Many late antique churches are still standing, allowing us to analyze their architecture and not just to construct the chronology of their foundation trenches, as is so often the case with other buildings demolished or abandoned centuries ago. The analysis of standing buildings is, however, problematic. It is particularly unacceptable to study a surviving late antique church as we find it today, with all its reconstructions and modern restorations, as if it is a work of art endowed with symbolic meaning. That kind of analysis, treating the building like sculpture, jumps over several fundamental steps.
We have to begin in a strictly formal way. We must first reconstruct the shape of a building at an identifiable moment in its life (which will often be its original phase). This step is carried out by applying the stratigraphic method I have already described. Then, we have to ask what kind of action that shape implies: one or many persons standing, sitting, or moving around? The use of water? Identifying such actions is possible, because although the form and decoration of buildings varied, late Roman architects used standardized techniques that were suited to the actions performed in or around those buildings. That standardized repertory of classical architecture might have depended exactly on the fact that the building was not considered a work of art in its own right, but rather a backdrop for human figures, either real or in the form of statues or mosaics. Only then can we take the third step, interpretation: what meaning did the ancient people themselves attribute to the actions performed in the building?
This emphasis on backdrop and action is particularly helpful when discussing octagonal baptisteries, which are plentiful from the fourth century onward, probably spreading from Rome to Milan, southern Gaul, and Asia Minor. The octagonal structure, the most monumental form of the baptistery, has been subjected to a great deal of symbolic interpretation. It is true that the church Fathers saw a symbolism in the number eight (Quacquarelli 1973). Similarities with both mausolea and baths have been seized upon as referring to the symbolic ‘‘death’’ that baptism evoked and to ritual purification (Styger 1933; Krautheimer 1993: 124-50), and it is true that Christian writers in earlier periods did apply that kind of interpretation to standing buildings. The connections were made and appealed to, however, a posteriori, and need not reflect the reasons for the choice of octagonal form in the first place, although they could have influenced the repetition and diffusion of the form, once it had been created. Octagonal halls, similar if not identical to those used as Christian baptisteries, were common in imperial Roman architecture, especially in the early fourth century (Brandt 2001, with bibliography). Many of them are found in baths, far beyond any Christian religious context. There is one in the mausoleum of Diocletian’s palace in Split - the palace of the great persecutor. Such a hall, obviously, did not reflect any Christian symbolism: rather, it solved a practical problem - namely, how to focus the attention of those present on one particular spot, while permitting movement around it. Octagonal baptisteries were focused, therefore, on the pool in which ritual initiation took place. In contrast, the oblong shape of the standard Christian basilica was designed to accommodate the important processions and other movements that took place along the nave (Mathews 1962).
Ancient Christian texts may help us understand what was going on in the heads of late antique Christians, but they do not always disclose the motives behind architectural choices. Ambrose, in an inscription, provided a symbolic interpretation of the baptistery in Milan; but that inscription does not explain satisfactorily why the building looks something like a bath, something like a dining room, something like a vestibule, and something like a mausoleum, all at the same time. The sixth-century Liber Pontificalis, which provides detailed information about church foundations in Rome from the fourth to the sixth centuries, gives the numbers of columns and details of other decorations in precious materials, but says little about architectural forms. Baptisteries were the object of much investment and architectural refinement, and were a propaganda showcase for bishops and for the triumphant Church (Guyon 2000: 59; Wataghin Cantino et al. 2001: 243). The same is true of Eusebius’ description of the Christian basilica in Tyre (Hist. eccl. 10.4). He stresses the precious nature of the decoration and provides a symbolic interpretation of the building, but tells us very little about the reasons behind the choice of form. He presents his account rather as a proof of Christian triumph under imperial patronage. Constantine, who paid for the erection of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, ordered the use of precious materials and columns, but again, in his instructions to bishop Makarios and the bishop’s architect Zenobios, had little to say about the building’s shape (Euseb. V. Const. 3. 31, analyzed in Liverani 2003). Indeed, there is no text that explains how a discussion between a bishop and his architect might really determine the shape of a building. Also Procopius’ famous description of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (Aed. 1. 1. 61-3) is an attempt to link the form of a building with its effect, not to explain the choices behind it.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
For modern archaeological method, see E. C. Harris 1989; Harris et al. 1993; and Carandini 1981. The relationship between modern archaeology and history has been discussed in Sauer 2004. For the history of Christian archaeology, see Frend 1996. Fundamental references for
This field are the old but incredibly rich Dictionnaire d’archeologie chretienne et de liturgie, the publications of the Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana in Rome, like the Rivista di archeologia cristiana and the proceedings of the International Congresses of Christian Archaeology, and the publications of the Franz Joseph Dolger-Institut zur Erforschung der Spatantike in Bonn, like the Reallexikon fur Antike und Christentum and the Jahrbuch fur Antike und Christentum. The renewed interest in a general archaeological study of Late Antiquity has found expression in journals like Antiquite Tardive and at recent conferences on late antique archaeology (see Lavan 2001).
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