Notes on the Sanctuary of St. Symeon Stylites at Qalʿat
Simʿān
P. Corby
Finney
Princeton, NJ
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
George A. Kiraz
James E. Walters
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Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2020
Volume 23.2
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https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv23n2prfinney
P. Corby Finney
Notes on the Sanctuary of St. Symeon Stylites at Qalʿat
Simʿān
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol23/HV23N2PRFinney.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, 2020
vol 23
issue 2
pp 430–432
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is an electronic journal dedicated to the study
of the Syriac tradition, published semi-annually (in January and July) by Beth
Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. Published since 1998, Hugoye seeks to offer the
best scholarship available in the field of Syriac studies.
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Emma Loosley Lemming and John Tchalenko, Notes on the Sanctuary of St. Symeon Stylites at Qalʿat Simʿān
(Leiden: Brill, 2019). Pp. x + 132; $179.00.
This splendid volume consists of three sections. First, a biographical overview
(pp. 1-27) documenting the extraordinary life and brilliant work of Georges
Tchalenko (1905-1987) written by Georges’ son John. Second, a short essay (pp.
28-32) on the historiography of Qalʿat Simʿān written by Emma Loosely. And
third, Georges’ Notes (written in French) on the
sanctuary of Qalʿat Simʿān with photographs and plans. Loosley and John
Tchalenko have translated Notes into English and have
included selected restoration and reconstruction drawings and photographs housed
in the Beirut archive of Georges Tchalenko.
The biographical section reveals first a man who was a gifted student. In 1928
he earned a degree as a certified engineer at the University of Braunschweig.
His German mentors praised his work. His sense of architectural design reflects
the Bauhaus tradition during its initial decades – a connection that would be
interesting to pursue. Georges Tchalenko also possessed considerable
organizational talents. His political allegiance was liberal and anti-fascist.
He was a Slavophile and at the end of the Second World War sought Russian
citizenship which was twice denied. In 1933 Georges Tchalenko travelled to
Palestine, and that pre-war date marks the beginning of his archaeological magnum opus. In 1935 he married Gerda Mangold, a union
that was marked by long bouts of separation. Georges Tchalenko comes across as a
person of pessimistic, self-critical temperament, dissatisfied especially with
his ex¬tended state of penury, with the quality of his own work, with his lonely
life, with his want of a passport, with his longing for repatriation with his
Motherland (he was born in St. Petersburg), and with lack of scholarly
recognition. In fact, it is clear from the biographical section that his closest
friend, Henri Seyrig, Director of the French Services des Antiquités, held Georges Tchalenko in the highest regard.
Loosley introduces the beginning of part 2 with a short – and in my view,
disappointing – discussion of Qalʿat Simʿān as a sacred place. The
historiography of sacred place begins not in the 1990s as she suggests but
instead in a late 19th or early 20th-century context (cf. P. C. Finney, “TOPOS
HIEROS und christlicher Sakralbau in vorkonstantinischer Überlieferung” Boreas 7 [1984], 193-225). Loosley expresses the view
that it was not the personhood of Symeon Stylites that formed the basis of
Qalʿat Simʿān as a holy place, and this is incorrect. After Symeon’s death the
only material evidence of his person that survived at Qalʿat Simʿān was the
column which became the symbolic center of the cult devoted to the veneration of
the saint. But the column was a holy place because a holy man had resided on it.
The second part of Loosley’s discussion is biographical, focused on Georges
Tchalenko’s struggle to bring his work to a successful conclusion. He worked
with a typewriter and hand-written corrections. Georges Tchalenko wrote under
difficult circumstances, including exile, war, conflict with his rivals at the
Institut français du Proche-Orient, and
technological limitations. He was still at work on Qalʿat Simʿān and the Syrian
bêma churches into his early 80s.
The third part of this remarkable volume gives Georges Tchalenko’s useful
historiography of the excavation and restoration of the Qalʿat Simʿān sanctuary.
The martyrion, the monastery, the funerary chapel, the
baptistery, the guest houses (cf. Rabun M. Taylor, “Xenodocheion,” The Eerdmans Encyclopedia of Early Christian Art and
Archaeology [Grand Rapids, 2017], s.v.) are at issue here. Georges
Tchalenko gives a chronology of the sanctuary which extends over the 5th to 19th centuries. He
traces the history of the sanctuary before and after its restoration. Throughout
this discussion Georges Tchalenko’s photographs and plans accompany the text.
The work of restoration is the most impressive part of this discussion. Part 3
is an informative and important addition to the architectural history of early
Christian Syria.