THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
ARCHITECTURE, ECCLESIASTICAL.
I. General Treatment.
First Places of Christian Worship
(S 1).
First Special Buildings (§2).
Changes Demanded by Altered Circumstances of Christians (§ 3).
Origin of the Christian Basilica (§4)
First Step toward a Church Building (§ 5).
Second Step (J 6).
Church-Building Activity after 313 (§ 7)
Basilica Style Reproduced (§ 8).
Change to Circular Buildings (§ 9).
Memorial Churches (§ 10).
Basilica the Accepted Type of
Western Medieval Churches (§11). Combination of Basilica and Domed
Styles (§ 12). The Romanesque Basilica (§ 13). Variations in the Details of the
Romanesque Basilica (§ 14). The Vaulted Church (§ 15). Differences between the Ancient
and Romanesque Basilica (§ 16). French Ecclesiastical Development
(§ 17). Introduction of the Gothic Style
(§ 18).
Its Adoption in France and Germany (§ 19).
No Present Single Predominant Type (§ 20).
II. English Ecclesiastical Architecture.
Romanesque Architecture (§ 1). Introduction of Gothic (§ 2). Three Periods (§ 3). Characteristics of English Gothic
(§ 4). The Smaller English Churches (§ 5). Renaissance Architecture (5 6). Modern English Architecture (§ 7).
III. Ecclesiastical Architecture in
America.
I. General Treatment: Christian architecture, as a separate and independent thing, exists no more than a Christian state. The conception of a state is not altered by the fact that its citizens happen to be Christians; nor does architecture receive its essential form from being used for Christian or non-Christian purposes. Some of the problems of architpcture were altered with the advent of Christianitj , as it had now to build churches instead of temples, one of the most important tasks ever laid upon architecture, and in fact for many centuries almost the only important one. The first question to be considered is the origin of this problem, the origin, that is, of specially designed church buildings.
The oldest documents referring to Christian worship show that the faithful assembled in the house of some member of the Church. At Jei. The rusalem they met from house to house First (Acts ii. 46); at Troas in an upper Places of room (Acts xx. 7-8); Paul designated Christian Gaius as the host of the whole church Worship, of Corinth (Rom. xvi. 23), implying that when they came together as a church, they met in his house. The mention of upper rooms does not prove that such were the ■only parts of the houses in which these gatherings took place; and we must remember that these houses were usually the small houses of poor people, constructed in the usual manner of the Greco-Roman world. Since the rooms were generally small, there would be no place for the assembly as soon as it got beyond a small number, except in the atrium or court-yard; the contention that divine worship could not have been held there, because the sacred mysteries would have been exposed to profane eyes, can not be upheld, as the arcani disciplina (q.v.) is of later growth. This domestic worship was in harmony with the spirit of early Christianity, full as it was of ideas of one family of brethren. A Christian house was the ideal place for it. The primitive Church, therefore, lacked not only the means but the motive to erect any special building for divine worship; it had no temples, and expressly rejected the idea of building them (cf., e.g., Minucius Felix, Octavius, x., xxxii.).
Nevertheless, it was not long before special buildings were erected for worship, and considered holy. To understand the change, it is necessary to try to fix the date at which this took place. Un-
questionably special places existed in Alexandria in the time of Origen(cf. his "On Prayer," xxxi. 5, Berlin ed., p. 398); but the date may 2. The be put further back by observation First of the popular use of the term ekklesia. Special In classical Greek meaning an assem- Buildings. bly of citizens, it came in Christian use to denote, first the gathering of the believers, then the Christian community either local or universal, and finally the meeting-place. This last use is common by the beginning of the fourth century; it is found in Eusebius and in his Latin contemporary Lactantius (De mort. persec, xii., p. 186, ed. Brandt and Laubmann). But still earlier, Clement of Alexandria (Strom., vii. 5, p. 846, ed. Potter), Hippolytus (In Dan., i. 20, p. 32), and Tertullian (De idol., p. 36), shortly before or shortly after the year 200, all apply the word to a distinctly recognized place of worship. The two latter also call it " the house of God." The Greek term kyriakon (Eng. " church "),with its Latin equivalent dominicum, appears somewhat later. But by about 200 there were at least two recognized names for a Christian place of worship, and the existence of a name demonstrates the prior existence of the thing. Whether these buildings belonged to the community or to individual Christians can scarcely be answered with certainty for the third century; the theory of corporate ownership is doubtful at the beginning of this period, though it becomes demonstrable toward the close. The edict of Constantine and Licinius, given in Eusebius, Hist, eccl., x. 5, in 313 assumes a generally recognized corporate possession of many Christian meeting-places.
Between the spring of 58, when Gaius was receiving the church of Corinth in his house, and the time about 200, when a Christian goes 3. Changes into a special " house of God," Chris- Demanded tianity had ceased to be the close by Altered brotherhood which it was at first; it Circum- had developed a complicated organizastances of tion, with a marked distinction be- Christians. tween clergy and laity; the conceptions of priest and sacrifice had won a place. And as the body changed, so did its worship; the place which had sufficed for the simple, informal gatherings of the first Christians was no longer adequate.
The next question, as to the form 01 these earliest distinct churches, is one which it is