CRYPT, krii it ( Lat. crypta, Gk. tcpt/irry, krypte, crypt, vault, from tipin-retv, krypt•in, to hide). A term usually employed to designate a chamber under a church. wholly or partly sub terranean; hut it was anciently used to mean a subterranean chapel in the catacombs. As a part of a church, it developed out of the confes sion (q.v.), of which it was the logical enlarge ment. Like the confession, its prime object was to provide a place under the high altar for the safe custody of the relics of saints: a confession became a crypt when it was large enough for an altar, with room to worship the relies. The cir cular passage of the larger confessions thus be came a chamber occupying at least the space from the high altar in the transept to the end of the apse: like the apse—whose outline it fol lowed—it usually had a semicircular ending. It was reached from the church by a single or a double staircase. usually in the neighborhood of the high altar in the nave or side aisles. Al though some crypts existed as early as the sixth century. it was nut until the Carolingian period (ninth century) that such chambers attained to any size: hut front that time until the thirteenth century, they formed a very important part of church architecture, especially of the Roman esque style. They usuOly do not occupy Inure space than that which lies beneath the transept. choir, and apse of the upper church, but some times they extend tinder the entire body of the ehurch, including nave and aisles, as in Saint Eutrope at Saintes, the Cathedral of Otranto, and San Nicol)), Bari. In such cases it is not always easy to distinguish them from the lower section of a double or two-storied church, such as those of Saint Francis at Assisi (q.v.), the Sainte Chapelle, Paris, Le Puy-en-Velay, and Schwartz Ilheindurf. Some of the early large crypts were connected with the concentric churches of the Roly Sepulchre type, such as Saint Benigne at Dijon, Ottmarsheim, Saint Michael's at Fulda, where the crypt has the same periphery as the church (ninth to thirteenth century). Where, as is usual], the crypt in a hasilical or cruciform church extends only beneath the choir end, the pavement here is often raised above that of the body of the church, so as to give greater height to the crypt. This adds picturesqueness to the
interior. Sometimes the change of level is so great that the centre of the crypt opens widely upon the nave by one long central stairway, and two side stairea.es ascend to the choir. In such cases the crypt is apt to be a very monumental structure. Such are the crypts of San Zeno, at Ve rona: of San 3liniato, at Florence; of the Cathe dral of Arezzo; of the Abbey Church of Saint Denis, of the Cathedral of Strassburg (the largest in Germany). and many others. The double choirs —one at each end—that were common in Ger man churches from the time of the old Cathedral of Cologne (81-1-73). and the Abbey Church of Saint Gall. usually had a crypt under each choir, as existing in the Cathedral of Bamberg. In Eng land the finest crypt is that of Canterbury; next to it, that of Glasgow Cathedral. Of course, all crypts were of necessity vaulted, in order to sup port the weight above. A few are tunnel-vaulted, as the example at Steinbach-Michaelstadt; but the immense majority are covered with groin vaults, supported by a forest of columns. In Italian churches, especially in Apulia and the Boman Province, the usual division is into seven aisles by six rows of columns. Farther north, heavy piers are often substituted for the slen derer eolumus, especially when the church above is vaulted. These supports were usually placed closer together than those above. Crypts are not only interesting in themselves, and from their great variety of plan and arrangement. but be cause, on account of their protected subterranean situation, they have suffered less from vandalism and are often the only remaining part of a mediveval church. With the age of cathedrals and churches of the Mendicant Orders. in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, crypts were no longer used. because the cardinal idea of this era was to provide immense interiors on a single level for large congregations, instead of interiors divided by a raised choir into two sections.