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The references are to Volume 1 of Lindsay (1847) in the context of a discussion of the Roman basilica. In footnotes he cites extended examples of images from East and West, of buildings, and from Eusebius on liturgical use and the importance of orientation towards the east liturgical use. Lindsay distinguishes the western image of the church as a ship from the eastern image of the ‘soaring and dominant cupola’ of the Byzantines as an image of the rest of heaven. ‘It is perhaps for this reason that while the latter invariably point East and West, the former even till a late epoch were directed indifferently to every point of the compass’. He does to some extent modify his argument in a footnote pointing out that even in the Latin church facing East was general and eventually became law. However he cites S. Peter’s, S. John Lateran and S. Clemente as examples of churches not oriented towards the East.
Steeples, he suggests, were added in or after the eighth century when the use of bells had been introduced from Greece. The basilica retained its form ‘co-extensively with the spiritual dominion of the Romish see; it even maintained its ground long after the Lombard style (formed from it and the Byzantine) had encroached upon its exclusive prerogative’.
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]