as we said, there is in the history of the city of Romebetween the last stage of its earlier existence, of which there remains so much, and the first stage of its second existence, of which there remains so little-one memorable field of debatable ground, which, for historical interest, can vie with all that precedes and with all that follows. We know not what might be the light thrown upon the early condition of the Christian society by the scenes of its first vicissitudes in Palestine or Asia Minor; but we much doubt whether even these can furnish any thing which so vividly calls before us an image of the first centuries of the Christian era, as the localities and monuments of Rome. We do not now speak of the ecclesiastical traditions in which it abounds at every turn-but of the two great vestiges of those momentous times which have been indisputably preserved to us in the CATACOMBS and in the BASILICAS. Of the former, we will only say, that a more striking proof could hardly be given of the imperfect manner in which the so-called Histories of the early Church have been written, than the slight notice which even the best of them has bestowed upon the whole state of life and society, which is implied in the existence which is expressed in the monuments of the Roman Catacombs. We do not profess to have studied the subject, but surely one glance at those endless galleries, chapels, and cemeteries of the sub'terraneous city-one glance at the rude sculptures, the illspelt epitaphs, the humble implements of trade, now preserved in the Lapidarian Gallery,' through which the visitor of the Vatican passes, on his way to the splendid works of art which adorned the cotemporary chambers of the palaces of Nero, and the baths of Titus, is a better illustration of the triumph of the weak things of the world over the things that are mighty, than the declamations of a hundred apologists; and opens a far deeper view into the life of the first ages of Christianity, than the most elaborate descriptions of sects and heresies which crowd the pages of the ordinary ecclesiastical history.

Of the Basilicas, however, the work of Chevalier Bunsen invites us to speak more particularly; and to this subject, and the thoughts which it suggests, we will now confine ourselves— restricting our remarks to the historical question to which the work professes to be an answer, namely, What was the original idea which the Christians of the first centuries conceived of a place of worship?—What was the model which they chose for

We must make an exception in favour of Mr Milman's ' History of Christianity,' Book iv. c. 4.

themselves when, on emerging from the Catacombs, they looked round upon the existing edifices of the civilized world?

For nearly two hundred years, as is well known, set places of worship had no existence at all. In the third century, notices of them became more frequent, but still in such ambiguous terms, that it is difficult to ascertain how far the building or how far the congregation is the prominent idea in the writer's mind; and it is not, therefore, till the fourth century, when they became so general as to acquire a fixed form and name, that our inquiry properly begins.

Of the public edifices of the heathen world, three kinds alone were likely to attract the Christian architect of this period, for the purpose of Christian assembly and worship. The one to which the instincts of a large part of modern Christendom would have most naturally turned, seems, by ancient Christendom, at least in the Western provinces, to have been most immediately rejected. The Temple, though occasionally adopted by the Eastern Emperors, and in some few instances, as the Pantheon, at Rome itself, was never incorporated into the institutions of Western Christendom. It was not only that all its associations, both of name and place, jarred with the most cherished notions of Christian purity and holiness, but also that the very construction of the edifice was wholly incompatible with the new idea of worship, which Christianity had brought into the world. Let any one who has seen the Temple of Isis at Pompeii (we mention this as, perhaps, the most complete specimen now extant of a heathen temple at the time of the Christian era) reflect on the impossibility of amalgamating elements so heterogeneous. It was exactly in accordance with the genius of heathenism, that the Priest should minister in the presence of the god, withdrawn from view in the little cell or temple that rose in the centre of the consecrated area; but how should the president of the Christian assembly be concealed from the vast concourse in whose name he acted, and who, as with the voice of many waters, were to reply Amen' to his giving of thanks? It was most congenial to the feeling of Pagan worshippers that they should drop in, one by one, or in separate groups, to present their individual prayers or offerings to their chosen Divinity; but how was a Christian congregation, which, by its very name of Exxana, recalled the image of those tumultuous crowds which had thronged the Pnyx or Forum, in the days of the Athenian or Roman Commonwealth, to be brought within the

Bingham, viii. 3.

narrow limits even of the outer courts, much less of the actual edifice which was supposed to be the dwelling of the God? Even the Temple of Jerusalem itself pure as it was from the revolting recollections which invested the shrines of the heathen deities, and present as it was, no doubt, to the minds of Christians, even after a desolation of two hundred years-was obviously inadequate to become the visible and outward home of a religion to which the barriers of Judaism were hardly less uncongenial than those of Paganism itself. A Temple, whether heathen or Jewish, could never be the model of a purely Christian edifice. The very name itself had now, in Christian phraseology, passed into a higher sphere; and however much long use may have habituated us to the application of the word to material buildings, we can well understand how instinctively an earlier age would shrink from any lower meaning than the moral and spiritual sense attached to it in those Apostolical Writings which had taught the world that the true temple of God was in the hearts and consciences of men. And therefore, in the words of Bingham, for the first three ages the name is scarce ever' (he might have said never) applied to Christian places of worship;' and though instances of it are to be found in the rhetorical language of the fourth, yet it never obtained a hold on the ordinary language of Christendom.

It is to a wholly different quarter that we are to look for an answer to our inquiry. We have spoken of the abuse of the appellation of Temple in later times; it is perhaps even more to be lamented that the word Church, or Ecclesia, already fraught with meanings sufficiently complicated, should have been additionally burdened in later times, by the expression which has identified it with the material building; when we might have retained the original and unambiguous title of Basilica, which' (again to use the language of Bingham) ever since it came into use, has been the common name of all churches' down to the commencement of the middle ages.

What, then, was the ancient heathen structure, whose title has thus acquired a celebrity so far beyond its original intention? It is, as Chevalier Bunsen strikingly observes, the especial offspring and symbol of Western civilization;-Greek in its origin, Roman in its progress, Christian in its ultimate developinent, the word is co-extensive with the range of the European family. In the earliest form under which we can catch any trace of it, it stands in the dim antiquity of the Homeric ageat the point where the first beginnings of Grecian civilization melt away into the more primitive forms of Oriental society. It is the gateway of the Royal Palace, in which the ancient Kings,

*

Agamemnon at Mycenae, David at Jerusalem, Pharoah at Thebes or Memphis, sat to hear and to judge the complaints of their people; and of which the last trace was preserved at Athens in the King's Portico' under the Payx, where the Archon King performed the last judicial functions of the last shadow of the old Athenian royalty. But it was amongst the Romans that it first assumed that precise form and meaning which have given it so lasting an importance. Judging from the great prominence of the Basilicas as public buildings, and from the more extended application of them in the imperial times to purposes of general business, the nearest parallel to them in modern cities would doubtless be found in the Town-hall or Exchange. What, in fact, the rock-hewn semicircle of the Pnyx was at Athens-what the open platform of the Forum had been in the earlier days of Rome itself that, in the later times of the Commonwealth was the Basilica-the general place of popular resort and official transactions; but, in accordance with the increased refinement of a more civilized age, protected from the mid-day sun and the occasional storm by walls and roof. Still, the original idea of a hall of justice, which came with the name from Greece, was never lost at Rome; and it was characteristic of the Eternal City, that the predominant image which was impressed on its public buildings was not commercial, or religious, or even political, but judicial. A long ball divided by two rows of columns into a central avenue, with two side aisles, in one of which the male, in the other the female appellants to justice waited their turn; whilst the middle aisle was occupied by the chance crowd that assembled to hear the proceedings, or for purposes of merchandise; a transverse avenue which crossed the others in the centre, and, if used at all, was occupied by the advocates and others engaged in the public business; the whole building closed by a long semicircular recess, (the form, it is said, most convenient for hearing,) in the centre of which sat the prætor or supreme judge, seen high above the heads of all on the elevated † tribunal,' which was deemed the indispensable symbol of the Roman judgment-seat.

It is perhaps doubtful how far the form of the word Basilica,' though of course itself purely Greek, was ever used with this acceptation in Greece itself. Στο βασιλέως is the designation of the Athenian portico, and oxos or vaos Bariλews is Eusebius' expression for the Christian Basilica.

†The judgment hall' or prætorium of the Roman magistrates in the provinces had no further resemblance to the Basilica, than in the apparent coincidence of name which must frequently have arisen from their formation out of the palaces of the former kings of the conquered

Such was the form of the Basilica, as they met the view of the first Christians in the different forums of the imperial city. It needs but few words to account for their adaptation to the use of a Christian church. Something, no doubt, is to be ascribed, as Mr Milman well remarks, to the fact, (History of Christianity, iv. 26,) that as these buildings were numerous, and attached to any 'imperial residence, they might be bestowed at once on the 'Christians without either interfering with the course of justice, or bringing the religious feelings of the hostile parties into collision.' Still, the instances of actual transformation are exceedingly rare in most cases it must have been impossible, from the erection of the early Christian churches on the graves, real or supposed, of martyrs and apostles, which, according to the almost universal practice of the ancient world, were necessarily without the walls of the city, as the halls of justice, from their connexion with everyday life, were necessarily within. It is on some such grounds as these, we imagine, that M. Bunsen conceives there must have been something in the type itself of the Basilica, at least not uncongenial to the early Christian views of worship, independent of any causes of mere accidental convenience. What this was has been anticipated, in what has been said of the rejection of the temple. There was now a church,' a 'congregation,' an assembly,' which could no longer be hemmed within the narrow precincts, or detained in the outer courts of the heathen TEMEVOS or enclosure-where could they be so naturally placed as in the long aisles which had received the concourse of the Roman populace, and which now became the 'nave' of the Christian Cathedrals? Whatever distinctions existed in the Christian society, were derived, not as in the Jewish temple, from any notions of inherent religious differences, between different classes of men, but merely, as in the Jewish synagogue, from considerations of order and decency; and where could these be found more readily than in the separate places still retained by the sexes in the aisles of the Basilica; or the appropriation of the upper end of the building to the clergy and singers, from whose ministrations it became transformed into the choir or chorus? There was a law to be proclaimed, and a verdict to be pronounced, by the highest officers of the new society; and what more natural, than that

nations. But so necessary was the elevation of the judge's seat considered to the final delivery of the judicial sentence, that, as has been made familiar to us in one memorable instance, (John, xix. 13,) the absence of the usual tribunal was supplied by a tesselated pavement, which the magistrate carried with him, and on which his chair or throne was placed before he could pronounce sentence.