ABSTRACT
The general scheme of the vaults, which connected the pillars and the walls of the building, in all the churches was the same. Four pillars were connected by arches in the core of the church. The cruciform shape of the pillars reflected their function, i.e. to serve as the supports for four arches. When square-section pillars replaced cruciform ones in the second half of the twelfth century, the abutments of the wall arches were not placed on the pilasters, but were cut into the pillars themselves. When the supporting pillars were round (or polygonal), they were capped with a square plate, above which they became either cruciform or square, as at the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at the Monastery of St Euphrosyne in Polotsk and the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb at Kolozha in Grodno.
