Over the past year or two, we've expended some time trying to showcase some of the liturgical-architectural features that were at one time commonly found in the churches of both the Christian East and West. One of those elements was the screen that separated the altar and sanctuary from the rest of the church. As we've noted previously, in certain regions of Western Europe this would become the rood screen, made of wood or occasionally stone and surmounted by a crucifixion scene. In the East, the spaces of the screen would become filled in and eventually turn into the iconostasis we know today. However, despite these later developments in both East and West, some of these earlier screens can still yet be found.
One such example is that which we are looking at here, which is the screen formerly found in the Satkhe Monastery church, located in the country of Georgia and now found in the Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts in Tbilisi. Georgia is, of course, primarily an Eastern Orthodox country, but as we like to emphasize, a screen such as this could as much be found in an ancient Roman church as it could an eastern, Byzantine one -- where it is was referred to as a "templon."
This particular screen is dated to the twelfth century and it was removed from the monastery of its origin for reason that the monastery is now, regrettably, little more than a ruin.
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| The remains of the Satkhe monastery in Georgia |
Fortunately for us, the chancel screen was still relatively in tact and was moved in order to preserve it. It is carved in stone of course, and the carvings include intricate, interlaced, knot work patterns that frame carved figurative designs, such as that seen here of St. George slaying the dragon.
Along the top of the screen is a text written in the distinctive script of the Old Georgian language -- the language still in use in the Georgian orthodox liturgy incidentally. Regrettably I have been unable to unearth what this inscription says, but it is likely to be a dedicatory text related to the benefactor as is so often the case with inscriptions such as these from this period.
Of course, in the form we see the screen here, it is simply the classic form that was used early on in churches of the first millennium in both East and West. As the centuries passed, the open spaces of the screen would come to see silk curtain hangings placed between the columns in order to veil the most sacred of the liturgical ceremonies (much as was done in the case of the ciborium magnum) and, eventually, in the East icons would come to more permanently fill these same spaces.
For the sake of those who have not come across our previous articles on this subject, here is an example of another templon, this time coming from the Visoki Dečani Monastery in Kosovo, which has had icons installed in just such a manner:
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| Photo source: Orthodox Arts Journal |
Finally, if you're wondering about the use of silk hangings, here is a digital reconstruction of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople where we see such curtains in place on both the templon and the ciborium over the altar.
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