Early Christian Architecture
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The official recognition of Christianity by Licinius and later by Constantine in the early years of the third century A.D., simply legalized an institution which had been for three centuries gathering momentum for its final conquest of the antique world. The new religion rapidly enlisted in its service for a common purpose and under a common impulse races as wide apart in blood and culture as those which had built up the art of imperial Rome. It was Christianity which reduced to civilization in the West the Germanic hordes that had overthrown Rome, bringing their fresh and hitherto untamed vigor to the task of recreating architecture out of the decaying fragments of classic art. So in the East its life-giving influence awoke the slumbering Greek art-instinct to new triumphs in the arts of building, less refined and perfect indeed, but not less sublime than those of the Periclean age. Long before the Constantinian edict, the Christians in the Eastern provinces had enjoyed substantial freedom of worship. Meeting often in the private basilicas of wealthy converts, and finding these, and still more the great public basilicas, suited to the requirements of their worship, they early began to build in imitation of these edifices. There are many remains of these early churches in northern Africa and central Syria.
THE BASILICAN STYLE IN ROME
Early Christian art in Europe was at first wholly sepulchral, developing in the catacombs the symbols of the new faith. Once liberated, however, Christianity appropriated bodily for its public rites the basilicatype and the general substance of Roman architecture. Shafts and capitals, architraves and rich linings of veined marble, even the pagan Bacchic symbolism of the vine, it adapted to new uses in its own service. Constantine led the way in architecture, endowing Bethlehem and Jerusalem with splendid churches, and his new capital on the Bosphorus with the first of the three historic basilicas dedicated to the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia). One of the greatest of innovators, he seems to have had a special predilection for circular buildings, and the tombs and baptisteries which he erected in this form, especially that known as Santa Costanza, furnished the prototype for numberless Italian baptisteries in later ages.
The Christian basilica generally comprised a broad and lofty nave, separated by rows of columns from the single or double side-aisles. The aisles had usually about half the width and height of the nave, and like it were covered with wooden roofs and ceilings. Above the columns which flanked the nave rose the lofty clearstory wall, pierced with windows above the sideaisle roofs and supporting the immense trusses of the roof of the nave. The timbering of the latter was sometimes bare, sometimes concealed by a richly panelled ceiling, carved, gilded, and painted. At the further end of the nave was the sanctuary or apse, with the seats for the clergy on a raised platform, the bema, in front of which was the altar. Transepts sometimes expanded to right and left before the altar, under which was the confessio or shrine of the titular saint or martyr.
An atrium or forecourt surrounded by a covered arcade preceded the basilica proper, the arcade at the front of the church forming a porch or narthex, which, however, in some cases existed without the atrium. The exterior was extremely plain; the interior, on the contrary, was resplendent with incrustations of veined marble and with sumptuous decorations in glass mosaic (called opus Grecanicum) on a blue or golden ground. Especially rich were the half-dome of the apse and the wall-space surrounding its arch and called the triumphal arch; next in decorative importance came the broad band of wall beneath the clearstory windows. Upon these surfaces the mosaic-workers wrought with minute cubes of colored glass pictures and symbols almost imperishable, in which the glow of color and a certain decorative grandeur of effect in the composition went far to atone for the uncouth drawing. With growing wealth and an increasingly elaborate ritual, the furniture and equipments of the church assumed greater architectural importance. A large rectangular space was retained for the choir in front of the bema, and enclosed by a breasthigh parapet of marble, richly inlaid. On either side were the pulpits or ambones for the Gospel and Epistle. A lofty canopy was built over the altar, the ciborium or baldaquin, supported on four marble columns. A few basilicas were built with galleries, as in S. Lorenzo and Sta. Agnese. Adjoining the basilica in the earlier examples were the baptistery and the tomb of the saint, circular or polygonal buildings usually; but in later times these were replaced by the font or baptismal chapel in the church and the confessio under the altar.
Of the two Constantinian basilicas in Rome, the one dedicated to St. Peter was demolished in the fifteenth century; that of St. John Lateran has been so disfigured by modern alterations as to be unrecognizable. The former of the two adjoined the site of the martyrdom of St. Peter in the circus of Caligula and Nero; it was five-aisled, 380 feet in length by 212 feet in width. The nave was 80 feet wide and 100 feet high, and the disproportionately high clearstory wall rested on horizontal architraves carried by columns. The impressive dimensions and simple plan of this structure gave it a majesty worthy of its rank as the first church of Christendom. St. Paul beyond the Walls (S. Paolo fuori le mura), built in 386 by Theodosius, resembled St. Peter's closely in plan. Destroyed by fire in 1823, it has been rebuilt with almost its pristine splendor, and is, next to the modern St. Peter's and the Pantheon, the most impressive place of worship in Rome. Santa Maria Maggiore, though smaller in size, is more interesting because it so largely retains internally its original aspect, its Renaissance ceiling happily harmonizing with its simple antique lines. Ionic columns support architraves to carry the clearstory. In most other examples, St. Paul's included, arches turned from column to column perform this function. The first known case of such use of classic columns as arch-bearers was in the palace of Diocletian at Spalato; it also appears in Syrian buildings of the third and fourth centuries A.D.
The basilica remained the model for ecclesiastical architecture in Rome, without noticeable change either of plan or detail, until the time of the Renaissance. All the earlier examples employed columns and capitals taken from ancient ruins, often incongruous and ill-matched in size and order. San Clemente ( 1108), built over the ruins of a sixth-century basilica, has retained almost intact its early aspect, its choir-enclosure, baldaquin, and ambones having been well preserved or carefully restored. Other important basilicas are mentioned in the list of monuments on pages 118, 119; of these the most important is San Lorenzo, a combination of two buildings, the earlier twostoried portion dating originally from Constantine's days, the nave from the fifth century; but both remodelled by Honorius III. early in the thirteenth century.
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