Η Παναγία της Λειβαδιάς. Μια άγνωστη εκκλησία του 11ου αι.
Part of : Δελτίον της Χριστιανικής Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας ; Vol.30, 1986, pages 305-328
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Pages:
305-328
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The Church of the Virgin at Lebadeia
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Articles
Abstract:
In 1904 and while at Lebadeia, George Lampakes, the Greek Byzantinist who created the Christianike Archaeologhike Etaireia one hundred years ago, discovered a rectangular slab bearing a relief decoration. He found it among the ruins of a church dedicated to the Virgin, on a site never since identified. To Lampakes' own words, this was "near Trofonios", apparently Lebadeia's renowned sanctuary obscurely described by Pausanias. It is believed that the sanctuary was situated on a narrow piece of land stretching between the foot of a hill fortified with the walls of Lebadeia's Catalan castle and the sources and left bank of Herkyna, a stream crossing Lebadeia from SW. to NE. In 1906 Lampakes published a drawing showing the slab front and dated it to the 10th or 11th century (Fig. 1). Paradoxically enough, this limited information remained all we knew either of the church and the slab, both of which vanished in the meantime, or of Lebadeia in the 10th and 11th centuries and of its topography. It was believed that the town gained some importance only in the 14th century under a Catalan regime, to become later a prosperous centre of Boeotia and Central Greece during the last period of the Ottoman rule until it was burnt down in 1821. Amand von Schweiger-Lerchenfeld's "Griechenland in Wort und Bild" (Leipzig 1882), an illustrated book containing the author's impressions from his tour of Greece, includes an engraving by C. Laplante after a sketch or drawing by an artist whose name reads Sahib (Fig. 2). The engraving bears the title "A funeral at Lebadeia". Schweiger-Lerchenfeld makes no mention of any funeral he personally attended while et Lebadeia. Furthermore, he makes no reference to the date of his visit to the town or even to the rest of Greece. From certain details on Sahib's drawing (mitre set on the dead man's head, honorary detachment accompanying the funeral procession) and two documents from the Public Archives in Athens referring to the erection of Lebadeia's present cathedral (no. 5 on the map, Fig. 3), begun in 1855 on the site of a demolished mosque, it is deduced that the scene depicts the funeral of Abramios, bishop of Thebes and Lebadeia between 1852 and 1858. Abramios died before the completion of his cathedral, while another church, however small, functioned temporarily as the central church of the town. This was obviously used on the very day of Abramios' funeral. To locate the church, one is guided by an L-shaped house appearing on Sahib's drawing just in the rear of it. Indeed, a similar block is found in the vicinity of Trofonios or Lebadeia's cathedral as deduced from the town's present plan which has preserved to a large extent its pre-1821 form. The site, an artificially created terrace lining Herkyna's right bank, is occupied by a small church called Palaea Panaghia, Old St.Mary's (no. 1 on the map, Fig. 3), a name originally attributed to a far earlier structure. This conclusion can be equally reached by noticing several pieces of bricks apparently collected from the ruins of the earlier church and reused in the construction of the lower parts of the present church external walls, or at the two-light window of its southern side (Fig. 5). On the other hand, a marble column shaft (Fig. 6) originally belonging to the same structure was eventually planted in the surrounding ground of the present church. All this means that this earlier church of the Virgin, though a sound structure in 1858, was turned into ruins before October 1904 when Lampakes visited Lebadeia. What might have happened in the meantime still remains uncertain, whereas the site was cleared soon after 1904 to build the present Palaea Panaghia. Thus identified and precisely located, Lebadeia's lost monument can still contribute to our knowledge not only of Lebadeia's topography in the 11th century but also of Helladic architecture during the same period. In Sahib's drawing, the N. and W. sides of the church are shown. The latter side is slightly elevated across its centre bay which is topped by a flat campanile, obviously an addition to the original building. Much later, the church was extended to the N. by the addition of a modern, humble structure attached to its northern external wall. Thus, a strange, flat and originally independent little structure bearing a two-light opening was incorporated to the building. In 1858 this was attached to the NW. corner of the church and could hardly be identified with an original campanile. Although in 1858 the church missed its SW. corner as concluded from Sahib's drawing, a fact which nevertheless might be due to an omission of the artist, the church of the Virgin was a small, cross-in-square domed building, most likely of the simple distyle type. This entails a templon screen set between two piers which leave space for two closure slabs between piers and colonettes framing the templon door. Lampakes' relevant measurements from the slab he found in 1904 fit perfectly this arrangement, a fact which constitutes an additional proof of the vanished monument's small size. On the other hand, unplastered parts of the external walls indicate a typical "cloisonné" masonry, as is the case of the walls of the octagonal drum. The latter was pierced by two-light windows which preserved their original marble screens, bearing a semi-circular and three circular or multilobed glassed openings on each of their upper and lower part respectively. The Athenian type of the dome with its two-light windows is fourth in a series of similar domes known from surviving 11th century churches: the Holy Apostles and H. Theodoroi, both in Athens, and Taxiarches Charouda in Mani. The same chronology can be established from certain features of the curved ornament appearing on the templon slab published by Lampakes (Fig. 1), by comparing it with the relief decoration of another slab of the Byzantine Museum, Athens (Fig. 7) or with a similar one kept in the church of Peribleptos at Politika, Euboea. In conclusion, Lebadeia's church goes back to the 11th century to indicate a Helladic spread of a dome after the unprecedented and highly sophisticated example of the church of the Virgin in the neighbouring monastery of Saint Luke. Lastly, there is some historical evidence to indicate that Lebadeia's vanished monument was right from the beginning a metochion of Saint Luke. Spon and Wheler were the first to mention the church after visiting it in 1676. Ten years later, an already "old metochion" of Saint Luke is clearly referred in a document published by Kremos. This was surrounded by shops and was located in the quarter of "Gazi Orner Bey", a name deriving from a late 15th or early 16th century Turkish mosque (Fig. 8) that can still be seen on pre-1821 Lebadeia's main road lining Herkyna's left bank (no. 2 on the map, Fig. 3). It is thus concluded that both the metochion and the church of the Virgin depended on Saint Luke and were erected on exactly the same site in the 11th century. Certainly, this reflects Lebadeia's reappearance or ascending importance in the 11th century Helladic theme, a conclusion enhanced by G. Schlumberger's opinion that Basileios II made a "halte probablement à Livadie" on his way to Thebes and Athens through recovering Hellas in 1018-1019.
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