In each culture, the types of religious buildings differ. But the beauty, grandeur and grace of religious buildings always struck the imagination of people.
In the Middle Ages, cathedrals and churches were not only a place of worship for God. The beauty of these buildings was to become a material manifestation of this worship. Therefore, the construction of cathedrals has always been carried out with special care and with the participation of many people, often stretching for decades. The prevailing architectural styles of the Middle Ages are Romanesque and Gothic. The article talks about one of the elements of the early Christian and medieval basilica - this is a transept.
European temple architecture of the Middle Ages
Before you understand what a transept is in a temple, you need to familiarize yourself with the general orientation of religious buildings in the Middle Ages.
At that time, religion was one of the main components of human life. Fear of God and worship of his will determined not only the way of life of people, but also the culture and art of that period. Not surprisingly, the love of God manifested itself in architecture.
One of the main religious symbols of Christianity is the cross. This symbol is reflected in the architectural ensembles of the Middle Ages. If you look at the Gothic cathedral from a height, you can clearly see that in plan it has the shape of a cross. Conventionally, the temple is formed by two huge intersecting "crossbeams" of the cross - this is a transept and a nave. What a medieval temple looks like in plan, can be seen above.
What is a nave in architecture
This word goes back to the Latin language and translates as "ship". This is not surprising: ships often look majestic and at the same time elegant. The same can be said of the cathedral nave.
The nave is the main, central part of the cathedral. In terms of it, it looks like a longitudinal crossbar of a conditional cross. In other words, the nave is a long corridor of the cathedral, making up its main internal space.
Typically, in the Middle Ages, cathedrals were built so that the "cross" ran in the direction from west to east. Therefore, entering the cathedral through the main, western entrance, the visitor immediately found himself standing in the nave and saw a long longitudinal part of the temple in front of him.
What is transept in architecture
So, with the nave sorted out. Let us turn to the concept of transept. The word "transept" is also of Latin origin. Trans is translated as "for" and septum is "fence".
The transept is a part of the cathedral building that crosses the central part - the nave. On the plan, it looks like the cross bar of a cross. Thus, the nave and transept, intersecting, form the same Latin cross in terms of which the Gothic architecture of the Middle Ages is famous. The transept of the church separates the nave from the altar, sanctuary, choir and presbytery.
Transepts first appeared in early Christian temples. The reason was the complication of religious rites. In this regard, the expansion of the internal space of the temple was required. Therefore, they began to complete the transepts.
What does the transept look like?
As a rule, this architectural element is shorter than the nave (all because of the same likeness to the cross). However, in some basilicas, the nave and transept are the same length and cross each other exactly in the middle. This type of cross is called Greek. Since the altar, as a rule, is located in the eastern part of the cathedral, the direction of the transept is from north to south. The altar ledge is usually in the form of a semicircle. It is called apse (absida).
On the north and south walls of the transept there is usually a stained glass window-rose - one of the main decorative elements of the Catholic Cathedral.
Parts of the transept on the sides of the central nave are called semitranscepts. The intersection of the transept and the nave was called the center of the cross. Above it can be located the cathedral spire (for example, the Salisbury Cathedral), the central tower or the dome (St. Paul's Cathedral in London).
Unusual cases
In the transept architecture, deviations from the canons of the cruciform construction occur. For example, cathedrals, as a rule, had only one transept. However, some temples have two transepts - for example, the Salisbury Cathedral mentioned above . A photo of this building is presented below.
Some temples were built without a transept. Sometimes this element was represented by conventional chapels on the sides of the cathedral.
Occasionally, you can see the cathedrals with only one semitranspekt. This is not an architectural feature of the building. Most often, one of the half-transcepts was destroyed during an incident, for example, a fire or a bombing in wartime.
An interesting case is St. Peter's Basilica in Beauvais, France. It is unique in that it has a transept and an apse. And the central nave collapsed several times during the construction of the cathedral. As a result, this part of the building was never completed.
Another case is St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague (Czech Republic). For a long time it was only one southern half-transept and choirs. The construction of the cathedral was completed in the nineteenth century.
Additional meaning of the word “transept”
This concept does not always apply only to the architectural element of a medieval cathedral. In another sense, a transept refers to any auxiliary corridor crossing the main one. The corridors of the Crystal Palace in London are also called transepts - a magnificent building made of glass and cast iron, built in the mid-nineteenth century.
So, along with the nave, the transept is the main element of the basilica in Christian cathedrals. It represents a corridor transverse to the nave - the long part of the temple. The intersection of the nave with the transept gives the building the shape of a Latin cross - a universal type of construction of medieval cathedrals.