ARCHITECTURAL SEMANTICS OF THE INTERIOR COMPOSITION OF CENTRALIZED ECCLESIASTICAL BUILDINGS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN PERIOD IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE

<p>In two previous articles, principles of interior architectural composition were clarified with regard to centralized ecclesiastical buildings in the early Christian period. Such buildings, in so far as their specific character of composition is distinguishable from the architecture of the previous period, appear as autonomous compositions. The present article compares these early Christian buildings in terms of their interiors, with other types of centralized building in the late Roman period and with contemporary written descriptions. In the Roman period, three structural modes of composition prevailed in architecture : the trabeated system which seems to have had the support of Vitruvius; the load-bearing-enclosure system which is generally evinced in the remains of centralized building; the trabeated- and load-bearing-enclosure system which is found in scaenae frons and the triumphal arch. These three modes could be said to apply two architectural "ideas", independently or combined, in any given case. One concept is linear in application and the other necessarily represents a surface assemblage in the elevation. These two ideas also suggest a fundamental difference between architectural compositions of the Roman Republic and those of the later Roman period. Although these systems are easily recognized in the buildings dealt with in my two previous articles, data required a further distinction within the trabeated system in the second article. Therefore, in the present article, the so-called traditional (Roman) trabeated system is once again resolved into "pure" trabeated and "mixed" trabeated systems in the main space of the ekklhsia. While the former exhibits ranges columns, restricted to the lower portion of the interior elevation, the latter yields columns as well as layered pillars on the interior elevation. The former is, furthermore, presumably derived from non-Christian Roman centralized examples since the upper part of the elevation was merely left as a blank wall. That is, based on ecclesiastical requirements, the wall of the lower portion of the elevation is replaced by columns to facilitate circulation between a main space (nave) and an aisle. Thus, the columns of this lower register assume the role of a screen between two domains, over and above the linear system upon which formal arrangement is based. The composition of the mixed-trabeated system utilizes layered pillars finished in marble as a metamorphose wall visually supporting the dome, at the same time that columns on each floor function as a screen in the above-mentioned fashion. Therefore, with regard to employment of column and wall in the mixed trabeated system, the usual "idea" of Roman architecture is depicted in a kind of reversal from the standpoint of the subject, although the formal arrangement of column and wall is derived from previous architectural examples as measured from the standpoint of the builder's intentions. Moreover, these first ekklhsiai were constructucted in the last part of the early Christian period. This means that visual contemplation is detached from physical composition in terms of the interior elevation, a process which might well have accorded with Vitruvian principle. Table-6 shows a schema of the logical development of the centralized ecclesiastical interiors in the early Christian period. In spite of the divergence between two architectural "ideas" as realized in composition, buildings from the early Christian period generally examined here show a similar attention to and treatment of surface. In all cases, the surface materials are brilliant and colorful in effect. Indeed, this new type of surface, although partially descended from Roman precedent, must be cited as a specific characteristic of the centralized ecclesiastical interior in the early Christian period. This further emphasizes the fact that the</p><p>(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)</p>