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The Forty Saints Reconsidered

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The Forty Saints Reconsidered THE FORTY SAINTS RECONSIDERED BY RICHARD HODGES & JOHN MITCHELL 38 EXPEDITION Volume 56 Number 3 THE FORTY SAINTS pectacularly situated above the Straits of RECONSIDERED Corfu in southern Albania, this large, complex church was built in Late Antiquity—probably in the age of the Emperor Justinian (AD 527– 565)—and remained a shrine until Communist Stimes. A new survey reveals the changing architecture of the great church, its crypts, and painted decoration. Metropolitan in scale, the Forty Saints for a millennium or more was perhaps the most important pilgrimage destination in the Ionian Sea region. Te late antique and medieval church of at Constantinople and Caesarea. Tey the Forty Saints occupies the prominent enjoyed particular veneration in the age hill above the city of Saranda in south- of the Emperor Justinian (AD 527–565), west Albania. Tis church would have and his chronicler Procopius records how ION T dominated not only ancient Onchesmos, the Byzantine emperor was cured of a NDA the Roman precursor of Saranda, but also serious infection of the knee when his leg U FO the seaways reaching southward down was brought into contact with the relics, T RIN the Straits of Corfu and westward in which had recently been discovered. BUT the direction of Sicily. As a seamark it is Te largely ruined basilica was first HE T not surprising that the church has given published by the Italian archaeologist, its name to Saranda (a version of Santa Luigi Maria Ugolini in the 1920s, who Quaranta, forty saints) at least since the described Santa Quaranta as the finest of Luigi Maria Ugolini’s 12th century when the crusader Benedict all the churches he had seen during his ERMISSION OF photograph of the P of Peterborough first mentions it. travels in Albania. At that time there was south-facing elevation RES Te Forty Saints that gave their name still a church there associated with the of the basilica in the U 1930s. to the church were soldiers in the army cult of the Forty Martyrs. A ground-plan ALL FIG of Licinius, who in AD 320 refused to drawn up in 1938 by the Danish architec- forsake their Christian faith and were tural historian Ejnar Dyggve describes a made to stand in a frozen pond until they curious building with a large single nave, expired. Teir cult was widespread in the a heptaconch (seven side conches or apses), eastern Mediterranean, and relics in the with a principal axial apse at the east end form of human skeletal remains were held and three large lateral niches or conchs EXPEDITION Winter 2014 39 constructed in the thickness of the walls on each flank. To confirmed that Dyggve’s plan was generally trustworthy, the west is an interior narthex (entrance hall) and beyond although the relationship of the basilica to the elaborate that possibly an exterior narthex, flanked symmetrically by sequence of underground crypts and oratories as well as attendant rectangular structures. Te hilltop basilica was an adjoining relic chapel, constructed under the western largely flattened by bombing during the Second World end of the nave, was more complex than he had imagined. War and by the subsequent construction of a military base A striking feature of the building is a series of dedicatory present there until 1997. inscriptions in Greek made of broken tile and potsherds on the east, north, and west sides of the building. Some of A PROGRAM OF SURVEY, CLEANING, these potsherds are clearly 5th or 6th century in date. Te AND CONSERVATION Albanian Institute of Archaeology has cleared the volumi- Te Butrint Foundation had the opportunity to make nous rubble masking the structures, revealing much more a new survey of the ruined remains in 2001–2002 and of the basilica and its associated buildings than was visible a decade ago. Meanwhile the Albanian Institute of Monuments in 2005 under- took conservation of some of the painted frescoes in the crypts below. Tis short report sets out our new interpretation of the building history of the Forty Saints and focuses on one important painted panel from a redecoration of one of the chapels below the basilica, which we cautiously date to the Middle Byzantine period. Te church was a large rectangular structure about 43 m long (excluding the later vaulted thoroughfare on its façade, carrying an outer narthex) and 23 m wide, with a projecting apse. Te interior was remarkable, as Ugolini and Dygge noted, taking the form of a heptaconch, with three large contiguous exedras or conchs on either side, which were of somewhat greater dimensions than the eastern apse. Te conchs are contained within the mas- sive lateral walls of the building. Ugolini describes the walls of the six great lateral conchs and the eastern apse as being pierced by many doors, windows, and ABOVE: The Butrint niches, and it is clear from early photo- Foundation’s graphs that the apse and the nave were ground plan of the lit by large arched windows above. At church and below it, the crypts and floor-level the north and south walls of chapels. Crypts were the church were pierced by arched doors discovered below the at the apex of each conch and articulated church. with deep niches on both the interior and 40 EXPEDITION Volume 56 Number 3 Shen Jan Phoenice FINIKI Mesopotam SARANDA (Onchesmos) Church of the Forty Martyrs Metoq Likurs ADRIATIC SEA ÇUKA Monastery of St George Dema Wall Lake Butrint KSAMILI TOP: This photograph was taken above the city of Saranda in the 1920s. LEFT: Map showing the location of Santa Quaranta, Albania. RIGHT: Postcard of Sti. Quaranta, Saranda, 1920. Butrint 0 5km Xarra Mursia Malathrea EXPEDITION Winter 2014 41 Çiflik e Aitoit the exterior. Te building was expertly constructed from A 1,500-YEAR HISTORY limestone, drafted for the façade but largely unworked Although much of the superstructure of the basilica has long for the rest of the building. Bricks seem to have been been demolished, pilgrims continue to place flowers in dis- employed occasionally in the upper reaches of the walls crete niches within the shattered building. As a place it still and in the window arches. At one stage the nave was possesses an importance for the Greek orthodox communi- paved with slabs of local limestone and the inner narthex ties here. Te now ruined structure is evidently a palimpsest appears to have had a flooring of terracotta tiles. of several major and numerous minor re-buildings spanning the last 1,500 years. Te first major building (Phase 1) essentially consisted of the nave with its seven conches and a western narthex that jettied out over the steeply falling slope of the hill, supported by a Phase 1 sequence of four large vaulted underlying substruc- Late Antique Phase 2 tures. Te basilica was entered from three doors on the north and south sides, presumably reached by passages later occupied by the Phase 2 aisles flanking Late Antique the nave. In other words there was no main entrance (6th century AD) from the west at this time. Instead it would seem that the narthex could only be accessed from the nave of the church and must have functioned as a gallery, 0 10 m with a spectacular prospect to the west. Te lower complex of passageways and oratories behind these vaulted spaces also belong to this initial phase of the Phase 1 Late Antique Phase 2 building, as do four surviving votive inscriptions, in Phase 3 terracotta tile and potsherds, recording the names of Phase 4 Medieval Phase 5 benefactors on the west façade and the north front. At least three others, recorded but now lost, existed on the north and east faces of the church. Phase 2 was more grandiose: outer aisles were Middle Byzantine (9th–12th centuries) added to the north and south, and to the west an impressive vaulted way, built against the west façade, provided a new dignified route to the long barrel- 0 10 m vaulted relic chapel, against the south flank of the church. Tis chapel, its eastern relic chamber illumi- nated by six small windows set in the south wall of the building, appears to have been the principal lo- Phase 6 Modern cus of the cult. A new, steep stairway led up over the central bay of the vaulted corridor, into the narthex of the basilica, and an outer narthex may have risen over the new vaults along the length of the façade. Tis must have given the building an extraordinary Modern (18th–20th centuries) new prominence at the apex of the steep hillside. New phase plan of Santa Quaranta (by Many of the service buildings 0 10 m Sarah Leppard). wrapped around the north side of 42 EXPEDITION Volume 56 Number 3 LEFT: This late antique cult pond dates to the 6th century. It may replicate the lake in which the forty martyrs perished. BELOW: A detail of a newly discovered painting depicts Christ pulling a saint’s beard. the church appear to belong to this period. At least one of these was a simple bathhouse, presumably for ablu- tions before entering the shrine. A small reservoir or pond beside the apse may have symbolically replicated the lake where the martyrs perished. Excavations to date have failed to locate any associated buildings on the south side. Te next phases are more difficult to disentangle and our interpretation must be treated with caution un- til a full excavation report appears. In Phase 3 the west- ern staircase was repaired or strengthened. Tis staircase probably accompanied a major initiative (Phase 4) to hold up the basilica: a line of piers on either side of the nave were almost certainly inserted to support the internal vaults of the conches.
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