THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF CANTERBURY. Conjectural plan by Mr. G. G. Scott. This shows the church as it was before the fire of A.D. 1067. The black parts represent the original Basilica.

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Rome, although its liturgical arrangement was that of St. Paul's and not of St. Peter's); the celebrant still faced eastwards but had his back to the main portion of the church. By degrees, owing perhaps in part to the greater frequency of the services at the monastic altar, the original altar being reserved for episcopal functions which were comparatively rare, the tendency grew up to regard the new altar, and not the original or episcopal altar, as the principal altar of the cathedral. Hence the lesser churches copied its arrangements for their own altars, and by degrees the original basilican arrangement died out of use, so that now it can hardly be met with outside of Rome itself.

The other innovation of the rebuilding of St. Paul's, the provision of the transverse nave, was soon found to be of great convenience, no doubt because of the greater room it allowed near the altar. Hence it seems speedily to have been adopted at the Lateran, where a similar enlargement was soon found to be necessary, and seems to have been carried out, as we have already said, by the Consul Flavius Felix, in the fifth century. At some later date the same thing was done at St. Peter's, but, as in the case of the Lateran, there is no specific mention in any record of the change. Our own belief, the reasons for which have been already given in another work,1 is that it was not done until the very end of the Middle Ages, in 1470. While, on the one hand the tradition of the sixteenth century seems clear that a transverse nave did exist at the time of its destruction, it is remarkable that no early authority seems to speak of it, and that no one of the many pictorial representations which we possess depicts it as showing externally, though there is no difficulty at all about proving the existence of the one at St. Paul's. There

1" St. Peter in Rome," pp. 244 seq., which see for details of the argu

ment.

were great works of reparation carried out in 1470, and it is possible that the change was made then, and that the church from that time onwards imitated the arrangements of St. Paul's and the Lateran. There was, however, one important difference. The transverse nave at both the other two churches was beyond the altar, between it and the new apse. But at St. Peter's the new nave was made eastward of the apse and altar; a wholly different plan, but one which was much more in accordance with the ideas brought into being by the Gothic cruciform churches.

With the development of Gothic churches we have here no concern. In them the cruciform plan is carried much further, and the upper limb of the cross, which in the basilicas was only represented by the apse, becomes longer and longer in order to accommodate the choir. But to follow out these developments would carry us far beyond our present plan, and we must go back again to the earliest days after the peace of the Church in order to follow out the development of churches in the East, which took place on lines very different from those which obtained in the West.

Eastern Churches.

The origin of the Western Churches, we have contended, must be looked for in the Roman house, and the line of their development was fixed to the basilican type by the donation to the Church by Constantine of the Lateran Palace with its great private basilica. In the East the churches during the centuries of persecution were, no doubt, just as in the West, simply domestic houses of the locality put to this particular use. But the ordinary house in the East, whether in Egypt, in Syria, or in Asia Minor, was not constructed on the lines which Rome had taken over from Greece.

The essential difference lay in the plans for carrying the roof. In Greece and Rome the roof was carried by timbers, and was therefore sloping. In the East the roof of the house was flat, and was used as a terrace. As a rule the support was given by flat beams of stone, but in some structures the arch and dome were used. As, however, the skill arrived at in this form of construction was not as yet great, the unit of construction was necessarily small. Eastern buildings tended then, as to a great extent they do still, to be made up of a great number of small squares, each covered with a separate dome, which may or may not be manifested externally.

At first the basilican style had a very great vogue in the East as well as in the West. At Tyre the great church built by Constantine and described by Eusebius was a true basilica. At Jerusalem the church of the Anastasis and that of the Nativity at Bethlehem were also basilicas. In Egypt the White Monastery near Assiout survives to this day and is of the same type. At Constantinople the original church of Sta Sophia, built by Constantine, was a basilica, and so also was the original of SS. Sergius and Bacchus. The great mosque of Damascus seems to have been originally two basilican churches standing apse to apse which have now been united to form a single edifice of great beauty and striking proportions.

In spite of these magnificent examples the basilican style in the East was exotic and never really took root in the soil. Even Constantine himself seems to have felt this, for in his directions to Macarius of Jerusalem, quoted by Eusebius,1 he expressly lays it down that either style of building (by which he means really either the timber beam form of construction for the roof or else the brick dome), might be employed in

1 Eusebius, "Vita Constantini," iii. 32.

Palestine as was preferred. Almost from the first the dome was the more frequent form of construction, and the development of Byzantine architecture is accordingly along the lines thereby necessitated rather than along those which were followed in the West. The square church, 'surmounted by a circular dome, is the type to which all conform, and from which all developments are ultimately derived.

In the country districts and where architecture was not progressive, as in Egypt at this period, we find churches built which in ground plan more or less resemble the basilica. They have commonly three haikals or sanctuaries, each square and with one side built into an internal apse. But the number three though usual in the North is very frequently exceeded in the South. Several churches in Upper Egypt have as many as seven haikals side by side.1 These are separated from the body of the church by screens, and have each an altar in the centre, and seats round for the clergy. The whole church is commonly roofed by means of a number of small domes, each rising from its own square unit, so that the resemblance to the basilica does not go beyond the general ground plan.

Such was the development in the country districts, and churches built on this plan may be seen anywhere in Egypt to-day. Size is obtained by the simple method of putting a great number of square units side by side, and in no other way. But at Constantinople itself, where Greek architects were available and threw themselves with enthusiasm into the conditions of the problem, development was rapid. The adoption of pendentives enabled the dome to be built of much

1 Dr. Butler, "Coptic Churches," is wrong when he says the number of three is invariable. He had never been beyond Cairo and knew nothing of Upper Egypt.