Note 35 — Chapter III · EARLY MEDIÆVAL DESIGN

Basilica: Originally, under the Roman imperial system, a building for varied business, public and private, having often a courtroom connected with the open hall: hence, under the earlier Christian control, a church built like most of the earlier basilicas, that is to say, with a nave and two or more aisles. A special feature of the Christian basilicas was the transept, a high and open hall built across the upper end of the nave and aisles: and beyond this (that is, farther from the entrance doorways) was often the apse, a generally semicircular projection.