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ready observed the role of the public cults in defining one's civic identity,
and Emperors understood the construction of temples as testament to their
pietas, or respect for the customary religious practices and traditions. So it
was natural for Constantine to want to construct edifices in honor of Chris-

tianity. He built churches in Rome including the Church of St. Peter, he
built churches in the Holy Land, most notably the Church of the Nativity
in Bethlehem and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, and he

built churches in his newly-constructed capital of Constantinople.

The Basilica
In creating these churches, Constantine and his architects confronted a

major challenge: what should be the physical form of the church? Clearly
the traditional form of the Roman temple would be inappropriate both
from associations with pagan cults but also from the difference in function.

Temples served as treasuries and dwellings for the cult; sacrifices occurred
on outdoor altars with the temple as a backdrop. This meant that Roman
temple architecture was largely architecture of the exterior. Since Christi-

anity was a mystery religion that demanded initiation to participate in reli-
gious practices, Christian architecture put greater emphasis on the interior.
The Christian churches needed large interior spaces to house the growing

congregations and to mark the clear separation of the faithful from the un-
faithful. At the same time, the new Christian churches needed to be visu-
ally meaningful. The buildings needed to convey the new authority of
Christianity. These factors were instrumental in the formulation during the

Constantinian period of an architectural form that would become the core
of Christian architecture to our own time: the Christian Basilica.
The basilica was not a new architectural form. The Romans had been

building basilicas in their cities and as part of palace complexes for centu-
ries. A particularly lavish one was the so-called Basilica Ulpia constructed
as part of the Forum of the Emperor Trajan in the early second century.
Basilicas had diverse functions but essentially they served as formal public

meeting places. One of the major functions of the basilicas was as a site
for law courts. These were housed in an architectural form known as the
apse. In the Basilica Ulpia, these semi-circular forms project from either

end of the building, but in some cases, the apses would project off of the
length of the building. The magistrate who served as the representative of
the authority of the Emperor would sit in a formal throne in the apse and

issue his judgments. This function gave an aura of political authority to the
basilicas.

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