.....about relationship between Computus of Time and medieval architecture-

To reflect on the importance in medieval architecture, of a factor like orientation with res pect to the cardinal points, means to cite a point of fact amply known and recognized because of the many and wide-ranging witnesses provided by ancient texts, as well as the data that can be recovered from checks on the actual monuments themselves. An "oriented" layout of consecrated buildings was considered necessary to underscore the symbolic meaning of the building itself. Thus liturgical usages of that time were favored which would have the faithful direct his prayers "ad orientem" while, usually , th e entire liturgical "iter" inside churches were set up "ad orientem" thus in turn determining the layout of the sacred furnishings. One must point out, however, with respect to medieval religious architecture, that, beyond its strictly symbolic meaning, the orientation of buildings, hightly defined and modulated, had fundamental consequences on the practical plane, especially as regards the computation of time. We owe in fact to the few known documents and to work like that of M. Pejakovic, who has compared some churches of the Dalmatian coast, the demonstration of how it was possible to compute the very important times of the canonical hours precisely by using the orientation of the walls and the openings in churches. To define this point better, without of course getting into so vast a question as that of the canonical hours, we may state here how, they take their names from the so-called Liturgy of the Hours. This Liturgy, the origins of which go back to the time in which Christianity was first spreading, owes to the Rule of St. Benedict (6th century) the organization that characterises it and which punctuate the rhythms of religious and even civil life thruout the Middle Ages and beyond. The moments of daytime prayers provided by this Liturgy were, and are still, named Matins, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline, and are meant to be celebrated at the canonical hours of the same names. As for nighttime prayers, the Rule provides instead for Vigils. One should add furthermore that, until the i ntroduction of mechanical clocks on belfries (in Italy: the end of the 15th century), the canonical hours were computed based on the "seasonal" hours of Roman origin, which were obtained by dividing by twelve the span of time from sunrise to sunset, and s i milarly by twelve the span from sunset to the next sunrise. In this way one obtained diurnal hours that increased in length as one approached the summer solsitice (June 21, the longest day of the year, on which the hour, at 44° latitude, was over 76 m i nutes long), and that decreased in length as one approached the winter solstice (December 21, the shortest day of the year, in which a daytime hour was 43 minutes long). The reverse occurred, of course, for the night hours. Day and night hours were equal at the equinoxes (March 21 and September 23, with hours 60 minutes long). To obtain the times of the canonical hours based on the seasonal hours, it sufficed to divide the latter into six groups, usually equal, following the scheme shown below.

For the sake of completeness, it should be added to what has been said so far, that the Rule of St. Benedict was subject, over the centuries, to diverse interpretations as well as adaptations of various kinds, even if, as has been already noted, the peals of bealls t h at announced the celebrations of the divine office for a long time remained, both in the country and in the cities, the main benchmarks in the daily round of the hours. To return to medieval churches, let us now see how the orientation of their structures was oftenthere are function of the rays of the sun at the times of the canonical hours at the main days of the year such as solstices and equinoxes (very close, besides, to important feast days such as Christmas, Lady's Day, Sts. Peter and Paul (*and Michaelmas in England*) and a special relevance was additionally attahced to the feast day of the patron saint. With these points of reference it then became possible to verify the passing of the hours either by observing the passage of light and shadow on the o uter walls on sunny days, or to regulate onself on beams of light that oriented apertures projected inside, where it was usually rather dark, even when sunlight outdoors was poor and the sky was cloudy. The main inside points of reference were chiefly pro v ided by the altar and the windows of the apse, and on the pavement, the center of gravity of the church, by those of the nave. Outside, the points of reference could be many and various. Remaining on the subject of the importance of the orientation of med i eval buildings, one should underscore the obvious relationship with the sculptural and even painted iconography of the buildings themselves. In reality, at least to this writer's knowledge, there have not yet be thorough and systematic studies on this top i c, but just partial and casual, and mostly frequent mentions and indications in nearly every text dealing with medieval iconography. The lack of studies in this area has been bewailed by iconographers and iconologists since last century. In this re gard, we can just ascertain the lack of studies, pointing out that a series of representations that often surround, or at least are to be found on the rims of, windows and slits of medieval churches are usually supposed to be connected with the orientation of the same windows. It is an absolutely varied and fantastic iconography in which, however, certain cymbols recur, often associated, that have "solstitial" meanings, such as the so-called "Celtic wheel", or "equinoctial" such as the eight-pointed star inscribed in a circle (derived from a very ancient iconography of the planet Venus), or a reference to the sunbeam (understood chiefly as its first or last ray of light), such as the the fleur-de-lis.

To be clear, it is maybe useful to remember also that, naturally, these symbols are found, with a pluarlity of different meanings with relationship each other, in the most varied contexts, in which they are sometimes studied and explained, without necessairly finding relationships with orientation. They are in fact widespread representations and it is not hard to trace them, just to quote a few examples, near doors (solstices and equinoxes = gates of heaven) with a purely apotropaic value, or as part of various types of cosmology. Naturally the checks that can be made on the relationsip between iconography and orientation of apertures on specific monuments, in most cases is neither simple nor reducible to paper. This depends mostly on the fact, according to the dictates of the Tridentine Reform of the Liturgy and the other reforms that followed, the composition and position of liturgical furnishings that is now found inside ancient churches has usually been radically and rep e atedly modified with respect to what they were in the Middle Ages; this inevitably involves difficulty in tracing the points of reference for the direction of the sunbeams, which, as has been mentioned, were often directed towards key elements of the furnishings. Other difficulties in checking this can be due to structural modifications to which church buildings have been subjected as well as architecural addictions or changes in the surrounding area. To pass to some very simple examples of what we have just been speaking about, it seems important to underscore that what follows had no pretense of constituting even a groundwork for an organic thought about the relationships among icoonography, orientation, and computation of time; the question is merely one here of examples found in some monuments that, because their structure has been relatively well conserved, sufficiently accurate drawings are available, and last but not least, were accessible enough to allow an analysis that might lead to relevant if elementary results. In particular, in both the cases given here, it is observations involving noon.

The Marecchia River, before crossing the city of Rimini and flowing into the Adriatic Sea, traverses a valley rich in medieval architectural remains. In th e lower valley, for example, we find, below the town of Verucchio, the church of S. Martino in Rafaneto. This is a church that shows evidence of notably ancient structures, some of which may have been executed before the 11th century. In the walls t o the left and right of the apse, has been found a notable system of asymmetrical slits, the purpose of which was certainly for time computation, which it would be of course interesting to verify the orientation. It is, however, to a feature of the 13c aps e that we will bring to bear our attention. Specifically, we would like to bring into evidence a little carving under the third arch from the left, in the series of Gothic arches that wend their way along the top of the apsidal drum. It is a very ruined little relief, hard to see, that still shows the head of a horned animal surmounted by an outcropping that is curved in its upper part. This representation is exactly East of the center of the apsidal semicircle, which means that every sunny day of the year the shadow will run along the arches from the right to the left of the apse, to cross the little carving at the precise instant of the day's astronomical noon. It is thus very likely that the carved head in that of a ram (Aries), which is still today the symbol used to indicate the so-called "vernal point", or the point on the horizon, coinciding exactly with the East, what the sun rises on the equinoxes. As for the curved object higher up, it might be a way of symbolizing the hill that prevents the sea from being seen, i.e., the horizon, from the location of the church. S. Martino in Rafaneto right: a stylized representation of the "head" of a ram at S. Martino

The head of a ram as found under one of the arches of the apse. This sign indicated the point on the horizon where the sun entered the sign of the Ram (Aries).

At the beginning of the upper valley of the Marecchia is the church of S. Pietro in Messa, a building that can be dated to the 12th century, that has been subjected to major transformations and mutilations during the course of its history, as well as a restoration of dubious merit in the last few decades. On the South side of the nave, there still remain visible four wall slit apertures, of which the last one towards the SE, towards the apse, has an architrave decorated with an inclined symbol of a "solstitial" type and two "balls" in relief on either side of the lower ray of the "wheel". In this case it must have been a way of indicating that, as one can see for oneself on paper, a sunbeam, at astronomical noon on a day very close to the winter solstice, traversing this aperture, would illuminate a point coinciding with the barycenter of the nave, which might have been marked in former times on the pavement .

We have wished so far to avoid entering upon complex discourses on the meaning of symbols; it will thus suffice to underscore how noon, which is the *culmination* and this the chief moment of "passage" in daily dse of the sun, is to be understood in itself as a "solstitial moment." In the case at hand, one may thus speak of a "solstice within a solstice." The inclined "rose" represented below in the drawing is what appears to be carved over the architrave of the fourth wall aperture slit on the outer wall of the right nave of the church. The inclination should be a way of representing the fact that it is a day that is not the actual winter solstice, but a day close to it.

Carlo Valdameri

Translation by Bill Thaier

The author

Fascinated by medieval iconography in general and in particular by that related to orientation. He is also interested in the medieval period of Rimini, the town where he was born and lives. He is 39 years old and workds for a government agency/*Ente pubblico*.

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