Church Of Christ Pantocrator, Nesebar
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The Church of Christ Pantocrator ( or ; ) is a medieval
Eastern Orthodox Eastern Orthodoxy, otherwise known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity or Byzantine Christianity, is one of the three main Branches of Christianity, branches of Chalcedonian Christianity, alongside Catholic Church, Catholicism and Protestantism ...
church in the eastern
Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...
n town of
Nesebar Nesebar (often transcribed as Nessebar and sometimes as Nesebur, , pronounced ) is an ancient city and one of the major seaside resorts on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast, located in Burgas Province. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous ...
(medieval Mesembria), on the
Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...
coast of
Burgas Province Burgas (, formerly the Burgas okrug) is a province in southeastern Bulgaria on the southern Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. The province is named after its administrative and industrial centre, the city of Burgas, the fourth biggest town in the countr ...
. Part of the Ancient Nesebar
UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...
World Heritage Site World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an treaty, international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural ...
, the Church of Christ Pantocrator was constructed in the 13th–14th century and is best known for its lavish exterior decoration. The church, today an art gallery, survives largely intact and is among Bulgaria's best preserved churches of the
Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...
.


History

The Church of Christ Pantocrator is usually dated to the late 13th or early 14th century.
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...
scholar Robert G. Ousterhout places its construction in the mid-14th century.
Rough Guides Rough Guides is a travel company that offers tailor-made trips planned and arranged by local travel experts based in destinations around the world. Originally established as a guidebook publisher in 1982, Rough Guides expanded into customized t ...
author Jonathan Bousfield attributes its building to the rule of
Tsar Tsar (; also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar''; ; ; sr-Cyrl-Latn, цар, car) is a title historically used by Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word '' caesar'', which was intended to mean ''emperor'' in the Euro ...
Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria Ivan Alexander (, transliterated ''Ivan Aleksandǎr'', ; original spelling: ІѠАНЪ АЛЄѮАНдРЪ), also sometimes anglicized as John Alexander, ruled as Emperor (''Tsar'') of Bulgaria from 1331 to 1371,Lalkov, ''Rulers of Bulgaria'', pp ...
(r. 1331–1371), though during this time control of Nesebar changed many times between the
Second Bulgarian Empire The Second Bulgarian Empire (; ) was a medieval Bulgarians, Bulgarian state that existed between 1185 and 1422. A successor to the First Bulgarian Empire, it reached the peak of its power under Tsars Kaloyan of Bulgaria, Kaloyan and Ivan Asen II ...
and
Byzantium Byzantium () or Byzantion () was an ancient Greek city in classical antiquity that became known as Constantinople in late antiquity and Istanbul today. The Greek name ''Byzantion'' and its Latinization ''Byzantium'' continued to be used as a n ...
. The church is dedicated to
Christ Pantocrator In Christian iconography, Christ Pantocrator (, ) is a specific depiction of Christ. or , literally 'ruler of all', but usually translated as 'almighty' or 'all-powerful', is derived from one of many names of God in Judaism. The Pantokrator i ...
, a name of God which hails him as the "Ruler of All" in
Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
. The church is located on Mesembria Street, near the entrance to Nesebar's old town. Nowadays, it houses an
art gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The long ...
which exhibits works by Bulgarian artists. As it belongs to the old town of Nesebar, the Church of Christ Pantocrator forms part of the Ancient City of Nesebar UNESCO World Heritage Site and the
100 Tourist Sites of Bulgaria 100 Tourist Sites of Bulgaria is a Bulgarian national Social movement, movement established in 1966 to promote tourism among Bulgaria's most significant cultural, historic, and natural landmarks. As part of this program, sites of cultural and his ...
. Since 1927, it has been under state protection as a "national antiquity", and it was listed among Bulgaria's monuments of culture of national importance in 1964.


Architecture

The church is designed in late
Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...
cross-in-square A cross-in-square or crossed-dome floor plan was the dominant form of church architecture in the middle and late Byzantine Empire. It featured a square centre with an internal structure shaped like a cross, topped by a dome. Architecture Archite ...
style. It was constructed from stones and
brickwork Brickwork is masonry produced by a bricklayer, using bricks and mortar. Typically, rows of bricks called '' courses'' are laid on top of one another to build up a structure such as a brick wall. Bricks may be differentiated from blocks by ...
, a construction technique known as ''
opus mixtum Example of ''opus mixtum'' in the substruction of Brest Castle, France ''Opus mixtum'' (Latin: "mixed work"), or ''opus vagecum'' and ''opus compositum'', was an ancient Roman construction technique. It can consist in a mix of ''opus reticulatu ...
'', and measures , , or , depending on the source. The walls of the church are thick. The colour of the bricks gives the church a ruddy appearance. The church features a
narthex The narthex is an architectural element typical of Early Christian art and architecture, early Christian and Byzantine architecture, Byzantine basilicas and Church architecture, churches consisting of the entrance or Vestibule (architecture), ve ...
and a
cella In Classical architecture, a or naos () is the inner chamber of an ancient Greek or Roman temple. Its enclosure within walls has given rise to extended meanings: of a hermit's or monk's cell, and (since the 17th century) of a biological cell ...
(or "naos") with an essentially rectangular elongated plan. The narthex is small, but has a medieval tomb underneath it. There are four entrances to the church: two accessing the cella from the south and west, and another two for the narthex from the west and north. The
apse In architecture, an apse (: apses; from Latin , 'arch, vault'; from Ancient Greek , , 'arch'; sometimes written apsis; : apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical Vault (architecture), vault or semi-dome, also known as an ' ...
of the church has three small parts which overlap each other to form a single, larger unit. The prothesis and
diaconicon The diaconicon (; Slavonic: ''diakonik'') is, in Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, the name given to a chamber on the south side of the central apse of the church, where the vestments, books, etc., that are used in the Divine Servi ...
of the church are located by the apse. The dome, octagonal in shape, stands prominently on top of the centre of the cella. It was supported by four now-destroyed columns which were located directly beneath it. The integrated
bell tower A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell to ...
has been built on top of the narthex, as was customary in contemporary Byzantine church architecture, and extends from the rectangular main structure. The bell tower was originally rectangular, though it is now partially ruined. It was reached from the south by means of a stone staircase.


Decoration

The best-known feature of the Church of Christ Pantocrator is the rich and colourful decoration of its exterior walls. The most lavishly decorated part of the church is the east side with the apse, and as a whole all sides of the church exhibit different ornamentation. Interchanging strips of three or four rows of bricks and carved stones, which create an optical pattern, are the most basic type of decoration used. Rows of
blind arch A blind arch is an arch found in the wall of a building that has been infilled with solid construction and so cannot serve as a passageway, door or window.''A Dictionary of Architecture''; Fleming, John; Honour, Hugh & Pevsner, Nikolaus (1966) ...
es, four-leaved floral motifs, triangular ornaments, circular
turquoise Turquoise is an opaque, blue-to-green mineral that is a hydrous phosphate of copper and aluminium, with the chemical formula . It is rare and valuable in finer grades and has been prized as a gemstone for millennia due to its hue. The robi ...
ceramics and brick
swastika The swastika (卐 or 卍, ) is a symbol used in various Eurasian religions and cultures, as well as a few Indigenous peoples of Africa, African and Indigenous peoples of the Americas, American cultures. In the Western world, it is widely rec ...
frieze In classical architecture, the frieze is the wide central section of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic order, Ionic or Corinthian order, Corinthian orders, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Patera (architecture), Paterae are also ...
s run along the east wall. Ousterhout likens the appearance of the church's superimposed arcades to an aqueduct; an earlier example of that configuration can be observed in the
Cappadocia Cappadocia (; , from ) is a historical region in Central Anatolia region, Turkey. It is largely in the provinces of Nevşehir, Kayseri, Aksaray, Kırşehir, Sivas and Niğde. Today, the touristic Cappadocia Region is located in Nevşehir ...
n church of
Çanlı Kilise Çanlı Kilise, meaning "bell church" or "church with a bell", is a Byzantine Empire, Byzantine-era ruin site located about 15 km southeast of the city of Aksaray in Turkey. It consists of a large rock-cut settlement surrounding a prominent ...
near
Aksaray Aksaray () is a city in the Central Anatolia region of Turkey. It is the seat of Aksaray Province and Aksaray District.
,
Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...
. The inclusion of swastikas in the decoration is considered unusual and curious to tourists. It is explained by the medieval use of the swastika as a symbol of the Sun. The decoration of the elongated north and south walls includes brick blind arches in the bottom part and a large arch for each wall adjacent to the dome with a columned window in the middle. There are windows above the lower arches of the north and south facade. The dome, which also exhibits a large number of ornamental details and ceramics, features eight windows, one for each of its sides. The medieval
fresco Fresco ( or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting become ...
es which were painted on the interior walls of the church have been only fragmentarily preserved.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Christ Pantocrator, Church of, Nesebar Bulgarian Orthodox churches in Nesebar 13th-century Eastern Orthodox church buildings 14th-century Eastern Orthodox church buildings 13th century in Bulgaria 14th century in Bulgaria Byzantine church buildings Byzantine architecture in Bulgaria Medieval Bulgarian Orthodox church buildings