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Beyond the narthex the vestibule of the church, where three penitents were flaying their backs with scourges by the side of a small marble fountain, and in full view of the crowd they were forced to part, as the women were divided from the men by a screen of finely-carved woodwork.
The plan of the atrium of the cathedral is Roman, not Byzantine like those at Grado, Ravenna, and Constantinople, which have a portico and the baptistery at the side, separate from the basilica. In this case the pavement of the atrium was seven or eight inches above that of the narthex.
Life, Faith, and Death, Judgment and Purgatory, Hell and Paradise or Glory, are the motives carved out in stone in this unique narthex, so masterful in the execution, and so vivid in the tale it tells, that we can compare its author to Dante, and call the Portico de la Gloria the "Divina Commedia" of architecture.
The crenelated square tower on the western front is heavy, and no higher than the peaked and simple crowning of the handsome Romanesque window above the narthex; the general impression is that of resistance rather than of faith, and the lack of all decoration has caused the temple to be called sombre.
The foundations show that there were two basilicas side by side, with a narthex common to both and a passage between them up to the transept. To the south the narthex terminated in an apse nearly 20 ft. across, and there was a hall, probably open to the sky, between the narthex and the baptistery, with others to the north and south of it.
Now, he felt it was all the same to him whether he and his family and Dada met their doom in the house or out of it. Dada and Papias soon reached the church of St. Mark, the oldest Christian basilica in the city. It consisted of a vestibule the narthex and the body of the church, a very long hall, with a flat roof ceiled with stained wood and supported on a double row of quite simple columns.
The greater part of this church was built in 1876, but a very fine rectangular porch with figures of saints in the niches, and a narthex in the same style, were added later. The square tower with corner pinnacles is a conspicuous object in the Fulham Road. It is odd to read of a highway murder occurring near Little Chelsea in 1765.
The narthex or porch is still more or less traceable in the great western portals, and in a kind of separation which often, but not always, exists between the westernmost bay of a cathedral and the rest of the structure. The division into nave and aisles remains, and in very large churches and cathedrals there are double aisles, as there were in the largest basilicas.
The northern door is smaller, but a hundred times richer in sculptural design. It shows Byzantine influence in the decoration, and as a Byzantine-Romanesque portal can figure among the best in Spain. It has been supposed that the western front of the building possessed at one time a narthex, like the cathedral Tuy, for instance.
Nor should the narthex be forgotten, mere skeleton though it be. It is characteristic of such a church as this, and set as it is obliquely to it, is original in conception and curious. Classis, Classe, as we know, was the station or port of the Roman fleet, established and built by Augustus Caesar.
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