Military and religious life in the Middle Ages and at the period of the Renaissance

by P. L. Jacob

The dogmas of Christianity would have been a dead letter for most of the neophytes, unless they had been accompanied by a rigorous and constant discipline. The Church foresaw this, and showed its sternness, though at the same time it held out indulgences to the penitent. It established a kind of scale of punishments, whose severity were proportionate to the gravity of the crimes committed. The privilege of oblation was taken from the lesser culprits—that is to say, they were neither allowed to place offerings on the altars nor to receive the eucharist; the more hardened and rebellious sinners were excluded from the communion of the faithful, and were not permitted to take part in public worship; those who had been guilty of actual crime, or who had shown themselves to be incorrigible, were expelled from the sanctuary, and their names were expunged from the list of Christians.

These more rigorous measures, however, might be modified according to the repentance of the offender or at the discretion of the bishop, the sole and sovereign judge in all such matters. Canonical penance was usually only inflicted for great public crimes, such as idolatry, adultery, and homicide; and, moreover, certain classes of individuals—children, young girls, married women, old men, priests, clerks, and monarchs—were only subject to it under the most careful restrictions; while in every case it was necessary to give legal and accurate proof of the alleged offence. When the period of canonical penance was over, if the criminal showed signs of repentance, the bishop, or even an ordinary priest in case of absolute necessity, was empowered to reconcile him with the Church.

As public worship in the early Church was slow to exhibit itself as a settled institution, so the more solemn and the more imposing it became from the moment that it took its lofty position under the protectorate of Constantine the Great. Then suddenly sprung up a number of Christian places of worship and imposing churches, amongst which we may mention the basilica of Tyre, restored and inaugurated in 315; that of St. John of Lateran, constructed in Rome in 324, with the remains of the temples once raised to the false gods of paganism; and other sanctuaries in the same city, which were consecrated by the Pope St. Damasius. The rites used at the consecrations of the early churches are unknown to us, but each inauguration had its solemn anniversary.

The position, the form, and the arrangement of the early churches were not left to the whims of their founders and architects, even when these churches were small and hidden for the most part in the catacombs, in forests, and in deserts. In the second book of the “Constitutions” of Pope Clement (chaps. 55 and 61), we read the following directions: “Let the church be of a long shape, like a ship, and facing the east.” Here, therefore, in the first century of the church, is an authentic proof of the orientation of the early Christian sacred edifices.

The method of construction of the primitive churches, however, according to the liturgical regulations of the period, is still an obscure question, and one surrounded with uncertainty. It has been surmised, with much probability, that the subterranean chapels of the catacombs of Rome were the models of the first churches; and such is the opinion of the most learned archæologists. It was from the very depths of these sepulchral caverns that Christian art, bursting forth into open day after the long series of persecutions, built its crypts and its churches after the types of its hidden shrines, at first in the transmural cemeteries, and afterwards, towards the end of the third century, in the midst of the Christianized populations and in the very centre of their cities. In 303, the date of the decree of Diocletian closing the Christian places of worship, there were already forty churches and chapels in Rome. The shape of these primitive sanctuaries is not well known; they were probably in general of one uniform pattern, specially adapted to the liturgical ceremonies of the day, though considerations of safety, the capabilities of the site, and other imperious necessities, no doubt frequently obliged their architects to depart from precedent and to vary the character of their construction. It was not until the reign of Constantine that Christian edifices began to assume the attributes of size, magnificence, and majestic boldness of outline. It was then that the emperor erected basilicas in the interior of his Lateran and Vatican palaces for the first time, and consecrated to the worship of the true God those immense edifices in which art was the humble handmaid of religion and bathed itself in the ineffable splendours of the faith.

The crypts or chambers (cubicula) of the Catacombs were reproduced in the full light of day in the early churches; they were of a quadrilateral shape, with three arched naves, and three vaulted recesses (arcosolia) which served at once as tombs for the holy confessors and shrines for the celebration of the eucharist. These sanctuaries were generally of greater length than breadth, after the analogy of the ship or vessel (navis), this mysterious symbolism finding favour with the early Christians.

Fig. 179.—Church of St. Antony, Padua, completed in 1307; the seven cupolas were added in the Fifteenth Century. The bronze equestrian statue which stands in front of the church was executed in 1453 by Donatello, and represents the famous captain, Gattemalata.

Fig. 180.—Foot of a large Choir Candelabrum in gilt bronze, with seven branches, nineteen feet high, and known as the “Tree of the Virgin,” because one of its ornaments represents the Infant Jesus adored by the Magi, in the arms of the Virgin.—Work of the Thirteenth Century, in Milan Cathedral.