Sacred Spectating: The Late Antique Triconch at the Red Monastery in Egypt

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the Red Monastery church, an early Byzantine monument located in Egypt. A monastic community which came to be known as the Red Monastery joined an ascetic federation led by the nearby White Monastery. In the fifth century C.E., the monks of the White and Red Monasteries commissioned monumental church buildings. The Red Monastery church is a smaller copy of the White Monastery church. Both are triconch basilicas, and their enclosure walls imitate the external profiles of pharaonic temples. The interior elevations of the two church sanctuaries adopt an architectural type called multistory aedicular façades. These kinds of façades adorned elite public buildings in the eastern Mediterranean region. Although a lot of scholarship has been done on the White Monastery and its famous abbot Shenoute (ca. 346-465 C.E.), the Red Monastery church was almost completely overlooked until recently. Between 2000 and 2015, Elizabeth S. Bolman directed a major multidisciplinary project that focused on the triconch sanctuary of the Red Monastery church. Its ensemble of architectural sculpture, polychromy, and figural paintings is virtually intact. Bolman and Dale Kinney have substantially advanced the state of knowledge about monastic visual culture in late antique Egypt by focusing on the Red Monastery church. My dissertation builds on their conclusions. I have identified a different perspective from which to understand the late antique triconch at the Red Monastery. The category of sacred spectating is the interpretive lens through which I view this building.