What is a Basilica?

Liturgical Art and Architecture, part 2

Constantine transformed the situation of Christians throughout the empire. Beginning with his taking of Rome in 313 AD and continuing through his becoming sole emperor, he supported the church. Christians, who under the previous emperor, Diocletian, were severely persecuted, under Constantine were not only allowed to practice their faith without threat but were supported by Constantine. He gave the church property and funding, and began himself commissioning churches.

What should a church look like?

We think we know what churches should look like, but in the early fourth century, there was no building style that was known as “church”. When Christians suddenly had the freedom to build permanent structures in which to gather and indeed had funding from the state to do so, they had to decide what shape this new structure would have. If we put ourselves into the mindset of these early Christians, we see that the issue is a complex one. We are used to thinking of churches as places for worship, as the house of God, as a sacred space, but these were not categories that would have been at the forefront of the concerns of these Christians. Christianity, remember, emerged into the Greco-Roman world as a critique of religion. Christians did not visit the house of their god to worship him. They did not intend to build a temple in the Greek, Roman, or even Jewish mode. For the Greeks, arguably, temples marked places that a god had chosen as his or her own. They were a way of setting out a sacred precinct where the god was vividly present. This was less the case with the Romans, but they shared with the Greeks the idea that the temple was a unique place to meet with the god or goddess to maintain a good relationship with them. For Jews, the temple had been the place of sacrifice to keep and restore the covenant, the primary dwelling place of the Spirit of God. Christians rejected all of these conceptions. God had made his dwelling place the people baptized into his name. These people were the living stones of the true temple, the living Body of Christ. They were those called out (ek-klesia) from the world to be the presence of Christ to the world so that the Spirit could penetrate the hearts of all. There were no particular places that were sacred – everything was sacred to the degree that it was transformed in Christ. So, then, what kind of building would suit the place of the church to gather for worship? A temple set apart would not do. The place of Christian gathering had been quite ordinary for over 250 years: the homes of the more wealthy Christians or simple rented halls. The important thing was for the community to be able to gather around a font of water for baptism, hear together the word and celebrate it in song, and, most importantly, share together the supper of the Lord. This new building should maintain these essential components and also reflect the church’s mission of engaging in and transforming the society around them. It was not to be a place of retreat but a place to exemplify what the true society should be.

Basilica: the style of choice

Of the architectural forms available in Rome, one turned out to fit these needs: the basilica. The basilica, for the Roman city, was not a worship space. It was fundamentally a political space. Structurally, basilicas were large, rectangular buildings of brick and concrete with the interior divided by columns into a center aisle and one or more side aisles on either side. There was a curved area, an apse, either midway along one of the walls that created an arched space. Its use was primarily juridical.  The magistrate or even the emperor sat in the apse and heard cases. The basilica was the place you went to negotiate your civic life, work out your relationships with patrons and clients, resolve disputes, and network.

For the church, the space fulfilled their need both practically and spiritually.