Η παλαιοχριστιανική βασιλική της Αγίας Ειρήνης στην Περίσσα Θήρας : Μία πρώτη προσέγγιση

Part of : Δελτίον της Χριστιανικής Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας ; Vol.49, 2010, pages 17-32

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17-32
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The Early Christian Basilica of St Irene at Perissa on Thera : A Preliminary Presentation
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In the course of major earth-removal works prior to building a church at Perissa on the island of Thera, around 1840, ancient ruins were uncovered, the plan of which was published in the Archaiologike Ephemeris of 1842. The plan included, inter alia, two three-aisled basilicas, while all that survives today is the lower part of a marble funerary monument of Hellenistic times, on which was incised in the fourth century AD the so-called Thera cadastre, based on the tax reform of Emperor Diocletian. Excavations during the 1990s, occasioned by the building boom in the area, in response to the pressures of tourism development, brought to light parts of a settlement of Late Antiquity, an organized cemetery and a large Early Christian basilica on the site of the Middle Byzantine church of St Irene. The ruined and disfigured two-aisle, vaulted-roof church of St Irene, at the northeast edge of the settlement, in the foothills of Mesa Vouno, was partly buried beneath huge deposits. The removal of these deposits in 1992, on the northwest side of the small church, brought to light the upper parts of built piers and columns, still standing upright in the fill (Fig. 1). The small-scale excavations conducted in the following years revealed that the two-aisle church had been founded in the east part of the middle aisle of a large three-aisle basilica. The upper structure of the northwest part of this basilica, the west part of an oblong building added to the north side and a large part of the narthex were uncovered (Fig. 2). To bring to light fully this important monument demands long-term excavations with parallel works of supporting and consolidating the parts revealed, as well as extensive interventions to contain the earth and rocks on the overlying steep rocky slope. Two building phases can be distinguished in the three-aisle basilica: the initial one (phase A) and a second one of extensive alterations (phase B). This is a three-aisle basilica in which the middle aisle terminates in a semicircular apse, and the lateral aisles in straight walls. The length of the middle aisle, excluding the apse, is 25.35 m. and the width 8.55 m., the north aisle is 3.80 m. wide, while the overall width of the basilica is estimated at 16.15 m. (Fig. 3). In phase A the middle aisle was separated from the side aisles by colonnades of ten columns (Fig. 3A). The four west columns of the north colonnade survive in situ, three of them with their capital. On the west wall, the central doorway of the middle aisle, width 1.80 m., and the smaller doorway of the south aisle, width 1.20 m., have been revealed (Fig. 6). The upper part of a monumental doorframe of the central portal has been uncovered, with two vertical jambs and part of the lintel, all of local grey limestone. They are decorated richly only on the face towards the narthex, with a variation of Lesbian cymatium (cyma reversa), astragal (bead-andreel) and Ionic cymatium (egg-and-dart) (Figs 7 and 8). The doorframe, which comes from an earlier building on the island, can be dated to the fourth century. The columns and the capitals of the colonnades are made of Prokonnesian marble and on one column there is a mason’s mark ‘EA’, which attests to their provenance from Constantinopolitan workshops. The Corinthianizing column capitals belong to the Leierkapitelle type (Fig. 9), which is disseminated widely in the second half of the fifth and the early sixth century. They display similarities to those in S. Apollinaire Nuovo in Ravenna, and so the founding of the basilica, which in this phase had a timber roof, can be dated to the early sixth century. In phase B extensive alterations were made to the monument, as observed in the massive built piers encasing, rather inelegantly, every second column of the north colonnade, and the other features that point to a change in the roofing of the church (Fig. 3B). The arcade created between the built piers abuts the original arcade of the columns, which is not abolished but is essentially hidden behind the lower and wider arcade of the piers (Fig. 1). As seen from the middle aisle, this creates the impression that the low arcade is supported alternately on piers and columns. Because large parts of the construction of the vault of natural volcanic stones and plaster were found in the fill of the north aisle and the narthex, it is deduced that the basilica was roofed by vaults. Moreover, the existence of two diametrically opposed built piers, ¶ 1 and ¶ 3 ,suggests that the central space of the middle aisle was roofed by a dome. The alterations were made presumably after earthquake damage to the monument and can be dated to the second half of the sixth century, since the same phenomenon has been observed in excavations of houses in the settlement at Perissa and the corresponding coastal settlement at Kamari. The north oblong addition to the basilica, the north side of which follows the line of the adjacent rock, forms a space of trapezoidal plan with varying width (Fig. 2). To phase A belong the thin outer walls and the apse, while all the rest of the building elements visible today belong to phase B. The east part is separated from the west by a cross wall, in which a monumental formation of a two-lobe opening above the lintel of the doorway has been revealed (Fig. 11). Particularly interesting is the west part, the side walls of which stand to a considerable height and preserve the springing of the roof with a semicircular vault (Fig. 5A), and the formation of the north and south sides lacks uniformity in spaces A and B. Found in the west part were copper coins of Maurice 587/8, Herakleios 623/4, Constans II 646/7 and Leo V the Armenian 813-820. One gold solidus of Leo III Isauros 720/5 refers to the catastrophic eruption of the Thera volcano in 726, which is described vividly by Theophanes in his Chronicle and is attributed to the iconoclast emperor ‘theomachos Leo’ (Leo who battles against God). Based on current knowledge, the St Irene basilica is the largest basilica on Thera, for which the sculpted decoration was commissioned from Constantinople and spolia of earlier buildings were not used exclusively, as in the other known basilicas on the island. It can also be considered the largest ecclesiastical monument in the Cyclades, prior to the founding of the Katapoliani church on Paros. The coastal settlement at Perissa was abandoned by its inhabitants around the mid-seventh century, with the appearance of the Arab threat, but at least some parts of this large ecclesiastical monument continued in use even after the eruption of the volcano in 726, while in the eighth and ninth centuries the two-aisle vaulted-roof church must have been founded in the east part of the middle aisle. An interesting testimony for the further use of the space is the inscription on part of a column, which was incised by the drouggarios Kakabopoulos from Euripos and can be dated to the tenth century (Fig. 13). This large ecclesiastical monument should be associated with the name of the island as Santorini, since it appears for the first time in the sources of the twelfth century by the Arab geographer Edrisi, derives from the portolans and is correlated by researchers with some coastal monument at which seafarers moored their ships
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