ARCH-GABLED CHURCH: STAGES OF FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The article examines the arch-gabled church, a characteristic feature of which is that all the façade bays are completed with semicircular arched gables, regardless of the structure of vaulting. Such a type of church became widespread throughout the territory of Kyivan Rus in the 12th century. During that period, the arch-gabled church existed in several variants. Some of them spread beyond the territory of their occurrence and became interregional, while others did not extend beyond their own region and remained local. For a long time, it was believed that the arch-gabled church had been borrowed by Kyivan Rus from Byzantium. Consequently, a comprehensive understanding of the formation and development of this type of church has yet to be established. The purpose of the article is to determine the stages of the formation and development of the arch-gabled church as a distinctive phenomenon of Kyivan Rus architecture, which should definitively refute the notion of its Byzantine origin. Research methods. To achieve the purpose, comparative and historical, typological, and compositional and stylistic methods were employed. Conclusions. Based on the analysis of Kyivan Rus monuments dating of the late 10th – 12th centuries, the stages of the formation and development of the arch-gabled church have been defined. They span the period from the mid-11th century, the time of occurrence of the first known decorative arched gable, to the end of the 12th century, when that type of church was almost entirely replaced with pillar-shaped churches. It provides grounds for considering the arch-gabled church a distinctive phenomenon of Kyivan Rus architecture. The lack of continuous arch-gabled completion in Byzantine architecture, as well as the churches dating from the initial stage of the development of Kyivan Rus stone construction, refu tes the notion of the Byzantine origin of this type