was the great mainstay which permitted the execution of so many vast
and expensive structures, forming a collection never surpassed. Roman
art corresponded with the national character, for it was coarse and
ostentatious, but at the same time vast and strong. The population
of Athens delighted in intellectual pursuits, in philosophy, in art;
it crowded the seats on the slope of the Acropolis to enjoy the wit
and satire of Æschylus and Sophocles, and the palæstra to witness the
development of bodily grace and dexterity, while the Romans flocked to
the Colosseum for the enjoyment of scenes of blood and carnage, to gaze
upon the slaughter of captives and the anguish of animals. The force of
their government, nevertheless, was unquestionable; their patriotism,
unlike that of the Greeks, was unaffected by civic jealousies or party
feeling; they trod rough-shod upon the nations, but they planted
everywhere the imprint of their heroic civilization and made their
capital the centre of the world, and left to it, for all ages, the proud
appellation of the Eternal City.
VI.
THE EARLY CHRISTIAN STYLE.
After the conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity, in
the fourth century, the Christians who, as a persecuted sect had
hitherto held their religious observances in hiding, in the catacombs
of Rome, adopted the basilica as the most convenient form of building
for the purposes of their worship. The bishop occupied a throne in the
apse, surrounded by the presbyters or fathers of the church, and the
congregation of the faithful filled the central nave.
For several centuries this plan was but little changed, the only notable
additions to it being the continuation of the transept beyond the line
of the walls of the nave, thus making it cruciform; the occasional
substitution of double aisles, making five divisions in the body of the
church, instead of the original three, and the addition of a tower or
belfry.
All subsequent churches, whether Romanesque, Gothic, or Renaissance were
constructed on but slight modifications of this original plan, which, in
fact, was itself evolved from that of the Roman temple.
Illustration: PLAN OF THE OLD BASILICA OF ST. PAUL’S BEYOND THE WALLS.
A - Apse
T - Transept
N - Nave
X - Narthex]
The first basilicas erected
for Christian worship had double aisles; this form was, however, soon
discontinued, probably owing to the difficulty of observing the offices
of the clergy from the outer aisle. Of these St. Peter’s, St. Paul’s
beyond the walls, and St. John Lateran were the finest examples. The
first-named was built upon the site of the present cathedral, and was
removed in the sixteenth century to make room for it. Its dimensions
were of notable size, being about 380 feet long by 212 feet in width.
It was preceded by an atrium, or open court, surrounded by a colonnade,
in which the Christians met to transact their affairs. The basilica of
St. Paul’s was destroyed by fire in the early part of this century, and
a new structure resembling the old was erected in its place on a scale
of great magnificence. The columns of its Corinthian colonnade and the
floor are of polished marble and the wooden roof lavishly ornamented with
carving and gilding. The transept is enriched with mosaics, and contains
a baldachin over the altar, in which malachite and other choice stones
have been used unsparingly.
A typical basilica was generally arranged as follows: The atrium or
quadrangular open court, surrounded by porticos, preceded the main
building, or was replaced by a porch composed of columns sustaining a low
roof which was called the narthex. Within, the structure was divided into
a nave, side aisles, transept, and apse. The nave (derived from “navis,”
a vessel, symbolical of that of St. Peter) was loftier than
the adjoining aisles, the upper wall being usually panelled with pictures
and pierced at the top by a range of windows, from which the Gothic
clerestory was derived later on. In one or two instances where the side
aisles had a second story or upper gallery for the women, the panels and
windows were placed in the outer wall.
The interior lines of columns were usually of the Ionic or Corinthian
orders, having been taken from older buildings, but if new they were of
stouter proportions than the Classical models. These columns supported
either a continuous architrave or circular arches.
Wooden doors, often covered by chased bronze, were hung in the main
entrance and the wall above was usually pierced by a round window or
bull’s-eye, afterward developed into the rose window. At the other end of
the nave a wide arched opening, called the triumphal arch, connected it
with the transept.
An enclosure, separated from the body of the church by a balustrade, at
the upper end of the nave, contained the seats of the choristers and the
reading-desks.
The altar was placed in the transept and was frequently surmounted by a
baldachin composed of four or six columns supporting a light dome. Behind
the altar in the centre of the apse was the throne (cathedra) occupied
by the bishop (episcopus), being raised by steps from the semicircular
stone seats (exedra) used by the presbyters, which were
covered with carpets. The walls of the transept and apse were inlaid
with mosaic inscriptions and pictures, in which the head of our Saviour,
the figures of saints and holy emblems were the chief subjects. Deep
blue, purple, and green were the prevailing colours and the letters
were of gold. The floors were decorated with mosaic patterns. The roofs
were either flat with sunken panels framed with mouldings and gilded
ornaments, or else showed the open trussed wood-work, though the latter
was the exception. Externally there was no attempt at enrichment, the
exterior generally offering a great contrast to the lavish internal
decorations.
At the present day nearly all the basilicas have undergone
transformation, the old roofs have been replaced, the walls covered with
a modern adornment of pilasters and gaudy paintings, the colonnades have
been broken through to allow of entrances to side-chapels, or disfigured
by the heterogeneous decoration of the eighteenth century, and the
exteriors treated with renaissance façades.
Nevertheless the general plan and arrangements have remained
substantially the same, and we have very interesting specimens of this
class of building in St. Maria Maggiore, St. Agnese, San Clemente, and
others, in Rome, San Appolinare, in Ravenna, the basilicas at Torcello,
in the Venetian lagoons, and later examples in St. Ambrogio, of Milan,
and St. Maria Sopra Minerva, in Rome. The basilica at Torcello was
built mainly from fragments of an older church upon the mainland at
Altino. The bishop’s throne is one of the most interesting and best
preserved examples we have.
The Greek name for this, cathedra, was the origin of our term cathedral,
applied to churches containing the bishop’s seat, there being no
architectural distinction between the buildings.
From the tombs of the Romans the Christians derived their conception of
the edifices which they used as baptisteries. Their exterior walls were
either polygonal or circular, and of severe simplicity. The interiors
were generally divided by a row of columns sustaining a round vault,
and forming a circular enclosure in which the font was placed. A wall,
carried on these columns, contained windows, and served as a lantern to
light the building. This wall occasionally supported a dome. San Stephano
Rotondo, in Rome; St. Angeli, in Perugia, and St. Vitale, in Ravenna, are
the best examples among the many found in Italy.
San Stephano has a double range of interior columns, taken from Roman
temples, the one supporting an entablature, and the other a series of
arches. The church has been much modified by successive alterations,
and the interior is ornamented with curious paintings, representing the
sufferings of the martyrs.
The baptistery of St. Angeli is smaller, but has preserved its
original form in a greater degree.
[Illustration: ST. VITALE, OF RAVENNA.]
[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF MINERVA MEDICA.]
St. Vitale is a type of structure much copied in subsequent buildings.
It is itself modelled on the so-called temple of Minerva Medica,
differing only in having an octagon instead of a decagon plan. Of this
Fergusson gives the following account:
“It certainly belongs to the best days of the Roman empire, if, indeed,
it be not a Christian building, which I am very much inclined to believe
it is, for on comparing it with the baptistery of Constantine and the
tomb of St. Contanza, it shows a considerable advance in construction
on both of these buildings, and a greater similarity to San Vitale, at
Ravenna, and other buildings of that time, than to anything else now
found in Rome.
It has a dome eighty feet in diameter, resting on a decagon of singularly
light and elegant construction. Nine of the compartments contain niches,
which give great room on the floor, as well as variety and lightness to
the general design. Above this is a clerestory of ten well-proportioned
windows, which give light to the building; perhaps not in so effective a
manner as the one eye of the Pantheon, though by a far more convenient
arrangement, to protect from the elements a people who did not possess
glass.
“So far as I know, all domed buildings erected by the Romans up to the
time of Constantine, and, indeed, long afterward, were circular in the
interior, though they were sometimes octagonal externally. This, however,
is a polygon both internally and on the outside, and the
mode in which the dome is placed on the polygon shows the first rudiments
of the pendentive system, which was afterward carried to such perfection
by the Byzantine architects, but is nowhere else to be found in Rome. It
probably was for the purpose of somewhat diminishing the difficulties of
this construction that the architect adopted a figure with ten instead of
eight sides.”
The plans of the temple of Vesta and of the baptistery of Constantine
have been placed here next to one another in order to show the
transposition of the columns from the exterior to the interior, which is
the chief distinction between the Roman circular buildings and Christian
baptisteries.
[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF VESTA, SOMETIMES CALLED THE TEMPLE OF
HERCULES.]
[Illustration: THE BAPTISTERY OF CONSTANTINE.]
VII.
THE BYZANTINE STYLE.
Constantine and his mother St. Helena built churches in Bethlehem,
Jerusalem, and Antioch, and embellished Constantinople with numerous
splendid edifices. The Eastern basilicas preserved the same character
in their construction as those of Italy, but their component parts were
more homogeneous, the materials being specially prepared, instead of
being borrowed from ancient buildings. The first vigour of emancipated
Christianity found vent not only in the erection of edifices devoted to
its religious observances, but in the infliction of irreparable injury
upon the pagan monuments of Greece and Rome. Constantine brought many
fragments of these Classical buildings to the new capital, but they have
been destroyed, together with the palaces, churches, and baths which he
built there, in successive invasions, by fire, or by earthquakes.
In Thessalonica there are two good examples of early basilicas—the old
mosque and the five-aisled church of St. Demetrius; and in Northern Syria
there are many admirable specimens. Of these the churches
at Rouheilia, Kalb-Louzeh, and Tourmanim deserve special mention.
The latter is a particularly successful building, designed in the new
style growing out of the older Roman one, and is a model structure, being
constructed exactly in accordance with the requirements of the early
Church.
In plan, the Syrian conventual buildings depart but slightly from that
of the basilicas of Rome, but in their interior treatment they show
a gradual secession from the rules which govern Classical buildings,
retaining only their useful and discarding their merely ornamental
features.
When the seat of the empire had been transferred to Byzance, the
Christians carried with them the principles of the arch and the vault and
combined them in a new form of structure. This construction, differing
from that employed in Rome, combined with Eastern or late Greek forms of
ornament, produced a new style called the Byzantine.
The distinctive feature of this method of construction was the placing of
the circular dome, not upon a cylindrical drum, as had been done by the
Romans in the Pantheon and other buildings, but upon four walls, square
in plan, surmounted by semicircular arches, with the intervening spaces
occupied by pendentives. To each side of this central square was joined
a nave of the same length, forming thus in plan a Greek cross, that is,
one having each arm equally long. These naves were usually short, more
frequently semicircular than rectangular, and often terminated by an apse.
[Illustration: THE PENDENTIVE SYSTEM IN BYZANTINE DOMES.]
We have seen, in the baptistery of St. Vitale, at Ravenna (in which Greek
artists were undoubtedly employed), a tendency to reduce the number of
sides of polygonal buildings supporting circular domes; the architects of
Byzance were therefore merely taking another step in the same direction
when they placed the dome upon a quadrilateral substructure.
To comprehend the pendentive, let us take a circle and inscribe within
it a square; at the four angles of the square we will place solid
piers of masonry and connect them with semicircular arches. Let us
now suppose that a hemispherical dome had been built upon this circle
as plan, and we will see that the planes of the arches and the plane
passing at the level of the top of the keystones of the arches, in
intersecting this dome, would leave but four triangular portions of
it. These triangular portions are called pendentives, and are the only
portions of the original hemisphere which are actually built. As this
hemisphere would have been necessarily constructed of materials the
joints of which would have radiated from the centre of the sphere, so
also do the joints of the pendentives radiate from this same centre,
which is identical with the centre of the original circle. The plane
passing at the level of the top of the keystones in intersecting the
hemisphere describes another circle, upon which the actual dome is
placed. The question has not been established satisfactorily whether
the Byzantine architects really understood the pendentive, as in many
instances they resorted to less scientific methods of filling in the
vacant spaces between the arches and the upper dome, but the only
logical method of constructing it is that which has just been described.
In building domes, it was not uncommon in the East to replace stonework
by light terra-cotta pipes, fitting into each other, giving great
lightness and comparative strength.
Justinian gave a marked impetus to architectural work and to the building
of religious edifices in particular. He commissioned Anthemius of
Thralles, and Isidor of Miletus, to execute the plans for the new church
of St. Sophia, upon the site of an older building of Constantine, also
dedicated to the “Holy Wisdom,” which had been burnt during an emeute
soon after it had been repaired by Theodosius.
Justinian had already built the church of Sergius and Bacchus in
Constantinople, on a plan nearly identical with that of St. Vitale, at
Ravenna, with the exception that the whole structure was externally in
the form of a square, enclosing the octagon supporting the dome. This
served as a stepping-stone to the conception of the larger church, which
became the type of all subsequent Byzantine constructions.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF SERGIUS AND BACCHUS AT CONSTANTINOPLE.]
[Illustration: PLAN OF ST. SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE.]
By comparing the plans of the Pantheon, the temple of Minerva Medica,
the baptistery of Constantine, St. Vitale, at Ravenna, and the
church of Sergius and Bacchus, in the order in which they are enumerated,
with that of St. Sophia, the sequence and continuous progress of
domical construction is at once apparent, and such comparison explains
the successive steps in a more satisfactory manner than a folio of
description.
“The church of St. Sophia,” says M. Texier, “is built on a square plan,
251 feet long by 186 feet wide. In the centre of this square rises
the dome, the diameter of which, measuring 108 feet, determines the
width of the nave. The dome is supported by four great arches and four
pendentives. Two hemispheric vaults abut against the two arches, which
are perpendicular to the axis of the nave, giving it an oval appearance.
Each of these hemispheres is itself pierced by two smaller hemispheres
carried on columns. This superposition of domes, whose points of abutment
are not visible, gives to the whole structure a lightness difficult to
realize.”
The church is built upon a foundation of béton twenty feet deep. It
is preceded by an atrium surrounded by a portico of the Ionic order.
The nave is entered by a double narthex, or porch, extending along the
whole width of the West front. The interior, both floor and walls, was
formerly adorned with rich marbles, and paintings upon a ground of
gold. The dome was built of light bricks faced with hard cement and
mosaic, and was lighted by forty windows. Originally a painting of the
Holy Father was placed in the centre of the dome, and four cherubim in
the pendentives. The latter are still to be discerned under the coat of
whitewash with which the Turks have hidden the original magnificence of
the interior.
The apse, lighted by three windows, contained the throne and seat of
the Church fathers. The columns supporting the great arches and the
galleries, originally occupied by the women, are of rare marble, eight of
them having, it is said, formed part of the temple of Diana at Ephesus,
being brought, together with the spoils of many Eastern and Western
buildings, to adorn the great edifice. The foliage of their capitals is
fine and sharp and intricately interlaced, having no resemblance to the
Classic models beyond a debased form of the volute which terminates their
upper corners. This style of ornament is a distinguishing feature of the
Byzantine style, and reappears in many examples both in the East and West.
The church, commenced in the year 532, took sixteen years to build,
during which time incredible sums were expended upon it. When completed,
the appearance it presented was most magnificent, resulting not only from
the rich marbles, wood-work, paintings, and mosaics with which it was
decorated, but also from the countless candelabras, curtains, precious
vases, and golden vessels with which it was furnished.
After the capture of Constantinople by Mahomet II., in the year 1453, St.
Sophia was converted into a mosque, and suffered greatly at the hands of
the Turks. It is only within recent years that any attempt at preserving
its original splendour has been made.
The architectural principles upon which St. Sophia was constructed were
reproduced in all Byzantine buildings in Italy and France as well as in
the Orient. In Turkey, indeed, the edifices subsequently erected are
almost counterparts of the original structure, the mosque of Suleiman
and that of Achmet, built as late as 1610, embodying almost identical
features of construction.
In Athens there are two or three small Byzantine churches, which, though
differing greatly in point of size, are founded upon the plan of the
mother church; and in Asia Minor generally and Armenia especially, there
are a great number; notably the churches of Daghour and Pitzounda and the
cathedral of Anim.
The decoration of some of the latter differs from the usual Byzantine
methods in the frequent revival of Classic forms, and in the use of thin
pilasters, carrying blind arches on the exterior.
This feature reappears in the buildings of Italy, influenced by the
style, particularly at Pisa.
In some later buildings a new manner of obtaining light was introduced,
by raising the dome upon a cylindrical drum, supported by the four arches
and pendentives of the older system. St. Nicodemus, of Athens, is one
of the best examples of this.
When the body of St. Mark was brought to Venice, having been stolen from
Constantinople by means of a clever trick about the year 831, the Doge
Partecipazio ordered a church to be built to his memory. The greater
part of this building as it stands to-day dates, however, from the
tenth century. It resembles St. Sophia in a great degree, the frequent
intercourse of the Venetian maritime population with the Orient having
enabled them to study the principles of Byzantine art, and to bring
spoils from the buildings of the East to their native city.
St. Mark’s has also much affinity with the church of Mone-tes-Koras,
in Armenia, the principal façade, with its five large bays decorated
with columns and arches framing the five doors which give access to the
church, being identical in general conception.
The interior of the building has the form of the Greek cross, the
four arms of which and also the central compartment formed by their
intersection, are roofed by domes supported on arches and pendentives.
The style of ornament is very similar to that of its prototype, with its
rich gold mosaics, frescos, and inlaid marble, some of the details being
essentially Oriental in character.
The constructors of the pendentives in St. Mark’s do not seem to have
properly understood that they formed part of a sphere to
the centre of which their joints should have converged, but filled up
the spaces between the supporting arches by a series of small superposed
arches.
The influence of this Byzantine construction extended into Aquitania,
in the South of France. At the close of the tenth century a number of
churches were erected there, with the dome as a prominent feature. St.
Front, of Perigueux, was built upon a plan closely resembling that of St.
Mark’s in Venice, and very nearly upon a similar scale of dimensions. The
architects of the church, however, seem to have distrusted the strength
of the semicircular arch, and resorted to the ogival[5] or pointed form
as a means of securing greater supporting power, although this arch had
not as yet been adopted in France.
[5] From augere, to strengthen.
They, too, failed completely to grasp the principle of the pendentive, as
those of St. Front are formed of corbelled stones with horizontal beds,
instead of voussoirs converging to the centre of the hemisphere of which
they should form part.
Besides St. Front, the churches of Fontevrault, Souliac, Angoulême, and
others in Aquitania were built with similar characteristics, though in
plan they adopted the Latin instead of the Greek cross. The abbey church
of Fontevrault is perhaps the most successful of these, the four domes
of its nave producing a very pleasing effect. The greater
number of these buildings were erected during the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, in an imported fashion, rather than in a style destined to be
engrafted upon French national architecture.
All of them show the want of a clear comprehension of the principles
involved, and are evidently foreign to the taste of the people.
The introduction of this style in France, offers a parallel case to the
introduction of Gothic architecture in Italy, a century or two later, for
in neither case were the styles in accordance with native inspiration.
VIII.
MAHOMETAN ARCHITECTURE.
The year 622 of our era is a remarkable one in historical annals, being
the date of the flight of Mahomet, the Hegira from which all events are
computed by followers of his religion. Within a marvellously short period
the new faith spread from the confines of Arabia, throughout Asia Minor
and Persia and all along the North coast of Africa to Spain, propagated
everywhere by the force of the victorious sword, until, scarcely a
century later, we find its promoters bearing the crescent against
Charlemagne, under the shadow of the Pyrenees.
As a political and theological narrative the history of the rise of
the faith of Islam, is a wonderfully interesting one, and to us it is
important as it explains the reason for the geographical position of so
many buildings, erected in accordance with the requirements of the new
religion, and therefore having a great similarity in all countries where
it prevailed.