In recent decades, Western eyes have become more accustomed to the sight of neo-traditional architecture. Neo-traditionalism stands out by virtue of its familiarity: it is neither the stern, rigid, and cold modernism of the 1970s, nor does it have any of the elegant, asymmetrical ebb-and-flow of those more exclusive, postmodern designs that are fixtures of any major city in the world. Often referred to in American circles as “New Traditional Architecture,” neo-traditionalism is a form of revivalism – the return of past aesthetics to a present age in response to the lack of meaning that pervades societies devoid of religion and tradition. It is perhaps not surprising that liturgical architecture has been at the forefront of this revivalist impetus in the Western world, as much of the resistance to the nihilistic, sterile zeitgeist is founded upon Christianity.
In church architecture, revivalism is a return not only to classical notions of beauty, but also to a notion of reverence towards rite, symbol, and continuity – conspicuously absent, or only elusively present, at many contemporary religious buildings. Since the 1990s, many of the most prodigious craftsmen and architects working in the neo-traditional style have been found in Eastern Europe. The fall of Communism led to the erection of new Cathedrals and the construction and restoration of thousands of churches. Within the region, Georgia, a nation of 3.5 million, stands out as a distinctly religious society, where the Orthodox Church remains highly influential. Georgia’s unique combination of religiosity and interest in architectural revival make it home to one of the most interesting building projects anywhere in the world today – one that truly honors the idea of a revival, the rebirth of what was thought to be lost to the tides of time.
Bana, Revived
The post-Soviet decades have been characterized by revival and renewal for the Georgian Orthodox Church. From the 1990s onwards, the Church regained the prestige and influence it had historically enjoyed in Georgian society and which, during the many years of Soviet rule, was forced underground. Hundreds of churches and Cathedrals across the country were built or restored since the 1990s, including the 87-meter tall Sameba Cathedral in Tbilisi. Nowhere else, however, did the proposal of “resurrecting” a long-gone church complex to life than in the town of Khashuri in southeastern Georgia. Khashuri is a typical, quiet Georgian countryside town, in a valley surrounded by the imposing Caucasus Mountains. As is common in smaller Georgian towns, there is a main square and roundabout, graced with a fountain, connects most of its key avenues, lined with standalone houses with verandas and apartment buildings. Some streets above, a modern Orthodox Church and an older convent stand near an 18th-century watchtower. Just outside of the city, a massive, round church building can now be seen under construction. A plaque, in the unique Georgian alphabet, announces it as the “New Bana”.
The roots of the New Bana project lie in today’s Eastern Turkey, in the hinterlands of the Black Sea, in an area once known as Tao – or Tao-Klarjeti, which the Georgian Royal House of Bagrationi ruled for much of the Middle Ages. In the 9th Century, Tao’s ruler, Duke Adarnase IV, proclaimed himself King following a military victory. Shortly after, Adarnase ordered the construction of a grand Cathedral, some 50km from the Kingdom’s capital, at an area known in Georgia as “Bana”. A monastic community formed around it and, over the centuries, the Bana would evolve into one of Georgia’s leading centers of theological and philosophical scholarship. The Ottoman conquest of Anatolia marked the end of its use as a Cathedral, and the building was later abandoned. By the 19th century, little more than ruins remained.
The idea of rebuilding the mediaeval Bana near Khashuri arose from a local parishioner, as Lasha Gelashvili told me. Gelashvili is the Secretary of the New Bana Organizational Council, the body charged with constructing the cathedral. A member of the , the Cathedral’s ensemble,, Gelashvili’s path crossed that of the Bana through the Church’s local institutions. His story coincides with that of many other parishioners and faithful Georgians involved with the New Bana, attracted by the idea of rebuilding a monument that once marked the beginning of the Georgian Golden Age. The local Bishop, His Eminence Svimeon of Surami and Khashuri, warmly embraced the idea, eventually expanding it and, similarly to the original Cathedral, making it a “monastic-educational complex.” A young hierarch, Bishop Svimeon has sought from the beginning to make the New Bana a project reflective of the community of Georgian believers, centered in his Eparchy but not limited thereto.
The resulting project was that of a round, tetraconch temple, 40 meters in height and diameter, modeled after the original Bana. Tetraconch churches are thus named for their four apses of equal size, which usually face each other, each in one direction. Its ornaments and decorations are elegant and simple, as Georgian churches tend to be. The New Bana’s architects, Revaz Janashia and Levan Jankhoteli, sought to faithfully revive a church that is only known through memory and 19th-century scholarly recollection. In many ways, their work is a demonstration of the very essence of the revivalism that comes with traditionalism. Traditionalism is a militant form of inheritance, a rejection of the simplistic yet ubiquitous idea of history as linear and progressive. It means creating something by restoring an element of the past into the present. Neo-traditionalism is today characterized by dynamism, revivalism, and a yearning for the transcendental.
A Guiding Light
As I write these lines from a fin-du-siècle coffee house in Budapest, a constant thought permeates my mind and soul. Hungary is, like Georgia, highly committed to its heritage as a Christian nation. Hungary, too, has experimented with neo-traditionalism, restoring and reviving palaces and buildings destroyed during Nazi and Communist rule. Western European and North American Christianity, in contrast, did not undergo forced secularization, nor were they violently repressed for much of the past century under the yoke of Communism. The attacks on Western Christianity were of a much softer, more pernicious nature. Secularization did not come with the hammer of the State, but with the pen and the camera of culture and (pseudo-organic) societal change.
Among many other facets of Christianity that came into question was its reverence for its own places of worship. This was as much a reflection of the modernist deconstruction of traditional architecture, often justified under that most-misused motto, “form follows function,” as it was of a deconstruction of the reverence for the Sacred and the Holy that has marked the present-day West. As said previously, a traditionalist aesthetic and intellectual orientation, in our hyper-secularized age, passes through revivalism. And revivalism, for all its merits, carries with it the risk of self-denial, often manifested as an arrogant rejection of one’s own circumstance. Nostalgia, which is one of the driving forces of revivalism, must be a means for the achievement of an objective – in this case, the restoration of tradition in a world devoid thereof – not an end. As a means, it leads to artistic virtuosity. As an end, it leads to nihilism and permanent weltschmerz.
As the Bana as a building takes its tetraconch form and the Bana as an institution – with its choir, schools, and passionate builders in Bishop Svimeon’s parish – comes together, one is constantly reminded of Psalm 113:9. Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam.1 This passage of Scripture today echoes loudly in a quiet Georgian town. The vision of that monumental round church rising from the ground centuries after its demise should serve as a reminder to all of Christendom. It should remind us of what can be achieved when revivalism is properly conjoined with long-term thinking and consistent theological and pastoral leadership. While the US is often described as a “city upon a hill,” the new Bana, might be compared to a lighthouse illuminating a path on the uncertain sea with the light of the Christian tradition. A light that, should we too find inspiration in our heritage and strength in our Faith, may illuminate our path to building our own Banas.
- Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory. Psalm 115:1 in the Hebrew numbering. ↩︎
