Cross-in-square

[3] Although evidence for Byzantine domestic architecture is scant, it appears that the core unit of the cross-in-square church (nine bays divided by four columns) was also employed for the construction of halls within residential structures.

The narthex serves as an entrance hall, but also for special liturgical functions, such as baptism, and as an honored site of burial (often, as in the case of the Martorana in Palermo, for the founders of the church).

[5] The architectural form and liturgical function described above correspond to the "classic" type of the cross-in-square church, which is exhibited by a number of significant monuments (for example, by the Myrelaion in Constantinople).

[6] The ultimate plans of many other Byzantine churches resulted from a similar diachronic succession of additions about a central, cross-in-square, core; for example, Kalenderhane Camii in Constantinople,[7] Çanlı Kilise in Cappadocia,[8] and the Martorana in Palermo.

On the other hand, a radically abbreviated, "compact" form of the cross-in-square existed, built without narthex and with the three apses adjoining directly onto the easternmost bays of the naos.

A particularly important variation on the cross-in-square is the so-called "Athonite" or "monastic" plan, in which the rectangular bays at the north and south of the naos also opened onto semi-circular apses, giving the church the appearance of a triconch.

The question of the origins of the cross-in-square form has therefore engaged art historians since the latter half of the 19th century, although no single account has ever received the unanimous assent of the scholarly community.

The most influential strands in the earlier research attempt to derive the cross-in-square church either from the early Christian basilica (a viewpoint advocated originally by Oskar Wulff, and followed by numerous scholars, including Alexander van Millingen and Charles Diehl)[22] or from the cruciform churches of late antiquity (a theory first advanced by Josef Strzygowski, and later followed in various fashions by Gabriel Millet and André Grabar, among others).

As the discipline of art history has moved away from an evolutionary approach, the question of the "parentage" of the cross-in-square church has receded somewhat, and attention has turned to the dating of the first fully developed examples of the type.

It has been suggested that the type was developed in a monastic context in Bithynia during the late eighth and early ninth centuries;[25] for example, the church built at the Sakkudion Monastery in the 780s by Theodore the Studite and his uncle Platon, although known only from literary accounts, appears to have been a cross-in-square.

[28] Whatever the reasons, the cross-in-square had come to dominate church-building by the later ninth century,[29] perhaps in part because its relatively small scale suited the intrinsically "private" nature of Byzantine piety.

[35] Beginning in the eighteenth century, a greater variety of architectural forms were employed for church-building in the Ottoman Empire, including revivals of early Christian types (such as the basilica).

[36] Although the neo-Byzantine architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries tended to draw on an eclectic set of historical references, the cross-in-square plan did play a role in the formation of "national styles" in the new, post-Ottoman states (for example, in the late 19th-century churches of Serbia[37]).

Panagia Chalkeon , an 11th-century cross-in-square church in Thessaloniki . View from the north east.
Plan of a typical cross-in-square church; based on the 10th-century Myrelaion in Constantinople
Plan of the Chora Church in Constantinople
Compact cross-in-square plan, based on the Cattolica in Stilo . The naos is the central liturgical area and bema the sanctuary.
Christ Pantocrator , in the dome of the Daphni Monastery
The Baptism of Christ, at Daphni. The figures on either side of the Jordan face each other across the empty space enclosed by the squinch, which becomes the space of the scene.
Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki (not to be confused with the larger and more famous church in Istanbul), an example of the "cross-domed" type often cited as a precursor to the cross-in-square. This picture was taken in 1890, when the church was still being used as a mosque under the Ottoman Empire .
Fatih Camii in Tirilye
Church of St. Paraskevi, Chernihiv , Ukraine. Built c. 1200 ; restored in the 20th century.