Building the Churches of Kievan Russia 0860783278, 9780860783275

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BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

To the memory of Eugenia G. Sheinina, wife of Pavel A. Rappoport.

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

Pavel A. Rappoport

O Routledge §^^

Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 1995 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX 14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 1995 Alexander P. Rappoport All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Rappoport, Pavel A. Building the Churches of Kievan Russia I. Title 726.50947714 U.S. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Rappoport, P.A. (Pavel Aleksandrovich) Building the Churches of Kievan Russia / P.A. Rappoport. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-86078-327-8. 1. Churches—Russia—Design and construction—History. 2. Church architecture—Russia—History. 3. Architecture, Byzantine—Russia—History. 4. Kievan Rus. I. Title. TH4221.R371995 690'8581947—dc20 94-42743 CIP ISBN 9780860783275(hbk) Transfered to Digital Printing in 2011

Contents

Note on translation and transliteration

vii

List of illustrations

ix

List of abbreviations

xii

Foreword Cyril Mango

xiv

Acknowledgements

xvii

Map

xviii

Introduction

1

BUILDING MATERIALS 1 2 3 4 5 6

Brick Stone Lime and mortars Ceramic floor tiles 'Resonators' Window glass and mosaic

5 54 59 69 78 82

STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Foundations Walls Arches, vaults, openings Staircases Wooden elements in the buildings Floors Roofs

89 109 119 129 133 145 149

vi

CONTENTS

THE ORGANIZATION OF CONSTRUCTION WORK

14 15 16 17 18

Laying the foundations and laying out the building on the site The period of construction The construction process The size and structure of the building teams The social position of the builders

161 168 180 193 207

Conclusion

212

Indexes

215

Note on translation and transliteration

The text of Building the Churches of Kievan Russia has been translated from the original Russian. Where there is a standard English form for names, for example, Kiev, Moscow, these have been used; otherwise names have been translated using standard Russian spelling. For purposes of transliteration, the Library of Congress system, without diacritics, has been followed.

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List of illustrations

Fig. \ Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 6 Fig. 7 Fig. 8 Fig. 9 Fig. 10 Fig. 11

Fig. 12 Fig. 13 Fig. 14 Fig. 15 Fig. 16 Fig. 17 Fig. 18 Fig. 19 Fig. 20 Fig. 21

A brick with traces of raindrops, Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, Pereiaslavl'. 8 Brick kiln in Suzdal'. Fagade, plan and reconstruction. After A.D. Varganov. 11 Brick kiln in Kiev. Reconstruction by V.A. Kharlamov. 15 Brick kiln on the Protoka in Smolensk. Axonometric view. 15 Brick kiln on the Protoka in Smolensk. View from west. 16 Brick kiln on the Protoka in Smolensk. View from north-west. 16 Brick kiln on the Protoka in Smolensk. Upper kiln. 17 Brick kiln on the Protoka in Smolensk. Middle kiln. 18 Brick kiln on the Protoka in Smolensk. Lower kiln. 19 Brick kiln in Smolensk, Pushkin Street. Plan. 22 Brick kiln in Smolensk, Pushkin Street. 1 - turf; 2 - sand; 3 - burnt sand; 4 - clay; 5 - burnt clay; 6 - crushed brick; 7 - mud bricks; 8 - brick; 9 - brick-kiln production; 10 - ash; 11 - hearth of the kiln; 12 - clay mortar; 13 - burnt clay mortar; 14 - subsoil. 23 Brick kiln in Smolensk, Pushkin Street. General view. 24 Brick kiln in Smolensk, Pushkin Street. A detail. 25 Brick kiln in Chernigov. 25 Marks on the ends of bricks. Smolensk, church on the Protoka. 32 Marks on the ends of bricks. Smolensk, church in Perekopnyi Lane. 33 The marked end of a brick. Smolensk, the katholikon at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity on the Klovka. 36 Marks on the flat side of bricks. Polotsk, church on the fosse. 39 The marked flat side of a brick. Polotsk, church on the fosse. 39 A stamped brick. Smolensk, church on Bol'shaia Krasnoflotskaia Street. 40 A brick with stamps. Smolensk, church on the Protoka. 41 ix

x

Fig. 22 Fig. 23 Fig. 24 Fig. 25 Fig. 26 Fig. 27 Fig. 28 Fig. 29 Fig. 30 Fig. 31 Fig. 32 Fig. 33 Fig. 34 Fig. 35 Fig. 36 Fig. 37 Fig. 38 Fig. 39 Fig. 40 Fig. 41 Fig. 42 Fig. 43

Fig. 44

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

Stamps, katholikon at the Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Novgorod-Severskii. 43 Marks on bricks. Chernigov, Cathedral of Sts Boris and Gleb. After N.V. Kholostenko. 44 'Combing' on bricks. Vladimir-in-Volynia, Old Cathedral. 45 A pattern on a brick. Kiev, the Podol. Collected findings. 44 Curved bricks from the arched corbel table, Church of St Cyril, Kiev. 48 Brickwork of a semi-column on the facade. Smolensk, Church of St Basil on the Smiadyn'. 48 A set of bricks of the church on Voskresenskaia Hill in Smolensk. 49 A set of bricks from the katholikon at the Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Novgorod-Severskii. 49 Brickwork of a pilaster, church on the Malaia Rachevka, Smolensk. 50 Stones prepared for the decoration of a wall. 55 Stone for the decoration of a wall, Volkovysk. 55 Dressed stone, Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Galich. 58 Dressed stone, excavations of the ambulatory of the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin on the Nerl'. 58 Lime kiln, Kiev. Plan and reconstruction. P.P. Tolochko and K.M. Gupalo. 60 Lime kiln, Kiev. 61 Lime kiln, Suzdal'. Plan, section and reconstruction. After A.D. Varganov. 63 The floor in the western entrance. Pereiaslavl', the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael. 70 Brick from the Katholikon of Sts Boris and Gleb at the monastery on the Smiadyn' in Smolensk. 71 Shaped tile, katholikon at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity on the Klovka in Smolensk. 74 Fragment of a floor tile. Smolensk, the church at the Okopnoe Cemetery. 74 Relief ceramic tile, Galich. 75 Resonators, golosniki. 1 - Katholikon of the Dormition at the Monastery of the Caves, Kiev; 2 - Church of St Basil at Ovruch; 3 - Lower church in Grodno; 4 - Church in Trubchevsk; 5-6 - Church on the Protoka in Smolensk; 7 - Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa in Novgorod; 8 - Cathedral of St Sophia in Kiev. 81 Fragments of window glass. Pereiaslavl', Cathedral of the Archangel Michael. 83

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. 45 Fig. 46 Fig. 47 Fig. 48 Fig. 49 Fig. 50 Fig. 51 Fig. 52 Fig. 53 Fig. 54 Fig. 55

Fig. 56 Fig. 57 Fig. 58 Fig. 59 Fig. 60 Fig. 61 Fig. 62 Fig. 63 Fig. 64 Fig. 65

Substructures under the foundations of the church in the Archbishop's Court, Kiev. Photo 1910. 90 Substructures under the foundations of the palace in Kiev (south-east of the Church of the Tithe). Photo 1911. 91 Traces of groundsels under the foundations of the church in the campus of the Institute of Arts in Kiev. 94 Iron spikes at the intersections of groundsels. Kiev, the church in the campus of the Institute of Arts. 95 Plan of excavated foundations, Church of St Andrew in Pereiaslavl'. 96 Traces of groundsels in the apse of the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael in Pereiaslavl'. 97 Cross section of a wall: 1 - recessed-course brick technique; 2 - flush-course technique. 110 North-east pillar, church at Kolozha in Grodno. 116 Traces of ties at the base of the walls of the Church of the Tithe in Kiev. Photo 1908. 134 Holes from the ties in the base of a sub-dome pillar. Smolensk, the Katholikon of Sts Boris and Gleb at the monastery on the Smiadyn'. 136 Katholikon of Sts Boris and Gleb at the monastery on the Smiadyn' (the core, without ambulatories). Plan to show the lower tier of ties. The location of ties in the apses is unknown. 137 Cathedral of the Archangel Michael in Smolensk. Axonometric section. After S.S. Pod"iapol'skii. 138 Window frame from the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa in Novgorod. 143 A window preserving its original window frame. Novgorod, the katholikon at the Monastery of St Antony. 143 Lead sheet for roofing, church on the Protoka in Smolensk. 152 Plinthos tile from the Church of the Tithe, Kiev. 154 Gutter from the katholikon at the Monastery of the Nativity of the Virgin in Vladimir. After N.A. Artleben. 156 Gutters from the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir. After I.O. Karabutov. 157 The holes from scaffolding pins on the west facrade, Church of Sts Peter and Paul in Smolensk. 184 A fragment of the west facade, Church of St Panteleimon in Galich. 185 Plan of the operation and movement of the building teams. 198 *

Table

xi

*

*

The dates of breaking ground for the churches, as determined by their azimuths.

172

List of abbreviations

Arkhitekturnoe nasledstvo (Moscow) Arkheologicheskie otkrytiia (Moscow) Byzantinische Forschungen (Amsterdam) Cahiers archeologiques (Paris) Dumbarton Oaks Papers (Washington) Jahrbuch der Osterreichisches Byzantinistik (Vienna) KSIA Kratkie soobshcheniia Instituta arkheologii (Moscow) KSIAU Kratkie soobshcheniia Instituta arkheologii Ukrainy (Kiev) KSIIMK Kratkie soobshcheniia Instituta istorii material'noi kul'tury (Moscow) Materialy i issledovaniia po arkheologii SSSR MIA (Moscow, Leningrad) Pamiatniki kul'tury. Novye otkrytiia (Leningrad) PKNO PSRL Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei (St Petersburg) SA Sovetskaia arkheologiia (Moscow) Svod arkheologicheskikh istochnikov (Moscow, SAI Leningrad) SE Sovetskaia etnografiia (Moscow) Soobshcheniia GAIMK Soobshcheniia Gosudarstvennoi Akademii istorii material'noi kul'tury (Moscow, Leningrad) Trudy luzhno-turkmenistanskoi arkheologichTrudy luTAKE eskoi kompleksnoi ekspeditsii (Ashkhabad) VizVrem Vizantiiskii vremennik (Moscow) Zapiski Russkogo arkheologicheskogo ZRAO obshchestva (St Petersburg) AN AO ByzForsch CahArch DOP JOB

xii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

xiii

Dal1, Tolkovi slovar' = V. Dal', Tolkovyi slovar' zhivogo velikorusskogo iazyka, 4 vols (St Petersburg - Moscow, 2 edn. 1880-82). Karger, Drevnii Kiev = M.K. Karger, Drevnii Kiev, 2 vols (Moscow Leningrad, 1958-61). Poppe, Materialy = A. Poppe, Materiaty do slownika terminow budownictwa staroruskiego X~XV w. (Wroclaw, 1962). Rappoport, Zodchestvo drevnei Rusi = P.A. Rappoport, Zodchestvo drevnei Rusi (Leningrad, 1986). Sreznevskii, Materialy = I.I. Sreznevskii, Materialy Alia slovaria drevnerusskogo iazyka, I-III (St Petersburg, 1893). Voronin & Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smolenska = N.N. Voronin, P.A. Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smolenska XH-XIH vekov (Leningrad, 1979). Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi = N.N. Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi XII-XV vekov, 2 vols (Moscow, 1961-62).

Foreword

It is generally acknowledged that the craft of masonry construction was imported into Kievan Russia from By/antium in the latter part of the tenth century, but little thought has been given by Western scholars to the implications of this transfer of technology. The erection of a masonry church of traditional Byzantine form and decoration was, however, quite a different proposition from the painting of icons or even of entire church interiors. The introduction of masonry architecture into a country that had had no previous experience of it, especially a country so different in its climate and natural resources from the Byzantine lands, must have posed at first enormous difficulties: stone needed to be quarried, clay pits dug, bricks manufactured in great quantities, lime mortar prepared and this even before construction could begin. Glass had to be made for windows and tiles or metal sheets to cover the roof. The lack of marble in Russia meant that columns had to be replaced by masonry pillars, and floors paved with either slate or glazed tiles. Above all, it was necessary to assemble and train a labour force capable of carrying out the whole process, starting with the laying of foundations and culminating in the construction of vaults and domes and their protection against the weather. We do not know how these problems were surmounted, but surmounted they were. What is more, the tradition of Byzantine architecture, once it had been implanted in Kiev, became established there, was picked up and modified by local masters and gradually spread to neighbouring principalities as far north as Novgorod and Ladoga. Russian archaeologists, in spite of their relative isolation in the past seventy years, have made greater strides in the study of their ancient monuments than their colleagues in the Byzantine field. It is a point worth stressing. Specialists in Byzantine architecture, while admittedly dealing with a much more numerous body of buildings, have devoted most of their attention to typology and, in the case of churches, to symbolism and liturgical function. They have, however, paid little heed to the basic xiv

FOREWORD

xv

techniques of construction, the only notable exception being Auguste Choisy's pioneering, but now completely outdated, L'Art de batir chez les Byzantins (1883). Nevertheless, the study of techniques is not only interesting in itself, but leads to deeper insights as the reader of the present book will discover. It enables the archaeologist to identify, amongst other features, the handiwork of individual teams of builders, to work out the length of time required to complete a project with a given labour force and to trace the migration of teams from one centre to another - all of which is more concrete and 'historical' than abstract statements about forms and influences. It is true that the situation in Russia was not quite the same as in Byzantium: the documentary evidence, though meagre, is nevertheless comparatively richer - I refer to chronicle entries which often record both the commencement and completion dates of building projects carried out at the behest of princes or prelates. At the same time the incidence of masonry construction was much smaller in Russia than in Byzantium. Ancient Russia built its dwellings and even fortifications in timber, while reserving stone and brick for special monuments, namely churches and palaces. If Rappoport is right in his conclusions, only one builders' team may have been active at any given time in a great centre like Kiev, carrying out major projects one after another because it could not accomplish them simultaneously. We imagine that things were different in tenth-century Constantinople or Thessalonica, but do not really know. For that matter, what can we say with any assurance about the manufacture of brick in medieval Byzantium or the supply of marble (to mention only two topics)?

Pavel Aleksandrovich Rappoport was born in St Petersburg in 1913, the son of an architect. After graduating from the Leningrad Civil Engineering Institute, he joined in 1939 the Institute of the History of Material Culture (known as the Institute of Archaeology, Leningrad Branch, between 1961 and 1992) of the Academy of Sciences, where he was to remain for the rest of his life except for his war service on the Leningrad battlefront (1941-45). In 1965 he won the degree of Doctor of Historical Sciences and from 1975 onwards served as head of the Architectural-Archaeological Fieldwork Group, conducting excavations at Chernigov, Polotsk, Novgorod, Smolensk and Vladimir-in-Volynia. He died in 1988. Rappoport's initial field of specialization lay in old Russian military architecture about which he wrote a number of fundamental studies, but he eventually extended his interests to both domestic and church architecture, mostly of the pre-Mongol period. Among his more than two hundred published contributions two basic works of reference may be singled out, namely his critical monograph of Russian dwellings from the sixth to the

xvi

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

thirteenth century (1975) and catalogue of architectural monuments from the tenth to the thirteenth century (1982), the latter containing 248 annotated notices. His book on the architecture of Smolensk, written in collaboration with N.N. Voronin (1979) and incorporating the results of ten campaigns of fieldwork, also deserves special mention. In the light of his extensive experience Rappoport came to formulate a method of archaeological exploration as applied to works of old Russian architecture. While recognizing the destructive character of excavation, he insisted on the necessity of collaboration between archaeologists and historians of architecture and especially on the importance of accurately recording technical data, such as sizes of bricks, systems of bonding, the thickness of mortar joints, the treatment of facades, foundation trenches, even the degree of settlement of foundations. He noted with regret that in nearly half of recently excavated monuments of Russian architecture such details were not recorded and so became irrecoverable (Kratkie soobshcheniia Inst. arkheologii, no. 135,1973). It is on the careful observation of technical data that the present book is largely based. CYRIL MANGO

Acknowledgements

The Publishers wish to acknowledge, with grateful thanks, the help and advice of the following in the preparation of this book: Alexander P. Rappoport; Dr W.F. Ryan, The Warburg Institute, London; and especially, Professor A. Poppe, University of Warsaw.

xvii

Map of the towns mentioned in the text Borders of the principalities KIEV • Capitals of the principalities Pskov • Other towns

Introduction

This monograph deals with the practice and processes of building in Kievan Russia from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, which represents an important and integral part of the history of medieval Russian culture. Monumental building was, in organizational terms, one of the most complicated aspects of urban craftwork. It follows, therefore, that a study of the construction process can reveal much about the development of technology, as well as about the professional and social organization of the work. Equally, a study of the organization of building work and its construction technology is needed to understand the development of architecture in Kievan Russia. The desirability of a study of these processes has long been recognised by scholars. In the late nineteenth century V.V. Suslov wrote that: "together with studies of the artistic value of our monuments, serious attention must be paid to all the methods of construction used in them".1 Later on, N.B. Baklanov in a special paper drew attention to the importance of studying building technology. Having listed the principal problems of detailed studies of monumental architecture, he wrote that: "the possibility of studying technology and the organization of construction works has never even been considered" .2 This problem was then taken up by N.N. Voronin, who emphasized the need for the thorough study of building materials, the construction of buildings, and the construction process itself.3 A detailed consideration of the problem of the relationship between architectural forms and building methods has been made by lu.K. Milonov, who stated: "The real history of architecture is impossible without the history of building technology".4 Nevertheless, although numerous scholars have emphasized the importance of studying the construction and technology of medieval archi1 V.V. Suslov, "O svodchatykh perekrytiiakh v tserkovnykh pamiatnikakh drevne-russkogo zodchestva", Trudy II s "ezda russkikh zodchikh (Moscow, 1899), 138. 2 N.B. Baklanov, "Izuchenie stroitel'noi tekhniki kak odin iz sposobov datirovki parniatnikov", Soobshcheniia GAIMK (1932), nos 7-8,40 and 33. 3 N.N. Voronin, "Arkhitekturnyi pamiatnik kak istoricheskii istochnik", SA 19 (1954), 46. 4 lu.K. Milonov, "Arkhitekturnoe tvorchestvo i stroitel'naia tekhnika", Arkhitektura i stroitel 'naia tekhnika (Moscow, 1960), 45.

1

2

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

tecture, there has been little progress in the development of this subject. The building materials of Kievan Russia have, as a rule, only been considered in archaeological literature, where they are treated primarily as archaeological sources, and are often not related to the process of building. The construction of the architectural monuments of Kievan Russia has been described mainly by architects in papers devoted to the restoration of particular buildings. Finally, the organization of construction work has only been considered in relation to the proportions of the architectural monuments, i.e. as a system of ratios and related measurements, and then only when drawings are available. Specific questions connected with the organization of building work and with the professional and social organization of the builders have never been studied. The reason for this is the scarcity of information: there are only brief remarks in the old Russian chronicles about the building of churches and their consecration and only occasional references in Vitae to miracles connected with the construction of churches. These are almost the only written sources that are available to study the construction process. Evidence about construction in later records and documents is of little value, since this information relates to the time after the seventeenth century, i.e. at least four hundred years later than the period under study. Finally, care should be taken in dealing with ethnographic evidence, since it relates to a later historical era, when the organization of building work was quite different from that during the Middle Ages. As a rule, it is also impossible to rely upon analogies with neighbouring territories: there is no information about Byzantine construction methods, and in the West, the information in the chronicles comes from the Gothic and not the Romanesque period. Thus the monuments themselves serve as the only reliable sources for the study of the organization of building methods in Kievan Russia.5 Unfortunately, scholars have never considered the architectural monuments from this angle. In this monograph, separate consideration is given to the building materials and their preparation, the construction of the monuments, and the organization of construction work. Given our sparse knowledge of this problem, this monograph may be considered to be the first attempt to describe the construction process in ancient Russia in the pre-Mongol period.6 5 For brief details on the monuments, their dating, architectural forms, materials and constructions, as well as a bibliography, see P.A. Rappoport, Russkaia arkhitektura X-XIII w. Katalog pamiatnikov (Leningrad, 1982). For information about the relationship between architectural styles and the development of architectural forms, see idem, Zodchestvo Drevnei Rusi (Leningrad, 1986). 6 There are several publications on the history of Russian construction technology which have considered the pre-Mongol period, but only in general and with numerous errors, see B.V. Smirnov, Razvitie tekhniki nisskogo kamennogo stroitel 'stva v period XI-XVIIvekov. Avtoreferat Kand. Dis. (Moscow, 1954); ed. V.F. Ivanov, Istoriia stroitel'noi tekhniki (Leningrad-Moscow, 1962), 90-100. One exception is a well-researched paper on the construction process in Novgorod by G.M. Shtender, "Drevniaia stroitel'naia tekhnika kak metod izucheniia russkogo zodchestva", Arkhitekturnoe nasledie i restavratsiia (Moscow, 1986), 9-31.

Building materials

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1 Brick

Brick was the building material most widely used in Kievan Russia. It is natural, therefore, that brickwork has always been an object of interest for the historians of Kievan architecture. However, the technological aspects of brick manufacture have remained practically unstudied. Publications on this question give substantial data only for a period starting from the seventeenth century, but for the pre-Mongol period there is little information about brick manufacture to be found, and it is often incorrect.1 Nevertheless, recent archaeological studies of monumental architecture and of the brick kilns, in conjunction with the chronicles and ethnographic material, make it possible to give a general picture of brick manufacture in Kievan Russia. MOULDING BRICKS

From the time of the erection of the first stone and brick building in Kiev in the late tenth century up until the Mongol invasion of the mid-thirteenth century, the bricks used in Russia were made in the shape of thin, broad plates. In the old Russian written sources, these bricks were called by the Greek word plinthos (spelled either plint" or plinf").2 This type of brick came to Russia from the Byzantine Empire. Brick manufacture, seemingly a very simple task, in fact requires special knowledge and experience. First of all, not every clay is suitable for brickmaking. Furthermore, the clay should contain a certain amount of sand, 1 A.V. Konorov, "K istorii kirpicha v Rossii v XI-XX w.", Trudy Institute* istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki 7 (Moscow, 1956), 178-224; la.N. Cherniak, Ocherki po istorii kirpichnogo proizvodstva v Rossii (Moscow, 1957). 2 From the fourteenth century, the term kirpich 'brick' was also used. This word is of Turkish origin and is thought to have arrived via the language of the Volga Tartars; see R.A. lunaleeva, K.R. Galiullin, "K istorii slova 'kirpich' v russkom iazyke", Uchenye zapiski Azerbaidzhanskogo pedagogicheskogo instituta russkogo iazyka i literatury (1974), no. 2,44. In the fourteenth century both the terms plinfa 'plinthos' and kirpich 'brick' were used interchangeably; see Sreznevskii, Materialy, vol. 1, col. 1209; vol. 2, col. 965.

5

6

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

in order that it will not crack during firing and will have the required strength. Usually, a pure clay mixed with sand is used; the optimum clay gives a linear shrinkage of 6-8 per cent.3 Analysis of the bricks from Kievan Russian monuments shows that throughout the eleventh century kaolin was used, which sometimes had to be brought from long distances.4 Bricks made from this clay were usually pink, straw-coloured or light yellow, rather than red. By the end of the eleventh century, it seems that other types of clay were used as well. In the twelfth century, local clay came into general use. To find a variety of clays in the bricks of a single monument is rare, but occasionally two types of bricks, clearly made from two different types of clay, have been found in the same brickwork. For example, the bricks of the Old Cathedral near Vladimir-in-Volynia are mostly red, but almost 30 per cent are light yellow or white. Red and light yellow bricks also occur in the Church of the Annunciation, Chernigov. However, in most cases the bricks of one monument are similar in composition, presumably indicating that the clay was dug from one clay-pit. The clay was kneaded in a pit before moulding. The next stage was to mould the raw bricks into the required form. We can establish the system of moulding by the traces left on the bricks themselves. It seems that the clay was crammed into a wooden mould and then any excess was cut away with a straight-edged tool, a type of knife used for levelling, until it was flush with the upper edge of the mould. The traces of such moulding can be clearly seen on many bricks. The upper surface of the bricks is usually smooth, but often has slight longitudinal scratches left by the knife. The lower surface of the brick is usually rough, bearing the imprint of the pallet board which lay on the shaping table. That the moulds had no base has been confirmed by the location of convex marks, sometimes seen on the lower surface of a brick. The marks imprinted from one pattern may be located differently on the lower side of the brick and are sometimes displaced to the side, so that only part of the mark was imprinted, the rest falling outside the brick's surface.5 This could only have occurred if the matrix was not cut on the base of the mould, but on the pallet board, and the mould was not placed squarely over the matrix. Thus it is clear that the moulds had no bases and were, presumably, similar to the proletka, a type of 'open' mould which was used in Russia in domestic brick manufacturing until the nineteenth century.6 3

P.D. Gonchar, Prosteishie sposoby proizvodstva kirpicha (Moscow, 1958), 4. N.V. Kholostenko, "Arkhitekturno-arkheologicheskoe issledovanie Uspenskogo sobora Eletskogo monastyria v Chernigove", Pamiatniki kul'tury 3 (Moscow, 1961), 63. 5 This has been observed, for example, on the bricks of the katholikon of the Monastery of Sts Boris and Gleb on the Smiadyn' in Smolensk. 6 A.K. Krupskii, "Kirpichnoe proizvodstvo", Entsiklopedicheskii slovar' F. Brokgauza i I. Efrona 29, vol. 15, (St Petersburg, 1895), 133. 4

BRICK

7

Sometimes the ends of bricks show convex markings. These marks are, as a rule, sharp and unsmeared. If the shape for these had been cut into the end wall of the mould, the fact that the marks are unsmeared suggests that the moulds were not fixed but could be taken apart.7 However, at other times the bricks are slightly curved, the concave side always being the upper, smoothed side. This could have resulted from knocking the raw brick downwards out of the mould, which would only have been possible with a fixed mould. Detailed measurements of the bricks shaped in a single mould (as determined by the similarity of the marks on the ends) have shown some difference in size. This difference can be up to 1 cm in the brick's thickness and 2 cm in its length and width, and presumably resulted from the primitive system of moulding, as well as from varying conditions of drying and firing. Ethnographic evidence shows that during drying, the raw bricks were first laid flat, then on edge and were then loosely stacked in a lattice or banquette.8 Drying took 10-14 days, but in unfavourable weather conditions it could last for a month.9 In Kievan Russia, bricks were probably dried in the same way, although bearing in mind their thinness, it is unlikely that they were laid on edge. Gothic bar-bricks were stacked in 10-12 rows.10 In cottage industry in the twentieth century, the brick stacks were 6-8 rows high.11 The pattern in which bricks of the Kievan period were stacked for drying is unknown, but it can perhaps be determined from the imprints on the bricks themselves. In different building centres the raw bricks were dried in different ways. For example, in Kiev, Pereiaslavl' and Grodno there exist bricks, which bear the imprints of the feet of domestic animals, birds and children, as well as traces of raindrops (fig. 1). It would therefore seem that these bricks were dried on the ground in the open air. At the same time, in Smolensk and Polotsk the bricks have no imprints at all, so we can 7

Ethnographical evidence includes split frames fastened with a rope; see M.I. Belavenets, Glinovedenie. Kirpichnoe proizvodstvo. Chikmarnyi sposob formovcmiia syrtsa Alia stroitel 'nogo kirpicha (St Petersburg, 1903), 2. 8 M.I. Semenov, "Kirpichnye postroiki i proizvodstvo kirpicha v Almazovskoi volosti Balashovskogo uezda", Saratovskaia zemskaia nedelia (1903), no. 12, 53; Opyt izgotovleniia kirpicha ruchnym sposobom (Omsk, 1957), 3. 9 A seventeenth-century document states: "and in bad weather the brick does not dry..., and the raw brick must not be placed in the kiln"; see A.N. Speranskii, Ocherki po istorii Prikaza kamennykh del Moskovskogo gosudarstva (Moscow, 1930), 86. 10 A. Wyrobisz, "Sredniowieczne cegielnie w wiekszych osrodkach miejskich w Polsce", Studia z dziejoiv rzemiosla i przemyslu \ (Wroclaw, 1961), 68; Z. Tomaszewski, "Badania cegly jako metoda pomocnicza przy datowaniu obiektow architektonicznych", Zeszyty naukowe Politechniki Warszawskiej n. 11, Budownictwo, z.4, (Warsaw, 1955), 34. 11 Gonchar, Prosteishie sposoby, 25.

8

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

Figure 1. A brick with traces of raindrops, Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, Pereiaslavl'.

BRICK

9

conclude that the bricks were dried under a roof, perhaps in special sheds. In Smolensk the bases and edges of some bricks show the imprint of fabric, possibly laid under the raw bricks before drying, although ethnographic evidence shows that the area to be used for drying the bricks was usually covered with sand. In Novgorod, the bricks of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries always have the distinctive imprint of grass on their broad sides. Sometimes bricks also have the imprints of fingers, presumably caused when the raw bricks were carried and stacked. Brick moulding was not carried out all year round, but only during the building season. This is shown by ethnographic evidence, which indicates that the season for brick moulding lasted approximately from 20 May to 1 September, i.e. 90-100 working days.12 The bricks needed to build a small church were most probably prepared during the course of one season, but for larger constructions bricks had to be prepared in advance, for two or even three seasons running. Judging by ethnographic evidence, an experienced brick moulder could make up to 1,500 raw bricks per day.13 Incidentally, the evidence from the seventeenth century indicates much lower productivity, only 2,000 raw bricks per brick moulder per month.14 It should be noted that bricks shrink in the process of drying and firing. Therefore in order to obtain a fired brick of the required size, moulds of a larger size must have been made. Apparently, the brick moulders took into account some empirically found coefficient of shrinkage for the clay.15 We would expect them to have been careful that the fired bricks were not larger than required, since any increase in the size of bricks complicated the process of firing and hence led to a deterioration in quality. In addition, 12

This was the duration of a season in the nineteenth century; N.I. Roshefor, Ittiustrirovannoe urochnoe polozhenie (Petrograd, 1916), 295; Krupskii, "Kirpichnoe proizvodstvo", 134. Even in the post-Revolutionary years, the brick production season did not last more than three and a half months; V.G. lagodin, Kirpichnoe proizvodstvo (Moscow-Leningrad, 1930), 47. There are no grounds for thinking that in the twelfth century the season was longer. See also Issledovanie kustarnykh promyslov Saratovskoi gubernii 5 (Saratov, 1913), 22; Promysly sel'skogo naseleniia Pskovskogo uezda (Pskov, 1888), 58. 13 Issledovanie kustarnykh promyslov Saratovskoi gubernii, 23. From other evidence, one brick moulder with two assistants, could make 2,500 bricks; see K.K. Veber, Prakticheskoe rukovodstvo po proizvodstvu kirpicha (St Petersburg, 1893), 107. 14 Speranskii, Ocherki po istorii, 87. 15 In the late tenth century defence ramparts were built of mud bricks. These unfired plinthoi are larger than the fired plinthoi used in Kiev at that time. The difference in size here probably corresponds to the percentage of shrinkage in firing. On their size, see P. A. Rappoport, Ocherki po istorii russkogo voennogo zodchestva X-XIII w. (Moscow-Leningrad, 1956), 78, 80, 84, 88. The masters, of course, determined the size of the raw brick, and not that of the fired brick. Even in the eighteenth century, the standard size of a brick was determined from the size of raw bricks; see E. V. Karaulov, Kamennye konstruktsii, ikh razvitie i sokhranenie (Moscow, 1966), 8.

10

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

an increase in format complicated the work of the bricklayers.16 The brickmakers therefore usually incorporated a minimum coefficient of shrinkage when making the moulds, which was less than the coefficient of real shrinkage. As a result, the bricks gradually decreased in size.17 FIRING BRICKS The archaeological study of ancient Russian brick kilns has only recently begun, though in 1891 two brick kilns were found in the village of Shatrishche near Staraia Riazan'.18 It was stated that: "the vaults and the walls of the kilns were well preserved". A.V. Selivanov, who examined the kilns, reported that notes were taken and drawings made, although neither have survived. The absence of any kilns has made it necessary to draw conclusions about brick firing largely from the bricks themselves, although the similarity of brick and pottery production gave grounds for scholars to search for traces of brick kilns among the remains of pottery kilns. Nevertheless, it has long been suggested that the large scale of brick production must have itself brought about the use of other more complicated and much larger kilns. In fact, the first genuine brick kiln excavated, in 1949 in Suzdal', did differ from usual ceramic furnaces (fig. 2).19 Unfortunately, this kiln was studied in insufficient detail and therefore many features remain unknown.

16

The advantages of decreasing the size of bricks have been emphasized even in the twentieth century: "with smaller bricks, the drying and firing of the raw brick is more uniform, and, hence, the quality of bricks rises substantially..., the work of the brick carriers and bricklayers becomes easier"; see N. Lakhtin, "Eshche o razmerakh standartnogo stroitel'nogo kirpicha", Stroitel'naia promyshlennost' (1929), no. 2, 160; see also B. Benderov, "Chto predpochtitel'nee v stroitel'stve - umen'shat' ili uvelichivat' razmer kirpicha", ibid., 156. However, this does not exclude an opposing trend - connected with the patrons' interests - since an increase in the size of bricks had economic advantages. Therefore government interference sometimes led to an increase in the standard size of bricks; this happened, for example, with the introduction of a bol'shoi gosudareu kirpich 'large sovereign's brick' in the late sixteenth century. P.A. Rappoport, "Russkoe shatrovoe zodchestvo kontsa XVI v.", MIA 12 (1949), 294. 17 A decrease in the size of bricks is also typical of Byzantine architecture. On the sizes of bricks see, for example, E. Reusche, Polychromes Sichtmauerwerk byzantinischer und von Byzanz beeinflufiter Bauten Siidosteuropas (Cologne, 1971). In Georgia, from the fourth to the sixteenth centuries, the length of bricks decreased by 10-15 cm; see D.K. Dzhgamaia, Stroitel'naia keramika feodal'noi Gruzii (Tbilisi, 1980), 94-98. 18 Trudy Riazanskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi komissii za 1891 g. 6 (Riazan1,1892), 43. 19 A.D. Varganov, "Obzhigatel'nie pechi XI-XII vv. v Suzdale", KSIIMK 65 (1956), 49. In 1946, M.K. Karger excavated a large construction in the grounds of the Cathedral of St Sophia in Kiev, which he classified as a brick kiln; see Karger, Drevnii Kiev, vol. 1,468. However, soon after this V.A. Bogusevich, "Sporuda XI st. u dvori kiivs'kogo mitropolita", Arkheologiia 13 (1961), 105, showed convincingly that it could not have been a brick kiln, but was the remains of a bath-house.

11

BRICK

SO

i

a

j

3

|

4

Figure 41. Fragment of a floor tile. Smolensk, the church at the Okopnoe Cemetery.

Figure 42. Relief ceramic tile, Galich.

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BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

Glazed ceramic tiles were used by every architectural school in Kievan Russia. Complicated decorative patterns have been found in the monuments of Kiev, Polotsk, Smolensk, Grodno and in the Vladimir-Suzdal' area. The most varied forms of shaped tiles have been excavated in Pinsk.14 Tiles with relief ornamentation have only been found in the monuments of Galich. In Novgorod, only simple patterns of monochrome square and triangular tiles were used. Very seldom has it been possible to reconstruct the original schemes of those floors which were decorated with shaped tiles.15 It can be seen from the wood grain imprinted on the tiles, that they were moulded in wooden frames. The clay was usually well levigated and dense. In most cases the core of the tile is dark grey and its surface red. However, groups of tiles of a red colour throughout are often found and sometimes thick tiles with a softer, brick-like fabric have also been discovered. White clay tiles are found in the monuments of Vladimir-Suzdal'.16 Workshops which manufactured and fired the glazed tiles have not yet been identified; most probably they were moulded and fired together with bricks. For example, the excavations of the church on the Protoka in Smolensk have shown that unglazed, i.e. semi-finished tiles were used to fill the holes made by scaffolding pins.17 It is apparent that the production of these tiles was connected with the building of the church itself. On the other hand, the technology of glazing was similar to that of glass and smalt. Tiles were clearly manufactured in two stages, first the moulding and firing and then the glazing and painting. The second stage could have been carried out in a different workshop. The remains of such a workshop, manufacturing glazed tiles, was excavated by V.V. Khvoika in the centre of Kiev, to judge from his report.18 Here numerous tiles were found, as well as "pieces of multicoloured enamel mass" and crucibles of fire clay. Some crucibles had two compartments, with traces of two colours of enamel. Excavations in 1936-1937 in this area also revealed such crucibles.19 No sign of any tile kiln was found, indicating perhaps that the tiles were only 14 T.V. Ravdina, "Polivnye keramicheskie plitki iz Pinska", KSIA 96 (1963), 110. Unfortunately, the excavations did not show with which monument the set of tiles found should be connected. 15 M.V. Malevskaia, "K rekonstruktsii maiolikovogo pola Nizhnei tserkvi v Grodno", Kul'tura Drevnei Rusi (Moscow, 1966), 146. 16 Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1,482. 17 Voronin & Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smolenska, 320. 18 V.V. Khvoika, Drevnie obitateli srednego Pridneprov'ia (Kiev, 1913), 70. What is supposed to be a special tile kiln has been excavated in Staraia Riazan'. This was a circular area (perhaps the floor of the kiln?) with a diameter of c. 1.3 m, built of unfired tiles and clay, subsequently exposed to heavy firing. The size of the tiles is 10 x 9 x 5 cm; see V. Kreiton, "Dnevnik raskopok, provedennykh v 1902 godu na gorodishche Staroi Riazani", Trudy Riazanskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi komissii za 1903 god 18 (Riazan', 1904), part 2, 202. 19 Karger, Drevnii Kiev, vol. 1,466.

CERAMIC FLOOR TILES

77

glazed here, having been manufactured elsewhere.20 Glazed tiles and crucibles were found in a workshop of the late eleventh century excavated at the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev, where both glass and smalt were produced.21 In 1984 excavation in the Podol at Kiev produced splashes of glaze, as well as unused glazed tiles, perhaps traces of the manufacturing process.22 Sometimes convex marks are found on the bottom and sides of the tiles. Their significance is not clear, but, since in most cases these were probably 'princely marks', it seems possible that they were the marks of the patron or the prince who owned the workshop (most likely the same person).

20

Unfortunately, it is not known how glazed ceramic tiles were manufactured in the West. In England the remains of a workshop have been found where such tiles had been manufactured in the second half of the fourteenth century, but the kiln itself has not been studied. It is unclear whether both the firing and glazing of tiles took place in one workshop; see E. Eames, "The products of a medieval tile kiln at Bawsey, King's Lynn", The Antiquaries Journal 35 (no. 3/4), (Oxford, 1955), 162. In Czechoslovakia the remains of a thirteenth century kiln have been found, with unglazed relief tiles and brick debris; see A. Hejna, "Stredoveka stanice ricni plavby v Cervene nad Vltavou", Archeologicke rozhledy XIV (1962), part 4,505. 21 V.A. Bogusevich "Masterskie XI v po izgotovleniiu stekla i smal'ty v Kieve", KSIAU 3 (1954), 19. 22 M.A. Sagaidak, "Raskopki kievskogo Podola", AO1984 (1986), 303.

5

'Resonators7

Among the building materials used in Kievan Russia, the ceramic vessels used primarily in the construction of the vaults and also in the brickwork of the upper parts of the building are of importance. Their widespread use in Byzantine architecture has long been emphasized by scholars.1 An example of this can be seen in the construction of the cupolas in the Mangana Palace complex in Constantinople (built between the ninth and twelfth centuries), where the recesses of the vaults were filled with amphorae laid dry.2 In Russian architecture such vessels are usually called 'resonators' (golosniki). Due to this name, it has repeatedly been claimed in the literature that the principal purpose of these vessels was to improve the acoustics of vaulted buildings. However, in most cases the vessels were not laid in the brickwork with their mouths facing into the building, therefore they could not have affected the acoustics. It is evident that the vessels were mainly used to reduce the weight of the vaults, as was correctly noted by several scholars of Russian architecture in the nineteenth century.3 However, this does not mean that some vessels were not laid opening into the building, precisely in order to improve the acoustics. This technique is also well known in Byzantine architecture, where it has long antecedents, traceable back to Antiquity.4 The use of 'resonators', that is vessels to improve the acoustics, is also known in West European medieval architecture.5 1

A. Choisy, L'art de batir chez les Byzantins (Paris, 1883), 72. R. Demangel, E. Mamboury, Le quartier des Manganes et la premiere region de Constantinople (Paris, 1939), 46. 3 V.V. Stasov noted that the pots had been used both to reduce the weight of the vaults and to improve the acoustics, "Golosniki v drevnikh novgorodskikh i pskovskikh tserkvakh", Izvestiia arkheologicheskogo obshchestva 3 (St Petersburg, 1861), 126; see also S. Polianskii, "Novye soobrazheniia o tak nazyvaemykh 'golosnikakh' v drevnikh tserkvakh", Vestnik Obshchestva drevne-russkogo isskustva 1874-1876, nos 1-12 (Moscow, 1876), otd. IV, 87. V.E. Geze also wrote about this in "Zametki o nekotorykh kievskikh drevnostiakh", ZRAO 12, issue 11, Novaia seriia (1901), 193. 4 Vitruvius wrote about the way in which copper vessels improved acoustics. Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, tr. M.H. Morgen (New York, 1960), 143-4 (V.5.1-4). 5 D. Drocourt, "L'acoustique au Moyen Age", Archeologia 40 (1971), 29. 2

78

'RESONATORS'

79

To judge from the sherds excavated, these 'resonators' were used in the most ancient building in Kiev, the Church of the Tithe. Later on, they were used in all monuments in Kievan Russia. Two types of vessel were used, these being imported Greek amphorae and locally produced pots, most of which were specially manufactured for the construction industry. In most cases the monuments had vessels of both types. The locally produced vessels were in the shape of tall pots with long, straight necks. They were made from a well-levigated clay and had been well fired. Their internal surface was not usually smooth, but preserved traces of ribbon modelling. The use of vessels in the brickwork of the upper parts of buildings was not only typical of Kiev, but it has also been found in the monuments of Pereiaslavl', Volynia, Chernigov, Polotsk, Smolensk and Novgorod. This tradition continued up to the Mongol invasions, since such pottery has been found in monuments dated to the start of the thirteenth century. In these later monuments either one or both types of vessel were used. For example, in the churches at Ovruch and Trubchevsk, locally produced vessels were found, and in the Church of the Annunciation and the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa in Chernigov, amphorae. It should be noted, however, that 'resonators' were not used in either Galich or Vladimir-Suzdal'. In Suzdal', fragments have been found only among the ruins of Monomakh's church, which was built by masters from southern Russia.6 The use of vessels in the architectural school of Grodno is of special interest. In the walls of the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb at Kolozha, there were numerous vessels laid with their necks inside the building, starting at a height of about 1.5 m.7 The vast quantity shows that they were not used to improve the acoustics, since for this purpose a few vessels placed in the pendentives would have been sufficient. It can be seen from the number of 'resonators' found in the debris during excavations of the lower church, Grodno, that these vessels were similarly distributed in the walls there. The regular positioning of the vessels, as well as the fact that the walls of the Grodno churches were not plastered on the inside, suggest that in this case the 'resonators' were used as one of the elements of the interior decoration. However, their use in the steps of the staircases and the sides of the vaults which covered them in the church at Kolozha, shows that the vessels did have a constructional purpose, as a hollow material which reduced the weight of the building.8 In most cases the ratio of amphorae to locally produced pots cannot be determined. Sometimes only one type of vessel has been found in a 6

Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi vol. 1,30. N.N. Voronin, Drevnee Grodno (Moscow, 1954), 98. For a description of these 'resonators'; see "Kolozhskaia tserkov'", Pamiatnaia knizhka Grodnenskoi gubernii na 1866 god (Grodno, 1866), 30-32. 8 Voronin, Drevnee Grodno, 98. 7

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BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

monument. The conch of the apse of the gate church at the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev, for example, used only locally produced vessels.9 Locally produced vessels placed in mortar filled the recesses of the vaults under the gallery in the Katholikon of the Dormition at the same monastery.10 On the other hand, excavations at the church in the campus of the Institute of Arts in Kiev have revealed that the majority of fragments were of amphorae.11 In the Crypt church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Pereiaslavl' only amphorae have been found.12 The choice of the type of 'resonator' was probably determined by the availability of each type of vessel. The builders probably also took into account where the vessels were to be located. For example, in the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Monastery of the Caves, the recesses of the vaults and upper part of the walls contained locally produced vessels, whereas the pendentives contained amphorae.13 Excavations at the church on the Protoka in Smolensk have revealed that amphorae prevail in the vaults of the naos, whereas locally produced vessels were mainly found in the lateral parts.14 Locally produced vessels differed markedly both in shape and fabric in the different construction centres of Russia (fig. 43). In Smolensk, for example, they were made of brown-grey clay, to which a fine gravel was added, giving a spotty or 'scalded' appearance to the external surface. The 'resonators' of the monuments of Grodno were made using the spiral ribbon technique, without smoothing the inside. The clay here is yellow or red and the external surface was covered with a dense ornamentation of parallel lines; a band of a wavy ornamentation was sometimes added on the shoulders. The vessels usually have an extended neck, most often straight, but sometimes profiled and sometimes the bases have marks on them. In the monuments of Novgorod, normal pots were often used as well as those specially made for this purpose. The diameter of the 'resonators' in Novgorod is therefore small, similar to the size of normal pots.15

9

P.A. Lashkarev, Tserkovno-arkheologicheskie ocherki (Kiev, 1898), 215. V.E. Geze, "Zametki o nekotorykh kievskikh drevnostiakh", 191. 11 Karger, Drevnii Kiev, vol. 1,426. 12 M.K. Karger, "Raskopki v Pereiaslave-Khmel'nitskom v 1952-1953 gg.", SA 20 (Kiev, 1954), 16. 13 N.V. Kholostenko, "Pamiatnik XI v. - Sobor Pecherskogo monastyria", Stroitel'stvo i arkhitektura (Kiev, 1972), no. 1, 32. 14 Voronin & Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smolenska, 322. 15 P.P. Pokryshkin, Otchet o kapital'nom remonte Spaso-Nereditskoi tserkvi v 1903 i 1904 godakh (St Petersburg, 1906), 27 table XXIV. 10

Figure 43. Resonators, golosniki. 1 - Katholikon of the Dormition at the Monastery of the Caves, Kiev; 2 - Church of St Basil at Ovruch; 3 - Lower church in Grodno; 4 - Church in Trubchevsk; 5-6 - Church on the Protoka in Smolensk; 7 - Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa in Novgorod; 8 - Cathedral of St Sophia in Kiev.

6

Window glass and mosaic

Window glass has been one of the building materials found during studies of Kievan Russian architecture. Fragments have been found in most of the monuments in Kiev and Pereiaslavl', and in several of the monuments of Chernigov. Glass has been found more rarely in the monuments of other Russian towns, although it does occur in Novgorod, Smolensk and in Volynia. However, since window glass is such a fragile and easily broken material, the absence of finds cannot testify to the fact that glass had not actually been used in a given monument. In Turov, Novogrudok, Vladimir and Riazan', window glass has been found in wooden houses, but its use in larger monuments has still not been recorded. Therefore, it would be difficult to suppose that glass was used only in rich dwellings and not in the stone churches in the same towns. In studies of the monuments in Novgorod, fragments of glass have seldom been found, but excavations of wooden dwellings have revealed glass.1 Window glass was also found during the excavation of houses in Volkovysk2 and Pinsk.3 In some of the monuments of Novgorod, wooden window frames have been found, but without any glass. In these cases either the fragments of glass have not survived or mica and not glass was put in the window panes.4 Window glass was usually formed from round discs with diameters of 10 to 22 cm (fig. 44). Triangular or rectangular shapes have been found more infrequently. The thickness of the glass was usually 1 to 3 mm. Most of the panes had 'ribs', a beaded or, more commonly, turned-up edge. The glass is semi-transparent, usually yellowish in colour. There are, as a rule, numerous air bubbles, although well-manufactured glass of a blue colour, and without air bubbles has also been discovered. The glass may be smooth or rough, with concentric thickenings and a marked thickening in the centre.5 Two fragments of glass from the Cathedral of St Sophia in Kiev 1

P.I. Zasurtsev, "Usad'by i postroiki drevnego Novgoroda", MIA 123 (1963), 43. la.G. Zverugo, Drevnii Volkovysk (Minsk, 1975), 24. 3 P.P. Lysenko, Goroda Turovskoi zetnli (Minsk, 1974), 111. 4 Zasurtsev, "Usad'by i postroiki", 43, note 55. 2

82

Figure 44. Fragments of window glass. Pereiaslavl', Cathedral of the Archangel Michael.

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BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

centre.5 Two fragments of glass from the Cathedral of St Sophia in Kiev had stamped marks on them.6 Window glass was used in the most ancient Kievan monument, the Church of the Tithe. Here the excavations have revealed fragments of rectangular panes7 and some stained glass, as well as colourless glass. Such glass was found, for example, in the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Elets Monastery in Chernigov.8 Found here together with the glass were pieces of melted lead and two fragments of a frame of thin red copper, which were perhaps used to fasten the glass. The glass was circular, but occasionally also rectangular, triangular, hexagonal or rhomboid. N.V. Kholostenko noted that the glass was of two different types: the first, with a large transparent pattern against a dark opaque background, possibly from the windows of the drum of the cupola; and the second, with a smaller pattern on a coloured background, he concluded, from the location of the finds, was from the wooden altar barrier. A fragment of stained glass with a pattern, found in the Grodno citadel, seems to have belonged to the lower church.9 Patterned, round glass has also been found in the ruins of a rich wooden dwelling of the twelfth to thirteenth century near Galich.10 Stained glass is probably implied in the chronicles by the term 'Roman glass'.11 Scholars have emphasized that the window glass of Kievan Russia, which was connected in origin with Byzantine glass, differed from it substantially both in chemical composition and in its production.12 There is no doubt, however, that the production of window glass was closely connected with the production of glassware. Besides their similarity in technology, it is also confirmed by the simultaneous finds of window glass and glass vessels during the excavation of the remains of a glass manu5

lu.L. Shchapova, Steklo Kievskoi Rusi (Moscow, 1972), 69. S. Visotskii, "Vikonna rama ta shibki Kiivs'koi Sofii", Kiivs'ka starovina (Kiev, 1972), 57. 7 Karger, Drevnii Kiev, vol. 1,411. 8 N.V. Kholostenko, "Arkhitekturno-arkheologicheskoe issledovanie Uspenskogo sobora Eletskogo monastyria v Chernigove", Pamiatniki kul'tury 3 (Moscow, 1961), 57; idem, "Drevnerusskie vitrazhi", Dekorativnoe iskusstvo SSSR (1963), no. 8, 36-37. Glass of a similar manufacture process was also used in Byzantine monuments in the twelfth century; for example, the stained glass found in the churches of Zeirek Camii (Pantocrator) and Kariye Camii (Chora), in Istanbul; A. Megaw, "Notes on recent work of the Byzantine Institute in Istanbul", DOP17 (1963), 349-367. On Byzantine stained glass windows; see also A.I. Komech, Drevnerusskoe zodchestvo kontsa X - nachala XII v. (Moscow, 1987), 118; C. Mango, Byzantine Architecture (New York, 1976), 243,271. 9 M.M. lanitskaia, Vytoki shklarobstva Belarusi (Minsk, 1980), 106, fig. 49. 10 P.A. Rappoport, Drevnerusskoe zhilishche (Leningrad, 1975), 71. 11 "Ipat'evskaia letopis'", PSRL 2 (1908, repr. 1962), 843, under year 6767 (1259). 12 Shchapova, Steklo, 67; see also N.N. Kachalov, Steklo (Moscow, 1959), 198, 212-214, 376-377; M.A. Bezborodov, Steklodelie v drevnei Rusi (Minsk, 1956), 220-229; and idem, Khimiia i tekhnologiia drevnikh i srednevekovykh stekol (Minsk, 1969), 146-150. 6

WINDOW GLASS AND MOSAIC

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facturing workshop at the Monastery of the Caves.13 The two glass furnaces found there were so badly destroyed that there is no way to determine their appearance. However, judging from the surviving remains, they were made of brick and clay. Pieces of an arched roof, or vault, were found in the ruins, as well as fragments of a platform with round vents, with a diameter of about 8 cm. The platform itself was up to 3 cm thick. In 1973 in Kiev, within laroslav's Town, the remains of another glass workshop were found, where, along with glassware and bracelets, window glass was also produced.14 Traces of glassware production have been found in Pereiaslavl',15 where parts of a circular construction made of bricks and stone, using lime mortar with crushed ceramic or brick were revealed by excavations, although the purpose of this construction is unclear. Two pits filled with charcoal were found 10-15 m from the construction. The level also contained much charcoal and potash, as well as round window glass. The problem of smalt production for mosaic in Russia has been inadequately studied. Some scholars believe that the principal component of mosaic smalt was imported ready-for-use from Byzantium and that in Kiev only the missing quantity needed to set the gold background was manufactured, although this was also probably made from imported material.16 The import of mosaic (called musiia in Kiev, from the Greek mousiori) into Russia is also noted in the Paterikon of the Monastery of the Caves, in the section on the decoration of the Katholikon of the Dormition, where it is written that merchants brought mosaic for sale: "then they donated the musiia, which they had brought to sell and with it they constructed the holy altar".17 Other scholars, however, suggest that most of the materials for mosaic were manufactured in Russia.18 This has been illustrated by the fact that the incidental by-products of smalt manufacture have been found in excavated glass-manufacturing workshops at the Monastery of the Caves and in Pereiaslavl'.19 Smalt by-products were also found in the excavations near the Cathedral of St Sophia in Kiev.20 13

V.A. Bogusevich, "Masterskie XI v. po izgotovleniiu stekla i smal'ty v Kieve", KSIAU 3 (1954), 15. 14 P.P. Tolochko, Kiev i Kievskaia zemlia v epokhu feodal'noi razdroblennosti XII-XHI vv. (Kiev, 1980), 51. 15 M.I. Sikors'kii, "Sklorobna maisternia XI st. u Pereiaslavi-Khmel'nits'komu", Doslidzhennia z slovi 'ano-rus 'koi arkheologii (Kiev, 1976), 146. 16 A.P. Kaliuk, "Kievskie masterskie vospolniaiushchego proizvodstva smal't", Aktual 'nye problemy istoriko-arkheologicheskikh issledovcmii. Tezisy dokladov (Kiev, 1987), 65. 17 Paterik Kievskogo Pecherskogo monastyria (St Petersburg, 1911), 8. 18 V.I. Levitskaia, "Materialy issledovaniia palitry mozaik Sofii Kievskoi", VizVrem 23 (1963), 157. 19 See above, notes 11 & 13. 20 1.F. Totskaia, "K voprosu o stroitel'nom proizvodstve v Drevnei Rusi", Tezisy chemigovskoi oblastnoi nauchno-metodicheskoi konferentsii, posviashchennoi 20-letiiu Chernigovskogo arkhitekturno-istoricheskogo zapovednika (Chernigov, 1987), 28.

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Structural elements

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7

Foundations

The foundations of the Church of the Tithe, the most ancient monument of Russian architecture, have been studied in detail thanks to the excavations of 1908-1914 and 1938-1939. These excavations showed that trenches were dug equivalent to the width of the foundations in some places, while in others they exceeded it greatly (the trenches were 2.1 m wide, the foundations 1.1 m). In the apses, the ground was dug away for foundations not only under the walls, but also from the whole area of the apses. The bases of the foundation trenches and of the whole area under the apses were strengthened by wooden structures. These consisted of 4-5 groundsels laid lengthways along the walls and reinforced with numerous wooden stakes. Above them, a second layer of groundsels was laid across those of the first layer. The groundsels were either circular or rectangular in cross-section and the stakes were 5-7 cm in diameter and about 50cm long. This wooden structure was covered with a layer of lime and crushed ceramic or brick mortar and above it lay the foundations, consisting of large stones of quartzite and sandstone, also covered with a mortar of lime and crushed ceramic or brick. Foundations of the same construction have also been found in the palace buildings to the north-east and south-west of the Church of the Tithe, in the church in the Archbishop's Court (which is probably to be identified as the Church of St Irene) and in the Golden Gate (figs 45 & 46). It has been possible to ascertain that in the palace south-west of the Church of the Tithe, the groundsels were of both oak and pine. Likewise, in the palace southeast of the church the same construction was found under the foundations, although here the groundsels were not only reinforced with stakes, but also joined with iron spikes. Judging from the remains of the groundsels and stakes, these wooden substructures were also used in the Cathedrals of St Sophia in Kiev and Novgorod. We can thus state that foundations of this type of construction were characteristic of Kievan architecture from the most ancient monuments of the late tenth century to the second half of the eleventh century. All the buildings 89

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Figure 45. Substructures under the foundations of the church in the Archbishop's Court, Kiev. Photo 1910.

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Figure 46. Substructures under the foundations of the palace in Kiev (south-east of the Church of the Tithe). Photo 1911.

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of that period had strip foundations with a wooden substructure of groundsels, reinforced with wooden stakes. However, some variation may have existed, since in the Church of St George, Kiev, no traces of any such wooden substructure have yet been found. It seems that the last monument in which a wooden substructure was used was the katholikon of the Monastery of the Virgin of Blachernae at Klov, Kiev, which was built in the 1080s-1090s. The foundations here were excavated under the whole area of the church, and the bottom of the pit was strengthened with wooden stakes. Again, the groundsels were joined with iron spikes.1 The technical purpose of these wooden substructures under the foundations has long been a puzzle for scholars and has been the subject of far-reaching, but incorrect, historical conclusions. F.I. Shmit believed that the wooden substructures were best explained by the desire of the builders to provide a substitute for stony, rocky ground and on this basis, he came to the conclusion that: "only the Caucasians could have invented the method of laying foundations which we see in the buildings of St Vladimir" .2 A.I. Nekrasov also believed that the wooden substructure was: "probably to simulate a stony levelled site, usual for builders coming from the East."3 However, in contrast to F.I. Shmit, he thought that this tradition was connected with Asia Minor, rather than with the Caucasus. In fact, these wooden substructures have nothing in common either with rocky ground or with eastern traditions, since it is a conventional technical solution, very suitable to ground of moderate density. In construction manuals up to the mid-nineteenth century, it was often stated that: "wooden groundsels are the most widely used means of strengthening the base of a building".4 With foundations about 1 m wide it was recommended to lay three parallel groundsels and fill the space between them with rammed, crushed stone. There is no doubt that the foundations of the Church of the Tithe were laid using a conventional Byzantine method. It is true that, so far, this method has been observed only in provincial Byzantine buildings; however, most probably, such constructions will be found in Constantinople itself.5 1

I.I. Movchan, V.O. Kharlamov, "Starodavnii Klov", Arkheologiia Kieva. Doslidzhennia i materiali (Kiev, 1979), 75; Novoe v arkheologii Kieva (Kiev, 1981), 215. 2 F.I. Shmit, Iskusstvo drevnei Rusi-Ukrainy (Khar'kov, 1919), 35. 3 A.I. Nekrasov, Ocherki po istorii drevnerusskogo zodchestva XI-XVHvekov (Moscow, 1936), 22. 4 A. Krasovskii, Grazhdanskaia arkhitektura (Moscow, 1886; 1st ed., St Petersburg, 1851), 37. In the late eighteenth century, the use of groundsels under the foundations was recommended in the case of soft or marshy ground; see Kratkoe rukovodstvo k grazhdanskoi arkhitekture Hi zodchestvu (St Petersburg, 1789), 22. 5 Groundsels fastened with iron spikes at their intersections and covered with mortar have been found, for example, in the church at Sardis, in western Asia Minor, which has been dated to the first half of the thirteenth century; see H. Buchwald, "Sardis church E - a preliminary

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In the second half of the eleventh century there can be seen a clear tendency towards the simplification of the wooden substructures. The foundations themselves were made, as usual, of large stones in mortar, but the groundsels under them now lay not in two layers, but in one only and were not reinforced with stakes. The groundsels were often joined at the point of intersection with iron spikes. It seems that the wooden substructures under the church and the adjacent palace on Vladimirskaia Street in Kiev and under the Cathedral of St Sophia in Polotsk were created in this way. This use of groundsels joined with iron spikes has been observed in many Kievan monuments of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, for example, in the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb in Vyshgorod, the great katholikon at the Zarub Monastery, the church on the campus of the Institute of Arts, Kiev, and in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at Berestovo (figs 47 & 48). Of the three monuments erected in the late eleventh century in Pereiaslavl', two had groundsels, these being the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael and the Church of St Andrew, but the Bishop's Gate had no groundsels under its foundations. In the Church of St Andrew the intersections of the groundsels were strengthened with stakes, as well as iron spikes. In the other monuments in Pereiaslavl' dated to the twelfth century, groundsels were absent. In Chernigov, groundsels have only been found in the two earliest monuments, the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Elets Monastery and the Cathedral of Sts Boris and Gleb, but not in the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour. In Polotsk, a wooden substructure of groundsels joined with iron spikes was found in only one monument, this being the great katholikon of the monastery at Bel'chitsa, which was also the earliest, of the twelfth century. In Smolensk, groundsels have only been found in the Katholikon of Sts Boris and Gleb at the monastery on the Smiadyn', which was the first monument of independent Smolensk architecture (1145). In Novgorod, this type of substructure was found under the foundations of the Church of the Annunciation at Gorodishche and in the katholikons at the lur'ev Monastery and at the Monastery of St Antony, which were built in the first two decades of the twelfth century. In the apses, the groundsels usually crossed at right angles, but diagonal groundsels were also often introduced (fig. 49). Another system has been found in the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael in Pereiaslavl', where the short pieces of groundsel were placed radially (fig. 50). In the first half of the twelfth century, the system of laying groundsels under the foundations was generally abandoned, although in Novgorod report", JOB 26 (1977), 274. The reinforcement of the base of the foundation ditches with wooden stakes and logs has been observed in some monuments of ninth-century Bulgaria; see S. Mikhailov, "Arkheologicheski materiali ot Pliska", 114-115; and idem, "Dvortsovata ts'rkva v Pliska", 250-251, both in Izvestiia na arkheologicheskiia institut 20 (Sofia, 1955).

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Figure 47. Traces of groundsels under the foundations of the church in the campus of the Institute of Arts in Kiev.

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Figure 48. Iron spikes at the intersections of groundsels. Kiev, the church in the campus of the Institute of Arts.

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B—

Figure 49. Plan of excavated foundations, Church of St Andrew in Pereiaslavl'.

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Figure 50. Traces of groundsels in the apse of the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael in Pereiaslavl'.

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their use was continued. Here, groundsels have been found in the Church of St Clement and in the Katholikon of the Dormition at Staraia Ladoga, built in the 1150s, as well as in the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb in the citadel at Novgorod (1167). One other exception is the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir, where groundsels also occur. Abandoning the use of wooden groundsels did not, at first, affect the character of the foundations themselves. As before, these were made of large stones in a mortar of lime and crushed ceramic or brick. The foundations of the Church of St Cyril in Kiev were made in this way, as well as most of the churches in Pereiaslavl', for example, the Crypt church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour, the churches in the Square of Reunion and on Soviet Street and the Church of the Resurrection. It should be noted that in the monuments of Pereiaslavl', unlike those in Kiev, broken brick was quite widely used in the foundations, as well as stone. The foundations of a small pillarless church found under the later Church of the Dormition were entirely made of crushed bricks in mortar, and not of stones. Foundations of stones in mortar were found in the Cathedral of the Dormition and in the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb in Staraia Riazan'. Foundations of stones in mortar, but without any wooden substructure became a characteristic feature of the Vladimir-Suzdal' and Galich architectural schools. Here various types and sizes of stone were used, sometimes roughly trimmed blocks, but always in a lime mortar, and there were no wooden substructures. The same was characteristic of Novgorod architecture, where the foundations were made of large stones in lime mortar. In Volynia, stone and brick were used for foundations in the mid-twelfth century. For example, in the Old Cathedral, the foundations were mainly brick, mostly in mortar, but in some places laid dry. In a church excavated near the Church of St Basil in Vladimir-in-Volynia, the foundations were also made of bricks in mortar. The foundations of the Church of the Annunciation in Chernigov (1186) were made of large stones in mortar, with a quantity of bricks added. The foundations of the Church of the Dormition in the Podol in Kiev are unique. Here the foundations were made of rubble in mortar, alternating with three or four level courses of bricks. It should be noted that the foundations of different types sometimes included spoiled, mainly over-fired bricks. There are foundations like this dating from the eleventh century, such as at the great katholikon of the Zarub Monastery and from the late twelfth century, as at the church in Trubchevsk. The practice of laying foundations without a wooden substructure, but still in mortar, persisted in the architectural schools of Vladimir-Suzdal', Galich and Novgorod up to the Mongol invasion. Such foundations were also used in Kiev and Chernigov until the thirteenth century. For example, the Church of St Basil at Ovruch had foundations made of sandstone in mortar and the church at Putivl' had cobble-stones with bricks in mortar

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above them. Foundations made only of bricks in mortar were also used, for example, like those of the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa in Chernigov. Sometimes only the upper parts of the foundations were made of stones in mortar and below the stones were laid dry. In this case, it seems that the mortar was poured from above and did not reach the lowest parts of the foundations. The foundations of the Crypt church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour and of the church on Soviet Street in Pereiaslavl' provide other examples of this practice. It has been established that in some cases sand (the katholikon of the Vydubits Monastery in Kiev) or lime crumb (several monuments in the territory of Novgorod in the second half of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries) was used as the filler in the mortar rather than crushed ceramic or brick. The foundations of these monuments were most probably laid at a time when plinthoi were not available and therefore crushed bricks were replaced by whatever natural materials were at hand. In the second half of the twelfth century, apart from the extensive use of bricks, foundations were sometimes laid not with lime mortar, but with clay. The foundations of the church on the Voznesenskii Slope and of the Rotunda Church in Kiev, as well as of the Church of the Apostles in Belgorod, are examples of this. In Smolensk, foundations laid in clay were used in buildings of the middle and second half of the twelfth century, for example in the church in Perekopnyi Lane, the German Church and the Church of St Basil on the Smiadyn', (here, part of the foundations was made of cobble-stones, part of broken brick). In some cases foundations in clay were used in Smolensk until the early thirteenth century, for example, in the church on the Malaia Rachevka and in the katholikon at the Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at Chernushki. However, on the whole, starting from the late twelfth century, foundations in Smolensk were made of cobble-stones, laid dry. Still earlier, in the first half of the twelfth century, such a technique was used in Polotsk, where foundations of small cobble-stones laid dry were used in the crypt-church at the Monastery of St Euphrosyne, the church in the lower citadel and then in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at the Monastery of St Euphrosyne. Apart from Smolensk and Polotsk, dry-laid foundations were characteristic of all the buildings of the Grodno area, for instance, the church at Turov. Such foundations, too, were found in the buildings erected by Smolensk masters in other Russian lands, such as the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa in Novgorod, in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at Staraia Riazan' and in a small pillar less church by the village of Nikitino, near Riazan'. In Kiev, the foundations of the katholikon at the Gnilets Monastery were made of crushed bricks, laid dry. The system of construction can be established from the distribution of materials in the foundations. In the Church of the Tithe, for example, different types of stone were laid in different parts of the foundations.

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Portions were filled with stones from bottom to top, as batches of stone were delivered to the site. However, the type and size of stone in the foundations normally differed according to the depth of occurrence, not the location. In such cases it seems that the foundations were filled up layer by layer over the whole site. Layers of various materials can, of course, be seen in the foundations, notably the courses of crushed bricks in stone foundations. Sometimes this lead to a stratified structure across all the foundations. In the church on Sadovaia Street in Vladimir-in-Volynia (1160s), for instance, the foundations consisted of alternating layers of crushed plinthoi and limestone with the brick being laid once the lime mortar had already hardened.6 Stratified foundations were discovered in several monuments of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, for example, in the churches in Nesterovskii Lane, Kiev, at Trubchevsk, in Novgorod-Severskii and in the Katholikon of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at laroslavl'. In the church in Kiev, the foundations consisted of alternating layers of crushed stone in mortar and clay, whilst at Trubchevsk they contained stone, crushed bricks and sand, and in Novgorod-Severskii, large stones and crushed small stones. In this last church, stratification was found only in the foundations of the west wall, whereas the other parts of the foundations were made of large stones in mortar. There can be no doubt, accordingly, that from the late tenth to the midthirteenth centuries, the construction of foundations in Russian architecture evolved substantially.7 Whereas in the eleventh century this evolution was more or less unified, in the twelfth century differences appeared, characteristic of local architectural styles. The overall picture, however, is not yet entirely clear, since in many monuments the foundations have not been studied adequately and in others not at all. Furthermore, it should be noted that the traces of wooden substructures are preserved, as a rule, only thanks to their imprints in the mortar. In the cases where the lower sections of the foundations had little mortar or were laid dry, any traces of a wooden substructure have totally disappeared. The general trend of evolution is not always reflected equally in all the monuments. For example, it is clear that in the eleventh century large stones were generally used for the foundations, but gradually during the twelfth century the stones were replaced by small cobbles. However, there are monuments which do not follow this pattern. For example, the foundations of the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa in Smolensk, built in the early thirteenth century, used very large stones. 6

A.A. Peskova, P.A. Rappoport, "Neizvcstnyi pamiatnik volynskogo zodchcstva XII v.", PKNO 1986 (1987), 541. 7 This is clearly illustrated by the monuments of Novgorod; see G.M. Shtender, "Drevniaia stroitel'naia tekhnika kak metod izucheniia russkogo zodchestva", Arkhitekturnoe naslcdie i restavratsiia (Moscow, 1986), 10-11.

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Deviations from the normal construction system were also connected with the purpose of the buildings. In the princes' palaces in Smolensk and Polotsk, the foundations were laid in mortar, whereas in the churches built at the same time they were laid dry. Here the change in the construction of the foundations was, presumably, connected with the fact that the buildings had a lower, semi-basement floor. The transition from strip foundations to a system of independent foundations under each support was not straightforward. Strip foundations, i.e. those lying not only under the walls but also in places with no construction above, were typical of the oldest Russian monuments. Such a system was used in the Church of the Tithe. Later on, in the eleventh-century monuments, a grid of strip foundations was used throughout and the pillars were placed on their intersections. This grid system was widely used in the first half and middle of the twelfth century in all the principal construction centres of Kievan Russia. Such foundations have been encountered in the Old Cathedral near Vladimir-in-Volynia, in the Cathedral of the Dormition at Staraia Riazan', in the Church of the Resurrection at Pereiaslavl', in the Cathedral of the Dormition at Galich and in some other monuments. In the Novgorod area, strip foundations were used in the Church of St Clement at Staraia Ladoga (1153) and in the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb in Novgorod itself (1167). However, at the turn of the twelfth century, the architects simplified the system of foundations in some monuments by reducing their extent. In the great katholikon of the Zarub Monastery on the Dniepr, the foundations consisted only of transverse strips, with no longitudinal ones. Later on, the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Galich (apparently 1140s) had only longitudinal ones. In the twelfth century, there appeared buildings in which the strip foundations did not stretch through the whole building, but only connected the pillars with the walls. For example, in the Katholikon of Sts Boris and Gleb at the monastery on the Smiadyn' in Smolensk, the western and eastern pillars were connected by strip foundations with the side walls, whereas the middle pillars had supports of their own. Short portions of strip foundations connecting the pillars with the walls were used until the thirteenth century. In the katholikon at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Smolensk, the eastern pillars were connected with the side walls, and the western ones with the west wall. The foundations of the eastern pillars were most usually connected with the walls between the apses. Examples of these include the churches on the Churilovka, on Bol'shaia Krasnoflotskaia Street and the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa, all in Smolensk, the church at Volkovysk and the church on Severianskaia Street in Chernigov. However, as early as the twelfth century, in many cases even such short portions of strip foundations had been abandoned and the foundations were laid only under the walls and individually under each

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pillar. This system was used, for example, in the Church of St Panteleimon in Novgorod and the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Staraia Riazan'. On the other hand, even at the turn of the thirteenth century, churches with a continuous grid of strip foundations were still being erected, like the Church of St Panteleimon near Galich. Usually the width of the foundations was equal to that of the walls. Where pilasters protruded, the foundations widened correspondingly. This can be seen right from the earliest monuments, beginning with the Church of the Tithe. The twelfth-century monuments had very characteristic widenings in their foundations which served as supports for the semi-columns of the pilasters, as in the Katholikon of Sts Boris and Gleb at the monastery on the Smiadyn' in Smolensk or the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Elets Monastery in Chernigov. This practice was even more marked in the monuments at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries, in which the pilasters had complex profiles and substantially projecting buttresses, as seen in the foundations of the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Staraia Riazan'. However, sometimes the foundations of the walls were built in the form of a straight strip, without broadening them under the pilasters, as was done, for example, in the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb in Vyshgorod. In such cases the total width of the foundations was somewhat greater than the thickness of the walls, so that the projecting pilasters could be supported by the foundations as well. Sometimes the foundations project beyond the walls by as much as 40 cm as, for example, in the Church of St Cyril in Kiev. The side walls of the foundations were usually vertical and therefore the width of the foundations from top to bottom was equal. However, there are cases when the bottom of the foundations was broader, for example, in the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb in Vyshgorod, the base of the foundations formed a cushion at the bottom of the trench 2.3 m wide, while the foundations themselves were 1.5-1.8m wide. However, sometimes the reverse occurred, when the foundations narrowed down towards the bottom. This appeared, for example, in the Church of St John at Opoki in Novgorod, where the upper parts of the side walls of the foundations were vertical, but lower down, they narrowed sharply. In the architectural schools of Galich and Vladimir-Suzdal', the foundations differed substantially. Here, as a rule, the foundations were made consistently broader than the walls. In the Cathedral of the Dormition in Galich the width of the walls was 1.4-1.5 m and the width of the foundations was 2.25 m. The foundations of the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour near Galich were 2 m wide; similarly those of the church at Vasilev, while the walls of this church were 1.3 m thick. The situation remained unchanged at the end of the twelfth century, shown in the Church of St Panteleimon, where the foundations were broader than the walls by

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50-60 cm. Studies of the church at Vasilev have shown that its foundations were very wide only in their upper parts and below they narrowed markedly. The foundations of the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour were vertical. The same pattern can be observed in the monuments of Vladimir-Suzdal'. In the Church of St George at Vladimir the foundations were broader than the walls by 50 cm, in the Church of St Demetrius by 70 cm and in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at Pereiaslavl'-Zalesskii by more than 1 m (in the eastern part of the church by 1.45 m). The foundations of the gates of the citadel in Vladimir and of the Cathedral of St George at lur'evPol'skii were much broader than the walls. It should be noted that the foundations of the constructions in Vladimir-Suzdal' were not vertical, but they narrowed downwards. The foundations of the church at Kideksha projected to form a ledge 60cm wide, but towards the bottom they narrowed sharply to the width of the walls. The excavations of the foundations of the cathedral in Pereslavl'-Zalesskii have revealed that here the foundations were only broad at the top; the side walls began vertically, and lower down narrowed sharply. However, in the Vladimir-Suzdal' region other forms of foundations were also found, which broaden markedly towards the base, such as the katholikon at the Monastery of the Nativity of the Virgin and the cathedrals of St Demetrius and the Dormition, the latter built by Vsevolod III of Suzdal' by the end of the twelfth century.8 The depth of the foundations of the pre-Mongol monuments varies considerably. However, there is a certain regularity in this diversity. Above all, it is clear that the masters considered it necessary either to cut the foundations into firm subsoil or at least to make this the basis of the foundations.9 Therefore, the depth of the foundations was often determined by the depth of occurrence of the subsoil. This can be well illustrated by the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael in Pereiaslavl'. In the southern part, at a depth of about 50 cm, there was a layer of pure loess, but by 1.25 m this layer became depleted and was replaced by a thick black humus. At a depth of 1.75 m from the medieval surface a dense layer of loess again appeared. The architect dug the foundations of the southern wall of the church down to 1.75 m, i.e. to the top of the lower deposit of loess. However, below the eastern part of this wall the second layer of loess began at a depth of 1.4 m and so the architect only dug down here to 1.45 m. It seems that the 8 A.V. Stoletov, "Konstruktsii vladimiro-suzdal'skikh belokamennykh pamiatnikov i ikh ukreplenie", Pamiatniki kul'tury. Issledovanie i restavratsiia 1 (Moscow, 1959), 188. 9 It seems that this principle was widespread in Byzantium; see lu.K. Milonov, "Stroitel'naia tekhnika Vizantii", Vseobshchaia istoriia arkhitektury 3 (Leningrad-Moscow, 1966), 179. It is probably an ancient tradition: Vitruvius recommended the digging of the foundation ditches down to the subsoil "if it can be reached"; Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, tr. M.H. Morgan (New York, I960), 86, 88 (III.6.1-2).

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masters knew beforehand to what depth they would dig the foundations; in other words, before starting the work, they sampled the soil by sinking pits. Another good example is the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at the Monastery of St Euphrosyne in Polotsk. The building stands on a small rise, formed by a lens of red clay. The builders cut through this layer of clay and at a depth of 1 m, they laid the base of the foundations on the firm subsoil sand. In the monuments of Smolensk foundations were always cut through the later deposits into the subsoil. Where the subsoil was deeply buried (1.2-1.3 m) the foundations were also dug deeper, so they too would cut into this solid layer or, at least, reach it. However, in some cases as, for example, in the church on Bol'shaia Krasnoflotskaia Street in Smolensk, the base of the foundations (at a depth of 1.1 m) was laid not on the subsoil, but on a solid pre-subsoil layer; evidently the builders considered this to be firm enough. Cases of the foundation base not reaching the dense subsoil are very rare. Examples include the Church of St Clement at Staraia Ladoga, where the foundations were 1.5 m deep, but did not reach the subsoil, since the cultural deposits are very thick. However, the masters at Staraia Ladoga did still want to reach the subsoil and where the cultural deposits were thinner, they reached it. For example, at the katholikon at the Monastery of St Nicholas, the foundations were about 1 m deep; at the Katholikon of the Dormition and the Church of St George, they were only 50-70 cm. A second factor that determined the depth of the foundations was the weight of the building. This can be seen in the monuments where the main body of the church and its lighter elements, such as ambulatories and porches, have foundations of different depths. The foundations of the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Elets Monastery in Chernigov were 1.6m deep, but those of its entrances only 1 m. In the Cathedral of Sts Boris and Gleb in Chernigov, the foundations of the main part of the church were very deep (2.4m), but those of its ambulatories only 1.1 m. In the Church of St John Chrysostom in Smolensk, they were 1.2m and 0.9m respectively. The same can be seen in the katholikon at the Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at Chernushki in Smolensk and in other monuments. The dependence of the depth of the foundations on the weight of the building is illustrated by the shallowness of the foundations of most secular buildings, since palaces were lighter than churches. The palaces close to the Church of the Tithe had foundations 60 cm (the building south-east of the church) and 45 cm (the one north-east) deep; in the palace in Smolensk, they were only 20-30 cm and in that in Grodno 30-40 cm. It is not clear whether the medieval builders took into account the depth to which the soil froze. In the middle regions of Russia the maximum depth of soil freezing is slightly more than 1 m10 and in most cases the depth 10 In Smolensk, the average depth to which soil freezes is 0.66 m, the maximum 1.15 m; the calculated depth used in modern design is 1.4 m.

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of foundations did exceed this. Thus, in the Church of the Tithe the depth of the foundations was 1.4m; in St Sophia, Kiev, about 1.1 m; in St Sophia, Polotsk, 1.35m; in St Sophia, Novgorod, 1.8-2.5 m; and in the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour, Chernigov, more than 2.0 m. Among the monuments of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, very few churches had foundations less than 1 m deep: the church in the campus of the Institute of Arts in Kiev (60-70 cm) and some smaller churches in Pereiaslavl', the church in the Square of Reunion (70 cm) and the Church of St Andrew (50 cm). As a rule, the foundations of the monuments in Galich and Vladimir-Suzdal' were not less than 1.4m deep. However, in the second half of the twelfth century shallow foundations were not uncommon. Foundations no deeper than 80 cm were encountered in Smolensk at the Church of St Basil on the Smiadyn', at the churches at the Okopnoe Cemetery and on the Protoka, and at the katholikon of the Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at Chernushki. In Kiev, the church on Voznesenskii Slope had very shallow foundations. Some churches in Novgorod in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries also had very shallow foundations, for example, the Church of the Dormition at the Arkazhi Monastery, the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa and the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin at Peryn'. However, in all these cases the base of the foundations lay on solid subsoil or was even cut into it. Laying of the foundations in ground subject to freezing cannot be taken to indicate that the builders were inexperienced, since such foundations can be quite sound in cases where there is solid subsoil under their base and no ground water. The Church of St Clement in Staraia Ladoga (1153) is unique.11 Here the total depth of the foundations reached about 1.5m, although they only cut into a thick cultural level and were far from reaching the subsoil. A 75 cm pit was dug over the whole area of the church and then the foundation trenches were dug down another 75 cm. After laying the foundations, probably with the help of wooden planking, the areas between the foundations were filled with alternate layers of sand and lime mortar. In the church on the fosse at Polotsk (second half of the twelfth century) the foundations were generally 1.05 m deep, the bottom 10-15 cm being cut into the subsoil.12 However, in the eastern part of the church the ground level apparently dropped away sharply and the design of the foundations was different. Here, they were only 70 cm deep, the bottom 30 cm being cut into the subsoil, and above the soil level a lime cushion was made, so that the total depth of the foundations was also about 1 m. 11

L.N. Bol'shakov, P.A. Rappoport, "Raskopki tserkvi Klimenta v Staroi Ladoge", Novoe varkheologii Severo-Zapada (Leningrad, 1985), 111. 12 P.A. Rappoport, "Polotskoe zodchestvo XII v.", SA (1980), no. 3,156.

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Finally, the foundations of the church in the lower citadel at Polotsk, built in the first half of the twelfth century, are also unusual.13 Here the foundation trenches were only cut 30-35 cm into a thick cultural level and were far from reaching the subsoil. Then the whole site was raised to 70 cm with a bright yellow loam cushion. The stone foundations were also raised to this height and as a result, their total height was about 1 m. Where the foundations passed through the cushion, their walls were vertical, but lower down they narrowed. This monument had additional foundations, parallel to the main ones, but set only into the cushion. The foundation base had a layer of burnt wood and fired bricks and below the yellow cushion there were several burials; these most probably represent the remains of a wooden church on a stone base, which burnt down before the erection of the brick church. In all these cases, the technique of combining foundations with a built up layer of soil was used in places where the base of the foundations could not be placed on solid subsoil. It seems that excavating the whole area, then filling it to make a solid platform, prevented the floor of the church from settling on soft ground. The artificially raised ground level of the church in the lower citadel at Polotsk is, perhaps, connected with the ruins of the burnt wooden church on this site. The builders of the Church of the Dormition in the Podol in Kiev must have taken into account the fact that the construction took place on the site of an earlier wooden church. Moreover, the geological conditions of the Kievan Podol are complicated. Therefore the builders excavated the whole area, then dug the foundation trenches deeper. Strip foundations were raised to the level of the excavation and above this they laid foundations only under the walls and pillars. The total depth of the foundations here reached about 4m, altogether unusual for a Kievan monument.14 However, in the early thirteenth century there are cases where the foundations were dug as an overall excavation even where the conditions were not so complicated. Examples include the foundations of the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa in Chernigov and the katholikons of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Novgorod-Severskii and laroslavl'. The upper surface of the foundations was thoroughly smeared with mortar. Such layers of smoothed mortar have repeatedly been found in studies of monuments, for example in the katholikon of the Vydubits Monastery in Kiev. In the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Elets Monastery in Chernigov, the layer of mortar extended somewhat beyond the foundations and covered the joint between the foundations and the edge of the trench. A brick pavement was generally laid above this. The purpose of this is clear, since it acted to level the foundations and create an even 13 14

Rappoport, "Polotskoo zodchestvo", 153. G.Iu. Ivakin, "Isslcdovanic tsorkvi Pirogoshchi", Drevnerusskii Corod (Kiev, 1984), 40.

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platform on which to erect the walls and pillars. The pavement was sometimes equal to the width of the foundations, but more commonly it was slightly broader, projecting over the foundations like a shield. The top of the pavement was located at the level of the ground encircling the building and therefore the shield could protect the foundations from rain. The thickness of the pavement differs. Sometimes it was made up of one course of bricks, as for example, in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at Berestovo in Kiev, in the Crypt church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Pereiaslavl', in the churches of St Basil on the Smiadyn' and on the Malaia Rachevka in Smolensk and in several monuments of the Novgorod school, the Church of St George at Staraia Ladoga and the katholikon at the Monastery of St John the Baptist in Pskov. However, the pavements were more often made thicker, with two or three courses of bricks, as have been found in several monuments in Smolensk, Polotsk and Volynia. Sometimes the pavements were thicker still, for example, in the Church of St Cyril in Kiev, the pavement was made of six courses of brick. In the Church of the Annunciation in Chernigov the pavement was 6-7 courses thick, with three projecting. Pavements of various types and thicknesses have been studied in Smolensk. The thickness of the pavements here varied from one course of bricks to nine, going moreover well below ground level, and sometimes it seems to partially substitute for stone foundations. The pavement occasionally broadened to several courses of bricks at the surface, creating a paved band around the walls and especially around the pillars. This wider section lay either on the earth or on a clay layer. The pavement itself was usually laid in mortar, though sometimes in clay, as in Smolensk at the church on the Protoka and the church on Voskresenskaia Hill. The pavement usually covered the foundations not only where the walls stood, but also where there were no walls, for example, above strip foundations. The shape of the pavement provides only a very approximate idea about the contours of the parts of the building lying above it. For example, in the Katholikon of Sts Boris and Gleb at the monastery on the Smiadyn', Smolensk, the pavement formed irregular circular extensions by the pilasters and in the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Elets Monastery, Chernigov, it formed rectangular buttresses. In the western part of the katholikon at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity on the Klovka in Smolensk, the pavement formed rectangular extensions under the pilasters and in the eastern part, it depicted in detail the form of the cluster pilasters standing above. In the eastern part of the palace in Grodno, a pavement three bricks thick covered an area 2.3 m wide, which served as a base for two parallel walls, with a small space between them.15 15

P.A. Rappoport, "Novye dannye ob arkhitekture drevnego Grodno", Drevnenisskoe iskusstvo khudozhestvennaia kultura Xv.- pervoi poloviny XIII v. (Moscow, 1988), 65.

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The foundations of the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin on the NeiT are special. Here the masters had the task of building a church on the site of a flood-plain. Therefore, having cut the foundations down into the subsoil clay, they put on them not the building itself, but a white stone socle, copying the plan of the future church. Raising the socle to a height of 3.7 m, they covered it with soil and so made an artificial hill. On top of the hill, on the socle and above the flood level, the Church of the Intercession was built.16

16

Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1, 279.

8

Walls

The technique of building walls in the monuments of Kievan Russia used a distinctive combination of brickwork and masonry, i.e. it was a mixed, stone-brick technique. This technique is often called opus mixtum, though, in fact, this term covers a broader range of construction techniques and Kievan brickwork is only one of its versions. Brickwork predominated in the walls, but with courses of large, roughly hewn stones. The courses were irregularly spaced and the stones were more numerous and larger in the lower parts of the walls. The stones projected from the wall, creating broad decorative bands on the facades. Stones were also used in the central part of the walls, where they were laid as a filling, with crushed bricks. The brickwork itself was laid in the so-called recessedbrick technique. In this technique, only every second course was flush with the fagade, the intermediate one being slightly recessed and covered on the outside with a layer of mortar (fig. 51). Since the horizontal mortar joints were approximately equal to the thickness of the bricks, bands of mortar equal in width to the thickness of three bricks were formed on the facades between the courses of bricks. The face of the mortar was thoroughly smoothed, almost polished, and along the edges of bricks it was carefully pointed. Thus, with this system of brickwork, the outer face of the walls was worked twice, first roughly, and then more thoroughly plastered and polished with a trowel.1 This resulted in a very picturesque striped surface and made it possible to create decorative lines and patterns. This system of brickwork with recessed courses and strips of natural stone had both practical and technological origins. The introduction of strips of stone permitted considerable economy in the use of expensive bricks, 1 A small trowel, used for ornamental treatment of the mortar was, found under the original floor of St Sophia, Novgorod. The length of the surface of the trowel was 13 cm, and the width 5.7 cm. A ceramic tile slicker for polishing the surface was found during the study of the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev; see G.M. Shtender, "Instrumentarii kamenshchika-novgorodtsa XI-XV w.", Novgorodskii krai (Leningrad, 1984), 207.

109

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-/

p

Figure 51. Cross section of a wall: 1 - recessed-course brick technique; 2 - flush-course technique.

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without reducing the stability of walls. The recessed brickwork also made bonding possible, which otherwise with almost square plinthoi would have been difficult. At the same time, there is no doubt that such a system provided an aesthetic effect, making an artistic and decorative solution of the facades possible. However, except for portions with purely decorative brickwork (meanders, crosses etc.), it does seem that the surface of the walls was sometimes plastered.2 Of course, this recessed-brick technique was of Byzantine and, more specifically, Constantinopolitan origin, where it was widely used. It is true that the earliest known monuments in Constantinople to use this technique date from the first half of the eleventh century, whereas in Kiev it was applied in the late tenth century in the Church of the Tithe. On this basis, some scholars have suggested that the recessed-brick technique was first developed in Russia,3 although this is undoubtedly incorrect.4 Unfortunately, Byzantine and particularly Constantinopolitan monumental architecture of the tenth and eleventh centuries has thus far been inadequately studied.5 Therefore, the precise date when the recessed-brick technique appeared in Byzantium cannot be established, though it seems certain that further studies will reveal that such monuments were erected as early as the tenth century.6 In Russia the recessed-brick technique, with bands of stone, was used in Kievan buildings from the Church of the Tithe through to the start of the twelfth century. It was also used in eleventh-century buildings outside Kiev, at the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Chernigov and the Cathedral of St Sophia in Polotsk. To this group of monuments may be added St Sophia in Novgorod, though here the technique was slightly modified to accommodate the use of local sandstone. When the new architectural centres of Chernigov and Pereiaslavl' emerged in parallel with Kiev at the end of the eleventh century, they used the same technique. At the beginning of the twelfth century, in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at Berestovo, a change in construction technique can be seen. The building was made of brick, in the recessed-brick technique, but 2 G.N. Logvin, "O pervonachal'nom oblikc khramov Kievskoi Rusi", Arkhitektura Kieva (Kiev, 1982), 62. 3 N.I. Brunov, "K voprosu o nekotorykh sviaziakh russkoi arkhitektury s zodchestvom iuzhnykh slavian", Arkliitekturnoe nasledstvo 2 (Moscow, 1952), 12. 4 P.A. Rappoport, "Arkheologicheskie isslodovaniia pamiatnikov russkogo zodchestva X-XIII vv.", SA (1962), no. 2, 76. 5 C. Delvoyc, "L'architecture byzantine au Xle siecle", Proceedings of the XIII International Congress of Byzantine Studies (Oxford, 1967), 227. 6 P. Vocotopoulos, "The concealed course technique", JOB 28 (1979), 258, cites the Church of Panagia Chalkeon, Thessaloniki, dated to 1028, as the earliest example of the recessed brick technique, but he believes it was developed in Constantinople in the second or third quarter of the tenth century.

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without the bands of stone. Thus, the walls of the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour appeared to be made completely of brick, although inside they were packed with both brick and stone. The Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at Berestovo is the latest monument preserved in Kiev to be built in the recessed-brick technique. The technique also went out of use in Pereiaslavl' in the first half of the twelfth century, but it then appeared in Polotsk, where it was used all through the twelfth century, right up until the cessation of monumental building in the area. All the monuments in Polotsk were built of brick in the recessed-brick technique, but without bands of stone,7 this being used only to pack the walls. The recess of a course of bricks on the exterior was usually 1-2 cm and, thus no doubt this technique had lost its constructional purpose and was used only as a traditional way of bricklaying. In the twelfth century, when it was no longer used in other areas, the recessed-brick technique immediately reveals the work of Polotsk masters, even when outside the Polotsk region. The ambulatories of the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb in Novogrudok, the Church of Sts Peter and Paul on Sinich'ia Hill in Novgorod and some areas of the brickwork of the Church of the Archangel Michael in Smolensk were all built in this way. In the twelfth century the recessed-brick technique was replaced by another technique, that of flush courses. In Kiev and in Kievan lands the earliest monuments built in this technique have been dated to the 1140s, i.e. the churches of St Cyril in Kiev and of St George in Kanev.8 Thus, in Kiev, this technique came into use soon after the old method had been abandoned. However, in Chernigov flush-course brickwork appeared a little earlier. The Katholikon of the Dormition at the Elets Monastery, the Church of the Prophet Elijah, and the Cathedral of Sts Boris and Gleb were built like this in the early twelfth century. Hence, in Chernigov the new technique came into practice whilst buildings in the old, recessed-brick technique were still being built in Kiev. Soon flush-course brickwork took over in Pereiaslavl' and was used for the buildings in Staraia Riazan', and in Vladimir-inVolynia. From the mid-twelfth century onwards, a large independent construction centre was formed in Smolensk, using this new technique. Finally, in the late twelfth century the flush-course technique was adopted in Grodno. From the moment of its appearance in Russia, the flush-course technique did not change substantially, continuing right up until the Mongol invasions. True, the shape of bricks changed, as well as the character of the mortar, the pointing and some other secondary details, but the principle remained unchanged. The very latest monuments of the Kiev-Chernigov area, i.e. 7 According to unreliable ninteenth-century evidence, courses of stone were found in the katholikon of the monastery at Bel'chitsa, Polotsk. 8 P.A. Rappoport, "Iz istorii kievo-chernigovskogo zodchestva XII v.", KSIA 179 (1984), 59.

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the churches in Trubchevsk, Putivl', etc., have brickwork that did not differ in principle from that of earlier monuments, such as the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Elets Monastery. In the Church of St Basil at Ovruch, with all its principal construction features preserved, only one new feature appeared, this being the insertion of large, smoothed, coloured stones to decorate the faces of the walls. This approach is even more clearly seen in the monuments of the Grodno school, where the walls were decorated with inserted glazed ceramic tiles as well as stones. In some cases the brick walls laid in the flush-course technique were plastered with mortar. Whether the plastering was done immediately or later is not always clear. There are examples where the external plastering (sometimes rather solid, like stucco) was made immediately upon completing the brickwork. This is illustrated in particular by the church on the Protoka in Smolensk, where all the parts of a clearly homogeneous complex (western annex, porch, ambulatories and chapels) butt up against the stuccoed walls of the previously built parts.9 In some monuments the plastering was smoothed and ruled to simulate squared masonry, as in the Cathedral of Sts Boris and Gleb, the Church of the Prophet Elijah, and the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Elets Monastery, all in Chernigov. In flush-course brickwork, all courses of bricks reached the outer face of the wall, and therefore, on the facades the courses of brick and mortar joints, which were approximately of equal thickness, clearly alternated. The bonding in this system was achieved by laying the bricks either as stretchers or headers. Usually most of the courses were headers, with the stretchers being laid after several consecutive header courses.10 Sometimes the stretcher courses were not continuous, since stretcher sections alternated with header sections. This was apparently considered enough to provide a good bonding. Overall, there seems to have been no regular system for the use of headers and stretchers. However, whereas the bonding of the walls was not always regular, the pattern of bonding the corners, the piers (especially the inner angles of crossshaped pillars) and pilasters was always followed strictly. Here headers and stretchers alternated every second course and the bricks used for bonding were generally narrower. Masters distinguished between the load-bearing sections of brickwork and those without a load. In the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries in Smolensk, for example, thin semicolumns appeared on the facades. The masters understood that such semi-columns did not necessarily have to be very strong and therefore every second course consisted of specially made narrow bricks, with one end semi9

Voronin & Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smolenska, 324. Current construction techniques allow bonding every five courses; see ed. D.D. Biziukin, Tekhnologiia stroitel'nogo proizvodstva (Leningrad-Moscow, 1951), 416. 10

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circular, and between them a course of broken bricks was usually laid, using only their rounded parts. In recessed brickwork not only bricks, but also stones were laid between each face of the wall, so that it looked like a box with brick walls filled with rubble. In flush-course brickwork the internal space of the wall was filled with bricks, but laid less regularly and including broken brick. This does not, however, mean that first two individual walls were built and only then the space between them filled with rubble. The filling was layered, the layers corresponding to the courses of brickwork on the exposed faces of the walls. It seems clear that the bricks were laid in horizontal courses, and that in each the faces were laid with whole bricks, and the internal space was filled with broken brick. After this, the whole course was covered with mortar on which the next course of bricks was laid. Even when stone was also used to fill the walls as in the lower church in Grodno, the basic filling material remained brick and the whole wall was laid course by course. In the earlier mid-twelfth century monuments of Smolensk, the internal space of the walls was filled almost exclusively with whole bricks laid fairly regularly. In monuments built between the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the space was filled irregularly: here only broken bricks were used, in no order, though still in horizontal courses. Only in one monument in Smolensk, the church on the Protoka, was the internal space packed with brick and stone, without horizontal courses. Stretcher courses, which served to strengthen the bonding, are found more often when the internal space of the walls was filled less regularly, for example, the church on the Protoka in Smolensk, and more seldom when the space was thoroughly filled, for example the Katholikon of Sts Boris and Gleb at the monastery on the Smiadyn' in Smolensk. It has been supposed in some studies that at some regular interval courses of properly laid brickwork went right through the wall, in order to reinforce its bonding, the so-called 'box' brickwork. Of all the monuments studied, this system has only been found in one, the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa in Chernigov, where every 5-7 courses of the external face of the wall alternated with 2-3 courses laid through the whole thickness of the wall.11 The external courses of the wall were laid, as a rule, with complete bricks and clearly using a plumb line and cord. In some cases the masters laid 'marker' bricks, by which the exact shape of the building was determined. For example, to establish the circular pillar of the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb at Kolozha in Grodno, the master first marked out the spot with four bricks lying diagonally within the square base of the pillar, thus determining

11

N.V. Kholostenko, "Arkhitekturnoarkheologicheskie issledovaniia Piatnitskoi tserkvi v Chernigove", SA 26 (1956), 285.

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its diameter, and then laid the bricks around the perimeter of the circle (fig. 52).12 The pointing of the joints on the facades in equal-course brickwork was, in most cases, single-bevelled down the outside.13 With this pointing each brick always projected out over the joint below by 0.5 cm and sometimes more. However, other systems of pointing have also been found, such as the double pointing along the edge of the bricks, similar to the pointing used in recessed brickwork. Pointing was also done in the form of indented rounded joints. In some monuments, especially in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the joints were not pointed at all; instead mortar was plastered over the fagade. The brickwork of the buildings of Novgorod has its own particular character. In St Sophia, Novgorod, the Kievan recessed brickwork was modified substantially and a considerable quantity of limestone was used. The walls and pillars of the core of the church, up to the level of the galleries, consisted mainly of thin stone blocks, laid flat, and plastered on the outside with mortar. Above that, and in the ambulatories, these flat stones were also used, but many were left to project on to the fagade and were marked out by the pointing of the mortar. However, despite laying the walls and pillars almost entirely of limestone blocks, the masters made all the major elements of the construction, i.e. the arches, pendentives, domes and pilasters, solely of brick, in the recessed-brick technique. Moreover, the masonry of the walls and pillars contains horizontal layers of brickwork consisting of several, usually 4-7, courses of brick also laid in the recessedbrick technique. Parts of the decorative brickwork on the facades of the Cathedral of St Sophia resemble that done in Kiev or on the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Chernigov. Later on, in the twelfth-century monuments of Novgorod, the practice of building walls almost entirely of stone was abandoned and a new system appeared, that of alternating courses of bricks and stone. This system was not always followed strictly, as sometimes the courses of bricks were interrupted and the courses of slabs doubled. These changes always tended to decrease the number of bricks rather than slabs. Sometimes to even out the stones, pieces of brick were laid on edge. This system of working has been found in the earliest twelfth-century Novgorod monument, the Church of the Annunciation at Gorodishche, and was continued throughout the thirteenth century. 12

P.A. Rappoport, "Novye dannye ob arkhitekture drevnego Grodno", Drevnerusskoe iskusstvo (Moscow, 1988), 65. 13 The oblique facing of joints was also characteristic of Byzantine flush-course masonry; see A.M. Schneider, ByzForsch 8 (1967), 13; S. Eyice, "La ruine byzantine dite 'Uc.ayak'" CahArch-[8(1968), 146.

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K AHCW

\

o i

1M

Figure 52. North-east pillar, church at Kolozha in Grodno. Another version of opus mixtum can be seen in the Church of the Annunciation at Vitebsk. Here one course of cut stone alternates with two courses of brick. The brickwork is not uniform everywhere and in some places, instead of two courses of brick, either one or several were laid; similarly, there could be several courses of stone, instead of the one. The stone was roughly cut and, along with the horizontal blocks, there were insertions of small vertically laid stones. Apart from the church in Vitebsk, this system was found only in the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb in Novogrudok, where its execution is considerably more slapdash. This technique has been found nowhere else in Russia, though in Byzantium, Bulgaria and Serbia it was widespread. In the church in Vitebsk, it is not visible on the outside, since the facades were plastered with mortar, which was then incised to simulate masonry of large blocks.14 The masonry of the monuments in the Galich and Vladimir-Suzdal' areas is quite different in character, being a white-stone masonry, with no brick. Two walls of well-cut limestone blocks were laid and the space between them was filled with fragments of stone, pieces of tufa and rubble 14

P.A. Rappoport, "Tscrkov' Blagoveshcheniia v Vitebske", PKNO 1985 (1987), 522.

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in a lime mortar. When the mortar set, the wall became a monolith with thoroughly worked external faces. The stone blocks were squared so accurately and smoothly that the joints between them were very narrow. Therefore the walls made of stone blocks were laid almost dry, but the fill was made with plenty of mortar. The inner sides of the stone blocks were not worked, in order to achieve better adhesion with the mortar of the filling. The thickness of the stone blocks was usually 20-40 cm, sometimes more. The assertion that the facing blocks had projecting 'tails' to bond with the packing has not been confirmed and the lack of good bonding between the stone blocks and the packing was noted during the restoration of the Cathedral of St Demetrius at Vladimir, as well as in a number of other monuments in Vladimir-Suzdal'.15 In addition, judging by the imprints of the lower course of stone blocks above the foundations of the church at Vasilev, the squared blocks were not bonded with the packing in Galich architecture either.16 Sculptural reliefs on the monuments of Vladimir-Suzdal' were carved on stones, which were installed in the masonry during building, but the vegetal ornament in the lower part of the Cathedral of St George in lur'ev-Pol'skii was carved after the wall had been built.17 White-stone masonry underwent some changes during the development of Vladimir-Suzdal' architecture, although its main principal features remained unchanged. For instance, in the mid-twelfth-century monuments, there was no very evident effort to ensure that the courses of stonework were equal, but starting from the 1160s such a trend appeared. In the later monuments of Vladimir-Suzdal' as in the church at lur'ev-Pol'skii, the stone was cut with less care and sometimes smaller stones are also found in the masonry. In the cathedral in Suzdal', built in 1222-25, the masonry was not of hard limestone, but of tufa, whose surface was, it seems, plastered with mortar. In this cathedral the socle and parts of the pilasters, as well as the decorative elements, were made of harder stone. In the monuments of the Bogoliubovo complex, tetrahedral holes were made in the stones to fasten individual elements of the masonry, columns and capitals, apparently with iron or lead rods. Overall, the white-stone masonry of Galich and Vladimir-Suzdal' coincides almost exactly with the Romanesque building techniques of Central Europe. 15

A.V. Stoletov, "K istorii arkhitekturnykh form Dmitrievskogo sobora v gorode Vladimire", Voprosy okhrany, restavratsii i propaganda/ pamiatnikov istorii i kul'tunj 3 (Moscow, 1975), 138. However, some carved stones excavated on the site of the church at Bogoliubovo had such 'tails'; Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1, 308. 16 G.N. Logvin, B.A. Timoshchuk, "Belokamennyi khram XII veka v Vasilive", Pamiatniki kul'tunj 3 (Moscow, 1961), fig. 4 on p. 42. 17 K.K. Romanov, "K voprosu o tekhnike vypolneniia rel'efov sobora sv. Georgiia v g. lur'evePol'skom", Semitwrium Kondakovianum 2 (Prague, 1928), 153; S.M. Novakovskaia, "Kamnetesnoe delo Vladimiro-Suzdal'skoi Rusi v XII-XIII vv.", SA (1986), no. 3, 79.

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The upper parts of the walls of Kievan Russian churches were generally somewhat thinner than in the lower parts. This tapering sometimes resulted in a ledge inside the church at the level of the galleries, though often the walls tapered gradually, without any such ledges. In some buildings in Novgorod, one of the walls has a ledge and another tapers without one. In the monuments of Vladimir-Suzdal', the ledge was always made on the external face of the wall, above the band of arcading. A ledge on the external face of the wall probably also appeared in monuments in Galich, if we can judge from the early buildings of the Vladimir-Suzdal' area, which were put up by the masters from Galich.18

18

O.M. loannisian, "O rannem etape razvitiia galitskogo zodchestva", KSIA164 (1981), 42.

9

Arches, vaults, openings

The monuments of Kievan Russia as a rule had vaulted ceilings (komary).1 Wooden-beam ceilings were probably only used in some palaces, for example, as seen in the ruins of those excavated in Smolensk and Polotsk. The walls of these were much thinner than the walls of even the smallest churches. The general scheme of the vaults, which connected the pillars and the walls of the building, in all the churches was the same. Four pillars were connected by arches in the core of the church. The cruciform shape of the pillars reflected their function, i.e. to serve as the supports for four arches. When square-section pillars replaced cruciform ones in the second half of the twelfth century, the abutments of the wall arches were not placed on the pilasters, but were cut into the pillars themselves. When the supporting pillars were round (or polygonal), they were capped with a square plate, above which they became either cruciform or square, as at the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at the Monastery of St Euphrosyne in Polotsk and the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb at Kolozha in Grodno. The arches connecting the pillars in the core of the church formed a subdome square, above which was placed the cupola, elevated on a drum, with clerestory windows. The transition from the quadrangular space between the wall arches to the ring of the drum was realized via spherical triangles, pendentives. The arms of the cross-shaped internal space were covered with barrel vaults. This general scheme permitted different types of ceiling to be used in the corners, where either semidomes or vaults of different configurations could be placed. It should be noted that the construction of the upper parts of buildings, vaults in particular, have been studied less thoroughly than the lower parts and especially the foundations, since there are few buildings with their original vaults dating from the pre-Mongol period. Moreover, only extensive 1 Poppc, Materiali, 30. However, the term svod 'vault' had come into use as early as the fourteenth century; see ibid., 67.

119

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restoration work permits a detailed study of the construction of the vaulting to be carried out. Of the oldest monuments, those of the first half and middle of the eleventh century, arches and vaults are known from the three surviving cathedrals, those of St Sophia in Kiev and Novgorod and that of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Chernigov. These cathedrals are multi-domed: in Kiev the cathedral has 13 domes and in Novgorod and Chernigov five each. Furthermore in both Kiev and Novgorod the cathedrals have vaulted ambulatories. The profiles of all their arches are semicircular. The corners of these cathedrals and the bays of their ambulatories have various forms of ceiling, either barrel-vaulted or domed on pendentives, but without drums. This can be seen in St Sophia, Kiev, under the galleries and in the lower storey of the internal galleries and in the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour, Chernigov, above and below the galleries. In the northern and southern aisles and in the western transverse aisle of St Sophia, Novgorod, barrel vaults alternate with vaults with a triangular crosssection.2 However, such vaults were not a unique feature of the Novgorod cathedral, since in St Sophia, Kiev, on the western and eastern butts of the northern external gallery there are triangular arches, like gables.3 In the ambulatories of the Novgorod cathedral and in the external galleries of that in Kiev, thick half arches in the form of flying buttresses formed a base for construction. In the upper storey of the southern gallery of the Novgorod cathedral, semi-cylindrical vaults are also used, again in the form of a quarter-circle in cross-section. The apses are roofed with conches. Cross vaults possibly covered the upper storey of the internal galleries in St Sophia, Kiev.4 In all these three monuments, the arches and vaults were made from bricks in the recessed-brick technique. In Kiev and Chernigov stone was not used in the arches and vaults, but in St Sophia, Novgorod, some vaults were built of flat stones.5 Judging by the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour, Chernigov, the pendentives were built of horizontal, slightly overlapping courses of bricks, i.e. following the false-vault system.6 In the domes which were built in one thickness of bricks, the bottom two-thirds 2 V.V. Suslov called such vaults frontonchati 'pedimental'; see "O svodchatykh perekrytiiakh v tserkovnykh pamiatnikakh drevne-russkogo zodchestva", Trudy II s"ezda russkikh zodchikh (Moscow, 1899), 140. 3 M.I. Kresal'nii, Sofiis'kii zapovidnik u Kievi (Kiev, 1960), 224. 4 lu.S. Aseev, I.F. Totskaia, G.M. Shtender, "Issledovaniia galerei kievskogo Sofiiskogo sobora", Stroitel'stvo iarkhitektura (Kiev, 1980), no. 7, 26. 5 G.M. Shtender, "K voprosu o dekorativnykh osobennostiakh stroitel'noi tekhniki novgorodskoi Sofii", Kul'tura srednevekovoi Rusi (Leningrad), 203, figs 1 & 8. 6 I. Morgilevs'kii, "Spaso-Preobrazhens'kii sobor u Chernigovi", Chernigiv i pivnichne livoberezhzhia (Kiev, 1928), 178. It is interesting that even in the nineteenth century it was recommended that pendentives be laid in horizontal courses to minimise lateral thrust; see A. Krasovskii, Grazhdanskaia arkhitektura (Moscow, 1886), 205.

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of the curve consisted of overlapping courses of bricks set at a slight angle, which increased with height. The upper third of a large dome was built as a real vault, that is with inclined courses of bricks. The radius of surface curvature was smaller in this upper third of the dome than in the lower parts; the upper part of the dome is called the skuf'ia. In small domes, after laying the lower parts, the remaining aperture was so small that it was filled in with bricks laid vertically. On the outside, the domes were plastered and probably covered with special convex plinthoi (judging from Kiev), and again plastered.7 The vaults of Kievan monuments from the second half of the eleventh century, for example the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Monastery of the Caves and the katholikon of the Vydubits Monastery, do not differ much from those built earlier. These two monuments have barrel vaults and domical vaults on pendentives, both with and without light drums. The vaults were made of brick in the recessed-brick technique. In Polotsk, vaults are preserved only in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at the Monastery of St Euphrosyne. A study of this monument has shown that the arches were made of bricks in the same recessed-brick technique and the dome was constructed from only one thickness of bricks, laid on edge.8 Substantial changes in the construction of vaults appear in Russian architecture with the transition to the new system of brickwork, the flush-course technique. Arches and vaults were now constructed of bricks in this new technique. The forms of the vaults also changed. In the eleventh century there were domical vaults on pendentives and cylindrical vaults;9 in addition semi-cylindrical vaults, ones of triangular cross-section, and, more rarely perhaps, cross vaults have also been found. In the earliest monuments built in the flush-course technique, the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Elets Monastery and the Cathedral of Sts Boris and Gleb in Chernigov, cross vaults were used, in the corners under the galleries, in addition to domes and cylindrical vaults. In the slightly later Church of St Cyril in Kiev, these corner bays were covered with cylindrical vaults with such large spans that they are practically transformed into cross vaults, and the bays further east have proper cross vaults. Such vault forms are typical of the mid-twelfth century monuments too. In the churches of St George 7

Kresal'nii, Sofiis 'kii zapovidnik, 228. An examination was carried out in 1946-47 by the architect E. Ashchepkov, under the auspices of the USSR Academy of Architecture. The reports are kept in the Central State Archive of the National Economy (f.337, inv. 1, nos 175-177). Copies of the reports are kept in the archive of manuscripts of the St Petersburg Institute of Archaeology, Academy of Sciences of Russia. 9 For the correct use of the term 'cylindrical vault", regardless of the shape of its section; seel.B. Mikhalovskii, "Arkhitekturnaiaterminologiia",Prob/emi/flrWi!tefcfwn/2.1 (Moscow, 1937), 8; Krasovskii, Grazhdanskaia arkhitektura, 174. 8

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at Kanev and Sts Peter and Paul in Smolensk, there are cylindrical vaults with large spans under the galleries, and in the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir-in-Volynia, judging from the preserved butts, the vaults were cross ones. It is accordingly clear that cross vaults were widely used at that time, whereas before they had either not been used at all or were rare. In contrast, domical vaults without drums became much less commonly used and then almost exclusively over chapels. There are such windowless domical vaults over the chapels in the upper storey of the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at the Monastery of St Euphrosyne in Polotsk. In the twelfth century the base of the dome was treated more freely. In the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Elets Monastery and then in the Cathedral of Sts Boris and Gleb in Chernigov and the Church of St Cyril in Kiev, the ring below the dome was not round, but rectangular with rounded corners. The transition from such a ring to the round drum in the Church of St Cyril was realised by the introduction of an additional arch 60 cm wide, up against the arch of the western wall.10 All arches, as before, were usually. However, but with a slightly elongated sub-dome space, some arches were made more sloping, in order to maintain both the butts and keystones at equal heights.11 The vaults were made, as a rule, one brick thick and most of the arches were made in the same way, although sometimes the wall arches were made two bricks thick. Where a cylindrical vault sprang from a wall arch, the arch became two or even three bricks thick.12 The pendentives, as before, were laid with corbelled bricks, i.e. as a false vault. The character of the arches and vaults in Novgorodian buildings is somewhat different. In accordance with the transition to the new system of construction, which included local limestone slabs as well as bricks, such slabs were also used to construct the arches and vaults. Sometimes the arches were made entirely of stone, as in some in the katholikon at the Monastery of St Antony, but usually this alternated with bricks. In this technique, the courses of slabs were slightly recessed from the surface and were plastered with mortar. Consequently, the arches outwardly look like brickwork in the recessed-brick technique. The vaults were one brick thick, like the arches. Where the cylindrical vaults sprang from the wall arches, the total thickness was equal to two bricks.13 The external surface of the vaults was sometimes covered with plinthoi laid flat, for example in the Church of St George in Staraia Ladoga. The types of vault used in Novgorodian archi10 N.V. Kholostenko, "Novye dannye o Kirillovskoi tsorkvi v Kieve", Pamiatniki kul'tury Issledovanie i restavratsiia 2 (Moscow, 1960), 16. 11 Kholostenko, "Novye dannye", 15, fig. 9. 12 Kholostenko, "Novye dannye", 15, fig. 8. 13 G.M. Shtender, "Vosstanovlenie Nereditsy", Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik 10 (Novgorod, 1961) 65-205.

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tecture were restricted to cylindrical vaults, domes on light drums or semidomes in the apses. There is no evidence for the construction of arches and vaults in Galich, since no vaults have been preserved in any of the buildings, but the total lack of bricks in the ruins indicates that the vaults were of stone. Similarly, the vaults in the monuments of the Vladimir-Suzdal1 region were of stone and the arches and vaults used specially cut wedge-shaped stones. The vaults were laid with one course of stone and to make them lighter, porous stone (tufa) was used, as in the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin on the Nerl' and the Cathedral of St Demetrius.14 The arches and pendentives were made of denser limestone, the blocks being carefully cut. These stone vaults were covered with a layer of lime on the outside, like brick vaults. In addition to domes on drums with windows, semi-domes in the apses and cylindrical vaults, cross vaults were also used in Vladimir-Suzdal'. The vaults in the tower and passage-way of the Bogoliubovo complex, as well as in two bays in the side naves of the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir provide examples of this. In this latter cathedral, the transition from an elongated rectangle to the drum of the dome of the eastern corner cupola was solved by introducing an additional arch. The Cathedral of the Dormition provides a unique example in Kievan architecture of a system of transition from the square created by the wall arches to the ring of the drum of the central cupola: two small arches were placed along the perimeter of each spherical pendentive, in the form of squinches. The arches in Vladimir-Suzdal' architecture are semicircular in form, as in all other Kievan monuments, but there are some slight variations. For instance, in the cathedral at Pereslavl'-Zalesskii, the supporting arches of the drum of the cupola sprang from two centres: the sides of the arches have symmetrical curves drawn from a point lying level with the butts of the arches and the central part, from a point located above the butts,15 with a result that the arches became slightly elongated. The arches of the Cathedral of St Demetrius probably had a slightly elliptical form, but this has not yet been determined.16 A certain regularity can be seen in the location of cylindrical vaults in the corner bays of churches. The end face of the vault forms an arched gable on the fagade, whereas the arch on the adjoining facade is false, since it corresponds not to the face of the vault, but to its side or span. Unfortunately, the direction of the axis of the corner cylindrical vaults can only be determined for a few monuments. In the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Monastery of the Caves, the western corner vaults were placed across the church, i.e. along the north-south axis. In the Katholikon of the Dormition 14

Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1, 310,474. A. Chiniakov, "Arkhitekturnyi pamiatnik vremeni luriia Dolgorukogo", AN 2 (1952), 56. 16 A.V. Stolotov, "K istorii arkhitekturnykh form Dmitrievskogo sobora v gorode Vladimire", op. cit. 115n.l5. 15

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at the Elets Monastery, this was the case for both the western and eastern corner vaults, but in the Cathedral of Sts Boris and Gleb, Chernigov, only for the western vaults, as the eastern vaults were aligned along the church, on an east-west axis. In the Church of St Cyril, Kiev, the corner vaults had their axes set longitudinally. Thus it seems that in the group of monuments in Kiev and Chernigov, the orientation of the corner vaults was not rigid. However, judging from individual monuments with preserved vaults, for example the Church of Sts Peter and Paul in Smolensk and the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir-in-Volynia, the corner vaults were oriented across the church. Several architectural schools had a more definite system. In the Vladimir-Suzdal' region, the Cathedral of St Demetrius and the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin on the NeiT; in Novgorod, the Cathedral of St Nicholas at laroslav's Court, and the katholikons at the lur'ev Monastery and at the Monastery of St Antony, the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa; and the Katholikon of the Dormition and the Church of St George at Ladoga, all corner vaults had longitudinal axes. In the Novgorod area the only exception was the katholikon at the Monastery of St John the Baptist, Pskov, where the northeastern corner vault was oriented across the church, since there was an exit on to the roof. The relationship between the western corners of the vaults and the vaults lying beneath them, and supporting the galleries was significant. In the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Elets Monastery and in the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb, both in Chernigov, as well as in the Church of Sts Peter and Paul, Smolensk, and in the Cathedral of the Dormition, Vladimir-inVolynia, where the upper western corner vaults were aligned north-south, the vaults under the galleries were either cross vaults or cylindrical vaults with large spans, which made them similar to cross vaults. In the Church of St Cyril, Kiev, and in all the monuments of Novgorod, where the upper western vaults were oriented east-west, the lower vaults were also cylindrical, but perpendicular to them, i.e. with their axes along the north-south axis. Finally, in the Vladimir-Suzdal' region, the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin on the Nerl' and the Cathedral of St Demetrius, the directions of the upper and lower corner cylindrical vaults coincide along the east-west axis. Thus each of the different architectural schools of Russia had its own traditions for the orientation of the corner vaults.17 In the monuments of the late twelfth to early thirteenth centuries, as the design of the upper parts of the churches changed, so did the construction of vaults. In the corners, semi-cylindrical vaults came into use instead of cylindrical ones, i.e. vaults which were a quarter-circle in cross-section. The 17

V.V. Suslov, working mainly on the monuments of Novgorod, believed that the vaults above and below the galleries were always located with their axes perpendicular to each other. He thought that this was connected with the architect's desire to reduce the effect of the thrust of the vaults; see V.V. Suslov, "O svodchatykh perekrytiiakh v tserkovnykh pamiatnikakh drevne-russkogo zodchestva", Trudy II s "ezda russkikh zodchikh (Moscow, 1899), 141.

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use of such vaults gives a trefoil form to the fac.ade. Unfortunately, original vaults of this type are partially preserved only in the Church of St ParaskevePiatnitsa, Chernigov. Traces of such vaulting systems have only been found in two other monuments, the Church of the Archangel Michael in Smolensk18 and the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa in Novgorod.19 It should be noted that during restoration work in the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa, Chernigov, which was destroyed in the Second World War, the construction of the stepped wall arches was successfully determined, i.e. those arches located not below, but above the adjacent vault.20 In the monuments designed in the form of a stepped tower-like construction, both semicircular and pointed arches were probably used. A single preserved example can be found in the same Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa in Chernigov, where the central gable of the facades has an elliptical form.21 'Resonator' vessels were placed in the spandrels and in the pendentives of all brick and stone and brick vaults. They have been found in all Russian buildings, except for those in the Vladimir-Suzdal' and Galich regions, where the vaults were made of squared stone. The span of pre-Mongol churches was relatively small. The maximum span was determined by the width of the central nave and that of the transept, i.e. the crossing. The diameter of the dome was also determined by these dimensions. Of course, the size of the sub-dome space and the diameter of the dome did not always coincide exactly. The sub-dome space was often not square, but slightly elongated. In the eleventh century, the width of the church was dominant, but from the mid-twelfth century, the length of the church became the prevailing parameter and this became particularly prominent by the end of the century. If the vaults are not preserved and there is only the ground plan, there is no way to determine the diameter of the dome accurately. In addition, towards the end of the twelfth century, the builders treated the design of the drum of the cupola with increasing freedom. In the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa, Chernigov, the drum was clearly oval in plan.22 In the Church of the Archangel Michael, Smolensk, the diameter of the drum is markedly narrower than the sub-dome space because of the overhanging brickwork at the level of the top of the pendentives.23 Therefore, knowledge of the exact size of the sub-dome 18 S.S. Pod"iapol'skii, "Tserkov1 Arkhangela Mikhaila", Voronin & Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smolenska, 178. 19 G.M. Shtender, "Arkhitcktura Novgoroda v svete poslednikh issledovanii", Novgorod. K 1100-letiiu goroda (Moscow, 1964), 207. 20 P.D. Baranovskii, "Sobor Piatnitskogo monastyria v Chernigove", Pamiatniki iskusstva, razrushennye nemetskimi zakhvatchikami v SSSR (Moscow, Leningrad, 1948), 20. 21 G.M. Shtender, "Razmetka arkhitekturnykh form drevnimi zodchimi", Pamiatniki kul 'tun/ 1 (Moscow, 1959), 71. 22 N.V. Kholostenko, "Arkhitekturno-arkheologicheskie issledovaniia Piatnitskoi tserkvi v g. Chernigove", SA 26 (1956), 282. 23 Pod"iapol'skii, "Tserkov' Arkhangela Mikhaila", 173.

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space alone makes it possible to estimate the diameter of the dome only approximately.24 In medium size churches the diameter of the dome was about 3-5 m. Among the twelfth-century monuments, the largest domes were in the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir-in-Volynia, where the size of the sub-dome space was 7.45 x 8.0 m; in the Church of St Cyril in Kiev, where the diameter of the dome was 7.7 m; in the Cathedral of the Dormition in Galich, where the sides of the sub-dome square were about 7m; and in the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir, with sides of about 6.5 m. Large domes can also be found in earlier Kievan monuments, for example, the Church of the Tithe, where the sub-dome space was 6.5 x 7.2 m and the central dome of St Sophia, Novgorod, which was 6.2 m wide. Some eleventhcentury monuments had larger domes. In St Sophia, Kiev and the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour, Chernigov, the central domes were about 7.7 m in diameter and in the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb in Vyshgorod, the sides of the sub-dome square were slightly more than 8m. The largest dome in the pre-Mongol period was in the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Monastery of the Caves about 8.6 m. The dome of the katholikon on the Klovka, Smolensk, may have been larger still, since according to one version of its reconstruction, the sub-dome span was 9.5-9.7m, with the dome supported by pillars with the help of squinches.23 In addition to the normal construction system, where the dome was placed on four individual supports with the help of pendentives, a different system of construction was also used in Russia, that is instead of pillars, buttresses in the corners of the building served as supports. The only example of this to be preserved in its original form is the Church of the Prophet Elijah, Chernigov. This building looks as if the central part of a normal four-pillar church had been cut out. In Pereiaslavl', the remains of several small churches revealed only two pillars in each church. Apparently here the wall arches formed a more or less quadrilateral space in the core of the church, surmounted by a dome on pendentives. However, there are a few examples of Russian churches with another roofing system. In the citadel of Smolensk, for example, the remains of a pillarless church have been excavated, which must have been vaulted, judging by its thick walls and strong foundations, along the eastern side of the core of the church over the entrance to the apses.26 The internal dimensions of the core of this church were 10.45 x 8.25 m, indicating that this space could not have been domed. Moreover, the external walls of the 24

For details, see K.N. Afanas'ev, Postroenie arkhitekturnoi formy drevnerusskimi zodcliimi (Moscow, 1961), 195. 25 G.N. Logvin, "Arkhitektura khrama na Klove", Issledovanie i okhrana arkhitekturnogo naslediia Ukrainy (Kiev, 1980), 72. 266 Voronin & Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smolenska, fig. 37 on p. 93.

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church were divided by pilaster strips into tripartite fagades, which excluded the possibility of a single dome. It seems that a system was adopted to narrow the internal space with the help of additional arches, either rising step by step or crossing. This technique was very probably widely used. In Vladimirin-Volynia, for example, the remains of a pillarless church were excavated on Sadovaia Street, with internal dimensions of 10.2 x 8.2m.27 This church had not been completed, but its thick walls and strong foundations suggest that it was meant to be vaulted. A pillarless church on Soviet Street in Pereiaslavl' had smaller internal dimensions of up to 8 m. A special form of vault was used in the entrances of the church at Berestovo. Here the vault had a trefoil shape and where the curvature change took place, it was supported by wooden beams.28 In the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at the Monastery of St Euphrosyne in Polotsk, the cylindrical vaults had a normal semicircular section, but above these vaults were keel-shape elevations, made of broken brick in plenty of mortar.29 The ornamental gables by the drum and the cornices of the arches over the windows of the upper storey, were of the same form. These keelshape elevations were preserved only because its vaults were later covered with a rafter roof for several centuries, which protected them from bad weather. Such details probably existed in other monuments, but have not survived. Very small keel-shape decorative elevations were found on the arches which crown the faqades of the entrances in the later monuments of Vladimir-Suzdal', such as the cathedrals in Suzdal' and of St George in lur'ev-Pol'skii. The windows and doors in the monuments of Kievan Russia were covered with semicircular arches. However, the narrow slit windows which were mainly used to illuminate staircases, and which had flat lintels, were exceptions to this. The door openings usually had flat wooden lintels, and their tympana are filled with brickwork. Therefore, the arch over the portal served as a frame for a niche. However, if the tympanum was filled in completely, and not left recessed, the arch then became wholly embedded in the wall, and so a relieving arch. In Vladimir-Suzdal', where it seems that the door openings did not have flat lintels, an additional relieving arch was usually made over the arch of the opening.30

27

A.A. Peskova, P.A. Rappoport, "Noizvestnyi pamiatnik volynskogo zodchestva", PKNO 1986 (Leningrad, 1987) 541. 28 G.M. Shtendcr, "Trckhlopastnoe pokrytic tserkvi Spasa na Berestovc", PKNO 1980 (Leningrad, 1981), 534. 29 P.A. Rappoport, G.M. Shtender, "Spasskaia tserkov' Evfrosin'eva monastyria v Polotske", PKNO 1979 (Leningrad, 1980), 459. 30 Voronin, Zodchestvo Sevcro-Vostachnoi Rusi, vol. 1, 308.

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On the exterior the doorways were recessed: in the simplest cases by just one step, but sometimes by several. The steps of the reveal were generally square and only in the buildings of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries do there occur doorways framed with rounded steps, like colonettes, for example in the Church of St Basil at Ovruch. Such multistepped openings resemble, to an extent, perspective portals, though genuine Romanesque perspective portals have only been found in the Galich and Vladimir-Suzdal' architectural schools. Windows were almost exclusively made with a single span and no intermediate colonnettes. The sole exception is a Romanesque three-span window in the tower of the Bogoliubovo complex. The window jambs were usually parallel, but recessed by one step on the exterior. As well as this type, flared window openings were also used. These widened both inwards and outwards, i.e. in plan they look like two trapezia with their long sides turned outwards. The outer window openings in the monuments of the Vladimir-Suzdal' region, starting from the 1160s, usually had a complicated profile. The windows in the cathedral at Suzdal' are quite unusual, because they are flanked with colonnettes on the outside.31

1

Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 2,38.

10

Staircases

The earliest Kievan monument, the Church of the Tithe, must have had a staircase to reach the galleries. Unfortunately, excavations have revealed no traces of it. St Sophia, Kiev, had two stair towers, included in the external western ambulatory and St Sophia, Novgorod, had one. St Sophia, Polotsk, had no galleries, so a rectangular tower adjoined the western part of the northern fagade of the cathedral. The towers in two Novgorod churches, the Church of the Annunciation at Gorodishche and the katholikon at the lur'ev Monastery, were positioned similarly. In the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour, Chernigov, the tower also adjoined the western part of the north wall, but was circular, as was the stair tower in the katholikon of the Monastery of St Antony in Novgorod. In the katholikon of the Vydubits Monastery and in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at Berestovo the tower was largely inside the church, in the northern part of the narthex and only partially projected from the building. Finally, there are examples where the tower was built entirely within the northwestern part of the building and did not project outside at all. Such are the towers in the Golden-Domed Katholikon of the Monastery of the Archangel Michael, Kiev, in the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb at Vyshgorod, in the Church of St Irene, Kiev, and in the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael in Pereiaslavl'. Thus all the monuments which had a staircase in a special tower date to the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Staircases were not placed in other positions at that time. In Kiev the latest example of a church with a stair tower is the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at Berestovo, built between 1113 and 1125. In Novgorod, judging from indirect evidence, the Church of St John at Opoki, erected between 1127 and 1130, supposedly, had a tower built in one of the western corners.1 Later on, in the twelfth century, stair towers were rarely built and only a few examples are known. In the second half of the twelfth century, for example, a stair tower was built in the south1 A.A. Peskova, P.A. Rappoport, G.M. Shtender, "K voprosu o slozhenii novgorodskoi arkhitekturnoi shkoly", SA (1982), no. 3,39. There was also a stair tower at the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb, dating from 1167, but the church was probably begun as early as 1146, ibid., 45.

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western part of the Cathedral of St Nicholas at laroslav's Court in Novgorod, but this exceptional case is to be explained by special circumstances, i.e. the elimination of the passage to the galleries, leading directly from the first floor of the prince's palace. There are also two monuments from the late twelfth century with stair towers, namely the Church of St Basil at Ovruch, where the western facade was flanked with two round stair towers, and an uncompleted church in Volkovysk, with a square tower near the southwestern corner. The stairs in the towers were built in a spiral around a central round post. Even when excavations revealed no sign of any such post, that the space was designed for stairs could still be determined from the fact that the foundations normally covered the whole site under the stair tower and not only under the walls. Such a solid foundation platform was found under the tower of St Sophia, Polotsk, as well as in the north-western corner of the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb at Vyshgorod and in the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael in Pereiaslavl'. Sometimes the stairs were for ceremonial purposes. A study of the northern tower of St Sophia, Kiev, has shown that the steps were made of red-slate slabs and the risers were covered with mosaic ornament. The walls of the staircase are decorated with frescoes. In the twelfth century, the stairs to the galleries came to be built within the walls of the church. An example is the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Elets Monastery in Chernigov, which was erected in the early twelfth century and where the staircase was located in the western part of the northern wall. The stairs in the Church of St Cyril, Kiev, in the church at Kanev, in the Cathedral of the Dormition in Staraia Riazan1 and in the Katholikon of Sts Boris and Gleb at the monastery on the Smiadyn' in Smolensk were similarly located. More often, the stairs were placed in the northern part of the western wall of the church, as for example, in the churches of the Dormition in the Podol in Kiev, Sts Peter and Paul in Smolensk, the Resurrection in Pereiaslavl', the Annunciation in Vitebsk, the Transfiguration of the Saviour at the Monastery of St Euphrosyne in Polotsk and of the Dormition in Galich, and in the Cathedral of Sts Boris and Gleb in Chernigov. In the late twelfth to early thirteenth centuries, the northern part of the western wall was also where the stairs were located, as in the Church of the Apostles in Belgorod and the Church of St ParaskevePiatnitsa in Chernigov. Among the monuments of the Novgorod area, this location was used for stairs only in the katholikon at the Monastery of St John the Baptist in Pskov and later, from about the 1160s, it became habitual to build the staircase in the southern and not the northern part of the western wall. In addition, at the Church of the Archangel Michael, Smolensk, which had balconies above the narthex instead of galleries, the staircase was built in the northern wall of the western entrance.2 2 S.S. PocTiapol'skii, "Tserkov1 Arkhangela Mikhaila", Voronin & Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smolenska, 179, note 25.

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The monuments of Vladimir-Suzdal' generally lacked staircases and the entrance to the galleries was either through towers adjacent to the church or through passages, as in the cathedrals of the Dormition and of St Demetrius at Vladimir and in the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin at Bogoliubovo. A further method was by a staircase built in the wall of the ambulatory, as in the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin on the Nerl'. This problem has not yet been solved in some monuments. In the cathedral at Suzdal', which dates to the early thirteenth century and has three entrances, the staircase is in the northern wall of the western porch, as it was in the Church of the Archangel Michael in Smolensk. A staircase of peculiar design can be seen in the lower church at Grodno and in the church at Turov, where in order to site the stairs in one of the western angles of the church, in Grodno on the south-western corner, at Turov in the north-western corner, a special, thin wall was built in a quadrant to separate off the staircase. It should be noted that in the Church of St Cyril, Kiev, as well as the main stairs to the galleries, there was another staircase within the eastern part of the southern wall, leading to a balcony in the southern apse. In the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb at Kolozha in Grodno the major staircase was, probably, in the western wall, but two additional staircases have been preserved; these rose from the base of the walls between the apses and lay in the walls of the side apses. The stairs in secular buildings were located in different places. In the Golden Gate in Vladimir, the staircase was built in one of the pillars of the gate. The staircase in the gate to the Prince's Court in Chernigov, early thirteenth century, was similarly located.3 In the Bishop's Gate in Pereiaslavl', a special chamber was built for a two-flight staircase. The site of the stairs in the Golden Gate in Kiev is unknown. In the palace ensemble of Bogoliubovo, a tower with spiral stairs was built in the passages which led from the church to the palace. The stairs in the towers of St Sophia in Kiev and Novgorod were covered with cylindrical vaults, situated stepways over the spiral stairs. A similar ceiling was found over the stairs in the tower of the katholikon at the lur'ev Monastery, Novgorod, although here some parts of the vault have an elongated cross-section, so they resemble pointed vaults. In the katholikon at the Monastery of St Antony, Novgorod, the vaults over the stairs are also stepped, but their cross-section is closer to being triangular. Ceilings over stairs built within walls were first made of flat stone slabs. In the Church of St Cyril, Kiev, in the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Elets Monastery and in the Cathedral of Sts Boris and Gleb in Chernigov, as well as in the katholikon of the Monastery of St John the Baptist at 3 L.N. Bol'shakov, V.P. Kovalenko, P.A. Rappoport, "Novye dannye o pamiatnikakh drevncgo zodchestva Chornigova i Novgoroda-Soverskogo", KSIA 195 (1989), 56.

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Pskov, the stairs were roofed with inclined slate slabs. Later on stairs were vaulted, in the form of a stepped vault consisting of sections of cylindrical vaults. Examples of this method are found in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa in Novgorod, the Katholikon of the Dormition at Ladoga, the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa in Chernigov, the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin in Suzdal' and the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb at Kolozha in Grodno. In Vladimir the stairs of the Golden Gate were vaulted with stepped vaults and the spiral stairs at Bogoliubovo were vaulted with a solid inclined vault. Stairs built in walls were, as a rule, narrow (about 70 cm wide) and quite steep, with the height of the risers greater than the width of the steps. The steps were usually made of bricks, but in some monuments the brick steps were covered with boards with their ends built into the brickwork of the wall.

11 Wooden elements in the buildings

Wooden ties were generally built into the walls of buildings of the Kievan period. These ties formed a continuous ring encircling the building and inside they passed through most of the interior, intersecting at the pillars. Arranged in several tiers, they created closed circuits which played an important role in the stability of the structure, especially where irregular settling or deformation occurred. Unfortunately, the number of tiers of ties and their construction can only be determined from a few monuments, since ties projecting into the interior are preserved in very few buildings and the holes left in the walls were usually filled during repairs. It is clear, anyway, that ties were almost always laid level with the butts of the arches, and that as well as acting as a frame for the building, they served as tie bars at the springing of the arches. The ties that passed through the interior could be carved or painted and thus, most probably, became one of the decorative elements of the interior. Traces of ties at the base of the walls were found during the excavations of the Church of the Tithe (fig. 53). A whole system of ties was observed in St Sophia, Kiev.1 Here the ties were built into the walls beneath the windows, at the level of the door and window openings, at the level of the abutments of the arches and at the base of the drums of the cupolas. Several tiers of ties were also found in St Sophia, Novgorod.2 Ties were also included in later monuments in the Kiev-Chernigov area. For instance, there are several ties in the Katholikon of the Dormition and also in the baptistery, both at the Monastery of the Caves. In the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Elets Monastery in Chernigov the ties were laid above the foundations, over the arches of the galleries and at the level of the abutments of the roof arching; and not only ran along the perimeter of the walls, but also across 1 G.N. Logvin, "K istorii sooruzheniia Sofiiskogo sobora v Kieve", PKNO1977 (Leningrad, 1977), 172-173,180. 2 G.M. Shtender, "Pervichnyi zamysol i posleduiushchie izmeneniia galerei i lostnichnoi bashni novgorodskoi Sofii", Drevne-msskoe iskusstvo. Probleiny i atributsii (Moscow, 1977), 34-37.

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Figure 53. Traces of ties at the base of the walls of the Church of the Tithe in Kiev. Photo 1908.

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135

the building, connecting the walls with the pillars.3 Holes for ties have also been found in the Church of St Cyril, Kiev. This tradition continued until the Mongol invasions: holes from several tiers of ties have been found in monuments of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, for example, in the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa, Chernigov, and in the Church of St Basil at Ovruch. Thorough studies have been made of the location of the ties in the monuments of Smolensk. The excavations of the Katholikon of Sts Boris and Gleb at the monastery on the Smiadyn' have shown that the bottom tier of ties was located directly over the foundations and within the brick pavement (fig. 54). The ties were laid both along the walls of the church and across the whole building, crossing under its pillars and forming an overall wooden frame (fig. 55). This tier of ties was covered with a floor. Ties at the base of the walls were also found in the pillarless church in the citadel. This lower tier of ties probably existed in all the monuments in Smolensk dated to the 1180s. In later monuments, the lower tier of ties was found only in the churches put up by one of the building teams, i.e. in the churches on the Protoka and at the Okopnoe Cemetery. These consisted of paired wooden ties located directly above the foundations. In the churches erected by the other team there were none, even where the lower parts of the walls remained in a relatively good state of preservation. It is clear that this technique for reinforcing the base of a building had been abandoned in most of the Smolensk monuments by the late twelfth century. In the interior of the Church of the Archangel Michael, square holes can be seen in the brickwork of the walls and pillars, marking where ties once were. Judging from these holes, there were five tiers of ties but none, apparently, at the base of the walls (fig. 56). Five tiers were also found in the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa, Novgorod, which was put up by Smolensk masters.4 In Polotsk in the first half of the twelfth century, judging from the excavated remains of the crypt church at the Monastery of St Euphrosyne and those of the church at the lower citadel, no ties were laid in the base of the walls. Ties existed in all the monuments of Novgorod. In the katholikon at the lur'ev Monastery, some of the ties connected the walls with the pillars. A detailed study has been made of the ties in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa.5 They were laid in three tiers. The lower tier was located at the level of the floor of the galleries, the second 3

N.V. Kholostenko, "Arkhitekturno-arkheologicheskoe issledovanie Uspenskogo sobora Eletskogo monastyria v Chernigove", AN 3 (Moscow, 1961), 52. 4 G.M. Shtender, "Arkhitektura domongol'skogo perioda", Novgorod. K 1100-letiiu goroda (Moscow, 1964), 211. 5 P.P. Pokryshkin, Otchet o kapital'nom remonte Spaso-Nereditskoi tserkvi v 1903 i 1904godakh (St Petersburg, 1906), 26 and tables.

Figure 54. Holes from the ties in the base of a sub-dome pillar. Smolensk, the Katholikon of Sts Boris and Gleb at the monastery on the Smiadyn'.

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v/Figure 55. Katholikon of Sts Boris at the monastery and Gleb on the Smiadyn' (the core, without ambulatories). Plan to show the lower tier of ties. The location of ties in the apses is unknown.

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Figure 56. Cathedral of the Archangel Michael in Smolensk. Axonometric section. After S.S. Pod"iapol'skii.

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tier, at the level of the abutments of the wall arches and the third tier, at the base of the dome. The lower two tiers formed closed rings around the perimeter of the building and the third tier, around the perimeter of the drum. The ties of the second tier also crossed the church, intersecting at the pillars. As well as the three tiers of ties, there were additional ties across the side aisles on the line of the western pillars. In the Church of Sts Peter and Paul on Sinich'ia Hill, the ties were located in three tiers and, in contrast to the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa, were laid across the window openings. In the Church of St George at Staraia Ladoga the ties were also laid in three tiers. A special system of laying ties was found during the excavations of the Church of St Clement at Staraia Ladoga. Here the ties went in pairs round the perimeter of the walls, directly over the foundations. The outer sides of these ties were located precisely under the faces of the walls and on either side of the ties themselves there was a brickwork covering, forming a kind of plinth.6 At the points of intersection the ties were connected by iron spikes. There were no ties inside the building. The location of the outer edges of the ties exactly under the edges of the walls makes it possible to consider them as a kind of template, i.e. guides to laying out the walls. Ties have been found in the monuments of the Vladimir-Suzdal' area. Here, they were usually located at the level of the floor of the galleries and at the level of the abutments of the wall arches. Projecting inside the buildings, the ties intersected at the pillars. Such ties were found in the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin on the NeiT and in the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir. In the Cathedral of St Demetrius, ties were not found at the level of the abutments of the wall arches, instead they were laid only at the level of the floor of the galleries.7 The absence of any upper tier of ties in this church is possibly explained by the presence of towers, which counteracted the thrust of the vaults.8 In the tower of the Bogoliubovo complex, ties were laid at the level of the floor of the first storey. The lack of preserved monuments in the Galich area does not permit us to establish whether ties were used in the buildings of this architectural school. Traces of wooden beams have only been found at the base of the walls of the ambulatory of the Cathedral of the Dormition at Galich; apparently none existed in the walls of the church itself.9 In all cases when it has been possible to determine the kind of tree from which the ties were made, it has been oak. The cross-section of the ties is 6 L.N. Bol'shakov, P.A. Rappoport, "Raskopki tserkvi Klimenta v Staroi Ladoge", Novoe v arkheologii Severo-Zapada (Leningrad, 1985), 115. 7 A.V. Stoletov, "Konstmktsii vladimiro-suzdal'skikh bolokamcnnykh pamiatnikov i ikh ukreplenie", Pamiatniki kul'tury. Issledovanic i rcstavratsiia 1 (Moscow, 1959), 192. 8 Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1,554, note 89 (A.V. Stoletov's supposition). 9 la. Pasternak, Staryi Galich (Krakov-L'vov, 1944).

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usually square, sometimes rectangular, with the height exceeding the width. Round beams have also quite often been found, mostly in the same buildings as square or rectangular ties. The size of the sections, i.e. the size of the sides of the squares or the diameter of the circles, usually varies from 22 to 28 cm. In the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa, it has been established that some ties were round at one end and square at the other. It seems that it was more important for the masters to adhere to the same size of cross-section than to the same shape.10 In the corners the ties were fastened with half-mitre joints, with the ends of the beams projecting. Any extension to the ties was largely made in 'tooth' or 'oblique tooth', a type of scarf joint.11 In most of the buildings of Vladimir-Suzdal', the ties were fastened with iron spikes, as in the cathedrals of the Dormition and of St Demetrius in Vladimir and the tower at Bogoliubovo, but in other centres, this technique was not normally used.12 In addition to iron spikes in the monuments of Vladimir-Suzdal' the intersections of the ties were also fastened with strips of iron, one end of which was fixed in the brickwork, the other being cut into the tie. In the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin on the NeiT, birch bark was wrapped round the oak ties. Wood was used in pre-Mongol buildings not only in ties, but also as beams to support the galleries. In the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Chernigov, for example, the beams supported the sections of the galleries over the aisles of the church. In the Church of St Cyril, Kiev, wooden beams supported the platform in the third storey of the southern apse. Beams also supported the galleries in the Church of the Prophet Elijah, Chernigov and in the Church of St Basil at Ovruch. Beams were widely used in Novgorod architecture when building the galleries. They usually supported the central bays of the galleries, as in the Church of Sts Peter and Paul on Sinich'ia Hill, the Church of St George and the Katholikon of the Dormition at Staraia Ladoga, but sometimes whole galleries were supported, for example at the katholikon at the Monastery of St John the Baptist, Pskov and the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa. Since the walls of the palace buildings excavated in Smolensk and Polotsk were not very thick, these must have had wooden-beam, rather than arched ceilings. Excavations in Smolensk have shown that in most cases the 10

G.M. Shtender, "Vosstanovlenie Nereditsy", Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik 10 (Novgorod, 1961), 193. 11 G.M. Shtender, "Pervichnyi zamysel", 36; P.P. Pokryshkin, Otchet o kapital'nom remonte Spaso-Nereditskoi tserkvi, 26. 12 The drum of the cupola of the baptistery of the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev contained a ring of ties fastened with iron spikes; see N.V. Kholostenko, "Novi doslidzhennia loanno-Predtechens'koi tserkvi ta rekonstruktsiia Uspens'kogo soboru Kievo-Pechers'koi lavri", Arkheologichni doslidzhennia starodavn'ogo Kicua (Kiev, 1976), 134, fig 5.

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ambulatories adjacent to the churches were roofed with beams. Traces of the ends of beams on the walls of the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin on the Nerl' indicate that the ambulatories here also had wooden roofs.13 Wood was also used for lintels to span the opening of a door. Here, as well as a beam above the door openings, an arch was also made, and the space between the beam and this arch, i.e. the tympanum, was filled with masonry. In St Sophia, Novgorod, a single beam served as a lintel for the door openings and therefore the wall of the tympanum was very thin. In later Novgorodian monuments, for example, in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa, the door openings were covered not with a single beam, but with several side by side and the wall above them was almost as thick as of the wall of the church itself, meaning that the lintel arch became a relieving arch.14 A wooden lintel beam has been found in the western portal of the Church of Sts Peter and Paul in Smolensk. In the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb at Kolozha in Grodno, thick oak boards were used to roof several sections of the staircase in the wall, whereas other sections were roofed with small stepped cylindrical vaults. It seems that the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at Berestovo (1113-1125) was the earliest monument in which wooden beams and lintels were widely used for openings. Here a 5m timber lay over the western entrance opening. Cut into this and perpendicular to it were the beams that served as supports for the vaulted tripartite ceiling of the western porch.15 These beams were composed of two timbers lying one above the other. The destroyed side porches probably shared the same construction. The use of wood in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at the Monastery of St Euphrosyne in Polotsk is special. In this church the two western pairs of pillars have octagonal sections, above which are short cylindrical sections, and then square blocks about 16cm thick. Above these blocks the masonry of the pillars has a rectangular section and serves as a transition to the arches. In studies of the church made in 1947, the architect B. Ashchepkov inspected the square block in the extreme north-western pillar and found that it was not made of stone, but of wood, a very dense dark brown oak ("looks like stained oak").16 In the corners the wooden bars 13 S.M. Novakovskaia, "K voprosu o galereiakh belokamennykh soborov Vladimirskoi zemli", KSIA 164 (1981), 46. The supposition by K.N. Afanas'ev that the galleries could not be roofed with beams and that the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin on the Nerl' lacked any galleries is so at variance with the facts that it cannot even serve as basis for discussion; see I'.A. Rappoport, "Eshche raz o galereiakh tserkvi Pokrova na Nerli", Arkhitektura SSSR (1984), no. I , 106. 14 G.M. Shtender, "Vosstanovlenie Nereditsy", 193. 15 lu.S. Aseev, V.O. Kharlamov, "Novi doslidzhennia tserkvi Spasa na Berestovi", Arkhcologiia Kieva (Kiev, 1979), 87. 16 The report by E. Ashchepkov is kept in the Central State Archive of the National Economy (f.337, inv. 1, nos 175-177). Duplicates are kept in the archive of manuscripts of the Institute of History of Material Culture in St Petersburg (M.K. Karger deposit).

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which make up the block were mitre joined. The block had slight traces of grey-yellow paint. At present this block is covered with lath and plastered. Wooden window frames were usually inserted in the windows of Kievan Russian churches. Such window frames (or their remains) have been found in no more than a dozen buildings. However, their design is clear enough. The window frame was a dressed oak or pine board about 3 cm thick with holes in it (figs 57 & 58). Sometimes these window frames consisted of several boards joined with tongues. Most of the holes were round, but sometimes they were triangular. In some monuments, for instance in the Church of St Cyril, Kiev, the window frames were laid firmly in the masonry during the building of the church. In the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa in Novgorod and in the Church of St George at Staraia Ladoga, a beam was laid in the windows at the level of the abutments of their arched lintels, to which the window frame was fixed with the help of wooden dowels.17 In contrast to these churches the window frames in the Church of Sts Peter and Paul in Novgorod were fastened to wooden ties laid across the window openings.18 Wooden window frames have sometimes been found together with fragments of window glass. The holes in the window frames usually broadened towards the interior, which, probably, made it possible to insert glass panes of different sizes. One window frame found in St Sophia, Kiev, is unique.19 It was bricked up in the twelfth century together with the window, so its dating to the eleventh century is not in doubt. It was not a board, but a frame of oak bars, rectangular with a rounded top. The total height of the frame was 145 cm and the width 92 cm, thus corresponding to the size of the window. The frame formed square openings 20 x 20 cm in which glass was inserted. These openings were located in three vertical rows. The middle row contained five openings, the side ones each had four openings with a further half-pane opening above. The remains of round panes 22 cm in diameter were found in the frame. The glass was of good quality with the edges bevelled. The glass was inserted from the outside into incisions specially cut in the bars and fixed with a paste, remains of which were also found. The window frame was connected with the ties which projected into the window opening and firmly fixed with plaster. Barred doors were also made of wood. Unfortunately, there are no surviving examples of such doors which we can study, with the exception of the gilded doors in the western and southern portals of the cathedral in Suzdal1, made in the first half of the thirteenth century.20 These are large 17

B. Sapunov, A. Dragi, "Okonnaia rama XII veka iz tserkvi Georgiia v Staroi Ladoge", Soobshcheniia Cos. Ermitazha 23 (Leningrad, 1962), 15. 18 Shtender, "Arkhitektura domongol'skogo perioda", 193. 19 S. Visots'kii, "Vikonna rama ta shibki Kiivs'koi Sofii", Kiivs'ka starovina (Kiev, 1972), 54. 20 A.N. Ovchinnikov, Suzdal'skie zlatye vrata (Moscow, 1978).

Figure 57. Window frame from the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa in Novgorod.

Figure 58. A window preserving its original window frame. Novgorod, the katholikon at the Monastery of St Antony.

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double-hinged doors, whose wooden frames are lined with iron on the inside and with copper sheets with a pattern of gold against a black varnished background on the outside.

12

Floors

Excavations of the Church of the Tithe have revealed two types of flooring, one made of slabs of variegated marble, porphyry and smalt, and the other of glazed ceramic tiles. The marble used was undoubtedly of Greek origin, so it is clear that it was imported from Byzantium. However, after that, in the eleventh century, there was no further use of marble and the floors were made exclusively of either local materials or artificial materials, which were also manufactured locally.1 Throughout the eleventh century the floors of buildings were made of slate, mosaic or ceramic tiles. Mosaic, from pieces of smalt, was laid both directly into a layer of mortar and also inlaid into slate tiles, which had special grooves cut in their surface for this purpose. Most often both techniques were used together and in combination with other slate tiles, which were left smooth, without any mosaic inlay. Thus both slate tile and inlaid floors were almost always combined in one building as, for example, in the Cathedral of St Sophia, Kiev, the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour, Chernigov, the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Monastery of the Caves, Kiev, the katholikon of the Vydubits Monastery, Kiev, and the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael in PereiaslavT. Parts of the floor in these monuments, in the aisles and sometimes in the apses, were almost always made of glazed ceramic tiles. In some cases, however, only ceramic tiles have been excavated and it seems that in less important buildings the floors were more modest, without either mosaic or slate tiles. Among these eleventh-century monuments, the floors of St Sophia, Novgorod, are par1

The chronicles record that church floors were paved with marble (mramor): in a church in Suzdal' "the floor was paved with variations of red marble" (1233), and in a church in Rostov "the floor is paved of red marble" (1280); see Poppe, Material}/, 41. It is difficult to say what material was indicated by the term mramor. V.N. Tatishchev, stating that the marble for the church in Suzdal' was sent "from a Bulgarian prince to their Great Prince as a present", questioned whether it really was marble: "it is not known where the Bulgarian prince could obtain red marble from, since it is found nowhere close by, unless these were polished slabs often found in the remains of buildings, which an ignorant author called marble"; V.N. Tatishchev, Istoriia Rossiiskaia 3 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1964), 228, 229 note 639. 145

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ticularly noteworthy. Here the original floor had been a layer of plastered lime and crushed ceramic or brick mortar. Later on, but apparently still in the eleventh century, a floor of flagstones was laid above this. In the twelfth century the character of the floors in these monuments changed substantially.2 Mosaic and slate floors went out of use, and instead ceramic tile floors, which had been relatively widely used in the eleventh century, now became common. In addition, lime floors came into use, as well as floors of brick or flagstones. However, mosaic and slate floors of the first half of the twelfth century can still be found. Slate tiles inlaid with mosaic were used in the Church of St Cyril, Kiev, and the Cathedral of Sts Boris and Gleb, Chernigov, and an inlaid floor existed in Polotsk in the crypt church of the Monastery of St Euphrosyne. It seems that the inlaid floor of the central apse of St Sophia, Novgorod, also belongs to the twelfth century. However, from the second half of the twelfth century only one monument is known with an inlaid floor, the Church of the Annunciation in Chernigov, where an inlaid floor was discovered in the core. Lime floors were made of a well-plastered layer of mortar. In most cases this was a special, very strong, fine-grained mortar consisting of lime and finely crushed bricks or limestone. The layer was not thick, about 1-2 cm and usually covered a layer of a rougher type of mortar. This type of floor covering became widely used in Novgorod architecture, for example in the churches of the Annunciation on Lake Miachino and of St Panteleimon in Novgorod, the Church of St Demetrius of Thessaloniki and the katholikon at the Monastery of St John the Baptist in Pskov and in all the monuments of Staraia Ladoga. In Polotsk a lime floor has been found in the great katholikon of the Bel'chitsa Monastery and in Smolensk in the churches at the Okopnoe Cemetery and on the Protoka. Such floors were probably not very strong, since in the Church of St Panteleimon in Novgorod the floor had cracked and had been covered with a second layer of the same mortar. Another type of flooring was brick. In Smolensk such floors were found in the Church of St Basil on the Smiadyn', in the churches on the Malaia Rachevka and on Bol'shaia Krasnoflotskaia Street. In the latter case it has been possible to determine that the bricks were laid parallel to the western wall of the church in alternate courses of headers and stretchers. The floor was made of normal bricks set close to each other, but without any binding agent, directly on a cushion. As in Smolensk, brick floors were found in the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin at Peryn', Novgorod, and also in some parts of the lower church, Grodno. There are cases when special, glazed bricks were used, for example, in the katholikon at the Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Novgorod-Severskii. 2

A special paper is dedicated to the floors in the monuments of old Russian architecture: M.K. Karger, "K voprosu ob ubranstve inter'era v russkom zodchestve domongol'skogo perioda", Trudy Vserossiiskoi Akademii Khudozhestv 1 (Leningrad-Moscow, 1947), 15.

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Flagstone floors are known in several Novgorodian monuments, for example the katholikon at the lur'ev Monastery and the Church of Sts Peter and Paul on Sinich'ia Hill. Dark red limestone slabs were used to lay the floor in the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa, Novgorod. A floor of sandstone slabs has also been excavated in the earliest monument of Galich architecture, the Church of John the Baptist in Peremyshl'. Floors of glazed ceramic tiles were the most widespread. These tiles and fragments of them have been found in the majority of pre-Mongol Russian monuments. These tiles were laid very close to each other, without any mortar, on a layer of a special grounding.3 Only in some buildings were they laid in mortar, as in the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa, Chernigov, and judging by the remains on the backs of the floor tiles from the crypt church at the Monastery of St Euphrosyne in Polotsk, these were also laid in mortar. A quite special and exceedingly splendid floor, with fragments of polished red copper tiles, was found in the excavations of the church at Bogoliubovo. According to the chronicle, a copper tile floor (dno medianoe) was also laid in the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir4 and in the Church of St John Chrysostom at Kholm: "in the interior the floor was made of pure copper and tin, which glittered like a mirror".5 Since the monuments of the pre-Mongol period lacked basements or crypts, the floors were laid on the ground,6 although a special filling was always laid under the floor. As far back as the eleventh century, various kinds of filling were used in the monuments, even if, as sometimes, it was simply a layer of earth 25-30 cm thick, as at the katholikon of the Vydubits Monastery. In the Church of St Irene in Kiev, the tiles in the central nave were laid on a layer of lime, below which was a layer of brick rubble, and those in the aisles on a layer of clay. The layers of filling in twelfth-century buildings vary considerably, being made of sand, clay, loam, earth, lime mortar, crushed brick or limestone. The composition and combinations of layers are also rather diverse and the total thickness varies from 10cm to much deeper. From the diversity of the materials used, it can be concluded that the composition of the filling did not play an important role. What was 3 It is interesting that in some eighteenth-century buildings in Povolzh'e the same technique was used to lay ceramic tile floors on a layer of dry cushion without mortar; see I.G. Sakharova, "O tekhnike nastila maiolikovykh polov", KSIIMK68 (1957), 141. 4 "Nikonovskaia letopis'", PSRL 10 (St Petersburg, 1885), 169. The record is dated to the year 1293. 5 "Ipat'evskaia letopis'", PSRL 2 (Moscow, 1962), 843-844, under year 6767 (1259). 6 The remains of a late eleventh-century crypt church were excavated in Chernigov; it also had a ground storey, the floor of which lay about 1.5 m below ground level; V.P. Kovalenko, P.A. Rappoport, "Etapy razvitia drevnerusskoi arkhitektury Chernigovo-Severskoi zemli", Russia Medicvalis 7 (Munich, 1992), 44—46. An underground chamber, apparently a crypt, was also found in the church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa at the monastery at Bel'chitsa in Polotsk, but here the chamber could have been built at a later period.

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important, apparently, was for the material to be dense and fine-grained, and not subject to irregular settling. In the monuments of the eleventh and first half of the twelfth centuries, the floor was usually either at ground level or slightly above it. Later on, the floor was raised above the ground with the help of either filling layers or a layer of solid clay or earth or loam, as in the monuments of Smolensk. Here, in the Church of Sts Peter and Paul and in the pillarless church in the citadel, dating to the mid-twelfth century, the floor was significantly above ground level. In the Church of St Basil on the Smiadyn' (1180s) the floor was 40 cm above the earth surface. Later on, this became widespread in Smolensk. No doubt, it was connected with a general change in the design of the churches, since the elevated floor naturally required the introduction of steps in front of the entrance and thus emphasized the height of the building. In small churches the floor level was relatively low, for example, in the church on the Malaia Rachevka it reached only 35 cm, but in the churches on the Churilovka and on Bol'shaia Krasnoflotskaia Street it reached up to 50 cm. In the katholikon at the Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at Chernushki and in the church at the Okopnoe Cemetery, the thickness of the fill layer was about 80 cm. Outside all these churches there is no sign that the external ground level had been raised, so the thickness of the filling does represent the amount the floor was elevated. In the church on the Protoka, the sand filling lay on the levelled layers formed during the building process and resulted, on the whole, in a layer about 1 m thick. In the katholikon at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity on the Klovka the floor was elevated above ground level with the help of a fill 1.1 m thick. Finally, the clay cushion in the church on Voskresenskaia Hill raised its floor to a height of almost 1.5 m. Thus an increase in the thickness of the cushion and the resulting elevation of the floor above ground level became a characteristic feature of Smolensk monumental architecture of the late twelfth and first third of the thirteenth centuries. Apart from Smolensk, an elevation of the floor by 50-60 cm has been observed in the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa, Novgorod, which was built by Smolensk masters. This raising of the floor level was very possibly characteristic not only of the monuments of Smolensk, but also of all Russian architecture of the late twelfth century, although studies have not revealed this. Among earlier buildings, the elevation of the floor by 1 m has been observed in the Church of the Annunciation in Vitebsk. It should be noted that no traces of external steps have been found, even when the floor was raised to a great height. Such steps in front of the portals were most probably made of wood. In most cases, the sills were probably also wooden, although stone sills have been found in several monuments, for example, sills made of several slabs were excavated in the pillarless church in the citadel of Smolensk.

13

Roofs

The Old Russian Chronicles refer to roofing of lead, for example, in 1151 in Novgorod the Archbishop Nifont: "roofed St Sophia with lead".1 In the Fifth Novgorod chronicle this is dated to 1156: "and outside the church was whitewashed with lime and roofed with lead".2 In later, fifteenth-century chronicles, lead plates used in roofing are repeatedly mentioned. As well as lead, the chronicles refer to the use of tin in roofing. For example, in 1194 the Church of the Virgin in Suzdal' (i.e. the Cathedral of the Dormition) in Vladimir: "was covered with tin from the top down to the vaults and to the entrances".3 Noting that the masters were local, the chronicler mentioned that: "some masters cast tin, some covered the roof and some whitewashed with lime".4 In 1280: "the church in Rostov was roofed with tin".5 Describing the churches of the Holy Land at the beginning of the twelfth century, Abbot Daniil wrote: "a great church has been built ... and it is completely roofed with tin".6 The records in the chronicles concerning lead are confirmed by finds of lead roof sheets. Tin, on the other hand, could not have been used in roofing, since this material cannot stand cold and is ruined at a temperature below +13°C.7 Evidently, the word olovo, in modern Russian 'tin', then also meant 'lead'.8 This is highly probable, since the word for lead in modern Bulgarian is olovo and in Polish olow. 1 Novgorodskaia pervaia letopis' starshego i mladshego izvodov (Moscow-Leningrad, 1950), under year 6659 (1151). 2 "Novgorodskaia 5-ia letopis'", PSRL, 4, 2nd edition (Petrograd, 1917), part 4,157 3 "Lavrent'evskaia letopis'", PSRL 1 (Leningrad, 1928, Moscow, 1962), 411, under year 6702 (1194). 4 Ibid. 5 "Voskresenskaia letopis'", PSRL 7 (St Petersburg, 1856), 174 under year 6788 (1282). 6 Puteshcstvie igumena Daniila po Sviatoi zemle, ed. A. Norov (St Petersburg, 1864), 79; Jerusalem Pilgrimage 1099-1185, ed. J. Wilkinson (London, 1988), 143. 7 Kratkaiakhimicheskaia entsiklopediia 3 (Moscow, 1964), 737; LA. Gal'nbek, "Izdeliia iz olova i d[oviannaiachumsi",MaterialypometodologHarklieologicheskoitekhnoIogn^(Leningrad, 1927), 21. 8 In Dai's dictionary, under the word tin (olovo) the meaning lead (svinets) is marked as archaic, Tolkovyi slovar', vol. 2, 694. The texts where both terms are used simultaneously are difficult to interpret; see Sreznevskii, Materialy 3 (1912), col. 273.

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There were no lead mines in Kievan Russia. This being the case, where was the lead used in Russia obtained from? In Novgorod, a piece of lead with Polish stamps was found in the levels of fourteenth century. Analysis has shown that this was from the mines in the region of the Swietokrzyskie mountains.9 However, earlier finds have shown that lead had been imported to Novgorod from Hungary and England via Hanseatic towns. The sources of lead in the pre-Mongol period are not yet clear, but it should be noted that lead articles have often been found during excavations of Kievan settlements in the lower Dniepr basin.10 This may mean that lead was obtained there from the caravans coming along the Dniepr. If so, lead may have been supplied to Russia from Byzantium.11 During investigations of Kievan period monuments, fragments of lead roofs have repeatedly been found. In cases where the buildings had burnt down, the lead was molten into shapeless, sometimes large pieces. However, sometimes in the remains of the roof the original shape of the sheets or, more often, bits of these sheets have been preserved. As a rule, the sheets were rectangular. In Pereiaslavl' a whole sheet of lead was found during the excavations of the Crypt church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour; its size was 72 x 45 cm.12 Two sheets were found during the excavations of a secular construction in Pereiaslavl'; one sheet was whole, measuring 86-88 cm long and 67-70 cm wide.13 The excavations of a twelfth-century brick gate in Chernigov revealed two lead sheets of original size (85 x 35 cm), one of them was ornamented in a graffito technique and was probably gilded.14 In 1985 during the excavations of the gate to the Prince's Court in Chernigov, early thirteenth century, a pile of lead sheets was found, presumably thrown down from the roof of the gate church. Some of these sheets were whole. A lead sheet found during the excavations of the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour near Galich was 31 cm wide and 47cm long. The sheets of the roof of the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir were

9

V.L. lanin, "Nakhodka pol'skogo svintsa v Novgorode", SA (1966), no. 2, 326. Information from A.A. Kozlovskii (Kiev). 11 In the nineteenth century, Greece was one of the top ten countries for lead production; see Entsiklopedicheskii slovar' F.A. Brokgauza i I.E. Efrona, vol. 29 (half-vol. 57), (St Petersburg, 1900), 132. 12 In M.K. Karger's publication: "Pamiatniki drevnerusskogo zodchestva v PereiaslaveKhmel'nitskom", Zodchestvo Ukrainy (Kiev, 1954), 288, the sheet size is incorrect. 13 lu.S. Aseev, M.I. Sikorskii, R.A. lura, "Pamiatnik grazhdanskogo zodchestva XI v. v Pereiaslave-Khmel'nitskom", SA (1967), no. 1, 210. 14 V.A. Bogusevich, "Raskopki v Chernigove", KSIAII 4 (1955), 10; N.V. Kholostenko, "Chernigovskie kamennye kniazheskie terema XI v.", AN 15 (1974), fig. 32 on p. 16. In N.V. Kholostenko's drawing, one decorated sheet is 37 cm wide and has a preserved length of 81 cm. 10

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square with sides of 53 cm.15 During the excavations of the church on the Protoka in Smolensk a trapezoidal sheet was found, evidently from the roof of the cupola (fig. 59). The thickness of these sheets varied, as a rule, from 1.5 to 3mm. During excavations in Novgorod, in levels dating from the eleventh to twelfth centuries, a fragment of a lead sheet was found with an inscription saying that they "roofed" (kryli) a building.16 The remains of lead-sheet roofs have been found in all the building centres of Kievan Russia, from the earliest monuments, i.e. St Sophia, Kiev, to the buildings of the early thirteenth century. The lead sheets were nailed to the external lime rendering of the vaults. Often the sheets still retain the holes from iron nails and sometimes even the nails themselves. The nails were usually long, about 7.5 cm, with round or oblong heads, about 2.5 cm in size. In some cases the nails were knocked into the vaults. In the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at the Monastery of St Euphrosyne in Polotsk, for example, the vaults have preserved nails with their heads torn off. Forged headless nails, probably with their heads torn off, have also been found in the surface of the vaults of some monuments in Novgorod dating to the first half of the twelfth century.17 During restoration work in the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir, there were found iron nails with broad heads, which projected above the rendering of the vaults and once fixed the sheets to the roof. The nails were spaced 53-58 cm apart.18 However, it is possible that the lead sheets were sometimes nailed not to the vaults, but to wooden roof boards lying on the vaults. In Smolensk, during the excavations of the church on the Protoka in 1868: "a fragment of lead roof with remains of a rotten rafter was found, a lead sheet being nailed to the wood with a broad-headed nail".19 The lead sheets were joined with the help of grooves, found on many fragments of such sheets. However, those found near the gate to the Prince's Court in Chernigov did not have a groove, but simply a turned-over edge, the nails being knocked right through this doubled edge. Apart from lead sheets, the domes of the most splendid churches were also covered with sheets of gilded copper. This is illustrated by the names of some churches. For example, the katholikon at the Monastery of the Archangel Michael in Kiev was called the 'Golden-Domed'. The Church of St Basil at Ovruch and the Palace Church of Prince Riurik Rostislavich, 15

Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1, 548 note 55. A.V. Artsikhovskii, "Novye novgorodskie gramoty", SA (1960), no. 1, 235. 17 G.M. Shtender, "Vosstanovlenie Nereditsy", Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbomik 10 (Novgorod, 1961), 192. 18 Voronin, Zoddiestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1, 548 note 55. 19 M.P. Polesskii-Shchepillo, "Raskopki razvalin drevnego khrama sviatoi velikomuchenitsy Ekateriny v vostochnom predmest'e g. Smolenska", Pamiatnaici knizhka Smolenskoi gitbernii na 1870 god. (Smolensk, 1870), 20. 16

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Figure 59. Lead sheet for roofing, church on the Protoka in Smolensk.

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was also called 'Golden-Domed'. Of the Cathedral of St Demetrius in Vladimir, the chronicle says: "and that Prince (lurii) gilded its dome".20 The same is said in the chronicle of the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir: "and he attached four domes and also gilded them".21 During repairs to the Cathedral of the Dormition in 1881-1891, it became clear that the central dome of the building preserved ancient sheets of gilded red copper with numbers on each sheet.22 In this cathedral, copper sheets covered not only the domes, but also the piers between the windows of the drum and there were also found small decorated sheets, made up of pieces riveted together, evidently off-cuts, which were designed to fill the gaps between the teeth of the ornamental frieze.23 Fragments of copper sheets were also found during the excavations near the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Pereslavl'-Zalesskii.24 Remains of roof tiles have been found only once, in the Church of the Tithe in Kiev.25 Several tiles were excavated among the fallen remains of the roof arches of the western wall. They looked like very large plinthoi (65 x 35 cm) curved both lengthways and across (fig. 60). On the surface of the tiles were shallow grooves made by a finger in the raw clay. The fact that the excavations of the Church of the Tithe revealed no further fragments of such tiles suggests that they did not cover the whole roof but, perhaps only the eaves, i.e. as a sort of cornice. Except for the Church of the Tithe, none of the Kievan monuments was covered with a tile roof and the suggestion that tiles were found in Novgorod and Polotsk cannot be confirmed, since all the tiles found there have been dated to a later period. In many cases the archaeological studies have given no evidence about the original roofing. This, of course, proves nothing, since lead sheets might have been destroyed for any number of reasons. However, in these cases it is very possible that the roof could sometimes have been wooden. In studies of the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa, Novgorod, the openings from log gutters were found, and around the church, on the original ground 20 "Voskresenskaia letopis'", PSRL 7, IIS, under year 6720 (1212). The copper roof of the dome of the Church of St Demetrius survived until 1850; see Voronin, Zodchestvo SeveroVostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1,552 note 25. 21 "Voskresenskaia letopis1", PSRL 7,118, under year 6720 (1212). 22 Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1,475. From the different styles of marks, it can be seen that the work was done by three masters, B.A. Rybakov, "Merilo novgorodskogo zodchego XIII v.", Iz istorii kul'tury drevnei Rusi (Moscow, 1984), 188. The copper roof of the Cathedral of the Dormition had been partly removed in the seventeenth century: the inventory of the property of Patriarch Nikon includes: "red copper tiles ... taken from the cathedral in Vladimir, that had covered the domes", Vremennik impemtorskogo Moskovskogo obshchestva istorii i drevnostei Rossiiskikh book 15 (1852), 101. 23 Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1,184-185. 24 Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1, 87. 25 Karger, Drevnii Kiev, vol. 1,462; vol. 2,53-54.

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0i

10 i

20 i

30 i

W i

Figure 60. Plinthos tile from the Church of the Tithe, Kiev.

50CM i I

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level, lay a layer of burnt wood with nails, which presumably testifies to a wooden roof.26 The structure of the arched roofing of Kievan Russian churches provided good drainage for rain water. The plan of the arches was such that the water poured from the dome via gullies to the edges, from which it was thrown with the help of water-spouts. In addition, the builders endeavoured to ensure that snow would not lie on the vaults. Apparently Kievan architects considered this important, as can be illustrated by the history of building the katholikon of the monastery at Mirozh in Pskov.27 This church was, apparently, built by a Greek architect, who did not take the severe northern climate into account. Therefore, immediately upon completion, the height of the lowest corners of the building had to be built up, in order to eliminate the pockets in which snow could collect. The water-spouts were similar in principle to West European gargoyles. They discharged the water at some distance from the walls, preventing it from flowing down the walls. The presence of water-spouts has been determined from the structure of the roof, though no remains have been found so far. Possibly they were made of lead or wood and not stone; remains of stone water-spouts have been found only in the monuments of Vladimir-Suzdal'. In the Cathedral of the Dormition and the katholikon at the Monastery of the Nativity of the Virgin in Vladimir, as well as in the palace church at Bogoliubovo, fragments of white stone gutters have been found, both plain and carved (figs 61 & 62).28 The carvings on them depicted plants, animals and people. Judging from the fragments, these gutters initially consisted of two parts, an upper and a lower, and so had the form of tubes. Traces of nails and patina show that water-spouts were sometimes wrapped in gilded copper. In the Cathedral of St Demetrius an uncarved water-spout was found, which consisted of a stone slab 70 cm long, 25 x 25 cm in section, with a channel 7 cm deep.29 It has been suggested that the cornices along the line of the roof arches served as a protection for the walls from water flowing down. However, in the case of the monuments of Novgorod, it has been proved that the cornices were exclusively of decorative value and, in contrast to the cornices of classical architecture, could not have provided protection from the weather.30 Apparently, the cornices in the churches of the other architectural centres in Kievan Russia were of the same character. 26

Shtender, "Vosstanovlenie Nereditsy", 193. M.I. Mil'chik, G.M. Shtender, "Zapadnye kamery sobora Mirozhskogo monastyria vo Pskove (K voprosu o pervonachal'noi kompozitsii khrama)", Drevnerusskoe iskusstvo. Khudodiestvennaia kul 'tura X - pcrvoi poloviny XIII v. (Moscow, 1988), 77-94. 28 Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1,182, 217,389. 29 Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1,552 note 22. 30 Shtender, "Vosstanovlenie Nereditsy", 1990. 27

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Figure 61. Gutter from the katholikon at the Monastery of the Nativity of the Virgin in Vladimir. After N.A. Artleben.

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50cn

Figure 62. Gutters from the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir. After LO. Karabutov.

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The organization of construction work

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14

Laying the foundations and laying out the building on the site

The process of constructing a monumental building began with the breaking of the ground for the building and then laying it out on the site. Since the monuments of Russian architecture of the pre-Mongol period are mainly churches (of 250 monuments of that period which have survived, fewer than 20 are secular, i.e. about 8 per cent), it follows therefore that breaking ground for a building was, primarily, done for churches. Usually there was a ceremony at which the supreme ecclesiastical hierarchs and princes were present. Although it is true that in most cases the chronicles describe the consecration of a church and not the procedure of breaking ground, the fact that the notices about breaking ground for a church mention which metropolitan and which prince were present, testifies to it having been a solemn occasion.1 It seems that first of all a level site was prepared. Traces of such levelling have repeatedly been found in archaeological studies and this practice is also referred to in Western sources going back to the twelfth century.2 Next, the location of the altar was marked and the longitudinal axis of the church was drawn, oriented to the first beam of the rising sun. The altar had to be oriented to the east and eastwas understood as sunrise. This was how it was done both in Russia and in the West.3 It has been suggested that the day of breaking ground for a church must have corresponded to the festival of its patron saint,4 but checking the dates of breaking ground, based on the azimuths of existing monuments, has not confirmed these suppositions.5 Usually it was the consecration of the church, rather than the breaking 1 In addition, a Latin Pontifical of the tenth century, states: "Nobody may build a church before the bishop of the town comes to the place and, in public, erects a cross"; see M.F. Mur'ianov, "Zolotoi poias Shimona", Vizantiia. hizhnye slaviane i drevniaia Rus', Zapadiiaia Evropa (Moscow, 1973), 197 n. 3. 2 P. du Colombier, Les chantiers des cathedrales (Paris, 1953), 65-66. 3 M. Aubert, "La construction au Moyen Age", Bulletin monumental 119 (1961-63), 183. 4 H. Benson, "Church Orientation and Patronal Festivals", The Antiquaries journal 36 (1956), 210. 5 P.A. Rappoport, "Orientatsiia drevnerusskikh tserkvei", KSIA 139 (1974), 47.

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ground, which coincided with the day of its patron saint, since this was specifically mentioned in the church regulations.6 Only occasionally did the day of breaking ground coincide with the feast day of the church's patron saint. After this, a ceremony took place to celebrate the breaking ground for the church. This procedure is described in Russian chronicles only for a later period, for instance in 1472: "the Metropolitan Philip with all the Holy Council came to found the church... Grand Prince Ivan Vasil'evich also came ... After the service the Metropolitan himself marked the place for the altar, the cardinal points and the corners, and according to these marks, the masters started building".7 It is interesting to note that this record, dated to the fifteenth century, almost totally coincides with the Armenian text The Foundation of a Holy Church', dated to the early sixth century: "then a stone is placed as the basis of the church in the centre of the altar, and the remaining uncut stones in the four corners ... The Bishop says a prayer ... and orders the chief master to take a measuring instrument and to draw the place as the architect wishes".8 It seems that the procedure of breaking ground for a church followed similar and traditional patterns throughout the Eastern Christian Church. The outline of a future church was marked with the help of a cord. In the West and in the Caucasus this is recorded both in written sources and in miniatures,9 and in Russia the layout of a church was done in the same way. This is illustrated by a legend about the building of the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Monastery of the Caves, Kiev, recorded in its Paterikon. According to this legend, the size of the future church was to be measured with a golden belt presented to the monastery by the Christian Varangian earl, Simon (Shimon).10 How the layout and then the vertical 6

The Penitential of the twelfth century ascribed to George, Metropolitan of Kiev, says: "in case a church is planned to be built, the day before breaking ground for it, a morning or evening service must be conducted, and during this service all priests should go round the site in chasubles with crosses"; see E. Golubinskii, Istoriia nisskoi tserkvi 1 (Moscow, 1904), part 2, 460, 542 para. 98. 7 "Nikonovskaia letopis'", PSRL 12 (St Petersburg, 1901), 143-144, under year 1472 (6980). 8 P.M. Muradian, "Stroitel'stvo i osviashchenie kul'tovykh sooruzhenii po armianskim istochnikam", Nauchnyesoobshcheniia Cos. muzeia iskusstva narodov Vostoka 10 (Moscow, 1978), 129. 9 Aubert, "La construction au Moyen Age", 184. Colombier, Les chantiers, 65. In Armenia, during the construction of the Church of the Holy Cross on the island of Akhtamar (tenth century), King Gagik: "together with numerous masters, took the cord of the builders, stretched it, and all together marked the places of future constructions"; the text, written by the tenth-century historian Tovma Artsruni, is cited in a paper by O.Kh. Khalpakhch'ian, "Arkhitekturnye pamiatniki Akhtamara", AN 18 (1969), 137. 10 "Antonii... blessed the place and measured the breadth and the length with the gold belt"; Patcrik Kievskogo Pecherskogo Monashjria (St Petersburg, 1911), 7. The legend says of this belt that: "though it seemed to be made of wood, it was endowed with God's power". On the basis of these words, it was considered that a wooden baton, the length of the gold belt, was used for the measurements. However, M.F. Mur'ianov has shown convincingly that these words refer not to the belt itself, but to the wooden crucifix which served as the basis for the legend about the belt; "Zolotoi poias Shimona", 187.

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height of the building was determined has long been of great interest to scholars. Various, often very complicated theories have been developed to explain the system of proportions of Kievan churches. Unfortunately, all these theories, even the most ingenious, can serve only as a method of analysis of the monuments and cannot represent the working practice of a medieval architect, although this is what some propose .n Of all these theories, those of K.N. Afanas'ev and E.F. Zhelokhovtseva come closest to resolving the question.12 The most important conclusion of K.N. Afanas'ev was that the diameter of the dome or, later, the length of the side of the sub-dome square served as the basis for the proportions of the building.13 The significance of the diameter of the dome as the basis around which all the principal volumes in churches of the central dome type were measured raises no doubts.14 However, this parameter was only secondary, allowing a transition from the ground plan to the vertical. It was the architect, and not the patron, who operated with this measurement. The principal parameters of the future church, on the other hand, were entirely within the remit of the patron, the prince or bishop. Therefore, the overall dimensions of the church, its length and width, became its principal parameters, governing the whole construction. According to the legend, this was exactly the task given to the architects of the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Monastery of the Caves. Here, they were to build a church 20 belts' wide and 30 'belts' long and high.15 This can be illustrated by the procedure of breaking ground for a church, according to which it was the four corners that was first marked out, i.e. its overall dimensions. It is clear from this that size was determined by the external walls of the building and not by its interior.16 11 A convincing critique of such theories is given by R.M. Gariaev, "K voprosu ob izmerenii krasoty v arkhitekture", Arkhitektum SSSR (1979), no. 8, 25. 12 K.N. Afanas'ev, Postroenie arkhitekturnoi formy drevnerusskimi zodchimi (Moscow, 1961); E.F. Zhelokhovtseva, "Geometricheskie struktury v arkhitekture i zhivopisi drevnei Rusi", Estestvennonauchnye znaniia v drevnei Rusi (Moscow, 1980), 23-63. 13 Afanas'ev, Postroenie, 195, 200,209. 14 This is also true for the monuments of medieval Armenia; see O.Kh. Khalpakhch'ian, "K voprosu garmonizatsii proizvedenii armianskogo zodchestva", 11 respublikanskaia konferentsiia po problemam kul'tury i iskusstva Armenii. Tezisy dokladov (Erevan, 1976), 183. 15 "Measuring with that gold belt, 20 in breadth (in other versions '20 cubits'), 30 in length, and 30 in height, the walls with the dome 50"; see D. Abramovich, Kievo-Pecherskii Paterik (Kiev, 1930), 3. Another part of the text (ibid. 7) states: "the longitudinal, latitudinal and vertical dimensions of this pure church". 16 From the early Byzantine period the principal dimensions of Byzantine buildings were probably determined in the same way. So, in a study of an early Byzantine church near Jerusalem, experts came to the conclusion that its external dimensions were 40 x 50 feet; see Y. Tsafrir, J. Hirschfeld, "The church and mosaics at Horvat Berachot", OOP 33 (1979), 299. Similarly, in medieval West Europe all chronicles give the external dimensions of all buildings described; see C. Davis-Weyer, Early Medieval Art 300-1150 (New Jersey, 1971), 125,128,136, 147, etc.

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During the ceremony of breaking ground for a church, therefore, the place of the altar was marked, as well as the direction of the longitudinal axis and the four corners of the building. All the subsequent processes, i.e. the layout of the parts of the plan on the site; the transition from the overall dimensions of the building to the size of the sub-dome square; and then the determination of the vertical dimensions, were within the remit of the architect. For this, of course, the architect employed some unit of measurement in use in Russia.17 As to what these units were, there are various opinions. K.N. Afanas'ev, for example, came to the conclusion that the size of 'Shimon's belt', by which the dimensions of the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Monastery of the Caves were measured, was equal to 1.18m, i.e. four Roman feet of 29.5cm, but at the same time, the sub-dome squares of most Russian churches, in his opinion, were multiples of a Greek foot of 30.8 cm and not a Roman foot.18 This conclusion hardly squares with the fact that in Russian chronicles all dimensions are given, as a rule, not in feet, but in terms of a sazhen' or lokot'. In the nineteenth century the standard length for a sazhen' was 2.134 m; for a lokot' (=cubit), 0.45m: in the earlier period these measurements could differ. N.V. Kholostenko and B.A. Rybakov estimated 'Shimon's Belf at 1.08 m, i.e. half a sazhen' (kosaia sazhen')}9 Different units of measurement were probably used at different times and in different construction centres, although, of course, only one in each building.20 There was no need for the unit adopted to coincide exactly with that used in other buildings, because 17

The problem of the measurements used in construction in Kievan Russia has been studied in detail by B.A. Rybakov, "Russkie sistemy mer dliny XI-XV vekov", SE (1949), no. 1, 67; and "Arkhitekturnaia matematika drevnerusskikh zodchikh", SA (1957), no. 1, 83; and "Merilo novgorodskogo zodchego XIII v.", PKNO 1974 (1975), 205; see also N.I. Bolotin, "Metrologicheskie osobennosti i mery v drevnerusskikh pamiatnikakh", Izvestiia uysshikh uchebnykh zavedenii. Stroitel'stvo i arkhitektura 11 (Kiev, 1969), 85. 18 Afanas'ev, Postroenie arkhitekturnoi formy, 196. 19 N.V. Kholostenko, "Pamiatnik XI v. - sobor Pecherskogo monastyria", Stroitel'stvo i arkhitektura I (Kiev, 1972), 33; Rybakov, "Russkie sistemy mer", 81. 20 According to Rybakov's hypothesis, two measures were used in the construction of the buildings. However, these units are linked: the second measure is equal to the diagonal of the square of the first measure. Thus, the second measure could be obtained from the first by a simple geometrical calculation, so there was, in fact, only one basic measure. Attempts by some experts to maintain that a number of measures could simultaneously be used in construction has led to curious conclusions. The number of measures in simultaneous use, according to some authors, was more than ten. They claim that some measures were used only during the construction of royal buildings, others only in the building of churches, and others still in public buildings (commercial/craft measures). Sometimes these different measures were apparently used simultaneously in one building: the length used one measure, the width another! These ideas are considered in detail in two papers; A. Piletskii, "Merilo drevnerusskogo zodchego", Nauka i zhizn' 11 (1980), 140; and "Sistemy velichin, mer i proportsii v drevnerusskoi arkhitekture", Arkhitektura SSSR (1980), no. 10,53, etc. If an expert simultaneously analyses a number of measures as well as their parts and derivatives, then naturally any parameter of any monument of any epoch will always either be equal to or a multiple of some unit, and thus anything can be proved.

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there was no standard. Evidence about a standard length mentioned in the Statute (Ustav) of Prince Vsevolod testifies to the opposite, because, if there had existed a special Ivariskii lokot' (the cubit of the Church of St John at Opoki in Novgorod), then other versions of lokot' could have existed as well.21 At the same time, within each building, all dimensions must have been coordinated to some exact unit.22 Therefore the architect himself determined the reference length by which he was guided during the building, independently, whether it was a foot, cubit, or any other unit. This reference was, it seems, a wooden rod, i.e. a kind of scale ruler. This can be inferred from all West European images of an architect where a wooden rod is his indispensable attribute.23 The fact that it was the same in Russia is illustrated, for example, by the ancient legend about Solomon and Kitovras, in which Kitovras, the builder of a church, being summoned by Solomon: "took a rod four cubits long, appeared before the king, bowed to him and placed the rod before the king".24 It should be noted that even if they did not make any precise calculations, medieval architects must have taken into account, in some empirical 21 Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy XI-XV vv., ed. la. Shchapov (Moscow, 1976), 155. A lokot' mentioned in this Statute was used not for construction, but for trade transactions, i.e. for measurements of cloth etc. Equally, measures in Byzantine architecture did not have any absolute reference. Thus, in the sixth century, the value of a foot varied from 30.8 to 32 cm; see P. Underwood, "Some principles of measure in the architecture of the period of Justinian", CahArch 3 (1948), 65, 72. 22 A paper by L.N. Bol'shakov provides a successful attempt to determine such a measure. In the monuments of the eleventh century, in his opinion, a Greek foot, which varied between 31.2 and 31.9 cm was used; and in the Kiev-Chernigov monuments of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries a lokot' of between 38.4 and 40.5 cm; see L.N. Bol'shakov, "K voprosu o drevnerusskoi arkhitekturnoi metrologii", Istoriko-arkheologicheskii seminar 'Chernigov i ego okruga v IX-XIII vv.'. Tezisy dokladov (Chernigov, 1985), 48; and "Metricheskaia sistema postroeniia kompozitsii Spaso-Preobrazhenskogo sobora Mirozhskogo monastyria i blizkikh po tipu khramov Vizantii i Rusi", Arkheologiia i istoriia Pskova i Pskovskoi zemli. Tezisy dokladov (Pskov, 1987), 5; and "Metricheskii analiz drevnerusskikh khramov XI-XII w.", Drevnerusskoe iskusstvo. Khudozhestvennaia kul'tura X-pervoipoloviny XIIIv. (Moscow, 1988), 112-119. 23 V.P. Zubov, "K voprosu o roli chertezhei v stroitel'noi praktike zapadnoevropeiskogo Srednevekov'ia", Trudy Instituta istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki 7 (Moscow, 1956), 244-245. There are many such pictures, for example; G. Binding, N. Nussbaum, "Der mittelalterliche Baubetrieb nordlich der Alpen", Zeitgenossischen Darstellungen (Darmstadt, 1978). The oldest picture of an architect with a rod in his hands dates to the mid-tenth century; ibid., 90. The use of a wooden rod, thought to be the reference length, has a long tradition. The Bible says that, for this purpose: "a measuring stick of six cubits was used, considering every cubit as a cubit plus a palm" (Ezekiel 40,5). The text of the mid-twelfth century included in the Bible, says that during the building of a church: "in the man's hand was a measuring rod (Massrute) of six cubits"; G. Bindung, N. Nussbaum, "Der mittelalterliche Baubetrieb, 43. In the description by Lambert of Ardres (died after 1203) of the building of a vast ditch around a castle, the master acts: "with his measuring rod"; see V.P. Zubov, "Arkhitektor v epokhu srednevekov'ia", Sovetskoe Iskusstvoznanie 19 (Moscow, 1985), 305. 24 "Skazanie o Solomone i Kitovrase", Izbornik, ed. L. Dmitriev and D. Likhachev (Moscow, 1969), 372.

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fashion, structural factors, such as the ratio between the thickness of the walls and pillars and the sizes of spans. It would seem that the traditional system of determining the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the church used by a Kievan architect, his standard working practice, must have also ensured the solidity of the building.25 It is not thought that Kievan architects used any drawings.26 This refers not only to the pre-Mongol period, but also to much later periods.27 It has been suggested that models could have been used instead of drawings, but this cannot be confirmed. On the contrary, all information about models found in the chronicles says that they were made not as project drawings, but as a means to show to the patron the shape of the proposed building.28 There is no doubt that Kievan architects must have had some empirically developed, later traditional, system of building, which made it possible for the architect to determine beforehand the principal dimensions of parts of the building, both in plan and elevation. This system must have been flexible, since the differences in the proportions of the various monuments of pre-Mongol architecture are very great. This illustrates just how much potential there was for the architect to make his own decisions. At the same time, the system must have been effective for accuracy to be maintained. A study of the monuments of Vladimir-Suzdal', for example, has shown that the sculptural reliefs in the upper parts of the building were cut from individual stones of different size and then, when finished, inserted into the masonry of the walls. Accordingly, the architect was able to give the carver the dimensions of the stone in advance, even though the stone was to be put in the upper part of the building. There is also no doubt that, with the help of the measurements obtained from the ground plan, the architect must have been able to determine the principal structural elements of the elevation of the building, primarily the arches and vaults.29 It has been 25 A Bulgarian scholar, G. Kozhukharov, drew attention to this in Svodiit v antichnostta i srednite vekove (Sofia, 1974). 26 All references in the scholarly literature to "Russian drawings of the 1 Oth-13th centuries" are erroneous. So, for example, excavations near the Church of the Tithe, Kiev, revealed markings made with light clay on dark ground; Novae v arkheologii Kieva (Kiev, 1981), 341. The author interpreted this drawing as a picture of the facade of the church. In fact, the 'drawing' seems to have nothing to do with the construction. 27 Even in the 16th-17th, centuries it was the client rather than the architect who needed the drawings: "for preliminary marking, outlining and recording the work of the builders"; see N.N. Voronin, Odierki po istorii russkogo zodchestva XVI—XVII w. (Moscow-Leningrad, 1934), 64; A.A. Tits, Zagadki drevnerusskogo chertezha (Moscow, 1978), 7. 28 Tits, Zagadki, 14. The same took place in the West: "a vivid depiction of the future construction - such is the requirement of the patron for the drawing and the model"; see V.P. Zubov, "K voprosu o roli chertezhei", 244; also Colombier, Les chantiers, 73. 29 A.V. Stoletov, "O rekonstruktsii pamiatnikov vladimiro-suzdal'skogo belokamennogo zodchestva", Patniatniki istorii i kul'tury 1 (laroslavl1, 1976), 81. An interesting attempt to reveal the relationship of the horizontal and vertical dimensions of a Kievan church was made by M.V. Stepanov, "K voprosu o metode postroeniia arkhitekturnoi formy drevnerusskimi zodchimi", KSIA 175 (1983), 26.

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supposed that the working system of a Kievan architect was based on geometrical constructions. However, in the absence of drawings, it is more likely that the dimensions of the building were determined arithmetically, in the form of simple proportional relationships, with linear measures as an initial unit.30 So far, despite all the attempts to understand it, we do not know what the working methods of Kievan architects were. It is also unclear whether they were developed in Byzantium or in a broader area, including Caucasian and, perhaps, Romanesque architecture. It is important to clarify what was particular to Russia as regards this method and what contribution was made by Kievan architects.

30

R.M. Gariaev, "Metrologiia, kak vspomogatel'nyi instrument pri issledovanii pamiatnikov drevnerusskogo zodchestva", Arkheologiia i istoriia Pskova i Pskauskoi zetnli. Tezisy dokladov (Pskov, 1986), 66. It should be noted that experts on ancient architecture have arrived at the same conclusions (the use of simple number ratios by ancient architects); see A. Radziukevich, "'Zolotoi' blesk modulei Parfenona", Arkhitektura, 14 May 1988, no. 9 (673), 8.

15

The period of construction

As the chronicles indicate, the start of the process of building a church usually fell in the spring or summer months. The ground for the Golden-Domed Katholikon at the Monastery of the Archangel Michael in Kiev, for example, was broken on 11 July, 1108, and for the Church of St George at Kanev on 9 June, 1158. In Vladimir, the Cathedral of the Dormition was started on 8 April or 8 May, 1158 (according to different lists in the chronicle), the gate to the citadel on 4 June, 1194, and the Katholikon of the Dormition of the Virgin at the Princess's Convent on 15 July, 1200. The Cathedral of the Dormition in Smolensk was started on 7 March or, according to other sources, 2 May, 1101. In Novgorod, the Church of St Theodore Tyro was started on 28 April, 1115; the Church of Sts Peter and Paul on 6 May, 1185; the Church of the Annunciation on Lake Miachino on 21 May, 1179; the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa on 8 June, 1198; the Church of St Cyril in April, 1196; the gate church in the citadel on 4 May, 1195; and the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at Staraia Russa on 21 May, 1198. The date of breaking ground for the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb in Norgorod is given less precisely as "spring time".1 Thus, according to the chronicles, the churches were usually started in the period from March or April until mid-July, although there is evidence for a later date. The katholikon at the Monastery of the Nativity of the Virgin in Vladimir was started in the autumn of 1192, though here the chronicle reports first that: Prince Vsevolod "broke ground for the church" and then that "the church was started on 22 August". Sometimes building work clearly began as late as August. The time of breaking ground for the churches can not only be determined from the chronicles, but also from the orientation of the longitudinal axes of the churches themselves, since the longitudinal axis was oriented towards the point on the horizon where the sun rose on the day of breaking ground 1 On the sources in which the dates of construction of churches are given; see P. A. Rappoport, Russkoe zodchestvo X-XIIIvv. Katalog pamiatnikov (Leningrad, 1982).

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for the church.2 This orientation is now fixed with a magnetic compass, i.e. it is a magnetic azimuth. Knowing the magnetic declination of the locations of the monuments, the true azimuth of the longitudinal axes of these churches can easily be determined.3 From the true azimuth tables can be used to find the angle of solar declination and from this angle, the day on which the sun rose can be determined according to the given azimuth, i.e. the point on the horizon towards which the church's longitudinal axis was directed.4 Naturally, this will not give one day, but two, since the sun rises at each point on the horizon twice a year. These days will correspond to the present Gregorian calendar, but not to the old Julian one. The difference between the calendars in the tenth and eleventh centuries was six days and in the twelfth century seven days and, thus, the days on which the sun rose at each given point on the horizon during breaking ground for a church can easily be determined. How accurately can these dates be determined? It is difficult to measure the orientation of a church's longitudinal axis with an accuracy higher than 1-2°, because of uncertainty in the layout of the Kievan monuments themselves. A 2° deviation of the axis gives a difference of about three days, but for summer months of up to ten days. Moreover, the calculations are made for the geometric horizon, whereas the relief of the local terrain often either narrows or broadens the real, visible horizon.5 Therefore the days of breaking ground for Kievan churches can be determined from the orientation of their longitudinal axes with an accuracy of not better than a week. However, even this degree of accuracy gives valuable information (see table). To what extent can these dates be trusted? How often do the dates of breaking ground coincide with the assessments made from the azimuths? 2 Such an orientation was justified by dogma: "to say prayers facing the east was handed down by the holy apostles and means the following. This is because the mental sun-of-thetruth Christ appeared on the Earth in those countries where the sensual sun rises.. .".The typikon probably dates to the twelfth century; see P.P. Krasnosel'tsev, "O drevnikh liturgicheskikh tolkovaniiakh", Letopis' istoriko-filologicheskogo obshchestva pri Novorossiiskom universitete 4 (Odessa, 1894), 242. Symbolically, this statement was substantiated by Honorius of Autun in his work written in 1130; see J. Harvey, The Medieval Architect (London, 1972), 226. 3 P.A. Rappoport, "Orientatsiia drevnerusskikh tserkvei", KSIA 139 (1974), 43. In the calculations in this paper, no adjustments were made for magnetic declination. 4 The angle of declination is determined from tables of the azimuth for the visible rising and setting of the upper edge of the sun, contained in navigation tables; for example, Morekhodnye tablitsy 1943 g., Gidrograficheskoie Upravlenie VMS, 1949, tables 28 & 29. The dates are determined from tables of the ephemerides of the sun; Astronomicheskii ezhegodnik SSSR m 1970 god., (Leningrad, 1967). 5 When a church is located on a hill, the azimuth shifts northward, and all spring-time dates should be taken to be later dates than with a normal horizon; all autumn dates, on the contrary, should be taken to be earlier dates. Where the church is in a lower location or has a narrow horizon, the reverse is true.

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Unfortunately, there are few churches for which both the azimuth of the longitudinal axis and the chronicle date for the day of breaking ground are known. Judging from its azimuth, the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir could have been started either on 21 April or 9 August (table, 1), but the location of the building on a high hill over the flood plain shifts the azimuth northward. Therefore, assuming that this shift is 8-9°, the sunrise coincides exactly with the date in the chronicle, i.e. 8 May. However, the dates for three monuments in Novgorod do not coincide. For the churches of Sts Peter and Paul, the Annunciation on Lake Miachino and the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa, calculations made from their azimuths do not give the dates mentioned in the chronicles even approximately (table, 2,3,4). Maybe it is no mere chance that in the chronicle the dates of breaking ground and beginning of building are given separately. For example, it is written of the Church of the Annunciation that: "the Archbishop Elijah broke ground for a stone church, and the church was started on 21 May". In this case the chronicle is probably not talking about the day of breaking ground, but about the day on which construction began. This is emphasized by the fact that on this day there was a ceremony in which the patron participated.6 The difference between the dates in the chronicles and the dates obtained from the azimuths of the churches can most probably be explained by the fact that the chronicler, when speaking about breaking ground, might sometimes have meant not the initial layout of the church on the site, but the placing of the first stone for the building. For example, Symeon of Thessaloniki, an author of the first half of the fifteenth century, points out that the bishop solemnly placed the first stone of the altar after the foundations had been dug.7 Finally, in some cases the longitudinal axes of the churches were most probably not oriented towards the sunrise, but were positioned according to the direction of an existing street, the orientation of an earlier wooden church on the site or some other special conditions.8 A comparison of the days of breaking ground obtained from azimuths with the days of the churches' patron saints also shows that in most cases 6 For example, during the breaking of the ground for the Katholikon at the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev in 1073 the prince: "began to dig the ditch with his own hands"; Paterik kicvskogo Pecherskogo monastyria (St Petersburg, 1911), 7. 7 Pisaniia sviatykh ottsov i uchitclei tserkvi, otnosiashchiesia k istolkovaniiu pravoslavnogo bogosluzheniia 2 (St Petersburg, 1856), 150. 8 R.M. Gariaev, "K voprosu ob orientatsii russkikh tserkvei", KSIA 155, (1978), 42. It seems that the same process took place in the West. The medieval churches there were also oriented towards sunrise, but there were numerous exceptions. So, for example, the oldest church in Vienna, the Church of St Ruprecht, is oriented, not towards the sun, but strictly parallel to the adjacent wall of the old Roman castle; see M. Firneis, H. Ladenbauer-Orel, "Studien zur Orientierung mittelalterlicher Kirchen", Mitteilungen der Osterreichischen Arbeitsgerneinschaft fur Ur- und Friihgeschichte 28 (Vienna, 1978), 7.

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these do not coincide. Nevertheless, even taking these differences into account, there are some monuments for which the days of breaking ground, judging from the azimuths, are close to the day of the patron saint of the given church. The azimuth of the Church of the Annunciation at Gorodishche near Novgorod gives the dates 17 March and 14 September (table, 5). Since the church was located on a hill, the shift of the point of sunrise gives a date very close to 25 March, i.e. the festival of the Annunciation. The Church of St Basil on the Smiadyn' in Smolensk was, apparently, started on the Saint's feast day, 26 April and the azimuth date is 24 April (table, 6); and the Church of John the Baptist in Peremyshl', on the festival of the discovery of the head of St John the Baptist, 25 May, whilst its azimuth gives a date of 19 May (table, 7). The katholikon of the Vydubits Monastery, Kiev, was started, judging from the azimuth, on 6 March or 24 September (table, 8). Therefore, taking into account the shift connected with the very high horizon, breaking ground could have taken place on 6 September, i.e. on the festival of the Miracle of the Archangel Michael. There are other monuments, too, where the dates coincide and fall in the autumn. The orientation of the Church of St Andrew in Pereiaslavl' is close to St Andrew Stratelates' day on 19 August (table, 9) and that of the Crypt church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Pereiaslavl' almost exactly coincides with the feast of the Transfiguration, 6 August (table, 10). The azimuth of the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Chernigov points to breaking ground either on 24 April or 6 August, i.e. it also coincides with the feast (table, 11). The orientation of the palace church at Bogoliubovo is very close to the festival of the Nativity of the Virgin, 8 September (table, 12). That of a small pillarless church excavated under the later Church of the Dormition in Pereiaslavl' also coincides exactly with that festival, 15 August; (table, 13) and comes close for the church in Staraia Riazan1, which is usually thought to be the Cathedral of the Dormition (table, 14). An autumn date is also probable for the Church of the Archangel Michael in Smolensk, which was started, apparently, on 6 September, i.e. on the feast of the Miracle of the Archangel Michael (table,15). It seems that a still later date should be assumed for the Church of St John Chrysostom, 26 September (table, 16). The Katholikon of Sts Boris and Gleb at the monastery on the Smiadyn' in Smolensk, judging from the azimuth, gives the dates 4 April or 27 August (table, 17). Given the low position of the church, the azimuth must be shifted southward, indicating that breaking ground took place on 5 September, i.e. on the 130th anniversary of the death of Prince Gleb on the River Smiadyn'. Breaking ground for churches during the winter was a rare event. However, there are cases when, judging from the azimuths, churches were started then. For example, the church at the mouth of the River Churilovka

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BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA The days of breaking ground for the churches,

No. Name

1

2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Azimuth Magnetic declination azimuth

Vladimir. Cathedral of the Dormition Novgorod. Church of Sts Peter and Paul on Sinich'ia Hill Novgorod. Church of the Annunciation on Lake Miachino Novgorod. Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa Novgorod. Church of the Annunciation at Gorodishche Smolensk. Church of St Basil on the Smiadyn' Peremyshl'. Church of John the Baptist Kiev. Katholikon of the Vydubits monastery Pereiaslavl'. Church of St Andrew Pereiaslavl'. Crypt church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour Chernigov. Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour Bogoliubovo. Palace church Pereiaslavl'. Church under the Church of the Dormition Staraia Riazan'. Cathedral of the Dormition Smolensk. Church of the Archangel Michael Smolensk. Church of St John Chrysostom Smolensk. Katholikon of Sts Boris and Gleb at the monastery on the Smiadyn' Smolensk. Church at the mouth of the River Churilovka Novgorod. Church of St John at Opoki Chernigov. Church of the Annunciation

53

+9

115

+6

92

+6

57

+6

80 56 54 90 61

+6 +6 +1 +4 +4

62

+4

60 80

+4 +9

65 69 77 87

+4 +8 +6 +6

68

+6

99 104 92

+6 +6 +4

PERIOD OF CONSTRUCTION

173

as determined by their azimuths True azimuth

Latitude

62

56

+14

28 Apr.-16 Aug.

21 Apr.-9 Aug.

121

59

-16

5 Feb.-7 Nov.

29 Jan.-31 Oct.

98

59

-5

8 Mar .-6 Oct.

1 Mar .-29 Sept.

63

59

+13

25 Apr. -19 Aug. 18 Apr -12 Aug.

86 62 55 94 65

59 55 50 50V2 50

+1 +15 +21 -3 +15

24 Mar .-21 Sept. 1 Mar.-13 Aug. 26May-19Jun. 13 Mar.-l Oct. 1 May -13 Aug.

17 Mar .-14 Sept. 24 Apr.-6 Aug. 19 May -12 Tun. 6 Mar.-24 Sept. 24 Apr .-6 Aug.

66

50

+14

28 Apr.-16 Aug.

21 Apr -9 Aug.

64 89

51V2 56

+15 0

1 May -13 Aug. 21 Mar .-23 Sept.

24 Apr .-6 Aug. 14 Mar.-16 Sept.

69 77 83 93

50 54 55 55

+12 +7 +3 -2

22 Apr .-22 Aug. 8 Apr .-5 Sept. 29 Mar.-16 Sept. 16 Mar .-29 Sept.

15 Apr -15 Aug. 1 Apr -29 Aug. 22 Mar .-9 Sept. 9 Mar .-22 Sept.

74

55

+8

11 Apr. -3 Sept.

4 Apr .-27 Aug.

-9 -11 -5

26 Feb.-17 Oct. 20 Feb.-22 Oct. 8 Mar.-6 Oct.

19 Feb.-lO Oct. 13 Feb.-15 Oct. 1 Mar.-29 Sept.

105 110 96

55 59 5lV2

Solar Day Day declination (Gregorian calender) (Julian calender)

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BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

has a peculiar orientation, since the longitudinal axis of this church is directed towards the south-east, the true azimuth being 105° (table, 18), i.e. to a winter sunrise. This is, probably, connected with the fact that breaking ground for the church was arranged for the day of its patron saint, Constantine-Cyril on 14 February. The orientation of the Church of St John at Opoki, Novgorod, probably points to February, close to the festival of the discovery of the head of St John the Baptist, 24th February (table, 19). There are several cases when the azimuth of the church is so close to the north that it cannot correspond to the point of sunrise even on the day of the summer solstice. For example, the azimuth of the katholikon at the Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Novgorod-Severskii is equal to 30°; with a magnetic declination of +4°, the true azimuth is 34°. However, it should be noted that the church stood in a high position, on the edge of the slope down to the River Desna and that the opposite bank was low. Hence the horizon of the church was much broader. If the shift here reached 15°, then the azimuth could correspond to mid-June. Thus, a comparison of the chronicles and calculations from azimuths suggests that the day of the breaking ground for a church usually fell either in spring or in the first half of summer, but could quite often occur in autumn as well. The day of breaking ground usually did not coincide with the feast day of the patron saint of the church, though it sometimes seems to have been planned that they should.9 Indeed to combine these events, the day of breaking ground was sometimes postponed until winter. It seems that this was possible, as it was not necessary that construction should immediately follow the day of breaking ground; this could be started 2-3 months later, i.e. when the building season began. Much more often it was the day of consecration and not that of breaking ground which coincided with the feast day of the patron saint of the church. The dates of the beginning and end of the building season in Kievan Russia can, at present, be determined only approximately and then mainly from documents of later periods. These time limits were very important for the medieval organization of the building process. It is known that in the 9 B.A. Rybakov, lazychestvo Drevnei Rusi (Moscow, 1987), 267, maintains that in ancient times the orientation of churches was towards the real sunrise on the day of the patron saint of the church. Hence, his conclusion is: "If the azimuth of the longitudinal axis of the church were exactly given as east-to-west, then it would be easier to determine the patron saint of the church": ibid., 267 and note 41. Unfortunately, the evidence does not confirm this conclusion. The determinations of the days given by Rybakov are also erroneous. So, for example, the Church of the Annunciation in Chernigov, according to his data, has an azimuth of 92°. With a magnetic declination of +4° in Chernigov, this gives a true azimuth of 96°, which corresponds to 1 March, and not to 25 March, according to the Julian calendar (table, 1-20). The non-coincidence of the days of the breaking of ground for the churches with the days of their patron saints is also characteristic of the monuments of medieval Western Europe; see, for example, C.J.P. Cave, "The orientation of churches", The Antiquaries Journal 30 (1950), 49.

PERIOD OF CONSTRUCTION

175

autumn, when cold weather set in, work usually stopped. In Smolensk, in the late seventeenth century, there was a case when poor quality brickwork was explained by the fact that: "the bricklayers worked in late autumn, in early frosts; they had to work in fur-lined coats and in mittens".10 Based on documents about the building of the Monastery of the Virgin of Iberia at Valdai in the mid-seventeenth century, M. A. Il'in came to the conclusion that the building season had ended by the feast of the Elevation of the Cross on 14 September.11 The season most probably lasted about five months, i.e. it began in April. Ethnographic material shows that in the nineteenth century this was the length of the season for moulding and firing bricks. In the Task Regulations' for building sites, the working day, right up to the early twentieth century, lasted 12 hours, but only from April until September; in other months it was much shorter.12 It seems that these were the approximate limits of the Kievan building season.13 Taking into account Sundays and holidays, it is unlikely that the length of the building season exceeded 120 working days. Naturally, the first months of the building season or, at least, the first half of it, were the most convenient to start building. Nevertheless, there were cases when the ground was broken in the autumn, one month before the end of the season and sometimes at the very end of the season. Why was such a late date possible? Ground was not necessarily broken on the feast day of the patron saint of the church, it could be done earlier. It is likely that they were still not worried about starting to build a new church at such a late time, since the cycle of works to be achieved during the building season was, it would seem, small and needed only a short time. Moreover it was independent of cold and rainy weather and therefore, it seems that this cycle principally included digging the foundation ditches and then laying the foundations themselves. A more detailed study of the remains of ancient structures has shown, however, that the cycle of the first season included not only the foundations but also their brick paving. After that a winter interval followed, but next spring they started laying the walls above the pavement, which had by that time settled.14 10

"Dokladnaia zapiska o neudachnom khode stroeniia tserkvi Vozneseniia ... v smolenskom Voznesenskom devich'em monastyre. 5 oktiabria 1695 g.", Srnolcnskie eparkhial'nye vedmosti (1883), no. 1,21. 11 M.A. Il'in, "K istorii russkogo kamennogo zodchestva kontsa XVII v.", Nauchnye doklady vysshei shkoly. Istoricheskie zapiski (1958), no. 2,4. 12 N.I. Roshefor, Illhistrirovannoe urochnoe polozhenie (Petrograd, 1916), 13. 13 Paul of Aleppo, visiting Russia in the mid-seventeenth century, noted that here: "the bricklayers can build for not more than six months per year, from mid April, as the ice melts, till the end of October"; Puteshestvie antiokhiiskogo patriarkha Makariia v Rossiiu v polovine XVII veka, opisannoe ego synom, arkhidiakonom Pavlom Aleppskim 3 (Moscow, 1898), 33. 14 In Russian recommendations on building, the foundations laid in the autumn had to be covered and left for the winter "to settle and dry", Kratkoe rukovodstvo kgrazhdanskoi arkhitekture Hi zodchestvu (St Petersburg, 1789), 26.

176

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

At the beginning of the second season the church was laid out, this time more accurately than the layout of the foundations and paving. Hence, in a number of cases the plan of the foundations and pavement does not coincide exactly with the plan of the above-ground parts of the building. There are several monuments in Smolensk which illustrate this well; for example, in the pillarless church in the citadel, the curve of the central apse made by the pavement does not match with the curvature of the walls. There were substantial differences in the layout of parts of the pavement and of the walls in the Katholikon of Sts Boris and Gleb at the monastery on the Smiadyn'. This can also be seen in the katholikon of the Monastery of the Holy Trinity on the Klovka, where neither in the layout of pilasters, nor in the position of the north-eastern corner of the church do the pavement and walls quite match up. Moreover, even the profiles of the pilasters differ: those in the pavement are not those which were built. The positions of the sub-dome pillars and ribbon foundations in the katholikon at the Monastery of St John the Baptist in Pskov, similarly, do not coincide. In the Church of the Dormition in the Podol in Kiev, the layout of the walls and foundations differ by several degrees. In Grodno the palace was built with the walls accurately aligned along the pavement on the northern and eastern sides, whereas in the eastern wall the pavement projects outside, forming a ledge. The fact that the plan of the foundations and pavement so frequently does not coincide with that of the walls, together with the late dates of breaking ground for some churches, suggests that the masters of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries considered it necessary that the foundations, once paved with brick, should stand through the winter and settle before brick walls could be built above them.15 No doubt, this was particularly important in cases when the foundations were laid dry, without mortar. Thus the first season was completed with the foundations paved with bricks, and then during the second building season the laying of the walls took place. Of course, the quantity of material studied does not permit one to apply this conclusion to all Kievan buildings; it may not have been a general rule and in some cases the walls could have been laid immediately after the foundations, during the first building season. How many seasons did it take to build a church? The chronicles give a fairly exact answer. It took eight years to build the Church of the Tithe; but since this was the first stone and brick building in Kiev, it clearly could not have been built at the same rate as when the process was fully organized. In the eleventh century the building time did indeed become shorter. From calculations by G.N. Logvin, based on studies of the construction and 15 It is possible that the term base (osnovanie) found in the chronicles referred to foundations paved with bricks. For example: "the Church of the Caves was started ... Theodosius laid the foundations, while Stephen continued it thereon", Povest' vremennykh let (MoscowLeningrad, 1950), vol.1,131, under year 6583 (1075).

PERIOD OF CONSTRUCTION

177

brickwork, it took five years to build St Sophia, Kiev, excluding the year to lay the foundations, i.e. six years in all.16 The Cathedral of St Sophia in Novgorod (1045-1050) was built in the same time, six years, but these cathedrals were large, substantially exceeding the dimensions of ordinary churches and usually, it took no more than five years to build a church. The Golden-Domed Katholikon of the Monastery of the Archangel Michael, Kiev, was started in 1108 and in 1113 its patron was buried in it, so the construction must have been completed before this. The chronicles say of the building of the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Monastery of the Caves that it was completed "in the third year", excluding the year to lay the foundations, i.e. it took four seasons.17 Throughout the pre-Mongol period, 4-5 years were sufficient to build a moderately large church. It took five years to build the katholikon at the Monastery of the Nativity of the Virgin in Vladimir (1192-1196), that of Sts Boris and Gleb in Rostov (1214-1218) and that of the Virgin Pirogoshchaia in Kiev (1131-1136). It also took five years to build the Cathedral of St George at lur'ev-Pol'skii (1230-1234), though in this case the old church was pulled down during the first year, and the new church built on its site. In many cases, it took not five but four years to build a church. The katholikon at the Monastery of St Theodore in Kiev was started in 1129 and in 1133 its patron, Prince Mstislav, son of Vladimir Monomakh, was buried in the completed church. Similarly, it took four years to build the cathedral in Suzdal' (1222-1225). Sometimes the process was faster: it took just three years to erect the Cathedral of the Dormition (1158-1160) and the katholikon at the Princess's Convent in Vladimir (1200-1202). The Cathedral of the Dormition in Rostov was built in only two years (1161-1162), but here the chronicle specially emphasized that "a small church was founded".18 Archaeological evidence for the length of the construction period is scarce, although excavations in Smolensk have answered this question in one case. Stratigraphic observations near the apse of the church on Voskresenskaia Hill revealed the layers connected with three building seasons.19 These layers were most probably left only by the brickwork of the walls, whereas the last season, during which the vaulting was made, is unlikely to have left layers of lime outside the building. In this case the construc16

G.N. Logvin, "Novye nabliudeniia v Sofii Kievskoi", Kul 'turn srednevekovoi Rusi (Leningrad, 1974), 160. 17 Povest' vremennykh let 1,131, under year 6583 (1075). 18 The Life of Euphrosyne of Polotsk mentions that the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at the Monastery of St Euphrosyne was built in thirty weeks; N.N. Voronin, "U istokov russkogo natsional'nogo zodchestva", Ezhegodnik Instituta istorii iskusstv 1952 (1952), 263. The reliability of this figure is questionable, and moreover, it is not clear whether this is the calendar time of construction, or only the working time, i.e. two building seasons. 19 Voronin & Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smolenska, 252.

178

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

tion of the building would have taken four building seasons or five years together with the laying of the foundations. In Novgorod, the length of building time changed substantially. In the first half of the twelfth century, it was the same as elsewhere; for example, the Church of St John at Opoki was built in four years (1127-1130) and the katholikon at the Monastery of St Antony in three or four years (1116 or 1117-1119). However, in the second half of the twelfth century the construction process became more rapid. The small dimensions of the churches and their simplified forms made it possible to build them in two years and often in only one building season. It took two seasons to build the Church of the Dormition at the Arkazhi monastery (1188-1189) and the Church of the Resurrection (1195-1196). In the latter case, in the first season the masters managed not only to lay the foundations, but also: "built up to the doors". All the churches put up in one season were naturally started at the beginning of the season, i.e. in April, May or early June. These include the gate church in the citadel, ground broken on 4 May 1195, the Church of St Cyril, April 1196 and the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa, 8 June 1198. The construction of each of these churches lasted about three months. The Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Staraia Russa was completed still more rapidly, from 21 May to 31 July 1198, i.e. 72 calendar days. Bearing in mind Sundays and holidays, the real number of working days was even less. In one case the chronicles give an exact count: the Church of the Annunciation on Lake Miachino was started on 21 May 1179 and completed on 25 August, i.e. in 97 days. However, the chronicles say: "in total it took 70 days to build the church". This rate of construction, which necessitated putting up the walls immediately after laying the foundations, was one of the reasons why in Novgorod, in contrast to Smolensk, Polotsk and elsewhere, the masters did not change to using dry foundations (without mortar). Upon completing the construction work, the interior of the church was started, its painting being the first stage. If possible, the painting was done the following season, i.e. immediately after the building was completed. The construction of the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir was completed in 1160 and in 1161: "the wall-painting was started... and finished on 30 August". The Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa in Novgorod was completed in 1198 and the following year it was painted. Similarly, the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Staraia Russa was painted the year after its completion. In 1195 the gate church in the citadel in Novgorod was built and in 1196 it was painted. However, this was not always the case: sometimes the wallpainting was started several years later, for example, the katholikon at the Monastery of St Antony in Novgorod was finished in 1119 (according to other sources 1122) and only painted in 1125. The Church of the Forty

PERIOD OF CONSTRUCTION

179

Martyrs, Novgorod, was finished in 1211 and painted in 1227. Sometimes the gap between the completion of the church and wall-painting was greater and sometimes the church even remained unpainted; churches without frescoes are quite numerous. According to the chronicles, the wallpainting, especially in small churches, was done in one season, though in larger churches it could take longer.20 In St Sophia, Novgorod, the painting of the Saviour in the central dome alone took more than a year to complete.

20

In the 16th-17th centuries the fresco painting of large churches was usually completed in one season. The wall paintings of the Katholikon at the Monastery of St Ferapont (1502) were finished in 34 days; see N.I. Fedyshin, "O datirovkakh Ferapontovskykh fresok", Ferapontovskii sbornik I (Moscow, 1985), 38; A.A. Rybakov, "O datirovke fresok Dionisiia v Rozhdestvenskom sobore Ferapontova monastyria", PKNO 1986 (1987), 283. From Serbian evidence of the 16th-18th centuries, a master painted 6-7 m2 per day; see D.C. Winfield, "Middle and later Byzantine wall painting methods", OOP 22 (1968), 132.

16

The construction process

The chronicles of Kievan Russia give practically no information about the organization of the building process. Sometimes later Russian sources can be used as analogies, as can West European material, both written and pictorial. There are also Byzantine miniatures representing the building process.1 However, these miniatures should be treated with care, since they may illustrate a different building practice. Therefore the building process in Kievan Russia can be reconstructed only from data obtained from studies of the structures themselves and from archaeological information. On starting the construction of a monumental building, the masters first selected a site to store and process the building materials. Only once has such a site been excavated, in Volkovysk. A church was begun here in the second half of the twelfth century, but when the foundations were ready the construction was stopped for some unknown reason, and the site and all its materials were left. Unfortunately, the site was excavated carelessly, but nevertheless a considerable amount of building material was found.2 For example, north-west of the foundations and approximately 5-1 Om from them, supplies of unused plinthoi were found, mostly stacked on edge. Also north-west of the church, but somewhat further away (10-12 m) lay a level of clay 60 cm thick. Still further, 20-25 m north-west of the church, was a lime pit of about 30m2, the layer of lime being 1.0-1.2m thick. Finally, west of the church were rows of large worked stones to be inserted in the walls as decorative elements. Traces of a construction site were also found in Minsk, where the building of a church had also been stopped after the foundations were laid.3 Here, north-west of the foundations, a trapezium-shaped pit of 25 m2 for slaking lime was excavated. The edges of this pit were reinforced 1

For example, in the Khludov Psalter (Greek, 9th century); see M.V. Shchepkina, Miniatiury Khludovskoi psaltiri (Moscow, 1977), 96. 2 la.G. Zverugo, "O stroitel'nom materiale khrama XII v. na Volkovysskom zamchishche", Tezisy dokladov na konfcrentsii po arkheologii Belorussii (Minsk, 1969), 153. 3 L.V. Alekseev, Polotskaia zemlia (Moscow, 1966), 203. 180

CONSTRUCTION PROCESS

181

with boards. Nearby were found numerous limestone slabs for use in the building.4 The construction sites in Volkovysk and, to some degree, in Minsk, were only preserved because the building work there was unexpectedly stopped. In cases where the building was completed, the remaining materials were clearly taken away and so no traces of the sites have remained. Nevertheless, V. V. Khvoika noted that near the Church of the Tithe, his excavations produced evidence of the working of marble, slate and other kinds of stone, corresponding to those used in the church.5 These were presumably traces of the construction site, where stone was cut during the building of the church. In Vladimir-Suzdal' and Galich, where cut white-stone blocks were used for the masonry, their initial working was probably made where the stone was obtained, i.e. at the quarry, but the final processing was, of course, done on site. Evidence for this is provided by the use of small stone chippings in the foundations of the quatrefoil church, the so-called 'Polygon', in Galich.6 Similarly, chips from red-slate tiles were found during the excavations of the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Chernigov, indicating that these were probably also prepared on site.7 After breaking ground for a building, the first operation was to dig the foundation ditches. As a rule, the width of the ditches was equal to the width of the foundations and their walls were more or less vertical. In these cases the foundations took up the whole ditch. However, with loose ground the walls of the ditches were inclined and it seems that frames had to be set up for the masonry of the foundations. The remains of soil filling in the space between the foundations and the walls of the ditch have repeatedly been found, but traces of the frames have rarely been preserved. Excavations in the lower part of the foundations of the northern apse of the Church of St Clement in Staraia Ladoga revealed a board from the frames pressed to the walls of the foundations. The imprint of boards and stakes from frames were also found in the mortar of the foundations of the katholikon of Sts Boris and Gleb at the monastery on the Smiadyn' in Smolensk,8 and the remains of frames in a church at Minsk.9 4

V.R. Tarasenko, Drevnii Minsk. Materialy po arkheologii BSSR1 (Minsk, 1957), 213. V.V. Khvoika, Drevnie obitateli srednego Pridneprov 'ia (Kiev, 1913), 69. Karger, Drevnii Kiev, vol. 1,472, doubted that a workshop found by Khvoika dressed stones for the Church of the Tithe and dated this workshop to the thirteenth century. Such scepticism may be unjustified, since the carved marble and slate details, found by Khvoika, are characteristic only of the Church of the Tithe, and are not found in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. 6 O.M. loannisian, "Novye issledovaniia odnogo iz pamiatnikov galitskogo zodchestva XII veka", SA (1983), no. 1,233. 7 M. Makarenko, Chernigivs'kii Spas (Kiev, 1929), 26. 8 Voronin & Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smolenska, 53. 9 Tarasenko, Drevnii Minsk, 222,225. 5

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BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

When the foundations were ready, the building was laid out again, this time in a more detailed and accurate manner. In the katholikon of the Vydubits Monastery a graffito design was preserved on the upper plastered surface of the foundations; the outlines of the walls were drawn before the mortar set.10 This has only been found the once, and most often it was probably made during the following season, i.e. on foundations which had already settled. In such cases the mortar of the foundations has naturally not preserved any traces of the layout. To put up the walls, scaffolding was erected beside them and as the walls rose, so its height was increased. The pins of the scaffolding were set into the brickwork of the walls. Upon completing the building, these pins were chopped or sawn off and as the wood rotted away, it left holes in the brickwork (fig. 63). Sometimes remains of wood have been found in these holes, for example, in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa, Novgorod, the pins were made of spruce.11 The holes for the pins were round, square or rectangular, with sides 10-20 cm. However, the remains of wood show that the pins themselves were mostly circular. On the outside the holes were not usually sealed. In a rare exception, the holes in the church at Kolozha in Grodno were filled with mortar and brick. This was done so carefully that they are almost impossible to see. The holes on the interior face of the walls were sealed before plastering for wallpainting. The scaffolding was of two types. In one, the pins went all the way through the wall. In this case the scaffolding was supported only on horizontal beams inserted into the wall. Through pins were used in the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Elets Monastery at Chernigov, in the Church of the Annunciation at Vitebsk, as well as in the mid-twelfthcentury monuments of Novgorod. In the Church of St Panteleimon at Galich (fig. 64) and in the monuments of Vladimir-Suzdal' another type of scaffolding was used, in which the pins did not go through the walls, but were sunk to a depth of 15-20 cm, sometimes 40 cm. With this type of scaffolding the planking could evidently not be supported on horizontal beams alone, so vertical struts were also needed.12 Of course, the traces of the pins give only a partial idea of the scaffolding and how it was used. For example, it is still unclear how bricks and mortar were carried up. One can suppose that the mortar was delivered in buckets or 10

Novoe v arkheohgii Kieva (Kiev, 1981), 208. P.P. Pokryshkin, Otchet o kapital'nom remonte Spaso-Nereditskoi tserkvi v 1903 i 1905 gg (St Petersburg, 1906), 18. 12 In West European medieval architecture, both types of scaffolding were used; see M. Arczynski, "Technika i organizacja budownictwa ceglanego w Prusach w koncu XIV i w pierwszej polowie XV wieku", Studia z dziejmv rzemiosla i przemyslu 9 (Wroclaw, 1970), 77; A. Antonow, Planting und Bau von Burgen in suddeutschen Raurn (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1983), 313. 11

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in tubs with the help of a primitive wooden block of the type known from excavations in Novgorod.13 Bricks and stones must have been delivered by workmen with trestles on their shoulders, indicating as well the presence of ladders. All this required complicated skills, therefore in the eleventh and twelfth centuries there were probably specialists in the construction of scaffolding, as there were in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Scaffolding was then called podviazi and its builders podviazchiki; they were first mentioned in chronicles in the late sixteenth century.14 In the seventeenth century, so as not to have to extend the uprights as the walls grew, they were made of large poles;15 the same was presumably true of earlier periods too. Even when the pin holes did not run right through the wall, the rows on both the interior and exterior faces of the walls were made at the same height. This shows that the scaffolding was double, which allowed both faces of the wall to be built simultaneously. Therefore, the process of bricklaying can be represented as the synchronous work of pairs of bricklayers. For building pillars, vaults and drums there must evidently have been a different system of scaffolding. The rows of pins illustrate how the planking was raised during construction. Mostly, they were fixed at the same height around the building, but sometimes they were sited differently, which indicates that the scaffolding was set independently on different facades and sometimes even on different parts of one facade. The bottom row of planking was usually placed at a height of about 2 m above the ground, for instance as in the Church of Sts Peter and Paul in Smolensk. In the Church of St Panteleimon in Galich the bottom row is 2.45 m above the ground, in the Church of the Annunciation in Vitebsk, 1.6m and in the monuments of Vladimir-Suzdal', from 2.8 to 4 m. The vertical distance between the rows also differs. In the earlier monuments of Kiev and Novgorod, eleventh and early twelfth centuries, the vertical distance between the holes is usually more than 2 m and in the monuments of Chernigov and Smolensk, first half of the twelfth century, 1.3-1.6m.16 In the buildings of Vladimir-Suzdal', the distance between the rows is 2.0-3.2 m. In the Church of St Panteleimon 13 B.A. Kolchin, "Novgorodskie drevnosti. Dereviannye izdeliia", SA (Moscow, 1968), no. I, 77-78 and table 72. 14 Sreznevskii, Material]/, vol. 2, col. 1054. 15 The estimate drawn up in 1692 by the master Gur Vakhrameev for the repairs of the Dniepr Gate at the Smolensk fortress planned for scaffolding with: "25 logs 8 sazhen long [approximately 17 m], 46 cart-loads of bird-cherry twigs, and 16 bundles of bast"; I.I. Orlovskii, Smolenskaia stena (Smolensk, 1902), 107. 16 G.M. Shtender, "Drevniaia stroitel'naia tekhnika kak metod izucheniia russkogo zodchestva", Arkhitekturnoe nasledie i restavratsiia (Moscow, 1986), 17. Information on scaffolding pins in the monuments of Vladimir-Suzdal' is provided courtesy of S.M. Novakovskaia.

Figure 63. The holes from scaffolding pins on the west facade, Church of Sts Peter and Paul in Smolensk.

CONSTRUCTION PROCESS

185

Figure 64. A fragment of the west fagade, Church of St Panteleimon in Galich.

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BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

in Galich this distance is 1.6-1.8m, in the Church of the Annunciation in Vitebsk, 1.4m and in the church at Kolozha in Grodno, about 1.5m. In present building practice, the productivity of bricklayers is considered to decrease sharply when the height of brickwork exceeds 1.2 m above the level of the planking on which the bricklayer is standing.17 It would seem very likely, therefore, that the bricklayers added extra planking when the distance between the rows of pins exceeded 1.4—1.5 m.18 In general two holes were located along each section of wall, three in a broad one, so they were usually 2-3 m, sometimes 3.5 m apart.19 In bricklaying the scaffolding pins were held in place by the pressure of bricks on all sides. However, sometimes square holes for the pins were specially made, which enabled the builders to move the beams from the lower levels to the upper ones as the walls grew. In laying the cut whitestone slabs, of Galich and Vladimir-Suzdal', the height of each stone was greater than the thickness of the plank to be fixed in the wall, therefore holes for the pins had to be cut into the stone. The holes were usually cut at the bottom of a block, mostly in the corner. However, in the Church of St Panteleimon in Galich, there are stones in which the holes were not cut in the corner, but at some distance from the vertical edge. In the same church the holes in the third level from the bottom on the western facade are of an unusual shape, since their width was 10-12 cm and their height was about 30 cm (fig. 64). A pair of bricklayers working with their assistants simultaneously on the inside and outside, presumably formed the basic core of a building team, i.e. what would be termed as a 'gang' (zveno).20 Each gang had its part of the wall, in present terms a sector (delianka). Since each gang worked simultaneously on both sides of the wall, the whole thickness was laid in one go. The breaks in the regularity of the brickwork observed by the architect M.B. Chernyshev in the buildings of Smolensk showed that work on several adjacent sectors was done simultaneously.21 If that were not so and one gang, having completed its sector, moved on to the next, it would not have been necessary to insert broken bricks at the interface between these sectors. On completing the work on its position of the wall, the gang moved on to the next. The completed brickwork they had just finished must have been covered to protect it from rain. There would probably have been a moveable 17

Ed. D.D. Biziukin, Tekhnologiia stroitel 'noga proizvodstm (Leningrad-Moscow, 1951), 452. In the nineteenth century, with the use of stages, the levels of scaffolding were placed every 4 arshiii (about 2.8 m); see A. Krasovskii, Grazhdanskaia arkhitektura (Moscow, 1886) 81. 19 By the norms of the nineteenth century, in order for the scaffolding planks not to sag, pins were placed not more than 2.5 arshin (about 1.77m) apart. 20 lu.M. Leibfreid, Tekhnologiia stmitel'nogo proizvodstva (Moscow, 1957), 13. 21 M.B. Chernyshev, "O proizvoditel'nosti truda kamenshchikov v drevnei Rusi", Kul 'tura drevnei Rusi (Moscow, 1966), 289. 18

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roof, cloth or something else, for example, covering the completed work with mortar. When, some time later, the gang returned to this area, they put a new layer of mortar above the protective layer and then continued with the bricklaying, thus making a double layer.22 These double joints can be clearly traced in a number of monuments in Novgorod, at the Cathedral of St Nicholas at laroslav's Court, the katholikon at the lur'ev Monastery, the Church of Sts Peter and Paul on Sinich'ia Hill, and others, as well as in two monuments in Smolensk, the churches on the Protoka and at the Okopnoe cemetery, all put up by one building gang. These double joints are usually thicker by a factor of 1.5 : 2. The upper layer of the mortar is thinner than the lower and sometimes a thin band of humus can be seen between the layers of mortar, formed in the interval between the completion of the lower brickwork and the addition of the new. These joints, marking the periodicity of the brickwork, coincide as rule with the levels of major structural elements, such as the floors, the bottom of an arched niche for tombs, or the butts of the arches. Where these elements are absent, the double joints are from 6-7 courses to 18-19 courses apart in Smolensk; in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa, Novgorod, the distance between the double joints was usually 80-100cm. Knowing the height of a building and the length of time it took to construct, we can calculate to what height the walls were raised in one season. For example, the Church of Sts Peter and Paul in Smolensk is a monument of moderate size and its erection probably took three years, excluding the foundations. Bearing in mind that the vaults and domes could be completed in one season, it can be concluded that it took two years to lay the walls. The top of the middle gable of this church is located at a height of about 13m from the ground, so in this building the walls were raised 6 m each season. In the Church of the Archangel Michael, Smolensk, the gable height is about 22 m, but in such a large church the brickwork of the walls probably took not two but three years. Hence, here the walls were raised approximately 7m each season. These calculations have been verified by observations in the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Monastery of the Caves, where the height of each season's brickwork was 4-5 m.23 On the basis of studies of the brickwork of the northern apse of the church on the Protoka in Smolensk, M.B. Chernyshev has attempted to 22 It is possible that some religious ritual was connected with these joins. In the 'Legend of the Sophia Church in the Imperial City' it is said that: "when 12 courses (of brickwork) had been laid, the patriarch with bishops and priests said prayers and buried holy relics, and so they did until the church was finished"; S.G. Vilenskii, "Skazanie o Sofii Tsaregradskoi v Ellinskom letopistse i v Khronografe", Izvcstiia otdeleniia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti 8 (1903), book 3,36. 23 G.N. Logvin, "Novye nabliudeniia v Sofii Kievskoi", Kul 'turn srednevekovoi Rusi (Leningrad, 1974), 160.

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determine the productivity of medieval bricklayers.24 A part of the wall, delimited below and above by two double joints, had seven courses of brickwork and was, it seems, laid in one working day. In this sector broken brickwork has been observed in several places, a header in a course of stretchers and vice versa; sometimes the brickwork is interrupted by an inserted truncated brick. This is easier to make out in this church, since its brickwork shows a clear tendency for the alternation of header and stretcher courses. The breaks in the brickwork mark sectors of the walls approximately 2.1 m long, i.e. one sazhen'. It is clear, therefore, that one bricklayer in one day laid a sector 2.1m long and 60 cm high, i.e. seven courses of brickwork. That it was only half of the wall's thickness is indicated by the presence of holes from the scaffolding pins on both faces of the wall at the same height. The walls of this church are 1.4m thick, so each bricklayer laid half its thickness, 70 cm. Accordingly, it can be deduced that in one working day a bricklayer laid approximately 88 cm3 of brickwork. Comparing this with the norms of the nineteenth century shows that medieval bricklayers were less productive by a factor of 1.5. The accuracy of vertical lines and surfaces in Kievan architecture suggests that the builders used a plumb line. It should be noted that bricklayers with plumb lines can be seen in many West European miniatures. In laying out the various parts of a building, it seems that a cord was widely used. A.D. Varganov noted that the slope of the stairs in the wall of the entrance to the Suzdal' cathedral was not straight, but sagged. He concluded that the slope of the stairs had been marked with the help of a cord and that it was the sagging of this cord which led to the curved slope of the stairs.25 In wall arches a cord was also used, with one end fixed into the brickwork with a wooden peg. The other end of the cord was used to draw the arc of the gable (as with compasses). The holes from the centres of such arcs, mostly in the form of small wooden batons inserted in the wall or of holes in the brickwork itself, have been found in many buildings in the varying architectural centres of Russia.26 Such string compasses were used not only for making semi-circular arches, but also for more complicated, three-centre curves, for example, in the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa in Chernigov. 24

Chernyshev, "O proizvoditel'nosti truda kamenshchikov", 289. Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1, 118. On the hypothetical list of instruments and devices used by Kievan Russian bricklayers; see G.M. Shtender, "Instrumentarii kamenshchika-novgorodtsa XI-XV w.", Novgorodskii krai (Leningrad, 1984), 211. 26 G.M. Shtender, "Razmetka arkhitekturnykh form drevnimi zodchimi", Pamiatniki kill 'tury 1 (Moscow, 1959), 66; and "Arkhitektura domongol'skogo perioda", Novgorod. K 1100-letiiu goroda (Moscow, 1964), 207. Bearing in mind ethnographic parallels, G.M. Shtender, "Vosstanovlenie Nereditsy", Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik 10 (Novgorod, 1961), 176, suggested that such string compasses were called kruzhalo in Kievan Russia. However, in chronicles of the XV-XVII centuries, kruzhalo meant the wooden curves used to shape arches; Poppe, Materiaty, 33. Later on G.M. Shtender, "Drevniaia stroitel'naia tekhnika kak metod izucheniia russkogo zodchestva", Arkhitektumoe nasledie i restavmtsiia, (Moscow, 1986), 15, used another ethnographic term, voroba. 25

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Arches and vaults were built with the aid of curved wooden forms and centering boards, imprints of which are sometimes preserved on the mortar of the lower surface of the vaults. It should be noted that the centering boards were sometimes cut in a curve to obtain a smooth rounded surface for the brickwork. It seems unlikely that centering high up was supported by poles rising from the ground; instead the curved forms for the arches and the centering of the vaults were most probably supported by some kind of wooden construction in the upper part of the building, for example special struts or ties set across the church. The vaults of the galleries of the Cathedral of St Demetrius in Vladimir, for example, were built following curved forms supported by wooden bars inserted into the wall.27 In the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa, Novgorod, near the abutments of the arches and near the corner vaults, holes were found in the brickwork, into which were set the struts supporting the curved forms.28 The centering of cylindrical vaults could be set without any curved pieces, since thick boards could be laid with one end on the brickwork of the tympanum, i.e. on the arched gable, and the other on the finished wall arch. Marks from the ends of such boards were found in the soffits of the arches of the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa.29 In the arched niche for a tomb in the same church, there were grooves with remains of the centering boards and in the chamber in the western wall the centering of the vaults for some reason had not been taken away, but was preserved together with a curved, wooden piece. The grooves from the ends of such centering boards are also clearly visible in the small vaults of the stairs of the church at Kolozha in Grodno. The only example of curved pieces supported by posts set in the ground is the church of the German merchants, the Smolensk Rotunda.30 This approach was probably exceptional and was required because of the use of a cylindrical vault, unusual in Russia. The arched lintels of windows and the small vaults of the stairs within the thickness of the walls were often built around curved templates cut from one board. These templates were sometimes placed directly on the edges of the walls, which led to the arch openings having a somewhat horseshoe shape.31 In other cases the curved pieces were supported by special pegs inserted into the brickwork near the abutments of the arches.32 27 S.M. Novakovskaia, "K voprosu o galereiakh belokamennykh soborov Vladimirskoi zemli", KSIA 164 (1981), 49. 28 Shtender, "Vosstanovlenie Nereditsy", 176. 29 Shtender, "Vosstanovlenie Nereditsy", 178. 30 Voronin & Rappoport, Smolenskoe zodchestvo, 145. 31 Pokryshkin, Otchet o kapital'nom remonte Spaso-Nereditskoi tserkvi, 23. 32 Such a beam, apparently not taken away upon completing the building, was found by I.M. Khozerov in the window of the north wall of the katholikon of the Monastery of St Euphrosyne at Polotsk; "Arkhitektura Belorussii i Smolenshchiny XI-XIII w.", Arkhiv Instituta istorii AN BSSR, sektor arkheologii opis' I , d.46 (1946).

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It should be noted that some bricklaying techniques were common to all the Russian territories where plinthoi were used, which indicates that they shared common traditions. For example, bricks were always laid with smooth side down, i.e. the side with the traces of the levelling knife. Even in towns where brick manufacture was well organized, builders always had an eye for economy and put brick waste to good use: defective bricks, of which there were often many, were crushed and added to the mortar mixture. When completing the brickwork, bricklayers tried to make use of all the bricks, even the special narrow and moulded ones. Sometimes, therefore, a great number of moulded bricks have been found in the vaults of churches, though they would seem quite inappropriate for this purpose. Moulded bricks were clearly also used in the paving of the floor of the church on Bol'shaia Krasnoflotskaia Street in Smolensk for the same reason.33 In some monuments the builders treated the brickwork of the various structural parts of the building differently. Sometimes this makes it possible to perceive their treatment of one or another area of the building. In the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Elets Monastery in Chernigov, for example, two types of brick were used, thin ones (2.2-2.5 cm) for the walls, and thick ones (4.0-4.5 cm) for the pillars and arches. The wall separating the narthex from the nave, together with the western pair of pillars, was made of thin bricks, i.e. it was all considered as the western wall of the church and not as a wall filling in between the western pillars. Evidently, the builders treated this building not as a six-pillar, but as a four-pillar one with a narthex.34 This was perhaps due to the idea that the four-pillar core was considered as an independent construction to which a narthex was attached. Sometimes the elements of a church were built in succession. Thus, in the katholikon of the Vydubits Monastery, Kiev, and in the katholikon at the Monastery of St Antony, Novgorod, the narthex was added without bonding it to the finished core of the church. In archaeological studies of Kievan-period monuments, it has commonly been noted that some sections of foundations were laid up against one another without any bonding. This applies most often to those under the entrances, but sometimes also the interior ribbon foundations. It seems that the architects tried to separate sections of the foundations under different loads, i.e. they created settling joints. Often such unbound sections can also be observed in the lower brickwork of the walls. However, such joints were usually only made up to a certain height, then above this the brickwork was bonded. For example, the walls of the narthex of the Crypt church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Pereiaslavl' were bonded with the brickwork of the core of the church only from a height of 1.5 m.35 In the 33

Voronin & Rappoport, Smolenska Zodchestvo, 284. Observation by G.M. Shtender. 35 M.K. Karger, "Raskopki v Pereiaslave-Khmel'nitskom v 1952-1953 gg.", SA 20 (1954), 13. 34

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Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at Berestovo, Kiev, the walls of the western entrance were bonded with the brickwork of the core starting at a height of 1.45 m.36 In the katholikon at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity on the Klovka, Smolensk, one of the pilaster strips of the northern wall was not bonded with the wall itself for the whole of its preserved height, about 1 m.37 Sometimes it was not only parts of the building that differed in height (and hence in weight), but also its principal elements were not bonded at the base. For example, in the katholikon at the Monastery of the Trinity on the Klovka the porches were bonded to the core of the church, but the apse was only bonded from the eleventh course of bricks upwards.38 It is clear that this was not connected with any differences in settling, but was simply a matter of convenience for the bricklayers. A characteristic feature of the work of Kievan architects was their desire to complete the construction of each part of a building, including the exterior facades, without taking any account of the fact that the brickwork of the next planned part, such as an ambulatory, porch or side-chapel, would be added to this fagade immediately or, at least, in the following season. There are numerous examples of such work and it is this circumstance that made scholars erroneously consider the external ambulatory of St Sophia, Kiev, to be a later addition to the core of the church and the interior ambulatory. In the church on the Protoka, Smolensk, each part of the complex was completely finished and plastered on each side, even though it was known beforehand that something would be added later, i.e. narthex, ambulatories, porch, chapels. The portal of the narthex of this church was built with a full profile, although this was unnecessary, since adding the entrance provided a second door, causing the internal parts of the portal to be immediately bricked up.39 Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the whole complex was built simultaneously. This characteristic is most clearly seen in the monuments of Vladimir-Suzdal'. For example, in Bogoliubovo all the elements of the ensemble, the passage from the church, the tower and the passage to the palace, were added one after the other, but to completely finished and faced facades, on which there were already bands of arcading. It might be supposed that building over the carved frieze pointed indisputably to the fact that the addition had not been foreseen, but since it was only possible to reach the galleries of the church through the tower and the tower already had the door to the passage to the palace, the simultaneous building of the whole ensemble cannot be doubted. An explanation of such a seemingly 36

Karger, Drevnii Kiev, vol. 2, 389. Voronin & Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smolenska, 202. 38 Voronin & Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smolenska, 202. 39 Voronin & Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smolenska, 324. 37

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irrational approach is the peculiar way of thinking of medieval people and their specific attitude to such notions as expediency and economy.40 After completing the brickwork, it seems that the scaffolding remained in place for a year, until the building dried. Then the scaffolding could be used by the painters to paint the interior of the church. If the facades were plastered outside, it was presumably done using the same scaffolding, simultaneously with the wall painting. Of the monuments of Novgorod and Smolensk, external rendering (or its remains) is seen only on buildings with frescoes; buildings which had no frescoes had no rendering.41 These were most probably interconnected operations. As the painting continued, the scaffolding was gradually taken down, which determined the order of the final stages of the building work. Hence, while the painters decorated the centre of the dome and the drum, the builders covered the dome with lead and erected the cross.42 The last stage of construction in the interior was the flooring, which it seems was added after dismantling the scaffolding, so upon finishing the wall painting. Naturally, when the painting of the church was not done immediately upon completion of the building, but much later, the scaffolding was probably taken away and another lightweight stage was erected for painters. After dismantling the external scaffolding, the building of the ambulatories and side-chapels could begin. Therefore these parts of the building adjoined the faced, sometimes even plastered facades. In Galich and Vladimir-Suzdal', where the facades were not plastered, the external scaffolding was, apparently, taken away immediately upon finishing the building, leaving the internal stages for the painters.

40

A.Ia. Gurevich, Kategorii srednevekovoi kul'tury (Moscow, 1984), 29, etc. G.M. Shtender noticed this in the monuments of Novgorod. In Byzantine architecture, as in Russia, facades were sometimes plastered but more often they were left uncovered; C. Mango, Byzantine Architecture (New York, 1976), 22. 42 It seems that the marking and numbering of roof sheets was carried out beforehand on the ground. This is suggested by the marks on the sheets of copper of the roof of the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir; see B.A. Rybakov, "Merilo novgorodskogo zodchego XIII v.", PKNO1974 (1975), 217. 41

17

The size and structure of the building teams

The written sources of Kievan Russia provide no references to building organizations, therefore all information about their existence, structure and social character must be deduced from architectural and archaeological studies of the remains of their work, i.e. studies of monuments. In scholarly literature teams of builders are usually called an artel', though this term is purely conventional, since it is a later one not mentioned in medieval sources.1 In the Kievan period such teams were probably called a druzhina, which was certainly the case in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.2 The number of Kievan building teams can be calculated from the number of buildings they erected. In contrast to today, when an architectural or building organization can be engaged in planning a project, but not in its construction, in the Middle Ages the activity of a building team could not be confined only to planning projects; it had to result in a construction. Of course, unfavourable political situations could cause delays and sometimes breaks in construction, but long idle periods would lead to the liquidation of the team. Therefore, if in any town construction work stopped for a long enough period, the team either disintegrated or left for some other place. This can clearly be seen in the Novgorod area, where, for example, after erecting the Church of the Dormition on the market, construction stopped, but just at that time it started in Pskov. Then, from the early 1150s work stopped in Pskov, but started in Ladoga. Finally, in the 1160s it stopped in Ladoga and began again in Novgorod. In every building the technical approach coincided exactly. It is clear that it was the same building team 1

On the complex nature of the term artel'; see M.N. Tikhomirov, "Remeslenniki i remeslennye ob"edineniia v Kievskoi Rusi", Uchenye zapiski MGU 87 (Moscow, 1946) 33. 2 The term, druzhina, in old Russian meant trusted comrades or companions headed by a leader e.g. a princely entourage. It could also mean a military, building, artistic or some other team; see Sreznevskii, Materialy, vol. 1, col. 729-730. Poppe, Material}/, 19. In the Novgorod and Pskov dialects even in the nineteenth century a production artel' was called druzhina; see Dal', Tolkovyi slovar'vol. I , 511. 193

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moving from Novgorod to Pskov, then Ladoga, and finally returning to Novgorod.3 Thus, from the number of buildings erected, their sequence and the rate of building, it is possible to establish the presence in a given town of a building team and its activity. In the largest construction centres (Kiev, Smolensk, Novgorod), the team erected the monuments one after another, without any substantial intervals. At the same time, it should be noted that the simultaneous building of two monuments is almost never mentioned in the sources. This can be checked, for example, with the monuments of Smolensk. The total number of buildings known is of course fewer than the number actually built, since some are presumably still undiscovered. However, the results of a detailed architectural and archaeological survey made in the city during the last decades and especially in the period 1962-1974 suggest that the number of undiscovered monuments is small and that the majority of medieval monuments are now known.4 This enables us to perform some statistical calculations. For example, for the period from the foundation of the Katholikon of Sts Boris and Gleb at the monastery on the Smiadyn' in 1145 up to 1180, i.e. for 35 years, we know of seven monuments. If we assume that in fact there were a couple more in total, then with the erection of one building after another in succession, each would take about four years, i.e. a period that corresponds to the estimate made earlier about the duration of the building process. It is clear that at that time, i.e. before 1180, one building team was at work in Smolensk, which could not have undertaken two projects simultaneously. In the majority of cases, it would seem that the medieval Russian building teams worked with a full complement; they did not divide, but built in succession, moving from one site to the next. The number of such teams in Kievan Russia was comparatively small. In the eleventh century there was only one team in Kiev. In the late eleventh century a second team appeared, in Pereiaslavl', and another in Chernigov, which soon combined with that in Pereiaslavl'. In the early twelfth century, a third team was formed in Novgorod.5 At the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a separate team appeared in Chernigov, but it was soon transferred to Kiev, while the Kievan one moved to Polotsk. In the twelfth century building teams existed only in the largest towns, capital cities, i.e. Kiev, Vladimir, Novgorod, Polotsk, Smolensk, and Galich. In the midtwelfth century, the Kievan team moved to Vladimir-in-Volynia, but soon returned to Kiev. In the late twelfth century, monumental building stopped 3

A.A. Peskova, P.A. Rappoport, G.M. Shtender, "K voprosu o slozhenii novgorodskoi arkhitekturnoi shkoly", SA (1982), no. 3, 35. 4 Voronin & Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smoknska, 330. 5 Rappoport, Zodchestvo drevnei Rusi, 68; O.M. loannisian, P.A. Rappoport, Arkhitekturnye shkoly Drevnei Rusi (in press).

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in Polotsk, but an independent team appeared in Grodno. The capital of the Riazan' area had no building organization of its own, instead building was carried out by masters from other areas, first from Chernigov and then from Smolensk. In rare cases there may have been two teams in the same area. In the early thirteenth century, two certainly existed in the Vladimir-Suzdal' area, one working in Rostov and laroslavl', the other in Nizhnii Novgorod and lur'ev.6 There is also no doubt that two building teams existed in Smolensk in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. In 20 years (1180-1200) no fewer than seven brick buildings were put up here. Assuming that in fact there were more, it would mean that if one building was erected after another in succession, each would have had to have taken little more than two years. Bearing in mind that among the monuments erected during those years were such large churches as the Church of the Archangel Michael, the katholikon at of the Monastery of the Holy Trinity on the Klovka, and the church on the Protoka, it is clear that these cannot all have been built in succession; two churches must have been built simultaneously. After the year 1200, the rate of building in Smolensk decreased, but it was then that the Smolensk builders erected the brick churches in the small towns of the principality, in Roslavl', probably in Mstislavl', as well as outside the Smolensk area, in Riazan'. Thus, starting from the 1180s it seems that there were two building teams in Smolensk. Architectural analysis of the buildings erected after 1180 shows that they can indeed be divided into two groups. Firstly, there were two types of plan: in the churches of one group all three apses were flat on the outside, with very gently sloping curves on the inside; the churches of the other group had a large semi-circular central apse and flat side apses. The first group includes the church on Bol'shaia Krasnoflotskaia Street, the churches on the Protoka and at the Okopnoe Cemetery; the second group includes all the other churches. The second substantial difference is in the profiling of the external pilasters: in the monuments of the first group they were flat at the bottom, in the second group they were clustered with a complex section. Thus, the division into two groups is justified typologically, but there are also other differences. In the churches on the Protoka and that at the Okopnoe Cemetery there were brick communion tables in all three apses and in both these churches, behind the principal altar the floor shows traces of the installation of a large cross or an icon behind the communion table. It is impossible to tell whether the third church of this group, that on Bol'shaia Krasnoflotskaia Street, had the same characteristic features due to its poor state of preservation. However, none of the monuments of the second group have such features. Furthermore, there were differences in the construction techniques of the monuments in these two groups. In the churches on the Protoka and at the 6

Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 2,119.

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Okopnoe Cemetery, wooden ties have been found at the foot of the walls. In this respect, these churches continue the traditions of the Smolensk buildings of the previous period, and those, in turn, are connected with the churches in Chernigov. None of the monuments of the second group shows traces of such wooden ties, which points to a building tradition leading from the monuments of Polotsk. Only two monuments in Smolensk, again the churches on the Protoka and at the Okopnoe Cemetery, have such a distinctive feature as double joints in the brickwork. Both these churches, again, had a lime floor. Finally, there are differences in the marks on the bricks. The set of convex marks on the ends of the bricks in the churches on Bol'shaia Krasnoflotskaia Street, on the Protoka and at the Okopnoe cemetery differs from that in all other monuments. Only in these churches was a triangle widely used as a mark, as well as a combination of two triangles, intersecting as a six-pointed star, as seen in the churches on Bol'shaia Krasnoflotskaia Street and on the Protoka. Stamps were also found, albeit rarely, on the flat sides of bricks from these churches, something which disappeared from Smolensk architecture in the mid-twelfth century. Thus, there is no doubt that the monumental architecture of Smolensk, starting from the 1180s, clearly divides into two groups, following the activity of two independent building teams each with their own characteristic features. These are revealed both in their building and technical methods and in the architectural composition of their buildings.7 These peculiarities of style evidently reflect building traditions, i.e. they are connected with the origin of the teams. The teams also differed with regard to productivity and skill, since in the same time that one team built three churches, the other erected seven in Smolensk and at least two in other lands, i.e. the churches of Riazan', since those in Kiev and Novgorod were built by local masters, although headed by a Smolensk architect from this second team.8 If we assume that there are some monuments which have not been preserved or discovered, it seems that the second building team was sizeable enough sometimes to build two structures simultaneously. It should be emphasized that the difference in the activity of these two Smolensk teams is shown at all levels, beginning with the brick moulding and continuing through to the type of monument erected. As a result, it shows that the building team was organized vertically, since it had masters of all specialities and could handle all stages of the process from brick manufacture to roofing and finishing works. In the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the simultaneous erection of churches can be seen in Novgorod too, but the total coincidence of building techniques and types of monument do not enable us to speak 7

P.A. Rappoport, "Zodchie i stroiteli drevnego Smolenska", Drevniaia Rus' i slaviane (Moscow, 1978), 402. 8 Voronin & Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smolenska, 348.

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197

about the presence of two teams. Given the small dimensions of the churches, it seems that one sufficiently skillful team could occasionally have built two structures simultaneously. By the end of the twelfth century, the connections between the building teams had intensified9 and their number also increased. There were now independent units in Kiev, which in the early thirteenth century, moved to the Chernigov-Severskii territory, in Galich and Novgorod; and Vladimir-Suzdal' and Smolensk had two each. Thus, even at the time of the highest intensity of building in pre-Mongol Russia, there were only eight or nine independent building organizations capable of putting up stoneand-brick monuments (fig. 65).10 Bearing in mind that each team could normally build only one building at a time, and that it took no fewer than three years to build a church of medium size (one year in Novgorod), we can calculate that no more than 30 stone or brick churches could be erected every ten years over the whole territory of Russia. In fact, allowing for the inevitable intervals in development, the number of buildings erected was probably smaller. Thus, right up to the Mongol invasions, stone-and-brick constructions remained very costly and, in any case, were not objects of mass production. It seems that the shortage of experienced builders occasionally required builders to be called in from adjacent principalities or even from abroad. Knowing the number of building teams, the chronology of their activity, and the length of the construction process, it should be possible to calculate the total number of monuments erected at that time. Moreover, from the dates when work on the known monuments began, it should also be possible to determine the lacunae in the activity of each team, and thereby predict monuments which have not yet been found. Unfortunately, our knowledge is still inadequate for such calculations.11 What was the complement of a building team? It was headed by its leader, the master-builder. The Old Russian chronicles refer to these masterbuilders by several different terms. The title most often used is master}2 This is given to the master builders who erected the Church of the Tithe: 9 P.A. Rappoport, O.M. loannisian, "O vzaimosviazi russkikh arkhitekturnykh shkol na rubezhe XII i XIII w.", Studenitsa i vizantiiska umetnost oko 1200 godine (Belgrade, 1988), 287-294. 10 P.A. Rappoport, "Stroitel'nye arteli Drevnei Rusi i ikh zakazchiki", SA (1985), no. 4, 84. 11 P.A. Rappoport subsequently drew up a chronological diagram of the development of Kievan Russian architecture; see P.A. Rappoport, Drevnerusskaia arkhitektura (St Petersburg, 1993), 256-257. The diagram has predicted the discovery of churches in lur'ev (now Belaia Tserkov'), Vladimir-in-Volynia and Chernigov. 12 The origin of this term in old Russian is still unclear; see M. Fasmer, Etimologicheskii slovar' russkogo iazyka 2 (Moscow, 1967), 578. The term most probably appeared in Russia along

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Figure 65. Plan of the operation and movement of the building teams.

1250

SIZE AND STRUCTURE OF BUILDING TEAMS

199

"Greek masters";13 the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir: "all masters from all lands";14 and the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev: "church masters".15 It should be noted that during the reconstruction of the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir: "[they] did not look for masters from Germany".16 In Novgorod the master builders of the two churches are named: "master Petr worked"17 at the katholikon at the lur'ev Monastery in Novgorod and at the Church of St Cyril in Kiev: "the master was Korov lakovich from Lubiana Street".18 Petr-Miloneg, who built a wall near the Vydubits Monastery in Kiev, was called a master and, moreover, a painter.19 However, the term 'master' evidently did not just mean 'architect', since in the development of the town of Kholm: "any masters" were mentioned.20 Similarly, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, architects were usually referred to as 'masters', but it was also used for masters from other trades, such as carpenters and potters.21 Thus, the term 'master' meant both 'architect' and 'builder' [hence the interpretation above of master builder] and had the broader meaning of any qualified craftsman. Another more specific term, which meant specifically 'architect' or 'master builder', was zdatel'. So, in the construction of the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb in Vyshgorod, Prince Oleg: "brought the builders [zdateli] and ordered them to build".22 In Nikon's chronicle, in a slightly changed formulation of the Povest' vremennykh let, 'stone-cutters and builders' are mentioned during the erection of the Church of the Tithe.23 This term was also used later, for example, in the Yarlyk of Khan Uzbek, kamennye zdateli.24 with the first Greek builders and corresponds to the medieval Greek word maistor, which in turn was taken from the Latin magister. This was proposed by A. Poppe; see, for example, the term protomaistor in a Byzantine text of the fourteenth century; and magister opens of medieval West European sources; see A. Petronotis, "Der Architect in Byzanz", Bauplanung und Bautheorie der Antike (Berlin, 1984), 331. 13 Povest'vremennykh let 1 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1950), 83, under year 6497 (989). 14 "Lavrent'evskaia letopis'", PSRL 1 (Moscow, 1962), 351, under year 6658 (1160). 15 Paterik Kievskogo Pecherskogo monastyria (St Petersburg, 1911), 5. 16 "Lavrent'evskaia letopis'", PSRL 1,411 under year 6702 (1194). 17 "Novgorodskaia tret'ia letopis'", PSRL 3 (St Petersburg, 1841), under year 6627 (1119). 18 Novgorodskaia pervaia letopis 'starshego i mladshego izvodov (Moscow-Leningrad, 1950), 421, under year 6704 (1196). 19 "Ipat'evskaia letopis'", PSRL 2 (Moscow, 1962), 711, under year 6707 (1199). 20 "Ipat'evskaia letopis'", PSRL 2, 843, under year 6767 (1259). 21 "Voskresenskaia letopis'", PSRL 8 (St Petersburg, 1857), under year 6979 (1471); see also Poppe, Materiaty, 36. 22 Slovar' russkogo iazyka XI-XVIIw. 5 (Moscow, 1978), 361; see also Poppe, Materiaty, 24. 23 "Nikonovskaia letopis'", PSRL 9 (St Petersburg, 1862), 64, under year 6499 (991). 24 Sobranie gosudarstvennykh gramot i dogovorov 7,2 (Moscow, 1819), 10. The Yarlyk of Khan Uzbek is presumed to have been written in 1313, but in fact it was probably written in the late fifteenth century; see Poppe, Materiaty, 24.

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BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

Sometimes the term khitrets is found, which apparently referred to both 'architect' and 'sculptor-carver': "the door was decorated by the carver Avdey".25 The Greek word architekton was also translated as khitrets,26 but starting in the fourteenth century, the translated chronicles contain the term architekton: "as a wise architect laid the foundations".27 Emphasizing the divine origin of the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev, the Paterikon lists several terms which all mean the creator of a church: "God is the creator of the church".28 Only in one case is the architect mentioned as the leader of a building team: "head of the builders of the church", loann, a builder of the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at the Monastery of St Euphrosyne in Polotsk.29 Only four architects of the pre-Mongol period are known by name. These were the builders of the katholikon at the lur'ev Monastery in Novgorod, Petr (1119); of the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at the Monastery of St Euphrosyne in Polotsk, loann (mid-twelfth century); of the Church of St Cyril in Novgorod, Korov lakovich (1196); and of the wall near the Vydubits Monastery in Kiev, Petr-Miloneg (1199).30 It is not yet clear what the precise functions of a Kievan architect were, but the head of a building team was probably also directly involved in building work, i.e. an architect was at the same time a master bricklayer.31 The leader of a building team most probably had an assistant (or apprentice) and maybe two or even three. For example, in Smolensk in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, there were two architects working 25

"Ipat'evskaia letopis1", PSRL 2, 843, under year 6767 (1259). Sreznevskii, Materialy 3 (1912), col. 1431. 27 Sreznevskii, Materialy 1 (1893), col. 31, (message of the apostle Paul in a fourteenth-century manuscript). 28 "Kievo-Pecherskii paterik", Pamiatniki litemtury drevnei Rusi. XII vek. (Moscow, 1980), 424. 29 "'Zhitie' Evfrosin'i Polotskoi", Pamiatniki starinnoi russkoi literatury 4 (St Petersburg, 1862), 175. In another version of the same life: Biashe zhe pristavnik delu muzh narochit itnenem loann... (Dimitrii. Kniga zhitii sviatykh. Mesiats tnai. 23 main [Kiev, 1700]); see also N.N. Voronin, "U istokov russkogo natsional'nogo zodchestva", Ezhegodnik Institute! istorii iskusstv, 1952 (Moscow, 1952), 263. On the term pristavnik; see Sreznevskii, Materialy 2 (1902), col. 1459. 30 The architect lakov is also mentioned in some works, such as E.V. Mikhailovskii, I.V. Il'enko, Riazan', Kashnov (Moscow, 1969), 36. This is a misunderstanding. The mark on a brick "lakov tv ..." meant, of course, that lakov was a plinthos maker and not an architect; see this text, p. 35. The work of Kievan architects was never described by the term tvoriti. 31 The trend towards a division of the functions of architect and bricklayer in West European architecture manifests itself mainly from the thirteenth century. The French preacher and writer Nicholas de Biar, thirteenth century, wrote with surprise that: "It became a custom that at large-scale developments there was a principal master who supervised work 'with words' and very seldom (if ever) used his hands in building". The master gives orders "holding in his hands a measuring rod and gloves"; T. Frisch, Gothic Art, 1140-C.1450. Sources and Documents (New Jersey, 1971), 55. 26

SIZE AND STRUCTURE OF BUILDING TEAMS

201

in one team, whose 'signature' was somewhat different.32 However, both these masters were developing the ideas begun in the Church of the Archangel Michael probably because they had started working as apprentices or assistants to the Polotsk architect, who then moved to Smolensk and built this church. West European literature contains many references to the existence in the Middle Ages of families, where the profession of architect was handed down from father to son.33 There is, however, no evidence for such a practice in Russia. The bulk of a building team must have been made up of bricklayers, i.e. the masters who laid the foundations and built the brick or stone walls and vaults. Based on studies of the monumental architecture of medieval Smolensk, we can attempt to calculate the number of bricklayers working on a church. For example, the walls of one of the largest buildings in Smolensk, the church on the Protoka, were built no more than 5 m high in one season. The height of brickwork laid by one bricklayer in a day was about 60 cm. Hence, a sector 1 sazhen' [about 2.13 m] long could be built to a height of 5 m by one bricklayer in eight working days. Since the building season was about 120 working days, each bricklayer could lay approximately 15 sectors in one season. The total sum of these sectors will, thus, make up the part of the building which one bricklayer could lay in one season. There are about 15 such sections in the church on the Protoka. Hence, to raise the brickwork to a height of 5 m, i.e. the height of a season's brickwork for the whole building, 15 or 16 bricklayers must have worked to this level of productivity. If this were so, then the brickwork could have been completed in four seasons. The accuracy of these calculations is, of course, only approximate. Nevertheless, it enables us to estimate, however roughly, the number of bricklayers who put up one of the largest monuments of medieval Smolensk. In the white-stone construction of Galich and Vladimir-Suzdal' the masonry was apparently built by the same masters who cut and dressed the stone. Cutting stone is a very laborious task.34 Therefore these teams probably contained more bricklayers (or, rather, stone-cutters, called kamen 'nitsi in the chronicles)35 than in those occupied in brick construction. Taking as a basis the calculations made by N.N. Voronin for the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin on the NeiT, it seems that dressing the stone 32

P.A. Rappoport, "Zodchie i stroiteli drevnego Smolenska", Drevniaia Rus' i slaviane (Moscow, 1978), 406. 33 M.S. Briggs, The Architect in History (Oxford, 1927), 86. 34 Not without reason, Daniil Zatochnik in his Slovo uses a picturesque proverb: "It is better to cut stone than to teach an ill-natured wife". This phrase is cited by Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1,328. 35 "Ipat'evskaia letopis1", PSRL 2,598, under year 6683 (1175).

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BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

for this church would have taken more than 7,000 man-days.36 To accomplish this work in two seasons, no fewer than 30 masons would have been needed. Apart from the bricklayers or masons, the team must have included one or two carpenters to construct the scaffolding, curved pieces and other wooden structures. Finally, in the teams working in brick, there must have been a group of masters manufacturing plinthoi,37 both those who moulded and fired the bricks. The moulding need have required only 2-3 men. The firing probably required few workers too, since several kilns could have been operated by the same people, providing that the process of brick firing was not started on the same day in each kiln: the same people could also have operated the lime kilns.38 The full list of specialists needed in a building team is still impossible to compile. The manufacture of window glass or lead sheets for roofing was probably not within the competence of the team, since these complicated tasks were not directly connected with the building process. In this case the glass for windows and lead sheets would have been obtained from outside.39 It is not clear how the manufacture of the glazed ceramic tiles used to cover floors was organized. The firing of these tiles could have been done by the brick makers, but at the same time the manufacture of the glaze was closely connected with the production of glass bracelets and other glassware. The fresco painters and mosaic artists clearly did not form part of the building team either. They apparently formed independent organizations and had teams of their own. These worked independently of the builders and their work did not always coincide. Therefore, one team of builders erected the Cathedral of St Sophia in Kiev and then started building the Cathedral of St Sophia in Novgorod, but the mosaicists who worked in Kiev did not move on to Novgorod. In Smolensk, to judge from the complete coincidence of ornamental motifs, the same team of painters painted the wall paintings in the church on the Protoka and in the church on Voskresenskaia Hill, though these two churches were built by different builders.40 The fact that these painters were not in the building team is confirmed by 36

Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1,325. The term plinthos maker (plinfotvoritel') is known in chronicles only from the fifteenth century; Poppe, Material]/, 51. There is no doubt that this term had appeared much earlier. 38 M.N. Tikhomirov, Drevnerusskiegoroda (Moscow, 1956), 85, suggested that in Kievan Russia there were no specialist plinthos makers and the potters who manufactured earthenware also fired bricks. The presence of the term plinfotvoritel' as well as of special kilns for brick firing makes this suggestion unacceptable. 39 It has been proposed that the building team did not include potters making 'resonators'; see V.I. Staviskii, A.P. Kaliuk, "O proizvodstve golosnikov v Kieve v kontse X-XII vv.", Aktual'nye problemy istoriko-arkheologicheskikh issledovanii. Tezisy dokladov (Kiev, 1987), 153. 40 N.N. Voronin, Smolenskaia zhivopis' XII-XIII vekov (Moscow, 1977); see, for example, figs 36 & 62. 37

SIZE AND STRUCTURE OF BUILDING TEAMS

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the fact that among the churches built by these builders, some were painted and others remained unpainted. On the other hand, there are examples when the work of the painters had been coordinated in advance with the builders. For instance, in the Church of St George in Staraia Ladoga, there was originally no lower window in the southern apse, in order to leave space for a large painting of the Miracle of St George. The existence of independent teams of mosaic workers is also recorded in Byzantium. It is known that in the eighth century, the Byzantine emperor sent to the Umayyad caliph a team of master mosaic workers (ten men) and a supply of smalt to decorate the mosques in Medina and Damascus, which had been built not by the Byzantines, but by local craftsmen.41 Thus the available evidence makes it possible to determine approximately the complement of a building team and the number of craftsmen, and it would seem that it consisted of 20-30 and maybe 40 specialists.42 In addition, a considerable number of assistants took part in the construction, although they were probably not members of the team and were recruited anew for each project. Judging by special construction techniques and later analogies, the number of such assistants was usually much greater than the number of members.43 Building teams usually worked with a full complement of craftsmen in all specialities. When transferring to another town, the whole group usually moved as one. Therefore, in the Cathedrals of St Sophia in Novgorod and Polotsk built by the teams of Kievan builders, both the overall scheme of the composition and its details, including the system of brick moulding, coincide with that at St Sophia, Kiev. Of course, this did not stop the visiting builders from substantially changing their designs, adapting themselves to local conditions or using local building materials. The Kievan builders in the early twelfth century built the great katholikon of the monastery at Bel'chitsa in Polotsk in total accord with the Kievan tradition of building.44 The same took place with the Chernigov masters in Riazan', and with the Pereiaslavl' team, which moved to Volynia in the mid-twelfth century.45 The Byzantine builders coming to Russia also had a full 41

H. Gibb, "Arab-Byzantine relations under the Umayyad caliphate", OOP 12 (1958), 229. It appears that the structure of West European medieval building teams was similar: in 1483, one included the leader, his assistant, a blacksmith, a carpenter and 13 masters, called 'fabriceri', presumably bricklayers, i.e. 17 people in total; see Z. Swiechowski, "Czy istniary strzechy budowlane?", Przeglad Historyczny 54 (Warsaw, 1963), 666. 43 In 1253, at the beginning of the erection of Westminster Cathedral (England), a minimum of 100 builders were present, 47 of them being masons; see L.F. Salzman, Building in England down to 1540 (Oxford, 1952), 35. 44 P.A. Rappoport, "Polotskoe zodchestvo XII veka", SA (1980), no. 3,157. 45 P.A. Rappoport, "'Staraia kafedra' v okrestnostiakh Vladimira-Volynskogo", SA (1977), no. 4, 265; and "Rol' pamiatnikov arkhitektury v izuchenii istorii drevnerusskikh gorodov", Geselhcliaft und Kultur Russlands im friihen Mittelalter (Halle, 1981), 199. 42

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BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

complement of specialists. Sometimes, quite probably, they could not have had a full team and must have taken on local assistants for a large-scale building, but even then they had their own masters in all necessary specialities. Such was the case in Kiev in the 1030s, when a Byzantine team embarked on a large-scale monumental development and the same took place when Byzantine builders came in the late eleventh century to Chernigov and Pereiaslavl1, and in the first half of the twelfth century to Vitebsk. Sometimes the building teams did not move in their entirety, but sent only some of their masters to another town. It seems that this was possible when the group was large enough; it could be divided and still guarantee the erection of buildings in both towns. The part of the team which left represented an independent and complete unit, with masters in all specialities, although probably in small numbers. This was evidently the case in the mid-twelfth century, when the Chernigov masters embarked on a development in Smolensk46 and the Galich masters on one in Suzdal'.47 This also occurred at the end of the twelfth century, when the Smolensk masters were building in Riazan1.48 However, there were cases when a team left without a full complement, taking advantage of the fact that the town to which they were moving had builders of its own. In the early thirteenth century builders came from Smolensk to Novgorod to build the Church of St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa, but this unit had no plinthos makers. Although the development closely copied the Smolensk pattern, the bricks for the church were of the Novgorod type. The Smolensk bricklayers only worked in Novgorod for one season and then returned to Smolensk; and in the second season the brickwork was made by Novgorod craftsmen, though still headed by a Smolensk architect.49 The cessation of monumental building in Polotsk at the end of the twelfth century released local masters and the team there disintegrated. The Polotsk architect then started a project in Smolensk, the Church of the Archangel Michael,50 the Polotsk bricklayers built the Church of Sts Peter 46

Voronin & Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smolenska, 385. O.M. loannisian, "O rannem etape razvitiia galitskogo zodchestva", KSIA164, (1981), 41. 48 Voronin & Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smolenska, 358. 49 Voronin & Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smolenska, 353. 50 It is interesting that in the second building season the Polotsk bricklayers worked together with the Polotsk architect. This is illustrated by a strip of brickwork in recessed-brick technique. It is clear that this is not a decorative technique, but a particular style which prevailed in the architecture of Polotsk at that time. Thus, there are grounds for believing that the strip of brickwork in recessed-brick technique points to the participation of the Polotsk bricklayers in erecting the Church of the Archangel Michael in Smolensk. The Polotsk bricklayers did not work there for a long time, since the height of the strip of brickwork is only about 2 m, i.e. even less than the normal height of a season's brickwork; see S.S. Pod"iapol'skii, "Tserkov' arkhangela Mikhaila", Voronin & Rappoport, Zodchestvo Smolenska, 175. 47

SIZE AND STRUCTURE OF BUILDING TEAMS

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and Paul on Sinich'ia Hill in Novgorod and traces of the activity of Polotsk brickmakers have also been found in Grodno.51 It should be noted that the brickmakers were often separated from the main body of the building team. This can be seen when comparing the system of brick moulding, which shows the methods of the plinthos makers, with the system of brickwork, which shows the traditions of the master bricklayers. For example, when in 1139 the Kiev builders moved to Polotsk, the brickmakers came from Chernigov and not from Kiev. The organization of a building team in Grodno in the 1180s was connected with the arrival there of a group of bricklayers from Volynia, although the plinthos makers came from Polotsk and not Volynia. There are cases when construction in a town ceased and the majority of a building team left for elsewhere. The plinthos makers, however, remained, perhaps working as potters, since the brick kilns could easily be used to fire large vessels. The plinthos makers would then rejoin the building team when the builders returned to the town.52 The leading master builders or architects were evidently closely connected with their teams. Thus in buildings constructed by one team, we see a distinct set of architectural forms, characteristic of the work of the master leading the team. However, in projects undertaken in different areas, the architects worked with their own team only when there were no local builders. This situation did not prevail everywhere: there are cases when a whole team moved, but there are also many other cases when only the master builder moved and took charge of the local building team. For example, the Katholikon of the Dormition at the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev was built by a local, Kievan team, but it was headed by architects from Constantinople (according to the Paterikon there were four architects). The Church of the Archangel Michael in Smolensk was built by Smolensk masters, except in the second season, when Polotsk bricklayers worked on the walls, with an architect from Polotsk in charge. Similarly, local Kievan masters erected the church on the Voznesenskii Slope under the direction of a Smolensk architect, whilst Novgorod masters put up the katholikon at Mirozh in Pskov, under the leadership of a Greek architect. A substantial change in the development of Vladimir-Suzdal' architecture is connected with the arrival in the mid-twelfth century of masters sent by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, although there were evidently only architects and sculptors, since there were no substantial changes in the masonry technique. -151 P.A. Rappoport, "Novye dannye ob arkhitekture drevnego Grodno", Drevnerusskoe iskusstvo (Moscow, 1988), 69. 52 P. A. Rappoport, "'Plinfotvoriteli' Drevnei Rusi", Tezisy istoriko-arkheologicheskogo seminara 'Chernigov i ego okruga' (Chernigov, 1988), 13.

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It should be mentioned that the building teams of pre-Mongol Russia mainly erected religious buildings, i.e. churches, and only occasionally palaces. When they built stone fortress walls, for example, at Ladoga, Izborsk, Bogoliubovo and the citadel in Vladimir, quite different, more primitive techniques were used, which made it possible to build faster and with fewer skilled craftsmen. Later on, in the fourteenth and especially in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when fortress walls began to be built of dressed stone or brick, a considerably greater number of builders was needed.53 A study of the building materials and construction of the monuments makes it possible to determine the 'signature' of the building teams and to establish the master responsible for a given monument. The determination of the signature of each team, along with an analysis of the architectural forms and historical situation, makes it possible to draw up a plan of the functioning and movements of these builders in the pre-Mongol period (fig. 65). This is a serious step towards an understanding of the real pattern of architectural and building practices in Kievan Russia.

53

So, for example: "the Pskovites hired 300 men and broke ground for a new fortress in Gdov", "Pskovskaia pervaia letopis"', PSRL 4 (St Petersburg, 1848), under year 6939 (1431). The development of the stone Kremlin in Moscow in the 1360s must have taken approximately 1,000,000 man-days; see Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 2, 233. The construction of stone fortresses in adjacent lands in the fourteenth century was also laborious. For example, every day 300 people were occupied in erecting the castle of King Casimir in Vladimir-in-Volynia: Kronika Jam z Czarnkowa (Warsaw, 1905), 25. About 100 bricklayers and 300-400 assistants were occupied in building the walls of Vilnius: Teodora Narbutta pomniejsze pisma historyczne (Wilno, 1856), 195.

18

The social position of the builders

In the works on the history of old Russian architecture little has been written about the role of the architect. This is due, above all, to the scarcity of records about architects and builders.1 The chronicles do contain much information about the building of churches, and also on which prince ordered a church to be built and which bishop consecrated it. They show little interest in information about the actual builders and therefore rarely mention them. We know the names of only four architects for the whole pre-Mongol period, three names are mentioned in chronicles and one in an ecclesiastical source. Instead, it is the patron who is almost always described in the chronicles as: "the builder of the church". It is usually mentioned that the prince: "founded" or "broke ground" for the church; "built" it, or, more rarely, "erected" it. In the Sermon on Law and Grace by Ilarion, it is said of Prince laroslav the Wise that he "built" the Cathedral of St Sophia. Describing the burial of princes in the churches, which they had had built at their command, the chronicler mentions that the prince was buried in the church: "which he himself built", and sometimes "which his father built". Sometimes princesses are also mentioned, and the chronicler writes: "which she built". Similarly, if the patron was not a prince, but a bishop, the chronicler also refers to him as the builder of the church. For example, it is mentioned in the chronicle that the Metropolitan Ephraim "built" the Church of the Archangel Michael in Pereiaslavl', and the Abbot Anton "founded or broke ground" for the katholikon at the Monastery of St Antony in Novgorod. Indeed, in the second half of the twelfth century, the patrons in Novgorod were for the most part not princes, but either the bishop or nobles (boyars), and the chronicle regularly reports that: "the noble ... broke ground or founded... and the church was built". When the chronicle says that: "Fedor Pineshchinits' completed the Church of St Panteleimon",2 it does not mean 1 As early as the late nineteenth century, I.B. Mikhalovskii wrote of the need to study these problems, Zodchie drevnikh i srednikh vekov, (St Petersburg, 1899) 1. 2 Novgorodskaia pervaia letopis' starshego i mladshego izvodov (Moscow-Leningrad, 1950), 50, under year 6715 (1207).

207

208

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

that Fedor was the architect, but its patron. The same is true of the entry stating that the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb in Novgorod: "was started by Sadko Sytinits".3 One exception is the report which states that during the construction of the Cathedral of St George in lur'ev-Pol'skii, Prince Sviatoslav: "was a master himself'.4 It seems that here the chronicler noted the more than usual active participation of the prince in the construction of the church. It is also not impossible that Prince Sviatoslav was genuinely interested in architecture and even supervised the work of the architect in some way, at least in selecting the plan of the building or its system of decoration. Thus, Kievan chronicles give little information about the builders of churches, but a fair amount about their patrons, who were usually princes.5 The initiation of building works in any large town, or the formation there of a team of builders often coincided with the reign of a powerful prince, and also with the construction of the fortress. In Smolensk in the mid-twelfth century, this was connected with the reign of Prince Rostislav; in Suzdal', with the reign of lurii Dolgorukii; and in Vladimir-in-Volynia with the reign of Mstislav Iziaslavich; the German Emperor Frederick sent builders to Vladimir at the request of Prince Andrei Bogoliubskii. Bearing this information in mind, as well as the numerous records in the chronicles about the building of churches by princes, it can be concluded that monumental construction in Russia was primarily determined by princely initiatives and that it corresponded to the prestige of the dynasty ruling in that land, rather than to the economic importance of the town. The connection of building teams with princely projects is further illustrated by the fact that the movement of master builders from one land to another usually coincided not with commercial or economic relationships, but with dynastic ones. Thus, the arrival of the Galich builders in Suzdal' was possible because of the military alliance of lurii Dolgorukii with the Galich prince, Vladimir, the alliance being strengthened through a dynastic marriage. Polotsk obtained a team of builders from Kiev after Prince Vsevolod Ol'govich took the Kievan throne in 1139 from the family of Vladimir Monomakh, who had been enemies of the Polotsk princes; he married his son to the daughter of Prince Vasil'ko of Polotsk. Only once is it mentioned in a chronicle that a new development in a town was started on the initiative of a bishop and not that of the prince; this was a project of Metropolitan Ephraim in Pereiaslavl' in the late eleventh century. However, there were cases when a building team organized by a prince, then carried out the orders of a bishop. For example, 3

Novgorodskaia pervaia letopis', 32, under year 6675 (1167). "Tverskaia letopis'", PSRL 15 (St Petersburg, 1863), 355, under year 6738 (1230). 5 For the importance of the role of the patron in the development of West European churches; see P. du Colombier, Les chantiers des cathedrales (Paris, 1953), 26. 4

SOCIAL POSITION OF BUILDERS

209

after the death of Prince Vsevolod, Bishop Nifont used the prince's builders to put up the katholikon at Mirozh and then transferred the team to Ladoga to erect the Church of St Clement. According to the chronicle, Prince Andrei Bogoliubskii obtained "masters from all lands", so at that time it was the prince's builders working in Vladimir.6 But 30 years later, in the same town, the builders were people "from the servants of the Theotokos", i.e. builders attached to the monastery or bishop.7 The chronicle says that Bishop loann had masters not only: "from the servants of the Theotokos", but also "of his own".8 The impression given is that development in Vladimir at that time was carried out by both Prince Vsevolod and Bishop loann. In 1194 the prince put up the stone fortress in the citadel, and in 1196 the bishop erected the Gate church of Sts Joachim and Anna there. The construction of the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at the Monastery of St Euphrosyne in Polotsk was made at the order of the princess, but the building team was, it would seem, from the monastery, since it was headed by the monk loann. It seems, therefore, that projects initiated by princes and bishops were closely connected and realized, as a rule, by the same masters. As a result, it is very difficult to determine who directly controlled the teams: most of them were evidently controlled by the prince, but some by the Church or even by a monastery. At times such teams probably existed simultaneously. In Smolensk in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries two were at work, one apparently belonging to the prince and one to the bishop.9 Written sources give some indication of the social position of the master builders. For instance, the master builder Petr-Miloneg is called "a friend" of Prince Riurik Rostislavich.10 The Novgorod architect Korov lakovich (or Korov lakovlich according to another chronicle) appears with his patronymic, which for that period testifies to a relatively high social position. The Polotsk architect loann was a monk, who was addressed by Princess Euphrosyne as "holy father". These few records show that the master builders could belong to the entourage of a prince and to monastic circles, while in Novgorod in the second half of the twelfth century they were free craftsmen. In any case, the position of the master builder must have been sufficiently honoured, otherwise the chronicler who described the building of the cathedral in lur'ev-Pol'skii, would not write that Prince Sviatoslav "was a master himself". 6

Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1,329. Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1,468. 8 "Lavrentievskaia letopis'", PSRL 1, 411; Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1, 465. 9 P.A. Rappoport, "Zodchie i stroiteli drevnego Smolenska", Drevniaia Rus' i slaviane (Moscow, 1978), 404. 10 Ipat'evskaia letopis', PSRL 2, 711, under year 6707 (1199). 7

210

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

Unfortunately, we cannot establish the social status of secular building teams with confidence, i.e. whether they were free craftsmen or in a feudally dependent relationship. In any case, there is no doubt that the builders did not work on commission, but served a given prince's court. If the building teams had worked on the 'open market', they would probably have consisted of only those masters with building specialities and would not have included the plinthos makers, since the bricks could be bought in from outside along with other building materials, such as glass or lead. Princes' marks, found on bricks as well as on the stonework of the monuments of Vladimir-Suzdal', confirm to some extent the feudal dependence of the builders.11 The Novgorod builders of the second half of the twelfth and early thirteenth century held a special position in pre-Mongol Russia. They erected buildings to the order of boyars, churchmen, and only sometimes for princes. In Novgorod at that time small-scale production developed, specialized producers emerged and productivity increased.12 Some scholars have suggested that there existed teams of builders for hire.13 It seems that this is the case, although there is literary evidence of the existence of free builders, working on commission and paid in money, only from a later period. In Pskov, in the fourteenth century, there are references to the payment of hired builders as in: "the Pskovites hired masters and paid them 400 roubles; they started to build the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity".14 The sole mention of a monetary payment for builders for an earlier period, is in the Synaxarion account of the construction of the Church of St George in Kiev in the mid-eleventh century. This states that: "there were not enough workers ... and they announced in the marketplace that everyone would receive one nogata [a silver coin of c. 10 g.] per day. And they took on a lot of workers" .15 The point here, evidently, is not the team of builders itself, but its lack of assistants. 11

Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1, 323. It is unlikely that the fact that the Rostov nobles called the inhabitants of Vladimir their slave-masons, indicates the dependent position of builders; this phrase used in the heat of political debate is, surely, a hyperbole: ibid., 324. 12 V.L. lanin, B.A. Kolchin, "Itogi i perspectivy novgorodskoi arkheologii", Arkheologicheskoe izuchenie Novgoroda (Moscow, 1978), 28. 13 L.A. Beliaev, "Arkhitektura drevnei Rusi (konets X-nachalo XIII vv.) po dannym arkheologii", Avtoref. hand. diss. (Moscow, 1975), 16. On the basis of studies on the dimensions of bricks, N.N. Demicheva suggested that in Novgorod, in the last quarter of the twelfth century, the manufacturers of plinthoi left the building team and started working to order: "Issledovanie pamiatnikov novgorodskogo zodchestva Xll-nachalo XIII v. po dannym ob evoliutsii formata kirpicha", SA (1984), no. 1, 223. 14 "Pskovskaia vtoraia letopis'", under year 6873, (1363), Pskovskie letopisi 2 (Moscow—Leningrad, 1955), 27. 15 Pamiatniki drevne-russkoi tserkovno-uchitd'noi literatury 2 (St Petersburg, 1896), part 1,58.

SOCIAL POSITION OF BUILDERS

211

Free building teams could have belonged to professional organizations connected with certain patronymia or regulations.16 However, even so the builders were evidently not grouped into organizations such as craftsmen's guilds, since the complexity of construction and the variety of operations did not favour such an organization.17

16

The lack of information about such organizations does not mean that they had not existed. Experts emphasize that but for the preserved Statute of Prince Vsevolod there would be no information about the Novgorod commercial association, the hundred of St John (Ivanskoe sfo); M.N. Tikhomirov, "Remeslenniki i remeslennye ob"edineniia v Kievskoi Rusi", UchenyezapiskiMGU87 (Moscow, 1946), 31. 17 Analysis of material on the organization of the medieval builders of western Europe has given grounds for the conclusion that the craftsmen corporations of builders were not formed before the fifteenth century; A. Wyrobisz, "Czy istnialy strzechy budowlane?", Przeglpd Historyczny 53 (Warsaw, 1962) 755. However, building organizations with independent jurisdiction were known from the second half of the thirteenth century: J.T. Frazik, "Organizacje architektoniczno-budowlane w Europe w okresie sredniowiecza", Teka komisji urbanistyki i architektury 9 (Krakow, 1975), 142. It was noted that the structures of medieval building organizations, as well as their statutes, were quite different at different countries and in different times: A. Wyrobisz, "Kilka uwag o bractwie kamieniarzy i statucie ratysbonskim z 1459 roku czyli jeszcze o strzechach budowlanych", Przegtpd Historyczny 56 (Warsaw, 1965), 310.

Conclusion

Studies of the construction process in medieval Russia have only recently begun. The available sources are far from being exhausted and the information that can be obtained from studies of the monuments is also far from being fully exploited. Nevertheless, even at the present stage of research, a general outline of the development of one of the most complicated craft industries of a medieval Russian town has been established. In the period from the late tenth to the mid-thirteenth centuries, the Russian construction process developed substantially. At first, the builders of Kievan Russia used Byzantine techniques, since Russia had no traditions of its own in erecting brick and stone buildings. Gradually, local practices developed, adapted to conditions specific to Russia.1 These building traditions were first formed in Kiev and then, gradually, in the other Russian lands. The impact of local conditions, the presence or absence of certain building materials and cultural relations and traditions led to the formation of regional variants and the creation of architectural schools, which differed not only in architectural form, but also in construction technique. In a number of cases both Byzantine and Romanesque master builders came to Russia and naturally brought with them their own construction methods. In most cases the religious and political authority of Kiev made these foreign masters adjust themselves to Russian traditions. As a result, the construction processes of Kievan Russia displays a common basis of method and principle, despite the existence of local schools and styles. Throughout the pre-Mongol period the construction process reveals a trend to the development of more rational building methods. A gradual decrease in safety factors; the rejection of complicated wooden substructures; the continuous grid of ribbon foundations; and the transition to foundations laid without mortar, are all links in one chain in the search for the most economic and least laborious solution. In the different construction 1

P.A. Rappoport, "O roll vizantiiskogo vliianiia v razvitii drevnerusskoi arkhitektury", VizVrem 45 (1984), 185. 212

CONCLUSION

213

centres of Russia these searches were made in different ways, though essentially they all followed very much the same pattern. The most noticeable changes in this respect took place in the second half of the twelfth century and especially the latter part. By this time, the methods of construction were simplified in all the architectural schools. As in most branches of Russian urban craft, large-scale production and standardization, which resulted in simplified production, can be observed. The construction process was also characterized by simplified techniques and sometimes even by a reduction in the stability of the buildings. Nevertheless, this process testifies not to a decrease in the level of development but, on the contrary, to an advance.2 The simplification of the building methods in most cases did not affect the complexity nor the exquisiteness of the architectural forms of the monuments. An exception is the Novgorod area, where forms were markedly simplified. It seems that this was connected with substantial changes in the social order, since in Novgorod architecture, for the first time in the history of Russia, the patrons were not princes or prelates, but nobles. A move towards making the process of construction quicker and cheaper, and so towards a form of mass production, can be seen in all Russian lands, but it is clearest in Novgorod, from about the 1160s or 1170s. The close links between the master builders of the different Russian lands did not become broken when the country became divided into different principalities. On the contrary, in the late twelfth and first third of the thirteenth centuries these bonds grew even closer. Together with the development of local construction methods, Russian architecture became clearly characterized by numerous common features and a tendency towards a unity of style. As well as indicating a common socio-economic and cultural path of development, this testifies to the existence of links between the master builders, that they had contacts and sometimes moved from one land to another. The process of construction was a complex mixture of various phenomena. Here artistry and technology were organically combined, architectural traditions interacted with the patron's will, and foreign influences with local traditions. The complexity and diversity of the construction process reflected many sides of community life. For that reason the study of the construction process is a necessary component of the study of the history and culture of Kievan Russia.

- Rappoport, Zodchestvo drevnei Rusi, 144.

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Index

acoustics, 78 aisles flooring, 145 galleries over, 140 vaulting, 120 alabaster in mortar, 68 in windows (?), 56 alignment churches, see axis, orientation corner vaults, 123—4 altars, 195; positioning of, 161, 162, 164; first stone, 170 barrier, 84 ambulatories, 112, 113, 115, 120, 131, 191 foundations, 104 roof beams, 141 amphorae, used as 'resonators', 79-81 (fig. 43) apses, 120 building of, 177, 191; foundations, 93, 97 (fig. 50), 176 flooring, 145 plans, in Smolensk, 195 platform on third story, 140 roofing, 80, 120 staircases in, 131 arcading, 51, 118, 191 archaeomagnetic dating, 13, 62 arched corbel tables, 47, 48 (fig. 26), 51 arches, 115, 119-27, 166 brick, flush course, 121-2; recessed course, 115, 120-1, 122 on facades, see gables planning of, 166; shaping, 188-9; forms and templates, 189 relieving, 127, 141 shapes, elongated/elliptical, 123, 125; semi-circular, 119, 123, 188; sloping, 122; triangular/pointed, 120, 125; two/three centred, 123, 188

stepped, 125, 127 stone, 114, 120, 122; 'recessed course', 122 ties at springing, 133, 139 architekton, architect, 200 architects Byzantine/Greek, 167, 200, 203-4, 205, 212; not used to Russian snow, 155 Russian, 162, 199-201, 205; named, 200; and planning dimensions, 162, 163, 165-7; role and position of, 207, 209 Western European, 165, 200 n30, 201 arithmetical relationships, in planning churches, 167 artel', team of builders, 193 Asia Minor, building practices, 92 assistants, to master builders, 200, 210 axis of church, longitudinal, 161, 164, 168-9, 170, 174 and pattern of floor tiles, 72 azimuths, of churches, 161, 169-74 balconies, 130, 131 basements, none, 147 semi-basement in palace, 101 bays, vaulting of above/below galleries, 120—1 corner bays, 119-20, 121, 123-4 beams for ceilings, 140-1 supporting galleries, 140 Belgorod (on Dniestr) brick kiln, 26-7, 29 n43 lime kiln, 62, 64 belt, golden, used for measuring, 162, 163, 164 birch bark, wrapped round ties, 140 bishops, as patrons/founders of churches, 207-9 blind arcades, 51, 118, 191

215

216

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

Bolgar, brick kiln, 26 breaking ground for churches, 161-2, 168-75, 181, 207 not same as starting building, 170 not usually in winter, 171, 174 work done, 175 bricklayers gangs, 186-8 master bricklayer, 200 productivity of, 186, 188, 201; courses laid per session, 186-8 teams, characteristics of different, 196, 204-5; number per team, 201 bricklaying, see brickwork bricks always laid smooth side down, 190 external walls, 114 forms, centering boards, 189 pillars, 114-6 (fig. 52) plumb line, 188 scaffolding for, 182-6, 188 brickmakers master brickmaker, 35, 37, 52, 113, 114, 202 team of, 204; number of, 202; separate from rest of building team, 205 working to order (?), 210 n13 brickmaking drying, 7-10; marks during, 7-8; shrinkage, 9—10 firing, 9, 10-30; process, 28-30; temperature, 29; productivity, 30; broken/spoiled bricks, 13, 30, 98, 190; see also kilns moulding, 6-7, 31, 35 season for, 9, 175 bricks, bar type ('Gothic') confused with half-plinthos bricks, 53 firing, 30 use in Russia, 52-3 bricks, plinthos type, 5, 47 broken, use in foundations, 98; in wall filling, 109, 112, 114 colour, 6 composition, 5-6; see clay crushed, as additive in mortar, 66-8; in foundations, 100 economy in use of, 190; more expensive than stone, 109 half-bricks, 47-51; mistaken for bar bricks, 53 in flooring, 146, 190 in roofing, convex to cover domes, 121 names for, 5 number needed for medium-sized church, 30

sizes, 12; decrease in size of, 9-10; standard determined from unfired brick size, 9 n15, 52 n61; use in dating, 13, 51-2, 62 special shapes, 47-51 (figs. 26-30), 190; narrow with rounded ends, for pilasters, 21, 47, 48 (fig. 27), 51, 113—4; ornamental, 51 types, 5, 46-53, 190; problems of classification, 46-7; brickwork and stone (opus mixtum), 109, 111-2, 115-6, 122 bonding, 111, 113-4; between sections of brickwork, 190-1 'box' brickwork, 114 breaks in (double joints), 196-7, 188 courses laid in one session, 186-8 decorative, 51, 111, 115 flush course, 110 (fig. 51), 112-4, 121-2; bonding, 113—4; pointing, 115 headers and stretchers, 113-4, 188 load-bearing sections, 113-4 marks and stamps, see marks plastered on exterior, 111, 113, 115, 116, 192 recessed course, 109-12 (fig. 51), 114, 120, 121, 204 n49; bonding, 111; pointing, 109; with stone, 111-2, 122 see also arches, domes, pendentives, pilasters, pillars, vaults, walls builders, teams of, 193-206 complement, 197-204; assistants, 200, 210; not including painters, 202-3 in different centres, 194-8; characteristics of Smolensk teams, 135, 195-6 mobility of, 193-6, 198 (fig. 65), 203-5 monastic, 209 number and capacity, 197-8 organisation, vertical, 196 patronage of, 207-9 status of, 209-10 working for hire (?), 210 see also master builders building materials, importance of study, 1-2 season, 168, 174-5; first and second, 175-6; time to build a church, 176-9; height of walls per, 187 site, 62, 161, 180-1 Bulgaria, stone and brickwork, 116 see also Madara, Pliska buttresses, 102, 120, 126

INDEX Byzantium, Byzantine architects, 167; in Russia, 155, 203-4, 205, 212 bricks, size, 10 n7; marks, 38 brickwork, 111, 116 building techniques, 212; foundations, 92 exports to Russia, lead (?), 150; marble, 145; mosaic, 85 floor tiles, 69, 73 glass, 84 mosaic, 85, 203 'resonators', 78 see also Constantinople, Greek calendars, Gregorian and Julian, 169, 173 capitals, 117 carpenters, 202 cathedrals, time to build, 176-7 Caucasus, building practices, 92, 162, 167 ceilings brick or stone, see vaults wooden, 119, 140-1 centering boards, 189 ceramics, crushed as additive in mortar, 66 ceremonies breaking ground, 161-2, 164 starting building, 170; during building, 187 n22 chalk, in mortars, 67 chapels, 113, 122 in galleries, 122 side-chapels, 191, 192 charcoal as fuel in kilns, 62; glass furnaces, 85 found in mortar, 67, 68 Chernigov, and region brick kilns, 13, 21, 25 (fig. 14), 26, 28 building practices, brick, 31; brickwork, 111-3; foundations, 93, 98-9 lime pit, 65 teams of builders, 194, 195, 196, 203, 204; brickmakers, 205 Cherson, pottery and tile kiln, 26 citadels (detinets), 84 and churches, 42, 98, 99, 101, 106, 126, 135, 148, 168, 176, 178, 208 and gates, 103, 168, 206, 209 clay for brickmaking, 5-6; kneading/ mixing, 6, 35; moulding, see brickmaking for floor tiles, 76 in foundations, 99

217 in mortars, 66-8; specially fired for tsemianka, 66 on building site, 180 under flooring, 147 cobble-stones, 99, 100 colonettes, in doorways, windows, 128 colour bricks, 6 glass, 82, 84 glazed tiles, 72-3, 76 stone, 54 columns, 117; see semi-columns compass, string, 188 conch, 120 'resonators' in, 80 consecration of churches, dates of, 161-2, 174 Constantinople architects, 205 building practices, 78, 111; foundations, 92 Mangana Palace, 78 copper floor tiles, 147 panels for doors, 144 sheets for roofing, 151, 153, 192 n42; around waterspouts, 155 use in glazing windows, 84 corbel tables, arched, 47, 48 (fig. 26), 51 corbelling, 120, 122 cord, for marking outline of church, 162; of elements in church, 188 corners role in laying out a church, 162, 163, 164 vaults of corner bays, alignment of, 119-20, 121, 123-4 cornices, 127 at eaves, 154, 155 bricks for, 51 stone ('red slate'), 54 see also corbel tables Crimea, pottery and tile kiln, 26 crosses behind altar, 195 cut on stone, 57 in brickwork, 111 on top of dome, 192 crypts, 147 cubit, unit of measurement, 164-5 cupola, 119; see also dome declination, magnetic and solar, 169 decoration, see bricks (shaped), mosaic, painting, pointing, sculpture, stone dimensions of church, determination of, 163, 164-7

218

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

domes, 115, 119-23, 127, 163 base of, 119, 122 brickwork, 115, 120-1; plastered, 121 diameter, 125-6; as basic dimension of church, 163 in vaulting, 121-2 roofing, copper, 151, 153, 192 n42; lead, 149-52 semi-domes, 119, 123 sub-dome space/square, 119, 122, 123, 163, 164; dimensions, 125-6 time to build, 187 doors, 142, 144 doorposts, bricks for, 51 doorways, 127-8, 141, 142, 144, 191 recessed, 128 Romanesque, 128 drawings (plans), of churches, 166-7 drums, of cupola/dome, 84, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125-6 decorated with copper sheets, 153 glass from windows, 84 oval, 125 ties in, 133, 139, 140 n12 druzhina, building team, 193 duration of building season, 175 time to build a church, 176-9 east, orientation of churches to, 161 empirical building practices, 165-6 enamel, 73 n8, 76 entrances, 130, 141, 190-1; see also doorways, porches vaulting of, 127 ethnographic evidence, care in using, 2 facades, see arcading, pilasters, walls (external) keel-shaped elevations, 127 plastered if frescoes inside, 192 trefoil on, 125 tripartite, 127 feast days, of patron saint of church, 161-1,170-4 flagstones, in flooring, 146, 147 flooring, 69-77, 145-8, 192 brick, 146, 190 construction and level of, 147-8 lime/mortar, 146, 196 marble, 69, 145 mosaic, 145-6 stone, flags, 146, 147; 'slate' tiles, 54, 145, 181 tiles, glazed ceramic, 69-73, 145-7; copper, 147 foot, as unit of measurement, 164-5

forms, curved, for making arches, 189 fortresses linked with establishment of a team of builders, 208 stone construction, 206 walls, Izborsk, 206; Staraia Ladoga, 206 foundations, 89-108, 175-6 (figs 45-50) brick, 98, 99; pavement over foundations, 106-7, 175 built up, 105-6 depth, variable,103-5; and depth freezing, 104-5 dry laid, 99, 100, 176, 178, 212 mortar, 89, 98-101, 105; clay used instead, 99; on top of foundations, 106-7 process of construction, 170-1, 175-6; evolution of, 99-101; simplification, 93, 101 settling, 175, 176, 182; settling joints, 190 stone, 89, 92-3, 98-100; move from large stones to cobbles, 100 strip, 92, 101-2, 106 trenches, 89, 105, 106; digging, 170, 175; frames, 181; width and profile, 102-3, 181 wooden substructures/groundsels, 89-98, 212; not preserved if laid dry, 100; placed radially, 93, 97 (fig. 50) frescoes, 130, 178-9, 192 time to complete, 179 frost, freezing and bricklaying, 175 and foundations, 104-5 gables, 120, 123-4, 125, 127, 188, 189 Galich, and region building practices, doorways, 128; foundations, 98; masonry, 56-7, 116-8, 123, 181; mortars, 68 Romanesque influence, 73, 76 team of builders, 194, 197, 204, 208 wooden dwelling, 84 galleries, 115, 118, 124, 140, 191 ledge in wall, at level of, 118 staircases to, 129-32 supported by wooden beams, 140 ties at level of, 133, 135, 139 vaulting, 120–4 gargoyles, 155 gates, monumental Bishop's Gate, Pereiaslavl', 93, 131 brick gate, Chernigov, 150 Golden Gate, Kiev, 89, 131; Vladimir, 131, 132 Prince's Court, Chernigov, 131, 150, 151

INDEX geometry, in planning churches, 164 n20, 167 Georgia, brick sizes, 10 n17 Germany, master builders not from, 199 gilt on copper roofing sheets, 151, 153 on lead sheet, 150 glass composition, Byzantine and Russian, 84 manufacture, 76, 84-5, 202 stained, 84 window, 82-5 (fig. 44), 142; in houses, 82 types and shapes, 82, 84 glassware, manufacture, 84-5 glazes, glazing colours, 72-3 manufacture, 76-7 on brick, 146 on floor tiles, 73-7, 202 gold mosaic, 85 on doors, 144 see also gilt 'golden-domed', 151, 153 golosniki, see 'resonators' Gothic bar bricks, 7 stonework, 57 n14 graffiti, 31, 46, 150, 182 gravel, in mortars, 67 Greek architect, 155 brick mark in, 38 foot, 164, 165 n22 masters, 198 see also Byzantium Grodno, and region building practices, bricks, 7, 31; brickwork, 112-3; foundations, 99, 102-3; tiles on external walls, 72, 113; use of 'resonators', 79, 81 (fig- 43) team of builders, 195, 205; bricklayers, 205 ground breaking of, 161-2, 181; dates of, 168-75 freezing, 104-5 types, 92, 103-5; sampled, 104; see also subsoil ground plan of church, 162-4, 166 groundsels, see foundations (wooden substructures) gutters, 155-7

219 headers and stretchers, 113-4 in flooring, 146 horizon, importance in determining orientation of church, 169, 171, 174 houses, glass windows, 82 Hungary export lead, 150 masonry, 57 lakov, brickmaker, 35, 200 n29 laroslavl', team of builders, 195 inscriptions, 38, 151 interior of church decoration, 178-9 not factor determining dimensions, 163 planning, see dome (sub-dome space) loann, monk and master builder, 200, 209 iron lining on doors, 144 nails, in roofing, 151 spikes, in foundations, 89, 92, 93, 95 (fig. 48); in ties, 139, 140 tie rods, in masonry, 117 lur'ev, team of builders, 195 Izborsk, fortress walls, 206 kaolin, in bricks, 6 keel shape, above vaults, 127 khitrets, architect or carver, 200 Kiev, and region building practices, brick, 7; brickwork, 111-2; foundations, 89-95 (figs 45-8); mortars, 66-7 brick kilns, 12-3, 15 (fig. 3), 21, 28; laroslav's Town, 62, 85 lime kilns, 59-62 (figs 35-6), 64 Podol, 106 teams of builders, 194, 203, 205, 208 walls near the Vydubits Monastery, 199, 200 workshops, glass, 84-5; glazed tiles, 76 kilns, brick operation of, see brickmaking types and origins, 21, 27-8 Belgorod (on Dniestr), 26-7,29 n43 Bolgar, 26 Bulgaria, Madara, 26; Pliska, 27 Chernigov, 13, 26; by Lake Mlynovishche (River Strizhen'), 21, 25 (fig. 14), 28 Kiev, near Church of Tithe, 12-3, 15 (fig. 3), 21, 28; near St Sophia, 13, 21 Polotsk, 28 Saraichik, 26

220

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

kilns, brick continued Smolensk, Mavrinskii Stream (Malaia Rachevka), 13, 26; Protoka, 13-19 (figs 4-9), 25, 26, 28, 29, 30; Churilovskii Gulley (Pushkin St), 20-25 (figs 10-3), 28 Staraia Riazan' (Shatrishche), 10, 28 Staryi Orkhei, 27 Suzdal', 10-2 (fig. 2), 26, 28, 29 see also brickmakers kilns, pottery and tile, 10, 26 different/similar to brick kilns, 28, 202 Cherson, 26 Crimea, 26, 27 Madara (Bulgaria), 26 kilns, lime, 59-65 (figs 35-7) types and operation, 64-5 Belgorod (on Dniestr), 62, 64 Kiev, Irininskaia St., 59-62 (figs 35-6), 64 Staryi Orkhei, 62, 64 Suzdal', near Church of Nativity of Virgin, 62-3 (fig. 37) Wales, 64 kirpich, brick, 5 n2 Kitovras, legendary church builder, 165 komary, vaults, 119 Korov lakovich, master, 199, 200, 209 Ladoga, see Staraia Ladoga laying out church, 162-6; second layout, once foundations laid, 176, 182 pillars, 114-5, 116 (fig. 52) walls, 139, 176 lead confused with tin, 149 gutters/waterspouts (?), 155 sheets, in roofing, 149-52 (fig. 59), 192; decorated, 150; manufacture, 202 sources, 149 use in fixing masonry, 117; window glazing, 84 levelling of site, 161 lime in foundations, 89, 105 in floors, 146, 196, below floors, 147 in mortar, 59-68; percentages, 66-8; misleading analyses, 67 n22, 68n23 manufacture, see kilns (lime) slaking, lime pits, 65,180-1 types, 65; hydraulic properties not considered, 65, 66 limestone for building, 54, 56, 115, 116-7, 123, 147, 181

for making lime, 59, 62, 67; spolia/chippings, 62 lintels, 127, 141 load-bearing brickwork, 113 lokot', cubit, 164-5 Ivan'skii lokot', 165 Madara, brick and tile kilns, 26 maistor, master, 197 n1l marble flooring, imported from Byzantium, 145; working, 181 replaced by glazed tiles, 69 marking out, see laying out marks, on plinthos bricks, 14, 31-46 (figs 15-24), 196 matrices, 6, 31, 34, 35, 37; see also moulds placing, on broad sides, 6, 37-8; on ends, 7, 31-3, 34-6; variable, 6 princely, 31, 35, 38, 210 purpose, 31, 35, 38, 42, 46, 77 typology and terminology, 31 1. mark (znak), 31-9 (figs 15-9); on flat side, 37-9 (figs 18-9); on end, 31-2, 34-6 (fig. 17); frequency, 34-5, 38; number of different marks, 35, 37; Byzantine, 38 2. stamp (kleimo), 38-43 (figs 20-2), 196; positioning and stamping, 42; frequency and purpose, 42 3. marking (metka), 42, 44-6 (figs 23-5); frequency and purpose, 46; 'combing' and graffiti, 46 marks, on other materials floor tiles, princely marks, 69, 77 glass, 84 lead, 150 stone, 57; princely marks, 210 masonry, see brick, stone masons, see stone cutters master, master builder, 197 master builder, 197, 199, 205, 209; see also architect Prince Sviatoslav as master, 208, 209 measurement, units of, 164-5, 167 measuring instruments, 162, 165 mica, in windows, 82 mines, lead, 150 Minsk, building site, 180-1 models, of churches, 166 mortars, 65-8 composition and additives, 66-8, 99; misleading analyses, 67 n22, 68n23 in brickwork, 109, 114; pointing, 109, 114; thickness of joints, 109, 113, 186-7

INDEX mortars continued in flooring, 146; with mosaic inlay, 145 in foundations, 89, 98-101, 105; on top of foundations, 106-7 in stone masonry, 117 mosaic, 85, 130 flooring, 145, 146 workers, 202-3 moulds for bricks (plinthos type), 6-7, 31, 34; and marks, 34, 37 for floor tiles, 76 mramor, marble (?), 145 nl musiia, mosaic, 85 nails, iron, 151 narthex, 130, 190, 191 Nizhnii Novgorod, team of builders, 195 Novgorod, and region building practices, bricks, 51, 204; brickwork, 115, 204; arches and vaults, 122-4; foundations, 93-4, 98, 178; mortars, 67; glass, 82; 'resonators', 80-1 (fig. 43); ties, 135, 139; flooring, 146 patronage, 207-9, 213 smaller, simplified churches, 178 teams of builders, 193-4, 197, 204; status of, 210 time taken to build a church, 178 oak foundations, 89 ties, 140 window frames, 142 olovo, means lead and tin, 149 opus mixtum, 109, 115-6 organisation of building work, see architects, builders orientation of churches to sunrise, 161, 164, 168-75 other factors, 170

painters, 192, 199, 202-3 painting, of church, see frescoes tiles, 74, 76 wooden tie beam, 133 palace buildings, 38, 42, 65, 78, 89,91, 101, 104, 107, 119, 130, 131, 140, 176 foundations, 101, 104, 107, 176 walls (quite thin), 119, 140 wooden ceilings, 119; roofs, 140 patrons, patronage, 163, 166, 170 and planning of churches, 162-3 bishops, 207, 208-9 nobles (boyars), 207-8, 213

221 princes, 161, 208-10; buried in church, 179, 207 saints, 161, 170-4 patterns, of floor tiling, 72-3 pavement, brick, over foundations, 106-7, 175-6; ties in, 135-7 (figs 54-5) pendentives, 119, 120, 123, 125, 126 brickwork, 115, 120, 122 'resonators' in, 80, 125 Pereiaslavl', and region bath house (?), example of secular building, 51, 150 building practices, bricks, 7; brickwork, 111-2; foundations, 93, 96-7 (figs 49-50), 98; mortars, 66-7 circular construction of brick and stone, 85 glass workshops, 85 patronage, 208 teams of builders, 194, 203, 204 Petr, master, 199, 200 Petr Miloneg, master and painter, 199, 200, 209 pilasters, 119, 127, 195 bricks for, 21, 47-51 (figs 28-30), 113-4 brickwork, 113-4, 115, 191 foundations, 102, 107, 176 stone, 117 pillars, 119, 126 foundations, 101-2, 107 brickwork, marking out and laying, 114-6 (fig. 52) masonry, 115 shapes, 119; complex, 141 tied to walls, 133, 135-9 (figs 54-5) wooden section, 141-2 pine, in foundations, 89 pins, to fix scaffolding, 182-6 (figs 63-4) Pinsk, window glass, 82 planks, in scaffolding, 183 planning of churches, 161-7 plans of churches 2 pillar, 126 4 pillar, 119, 190 '6 pillar', 190 pillarless, 126 plaster, plastering exterior walls, 111, 115, 192; incised to imitate masonry, 113, 116 interior walls, 182 used as mortar, 68 vaults, 123, 151 plinf" or plint" = plinthos, brick, 5 plinfotvoritel', brickmaker, 202 nn36-7

222

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

plinthos, 5 Pliska brick kiln, 27 foundations, 93 n5 plumbline, 114 podviazchiki, scaffolding specialists, 183 pointing, 109, 112, 115 Polish, lead stamps, 150 Polotsk, and region brick kiln, 28 building practices, bricks, 7, 31, 38; brickwork, 112, 204 n49; foundations, 99; mortars, 67 patronage, 208-9 teams of builders, 194-5, 196, 204-5, 208; architect, 201, 204; bricklayers, 204; brickmakers, 205 porphyry, in flooring, 54, 145 porches, 191 foundations, 104 side, 141 portals, see doorways potash, 85 pots/jars, local, used as 'resonators', 79-81 (fig. 43), 202 n38 princes as patrons, 161, 208, 210; buried in churches they founded, 179, 207 marks of, 31, 35, 38-9 (figs 18-9), 69, 77, 210 Prince Sviatoslav as 'master', 208, 209 relationship with builders, 207-10 proportions of churches, 165 proportional relationships, 167 Pskov, team of builders, 193- 4, 205, 210 quarries, 54, 56, 181 raindrops, marks in bricks, 7-8 (fig. 1) rainwater, shedding from roofs, 155-7 ratios, in building, 2, 166, 167 relief decoration on tiles, 73, 75 (fig. 42), 76 see sculpture 'resonators', 78-81 (fig. 43), 125, 202 n38 pottery vessels used, 79 purpose (not just acoustic), 78; as decoration, 79 Riazan', see Staraia Riazan' ring of dome/drum, 119, 122, 123 rods measuring, 165 tie, 117, 140 Roman foot, 164 'Roman glass', 84

Romanesque architects, 165, 167, 212 building practices, brick, 52; masonry, 57 nl 4,117 doorways, 128 influence on Galich tiles, 77 roofs, roofing, 149-55 (figs 59-60) drainage and gutters, 155-7 (figs 61-2) metal sheets, copper, 151, 153, 192 n42; lead, 149-51 (fig. 59) tiles, ceramic, 153–4 (fig. 60) wooden, 140, 153, 155; rafters under lead sheets, 151 Rostov, team of builders, 195 rubble as filling in walls, 114, 116 below floors, 147 sand in clay for bricks, 5-6 in mortar, 66-8, 99 Saraichik, 26 sawtooth, brick frieze, 51 sandstone, 54, 56, 111, 147 sazhen', unit of measurement, 164 scaffolding, 182-6 (figs 63-4), 192 for painters, 192 height of stages, 183, 186 specialists, 183 schools of architecture, see Chernigov, Galich, Grodno, Kiev, Novgorod, Pereiaslavl', Polotsk, Smolensk, Vladimir-Suzdal', Vladimir-inVolynia sculptors, 205 sculpture, 117, 155-7, 166 season, for building, 168-76 semi-columns engaged on facade, 47, 48 (fig. 27), 51, 113-4; see also pilasters stone, reuse in lime kiln, 62 settling, 133, 148 foundations, 175, 176, 182, 190 joints in walls, 190 shale, pyrophyllite (red slate), 54, 130, 145, 181 with mosaic inlay, 145 shrinkage of bricks, drying and firing, 9-10 sills, door, 148 Simon (Shimon), Varangian earl, belt used for measuring, 162 simplification of building plans and practice, 178, 212-3; foundations, 93, 101 site, building, 62, 161, 180-1 slate, see shale

INDEX smalt in flooring, 145 manufacture, 76, 85 Smolensk, and region brick kilns, 13-26, 28-30 building practices, bricks, 7, 31, 34-5, 38; foundations, 93, 99; mortars, 67; raised floor levels, 148; use of ties, 135 painters, 202-3 patronage, 208 teams of builders, 194-5, 204, 205; characteristics of different teams, 135, 195-6; architects, 200-1, 205; number of bricklayers, 201 snow, on roofs, 155 soil, depth of freezng, 104-5 spans cross vaults, 121 interiors of churches, 125-7 spandrels, 125 spikes, iron, to fix wooden ties, 89, 92, 93, 95 (fig. 48), 139, 140 squinches, 123, 126 stained glass, 84 staircases, 129-32 in towers, spiral, 129-30, 131; foundations, 130 in walls, 130-2 marking out slope, 188 roofing and vaulting, 131-2, 141; templates for, 189 steps, 130, 132 stamps for marking bricks, 42; see also marks on glass, 84 on lead, 150 Staraia Ladoga fortress walls, 206 team of builders, 193-4 Staraia Riazan', and region brick kiln, 10, 28 building practices, bricks, 31; brickwork, 112; window glass, 82 teams of builders, 195, 203, 204 Staryi Orkhei brick kiln, 27 lime kiln, 62, 64 steps in staircases, 130, 132 up to church, 148 stone, 54-8 (figs 31-4) carved, 117, 155-7 (figs 61-2), 166 decorative use of, 54, 113, 180-1 marks on, 57, 210

223

masonry, 115-7; plastered on exterior, 115, 117; stone and brick, 109, 111-2, 115-6, 122 working and dressing, 54, 57-8 (figs 33-4), 116-7, 181; tools for, 57 types and sources, 54, 56-7; see also limestone, marble, porphyry, sandstone, shale, tufa use of, see arches, flooring, foundations, gutters, vaults, walls stone cutters and masons, 57 n14,199, 201-2; carver, 200; number required for a church, 202 stucco, 113 structural factors in building, 78-9, 104, 113-4, 120 n6, 123, 124 nl7, 139, 166 subsoil, and foundations, 103—4 sunrise, in orientation of churches, 161, 164-75 Suzdal' brick kiln, 10-2 (fig. 2), 26, 28, 29 lime kiln, 62-3 (fig. 37) patronage, 208 see also Vladimir-Suzdal' svod, vault, 119 templates for arches, 189 ties used as template for walls, 139 terem, palace, 38, 42; see also palace buildings thrust, lateral, 120 n6 of vaults, 124 n17; counteracted by towers, 139 ties, iron/lead, in masonry, 117, 140 ties, wooden, 133-40 (figs 53-6), 142, 196 around drum, 133, 139 as template for layout of walls, 139 painted, 133 supporting forms for arches, 189 tiles, floor, 69-77 (figs 38-42), 145 colours and patterns, 72-3, 76 manufacture and glazing, 73, 76-7, 202 marks, 69, 77 relief decoration, 73, 75 (fig. 42), 76 tiles, roof, 153-4 (fig. 60) tiles, wall, 69, 72, 113 tin not used in roofing, 149 use in flooring, 147 tombs, 189; see also patrons (buried) trefoil on facade, 125 vault, 127 tsemianka, crushed ceramics used as additive in mortar, 66 tufa, 56-7, 116, 117

224

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

tympanum, 189 of doorway, 127-8, 141 units of measurement, 164-5 upper parts of buildings less well studied, 46, 119-20 'resonators' in, 80 stonework pre-planned, 166 thinner/tapering, 118 vaults, 119-27, 166 construction of, 189; brickwork, 122; time to build, 187 corner, orientation of, 123-4 exterior, rendered with lime plaster, 123, 151; covered with plinthos bricks, 122 false (corbelled), 120, 122 shapes, barrel, 119, 120, 121; cross, 120-2, 123, 124; cylindrical, 121-3, 124, 127, 131-2, 189; domical, 121-2; semi-cylindrical, 120, 121, 124; trefoil, 127; triangular, 120-1 stepped, over staircases, 131-2 stone masonry, 120, 122-3, 125 vertical dimensions of churches, planning, 163, 164, 166 Vitebsk brickwork and masonry, 116 team of builders, 204 Vladimir-in-Volynia, and region building practices, foundations, 98; brickwork, 112 patronage, 208 teams of builders, 194, 203; bricklayers, 205 Vladimir-Suzdal' region building practices, foundations, 98, 103; masonry of walls, 116-8; arches and vaults, 123, 124; use of ties, 139; doorways, 128; staircases, 131 patronage of, 209 planning of churches, 98, 103 stone working, 56-7, 117, 181, 200-1; carving, 117, 166 teams of builders, 194, 195, 197, 204; from West, 205, 208; number of masons, 201 see also Suzdal' Volkovysk building site, 65, 180 window glass, 82 Volynia, see Vladimir-in-Volynia Wales, lime kiln, 64

walls brickwork, flush/recessed course, 109-15 (fig. 51); with stone, 109-14; amount laid per season, 187; per day, 188; whole thickness laid simultaneously, 114, 183, 186 interior packed with brick/stone, 109, 112, 114, 116; layered, 114 laying out, 139, 176; see also laying out scaffolding for, 182-6, 192 stone, 115-8, 206; holes cut for scaffolding pins,185-6 (fig. 64) wooden ties, 133-40 (figs 53-6) walls, external determine size of church, 163 finished off and decorated before next section built on, 191-2 plastered, 111, 113, 115, 117, 191; whitewashed, 149 tiles on, 72, 113 see also facades walls, internal not tiled (?), 69, 72 see also frescoes water spouts, 155 weight of building and foundations, 104 lighter stone in vaults, 123 'resonators' to reduce weight, 78-80 Western Europe building practices, bricks, 52-3; laying out a building, 162 teams of builders, 203 nn41-2; architects, 165, 200 n30, 201 see also Gothic, Romanesque whitewash, 149 windows frames, wooden, 82, 142-3 (figs 57-8) jambs, 128 glass, 82-5 (fig. 44), 142 mica, 82 openings, bricks for, 37; slit, 127; single-arched, 128; templates for, 189; ties across, 133, 139, 142 Romanesque, 128 winter breaking ground in, 171-4 for foundations to settle, 175 n6 wood as fuel, 28 in buildings, dwellings, 82; foundations, 89-98; ties in walls, 133-40; forms for arches, 189 roofing, 140-1, 153; gutters, 153 steps, 132, 148 types of, 89, 140, 142 see also doors, scaffolding, windows

INDEX written sources for medieval Russian architecture scarcity of, 2, 207 on founding/laying out churches, 161-2, 168, 170 on length of construction process, 176-9 on patron-architect relationship,

225 207-8 terms for architects/builders, 197, 199-200 zdatel', builder, 199 igzag decoration, on brick, 51 zveno, building gang, 186-7; see also bricklayers

z

226

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA Index of churches and other monuments

The monuments are listed by name in alphabetical order under their respective towns, with their Russian names in transliteration, e.g. Kiev: St Sophia, cathedral, Sofiiskii sobor; Smolensk: St John Chrysostom, church, tserkov' Ivana Bogoslova. Names of streets and squares are given as they were known in 1988. Belgorod (near Kiev) Apostles, church, tserkov' Apostolov, 73, 99,130 Bogoliubovo (10km from Vladimir) complex, including palace, tower, fortress walls and church, 117,123, 128, 131, 132, 139, 140, 191, 206 Intercession of the Virgin, church on the Nerl', tserkov'Pokrova na Nerli, 58, 108, 123, 124, 131, 139, 140, 141, 202 Nativity of the Virgin, church, sobor Rozhdestva Bogoroditsy, 73, 131, 147, 155, 171, 172; see also Bogoliubovo, complex Chernigov (and region) Annunciation, church, tserkov' Blagoveshcheniia, 6, 79, 98,1 07, 146, 172 Sts Boris and Gleb, cathedral, Borisoglebskii sobor, 44, 46, 47, 93, 104, 112, 113, 121, 122, 124, 130, 131, 146 Elets Monastery, Eletskii monastyr' Dormition, katholikon, Uspenskii sobor, 84, 93, 102, 104, 106, 107, 112, 113, 121, 122, 124, 130,131, 133, 182, .190 palace, terem, 65 Prince's Court, Kniazheskii dvor, gate, 131, 150, 151 Prophet Elijah, church, II 'inskaia tserkov', 112, 113, 126, 140 St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa, church, Piatnitskaiatserkov', 79, 99, 106, 114, 125, 130, 132, 135, 147, 188 Severianskaia Street, church on, tserkov' na Severianskoi ulitse, 72, 101 Transfiguration of the Saviour, cathedral, Spasskii sobor, 93, 105, 111, 115, 120, 126, 129, 140, 145, 171, 172, 181 seee also Novgorod-Severskii, Putivl', Trubchevsk Galich (and region) Dormition, cathedral, Uspenskii sobor, 56, 68, 101, 126, 130, 139 St Panteleimon, church, tserkov' Panteleimona, 57, 102, 182, 183, 185, 186 quatrefoil church, 'Polygon', 'Poligon', 181

Transfiguration of the Saviour, church, tserkov' Spasa, 58, 101, 102, 103, 150 see also Peremyshl', Vasiliev, Zvenigorod-Galitskii Grodno (and region) Sts Boris and Gleb, church at Kolozha, tserkov' Borisoglebskaia na Kolozhe (Kolozhskaia), 79, 114, 116, 119, 131, 132, 141, 182, 186, 189 citadel, detinets, 84 lower church, nizhniaia tserkov', 79, 81, 84, 114, 131, 146 palace, terem, 104, 107, 176 see also Novogrudok, Volkovysk laroslavl' Transfiguration of the Saviour, katholikon, Spasskii sobor, 100, 106 lur'ev-Pol'skii St George, cathedral, Georgievskii sobor, 103, 117, 127, 177, 208, 209 Kanev St George, church, tserkov' Georgiia, 112, 121, 130, 168 Kholm (now Helm, Poland) St John Chrysostom, church, tserkov' Ivana, 147 Kideksha (4km from Suzdal') Sts Boris and Gleb, church, Borisoglebskaia tserkov', 57, 103 Kiev (and region) Archangel Michael, 'Golden-Domed' monastery, Mikhailovskii-Zlatoverkhii monastyr' Archangel Michael (also known as 'Golden-Domed'), katholikon, sobor Arkhangela Mikhaila, 129, 151, 168, 177 Caves, monastery, Pecherskii monastyr' baptistery, 133 Dormition, katholikon, Uspenskii sobor, 46, 47, 59, 77, 80, 81, 85, 121, 123, 126, 133, 145, 162, 163, 164, 177, 187, 199, 200, 205

INDEX gate church, nadvratnaia tserkov', 80 St Cyril, church, Kirillovskaia tserkov',47, 48, 98, 102, 107, 112, 121, 122, 124, 126, 130, 131, 135, 140, 142, 146, 199 Dormition of the Virgin Tirogoshchaia', church in the Podol, tserkov' Uspeniia Bogoroditsy na Podole, 'PirogoshcMa', 46, 98, 106, 130, 176, 177 Golden Gate, Zolotye vorota, 89, 131 St George, church, tserkov' Georgiia, 92, 210 Gnilets Monastery, Gniletskii monastyr', katholikon, 99 Institute of Arts, church on the campus, tserkov' na usad 'be Khudozhestvennogo Instituta, 80, 93, 94, 95, 105 St Irene, church on the Metropolitans estate, tserkov' Iriny na territorii mitropolich'ei usad'by, 89, 90, 129, 147 Irininskaia Street, unnamed church, tserkov' na Irininskoi ulitse, 62 Nesterovskii Lane, church, tserkov' v Nesterovskom pereulke, 100 Rotunda, Rotonda, 53, 99 St Sophia, cathedral, Sofiiskii sobor, 13, 62, 69, 73, 81, 84, 85, 89, 105, 107, 120, 126, 129, 130, 131, 133, 142, 145, 151, 177, 191, 202,203 St Theodore, monastery, Fedorovskii monastyr', katholikon, 177 Tithe, church, Desiatinnaia tserkov', 12, 13, 28, 37, 38, 47, 69, 79, 84, 89, 91, 92, 99, 101, 102, 104, 105, 111, 126, 129, 133, 134, 145, 153, 154, 176, 181,199 palace, close to the, 89, 91, 104 Transfiguration of the Saviour, church at Berestovo, tserkov' Spasa na Berestove, 93, 107, 111, 112,127,129, 141, 191 Virgin of Blachernae, monastery at Klov, Klovskii Bogorodichnyi monastyr', katholikon, 92 Vladimirskaia Street, church, tserkov' na Vladimirskoi ulitse, 93 palace, close to the, 93 Voznesenskii Slope, church, tserkov' na Voznesenskom spuske, 99, 105, 205 Vydubits Monastery, Vydubitskii monastyr', katholikon, 99, 106, 121, 129, 145, 171, 172, 182, 190 see also Belgorod, Kanev, Ovruch, Vyshgorod, Zarubintsy Minsk church, 180, 181

227 Mstislavl' church, 195 Novgorod (and region) Annunciation, church at Gorodishche, tserkov' Blagoveshcheniia na Gorodishche, 93, 115, 129, 171, 172 Annunciation, church on Lake Miachino, tserkov' Blagoveshchenniia na Miachine, 146, 168, 170, 172, 178 St Antony, monastery, Antoniev monastyr' Nativity of the Virgin, katholikon, sobor Rozhdestva Bogoroditsy, 53, 93, 122, 124, 129, 131, 143, 178, 190, 207 Sts Boris and Gleb, church in the citadel, tserkov' Borisa i Gleba, 98, 101, 168, 208 St Cyril, church, tserkov'Kirilla, 168, 178, 200 Dormition, church at Arkazhi, tserkov' Uspeniia v Arkazhakh, 105,178 Dormition, church on the Market, tserkov' Uspeniia na Torgu, 193 Forty Martyrs, church, tserkov' Soroka muchenikov, 178 gate church in the citadel, nadvratnaia tserkov', 168, 178 lur'ev Monastery, lur'ev monastyr' St George, katholikon, Georgievskii sobor, 93, 124, 129, 131, 135, 147, 187, 199, 200 St John, church at Opoki, tserkov' Ivana na Opokakh, 102, 129, 165, 172, 174, 178 Nativity of the Virgin, church at Peryn', tserkov' Rozhdestva Bogoroditsy na Peryni, 105, 146 St Nicholas, cathedral at laroslavis Court, Nikol 'skii sobor na laroslavovom dvorishche (NikoloDvorishchenskii), 124, 130, 187 St Panteleimon, church, tserkov' Panteleimona, 102, 146, 207 St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa, church on the Market, Piatnitskaia tserkov' na Torgu, 51, 99, 125, 135, 150, 148, 153, 204 Sts Peter and Paul, church on Sinich'ia Hill, tserkov' Petra i Pavla na Sinich'ei gore, 112, 139, 140, 142, 147, 168, 170, 172, 187, 205 Resurrection, church, tserkov' Voskreseniia, 178 St Sophia, cathedral, Sofiiskii sobor, 54, 89, 105, 111, 115, 120, 126, 129, 131, 133, 141,1 45, 146, 149, 177, 179, 202, 203

228

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

St Theodore Tyro, church, tserkov' Fedora Tirana, 168 Transfiguration of the Saviour, church on Nereditsa Hill, tserkov'Spasa na Nereditse (Spasa-Nereditsy), 81, 105, 124, 132, 135, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 168, 170, 172, 178, 182, 187, 189 see also Pskov, Staraia Ladoga, Staraia Russa, Valdai Novgorod-Severskii Transfiguration of the Saviour, monastery, Spasskii monastyr', katholikon, 42, 43, 49, 100, 106, 146, 174 Novogrudok Sts Boris and Gleb, church, tserkov' Borisa i Gleba, 112, 116 Ovruch St Basil, church, ['Golden-Domed' Palace Church of Prince Riurik Rostislavich], Zlatoverkvii tserkov' Vasiliia, [dvortsovyi khram Kniazia Riurika Rostislavicha], 54, 79, 81, 98, 113, 128, 130, 135, 140, 151, 153 Pereiaslavl' (now PereiaslavKhmel'nitskii) St Andrew, church, tserkov' Andreia, 93, 96, 105, 171, 172 Archangel Michael, cathedral, sobor Arkhangela MikMla, 8, 53, 83,93, 95, 97, 103, 129, 130, 145, 207 Bishop's Gate, Episkopskie vorota, 93, 131 pillarless church under later Church of the Dormition, besstolpnyi khram pod Uspenskoi tserkov'iu, 98, 171, 172 Resurrection, church, Voskresenskaia tserkov', 98, 101, 130 Soviet Street, church, tserkov' na Sovietskoi ulitse, 98, 99, 127 Square of Reunion, church, tserkov' na ploshchadi Vossoedineniia, 98, 105 Transfiguration of the Saviour, crypt church, Spasskaia tserkov '-usypal 'nitsa, 37, 38, 80, 98, 99, 107, 150, 171, 172, 190 Pereslavl'-Zalesskii Transfiguration of the Saviour, cathedral, Spaso-Preobrazhenskii sobor, 57, 103, 123, 153 Peremyshl' (now Przemysl, Poland) St John the Baptist, church, tserkov' loanna, 56, 147, 171, 172

Polotsk (and region) Bel'chitsa, monastery, Bel 'chitskii monastyr' great katholikon, Bol'shoi sobor, 38, 93, 146, 203 St Euphrosyne, monastery, Evfrosin 'ev monastyr' crypt church, khram-usypal 'nitsa, 67, 99, 135, 146, 147 Transfiguration of the Saviour, church, Spasskaia tserkov', 99, 104, 119, 121, 122, 130, 141, 151, 200, 209 fosse, church, tserkov' na rvu, 37, 39, 105 lower citadel, church, tserkov' na nizhnem zamke, 99,106,135 palace, terem, 38, 101, 140 St Sophia, cathedral, Sofiiskii sobor, 93, 105, 111, 129, 130, 203 see also Minsk, Vitebsk Pskov St Demetrius of Thessaloniki, church, tserkov' Dmitriia Solunskogo, 37, 146 Holy Trinity, cathedral, Troitskii sobor, 210 St John the Baptist, monastery, Ivanovskii monastyr', katholikon, 107, 124, 130, 131, 140, 146, 176 Mirozh Monastery, Mirozhskii monastyr' Transfiguration of the Saviour, katholikon, Spaso-Preobrazhenskii sobor, 155, 205, 209 Putivl' church, 98, 113 Riazan', see Staraia Riazan' Roslavl' church, 195 Rostov Sts Boris and Gleb, church, tserkov' Borisa i Gleba, 149, 177 Dormition, cathedral, Uspenskii sobor, 177 Smolensk (and region) Archangel Michael, church, tserkov' Arkhangela Mikhaila (Svirskaia), 112, 125, 130, 131, 135, 138, 171, 172, 187, 195, 201, 204, 205 Bol'shaia Krasnoflotskaia Street, church, tserkov' na Bol'shoi Krasnoflotskoi ulitse, 38, 40, 101, 104, 146, 148, 190, 195, 196 Churilovka, church on river, tserkov' na reke Churilovke, 101, 148, 171, 172 Dormition, cathedral, Uspenskii sobor, 38, 168

INDEX German Church (Rotunda), Nemetskaia bozhnitsa (Rotonda), 99,189 Holy Trinity, monastery on the River Klovka, Troitskii monastyr' na Klovke, katholikon, 34, 36, 74, 101, 107, 126, 148, 176, 191, 195 St John Chrysostom, church, tserkov' Ivana Bogoslova, 104, 171, 172 Malaia Rachevka, church on river, tserkov' na MaloiRachevke, 50, 99, 107, 146, 148 Okopnoe Cemetery, church, tserkov' na Okopnom kladbishche, 51, 73, 74, 105, 135 , 146, 148, 187, 195, 196 palace, terem, 42, 101, 104, 140 St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa, church, Piatnitskaia tserkov', 100, 101 Perekopnyi Lane, church, tserkov' v Perekopnom pereulke, 33, 99 Sts Peter and Paul, church, tserkov' Petra i Pavla (Petropavlovskaia), 35, 38, 122, 124, 130, 141, 148, 183, 184, 187 pillarless church in the citadel, besstolpnaia tserkov', 42, 126, 135, 148, 176 Protoka, church on the river, sober na Protoke, 13, 14, 30, 32, 35, 37, 38, 41, 51, 76,80,81,105,107,113,114, 135, 146, 148, 151, 152, 187, 191, 195, 196, 201, 202 Smiadyn', monastery, Smiadynskii monastyr' St Basil, church, tserkov' Vasiliia na Smiadyni, 48, 99, 105, 107, 146, 148, 171, 172 Sts Boris and Gleb, katholikon, Borisoglebskii sobor, 37, 38, 42, 71, 72, 93, 101, 102, 107, 114, 130, 135, 136, 137, 171, 172, 176, 181, 194 Transfiguration of the Saviour, monastery at Chernushki, Spasskii monastyr' v Chernushkakh, katholikon, 99, 104, 105, 148 Voskresenskaia Hill, church, tserkov' na Voskresenskoi gore, 49, 107, 148, 177, 202 see also Roslavl' Staraia Ladoga St Clement, church, tserkov' Klimenta, 98, 100, 104, 105, 139, 181, 209 Dormition, katholikon, Uspenskii sobor, 98, 104, 124, 132, 140 St George, church, Georgiovskii tserkov', 104, 107, 122, 124, 139, 140, 142, 203 St Nicholas, monastery, Nikol 'skii Monastyr' katholikon, 53, 104

229 Staraia Riazan' Sts Boris and Gleb, church, Borisoglebskii sobor, 98 Dormition, cathedral, Uspenskii sobor, 35, 98, 101, 130, 171, 172 Nikitino, small pillarless church by village, besstolpnaia tserkov' v Nikitine, 99 Transfiguration of the Saviour, church, Spasskaia tserkov', 99, 102 Staraia Russa Transfiguration of the Saviour, church, tserkov' Spasa, 168, 178 Suzdal' Monomakh's church, (under the later Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin), Monomakhova tserkov', 12, 62, 68, 79 Nativity of the Virgin, cathedral, sobor Rozhdestva Bogoroditsy, 12, 57, 62, 117, 127, 128, 131, 132, 142,177, 188 Trubchevsk church, under existing Church of the Holy Trinity, 79, 81, 98, 100, 113 Turov church, 99, 131 Valdai Virgin of Iberia, monastery, Iverskii monastyr', 175 Vasilev (near Galich) church, 102, 103, 117 Vitebsk Annunciation, church, tserkov' Blagoveshcheniia, 37, 42, 68, 116, 130, 148, 182, 183, 184 Vladimir (and region) citadel and gates, detinets, vorota, 103, 168, 206, 209 St Demetrius, cathedral, Dmitrievskii sobor, 103, 117, 123, 124, 131, 139, 140, 153, 155, 189 Dormition, cathedral, Uspenskii sobor, 98, 103, 123, 126, 131, 139, 140, 147, 149, 150, 151, 153, 155, 157, 168, 170, 172, 177, 178, 199 Dormition, katholikon at the Princess's Convent, Uspenskii sobor Kniaginina monastyria, 168, 177 St George, church, tserkov' Georgiia, 103 Golden Gate, Zolotye vorota, 131, 132

230

BUILDING THE CHURCHES OF KIEVAN RUSSIA

Sts Joachim and Anna, gate church, nadvratnaia tserkov' loakima i Army, 209 Nativity of the Virgin, monastery, Rozhdestvenskii monastyr', katholikon, 103, 155, 156, 168, 177 see also Bogoliubovo, laroslavl', lur'evPol'skii, Kideksha, Pereslavl'Zalesskii, Rostov, Suzdal1 Vladimir-in-Volynia (VladimirVolynskii and region) St Basil, church near the church of, khram bliz Vasil'evskoi tserkvi, 98 Dormition, cathedral, Uspenskii sobor, 37, 122, 124, 126 Old Cathedral, 'Staraia Kafedra', 6, 45, 72, 98, 101 Sadovia Street, pillarless church,

besstolpnaia tserkov' na Sadovoi ulitse, 100, 127 see also Kholm Volkovysk unfinished church, 65, 101, 130, 180, 181 Vyshgorod (near Kiev) Sts Boris and Gleb, church, tserkov' Borisa i Gleba, 93, 102, 126, 129, 130, 199 Zarubintsy (near Kiev) Zarub Monastery, Zarubskii monastyr', great katholikon, 93, 98, 101 Zvenigorod-Galitskii St Paraskeve-Piatnitsa, wooden church, Piatnitskaia tserkov', 72