Religious and Memorial Architecture

RELIGIOUS AND MEMORIAL ARCHITECTURE. The earliest religious buildings were not so much congregational as shelters for the mysteries or provisions for the rite, sometimes consisting merely of an altar; and the earliest memorials were a stone or a mound. Even the Egyptian temple, with its court guarded by pylons or towers and approaching avenue of sphinxes or colossal human figures, was a sanctuary for kings and priests rather than a place of worship for the people; and the pyramids were the tombs of kings, furnished with the necessities of the future life (see EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE). The Greek temple, with its central shrine for a statue of the god or goddess, porticoes to front and rear, and flanking colonnades, was more like a place of worship as we understand it to-day. It was at least a public building. Greek memorials were generally tombs (see GREEK. ARCHITECTURE). The Roman temple, of which the construc tion was determined by the blending of the Greek columnar sys tem with the Etruscan arch, came nearer than the Greek to the Christian church in plan ; the cella—used as a treasury or as a museum of sculpture and frequently occupying the whole width of the building—corresponding to the chancel or sanctuary, and the deep portico and steps of the entrance anticipating the west front. A favourite form of Roman memorial, reflecting a proud spirit, was the triumphal arch (see ROMAN ARCHITECTURE).

Early Christian and Mediaeval.

It is probable that the earliest Christian churches, in countries under Persian rule, were humble structures of wood, clay, or at the most brick concrete, in the form of a shrine for an altar where two or three might be gathered together. Such churches, of which remains have been found in Syria, Palestine, Armenia and north Africa, were con centric in plan—that is to say, square, circular, octagonal or cruciform—and roofed with a dome. With the conversion of Rome to Christianity in the 4th century, and .the establishment of Constantine's new capital at Byzantium, a more congrega tional form of church was evolved by adjustments between the domed, concentric shrine and the plan derived from the Roman basilica, or hall of justice. In the Eastern empire the interactions between East and West were extremely complicated, and authori ties still differ about the respective shares of Greek, oriental and Roman influence in forming the religious architecture that we call Byzantine. The result, however, was a square, circular, octag onal or cruciform church of brick and concrete, with a central space covered by the principal dome, and arms or extensions covered by subsidiary domes. One arm was provided with an apse for the altar—now removed from the centre of the build ing—and another with a narthex, or porch. Decoration took the form of a continuous sheathing or "skin" of marble and mosaic.

St. Sophia, Constantinople, and St. Mark's, Venice, are famous surviving examples.

In the Western empire development was simpler, and the earliest Christian churches in Rome itself were copies or even adaptations of Roman buildings, frequently embodying fragments of pagan temples in their construction, following, with internal modifications, the plan of the basilica. The usual arrangement of basilican churches was that of nave and aisles, divided by arcades, with a semi-circular apse for the altar and a choir en closed by low screen walls at one end, and a covered narthex, or porch, preceded by an open court, or atrium, at the other. From the basilica, with some reflection from the East, was evolved the form known as Romanesque. The addition of transepts and the prolongation of the sanctuary resulted in a cruciform plan, and the flat wooden roof of the basilica was gradually exchanged for vaulting in stone. In northern Italy conditions favoured a mixed style, so that it is sometimes difficult to say whether a particular building should be described as Byzantine or Romanesque, but in passing down the Rhine and extending into France and Germany Romanesque became more clearly defined, reaching England finally in the form we know as Norman. (See BYZANTINE AND ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE.) Gothic, which may be dated from the i2th century, proceeded logically from Romanesque by the substitution of the pointed for the round arch and the development of rib vaulting—changes which enabled unequal spans to be vaulted to the same height and smaller units of inferior materials to be used for filling the spaces between the ribs. With the progress of Gothic the onus of stability tended to be put more and more upon the stone skeleton, with its elaborate system of thrust and counterthrust, the down ward pressure of the nave vaulting being met externally by buttresses and flying buttresses, while the inactive wall-spaces were pierced by larger and larger traceried window openings filled with stained glass. Architecturally the Gothic church was a col laboration of many kinds of craftsmen—masons, carvers, paint ers and glaziers—organized into guilds and working more or less "freehand" under a master mason, and ecclesiastically it was adapted to the requirements of a powerful priesthood. Its char acters can be studied to advantage in Chartres and Reims cathe drals in France, and Westminster Abbey and Canterbury and Wells cathedrals in England. Gothic memorials were almost exclusively religious, in such forms as "Eleanor" and market. crosses (see GOTHIC ARCHITEC In the loth century the Gothic, because of its aspiring verticality, has sometimes been adapted to tall, non-religious buildings (see ARCHITECTURE).