PART III.

CHAPTER I.

Christian Edifices before Constantine.

THE earliest of all the edifices consecrated to Christian worship was that upper room in Jerusalem, where our Lord had instituted the Holy Eucharist, and where on the day of Pentecost the Holy Ghost had come down upon the assembled Apostles. A place with such memories could not possibly be neglected, and it is without surprise, therefore, that we find that the local tradition of Jerusalem has preserved the identity of this sacred spot. This upper room, capable as it was, apparently, of accommodating at least 120 persons, became, naturally enough, the central and perhaps the only place of meeting of the little band of Christians in Jerusalem before the dispersion of the Apostles. They went daily to the Temple for the prayers of their nation, and returned "to break bread," kaт' oikov, not from house to house as the "Authorized Version" translates the phrase, nor even "at home," but rather "in the house"; in that house and place, that is to say, which had been originally consecrated by the institution of the Blessed Sacrament, and which now remained the normal centre of its administration.

The house, lying as it did on the outskirts of

Jerusalem, survived, so again tradition informs us, the destruction of the siege of Jerusalem, in A.D. 70, and it was still in being and still preserved its essential characteristic of an upper room when St. Epiphanius wrote about A.D. 380.1 It still survives and still is an upper chamber, but is now in the hands of the infidels. Moreover, such changes have been made in the lapse of ages that it is impossible to make any certain deductions from its present form. Outside of Jerusalem when the Apostles were scattered over the world, preaching the gospel, we should naturally expect to find them preserving in the main this original plan of action. The appeal was everywhere made first to the Jews; every possible use was made of the existing organization of the Jewish body, for the time of definitive separation had not yet come, and the hope was still alive that the Jewish nation as a whole might yet accept the gospel message. But there must always in each place have been some one chosen spot where Christians could meet for their own special devotions; where, as in Jerusalem, they could "break bread in the house," besides using the public worship of their nation.

We can follow the process in detail in the history of St. Paul as narrated in the Acts. The missionary work of the Church was conducted for the most part in the Synagogues. Everywhere we find him as soon as he arrived in a new town, going straight to the Synagogue, and there delivering his message as a Jew to Jews. But at the same time we are aware that there is another kind of religious work being carried on, and this not in the Synagogue, nor in any public place, but in the privacy of a convert's house. At Troas, for instance, this private assembly was held on the third floor (eis тò vπеρçov, Acts xx. 6-9); at Rome St. Paul sends salutations to Aquila and Priscilla “and

1" De Mens.," xiv.; cf. Cyr. Hier., "Catech.," vi,

the church that is in their house" (Rom. XVI. 5); at Colosse, it is in the house of Nymphe (Col. IV. 15); at Ephesus, besides the church in the house of Aquila (1 Cor. XVI. 19), we find that a public hall has been taken for missionary work, and St. Paul disputes daily in the schola of one Tyrannus (Acts XIX. 9).

Private Oratories.

Here then we have the real origin of the Christian churches of later date. It begins with private oratories sheltered by the rights of private property. If we are to get any idea of these places now, it can only be by examining the general plan of a Roman house, and forming our ideas as to the most usual disposition which would be made for these purposes. Individual cases must, of course, have varied widely, but the general type was pretty constant, and from it we may gather some ideas of value.

ROMAN HOUSES AS SHOWN ON THE CAPITOLINE PLAN. (From Sir W. Smith's "Greek and Roman Antiquities," John Murray.) The arrangement of a Roman house was mainly on a single floor, though sometimes in crowded localities upper stories were added. It was entered from the

street by a passage which led into the atrium, the more public part of the house. From this access could be obtained to the peristyle, an inner courtyard surrounded by pillars, round which were built the private rooms of the family. At the far end of the peristyle chamber, the oecus or tablinum,

was usually a larger

which served as a private reception room for the owner of the house.

STREET

GARDEN

ATRIUM

PERISTYLE O

OECUS

TYPICAL PLAN OF A ROMAN HOUSE.

If we take these main features, neglecting the subsidiary arrangements, which varied in every way, we shall see that if the owner of such a house as this were called upon to make provision for a meeting of Christians for the purpose of worship, he would have found his premises admirably adapted for this object. The guests would naturally be admitted into the inner portion of the house, for fear of interruption. The oecus would be the natural place for the officiating clergy, and so forth, and the peristyle would afford accommodation for a large number of worshippers. If that was the arrangement made, we can already recognize the germ of our later plans. We have the large oblong

space for the ordinary worshippers, and we have also the smaller apartment, similarly oblong in form and separated from the other by an arch, which forms the chancel. It is precisely and identically the plan which is so familiar to us in the north as that of our oldest churches.

Only two oratories certainly earlier than the time of Constantine are known to exist in Rome. One of these at Sta Prisca was discovered in 1776 and has again been lost. We have no certain record of its shape. The other was recently found near the Via Venti Settembre, and is rectangular and apseless with a vine-patterned mosaic pavement enclosing an altar compartment with symbolic cross and fishes.1

Two passages in the " Clementine Recognitions" are of special interest. Although some of this document is to be assigned to a later date, the ground plan of it is very early indeed, and of considerable value. We read in it that at Tripoli, when the Apostle Peter was there, and great numbers were converted through his preaching, a certain prominent citizen named Maro

1 Frothingham, "Amer. Journal of Archæology," 1903, p. 77.