Observe, I am not saying how far this feeling, be it faith, or be it imagination, is true or false;—I only desire you to note that the power of all Christian work begins in the niche of the catacomb and depth of the sarcophagus, and is to the end definable as architecture of the tomb.
30. Not altogether, and under every condition, sanctioned in doing such honour to the dead by the Master of it. Not every grave is by His command to be worshipped. Graves there may be—too little guarded, yet dishonourable;—"ye are as graves that appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them." And graves too much guarded, yet dishonourable, "which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but are within full of all uncleanness." Or graves, themselves honourable, yet which it may be, in us, a crime to adorn. "For they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchres."
Questions, these, collateral; or to be examined in due time; for the present it is enough for us to know that all Christian architecture, as such, has been hitherto essentially of tombs.
It has been thought, gentlemen, that there is a fine Gothic revival in your streets of Oxford, because you have a Gothic door to your County Bank:
Remember, at all events, it was other kind of buried treasure, and bearing other interest, which Niccola Pisano's Gothic was set to guard.
LECTURE II. JOHN THE PISAN.
31. I closed my last lecture with the statement, on which I desired to give you time for reflection, that Christian architecture was, in its chief energy, the adornment of tombs,—having the passionate function of doing honour to the dead.
But there is an ethic, or simply didactic and instructive architecture, the decoration of which you will find to be normally representative of the virtues which are common alike to Christian and Greek. And there is a natural tendency to adopt such decoration, and the modes of design fitted for it, in civil buildings. {1}