THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
est was the church at Tyre under Licinius; then follow, under Constantine, the buildings at Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Mamre, Constanti-
7. Church- nople, Nicomedia, Heliopolis, and per- Building haps St. Peter's in Rome. None of Activity these remains ; the oldest large basilicas
after 313. extant, Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome and the churches of Ravenna, belong to the fifth and sixth centuries. Thus we are dependent on the descriptions of the lost buildings, the first of which is the unfortunately too rhetorical account given by Eusebius (Hist, eccl., x. 4) of the church at Tyre. According to this picture, it corresponded in essential details to the type of basilica found in Africa and the West; but we learn from the latter not to suppose that everything described by Eusebius was uniformly present.
Though the adoption of the basilican style did not exclude creative freedom on the part of the architect, no further development of the
8. Basilica idea ever took place in the Roman Style Re- empire. Here, as in other things, we produced, see the powerless despair which contented itself with endless reproductions of an accepted type, and reproductions which were successively poorer. The basilican style in itself, however, was capable of development to a marked degree. Among the artistic creations of the ancient world, it was the one which was destined to have the greatest future. It is conceived wholly in the ancient spirit, as is shown particularly in the feeling for space which regulated its dimensions. The relation of height to length and breadth shows that the beauty of the building was sought in broad, dignified extent. That it grew up in an era of decaying art is evident on the face of it. Only in the rows of columns which divide the aisles is constructive necessity made to minister to beauty; nowhere in the rest of the building is there any attempt to please. There is nothing more depressing in the history of architecture than the straight brick walls, only broken here and there by a few small windows, that enclose it. Decoration of a sumptuous kind partly makes us forget this poverty; but the decoration is purely arbitrary, extraneous, not required by the nature of the plan.
The basilica, then, was the normal type of
churches built to hold congregations assembled for
worship. But these were not the only ecclesiastical
buildings thought of after the fourth
9. Change century. Special ritual observances to Circular or the desire to display princely pomp
Buildings, brought about the use of the circular structure, which became the normal one for baptisteries and memorial chapels. As to the former, when we remember that adult baptism was frequent, that immersion was customary, and that the observance of regular seasons for baptism made the number of candidates large, we see that a comparatively large pool was required; and the building constructed to enclose it naturally allowed for placing it in the center, and so could be only circular. The building of memorial churches was begun by Constantine with that of the Holy Sepulcher at Jerusalem, and again the circular or polygonal form was prescribed by its relation to the sacred
object or the tomb which they were intended to enshrine. The simple structure might be enriched by a number of small chapels or niches, or surrounded by a corridor; a cupola or dome necessarily covered it. Here it was not so much the working out of a new form as the adaptation of one already existing; even when the chapels were prolonged so as to make the ground-plan into a Greek cross, it was scarcely a new form. Examples are the Lateran baptistery and the two at Ravenna, the tombs of Galla Placidia and Theodoric at Ravenna, and the church of Santa Costanza in Rome. When an attempt was made to use these buildings for general purposes of worship, a new problem arose in the laying out of the approved places for clergy and people. Churches of this type were used in the East for congregational purposes as early as Constantine 's reign; according to 10. Me- Eusebius's description (Vita Const., iii. morial 50, p. 207), that which the emperor built Churches, at Antioch was apparently an octagonal building surmounted by a cupola, and so was the one put up by the father of Gregory Nazianzen in his see city (Or at. ,xviii. 39, MPG, xxxv. 1037), while Gregory of Nyssa (Epist., xxv., MPG, xlvi. 1093) describes a similar one. But we know nothing of the interior arrangements of these. Later (not before the second half of the fifth century) comes the puzzling church of Santo Stefano Rotondo on the Celian Hill, whose size proves that it was meant for public worship. This, the ugliest building of the kind ever constructed, only shows how far the Roman architect was from understanding his task; he built a church as he would have built a memorial chapel, without realizing the total difference in requirements. Yet, in spite of all the difficulties presented by this form, especially by the absence of perspective when the altar was placed in the middle, a certain number of churches were built with which no basilica can compare in beauty — really the highest achievements of the older ecclesiastical architecture. The best of these is San Vitale at Ravenna (early sixth century). Here one of the eight chapels is removed, and a longer apse put in its place, which gives a certain effect of length — though only by a disturbance of the harmony of the original plan. Much more admirable is the solution found in the church of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus, and, more completely, in St. Sophia, both in Constantinople. But here the essence of this central form of structure is not only disturbed, as in San Vitale — it is absolutely abandoned. In the Greek and Russian churches the domed church became the accepted type, after the model of St. Sophia. The groundplan of the latter was not commonly followed, the cruciform being preferred; and thus, when each arm of the cross was surmounted with its cupola, as well as the central space, they became simply a number of similar connecting rooms, and the main attraction of the type, its impressive unity, was lost.
The new peoples who were to carry on the work of civilization during the Middle Ages inherited in the basilica a type capable of great development, though not, as it came to them, much developed.