When the periods of persecution of the early Christians had come to an end, and they were able in security to assemble for worship, two distinct types of Church contested for the supremacy—the Basilican and the Catacumbal.
Even during the times before Constantine, when persecution was in abeyance, Christians had been accustomed to gather together for the Divine mysteries in private houses. But after that Christianity was recognised and favoured, the wealthy and noble citizens of Rome, Italy, and Africa, who had become Christians, made over their stately reception halls, or basilicas, to be converted into churches. These basilicas, attached to most palaces, were halls comprising usually a nave with side aisles separated from the nave by ranges of columns, and an apse at the extremity of the nave in which the master of the house was wont to sit to receive his clients and his guests. This is the type upon which cathedral and parish churches in east and west are modelled. But the early Christians had become accustomed in times of danger to resort to the subterranean chapels in the Catacombs. The poorer members doubtless preferred these dingy meeting-places to the lordly halls of the nobles, and the slaves could not feel their equality with their masters under the same roof where they had served, and been whipped, as in the Catacombs, where all were one in fear of their lives and in the darkness that, buried distinction. Moreover, the cult of the martyrs had grown to a passion, and it had become customary to commemorate their nativities as it was called, i.e. the anniversaries of their deaths, at their tombs in the Catacombs. It was there that the faithful habitually prayed, it was near the bones of the Saints that it was believed special sanctity dwelt, and that prayers were most effectually answered through their intercession; and it was there, ad martyres, that they themselves purposed to be laid in expectation of the Resurrection.
In Rome, the tombs of the martyrs continued to enjoy popular favour, and to attract crowds, till the incursion of the Lombards, when, to save the relics of the Saints from profanation, they were transferred to the basilicas within the walls, whereupon the Catacombs ceased to interest the faithful, that were neglected and allowed to fall into oblivion. Gaul rejoiced in having had its soil watered with the blood of many witnesses to the Faith, consequently it had numerous hypogee chapels, and when, to the Martyrs were added hermits, abbots, bishops, devout women, and confessors of all descriptions, their underground tombs became extraordinarily numerous, and were resorted to with great devotion. Such was the origin of the crypts found in profusion in France, not under cathedrals only, but under parish and monastic churches as well. The whole population having become Christian, the resort to these subterranean chapels became so great as to cause inconvenience, and the bishops proceeded to "elevate" "illate" and "translate" the bones of the saints from their original resting-places to the basilicas above ground. Thereupon the crypts lost most of their attraction, and the worshippers gathered about the altars in the upper churches to which the bones had been transferred.
In Britain, where there were no early martyrs save Alban at Verulam, and Julius and Aaron at Caerleon, the type of church from the beginning was basilican, as we may see by that unearthed at Silchester, and that of S. Martin at Canterbury.
It was the same in Germany and throughout Northern Europe.
John and Paul were chamberlains to the Princess Constantia. They had in some way incurred the anger of the Emperor Julian, and he sent orders for their despatch in their own house on the Coelian hill. They were accordingly executed in their bath, and were buried in the cellar under their mansion. At once a rush of the devout of Rome took place to the Coelian to invoke the aid of these new martyrs. The visitors picked off the plaster, scribbled their names on the walls, applied kerchiefs to the tomb, and collected the dust, stained with the blood of the chamberlains. Pope Hadrian IV., 1158, built a basilica on top of the house, driving the foundations through it, and transferred to this upper church the bones of SS. John and Paul. At once the stream of devotion was deflected from the substructure to the superstructure, and the former was filled up with earth and totally abandoned.
Herbert Spencer has established in his "Principles of Sociology" that the mausoleum was the egg out of which the temple was evolved. The first cave-dwellers buried their dead in the grottoes in which they had lived, and themselves moved into others. They periodically revisited the sepulchres to bring offerings to the dead. In time the deceased ancestor became invested by the imagination of his descendants with supernatural powers, and ascended from stage to stage till he was exalted into a deity. Thenceforth his cave became a temple. Ferguson, writing of the Chaldæan temples, and indicating their resemblance to tombs says, "The most celebrated example of this form is as often called (by ancient writers) the tomb or the temple of Belus, and among a Turanian people the tomb and the temple may be considered as one and the same thing." [Footnote: Clement of Alexandria (Exhort. to the Heathen) had already said, "Temples were originally Tombs." Cf. also Eusebius (Præp. Evangelica ii. 6) heads the chapter, "The Temples of the Gods that are none other than Tombs.">[
In the primitive Church there were, as we have seen, churches which had no connection whatever with sepulchres, and chapels underground that contained tombs. The current of popular feeling set so strongly towards the latter that the Popes yielded to it, as did also the Bishops, and converted every basilica into a mausoleum by the transfer to it of the bones of a saint.
But that was not all. The Holy Mysteries had been celebrated in private houses and basilicas on wooden tables, sometimes square, but often round, and with three legs. An illustration is in the cemetery of S. Calixtus, of the latter half of the second century, where a priest is represented celebrating at what looks like a modern tea-table. According to William of Malmesbury, S. Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester (1062-1095), destroyed the wooden altars in his diocese, which had been universal in England, altarea lignea jam inde a priscis diebus in Anglia. But with the transformation of the basilica into a mausoleum, the altar was also transformed into a sepulchre. If it did not contain the entire body of a saint, it had a hole cut in it to receive a box containing relics; and the Roman pontifical and liturgy were altered in accordance with this. The Bishop on consecrating an altar was to exact that it should contain relics, and the priest on approaching it was required to invoke the saints whose bones were stored in it. [Footnote: Pontifex accepta mitra, intigit policem dextræ manus in sanctum Chrisma et cum eo signat confessionem, id est sepulchrum altaris, in quo reliquiæ deponendæ. Pont. Roman. The priest on ascending to the altar kisses it, and refers to the relics contained in it. "Oramus te, Domine, per merita sanctorum tuorum quorum reliquiæ hic sunt—ut indulgere digneris omnia peccata mea.">[ The cavity in the slab to contain the relics was liturgically entitled sepulchrum. The change from a table to a tomb involved a change of material from wood to stone.
The dedication of a church to a saint in the Latin Church implies the presence in the sepulchre of the altar of the relics of that saint. From the Roman point of view, a dedication without the relic is unmeaning. Among the Celts this was unknown, with them a church took its name after its founder, and the founder of a church dedicated it by a partial fast of forty days, and prayer and vigil on the spot. The early basilicas of Rome also took their titles from the families that surrendered their halls for Christian worship. The introduction of dedication to deceased saints marks unmistakably the transformation of a church from a basilica to a mausoleum.