Centralized Church Design Although Buildings

Centralized Church Design

Although buildings that manifest a 'typical' church design are easy to spot from a distance, this style was not always embraced as the ideal way of designing a house of God. For example, one of the earliest churches of the new faith of the Holy Roman Empire was that of the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus in Constantinople, dedicated to two Roman soldiers who were tortured to death in 303. "Many churches in this age were very innovative and experimental; the architects were still looking for new forms. Eventually, the Hagia Sophia (The Church of Divine Wisdom) was to manifest a different" and what became a more common design. Although the Hagia Sophia did adopt some elements of the Sergius and Bacchus Church, such as the earlier work's eight-fold design, consisting of eight flat and eight concave sections, all resting on eight piers (Lendering 2008).

The Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus actually consist of two very similar churches standing at an angle to one another, joined together: "In just one respect…they do differ. For the long axis of one of them is built straight, while in the other church the columns stand for the most part in a semi-circle. But whereas they possess a single colonnaded stoa, called a narthex because of its great length, for each one of their porches, they have their propylaea entirely in common, and they share a single court, and the same doors leading in from the court, and they are alike in that they belong to the Palace" (Lendering 2008)..

Another idiosyncratic style in the history of the early church design is that of Santo Stefano Rotondo in Rome: "the round design of Santo Stefano Rotondo is very different from that of a traditional western church" ("Santo Stefano Rotondo, Rome," Sacred Destinations, 2009). The original plan of the church was even more eccentric, consisting of three concentric circles, intersected by the four arms of a Greek cross. "The arms divided the outer ring into eight sections: four chapels plus four covered areas used as an entrance to the church and passageway to the chapels. The two inner rings were (and still are), made of arcaded colonnades forming a circular aisle and central nave. ..The present entrance to the church is through an original doorway that leads into the one remaining arm of the Greek cross plan" ("Santo Stefano Rotondo, Rome," Sacred Destinations, 2009).

The centralized church, "of circular or polygonal plan, with one large central space, usually with a dome overhead" became more popular in the Middle Ages. First came Romanesque and then Gothic churches, in the form of works such as Notre Dame and the Royal Abbey of Saint Denis ("Church," Encarta, 2009). The new church designs housed a congregation within their center halls and contained high, arching ceilings that seemed to reach upwards to God. They were "roofed with arching sheets of stone, the Romanesque with arches and vaults of semicircular form, the Gothic with pointed elements" ("Church," Encarta, 2009).