1. General presentation of the monument

The church of St. Nicolas used to be the katholikon of the namesake monastery, which operated until modern times (19^th century) and was a dependency of Hosios Loukas. It lies at the rural region of Kampia in Boeotia, a short distance (about 10 km) northwest of the village of Dionysos (former Tzamali or Tsamali) in the municipality of Orchomenos. The church is generally presumed to have been a monastic katholikon already from the 12^th-century, although the relevant evidence comes from a 15^th-century source. Either way, the church survives almost in its entirety and preserves its original shape in a relatively good condition. The rest of the monastic buildings, currently lying in ruins, are dated no earlier than the 18^th or the 19^th century, judging from their morphological and structural elements. During this period, the building complex of the monastery had a quadrilateral ground plan of 50 m each side, based on the surviving data. In the perimeter of the courtyard that surrounded the katholikon, along its northern, western and southern sides there were three elongated wings. The northern one is still preserved today in a better condition, an oblong two-storey building, with external dimensions of 8,5 x 26 m. The western part of its barrel-vaulted ground floor is fully preserved, on the top of which lies a modern building, erected in the 1920s. From the other two wings, with dimensions similar to the northern one (7 x 47 m the western one and 9,5 x 33 m the southern one), only the foundations survive. In the eastern side of the monastery a precinct wall made of rubble stones stood high, in the southern side of which the original gate of the complex was opened – today only its pilasters are preserved in situ.

Because of its importance, the church of St Nicolas has often been included in general studies on Byzantine architecture as well on individual structural issues, yet it has never been the subject of a special scientific research. The brief description and the drawings published in 1901 by R.W. Schultz and S. H. Barnsley, made while they were studying the monastery of Hosios Loukas (whose katholikon St. Nicolas imitates) are still basic. The important study of Charalmpos and Laskarina Boura on the 12^th-century church-building gathers in a systematic way all the relevant bibliography.

2. Architectural description

2.1. Architectural type and internal arrangement

The monument is of medium size, with a ground plan in the shape of a rectangle, ca. 10 x 12 m., imitating in a smaller scale the katholikon of Hosios Loukas. The latter was built after 1011 through imperial donation, which had a great impact on the formation of the "Helladic School" of the Middle Byzantine architecture. It belongs to the same architectural type, the so-called "continental" or "complex octagonal", a type that fully appears in the katholikon of the monastery of Hosios Loukas and is seen in few examples, mainly in large and rich monastic churches. In this type the dominant element remains the wide dome which covers the entire central nave. In the case of St Nicolas its inner diameter measures 5,3 m. The dome rests through small pendentives on eight arches which step in equally numbered pillars – in St Nicolas the two western ones have been replaced by columns. Its four out of the eight arches project to the outer walls, giving the impression of a cross shape in ground plan, while the four remaining ones bridge, under the form of squinches, the corners of the central square. Secondary small lateral compartments frame the main area of the church in its corners.

The church of St Nicolas has a tripartite bema to the east and a tripartite narthex, with high proportions, to the west. Its eastern side, with only one three-sided apse projecting from the outer façade, and a single-light window on each side of the apse, clearly imitates the example of Hosios Loukas, since in the 12^th century the opening of three widows in the bema apse is relatively rare. In the two lateral sides of the church the pilasters that support the lunettes of the arches of the transverse cross arms, are lightly projecting. The building is full of large two-lighted or three-lighted windows, while in the lunettes of the transverse cross arms large complex windows are opened with double-columns stepping on the floor and marble parapet slabs in between, in the lower zone, according to the example of Hosios Loukas. The church is based on a high two-step substracture.

The considerable leaning of the ground level allows the formation of a subterranean crypt under the church, similar to that of the katholikon of the monastery of Hosios Loukas. It stretches in an area equal to that of the main church and belongs to the complex cross-in-square type. It is covered with ribbed groin vaults, while a distinctive element of its ground plan is the abandonment of the diakonikon to the east.

The small scale of St. Nicolas led the monument’s architect to follow certain original solutions, which differed from its prototype and largely contributed to the formation of a much more unified and luminous interior. The couple of the western, solid pillars were replaced by elegant columns, resulting in the unification of the narthex with the main church. In the overall unification of the church interior also contributed the abandonment of the galleries (still in use in the case of Hosios Loukas), the transformation of the two-storey narthex to a simplified single-storey one and the octagonal drum of the dome which is taller than that of the dome of the katholikon of Hosios Loukas.

2.2. Architectural decoration

Besides the peculiarities in the architecture of the church of St. Nicolas, what makes the church single out so much from its prototype, as wellcas from the rest of the closely dated monuments, is the extremely elaborate formation of its outer face with exclusively well-dressed stones. This 12^th-century trend for the wide use of dressed stones in the outer surfaces of the churches, is fully applied here and appears in an advanced form. The architect of this monument chose consciously and almost exclusively the particularly expensive method of dressed stones. The use of brick stones, a common material in this period, is reduced to the cloisonné technique of wall-masonry, applied on the drum of the dome, on the excellent and elaborate brick decoration of the drums of the double-lighted openings in the underground crypt, on some of which opus sectile of thick brick stones are also used, and on the brick-made groin vaults of the crypt, an innovative solution of its age.

The clarity of its surfaces and outlines makes the edifice differ from the multi-colored and picturesque sense that characterizes the architecture of this period, and puts it among the most representative examples of classicism, revived during the 12^th century, as well as one of the most beautiful and interesting monuments of its period. The massive rectangular pieces of hard limestone used in its masonry in fully continuous horizontal layers, are not spolia from a nearby ancient monument, as often happens in this period, but have been carefully extracted and hewn especially for this monument’s erection. The same careful carving and perfect join is observed in the individual structural elements made of stone, as for example the arches and the drums of the double-lighted or triple-lighted church windows.

The church preserves enough decorative architectural elements, most of which remain unpublished. Some of them present special interest, as for example the capitals of the two western columns of the church, decorated with complex floral formations imitating the similar but chronologically earlier column capitals of the Panagia church of Hosios Loukas, the imposts of the marble mullions of an excellent quality from the complex openings of the transverse cross arms and a pigeon sculpted almost in the round on the drum of the triple-lighted apse window. Some scattered individual marble elements are attributed to the original temple screen of the church that has not survived.

3. Iconography

The interior walls of the monument were decorated with wall paintings, still unpublished. Most of the scenes have been severely damaged and some times are covered with later coating. The wall paintings of the underground crypt are preserved in a fragmentary condition, but were published in 1976 by professor Μ. Panagiotidi. The few remaining scenes are enough to restore the iconographic program of the crypt: it has clearly funerary character, as the one in the burial crypt of Hosios Loukas, in accordance with its use as burial chapel and ossuary, where funerary rites would be performed in memory of the monastic community’s deceased members.

In the semi-dome of the bema apse, Christ Pantokrator is depicted in the Antiphonetes type. Concelebrating Church Fathers are depicted in the semi-circle of the apse and the lateral walls of the bema, among whom the particularly popular local saint John Kaloktenis, metropolitan of Thebes, who died between 1182 and 1193. In the same area, above the opening towards the prothesis, the bust of St. Nicolas is depicted, frontal and with raised hands. The depiction of the eponymous saint of the church in a gesture of supplication should be connected with the nearby figure of Pantokrator, to whom the popular saint mediates for human salvation.

The iconographic program of the main church does not include evangelic scenes, but only individual figures of saints. The groin vaults carried busts of saints between stylized floral decorative elements. Today the four evangelists depicted on the north groin vault are still preserved and an angel on the central one. On the eastern part of the main church dominates the scene of Deesis, with Christ-Emmanuel between Theotokos and John the Baptist. On the remaining available surfaces of the lower zones of the crypt are pictured monastic saints, who, along with the other figures, form a larger Deesis for the salvation of the monks.

The wall-paintings of the crypt date to the late 13^th century and belong to a provincial artistic trend, which remains mostly attached to the artistic traditions of the previous century, although it partly follows modern progressive trends of its age. In case of a complete publication of the monument in the future, it would be of much interest to search for the relation between the wall-paintings of the crypt and those of the main church.

4. Current condition

Due to the lack of any written sources and epigraphic evidence, it still remains unexplained the existence of such an expensive undertaking, lying in a relatively isolated region of Boeotia. Today, the locals are boasting that the church of St. Nicolas rivals that of Hosios Loukas, while they claim that for its construction materials have been transferred on imperial ships. A few years ago the monastery started operating again after the settlement of five monks. Meanwhile, the metropolis of Thebes and Livadeia has submitted for approval to the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism a study on the restoration of the ruined auxiliary facilities of the monastery and its overall re-organization. The re-opening of the monastery is necessary to respect the architectural and archaeological value of a katholikon of major importance, which still waits for a systematic preservation and restoration.