Bastions of the Cross

Name: Bastions of the Cross
Brand: Unknown
SKU: 9780884024972
Price: 181.99 NZD
Availability: InStock

Medieval Rock-Cut Cruciform Churches of Tigray, Ethiopia

By Mikael Muehlbauer

Series: Dumbarton Oaks Studies

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Summary

Bastions of the Cross explores the majestic cruciform churches carved from mountains in 11th-century Tigray, Ethiopia. Mikael Muehlbauer highlights these royal monuments as crucial to political and religious unity, preceding the famed 13th-century Lalibela churches. The book connects these architectural marvels to a medieval revival of Byzantine church design, showcasing pioneering vaulting that emphasised spatial hierarchy. It also uncovers how pilgrimage routes and trade brought diverse influences, reshaping the narrative of the 11th century from a "dark age" to a vital chapter in Eastern Christian architecture.
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Format: Hardback

$181⁹⁹

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Bastions of the Cross

$181⁹⁹

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Ideal for readers interested in architectural history, Ethiopian culture, medieval studies, and Eastern Christianity.

In the late eleventh century, Ethiopian masons hewed great cruciform churches out of mountains in the eastern highlands of Tigray. Bastions of the Cross, the first study devoted to the subject, examines these cruciform churches in East Africa and connects them to the great millennial revival of early Byzantine church architecture.

Description

In the late eleventh century, Ethiopian masons hewed great cruciform churches out of mountains in the eastern highlands of Tigray, Ethiopia's northernmost province. Hitherto unparalleled in scale, these monuments were royal foundations, instruments of political centralization and re-Christianization that anticipated the great thirteenth-century churches at Lalibela.

Bastions of the Cross, the first study devoted to the subject, examines the cruciform churches of Abreha wa-Atsbeha, Wuqro Cherqos, and Mika'el Amba. It connects them to one of the great architectural movements of the Middle Ages: the millennial revival of the early Byzantine aisled, cruciform church. These were also the first to incorporate vaulting, and uniquely did so in the service of centralized spatial hierarchy.

Through resuscitated pilgrimage networks, Ethiopian craftsmen revisited architectural types abandoned since Late Antiquity, while Islamic mercantile channels brought precious textiles from South Asia that inspired trans-material conceptions of architectural space. Bastions of the Cross reveals the eleventh century, in contrast to its popular reputation as a "dark age," to be a forgotten watershed in the architectural history of Ethiopia and Eastern Christianity.