Armenia, the first Christian Kingdom in history, has developed a unique personality in matters of spirituality, art, music and literature. It had exported the spirit of its sacred architecture to the four corners of Europe long before erecting the churches of its diaspora on the five continents.
The type of church developed by Armenia is a cruciform plan inside and polyhedral outside. The cupola which surmounts the naos, or central space, is enclosed in a conical roof built in stone, raised on a drum and which has become emblematic of this architecture. The drum can be cylindrical or octagonal, pierced with arched bays and adorned with a gallery of blind arcades on engaged columns in the manner of a bas-relief. This last motif is one of the elements most exported by Armenia to neighboring countries and as far as Roman Europe.
The carved ornaments
Sculpture is not the sculpture in the round in the spotlight in the West, but bas-reliefs sometimes figurative like manuscript miniatures, sometimes abstract like khachkars, or stone crosses. It is a whole series of interlacings and guilloches which develop into frames of openings, friezes or arcades. A median cornice bending the whole building corresponds on the facade to the birth of the vaults inside. It happens that this cornice comes to embrace the lintels and the arcades of the openings, integrating them in a continuous scenario. We will find this phenomenon as far as Romanesque France, at Notre-Dame-du-Port in Clermont-Ferrand in Puy-de-Dôme.
Serbia and Romania
This principle of cornice was exported to Wallachia and the rest of Romania, as well as to Serbia, notably to the Church of the Assumption in Ljubostinja (end of the 14th century) which also incorporates the blind arcades engaged and the rose windows finely chopped. These tracery rosettes also became typical of the Armenian style. They are formed starting from a concentric zone followed by a set of cords which develop towards the outer disc. Their infinite geometric patterns echo those of the khachkars, which evoke the work of a goldsmith. Also in Serbia, the monastery of Ravanica (end of the 14th century) presents the median cornice and the almost blind engaged arcades, but pierced with loopholes in the Armenian manner as in Dadivank and Hovhannavank.
It is the Church of the Dormition in the monastery of Argeş in Romania which presents, as in Ljubostinja, the interplay of twisted median cornice, engaged arcades with loopholes and rosettes chiseled in interlacing. As in Armenia, the plan of this church is also cross-shaped with a raised central cupola. According to a properly Armenian model, the arcades of the drum are sausage, that is to say without the insertion of capitals between the columns and the arches.
The gavit
Particular sign of Armenian architecture, the gavit is a narthex, or pronaos, with its own cupola topped with its cone. It is a vertical element which reproduces on a smaller scale the image of the central tower of the naos. It can be closed in turbé or open in canopy. This last solution is found strangely in Lebanon, in the Maronite church of Saint-Jean in Mtein. Here, the narthex is open in the form of a porch and surmounted by steps bearing a bell tower. The whole is openwork according to the model of the Church of the Holy Mother of God in Khor-Virap (Armenia).
The repetition of the cones of the naos and the gavit are the most revealing elements of the Armenian identity of this architecture and allow its identification from a distance from the perception of its silhouette. This shape is also reminiscent of the headdress of monks, bishops, vardapets and even Catholicos.
Stability
A highly seismic country subject to extreme temperatures, Armenia had to develop a technique adapted to these constraints. Its builders used solid materials such as granite, marble, clay and basalt, but also and above all brown and reddish tuff. This volcanic rock cut into large blocks gives Armenian buildings a monumental, archaic and warm aspect. The facade thus spreads out a blossoming of all the reddish and orange nuances of the volcanic stone. This material is also used for carving and carving khachkars.
A blocking of concrete was used to consolidate the interior of the walls, while the exterior part was worked in cut stone with sharp joints. The technique of entangling the stone beds made it possible to avoid slippage caused by earthquakes. Here and there, a chicane stone overflowing towards another bed allows the junction with this one, providing the facade with greater cohesion.
From the general plan to the smallest details through the volumetry, we are in the presence of an ingenious architecture of stability, balance and harmony. The monument soars on a larger base, to reduce as it rises. The thickness of the walls, the reduction of the openings and the vaulted roof, all this contributes to the solidity which has enabled these treasures of humanity to cross the centuries and to brave wars and natural disasters.
Influences on Europe
Josef Strzygowsky assumes an Armenian influence on the Christian world, both Byzantine and Western. He recalls that it was Tiridates, the Armenian architect of the artistic school of Ani, who had restored the dome of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople after the earthquake of 989. Another Armenian, Eudes de Metz, called Odo, was Charlemagne’s architect. It was he who had built the palatine chapel of Aix-la-Chapelle on the model of the catholicossate of Etchmiadzine and which was to become the prototype for the other Carolingian and then Romanesque monuments.
On the eastern side, it is Russia that has also drawn on the sources of Armenian architecture. Thus, in Romania, in the Balkans, in the Dnieper region (Russia), and in Roman Europe, we find the characteristics of a particular style born in Ani in the Armenian Caucasus. The naves with ribbed ribs with transverse arches, the blind arcades engaged in the facades and the cruciform plan surmounted by the central tower testify to a common Caucasian origin.
Romanesque architecture
In Saint-Étienne de Nevers and the Sainte-Trinité abbey in Lessay, both from the 11th century, Romanesque art was inspired by the cross plan. At Lessay, as at the Très-Sainte-Trinité in Germigny-des-Prés, it is the central tower that marks the main difference from the conical shape of the Armenian cupolas. It is a square-based tower topped with a pyramidal framed roof which contrasts with the cylindrical or octagonal shapes of the Armenian prototype. However, the octagonal shape is found in several Romanesque examples from Puy-de-Dôme such as at Notre-Dame d’Orcival, Notre-Dame-du-Port, Saint-Nectaire, Saint-Saturnin and Saint-Austremoine.
Although Armenian and Romanesque architecture developed simultaneously between the 6th and 11th centuries, the former seems to predate the accomplished style of the latter by one to two centuries. Vahanavank, or the convent of Prince Vahan, dates back to the 10th century, while the Romanesque monuments in the West that resemble it are concentrated around the 11th century. Some witnesses of this Armenian architecture even date back to the 6th century, such as the basilica of Ererouk near Ani.
Despite the significant differences noted by art historians, they agree on the likelihood of specific influences on Romanesque architecture. Armenia, the first Christian Kingdom in history, has developed a unique personality in matters of spirituality, art, music and literature. It had exported the spirit of its sacred architecture to the four corners of Europe long before erecting the churches of its diaspora on the five continents.
