Church of St Peter and St Paul,
by the River Agrò, Casalvecchio Siculo, northeast Sicily, 24 September 2020
A fair share of earthquakes, conquests and plagues befell this Siculo-Norman architectural wonder—and yet it persists to bear witness of an experiment in heteroglossia and scholastic proximity. Consecrated in 1178 CE—after the first Norman reconstruction of a 560 CE monastic temple, some sixty years earlier, fell victim to an earthquake—the church presents a unique synthesis of Arabo-Persian/Islamic honeycomb vaulting (muqarnas) and stereometry, a Byzantine floor plan and castle-like battlements, and of foundational Norman contributions to early Gothic architecture. That tripartite meeting of shared Abrahamic spatial and sacred knowledge is matched by mesmerising use of bricks and three types of Sicilian stone, including volcanic rock of Etna. A long-time place of refuge and artistic, cosmological, humanistic and agricultural learning and experimentation, the church finally lost its monks to a 1784 CE epidemic. But, in its stony presence, an undying zest for harmonia mundi lingers to this day.
by the River Agrò, Casalvecchio Siculo, northeast Sicily, 24 September 2020
A fair share of earthquakes, conquests and plagues befell this Siculo-Norman architectural wonder—and yet it persists to bear witness of an experiment in heteroglossia and scholastic proximity. Consecrated in 1178 CE—after the first Norman reconstruction of a 560 CE monastic temple, some sixty years earlier, fell victim to an earthquake—the church presents a unique synthesis of Arabo-Persian/Islamic honeycomb vaulting (muqarnas) and stereometry, a Byzantine floor plan and castle-like battlements, and of foundational Norman contributions to early Gothic architecture. That tripartite meeting of shared Abrahamic spatial and sacred knowledge is matched by mesmerising use of bricks and three types of Sicilian stone, including volcanic rock of Etna. A long-time place of refuge and artistic, cosmological, humanistic and agricultural learning and experimentation, the church finally lost its monks to a 1784 CE epidemic. But, in its stony presence, an undying zest for harmonia mundi lingers to this day.
© Vanja Hamzić, 2020
© Vanja Hamzić, 2020
© Vanja Hamzić, 2020
© Vanja Hamzić, 2020
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© Vanja Hamzić, 2020
© Vanja Hamzić, 2020
© Vanja Hamzić, 2020
Dr Vanja Hamzić is Reader in Law, History and Anthropology at SOAS University of London and a 2016/17 Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. His work includes an exploration of twelfth-century CE spiritual, relational and gender non-conformity.
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