Chrysa Savvidou

The church of the Panayia tou Bourgou is not preserved intact. It is nevertheless evident at first glance that it was a splendid monument. It is proof of the existence on Rhodes of a distinctive ecclesiastical architecture that developed during the Hospitaller period, of which it is one of the few surviving examples (the other is the Panayia Philerimou). The traces of the church were difficult to make out down to the period of the Italian Occupation, since 6 houses had been built inside it. There is no evidence to suggest it was converted into a mosque, a very common practice during the Ottoman period.

The Italians expropriated the houses and demolished them, retaining only the parts that belonged to the church. The precise date at which these houses were built is unknown, since Rottiers, a traveller who visited Rhodes, depicts the church in ruins in an engraving of the early 19^th century. At the beginning of the 20^th century Balducci, the Italian excavator of the church, mentions the houses and publishes photographs of them. They must therefore have been erected in the intervening period, some time in the 19^th century. In any case, recent archaeological investigations suggest that the church was probably in use down to the beginning of the 16^th century, and was probably destroyed during the siege of 1522.¹ This conclusion is suggested by the finds from a recent excavation inside the church. A mass grave for about 40 people who were hastily interred there and a hoard of coins dating from the first quarter of the 16^th century, discovered during the excavation, suggest that they were victims of the siege of 1522.

The church was undoubtedly used to serve the needs of the Catholic creed, as may be deduced from its form and characteristic features. It was probably one of the first buildings erected by the Knights. Balducci considers that it was converted into a Catholic cathedral dedicated to St Catherine, about 1480, when the Panayia tou Kastrou ceased to act as the cathedral of Rhodes.² This hypothesis is founded on a comparison of the church with the adjacent building of the Admiralty, as it is known today. Balducci holds the view that the latter building was constructed to house the Catholic bishop of the island. Arguing from the proximity of the two, the Italian excavator considers that the cathedral was moved to be nearer the residence of the bishop. This view is not now generally accepted, since it the Admiralty is now thought to have been the seat of the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Bishop.³

In 1936, when the town plan was being implemented, a street (Alhadeff Street) was laid that ran through the church across the nave, just in front of the sanctuary. This situation prevailed for many years and it is only recently that restoration and consolidation work has been carried out unifying the two parts of the church.

The Panayia tou Bourgou was a typical example of Hospitaller architecture, and despite the fact that its dimensions are smaller than those of corresponding churches in Europe, it met the needs of the Catholics of Rhodes town. Its importance is even greater when account is taken of the fact that the other purely Catholic churches of the town no longer exist. Some of them, such as St John in the Collachium, have been completely destroyed. In the case of others, such as Our Lady of Victory (Panayia tis Nikis), very few remains are preserved, making it difficult to draw any firm conclusions. Finally, Saint Augustine and Saint Sebastian are known only from literary sources, and their sites have not been identified with any certainty. The church under examination exercised great influence on the architecture of the entire island, and possibly of the Dodecanese as a whole.

In its original form the church was a three-aisled basilica with two arcades, each consisting of four columns.⁴ The tripartite sanctuary seems to reflect the influence of Byzantine architecture and is an example of the coexistence of elements drawn from the various architectural types that were to be found alongside each other on Rhodes. Entrance was from the west, though later, and certainly before 1480, another door was created in about the middle of the north side.

The nave was probably covered by cross-vaults that were reinforced by diagonal ribs with the cross section of a flower petal. None of these are now preserved, though their springings can be seen on the two narrow sides of the church. The three bays of the sanctuary were roofed with cross-vaults with radiating ribs.

Rottiers and Balducci referred to the traces of a wall-painting directly above the arcosolium in the façade, in which were depicted three coats-of-arms and the beginning of a fourth. The rendering of these is rather clumsy and exhibits slight errors. Nonetheless, the coats-of-arms of the first Grand Masters can be recognised: Villaret (1309-1319), Villeneuve (1319-1346), Gozon (1346-1353) and Corneillan (1353-1355).⁵ This wall-painting, very little of which can now be made out, is of great importance, since it is evidence that the church was constructed during the first half of the 14^th century, the Grand Masters mentioned probably being the ones who contributed to its erection. On the basis of the inscription it may be concluded that the Knights of St John turned their attention to the construction of a large religious building, by the standards of the island, in the early years after their arrival. It is also apparent that the construction of the church took almost half a century, a common phenomenon, since it required great expense and a large number of specialised craftsmen. There is inadequate evidence for the precise form of the roof of the church. Its excavator, H. Balducci, believes that it was probably a pitched roof, since the top edges of the surviving masonry point to a gabled roof. Doubt has been cast on this hypothesis, however, by recent investigations on the monument, which support the view that the external edges of the facades follow the exterior outline of the tympana of the pointed cross-vaults.

From the existing evidence it may be concluded that the roof over the central aisle was at a higher level then those over the side aisles. If account is taken of Caoursin’s miniatures, the church was probably lit by lunettes on three sides, the exception being the East. There are three lunettes in the west side.⁶ Balducci takes the view that a stone closure slab from the church, the fragments of which were found in the earth deposits of the excavation, perfectly fits the rectangular lunettes.

The original entrance no longer exists, since the opening was walled up and the entire façade of the church used as the internal wall of the adjacent houses. Despite this, its original form may be restored to some extent from the few traces that are visible. The doorway was probably slightly pointed and bordered by a triangular pointed cornice that ran the entire length of the façade. A similar form can be seen in the earlier depictions of St John in the Collachium and the church of the Evangelismos at Mandraki which was replicated from painted representations of the former church.

The Panayia tou Bourgou is built entirely of Rhodian poros. The use of bricks in the joints, a survival of the strong Byzantine tradition on the island, may be noted.⁷ This technique was used in part of the old Hospital (1365-1375), the Panayia Philerimou, Ayia Triada on Ippoton Street, and the chapel of the tongue of France, which assigns the construction of the masonry to about the middle of the 14^th century.⁸ The floor was paved with slabs of marble.

This was the form of the church in its initial building phase. Additions were constantly made to it from the middle of the 14^th century and throughout the whole Hospitaller period. Seven arcosolia – niches created in the thickness of the wall – were built along the north wall. They were used for burial purposes, a common practice known also from the other monuments of Rhodes at this same period. The corresponding examples in the Panayia tou Kastrou have a pointed top, and they will also have taken this form in the church under examination. These arcosolia were added after the church was completed, but probably before the creation of the north entrance, since one of them was destroyed to make way for it. The tomb of the son of a baron of Morphos (an area of Cyprus), the covering slab of which was found during excavations inside the church, may have been located here.

Six chapels, which were erected at later periods, were added on the south side of the church. Of these, the one at the south-west goes back to the middle of the 15^th century and the one at the south-east to the end of the same century.⁹ Only the chapels at the south-east and the south-west are preserved to their full height, while the remains of the others are no higher than the foundations.¹⁰

Special interest attaches to a find in the south-east chapel. During work on the two pendentives of its vault, two large pithoi, each 80 cm. high and 40 cm. in diameter, were discovered, built into the interior of the structure. Given the small dimensions of the chapel, they are not thought to have been designed in order to relieve the structure from the overlying thrusts, but probably served to improve the acoustics of the room.¹¹ This is an important piece of evidence for the technical expertise and practice of Hospitaller architecture.

The Panayia tou Bourgou must have been a very impressive church, as is evident from the frequent references made to it by the historiographers of the period, from the outstanding position it occupied in the miniatures adorning the manuscripts of Caoursin, and from the interest expressed by later travellers. The impression created by the church itself is also seen in the influence it exercised on the architecture of the island, both during the Hospitaller period and later. A distinctive local Late Gothic style was created throughout the whole of the Dodecanese, in which Western and Byzantine elements were combined. This was used in a group of churches in which typological and morphological similarities can be identified. Most of them are aisleless and more rarely three-aisled basilicas, roofed entirely with cross-vaults and decorated with Gothic windows, doorways and niches. The style survived until the beginning of the 20^th century.

Examples of typologically similar architecture have been located in the Holy Land and Cyprus. A similar ground plan, though of a larger size, and with higher-quality decoration, is to be found in Ayios Nikolaos at Famagusta, which was built in the 13^th century.¹² Stylistic similarities can be seen in the decorative elements of the church of St George of the Latins in Famagusta (about 1300), and also in Ayia Sophia in Nicosia. These similarities are possibly due to the close relations between Rhodes and Cyprus and suggest that Cypriot craftsmen also worked on Rhodes.¹³ Moreover, the first Grand Masters on Rhodes were French, like the Lusignans who ruled Cyprus at the same period, in which case the possibility cannot be ruled out that there were contacts between them, with mutual influences in techniques and forms.

The striking similarity with the church on Cyprus is, moreover, evidence for route followed by the Crusaders in the Mediterranean. The architecture of the Lusignans on Cyprus stands apart for the larger part of its history, from the beginning of the 13^th century to the 15^th century, as a Western style of the Catholic creed that was introduced either from the Holy Land or directly from the West. The ground plans and morphological features of the churches erected for the needs of the Roman Catholic creed are different from those of Orthodox ecclesiastical architecture.

The Gothic architecture of Cyprus may be regarded as a purely French colonial art, though it created its own morphological style. Despite the very strong influence of its models, it did not imitate them in a sterile and uncritical manner, but created its own authentic and distinctive style. It adapted Western elements to the climate and available raw materials of the area. It was precisely this that made it more natural, as Enlart notes, since it rejected features that did not correspond to its needs, but creatively assimilated those that were necessary. This was undoubtedly assisted by the fact that Gothic art came to Cyprus at its finest period, before it had begun to lose its dynamism. Nor should we overlook the fact that there was already a strong Byzantine tradition on the island, and mutual loans can be observed between the two forms of art, the Byzantine and Gothic.

The Panayia tou Bourgou is tangible confirmation of the historical evidence for close relations between Crusader states of the Mediterranean.