Note 257 — Chapter II · EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE-LOMBARDIC STYLES.

[It has been assumed that the Roman basilicas were taken possession of by the early Christians for their own religious services, but as Mr. G. G. Scott points out in his ‘Essay on the History of English Church Architecture,’ “there is no well-authenticated instance of the conversion of any Pagan basilica into a Christian church, whilst there are abundant examples of Pagan temples converted into Christian sanctuaries” (see Texier and Pullan’s ‘Byzantine Architecture,’ pp. 75, 103). Indeed, it is, as Mr. Scott observes, “on the face of it improbable, if we reflect that the conversion of the government to Christianity had no tendency to render the existing basilicas less necessary for legal business, after the peace of the church, than they had been before that event. Christianity, unfortunately, could not abolish the litigious instincts of our nature, and after fifteen centuries of the gospel the legal profession still flourishes.” The buildings which were rendered useless by the official recognition of the new faith were not the basilicas but the temples, the fact being that the class of building known as a basilica (a term never used by either the writers or architects of Byzantine times), with its wide central nave and aisles with galleries over them lighted by clerestory or side windows, and covered with a timber roof, constituted the simplest and most economical building of large size which could be constructed to hold a vast assembly of worshippers; especially as the only features which can be looked upon as having any architectural pretensions, viz., the columns and their capitals, could be taken wholesale from temples and other Roman buildings. The semicircular apse, which alone in the Roman basilica served as a court of law, became the tribune for the bishop and presbyters.

Mr. Scott is even inclined to assign an earlier and more independent origin for the basilican form. According to his theory the germ of the Christian basilica was a simple oblong aisleless room divided by a cross arch, beyond which lay an altar detached from the wall. This germ was developed by the addition of side aisles, and sometimes an aisle returned across the entrance, and over these upper aisles were next constructed and transepts added, together with the oratories or chapels in various parts of the building. Mr. Butler, in his work on ‘The Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt,’ accepts this theory, as the churches of Egypt are rich in evidence that favours it. At the same time, the first great basilica erected by Constantine, viz., the Vatican (St. Peter’s), and the Lateran, (St. John Lateran), are of too great importance to warrant the suggestion that their origin should be sought for in the very small though possibly earlier examples in Egypt or the East.—Ed.]