milar plan to that of Hadrian.

CHAPTER IV

EARLY CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE

It was in the low, gloomy, dimly lighted subterranean galleries known as
catacombs, hewn in the living rock near Rome, that Christian
architecture may be said to have had its first crude beginnings. The
passages in the walls of which the graves of the dead were hollowed out,
widened at intervals into spacious vaulted halls, where the persecuted
followers of the crucified Redeemer met in secret for worship or to take
part in the funeral services for those they had lost.

It was long taken for granted that it was not until the first issue in
A.D. 313 of the Edict of Milan by Constantine, Emperor of the West, and
Licinius, Emperor of the East, that the professors of the new faith
ventured to erect above ground buildings for the exercise of the rites
of their religion, but recent discoveries prove that Christian churches
were built as early as the 3rd century in many parts of the Roman
empire. To quote but two cases in point, relics of a circular one with a
small apse at the eastern end have been found at Antepellius in Asia
Minor, and of one of the basilican type at Silchester in England.
Moreover, heathen temples were occasionally converted into churches,
whilst basilicas were sometimes used for Christian services just as they
were.

[Illustration: Plan of a Basilica]

Some few early Christian churches were possibly modelled on classic
tombs such as those referred to in the chapter on Roman architecture,
but the more usual form was the basilican, the altar having been placed
on the raised platform within the semicircular apse at the eastern end,
the bishops and clergy occupying the seats assigned in halls of justice
to the praetor and his assessors, whilst the congregation met in the nave
and aisles. Ere long, however, to this general plan was added the
distinctive feature of transepts or transverse passages running across
the entrance to the apse, thus giving to the whole building the form of
a cross. Later structural changes were the erection of an arch above the
altar, the heightening of the nave, the connecting of the columns
between the nave and aisles by arches instead of horizontal architraves,
the introduction of windows, to which the collective name of the
clerestory or the clear-story was given, in the semicircular heads of
the arches and more rarely into the upper part of the low external walls
of the aisles, the apse, whic