ArtSmart Roundtable: Charlemagne’s Palatine Chapel

This month’s ArtSmart subject is religious architecture. I had a hard time deciding on a topic because I had studied SOOO many churches, cathedrals, temples, mosques, and synagogues as an art history major. Architecture makes me happy. Medieval religious architecture makes me completely geek out. So I finally settled on a chapel that has ties to Byzantine churches: the Palatine Chapel in Aachen, Germany.

Charlemagne was the first leader in post-Roman Empire Europe to attempt to reunify the various kingdoms under one person. Justinian had tried to reassert the authority of the Roman East (the Byzantine Empire) over the Roman West, but he really only managed to snag the city of Ravenna in Italy and nearly bankrupted the Byzantine coffers in the process. Charlemagne sought to legitimize his conquests by tying himself to every Roman tradition he could get his hands on. He had the pope crown him Holy Roman Emperor to get the last Roman system of power in Europe to back him. He also wanted to resurrect the Roman education system within his court to bring back the glory of the Roman Empire. He never succeeded at learning to read himself, but he created an educational and artistic renaissance in the 9th century across his kingdom. Religious art and manuscript copying flourished under his rule. By recruiting scholars from all over the known world, he became familiar with Byzantine architecture. As another symbolic tie between himself and the Roman Empire, he took Justinian’s San Vitale church in Ravenna as the inspiration for his palatine chapel in the Holy Roman Empire’s capital of Aachen.

Interior of San Vitale, Ravenna. Some rights reserved by paulbai/CreativeCommons

San Vitale is an octagonal church with Byzantine style mosaics and marble floors adorning the interior. The stone exterior is rather plain to symbolize the earthly world whereas the extremely ornate interior symbolizes the spiritual or heavenly world. Light reflecting off the gold tesserae (the little tiles the make up a mosaic) creating the illusion of the ceiling floating above the floor on delicate arcades. The eight sides represent the seven days of creation and the resurrection which occurred on the day after the Sabbath making eight days total. This is the church where the famous mosaic of Justinian in procession with his court leads towards the altar (on the east side because the sunrise is symbolic of the resurrection). It’s interesting that this is the church that Charlemagne chose to mimic. Justinian was at odds with the Roman Catholic Church because he considered himself both the temporal and spiritual leader of the Byzantine Empire and the true, legitimate successor to the Roman Empire. The Vatican considered the Eastern Orthodox Church to be a broken, disconnected church whereas the Roman Catholic Church was linked directly to St. Peter as Jesus’s successor. Perhaps he hoped to marry the two lineages of the Roman Empire’s dynasties through this symbol of his power.

Interior of Palatine Chapel in Aachen. Some rights reserved by Jim Linwood/Creative Commons

The Germanic people in Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire had no tradition of marble floored stone structures with arcades or mosaics. Timber was more plentiful and the vestiges of Western Roman architecture left a history of more cross-shaped basilicas. So his palatine chapel in Aachen was incredibly unique to his subjects. However, his chapel lacks the finesse of San Vitale. The windows are small, the arcades are thick, and the chapel has a general clunkiness compared to San Vitale. It was a good attempt at a replication, but it lacked the engineering know-how that the Byzantines preserved and improved upon from the Roman Empire. However, the clunkiness served to reinforce the idea of Charlemagne as the protector of his kingdom. The thick walls are fortress-like, and this connection to a fortress may have been a purposeful design. Regardless, it has become a hallmark of Carolingian (meaning of Charlemagne and his dynasty; Charlemagne means Charles the Great in Frankish and Charles is Carolus in Latin) architecture. The chapel was a major pilgrimage site in the West as a new Rome. Charlemagne successfully legitimized his rule by making as many connections to the Roman Empire of the past as he could. By doing so, he set the gears in motion for a new Romanesque style of architecture in medieval Europe.

This month’s fellow ArtSmart participants:

EuroTravelogue: Florence
Baptistery: Through the “Gates of Paradise”

No Onions Extra Pickles: Modernisme in the Church

This Is My Happiness: Prambanan Hindu Temples

Travellious: San Pietro in Spoleto

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