Theology and Form

Contemporary Orthodox Architecture in America

Nicholas Denysenko

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780268100155
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Konfessionen

How do space and architecture shape liturgical celebrations within a parish? In Theology and Form: Contemporary Orthodox Architecture in America, Nicholas Denysenko profiles seven contemporary Eastern Orthodox communities in the United States and analyzes how their ecclesiastical identities are affected by their physical space and architecture. He begins with an overview of the Orthodox architectural heritage and its relation to liturgy and ecclesiology, including topics such as stational liturgy, mobility of the assembly, the symbiosis between celebrants and assembly, placement of musicians, and festal processions representative of the Orthodox liturgy. Chapters 2–7 present comparative case studies of seven Orthodox parishes. Some of these have purchased their property and built new edifices; Denysenko analyzes how contemporary architecture makes use of sacred space and engages visitors. Others are mission parishes that purchased existing properties and buildings, posing challenges for and limitations of their liturgical practices. The book concludes with a reflection on how these parish examples might contribute to the future trajectory of Orthodox architecture in America and its dialogical relationship with liturgy and ecclesial identity.

NOTES

Introduction

1. Thomas Mathews, The Early Churches of Constantinople: Architecture and Liturgy (University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971); Cyril Mango, Byzantine Architecture (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1976); Vasileios Marinis, Architecture and Ritual in the Churches of Constantinople: Ninth to Fifteenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Nicholas Patricios, The Sacred Architecture of Byzantium: Art, Liturgy, and Symbolism in Early Christian Churches (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014).

2. See Egeria, Journal de Voyage (Itinéraire), ed. and trans. Pierre Maraval, Sources Chrétiennes 296 (Paris: Cerf, 1982).

3. For the Armenian lectionary, see Athanase Renoux, ed., Le Codex Arménien Jérusalem 121. I. Introduction aux origines de la liturgie hiérosolymitaine: Lumières nouvelles, Patrologia Orientalis 35.1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969), and Le Codex Arménien Jérusalem 121. II. Édition Comparée du texte et de deux autres manuscrits, introduction, textes, traduction et notes par A. Renoux, Patrologia Orientalis 36.2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971); for the Georgian lectionary, see Michael Tarchnischvili, ed., Le grand lectionnaire de l’Église de Jérusalem Ve–VIIIe siècle, Corpus scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 189 (Louvain: Secrétariat du Corpus SCO, 1959).

4. John Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Development, and Meaning of Stational Liturgy, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 228 (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1987).

5. Robert F. Taft, The Byzantine Rite: A Short History (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992); idem, “The Liturgy of the Great Church: An Initial Synthesis of Structure and Interpretation on the Eve of Iconoclasm,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 34–35 (1980–81): 45–75. See also Mango, Byzantine Architecture; Mathews, The Early Churches of Constantinople.

6. Hans-Joachim Schulz, The Byzantine Liturgy: Symbolic Structure and Faith Expression, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (New York: Pueblo, 1986).

7. See Robert F. Taft, “Mount Athos: A Late Chapter in the History of the Byzantine Rite,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers (1988): 179–94.

8. Patricios, The Sacred Architecture of Byzantium, 88–244.

CHAPTER ONE Orthodox Architecture

1. Denis McNamara’s informative overview of ecclesial architecture, How to Read Churches: A Crash Course in Ecclesiastical Architecture (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2011; originally published in Lewes by Ivy Press, 2011), contains many examples of ancient and contemporary Byzantine architecture.

2. Robert F. Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West: The Origins of the Divine Office and Its Meaning for Today, 2nd rev. ed. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993), 273.

3. Rowland Mainstone, Hagia Sophia: Architecture, Structure and Liturgy of Justinian’s Great Church (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988); Mathews, The Early Churches of Constantinople.

4. Juan Mateos, ed., Le Typicon de la grande église, vol. 1, Le cycle des douze mois, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 165 (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1962); idem, Le Typicon de la grande église, vol. 2, Le cycle des fêtes mobiles, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 166 (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1963); Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship.

5. Mango, Byzantine Architecture.

6. Patricios, The Sacred Architecture of Byzantium.

7. Marinis, Architecture and Ritual.

8. Allan Doig, Liturgy and Architecture: From the Early Church to the Middle Ages, Liturgy, Worship and Society Series (Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2008), 68.

9. Ibid., 67.

10. Alexander Grishin, “Eastern Orthodox Iconography and Architecture,” in The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity, ed. Ken Parry (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 371.

11. See Mateos, ed., Le Typicon de la grande église, vols. 1 and 2; Mainstone, Hagia Sophia; Mathews, The Early Churches of Constantinople; Taft, The Byzantine Rite; idem, “The Liturgy of the Great Church”; Hugh Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy: The Development of the Eucharistic Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990).

12. Robert F. Taft, A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, vol. 2, The Great Entrance: A History of the Transfer of Gifts and Other Pre-anaphoral Rites, 2nd ed., Orientalia Christiana Analecta 200 (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1978).

13. Robert F. Taft, William Loerke, and Mark J. Johnson, “Pastophoria,” in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. Alexander P. Kazhdan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

14. For a brief and suitably summarized description of the Great Entrance in Hagia Sophia, see Doig, Liturgy and Architecture, 75–76.

15. Richard Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, 4th ed., rev. Richard Krautheimer and Slobodan Ćurčić (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 206, quoted in Doig, Liturgy and Architecture, 68.

16. Quoted in Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin, 1963, 1964, 1993 reprint), 264.

17. René Bornert, Les commentaires byzantins de la Divine Liturgie du VIIe au XVe siècle, Archives de l’Orient chrétien (Paris: Institut Francais d’études byzantines, 1966), 83–124.

18. Maximus Confessor, Selected Writings, trans. George C. Berthold, intro. Jaroslav Pelikan, pref. Irenee-Henri Dalmais (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1985), 1–11.

19. For a complete overview of recent debates on the liturgy Maximus knew, see Robert F. Taft, “Is the Liturgy Described in the Mystagogia of Maximus Confessor Byzantine, Palestinian, or Neither?” Bollettino della badia Greca di Grottaferrata 7 (2010): 247–95.

20. Bornert, Les commentaires byzantins, 123–24.

21. Schulz, The Byzantine Liturgy, 58–62.

22. “Having once resided in flesh, the Word consents, by the operation of the Spirit, to reside in temples built by hand, assuring his presence by mystical rites”; anonymous kontakion, quoted in Kathleen McVey, “Spirit Embodied: The Emergence of Symbolic Interpretations of Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture,” in Architecture as Icon: Perception and Representation of Architecture in Byzantine Art, ed. Slobodan Ćurčić and Evangelia Hadjitryphonos (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2010), 56–57.

23. Amy Papalexandrou, “The Memory Culture of Byzantium,” in Companion to Byzantium, ed. Liz James, Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World Series (Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 113.

24. Ibid.

25. Schulz, The Byzantine Liturgy, 58–59.

26. Doig, Liturgy and Architecture, 74.

27. Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship, 45–49.

28. Ibid., 48. John Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1999); Jan Villem Drijvers, Cyril of Jerusalem: Bishop and City, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae (Leiden: Brill, 2004).

29. Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship, 49–54.

30. Ibid., 102–4, and Robert F. Taft, “Historicism Revisited,” in Beyond East and West: Problems in Liturgical Understanding (Washington, DC: Pastoral Press, 1997), 15–30.

31. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catéchèses mystagogiques, ed. and trans. Auguste Piédagnel, Sources Chrétiennes 126 (Paris: Cerf, 1966). See also the English translation The Works of Cyril of Jerusalem, trans. Leo P. McCauley and Anthony A. Stevenson (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1969–70). For a comprehensive analysis of the authenticity and interpretation of Cyril’s mystagogical catecheses, see Donna Hawk-Reinhard, “From Χριστιανοί to Χριστοφόροι: The Role of the Eucharist in Christian Identity Formation according to Cyril of Jerusalem” (PhD diss., St. Louis University, 2011). For an analysis of Cyril’s catechetical program, see Nicholas Russo, “The Distribution of Cyril’s Baptismal Catecheses and the Shape of the Catechumenate in Mid-Fourth-Century Jerusalem,” in A Living Tradition: On the Intersection of Liturgical History and Pastoral Practice, Essays in Honor of Maxwell E. Johnson, ed. David Pitt, Stefanos Alexopoulos, and Christian McConnell (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 75–102.

32. Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship, 180.

33. Taft, The Byzantine Rite, 29–32.

34. Cyril Mango, Alexander Kazhdan, and Anthony Cutler, “Hippodromes,” in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. Alexander P. Kazhdan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

35. Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship, 176.

36. Ibid., 168 and passim.

37. Baldovin traces the origin of the ektene to rogational and supplicatory offices celebrated in Constantinople’s liturgy (ibid., 220–25).

38. Helen G. Saradi, “Space in Byzantine Thought,” in Architecture as Icon: Perception and Representation of Architecture in Byzantine Art, ed. Slobodan Ćurčić and Evangelia Hadjitryphonos (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2010), 74–75.

39. Averil Cameron, “The Theotokos in Sixth-Century Constantinople,” Journal of Theological Studies 24 (1978): 79–108. See also Nicholas Denysenko, “The Soteriological Significance of the Feast of Mary’s Birth,” Theological Studies 68 (2007): 739–60.

40. Saradi, “Space in Byzantine Thought,” 83–84.

41. Grishin, “Eastern Orthodox Iconography and Architecture,” 373.

42. For a description of the tripartite sanctuary, see Marinis, Architecture and Ritual, 30–41. See also Patricios, The Sacred Architecture of Byzantium, 383.

43. Grishin, “Eastern Orthodox Iconography and Architecture,” 374, and Patricios, The Sacred Architecture of Byzantium, 250–63.

44. Schulz, The Byzantine Liturgy, 50–59. See also Mango, Byzantine Architecture, 196–97.

45. Schulz, The Byzantine Liturgy, 59.

46. “The next place of honor in the church is the apse. As terminus of the sanctuary, but closer to the dome than the nave, it calls for an image that stands in special relation to the concrete accomplishment of our redemption here on earth…. The incarnation in Mary’s maternal womb is represented in the apse, and it is here that the event of redemption, which I rendered liturgically present on the nearby altar, has its start” (Schulz, The Byzantine Liturgy, 59). For further explanation of the significance of Mary in the apse, also known as “Platytera ton ouranon,” or “she who is wider than the heavens,” see Patricios, The Sacred Architecture of Byzantium, 257.

47. “Instead of the open marble screen that afforded a view of the apse, a solid wall of icons now stood between the worshipper and the mystery of the Christian service, barely revealing the figure of the Virgin Mary in the semi-dome of the apse. The interior space was thus entirely overrun and obscured by painting” (Mango, Byzantine Architecture, 295).

48. Marinis, Architecture and Ritual, 43.

49. “Portable icons eventually occupied the templon and the intercolumniations. When this happened has been a matter of debate, with suggestions ranging anywhere from the eleventh century to the post-Byzantine period. The disjointed and at times contradictory nature of the evidence, both textual and material, indicates that the transformation of the templon into the iconostasis was gradual, localized, and became the norm at different times in different places” (Marinis, Architecture and Ritual, 45).

50. Schulz, The Byzantine Liturgy, 58–59.

51. “In short, the monastery was a miniature, self-enclosed city. In most cases, the monastic complex has disappeared, le...