CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE, that of theschools which have grown up among the peoples generally Christian in belief ; but more especially the architecture of churches and their dependencies. The term is used commonly in both senses. Thus, at the time of the Gothic tevival in England (most active between 1850 and 187Q) the term °Christian .architecture* was used especially to denote Gothic art and Gothic and Romanesque art ,taken together; and this because it' was assumed that those styles were,peculiarly the creation of the Chris tian organization, as distinguished from the neoclassical styles of the Renaissance and later epochs, which had obviously been developed from the study of ancient Greco-Roman archi tecture.
Styles which are in a strict sense Christian are (1) the Latin style, identified with the basil icas of the Western Church built from the 4th to the 9th century, and most numerous in Italy, especially in Rome and Ravenna. The Christian basilicas are extremely simple in Structure and design. The entrance is ITenerallv from a Square peristyle, like a cloister; though the narthex or vestibule often replaces it. A nave from 30 to 50 feet wide is divided from two aisles by rows -of "eohnniis often takin froth classical buildings. These columns carry the clerestory wall which rises above the aisle roofs and between the windows of the clere story, and above and below the windows there are large flat surfaces commonly filled with pictures and decorative scroll-work in mosaic. There are sometimes two additional aisles. The aisles and the nave all stop against the tran sept, which is often higher and generally wider than the nave and is the most striking part of the buildings, but in many of the 'smaller ba silicas no transept exists. Beyond the tran sept, that is, farther from the entrance doors, an apse projects, and this originally contained the seats of the bishop and his clergy. The high altar had different places at different pe riods, but the middle of the transept, on the axis of the great nave, was the more usual place and a baldacchino or permanent canopy was built over it—a feature which was pre served in later Italian churches; (2) the By zantine style, finding its great central monu ment in the church of Saint Sophia, Constanti• nople, and spread over the Balkan Peninsula, parts of Asia Minor and Syria, with offshoots in Egypt and Persia, and with more recent de velopments among the churches of Russia; (3) the Romanesque style of western Europe, developed from the attempt of the church builders to roof their naves and aisles, choirs and apses, with vaulting, copied at first from the Imperial Roman examples, which were np merous throughout western Europe, but al ways with inferior materials and skill; then de veloping into a more florid style, taking differ ent characteristic forms according as it was in fluenced more or less by Eastern intercourse, and spreading over Europe from Hungary to Scotland and Spain; (4) the Gothic style, which is the Romanesque style carried to its legitimate sequence in the way of vaulting, but greatly changed by the very perfection of that constructive process, the buildings growing larger and lighter, more open and with a con stant tendency of the walls to disappear until the building becomes a stone roof supported on light uprights, with no wall surface except under the great windows; the windows them selves very rich in colored glass and filling large parts of the upright screen or enclosure of the buildings. These are the four great di visions of Christian architecture in the strict est sense; all these styles are treated in the general article ARCHITECTURE.
There are exceptional forms, less important but very interesting, hardly to be classified un der the above general divisions. Thus, there exists in Syria a style of building which was entirely unknown until the explorations of the Comte de Vogiie (about 1860-65) and which has been studied since by an American expedi tion. This is a Romanesque of singular sim plicity and consistency of design, the buildings being entirely of stone, roofed and fitted in every part with solid stone, and the whole style growing out of Imperial Roman construction as adapted to a country where stone was the material most easily procured. The resulting style was, however,generally unrestrained by Greco-Roman traditions. The general design and the sculptured detail alike were singularly free, original, logical, inevitable, in their con ception. It has been pointed out by French critics that the qualm of elearhess„and original thought in design is present in all the earlier and finer buildings. The Christian symbolism, which, in its more elaborate forms, is shown most perfectly in the mosaics of central Italy (see the Latin style above), is seen in its sim plest form carved on the lintels and wall-pan els of these churches. The cross in its many forms, the sacred monograms and ciphers, the vine and other plants identified with the Chris tian teaching of the East, are used with marked success in these carvings both as symbolism and as decoration. The churches of Syria are of singular simplicity and charm. Again, al though the Gothic architecture of Europe reached its culmination at the close of the 13th century, and was less energetic, less fruitful of new thought during the 14th century, this was followed by an independent and most attrac tive style in the 15th century, which on the Con tinent we call generally Florid Gothic or Flamboyant style, whereas in England it took the shape of the formal and rigid Perpendicular and passed into the Tudor style with its far vaulting. (See VAULT). Yet again, as the Italians never understood Gothic architecture nor sympathized with it, there are only a few monuments which are strictly Gothic, but the great cathedrals of Orvieto, Siena and Flor ence and churches throughout the peninsula and in Sicily, are Gothic in detail, and are adorned by a magnificent system of sculptured and colored It is to be noted that from the beginning of the 15th century onward the artistic design is less and less dependent on church buildings; the important dwellings of the nobles in the country, and of citizens in the towns, modifying greatly the style of the day and sometimes taking the lead away from eccle siastical structures. It is entirely a matter of private judgment how far this change tends to remove those later styles from the field of Christian architecture.
Bibliography.— Browne, 'Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture) (New York 1912); Butler, 'Architecture and Other Arts in North ern Central Syria' (New York 1903); Dehio and Von Bezold, kirchliche Baukunst des Abendlandes) (Stuttgart 1887-1901) ; Esenwein, 'Der christliche Kirchenbau' (Frankfort-on the-Main 1886); id., der klassischen Baukunst) (Stuttgart 1889); Hill, 'Architec tural History of the Christian Church) (Lon don 1908) ; Holtzinger, altchristliche Architektur) (Stuttgart 1889); Hiibsch, altchristlichen Kirchen) (Karlsruhe 1863); Kraus, 'Geschichte der christlichen Kunst' (Freiburg 1896); Vogiii, De, (Syrie Centrale; Leseglises de Terre-Sainte) (Paris 1865); Von Quasi, (Die altchristlichen Bauwerke zu Ravenna) ,