In an extremely interesting monograph “On the origin of the cruciform plan of the mediæval Cathedral,” by the distinguished architect, Mr. E. M. Wheelwright, published in the “Transactions of the Boston Society of Architects, 1891,” I find the significant fact that what is now the little church of S. Tiburce, Rome, in the form of a Greek cross, was built at the time of Constantine.
The same monograph teaches that “de Rossi discovered in the catacombs of Rome two scholia of a plan called specifically triclinium, of a date previous to Diocletian and probably of the third century. In such were celebrated, by the presbyters, the memorial feasts of martyrs, the congregation assembling outside. Tombs of a positive cruciform plan are also found in the catacombs. In [pg 515] the fifth or sixth century cruciform buildings became in the East, and wherever Byzantine influence was potent, the recognized form for tombs, mortuary chapels and buildings commemorative of holy places. These types seem to have been given, by Byzantine architects, special recognition of the purpose of their construction and to have appeared to them as monuments requiring a symbolical expression of plan, while they evidently did not consider such symbolical expressions requisite in buildings planned for general congregations, which, although of types without distinct association with the Christian faith, were held, for several centuries, to be sufficiently well adapted to purposes of Christian worship without material change from their ancient form [that of the Roman Basilica].”
Referring the reader to Mr. Wheelwright's monograph for interesting data concerning the Byzantine influence discernible in the early types of Christian churches of cruciform plan erected in northern Italy and Europe, I merely note here that in St. Sophia, founded by Constantine, and completed by Justinian, “the load of the dome is thrown on four great piers disposed at either corner of a square. These great piers, with the corresponding buttresses of the outer wall, suggest a possible symbolical intent in the arrangement ... otherwise the cruciform plan here suggested is expressed neither externally nor internally.” I venture to suggest that in St. Sophia, “Holy Eternal Wisdom,” as in the case of the Pantheon, the dominant idea may have been the all-embracing unity, but that, as the number four was identified with “wisdom and justice” by the widespread Pythagorean philosophy, that number must have seemed, to the initiated, to pervade the entire structure. In the case of the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem, where it was Justinian's intention to mark a sacred locality, we find the cruciform plan clearly carried out. “The church of St. Simeon Stylite at Kelat Seman Syria, built about A.D. 500, is a most interesting example of a cruciform church, marking a sacred spot [and associated with a sacred column].”
“The church of the seventh century built at Sichem, over the well of the Samaritan, shows a distribution of plan similar to that of S. Simeon Stylite, the holy object being at the crossing.... There are existing at St. Wandrille and at Querqueville in Normandy, two (cruciform) triapsidal churches of a date prior [pg 516] to the Norman conquest ... a well preserved four-apsed tomb chapel exists at Montmajour near Arles, built in 1019; the detail and plan of which point to a Syrian prototype and resembles two buildings of an early date now existing in Dalmatia.” The use of the cruciform type of church, anterior to the great revival of purely Christian religious architecture in the thirteenth century, was confined to Picardy and the Rhenish provinces, fine churches of this type being at Cologne, Bonn, Marburg, etc.
It is interesting to recall that the building of sacred structures is attributed to “secret organizations of free or enfranchised operative masons which existed during the middle ages, and possessed grades of officers and secret signs by which, on coming to a strange place, they could be recognized as real craftsmen and not impostors.” To this day, in some parts of Germany and Bohemia, the swastika is the sign or mark of the stone-mason's guild which has survived from the mediæval times. In the organized bands of masons whose mark was the swastika and who introduced Eastern cosmical symbolism into Europe and gradually developed, upon this basis, a purely Christian form of architecture, we may perhaps see the descendants of those ancient builders who, filled with the conception of the sacred Central power, the Four Quarters, the Above and Below, planned the square, seven-stoned zikkurats of Babylonia-Assyria, the pyramids, obelisks and sphinxes of Egypt, the columns and cruciform tombs and sanctuaries of Greece, Asia Minor and Rome, the cruciform temples and the topes of India and the domes of the Pantheon and St. Sophia.[152]
It would appear that these ancient builders were also the designers and founders of cities and states. It is, for instance, known that Hippodamus, the son of Euryphon, a Milesian, and by profession an architect, gained celebrity in his own art by constructing the Piræus at Athens and by improving the method of distributing [pg 517] streets and planning cities ... and also wrote a treatise concerning the best form of government.
A kinship of thought undoubtedly exists between the trained builders of cosmical structures in the Old World and the ah-men, the amantecas and toltecas of Central America and Mexico, who also reared pyramids, cruciform vaults, circular temples, with openings to the four quarters (see fig. [30], p. 97), altars and pillars, and in their temples wrought, in stone, endless variations of the great human theme: the sacred central, stable power, the four quarters and elements, and the heaven and earth with the dualities of Nature, and likewise instituted an artificial scheme of social organization, a calendar and religious rites based on these same fundamental principles, which can be traced back to primitive pole-star worship. It has been of utmost interest to me, as I was approaching the end of the present investigation, to become acquainted with Hewitt's work and his view that it was the seafaring Turanians, originally a northern race, the worshippers of Tur=the pole, who claimed descent from the seven stars of Nāgash, the serpent=Ursa Major, and, from India, extended their trade and carried their form of social organization and religious cult first to the Euphratean kingdoms and afterwards to Egypt and Syria, where they were known by the Greeks as the Phœnicians.
The subjoined detached passages, which open out new fields of inquiry, not only appear to me to establish conclusively this view, but certainly afford most interesting information concerning the ancient race of pole-star worshippers, seafarers, builders and handicraftsmen who, according to Hewitt (p. 25), extended their emigrations not only to Europe but also to America.[153] Hewitt bases [pg 518] the latter assertion upon the identity be perceived “between Akkadian and American mythological traditions.”
As the limit of the present inquiry excludes mythology, I cannot discuss here the evidences of similarity produced by Hewitt. I must express regret, however, that he designates a tribe of Pueblo Indians (the Sias, related to the Zuñis), as “Mexican” (see vol. ii, p. 243, etc.), a term which, in this case, is decidedly misleading. His identification of the truly Mexican, “teo-cipactli” as a “fish-god” is unfortunate, as numberless conventionalized drawings in the Codices prove that cipactli signifies alligator. If the somewhat limited and vague evidence, produced by Mr. Hewitt, appeared to justify his conclusion, how much more must an identity of social organization and cult such as I have traced, not only authorize but also render it imperative, that the possibility of pre-Columbian contact should be thoroughly looked into. Disclaiming any desire to formulate hasty conclusions, and merely for the sake [pg 519] of gaining information by looking squarely at facts, I shall now rapidly enumerate some of these which undoubtedly appear to corroborate Hewitt's further assertion that “the Mayas and Nahuas of Yucatan and Mexico were emigrants of the Magha and Nahusha tribes, who pertained to the race of navigators known by the Greeks as the Phœnicians ... and who continued in their new land, America, the worship of the rain god, to whom, as their fathers in central Asia, they dedicated the sign of the cross” (Hewitt, p. 492).
“The Maghas were the Finnic long-haired race of star- and fire-worshippers who, starting from Phrygia, as the Takkas conquered northern India ... who called themselves the sons of the Northern pine tree, called in Phrygia, as by the Northern Finns, Ma=the mother; also the sons of the mother-goddess Magha, the socket block whence fire was generated by the fire-drill; who is also worshipped as the mother Maga under the form of the alligator. Consequently the alligator was their totem.” In Essay viii [pg 520] Hewitt states that these “sons of the great witch-mother Maga” lived in Magnesia, whence they emigrated to Thessaly and that theirs was the “city of the Magnetes” referred to by Plato as “the mother of laws.” The word mag, however, meant great in Akkadian, hence according to Hewitt the name Makkhu, the high priests or Magi (vol. ii, p. 54).