United States or Czechia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


M. Saladin points out that there seem to be few instances of the use of columns made by native builders; but it does not therefore follow that all the columns used in the early mosques were taken from Roman temples or Christian basilicas.

Under the part not yet exhumed lie the remains of the earliest of all the Basilicas, the Basilica of Porcia, built by the elder Cato in the immediate vicinity of the Curia, and also those of the famous Basilica Æmilia, which probably extended along the greater part of the east side of the Forum.

Then, when the protection of a Christian emperor enabled the Christians to express themselves without fear, the doctrines of the church and the stories of the life of Christ and the histories of the saints, as well as many other instructive religious subjects, were made in mosaics, and placed in prominent places in churches and basilicas.

Not the cry of "New lands" merely, but the adventurous heart of his race, lured on by the magic of the sea, its receding horizons, its danger and its change, spread the fame and the terror of the Norsemen from the basilicas, the marbles, and the thronging palaces of Byzantium to the solitary homestead set in the English forest-clearing, or in the wastes of Ireland which the zeal of her monasteries was slowly reclaiming.

'Those out there serve to feed the officers, the effeminate priestlings, all the people that take part in the theatrical performance of the Vatican. Those unfortunates help to uphold the eight basilicas and the three hundred odd churches of Rome. "Susanna shrugged her shoulders and smiled."

Its streets were paved, and it had its forum, its amphitheatre, its theatre, its temples, its basilicas, its baths, its arches, and its monuments. The basilica was two hundred and twenty feet in length by eighty feet in width, the roof of which was supported by twenty-eight Ionic columns. The temple of Venus was profusely ornamented with paintings.

Just picture this popular debauch in full blast in the cemeteries and the courts of the basilicas, and it will be understood why Augustin did his best to put an end to such scandals. For this purpose, he joined hands first of all with his bishop, Valerius, and then with the Primate of Carthage, Aurelius, who shall be henceforth his firmest support in his struggle against the schismatics.

One of them had one hundred and eight pillars arranged in a double row around the sides and ends of this central space. The name basilica is Greek and means "royal." Some of these basilicas were used as Christian churches when the Romans accepted the Christian religion. The central space was then called the "nave," and the spaces between the columns the aisles.

Even as in very old fruit gardens newly planted plum and cherry trees wither and die, so the new walls, no doubt, found no life in that old dust of Rome, impoverished by the immemorial growth of so many temples, circuses, arches, basilicas, and churches.

It was all well enough to remonstrate to them that the Christians of Rome, and even a good number of pagans, had been spared at the name of Christ, and that the Barbarian leader had bestowed a quite special protection and respect upon the basilicas of the holy apostles; it was impossible to prevent their thinking that many Christians had perished in the sack of the city, that consecrated virgins had experienced the last outrages, and that, as a matter of fact, all the inhabitants had been robbed of their property.... Was it thus that God protected His chosen?