BASILICA

The halls of justice and of other public busine among the Romans were thus called; and many of them, when converted into Christian churches, retained the same name. The general ground-plan of the basilica was also frequently retained in the erection of a church. The basilicas terminated with a conchoidal rece , or apsis, (see Apse ,) where the prætor and magistrates sat: beneath this was a transverse hall or gallery, the origin of the transept, and below was the great hall with its side pa ages, afterwards called the nave and aisles. The bishop of Rome had seven cathedrals called Basilicæ. Six of these were erected or converted into churches by Const an tine, viz. St. John Later an, (the regular cathedral of Rome,) the ancient church of St. Peter, on the Vatican Hill, St. Sebastian, St. Laurence, the Holy Cro , St. Mary the Greater; and one by Theodosius, viz. St. Paul. There are other very ancient churches in Rome, basilicas in form and name, but not cathedrals; for example, St. Clement’s church, supposed to have been originally the house of the apostolical bishop of that name, and the most ancient existing church in the world. Several Italian churches are called Basilicas; at Milan especially; often more than one in a city. (See Cathedrals .)— Jebb. It is sometimes said, but without any certain foundation, that some of the churches in England with circular apsidal terminations of the chancel, (such as Kilpeck and Steetly,) were originally Roman basilicas. They rather derive their form from the Oriental country churches, which are uniformly apsidal. The most that can be said of them is, that they do, in some respects, resemble the basilicas in arrangement. But as to the cathedrals of England, the case is different: and since old Saxon or Norman churches were unquestionably debasements of the Roman style in their architectural features, it is po ible that they derived from Rome the characteristics uniformly observed in the old basilicas. The conversion of the apses into sepulchral chapels for shrines, as at Westminster and Canterbury, as superstition increased, destroyed the ancient arrangements.— Jebb.