Frühchristliches Martyrion in der „Nekropole der Heiligen“ von Chersonesos. Mitteilungen zur Christlichen Archäologie|Mitteilungen zur Christlichen Archäologie 25|

Résumé 0

Early Christian Martyrion in Chersonesos “Necropolis of Saints” The article presents an early Christian cave complex located on the slope of Devich’ya Hill on the suburban south eastern necropolis of Chersonesos. In the late 4th / first half of the 5th century the revered crypt was reconstructed into a miniature cult construction of a memorial character with an apse-exedra spanned by a concha. In the rock floor several deepening’s of various sizes were cut for the installation of the altar, altar rood screen and for crypt-repository. In the layer of destruction fragments of four marble round (or sigmoid) tables (mensae) were found. In the second half of 6th century at the earliest the chapel ceased functioning due to the collapse of the rocky vault. In room 3 a bread oven was arranged. Material from its subtraction provides a terminus ante quem for the destruction of the chapel and allows supposedly assigning it to the mid-6th century. In the Middle Byzantine period the oven stopped to be used and the western part of the chapel became a place for dumping of the household garbage from the monastery complex located above on the plateau. It may be considered that for the transformation of the crypt into the memorial chapel there were some imported reasons connected either with the special spiritual status of the buried or with the sacred character of the place itself. The motives should be sought in the early Christian hagiographic sources, reflecting the processes of the formation of Christianity in the region. The attitude to this place as to the sacred one is confirmed by the construction in its immediate vicinity of the over ground church and appearance of a small monastery that continued to keep the memorial functions into the middle Byzantine era.