Places of Worship

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In Byzantium

For the Byzantine people, as for all Christians, prayer could take place anywhere (cf. John 4: 24: ‘God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship in spirit and in truth’). But the preferred place for community prayer and religious practice was the church, where the liturgy took place for the living encounter between God and man through the Eucharist (Christ’s body is the new temple: cf. John 2: 21).

When entering a Byzantine church, one is struck by the contrast between its generally austere external appearance, and the omnipresence of images within: it is like entering an entirely different world with the abundance of mosaics, frescoes, and icons. The images, which were a part of Byzantine piety since the iconoclastic crisis (eighth to ninth centuries), play an essential role in the liturgy. Indeed, everything in the church has a liturgical role, which explains why Byzantine churches evolved in parallel with the liturgy itself.

At the beginning of the Empire (fourth to sixth centuries), the most common type of church was the basilica church, composed of a (sometimes several) rectangular nave, preceded by a narthex (the room where the Catechumens and penitents stood), covered with a timber structure and ending, towards the east, in an open choir and an apse. This plan was ideal for a liturgy influenced by imperial ceremonies, with processions and movement into and out of the church: an example of this is the Basilica of S. Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna (sixth century). Another architectural type gradually became more predominant. The new element was the cupola that dominated the nave, along with the generalization of central plan churches. The Church of Saint Sophia, built by Justinian in Constantinople, combines the two plans. The earthly liturgy is the image of the celestial liturgy, the church representing the cosmos composed of the sky (shrine) and the earth (nave). The shrine is separated from the nave by a chancel, a sort of low parapet. Mosaics and frescoes confer great splendour on the whole; attention is drawn towards the apse, which houses the image of Christ.

From the ninth century, private monastic churches rivalled the basilica churches typical of the cult of the Cathedral (that of the bishop). These were smaller and adopted the plan of a ‘Greek’ cross, and were topped by one or several domes. In parallel, the evolution of the chancel or templon, which became higher and was adorned with images until it became an  opaque enclosure covered with icons and pierced with doorways (iconostasis), rendered very sacred the shrine, the clerics who had access to it, and the rites performed there (the Eucharistic consecration). Given the church’s reduced dimensions, the previous grand processions took on a purely symbolic function (with the clerics leaving the shrine and entering by the doors of the iconostasis). The Divine Liturgy was no longer the terrestrial image of a heavenly liturgy, but the figurative representation of the stages of Christ’s life, and the iconographic programme changed accordingly: Christ the Pantocrator (Christ in majesty) occupied the cupola, which looked down over the worshipers; the apse housed the image of the Holy Mother of God (Theotokos), as mediator between the sky and the earth; the nave was decorated with narrative cycles (particularly the life of Christ). In the churches of Daphni and Hosios Loukas in Greece, iconographic ensembles exist in remarkable mosaics.

Iconographic themes flourished during the last centuries of the Empire. The Ascension of Christ, prefiguring man becoming God after the resurrection, took pride of place in the apse. Byzantine art’s final manifestation can be seen in small monastic churches, like the Church of the Holy Saviour in Chora (Karye Djami in Istanbul), which is one of the most beautiful examples of Byzantine art, with its mosaics in the narthex and the nave, and the frescoes of the adjoining chapel (parecclesion) decorated with scenes of the life of Christ and his mother.

Apart from churches, another important place for prayer was the baptistery, where baptism, the most important of initiation rites, took place. This building changed with the evolution of the practice. Circular or octagonal in form, it was originally organized around a piscina into which the Catechumens descended down stone steps. As adult baptisms became rare, the piscina was gradually replaced by fonts or basins on a pedestal, in which infants were immersed. The mosaics and the frescoes adorning the walls of the baptistery represented baptismal themes (the baptism of Christ in Jordan). Two fine Byzantine baptisteries can be seen in Ravenna.

M.-H. C.

In Western Europe

The origins of Christian basilicas

After Constantine’s decision to officially recognize the Christian religion, in Milan in AD 313, the number of Christians greatly increased—to such an extent that, at the end of the fourth century, Theodosius proclaimed Christianity the state religion. Places of worship sprang up, and Constantine himself had sanctuaries (basilicas) built where the faithful could gather. Their architectural style was inspired by existing buildings. The name itself was derived from the Greek Basileus, meaning ‘king’, which was the royal assembly hall that first appeared in the Hellenistic era. It was used in Rome from the second century BC as a place for public assemblies; the forum was extended laterally and used as a hall, commercial centre, and for courts of law. The Christian basilica, which was designed to hold a large number of people, took the same form as this building. All the same, it was altered to suit its new functions. Roman civil basilicas generally opened on the long side next to the forum, in order to increase the number of entrances, and they often had two apses on the short sides. In contrast, the Christian basilica opened on a short side, and had a long plan that placed the apse at the other end of the rectangle that formed the nave. This apse was positioned in the east, where the sun rises, in evocation of the resurrection. There are, however, several exceptions, like in St Peter’s and St John Lateran in Rome, which have western apses for topographic reasons). The monument was eventually subdivided by rows of columns that delimited a central nave and lower side aisles. It was covered by a timber gable roof, except for the apse with its quarter-sphere vault. Thus, the apse was the most important place in the building, where the altar stood.

Other square-plan buildings existed, but they were exceptional in the West (apart from baptisteries), while in Byzantine architecture they were predominant. Lastly, the prayer halls of some kinds of mosques, like the Umayyad mosque in Damascus, were inspired by this architecture (a rectangular hall subdivided by columns), but took on the wider dimensions of the civil basilicas in order to accommodate the ranks of worshippers facing Mecca.

The functions of the basilicas

The first Christian basilicas had very specific uses. Thus, the Lateran Basilica in Rome, the Episcopal seat of the pope, was used for the Eucharistic celebrations and housed an altar. St Peter’s Basilica, with its cult of the martyr, was intended for congregating around the tomb of the apostle and martyr, around which the apse was built. St Agnes Basilica, whose side aisles extend around the apse (‘circiform’ type), contains the sepulchres and constitutes the funerary area. After the fourth and fifth centuries, these differences tended to disappear, and every basilica had an altar, housed the shrines of martyrs, and contained the sepulchres of the privileged. The word ‘church’ was also used to describe the monument, originating from the Greek ekklesia, which designated the gathering of worshippers. The churches linked to the Episcopal Church were called cathedrals: (from kathedra, meaning chair), and those in parishes, ‘parish’ churches. The sanctuaries that were linked to religious communities (see ‘Places of Seclusion’) were given specific names: the abbey church for a monastery, a collegial church for a community of canons, and conventual for convents of mendicant friars … the main role of the church was to provide a place for Eucharistic celebration.

The Eucharistic celebration, a sacrificial cult in a sacred building

The Sunday mass, divided into the liturgy of the Word and the liturgy of the Eucharist, originated in the celebrations of the first disciples. As described in The Acts of the Apostles, the first Christians prayed, read, and meditated together on Sunday mornings. At the end of the day, they shared a meal, reproducing the gestures of Christ during the Last Supper, the last meal before the Passion. During this rite, called the consecration, bread and wine are transformed for Christians into the body and blood of Christ (‘the transubstantiation’). This sacrificial rite constitutes an essential particularity of the Christian religion, because the sacrifice of Christ is celebrated through the Eucharist. Thus, Christianity was defined as a sacrificial cult, like Judaism at the time of the Temple of Jerusalem, when the priests carried out animal sacrifices. But, in post-Temple Judaism and in Islam, synagogues and mosques were used for collective prayer, led by a Rabbi or Imam. In sixteenth-century Christianity, the Reform—particularly that of John Calvin—redefined, in turn, the Christian religion as a prayer based, because the Eucharist took on a commemorative role. Pastors, whose role was similar to that of the rabbis and imams, led the Protestant communities.

Catholic priests, like their orthodox counterparts, who had received the sacrament of the order, carried out the Eucharistic sacrifice on the altar—the terminology is singularly sacrificial—, which was also the symbolic evocation of the tomb of Christ. Thus, the church, as the place for sacrifice, was a holy building, especially after the fourth Lateran Council (1215), when the consecrated bread—the body of Christ—was kept permanently in the eucharistic reserves, originally the tabernacles, for the veneration of the worshippers. The bishop was responsible for consecrating the church during a solemn service.  

The church was the material representation of the heavenly church, according to St Augustine’s concept that identified the City of the World with heavenly Jerusalem. Consequently the circumference of Charlemagne’s Palatine Chapel at Aix measured 144 feet, which, according to the Apocalypse, was the dimension of the Heavenly Jerusalem, ‘according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel’; the idea was reiterated in the inscription ‘This image represents the Heavenly Jerusalem, a vision of peace and real hope for serenity’. In the Romanesque era, the themes of the sculptures over the portals evoked the end of time (eschatology), through representations like the Last Judgement or Christ in Majesty of the Apocalypse, marking the passage between the earthly and heavenly worlds, symbolized by the church. In the twelfth century, abbot Suger of St-Denis compared his church’s windows to the sparkling gems of heavenly Jerusalem.

The architectural evolution of Western churches

From the eighth to ninth centuries, the churches were transformed with the liturgical changes introduced by the clergy and the Carolingian kings. The single altar of Paleo-Christian basilicas was replaced by a number of altars. Processions led from one altar to another, where masses were celebrated for the dead inscribed in the obituary (only one daily mass could be celebrated on the altar). Towers were built at the western ends (westwork, from the German Westwerk), housing an altar in a high chapel; they were also given bell towers. This was the origin of Romanesque facades, which were given a portal tower in the entrance (St-Germain-des-Prés, Paris, circa AD 1000), preceded by an entrance porch (porch and elevated chapel as in Tournus in Burgundy, in the second quarter of the eleventh century), or flanked by two towers (the harmonic facade of St-Etienne de Caen, at the end of the eleventh century). The development of the cult of shrines led to the construction of complex crypts, with ambulatories and annexing chapels (St-Germain d'Auxerre, ninth century). These crypts led to the development of the Romanesque chevets.

Around AD 1000 new formulas developed. The chevets became far more complex. Two formulas predominated: chevets with chapels spaced out, comprising a central apse flanked by side apses of increasing depth (plan of the second abbey church of Cluny, second half of the tenth century, discovered during the archaeological digs; Chateaumeillant in Berry, twelfth century), and the ambulatory with its radiating chapels, comprising an ambulatory that led around the sanctuary and which opened onto a crown of chapels (e.g. the abbey churches of Tournus and Conques, eleventh century). The arms of the transepts formed a cruciform church plan (a Latin cross) articulating around a regular crossing. While these areas were vaulted, it wasn’t necessarily true for the rest of the nave which could be covered with a timber roof: contrary to popular belief, Romanesque art is not necessarily synonymous with cradle vaults (abbey church of Jumièges in Normandy, mid eleventh century) for example. However, very early on, engaged columns (half columns built into the walls) appeared in the walls, defining the bays. Complex supports—piers—supported the springers. Lastly, vaults became more widely used in the second half of the eleventh century. The interdependence of the architectural elements was one of the main characteristics of this architecture, which managed to create an impression of space for its masses and volumes, as can be observed in Romanesque art in the Auvergne. During the twelfth century, new formulas were tried (naves covered with domes, e.g. in the cathedrals of Angoulême, Cahors, and Puy). Pictorial decoration underpinned the architecture, while developing complex iconographic cycles (St Savin in Poitou). Historiated capitals and the reliefs of the carved tympans translated the images into stone. References to classical antiquity were numerous.

Gothic architecture developed in Ile-de-France during the 1140s at a time when the Romanesque style was reaching maturity in the rest of France. It was immediately defined by new techniques, for example, with the use of the rib vault and the pointed arch. After some atypical experiments (four-level buildings, in the cathedrals of Laon and Paris), the Early Gothic style made way (circa 1190) for High Gothic, and Chartres Cathedral, followed by those of Reims, Amiens, and Beauvais, are supreme examples. They have narrow bays on three levels (lower wide arcades, then the triforium—a passage above the arches—, and high windows), bays subdivided by stone tracery, and vaults comprising two ogives in four sections, on a rectangular plan (quadripartite on an oblong plan). From 1240, this architectural rationalization enabled the wall surfaces to be unencumbered, and the iconography that had previously been represented in the wall paintings was now enclosed within windows. Thus, as in the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris, the desired effect of dematerialized architecture was successful, creating the impression of a cage of stone and glass that gave its name to the Gothic Rayonnant style. Thus, the light coming from the sky is an evocation of divine light. From the fourteenth century, Gothic Flamboyant style accentuated the decorative and graphic aspects, cutting the stone into fine filigree and creating the illusion of flames in its bays and rose windows. In parallel, from the thirteenth century, the Gothic of the mendicant orders was a reaction against the luxury of the churches, affirming its attachment to the asceticism and austerity that was aligned with the evangelical ideal.

Th.S.