Building churches in Armenia: art at the borders of empire and the edge of the canon

Between the index entries for "Arles" and "arms and armor" in most general studies of medieval art is a thin rectangle of white space. For those seeking "Armenia," this interval is as familiar as it is bleak, for the cultures of the Transcaucasus typically occupy a marginal position, if any, within the study of the Middle Ages. One might blame realities of geography and language: a stony tableland wedged between Byzantium and the Sasanian and Islamic Near East, home to a tongue unintelligible to Greek or Latin ears, Armenia could be perceived as not easily absorbed within the traditional contours of the field. Yet shifts in historiography have perhaps contributed more to its liminal status. Initially assigned by Europeans to the role of Oriental Other, Armenia was championed as an Aryan Urkultur in the early twentieth century. (1) Now cast aside, this position nevertheless survives as a potent memory, a memory that has become an obstacle, it seems, to cross-cultural inquiry. At present, the field remains isolated, and discussions of Armenian art and architecture appear almost exclusively in the specialized literature. (2)

Through the exploration of a domed church on the edge of the eastern frontier, Armenia's status as a hinterland comes into question. Greater diversification is certainly an important desideratum: the field of medieval art has for generations privileged the study of Latin Europe and Byzantium, to the neglect of lesser-known but equally vital cultures. (3) The case of Armenia, however, challenges not only the breadth of the canon but also its centers of gravity. For the seventh century, one of the most dynamic theaters for cultural activity occurred not within but at the interstices between imperial worlds (Fig. 1). Located in a militarized zone flanked by warring Greek and Persian forces and the object of early attacks by the Arabs, Armenia produced a group of monuments distinctive both for their abundance and conceptual sophistication. For the art historian, they offer fertile ground for studying the function of visual culture in an era of military conflict.

The Armenian churches are also critical to the field of medieval epigraphy. Exterior inscriptions, written in the Armenian alphabet, provide evidence of public texts at a time when such writing practices were rare in the eastern Mediterranean and Near East. (4) Anticipating what have been referred to as the "stone charters" of Romanesque France, the seventh-century churches of Armenia functioned as constructed documents. (5) Like stone pages set upright, they imprinted the complicated and shifting landscape of the eastern frontier with the authority of the text. In conjunction with relief sculpture, the inscriptions shed new light on the relation between reading and viewing in the Middle Ages. In Armenia, the combined medium did not simply allow for the possibility of multiple interpretations, it was deliberately created to do so. In a highly charged climate, and before diverse and sometimes violent audiences, heteroglossia (the coexistence of multiple and distinct voices within a single voice or language) and ambiguity became shrewd diplomatic devices. The Armenian structures thus can generate an alternative picture of the early medieval Christian East, one in which military conflict activated, rather than dulled, the visual and verbal response.

These churches present the additional benefit of furnishing architectural evidence from an era often considered virtually bereft of monuments. Despite the prolific building of the Merovingians, the Baptistery of St-Jean at Poitiers remains one of the few constructions of the dynasty to have survived relatively intact from the seventh century. In contemporary Byzantium, archaeological evidence suggests a sharp decline in building. (6) The historical circumstances certainly bear this out: the era following the reign of Justinian witnessed an extraordinary succession of disasters, including the invasions of the Slavs and Avars, the Persian Wars, earthquakes, and the bubonic plague. The paucity of architectural remains has led one scholar to remark that "one cannot speak with any assurance of the development of Byzantine architecture in the period between about 610 and 850." (7) These words, from Cyril Mango's Byzantine Architecture, appear in the opening to a chapter entitled "The Dark Ages." (8) It is doubtful, however, that an Armenian living in the seventh century would have found the era so very dark. The years between about 610 to 680 witnessed a building boom in Armenia, when more than two dozen churches were constructed, many datable by epigraphic and literary sources. This in itself is striking, as Armenia was no less embattled than its imperial neighbor. (9) If one assumes that church buildings are erected only in times of a stable economy and relative peace, these churches are, on the surface, difficult to explain.

At present, though, the surface is all we have. With few exceptions, Armenian architecture has been studied through the lens of formal analysis. Carefully documented by T'oros T'oramanyan in the early twentieth century, the monuments later captured the attentions of Josef Strzygowski. His nearly-nine-hundred-page Die Baukunst der Armenier und Europa focused almost exclusively on the origins and diffusion of the domed, centrally planned form, which he perceived as an Aryan creation. (10) Although repelled by the Austrian's ideology, subsequent Armenologists have maintained Strzygowski's formal approach, concentrating on the documentation of monuments and the formation of architectural typologies. (11) These endeavors are important, particularly in light of the vulnerability of the monuments, yet little is known about why and how the seventh-century churches arose. (12) Efforts toward contextualization and inquiries into patronage and reception, now quite normative in other fields, are only rarely attempted by specialists in Armenian architecture and sculpture. (13)