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The reference is to Lindsay Vol.1 Letter 1 Roman Art.
Lindsay argues, p 6ff.that ‘tombs were the first altars, and mausoleums the first churches of Christendom’. Within the catacombs for those ‘of higher mark and renown more distinguished resting places were allotted. A space broader and more regular than the usual passages, and ending in a blank wall, was in such cases selected or excavated; recesses, surmounted by circular conchae or shells, were hollowed out of the extremity and in the two sides of the square; within these recesses were placed sarcophagi, their sides covered with the symbols and devices of Christianity; the roof was scooped into the resemblance of a dome or cupola, - this was usually painted, as well as the shells of the recesses, and the whole, thus completed, formed a chamber bearing some faint resemblance to the Greek cross, and well suited by its comparative space, for the congregation of the faithful and the services of religion, the sarcophagus at the upper end of the cell serving as a communion-table or altar’.
At page 9 Lindsay suggests that in Rome the basilican form was adopted because the ‘descendants of those who built the Pantheon, in Augustus’s time were unable, or afraid, save on the most trifling scale, to imitate its stately dome’.
At page 15f he suggests that the tabernacle, supported by small pillars, set above the altar, was ‘an imitation of the tombs of the martyrs and their rock-hewn canopies in the Catacombs.’
At page 17 he refers to the ‘Opus Graecanicum’ of mosaic pavements within basilican churches, and the use of mosaic in the choir, the reading desks, and the ciborium, the triumphal arch, the shell of the absis, and sometimes the side walls of the nave.
He concludes that the basilicas have a ‘richness and simplicity which lend them a grace to which the more imposing edifices of Byzantium, and even the glorious creations of Lombardy and the North, can make no pretensions’.
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]