Mareva U

Essentielles à tout édifice, les portes, situées entre deux espaces distincts, constituent à la fois une séparation et une transition. Elles marquent les divisions structurelles nécessaires à l'articulation et la hiérarchisation de l'espace des lieux de culte. Prenant appui sur un corpus d'étude représentatif des églises monastiques érigées entre le Xe et le XVe siècle dans le territoire de l'empire byzantin et ses environs, cette thèse s'attache, par une étude holistique et pluridisciplinaire, à examiner les fonctions et les significations des lieux de passage et de leurs décors. Jalonnant les parcours effectués par les officiants et l'assistance vers l'église et en son sein, les portes et leurs abords sont le support privilégié de décors sculptés, en mosaïques ou peints. Les images et les signes graphiques qui les composent contiennent des messages divers et contribuent à appréhender les significations attribuées aux seuils dans la pensée chrétienne à Byzance. Les utilisations et les affectations des portes sont plurielles. Elles participent à la mise en scène des services liturgiques et à l'instauration d'un ordre social au sein de l'espace monastique. Ainsi les lieux de passage sont ceux d'expériences multiples. Le franchissement d'une porte s'inscrit dans un cheminement gradué conduisant l'assemblée vers la communion avec Dieu. Il produit une expérience spatiale, temporelle et spirituelle, mais aussi sensorielle et cognitive. Cette étude raisonnée des lieux liminaires des églises byzantines propose une nouvelle lecture du patrimoine architectural et iconographique, en mesure d'apporter un éclairage supplémentaire sur la vie et la spiritualité monastique, comme sur ses pratiques religieuses et sociales. Elle remet en question l'exclusivité de la perception verticale de l'espace religieux byzantin et réévalue les normes prédominantes de la compréhension et de l'appréciation des portes, telles que les notions d'entrée principale ou secondaire et de séparation entre le sacré et le profane.

Liminal Places and their Decoration in Byzantine Monastic Churches (10th-15th century): Function, Meaning and Experience of Doorways and Passageways

Essential to any building, doorways, i.e. the areas located between two distinct spaces, are both a separation and a transition. They mark the structural divisions necessary for the articulation and internal hierarchy of space in church buildings. Based on a representative selection of monastic churches located within the territory of the Byzantine Empire and its surroundings, dated from the 10th to the 15th century, this dissertation analyzes the function and the meaning of passageways and their decoration through a holistic and multidisciplinary approach. Punctuating the paths taken by officiants and the audience towards the church and within it, the doors and their surroundings are important settings for sculptures, mosaics or paintings. The images and graphic signs displayed on and around them convey a variety of messages and contribute to our understanding of the significance of thresholds in Byzantium. The use of doorways and the assignments given to them are many and various. They participate in the staging of liturgical services and in the establishment of a social order within the monastic space. Thus, they are the place of multiple experiences. The crossing of a doorway is part of a gradual itinerary leading the assembly towards communion with God. It produces a spatial, temporal and spiritual experience in addition to a multisensory and cognitive impact. This study of liminal places of Byzantine churches proposes an alternative reading of the architectural and iconographic heritage and attempts to shed new light on monastic life and spirituality, as well as its religious and social practices. It challenges the exclusive vertical perception of the Byzantine religious space and reconsiders the prevailing norms of understanding and appreciation of doorways, such as the notions of main or secondary entrances and the hermetic barrier between the sacred and the profane.

Monks or nuns, who lived in community in cenobitic monasteries, under the supervision of a higoumenos, have left the worldly life to embrace the religious and contemplative life, preparing themselves for the eschatological separation. This existence between life and death, transformative, places them in a state of fixed and institutionalized liminality, as described by the anthropologist Victor Turner. This existential liminality that defines monasticism is embodied in the meaning and perception of the physical characteristics of a monastery, conceived as an intermediate space, a passageway between earth and heaven.
Based on textual sources and on the architectural space of a selection of monasteries built between the 9th and 15th centuries in the territory of the Byzantine Empire and its neighbors, this paper proposes to evaluate the connections between the experiences at thresholds and the liminal nature of monasticism. To do so, it analyzes the topography of the monasteries and the liminal aspect of the spatial arrangements and practices, focusing on the enclosure wall and its gateways.