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 ECCLESIASTICAL

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ECCLESIASTICAL

alike be served if the piers which support the dividing arch were projected inwards, soniewliat beyond the side walls of the sanctuary; for the narrower the span the easier it would be to construct the arch, and to sus- pend a curtain from pier to pier. Thus, then, that rudimentary type of church or chapel would be reached of which archaic examples still survive in England and Ireland. Mr. Scott notes that in many of our oldest English churches there are clear indica- tions that the opening from the nave into the sanctu- ary was originally much narrower than it is at present. He further notes that in the persistent adherence to the square-ended type of sanctuary which manifests itself throughout the history of English ecclesiastical architecture, may possibly be found a surviving indi- cation of the very early introduction of Christianity into these islands (Scott, op. cit., 4).

The earliest improvement on the crude form of the oblong chamber with its rectangular annex, and one which may well have become usual even while the liturgy was confined to a single room in a private house, was to throw out a semicircular apse at the end of the chamber opposite the door, or to select for the purposes of worship a room thus built. And this would almost certainly be the form adopted, at least in Rome, as soon as the Christian communities began to possess separate buildings in which to hold their religious meetings. These buildings would be, in the eyes of the public and perhaps of the law, scholw or guild-rooms; and for such buildings the form most commonly adopted appears to have been that of an oblong terminated by an apse (Brown, op. cit., 51 sqq. ; cf. Lange, op. cit., 291 sqq.). In the apse, of course, was placed the seat of the bishop; round the walls on either side were the stibsellia of the assistant clergy, while the altar stood beneath the arch formed by the opening of the apse, or slightly in advance of it. On the hither side of the altar would be a space re- served for the clerics of inferior rank, and for the schola cantoTum, as soon as an organized body of sing- ers, under whatever name, came into existence. Out^ side the boundary of this space, however it may have been marked, the general body of the faithful would have their place, and at the lower end of tliis chamber, or in some kind of ante-room or narthex, or possibly even in an outer court, would be placed the catechu- mens and — when ecclesiastical discipline was suffi- ciently developed — the penitents.

This particular form of the domestic church, re- moved by just one degree, architecturally speaking, from a quite primitive simplicity, deserves special at^ tention. For there would seem to be good grounds for the assertion that it had become at least not un- common, even within Apostolic times. In fact, as several writers on the subject have quite independ- ently pointed out, the main feature of the arrange- ment would seem to be indicated in the New Testa- ment itself. The visions recordetl in the Apocalypse are, of course, Divine revelations; but, as the vision of Ezechiel was cast in the mould of the Jewish ritual, so also those of St. John may be reasonably thought to reflect the ritual of primitive Christianity (Scott, op. cit., 211 sq.; Weizsacker in "Jahrb. f. deutsche Theol.", xxi, 480 sq.; Lange, op. cit., 298 sqq.). There, then, in the midst, we see the throne, whereon there sits One enthroned, of whom the t'hristian bishop is the representative; and with Ilim are four and twenty presbyters, who are "priests" (Upih), ranged in a semicircle {KVKK66ev), twelve on either hand (Apoc., iv, 2, 4). Within the space bounded by these seats is a pavement of glass " like to crystal " (possibly of mosaic), and in the centre the altar (.Vpoc, iv, G; vi, 9; viii, 3; ix, 13; xvi, 7). On the hither side of this are the one hundred antl forty-four thousand "signed", or " sealed ", who " sing a new canticle ", and who inci- dentally bear witness to the very early origin of the sclwla cantorum, at least in some rudimentary form

(Apoc, vii, 4; xiv, 1-3). Farther removed from the altar is that "great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues", the heavenly counterpart of the ccetus fide- lium (Apoc, vii, 9).

To lateral columns and aisles there is indeed no allu- sion, but it is at least possible that in the mention ol the outer court which is "given unto the Gentiles" we may find the earliest traces of the atrium or parvis, which in later ages formed part of the precincts of a fully equipped basilica (Apoc, xi, 2; Scott, op. cit., 31). Moreover, in these same Apocalyptic visions certain details of internal arrangement, which might perhaps have been thought to have been of compara- tively late development, appear to be clearly implied. Every one is aware that in the basilicas of the fourth and succeeding centuries the altar was surmounted by a baldachin, orcivory; and it is hardly less certain that the civory was not merely a canopy, but a means of support for curtains which during certain portions of the Liturgy were drawn round the altar. Traces of these ancient curtains still survive in those which flank our modern altars, in our tabernacle veils, and in the very name tabernacle, i. e. " tent", and also, curi- ously enough; in " those imitations of silken vallances, cast in bronze, . . . which we see in the canopies of S. Maria Maggiore and St. Peter's" (Scott, op. cit., 29). In addition to these canopy veils, however, we hear of curtains which, when drawn close, concealed the en- tire sanctuary from view. In the East these have, of course, been replaced by the iconostasis, a screen formerly latticed but now usually solid; while in the West they are represented, not without some change of position, by our chancel screens, and may be thought to have found another modified survival in the Lentea veil of the Middle .\ges.

Now, whatever may be the case as regards the civory with its veils, there are clear indications in the Apocalj'pse that the transverse curtains were in use from Apostolic times. For the seer thrice makes mention of a "voice" which he heard, and which pro- ceeded either "from the four horns of the golden al- tar" (Apoc, ix, 13), or " from the temple of the taber- nacle of the testimony" (Apoc, xv, 5), or "from the tlirone" (Apoc, xvi, 17). From the first of these ex- pressions it is plain that the altar, at the moment when the voice was heard, must have been shrouded from view, and from the last it appears that the throne was likewise within the space enclosed within the veil. As regards other ritual indications in the Apocalj'pse, it must be sufficient barely to mention here the " souls of the martjTs" beneath the altar, the incense, the opening of the sealed book, and the garb, carefully distinguished, of the various classes of per- sons mentioned in the visions (Apoc, vi, 9; viii, 3; etc.).

The Basilica and Basilican Churches. — A great deal of conjecture has been expended on the question as to the genesis of the Roman basilica. (The ques- tion has been discussed at great length by Zester- mann, Messmer, Kraus, Lange, Durm, Dehio and von Bezold, and others.) For present purposes it may be sufficient to observe that the addition of aisles to the nave was so manifest a convenience that it might not improbably have been thought of, even had models not been at hand in the civic buildings of the Empire. The most suitaljle example that can be chosen as t j'pi- cal of the Roman basilica of the age of Constantine is the church of S. Maria Maggiore. And this, not merely because, in spite of certain modern altera- tions, it has kept in the main its original features, but also because it departs, to a lesser extent than any other extant example, from the classical ideal. The lateral colonnade is immediately surmounted by a horizontal entablature, with architrave, frieze, and cornice all complete. The monolithic columns, with their caiiitals. are, moreover, homogeneous, and have been cut for their position, instead of being, like those