Srima – Prižba

Context

Same coast, different century, different god

The peninsula of Prižba lies immediately beside Srima, a settlement neighbouring Vodice. The ground is flat and stony — the characteristic Dalmatian karst landscape, without dramatic hills or rivers. It was here that, sometime in the 6th century AD, two Christian basilicas were built side by side in the configuration Latin architecture calls basilicae geminatae — twin or paired churches.

That same Peninsula of Prižba lies only a few kilometres from Velika Mrdakovica — from Arauzona. The gap between the two sites is roughly three centuries: the Liburnian-Roman town on the hill disappears sometime in the 3rd century, and the basilicas on the peninsula rise in the 6th century, in late-antique Christian Dalmatia, already long under Justinian’s Byzantium.

Same peninsula. Same patch of sky. Only the ritual changed the vessel in between — from the rhyton of the symposium to the chalice of the Eucharist.

The site was excavated by Zlatko Gunjača, curator of the Šibenik City Museum, in campaigns from 1969 to 1974 — the same institution, the same time frame as the systematic excavations of the necropolis at Velika Mrdakovica. Two stories, one house, one decade of digging along the same Vodice coast.

Basilicae geminatae

Twin churches — what they were and why

Twin basilicas were nothing exclusive to Srima-Prižba — the form was well established in late-antique architecture across the western Mediterranean, particularly in North Africa and along the Adriatic coast. Two parallel churches, usually separated by a narrow corridor or sharing only a common wall, served different liturgical purposes within the same Christian community.

At Srima-Prižba these were the north and south church, both with rectangular naves, apses on the eastern side, and sanctuaries with ciboria — canopies over the altar, characteristic of liturgical furnishings of the period. Between the churches or in their immediate vicinity were the narthex (vestibule), the diaconicon (sacristy), and — the key element that completed the complex — the baptistery.

One theory about the purpose of twin basilicas is that one served the already baptised and the other the catechumens — those still undergoing preparation for baptism. Another holds that they served as the cathedral church for the bishop and the church for the people. At Srima-Prižba, at the current level of research, this question has not been definitively resolved.

The stone that survived

What has survived to the present day is not the architecture itself, but the architectural details. The soil of Srima-Prižba preserved altar screens, plutei and ciboria — the stone furnishings that, in the liturgical space of both churches, separated the sanctuary from the nave.

Several finds deserve particular attention: the tufa half-domes of the apses — the light, porous limestone that is easily worked, and which Dalmatian builders of the period preferred over primary stone — and the remains of a painted ceiling, which tell us these churches were not spartan and functional, but decorated to the extent circumstances allowed. Biforas — double windows with a slender column at the centre — were a characteristic feature of their facades.

Baptistery

The font and the bones

The baptistery was the heart of the early Christian complex. Without it there was no baptism, without baptism there was no entry into the community, and the twin basilica was, in liturgical terms, incomplete. At Srima-Prižba the baptistery was located within the complex between or beside the churches.

The most interesting detail the excavation revealed is the layering of the baptistery: beneath the circular font — characteristic of late-antique liturgical practice, when baptism was performed by full immersion — lay an older, cruciform piscina. Two fonts, two liturgical moments, in the same place.

The cruciform shape is the older form; the circular comes somewhat later, in the period when the practice of baptism was shifting from full immersion toward affusion — pouring. That both are recognisable at Srima-Prižba speaks of a site that was in active liturgical use across several phases — and which was accordingly renovated and adapted.

Graves and charnel houses

Alongside the churches and baptistery, the excavations also uncovered graves — which is not surprising. Early Christianity had a long-established practice of burial ad sanctos, which meant: the closer to the church, the closer to the community of saints and to God. Being buried within the basilica walls or at its threshold was a privilege, not the standard.

Alongside the graves, charnel houses were also found — communal spaces for collecting the bones of the previously buried, usually when space needed to be made for new burials in the limited area beside the church. That detail speaks of a community that persisted on this peninsula across several generations.

The thread

From rhyton to chalice

Arauzona disappeared sometime in the 3rd century. The churches at Srima-Prižba rose in the 6th century. Between those two dates lie three centuries about which — at least as far as this immediate coast is concerned — we know little and would like to know more.

But what we do know is this: the same peninsula, the same stone-working hands, the same Dalmatian heat. On one side of that gap, a Liburnian and Roman town on a hill, graves with rhytons, wine and oil lamps. On the other, a Christian community on a flat peninsula, with a baptismal font and charnel houses.

The vessel changed. The ritual changed. But the need for a shared place and a shared act — symposium or Eucharist, pouring of wine or pouring of water — remained the same. Perhaps it is not so very different.

The rhyton was a vessel from which the elite drank together. The chalice was a vessel from which the community drank together. Both were on this coast.

Catalogue data

Srima-Prižba in nine lines

Sources

Zlatko Gunjača, Srima – Prižba, Šibenik City Museum, 2005.

This page was prepared for guests of Arauzona on the basis of the catalogue cited above. For scholarly reference, please contact the Šibenik City Museum.