entry Jan
2016
Romanesque architecture
Sant'Angelo in Formis
Sant'Angelo in
Formis is the name of a section of the town of
Capua in the province of Caserta, as well as
the name of a well-known Benedictine abbey in
the town. The abbey (pictured) is
dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel and
lies on the western slopes of Mt. Tifata about
one km off the A3 autostrada to Rome.
The abbey and church are built on the
foundations of an ancient Etruscan-Italic
temple from the beginnings of the 3rd century
B.C. and dedicated to Diana, (Artemis
in Greek, the goddess depicted as armed with
quiver and bow, the protector of the young).
The site was once called ad arcum Dianae
("near the Arch of Diana"). Indeed, the entire
hillside, alive with spring water and oak
trees, was consecrated to that deity. (The
term in formis likely comes from a
Latin word for aqueduct, forma, in
reference to a local water source.) Parts
of the ancient temple survive and were even
restored in the 1st century B.C. Then, after
the fall of the western Roman empire a church
dedicated to the Archangel Michael was built
on the site of the ancient temple by the Longobards during
the 6th and 7th centuries. The abbey that you
see today was built in the mid-11th
century at the behest of Desiderius
(1026-1087), the abbot of Montecassino (who
was also responsible for rebuilding that
famous abbey). The Sant'Angelo abbey is called
in many sources one of the best examples of
Romanesque architecture in southern Italy.
The word
“Romanesque” simply means “similar to Roman")
and, indeed, one of the characteristics of
this architecture is that it used Roman
elements such as semi-circular arches. The
style is often described as the first
pan-European architectural style since
Imperial Roman Architecture. That requires a
comment. It's one thing to look at the
beginnings of Roman construction and watch the
flowering of the ideas —the very ideas!— of
grand roads, aqueducts, tunnels, bridges,
vaults, domes, arches, arenas and amphitheaters.
At the height of the empire (around 200 AD) it
was indeed possible to go from one end to the
other, from the Atlantic Ocean to ancient
Mesopotamia, from the North Sea to North Africa,
and see all that construction in a uniform style
—Imperial Roman Architecture, invented to
be precisely that: Imperial! It is however quite
another thing to watch it all crumble, in many
cases physically picked to pieces by remnant
cultures who could no longer even knew what they
were tearing down in the search for some useful
stones for the stable. So when we say that
"Romanesque" architecture was pan-European, it's not that
the new imperial builders of Charlemagne set
out to manifest the culture of the Holy
Roman Empire; they were using what was
left of Roman architecture, small bits
and pieces put together by those who only
dimly recalled arches and the Five Orders of
Architecture. Knowledge of such things sadly
drained out of western Europe in the "dark
ages." They were called dark for a reason; in 800 the architects of the
new empire of Charlemagne were just
picking up the pieces.And Charlemagne's empire really didn't work out very well. It shattered into many pieces shortly after his death, some of which had architectural ideas of their own. The Muslim invasion of Spain, Sicily and parts of the southern Italian mainland, for example, had great influence on southern European architecture. Cultural knowledge survived in western monasteries and in Byzantium. (And was being rediscovered far away in the new Muslim cultural center of Baghdad.) Indeed, when Desiderius rebuilt the abbey of Montecassino, he employed a number of Greek artists and architects. As well, at Sant'Angelo in Formis there is great Byzantine influence in the artwork and mosaics on the premises, including the depiction of Christ Pantocrator (Omnipotent) (pictured). Perhaps all you can say is that Romanesque was the style of castles, churches and some domestic structures after Charlemagne and before the coming of early Humanism in the 12th century.
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