Studying the Single Nave Domed Churches in the Context of Medieval Serbian Architecture

Abstract

Complexity of the cultural and historic context of the Balkans was the main cause which called forth the development of local architectural paradigms with characteristic constructional, typological and stylistic diversity. The logic of these architectural trends may be explained to a great extent by active involvement of these regions into difficult and multipartite interrelations among the greatest centers of the Adriatic basin and Europe, to which one may refer as to opposition of the New Empire of Rome and Byzantium. It is obvious that this situation makes the issues of influence, adoption and analogy particularly actual for the development of the Balkan art of the Western and central regions. First of all, this concerns the problem of origins and evolution of a single nave domed church, represented by a basilica type, as well as by a cross-domed design of the so-called atrophied type or mildly marked cross. Those churches had been spread mostly in the coastal regions since the early period (10th – first half of the 12th centuries). Eclecticism of the architectural designs, which were being developed there for several centuries, was caused by a great number of factors. However, it can`t be reduced to a mechanical and random synthesis of samples, adopted from the architectural repertoires of the Late Antique, Early Christian, Byzantine and West European traditions.