Identifier: monumentsofearly00lowr (find matches)
Title: Monuments of the early church
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: Lowrie, Walter, 1868-1959
Subjects: Christian antiquities Christian art and symbolism Church architecture Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600
Publisher: New York, The Macmillan Company London, MacMillan & Co.
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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gular plan of the basilica.The exceptional cases in which it extended slightly beyond thisline belong, however, to the oldest and most important of theRoman basilicas, — S. Peters, S. Pauls, and the Lateran (Figs.26, h, 29), — and it was probably the great importance of thesechurches which contributed, together with purely architecturaland symbolic considerations, to impress this scheme upon theGothic cathedral. In a church which was provided with atransept, the altar was not located beneath the apsidal arch, buton the line which separated the transept from the nave, beneaththe circus major, as it was called in the Liher Pontificalis. Thisleft between the altar and the apse ample space for the clergy,and in its wings provided accommodation for the altars of the THE BASILICA— rrothosis 125 jjrothesis, upon which the offerings of the people were bestowedand from which the bread and wine for the Eucharist weretaken. The whole of the transept, or at least the part reserved \ > ik
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Fk;. 39.- ( aiii.h.^. of Iarenzu. Sixth ceiitiu-y. to the clergy, was raised like the floor of the apse, and sur-rounded by chancels, sometimes also by rows of columns andcurtains. 126 ABCHITECTUBE The altars of prothesis were obviously a necessary part ofthe furniture of the church so long as the offerings of thepeople were largely made in kind; a mere reminiscence of themis preserved in the credence upon which the Eucharistic ele-ments are placed before they are carried to the altar. Itappears that one table of prothesis often sufficed; but theseparation of the sexes to the one side and the other of thechurch must as a rule have required one table at the end ofeach aisle, or, in case there was a transept, in each of its wings.The Liber Pontijicalis records the gift by Constantine to theLateran of seven altars of purest silver weighing two hundredpounds each. This has been relied upon as a proof of the plu-rality of altars in that early age of the Church ; but these silveraltars were

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