nsidering that, at the time when this edifice was built, the ancient
quadruplicate plan had been revised and the empire of New Rome had been
divided into four parts by Constantine, it seems reasonable to infer that
the form of the great edifice which marked the territorial centre of the
new empire bore the impress of the cruciform plan, and that the shape of
the cross should have been adopted throughout the empire, in edifices
marking central consecrated places. How much of the true spirit of the
Christian ideal of universal brotherhood entered into the constitution of
Constantine's New Rome it is impossible to conjecture. Niebuhr denies that
Constantine was a Christian, records that he was only baptized shortly
before his death, and states that the religion of Constantine "must have
been a strange compound indeed, something like the amulet recently
discovered at Rome, which is an example of that curious mixture of
Judaism, Christianity and Paganism which we so frequently meet with from
about the beginning of the third century."(151)

In an extremely interesting monograph "On the origin of the cruciform plan
of the mediaeval Cathedral," by the distinguished architect, Mr. E. M.
Wheelwright, published in the "Transactions of the Boston Society of
Architects, 1891," I find the significant fact that what is now the little
church of S. Tiburce, Rome, in the form of a Greek cross, was built at the
time of Constantine.

The same monograph teaches that "de Rossi discovered in the catacombs of
Rome two scholia of a plan called specifically triclinium, of a date
previous to Diocletian and probably of the third century. In such were
celebrated, by the presbyters, the memorial feasts of martyrs, the
congregation assembling outside. Tombs of a positive cruciform plan are
also found in the catacombs. In the fifth or sixth century cruciform
buildings became in the East, and _wherever Byzantine influence was
potent, the recognized form for tombs, mortuary chapels and buildings
commemorative of holy places_. These types seem to have been given, by
Byzantine architects, special recognition of the purpose of their
construction and to have appeared to them _as monuments requiring a
symbolical expression of plan_, while they evidently _did not consider
such symbolical expressions requisite in buildings planned for general
congregations_, which, although of types without distinct association with
the Christian faith, were held, for several