Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/97

 gave preference to the constant recurrence of the cross and the cruciform rather than the rectilinear features of the basilica, contrived by the introduction of interior vaulting and later extended to the external lines of the building too. Such is the church on Mount Athos, of the provincial convents and monasteries in the remoter districts which end by encroaching on the capital itself. As the number of smaller houses of prayer for small communities of monks increased, this type became general and transmissible to the neighbouring realms of Byzantine imitation.

This is why the periods of this art cannot be established.

First, under Constantine, and then under his succesors, we come across no attempt, in the course of two whole centuries, to delineate the uniform Byzantine church or palace: the Roman tradition is still too strong. All means were employed to maintain this tradition in art as well as in legislation, upon coins, in the law-academy of Beyrouth, in the armies, in certain works of literature (as in the memoirs of Ammianus Marcellinus, at a period when the emperor Julian was the imitator of the ancient Hellene Lukianos). Thus Constantinople was, by the will of its founder, as regards the Empire, much as Aachen was for Charles the Great, a heap of carted furniture.

The second epoch is represented by Justinian and his immediate successors up to the growth of Islamitic influence. It was no slow preparation for a magnificent, amazing burgeoning. The Queen of Sheba had come to present her thousand gifts to imperial Solomon who enjoyed this munificence and considered it as due to his high rank. The Roman foundation remained, but the Orient wastefully lavished on its pure lines all the accumulated treasures of a long train of years.

To hinder a return of iconoclasm, of this insolent intrusive 93