Indeed, textual sources confirm that such a visual connection was understood as desirable and could even form an explicit goal of the architectural program. The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus and the writings of Paulinus of Nola articulate something of the aims and effects of employing such visual and architectural strategies. At the complex housing St. Euphemia’s memorial at Chalcedon described by Evagrius in the late sixth century and that built up by Paulinus around the shrine of St. Felix at Cimitile in the early fifth century, the saint’s tomb lay within a structure distinct from the main basilican hall. Yet, both Evagrius and Paulinus expressly emphasized the way in which the architectural arrangements granted the visitor visual access between the two cultic focal points.
Situated directly across the Bosphoros from Constantinople, St. Euphemia’s martyrium was visited by the pilgrim Egeria in the late fourth century, and the church that stood there in 451 served as the splendid venue for the Council of Chalcedon. Although the location of the church remains unknown, based on the description in Evagrius’s history, the martyrium that housed the silver casket containing the saint’s remains was one of three principal structures of the ecclesiastical complex, together with an open porticoed courtyard and a covered basilica.37 The martyrium was apparently circular in plan, two stories high, and ringed with interior columns. It attached to the end of one of the basilica’s aisles and communicated with the side aisle at ground level as well as from an upper story gallery.38 As part of his admiring ekph-rasis, the author explained one function of the rotunda’s upper level: “so that from there it is possible, for those who wish, both to supplicate the martyr and to be present at the services.”39 Evagrius thus explicitly praised the spatial configuration between Euphemia’s martyrium and basilica for allowing visitors to witness the eucharistic celebration and to venerate the martyr’s remains simultaneously. The arrangement, in other words, allowed a visual connection between the different spaces and thereby facilitated a kind of ritual multitasking.
An analogous separation between cult center and liturgical focus is preserved in an important, early pilgrimage center in the heart of Italian Campania. Cimitile, the northern cemetery zone of Nola and home to the tomb of St. Felix, monumentalized its patron saint’s relics at the heart of the complex, but distinct from the liturgical center of the altar. Here we are fortunate to possess both literary and archaeological testimony regarding the physical and symbolic organization of sacred space. Indeed, the surviving textual attention the site received during Paulinus’s time at Nola (395-431), first as monk and priest, later as bishop, is unique in the early Christian world.40
By the time Paulinus’s tenure at Nola began, Felix’s late-third-century tomb had been enclosed within an early fourth-century singleaisled structure, the so-called Aula Apsidata, which had a triple-arcade entrance on the south and an apse on the north (Fig. 9.8).41 Sometime probably in the third quarter of the fourth century, a small three-aisled church with an eastern apse was built to the east of the Aula. This structure, dubbed the Basilica Vetus (to distinguish it from Paulinus’s later Basilica Nova or “New Basilica”), was certainly integrated with the Aula, but many details of its architectural arrangement remain unclear due to the still-extant parochial church of Cimitile constructed on the site in the late eighteenth century. The altar of the Basilica Vetus would have been situated, as usual, at the east end of the structure before the apse.42 Therefore, the altar was certainly, at the minimum, separated from the site of Felix’s tomb in the Aula by that structure’s still functioning east wall.43 It appears, therefore, that the earliest monumental cult structures at Cimitile were neither directly centered on the saint’s grave nor joined his tomb to a liturgical altar. Here the saint’s memorial was, within the context of the larger ecclesiastical and pilgrimage complex, linked to the liturgical space within the basilica proper by the trajectory of the visitor’s path.
For his part, Paulinus was very clear that the altar at the heart of the monumental Basilica Nova he built at the beginning of the fifth century was not physically assimilated to St. Felix’s tomb (Fig. 9.9). In fact, with Paulinus’s expansion of the complex, the saint’s memoria and the
9.8. Cimitile, Italy, plan of Christian complex, third quarter of the fourth century; Grave of St. Felix is labeled "F.” John Marston, after T. Lehmann, Paulinus Nolanus und die Basilica Nova in Cimitile/Nola, Wiesbaden 2004, fig. 26.
New liturgical altar of the Basilica Nova were distanced by more than the entire length of that church’s nave. Excavations of the Basilica Nova have revealed its plan to be a three-aisled structure extending north from the area around Felix’s tomb.44 The church’s main altar stood within a
9.9. Cimitile, Italy, plan of Christian complex, early fifth century (including Paulinus’s constructions); Grave of St. Felix is labeled "F.” John Marston, after T. Lehmann, Paulinus Nolanus und die Basilica Nova in Cimitile/Nola, Wiesbaden 2004, fig. 27.
Trefoil choir area at the northern end of the basilica, that is, at the opposite end from the direction of the saint’s grave located across a narrow courtyard in the renovated Basilica Vetus to the south.
Although scholarship on Paulinus’s inventions at Cimitile have focused primarily on his promotion of Felix’s cult, it is clear from his material and literary attention to the relics under the altar of the Basilica Nova that the saint’s tomb was not the sole repository of sanctity at the site. On the contrary, Paulinus’s description of the complex at Cimitile explicitly emphasized that it possessed two sacred focal points. Writing in a letter to Sulpicius Severus, another church-building cleric, Paulinus stressed the pair of holy sites: “The basilica, therefore. . . is venerable not only on account of the honor of blessed Felix, but also by virtue of the consecrated relics of apostles and martyrs under the altar within the trilobed (trichord) apse.”45 Felix’s tomb and the liturgical altar of the Basilica Nova with its own deposit of relics provided Cimitile with a doubly rich sacred pedigree.
This duality, however, while here cast as a strength, could also be a potential source of discordance, and Paulinus repeatedly sought to counter this perception by underscoring the coherence and harmony of the complex as a whole. One mechanism he used to achieve this was the crafting of a visual dialogue between sacred focal points. The texts Paulinus left us reveal the significant lengths he went to publicize the visual line he created between St. Felix’s grave and the altar of his new church. He writes, for example, of the renovations he carried out at the site which included the demolition of the apsidal wall of the old Aula building: “For because the wall obstructed by the interfering apse of a certain monument would have cut off the new church from the old one, it was opened from the confessor’s side. . . and thus this wall gives a view. . . to those gazing from one church into the other. . .”46 Paulinus thus replaced what had been a solid barrier between Felix’s tomb and the new basilica (cf. Fig. 9.8) with a set of permeable triple-arched passage-ways, the southern one of which can still be seen at the site (Figs. 9.9 and 9.10).47
Paulinus further emphasized the linking of the two sacred centers and the creation of a line of sight between them by monumental inscriptions that adorned the arches of the passageway between the two structures.48 For example, he drew attention to the visitor’s transition
9.10. Cimitile, Italy, Basilica Nov i view south along nave toward triple-arched entrance to the Basilica Vetus (left/east opening walled in). Photo Ann Marie Yasin.
From one space to another by positioning on one of the arches of the triple arcade he built between the Basilicas Vetus and Nova an inscription that addressed readers directly (labeled “N” on the plan, Fig. 9.9): “Leave the old hall of St. Felix, (and) cross to Felix’s new structure.”49 While this inscription underscored the spatial shift as viewers moved from “old” to “new” buildings, to those passing through in the opposite direction, from the Basilica Nova to the old basilica, the central opening (indicated “J” on Fig. 9.9) spoke in overtly flattering terms of eliminating barriers and creating union: “Just as Jesus, our peace, opened the middle of the wall and, extinguishing (our) discord through the cross, has made two into one, so we see that, since the division of the old building has been destroyed, the new roofs are united by the marriage of (their) entrances. . .”50 Similarly, he drove the message home with additional inscriptions placed on the side arches of the arcade between the Basilica Nova and Felix’s old basilica. One (at position “K” on Fig. 9.9) read, “A new light is revealed to astonished eyes, and standing on a single threshold one beholds simultaneously the twin halls,” and the other (at “L”) read, “Three times the twin halls are opened by twin arches, and they admire their own decoration from mutual thresholds.”51 Paulinus thus crafted the martyrium complex so that it overtly and repeatedly encouraged visitors to take notice of the sight-line afforded between the old and new structures. The building complex was highly self-conscious, indeed proud, of its double centers. It celebrated the duality of its sacred focal points as well as the wonderment engendered by the experience of beholding both simultaneously.
At the same time, while forging a link between physically distinct memorials and altars, the architectural arrangement at this and other sites nevertheless can also be seen to have asserted a relative hierarchy between the two types of sacred loci. At Cimitile, the elevated sanctuary and wide, triple-lobed apse of the spacious Basilica Nova highlighted the liturgical altar’s prominence as a ritual focal point (Fig. 9.9). Similarly, the longitudinal basilican plans of St. Demetrios’s church in Thessaloniki, of St. Thecla’s upper church at Meryemlik, and of the huge basilica at Tebessa pointed directly to the altar in each case (Figs. 9.1, 9.5, and 9.6). Likewise, at Qal‘at Sem‘an, while the cruciform plan of the complex does indeed focus attention on the column at its center, the structure is also overwhelmingly linear and hierarchical as one approaches the liturgical altar (Fig. 9.2). The stylite’s column, in other words, was not the center of the complex, but a center. It dominated the space - and the visitor’s experience - immediately before the entrance to the east wing. But the east wing itself, which is in effect a semi-independent basilica structure, and specifically the altar situated before its apse, was the primary center, the culmination of both the architectural program and the liturgical drama.52 Distinct eucharistic and saintly focal points housed within a common complex, even when they were visually connected, were not necessarily on par.
World History
