Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Forms of churches?Position of the altar?To whom dedicated? Construction?Interior?The Byzantine style?The Lombardic style?The Pointed style?The Temple still the leading idea?Not well received in Italy?Its decline. FOBMS OF CHURCHES. The circular form was adopted at a very early period, suggested probably by that of the Pantheon. This form was employed by Constantine in the chapels raised to the memory of his mother and of his sister; it thence spread into different parts of Christendom; and baptisteries, which in the early times, were always separate buildings, were built in this, and also an octagonal form. The form of the cross was not adopted as the plan of a church until the sixth century, when Justus II., (A.D. 583) gave that figure to a church at Constantinople. For many centuries, however, it was the exception, rather than the rule, by far the greater number of churches still continuing to be built upon the plan of the Basilica. In the east the square was the favourite figure, and the dome which the Byzantine architects had now learned to construct, served as an imposing addition to the new form. The schism between the Pope of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople, caused this plan to be more generally adopted by the Greeks, who insisted upon it as one of their own invention, while such nations as acknowledged the Papal supremacy, adhered to the ancient Latin form, maintained at Rome. It was subsequently introduced into some parts of Italy by the Greeks, and into others by the Venetians. POSITION OF THE ALTAR. When it became the practice to place the altar at the east end of the church is by no means clear. Strabo, who died A.D. 25 asserts, that it was the usual custom of the Christians to pray towards the east. The greater part of the churches...