Triconchs in Serbian Architecture of the Moravian Period: Survey of the Basic Problems

Abstract

The Moravian period in the development of Serbian architecture (second half of the 14th c.) is discussed in the article. During this period, and up to mid-15th c., when Serbia lost its independence under Turkish conquest, its cultural and political centers moved from Kosovo and Macedonia to the lands in the Morava river basin. The basic tendencies in the development of the Moravian architecture — same as before, i. e. since mid-12th c. — keep being guided by the Byzantine tradition combined with striking traits of local specificity and national peculiarity. Style unity is usually mentioned as characteristic feature of Moravian monuments. However, detailed analysis of stylistic features and an attempt of generalization prove the problem to be much more complicated than it could seem at the first blush. Architectural composition of Moravian churches presents a complete set of artistic devices elaborated during the previous periods of the develop-ment of Serbian regional architecture. This certainly contributed to the variety of architectural compositions and decorative programs. Under such circumstances the triconch architectural formula, being the specific peculiarity of the church buildings of the period, should be referred to as the principal if not the only feature of the style unity. Despite active practice of constructing exedras known since Classical antiquity, triconchs that would emerge in Christian sacral architecture of various regions often raise a problem of their genesis and function. In the Balkans triconchs were widely spread in the early Byzantine period, and at the turn of the 9th–10th cc. became a predominant type of church building in the regions under jurisdiction of the Archbishopric of Ohrid, to which Serbian lands belonged at that time. Triconchs weren’t spread in the architecture of Serbian regions from the second half of the 12th to mid-14th c. This work is a survey of the problems connected with the circumstances and the reasons for recurrence of triconchs to Serbian architecture during the Moravian period.