An African “Constantine” in the Twelfth Century: The Architecture of the Early Zagwe Dynasty and Egyptian Episcopal Authority

IF 0.8 1区 艺术学 0 ART
Mikael Muehlbauer
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Abstract

Sometime around the mid-twelfth century, two antique structures in Tǝgray, Ethiopia’s northernmost province, appear to have been converted into churches or otherwise reconsecrated. One was a temple dedicated to the south Arabian sun god Almaqah in Yǝḥa from 800 BCE, while the other was an anonymous palace plinth from the sixth century near the contemporary village of ‘Addi Awona. The churches that took over these structures went on to serve important functions in this burgeoning kingdom. The palace plinth became the seat of the Ethiopian metropolitan installed from Egypt, while the Yǝḥa temple later became a church associated with the legendary sixth-century Byzantine missionary Afṣe.The decision to appropriate these monumental structures for use as churches in the twelfth century is anomalous but, as I argue here, constitutes material evidence of a general political centralization, re-Christianization, and reintegration into world trade that characterized the period we now call Zagwe (eleventh to thirteenth centuries). Because all these phenomena had been in flux, the change in the Zagwe period was seen by ecclesiastics in Ethiopia as well as Coptic Christians in Egypt as a restoration of past glories akin to those of Constantine in Rome, especially the apocryphal Constantine found in Coptic martyr literature. The construction of five-aisled basilicas specifically in sites understood as ancient therefore yielded platforms with which to parallel this Christian transformation.
12世纪的非洲“君士坦丁”:早期扎格王朝和埃及主教机构的建筑
大约在12世纪中期的某个时候,在埃塞俄比亚最北部的省份Tǝgray,两座古老的建筑似乎被改造成教堂或以其他方式重新奉献。一座是建于公元前800年Yǝḥa的献给南阿拉伯太阳神Almaqah的神庙,另一座是建于6世纪的无名宫殿基座,位于当代村庄' Addi Awona附近。接替这些建筑的教堂继续在这个新兴的王国发挥着重要的作用。宫殿的基座成为了从埃及迁来的埃塞俄比亚首都的所在地,而Yǝḥa神庙后来成为了一座与传说中的六世纪拜占庭传教士Afṣe有关的教堂。在12世纪,将这些纪念性建筑用作教堂的决定是反常的,但正如我在这里所说的,这构成了普遍的政治集中化、重新基督教化和重新融入世界贸易的物证,这些都是我们现在所说的扎格威(11至13世纪)时期的特征。因为所有这些现象都在不断变化,所以在埃塞俄比亚的神职人员和埃及的科普特基督徒看来,扎格维时期的变化是对过去荣耀的恢复,类似于罗马的君士坦丁,尤其是在科普特殉道者文献中发现的伪君士坦丁。五过道长方形教堂的建造,特别是在被理解为古代的地方,因此产生了与基督教转型平行的平台。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.50
自引率
25.00%
发文量
8
期刊介绍: The Newsletter, published three times a year, includes notices of ICMA elections and other important votes of the membership, notices of ICMA meetings, conference and exhibition announcements, some employment and fellowship listings, and topical news items related to the discovery, conservation, research, teaching, publication, and exhibition of medieval art and architecture. The movement of some material traditionally included in the newsletter to the ICMA website, such as the Census of Dissertations in Medieval Art, has provided the opportunity for new features in the Newsletter, such as reports on issues of broad concern to our membership.
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