ABSTRACT
The question of the development of the earliest forms of Christian churches has been treated by a number of authors from various angles, based mostly on the same comparative material. Thus, Jean Lassus, professor of Strasbourg University, published Sanctuaires chrétiens de Syrie (Paris, 1947), a comprehensive opus that is devoted to “the genesis, forms and liturgical use of Christian cultic edifices in Syria from the third century to the Muslim conquest”; Professor André Grabar, director of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, published an investigation on “the cult of relics and on Early Christian art” in three volumes entitled Martyrium (Paris, 1946); finally, there is Samuel Guyèr's book, Grundlagen mittelalterlicher abendländischer Baukunst (Zurich-Cologne, 1950), on “evolution from the antique temple to the cross-planned basilica in Western Europe during the Middle Ages.” In the above works, the authors raise and discuss the all-important problem of the development of the earliest forms of Christian churches, substantiating their deductions thereupon. The first two researchers devote most of their attention to determining the difference between religious ritual in basilicas from those that were held in martyria and other memorial central-domed edifices. As for Guyèr, he does not overlook the significance of the functional aspect of Christian churches, but sees his main task in following up architectural evolution: namely, “why were the temples and colonnades of antiquity, perceived horizontally, as a whole, suddenly superseded by completely differently organised complex groups of structures having dominating and subordinated parts, with soaring towers?” — this writer addresses the problem of the central-domed and basilican compositions but from a different angle.
