Note 8 — ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE

We are not dealing here with Byzantine architecture. Constantinople and the Eastern empire, while maintaining generally the round-arch style, had her own great architectural invention, the Cupola, which under Justinian in the sixth century was brought to perfection in the great Church of S. Sophia; this was copied in many a famous church in the Eastern empire. It influenced later some of the architecture in the Southern Provinces of Gaul (France).

Freeman, however, is scarcely accurate in styling the Cupola as the great architectural invention of the Byzantine masters.

The Byzantine-domed Basilica, as it appeared in the time of Justinian, as Rivoira accurately tells us, was the result of a gradual but tolerably rapid evolution. It was really a creation of the Latin mind, and is based upon the old Roman-domed buildings. The Byzantine-domed church appears first in Macedonia, where we find it notably in Salonica in the Church of S. Sophia in that city; it received its present development at Constantinople, in the mighty Basilica of S. Sophia, and may justly be termed the principal characteristic feature of the round-arch style of Byzantine architecture.

The dome or Cupola was, however, by no means unknown or unused in the Lombardic School of the Comacine builders. But it never really took root in Italy and in the West, save, perhaps, later in certain districts in the south of France. It is in Constantinople and in the near East that it was developed and adopted as the main prominent feature of the Byzantine style.