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Updated: May 6, 2025
The site of the abbey is now occupied by the buildings of the Hotel Central and other houses in the parallel streets Via Minerva and Via Abbazia. It was a basilican church with nave, and aisles raised two steps above it. There were ten columns on each side, with varied capitals. The aisles were vaulted, and the semi-dome of the apse was decorated with mosaics on a gold ground.
While the merchants, in their year of victories, threw down the walls of the war-towers, they as eagerly and diligently set their best craftsmen to lift higher the walls of their churches. For the most part, the Early Norman or Basilican forms were too low to please them in their present enthusiasm.
Notwithstanding very wide differences which undoubtedly exist, there is a sufficient bond of union between the Basilican, the Byzantine, and the Romanesque styles, to render it possible for us to include the characteristics of the three in an analysis of Christian round-arched architecture. The Plan or floor-disposition of the basilican churches, as has been pointed out, was distinctive.
A simple pediment rises above the four central figures, surmounted by a crucifix and containing a carving of a sun on a strapwork shield. The whole is of granite and the figures and mouldings are distinctly rude, and yet it is eminently picturesque and original, and shows that Lopez was a skilled designer if but a poor sculptor. Coming now to the basilican churches.
The glass mosaic-work to be found on the walls of Early Christian churches, both basilican and Byzantine, but less frequently Romanesque, is most interesting and beautiful: "it was," says the high authority already quoted, "employed only to represent and reproduce the forms of existing objects, such as figures, architectural forms and conventional foliage, which were generally relieved with some slight indication of shading upon a gold ground the whole being bedded in the cement covering the walls and vaults of the basilicas and churches."
But before speaking of the basilican and other churches of this time, the Misericordia at Vianna do Castello must be described. The Misericordia of Vianna stands on the north side of the chief square of the town, and was built in 1589 by one João Lopez, whose father had designed the beautiful fountain which stands near by.
In the basilican churches one great arch, called "the arch of triumph," occurs, and only one; this gives access to the apse: and a similar arch, which we now denominate "the chancel arch," usually occupies a corresponding position in all Romanesque churches. The arches of the arcade separating the nave from the aisles in all Western churches are usually of moderate span.
The term Romanesque is here used to indicate a style of Christian architecture, founded on Roman art, which prevailed throughout Western Europe from the close of the period of basilican architecture to the rise of Gothic; except in those isolated districts where the influence of Byzantium is visible.
When the periods of persecution of the early Christians had come to an end, and they were able in security to assemble for worship, two distinct types of Church contested for the supremacy the Basilican and the Catacumbal. Even during the times before Constantine, when persecution was in abeyance, Christians had been accustomed to gather together for the Divine mysteries in private houses.
Beneath him lay his own cathedral, already blazing within like a treasure-cave, ready for its consummation, without, tranquil and strong; behind him the ancient Abbey once again in the hands of its children; far away to the right, seeming strangely near in this lucid atmosphere, hung, like a bubble, the great dome below which, as he knew, stood the first basilican altar in London, newly consecrated as a sign of its papal dignities and privileges.
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