Apse - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

This article is about an architectural feature; for the astronomical term see apsis
Apsis
An apsis , plural apsides , is the point of greatest or least distance of a body from one of the foci of its elliptical orbit. In modern celestial mechanics this focus is also the center of attraction, which is usually the center of mass of the system...

. For the rock band, see Apse (band)
Apse (band)
Apse was an American rock band signed to the UK label ATP Recordings and Spanish label . The band moved through many different musical styles since its inception, weaving together at various times shoegazer, Heavy Metal, gothic rock, post-punk, prog-rock, industrial, and post-rock influences;...

. Or you may mean the acronym APS
APS
-Education:* Army Public School, group of Army schools in India under AWES* APS Netherlands, or APS International, a Dutch educational non-governmental organization* Abbottabad Public School and College...

.

In architecture

Architecture

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

, the apse (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

αψις (apsis), then Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

absis: "arch, vault"; sometimes written apsis; plural apses) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault

Vault (architecture)

A Vault is an architectural term for an arched form used to provide a space with a ceiling or roof. The parts of a vault exert lateral thrust that require a counter resistance. When vaults are built underground, the ground gives all the resistance required...

or semi-dome

Semi-dome

A semi-dome, also called a "half-dome", is the term in architecture for half a dome , used to cover a semi-circular area. Similar structures occur in nature.-Architecture:...

. In Romanesque

Romanesque architecture

Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of Medieval Europe characterised by semi-circular arches. There is no consensus for the beginning date of the Romanesque architecture, with proposals ranging from the 6th to the 10th century. It developed in the 12th century into the Gothic style,...

, Byzantine

Byzantine architecture

Byzantine architecture is the architecture of the Byzantine Empire. The empire gradually emerged as a distinct artistic and cultural entity from what is today referred to as the Roman Empire after AD 330, when the Roman Emperor Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire east from Rome to...

and Gothic

Gothic architecture

Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....

Christian abbey

Abbey

An abbey is a Catholic monastery or convent, under the authority of an Abbot or an Abbess, who serves as the spiritual father or mother of the community.The term can also refer to an establishment which has long ceased to function as an abbey,...

, cathedral

Cathedral

A cathedral is a Christian church that contains the seat of a bishop...

and church architecture

Architecture

, the term is applied to a semi-circular or polygonal termination of the main building at the liturgical east end (where the altar is), regardless of the shape of the roof, which may be flat, sloping, domed, or hemispherical.

Definition

The apse is the semicircular or polygonal termination to the choir or aisles of a church. In relation to church architecture it is generally the name given to where the altar is placed or where the clergy are seated.

The epithet "apsidal" may be applied to the exedra

Exedra

In architecture, an exedra is a semicircular recess or plinth, often crowned by a semi-dome, which is sometimes set into a building's facade. The original Greek sense was applied to a room that opened onto a stoa, ringed with curved high-backed stone benches, a suitable place for a philosophical...

of classical architecture

Classical architecture

Classical architecture is a mode of architecture employing vocabulary derived in part from the Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, enriched by classicizing architectural practice in Europe since the Renaissance...

, a feature of the secular Roman basilica

Basilica

The Latin word basilica , was originally used to describe a Roman public building, usually located in the forum of a Roman town. Public basilicas began to appear in Hellenistic cities in the 2nd century BC.The term was also applied to buildings used for religious purposes...

Features

The apse as a semicircular projection (which may be polygonal on the exterior, or reveal the radiating projections of chapel

Chapel

A chapel is a building used by Christians as a place of fellowship and worship. It may be part of a larger structure or complex, such as a church, college, hospital, palace, prison or funeral home, located on board a military or commercial ship, or it may be an entirely free-standing building,...

s) may be roofed with a semi-dome

Semi-dome

A semi-dome, also called a "half-dome", is the term in architecture for half a dome , used to cover a semi-circular area. Similar structures occur in nature.-Architecture:...

(also called a half-dome) or with radiating vault

Vault (architecture)

ing. A simple apse may be merely embedded within the wall of the east end. Eastern orthodox churches may have a triple apse, which is usually a mark of Byzantine

Byzantine architecture

influence when it is seen in Western churches.

Smaller subsidiary apses may be found around the choir or at the ends of transept

Transept

For the periodical go to The Transept.A transept is a transverse section, of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In Christian churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform building in Romanesque and Gothic Christian church architecture...

s. These proliferating apses are common in later Byzantine architecture

Byzantine architecture

and the Ottoman architecture that developed from it. The term "abse" tends to be reserved for those at the liturgical east end, with these further spaces called "exhedras" or "absidal openings". A tetraconch

Tetraconch

A tetraconch, from the Greek for "four shells", is a building, usually a church or other religious building, with four apses, one in each direction, usually of equal size. The basic ground plan of the building is therefore a Greek cross...

is a church on a central plan with four abses, one in each direction. An exedra or apse may be reduced in scale to form a niche

Niche (architecture)

A niche in classical architecture is an exedra or an apse that has been reduced in size, retaining the half-dome heading usual for an apse. Nero's Domus Aurea was the first semi-private dwelling that possessed rooms that were given richly varied floor plans, shaped with niches and exedras;...

within the thickness of walling; a niche does not reveal its presence by projecting on the exterior.

The interior of the apse, especially the semi-dome, is traditionally a focus of iconography

Iconography

Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek "image" and "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons in the...

, bearing the richest concentration of mosaics, or painting and sculpture, towards which all other decoration may tend.

Related features

In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the south apse is known as diaconicon

Diaconicon

The Diaconicon is, in the Eastern Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Churches, the name given to a chamber on the south side of the central apse of the church, where the vestments, books, etc, that are used in the Divine Services of the church are kept .The Diaconicon contains the thalassidion...

and the north apse as prothesis. Various ecclesiastical features of which the apse may form part are drawn together here:

Presbytery

The presbytery (or sanctuary), directly to the east beyond the choir

Choir (disambiguation)

- Choir or quire :* Choir, an ensemble of singers* Choir , the area between the nave and sanctuary in a church or cathedral* One of the divisions of a Pipe organ...

is the High Altar, where there is one (compare communion table

Communion table

A Communion table is used by many Protestant churches, particularly from Reformed, Baptist, Congregational, and non-denominational traditions, for the preparation of the Eucharist ....

). This area is reserved for the clergy. The word derives from the Greek

Greek language

presbuteros meaning "elder".

Chancel

The word "chancel" derives from the French usage of chancel from a Late Latin

Late Latin

Late Latin is the scholarly name for the written Latin of Late Antiquity. The English dictionary definition of Late Latin dates this period from the 3rd to the 6th centuries AD extending in Spain to the 7th. This somewhat ambiguously defined period fits between Classical Latin and Medieval Latin...

word cancelli meaning "lattice" (Online Etymology Dictionary). The grating in question separated the chancel from the nave

Nave

In Romanesque and Gothic Christian abbey, cathedral basilica and church architecture, the nave is the central approach to the high altar, the main body of the church. "Nave" was probably suggested by the keel shape of its vaulting...

, thus "chancel" refers to the part of a church near the main altar used by the priests and open to the choir.

Chevet

In the beginning of the 13th century in France, the apses were built as radiating chapels outside the choir aisle, henceforth known as the chevet (French, "headpiece"), when the resulting structure was too complicated to be merely an "apse". Famous northern French examples of chevets are in the Gothic cathedrals of Amiens

Amiens Cathedral

The Cathedral of Our Lady of Amiens , or simply Amiens Cathedral, is a Roman Catholic cathedral and seat of the Bishop of Amiens...

, Beauvais and Reims

Reims Cathedral

Notre-Dame de Reims is the Roman Catholic cathedral of Reims, where the kings of France were once crowned. It replaces an older church, destroyed by a fire in 1211, which was built on the site of the basilica where Clovis was baptized by Saint Remi, bishop of Reims, in AD 496. That original...

. Such radiating chapels are found in England in Norwich

Norwich

Norwich is a city in England. It is the regional administrative centre and county town of Norfolk. During the 11th century, Norwich was the largest city in England after London, and one of the most important places in the kingdom...

and Canterbury

Canterbury

Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....

cathedrals, but the fully developed feature is essentially French, though the Francophile connoisseur Henry III

Henry III of England

Henry III was the son and successor of John as King of England, reigning for 56 years from 1216 until his death. His contemporaries knew him as Henry of Winchester. He was the first child king in England since the reign of Æthelred the Unready...

introduced it into Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey

The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...

Ambulatory

The word "ambulatory

Ambulatory

The ambulatory is the covered passage around a cloister. The term is sometimes applied to the procession way around the east end of a cathedral or large church and behind the high altar....

" refers to a curving aisle

Aisle

An aisle is, in general, a space for walking with rows of seats on both sides or with rows of seats on one side and a wall on the other...

in the apse that passes behind the altar and choir, giving access to chapels in the chevet. An "ambulatory" ("walking space") may refer to the arcade passages that enclose a cloister

Cloister

A cloister is a rectangular open space surrounded by covered walks or open galleries, with open arcades on the inner side, running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle or garth...

in a monastery

Monastery

Monastery denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer as well as the domestic quarters and workplace of monastics, whether monks or nuns, and whether living in community or alone .Monasteries may vary greatly in size – a small dwelling accommodating only...

, or to other types of aisles round the edge of a church building, for example in circular churches.

Definition

Features

Related features

Presbytery

Chancel

Chevet

Ambulatory

See also