II.3.5
CRYPTS
The combination of a circumambient corridor crypt with a
vaulted inner hall crypt, as has been claimed in the preceding
chapter, is a Carolingian innovation that owes its
origin to the need for an area of devotional seclusion
enabling the monks to pray in front of the tomb of their
patron saint without intermingling with the secular visitors
to the tomb.[239]
Hall crypts and corridor crypts as separate
entities are well known around 800, both north and south
of the Alps. The former is relatively rare; the latter, very
common.
The most ancient Christian hall crypt known at this date
is the small three-aisled crypt of the church of Santa Maria
in Cosmedin in Rome (fig. 153), built under Pope Adrian I
(772-795).[240]
Its columns carry a straight entablature, surmounted
by a flat ceiling made of large slabs of stone. The
earliest known example of an annular corridor crypt, to the
best of my knowledge, is the semicircular passage with
which Pope Gregory the Great encircled the shrine of St.
Peter's when he raised the platform of the Presbytery above
the original pavement of the church sometime between 594
and 604 (fig. 154).
[241]
Corridor crypts were ideally suited to relieve conditions
of crowding imposed by the increasing number of pilgrims
and other visitors to the shrines of saints. They permitted
the devout to come into close bodily contact with the tomb
of the saint, while affording to it a central and well-protected
position. The layout assured an easily controllable
peripheral flow of movement for laymen, leaving the central
area free to be utilized (as such areas subsequently were)
for more restricted rites. The corridor crypt became an
integral feature of Christian architecture on both sides of
the Alps from the seventh century onward, as popular
veneration of relics became widespread.
Typical examples of corridor crypts in Rome are those
of the churches of San Crisogono (built under Gregory III,
731-741); San Marco (built under Adrian I, 772-795);
and San Stefano degli Abissini (built under Leo III, 795816).[242]
North of the Alps they are found in the Abbey
Church of St. Emmeran at Regensburg (as early as ca. 740);
in St. Lucius at Chur (mid-eighth century); in the Abbey
Church of St.-Denis (consecrated in 775); in St.-Maurice
of Agaune (end of the eighth century); in the Abbey
Church of Werden (ca. 830); in the Abbey Church of
Vreden (consecrated in 839) and the Carolingian cathedral
of Hildesheim (consecrated in 872).[243]
In the ninth century
north of the Alps, the annular corridor crypt was replaced
with increasing frequency by a crank-shaped crypt, consisting
of two straight longitudinal arms connected in the
east by a straight transverse arm. The new form was
unquestionably conditioned by the introduction of the fore
choir, which made the circumambient crypt independent of
the semicircular shape of the apse, thus opening up new
possibilities in crypt design. The earliest occurrence of the
crank-shaped corridor crypt is the Plan of St. Gall (fig. 155)
and here, also for the first time, this type of crypt is found in
combination with a central hall crypt. The designer of the
Plan may very well have been the inventor of this scheme.
Other examples soon followed: St. Philibert of Grandlieu,
847-853 (fig. 156);[244]
St. Germain of Auxerre, consecrated
on January 6, 859 (fig. 157);
[245]
the Carolingian
cathedral of Hildesheim, built by Bishop Altfrid between
851 and 872
[246]
and St. Pierre in Flavigny, 864-878
[247]
(fig.
158). None of these crypts are identical in design, yet all
of them have in common the existence, side by side, of a
circumambient corridor crypt (crank-shaped or rounded)
and a highly developed system of inner spaces differing in
form and size from the small confessional chambers of the
preceding centuries.
In St. Philibert of Grandlieu (fig. 156) the inner crypt
consisted of a barrel-vaulted transverse shaft—located at
the base of the apse—that was intersected by three shorter
longitudinal arms. East of this system there was a larger
cross-shaped space accessible through an opening in the
apex of the apse.
At St. Germain of Auxerre (fig. 157) the hall crypt had
the shape of a small basilica with longitudinal barrel vaults
rising from straight entablatures supported by piers and
columns. This space was entered from the east by a straight
longitudinal arm and terminated toward the west in a
polygonal apse which sheltered the tomb of St. Germain.
The latter, if Louis' interpretation of the description of this
crypt by Heiric is correct, was visible from the upper church
by a fenestella.[248]
The massif of masonry by which this
confessio is enclosed is 33 feet (10.00 m.) wide and 50 feet
(15.30 m.) long, and thus covers a surface area of 1,650 feet.
The clear inner space of the confessio totaled roughly 670
square feet.[249]
This is only slightly less than the area of 787
square feet, assigned in our reconstruction to the confessio
of the Plan of St. Gall. But the crypt of St. Germain is
more elaborate in other respects: by the wealth of chapels
attached to its outer corridor shafts, as well as by the
sophisticated rotunda of St. Maximin at the extreme eastern
end of the system joined to the corridor crypt by an aisled
longitudinal arm two bays deep.
The inner crypt of Flavigny (fig. 158) was of the same
order of magnitude, perhaps larger, than that of St. Germain
of Auxerre. The excavation conducted by Georges
Jouven in 1960 revealed without any shadow of doubt that
the confessio extended westward from the apse for the full
length of the presbytery, with a clear inner width of 20
feet (6.00 m.) and an axial inner length of 34½ feet (10.5 m.).[250]
Its vaults, which carried the floor of the entire presbytery,
were supported by two rows of free-standing columns with
corresponding pilasters in the long walls. Because of the
unco-operative obstinacy of a private property owner only
the southern half of the crypt could so far be excavated for
its full length; but there is no reason whatsoever—as
Jouven points out convincingly—that conditions in the
unexcavated northern part of the crypt were not identical.[251]
There is no doubt in my mind that the designer of the
church of the Plan of St. Gall furnished the prototype for
this combination of an inner hall crypt with a circumambient
corridor crypt. An important link in the dissemination
of this scheme may have been the crypt of the
church of St. Remi in Reims, in which archbishop Hincmar,
in 852, deposited the relics of St. Remi. Archaeologically
this crypt is
terra incognita, but the description "larger and
more beautifully built" (
maiori et pulchriori opere factum)
in the
Vita sancti Remigii[252]
suggests, as Hilde Claussen has
argued persuasively,
[253]
a more elaborate type of Carolingian
crypt.
