hello everyone this video is going to look at old saint peter's in rome as an example of a basilica church in the early christian period we're also going to use this building to introduce a lot of vocabulary that we will really use for the rest of the semester it's vocabulary associated with um church architecture and two to make our transition from a roman empire dominated by the roman state religion to the new religion of christianity and what will eventually become the official religion of the roman empire in the east so to go back a little bit in to roman history we have constantine our emperor who defeated maxentius at the milvian bridge who uh will move the capital of the roman empire if i go back to one of these slides here remember that constantine in the year 330 will move the capital to an old greek city called byzantium which uh he remains after himself he renames it constantinople and today that city is known as istanbul turkey so he will move the capital to the eastern part of the empire we know that eventually the west western half of the roman empire will fall the eastern roman empire will continue as the byzantine empire now another notable thing that constantine does is he legalizes christianity within the roman empire and so in the year 313 he issues the edict of milan and so it is an edict of religious tolerance and what it does is it says that christianity among other religions are now acceptable within the roman empire and this leads the way to eventually christianity becoming the official religion but that takes a little while however one thing that constantine does is he initiates a building campaign now that people can practice christianity they need spaces right they need somewhere to practice and so we're going to look at old saint peter's in that context now the difference between greek and roman religion and with um christianity is that in terms of architectural needs christianity needed buildings that could house the community a building where the community could gather together and worship we don't necessarily need that in greek and roman religion right the temples people don't gather inside the temples you leave offerings but most of the gatherings were outside around outdoor altars so it's a very different function even though they are both religious structures and also you know the romans were [Music] much more active in terms of maintaining private house altars and that was your main contact with religion day to day so when um early christians are looking for this new form what develops into the basilica style of church architecture okay go back to structures like this so we have our imperial form of trajin and remember our basilica opia these are posts and lentil structures that are large-scale the roman basilica they can hold a lot of people inside we saw that with this basilica we saw that with the basilica treer and also the basilica of vaccencious and constantine these are large interior spaces and so that's how we get to a space like this here's our interior of old saint peter's it is a vast space this could hold like 15 000 people it's um remained the largest church in the christian world until the 11th century and it's really a large post and mental structure let me go to this diagram here and so one of the reasons we're looking at diagrams is that this was torn down and rebuilt in the 16th century here's a nice comparison between what they originally looked like and what it um not what it looks like today the basilica opia the roman precedent for this so vast interior space um you can see they both use uh columns right to divide space we see that in both of these structures we both have wooden roofing structures on top now uh old saint peter's is torn down and rebuilt in the 16th century so there is a saint peter's today but it is not the same building okay so that's why we need to look at reconstruction images and diagrams to understand what old saint peter's looked like now the floor plan of old saint peter's is a basilica-style floor plan so let me work through that because there's going to be a lot of vocabulary associated with that space okay here is our generic basilica-style floor plan that we have at old saint peter's now at the center we have the nave a nave is a central space of a basilica two or three stories high it's usually flanked by isles so here we have the isles old saint peter has double aisles meaning there's two aisles on either side of the nave that is unusual typically there's only one the reason there's double isles here is because of the scale of old saint peter's and because of the importance of this as being sort of the largest the main church of christianity so the isles in a basilica church these are the portions that parallel to the nave they are generally separated from the nave by columns or peers now at the front of a basilica plan church sometimes we have a narthex a north x is an entrance porch or chamber before the name of the church a narthex is not required so we do not always see them and then in the blue here at the end we have the apps and it's sorry there's no apps is not labeled here but the apps is where the altar is which you can see the alter in this diagram the apps is a large semicircular usually vaulted niche protruding from the end well of a building in a christian church it contains the altar so the term apps refers to the shape of this space when you say apps you're not always talking about a church but the app space in the church is where the altar is okay so now if we go back to our diagram here okay this is our knave at the center you can see the nave is the tallest part of the structure it's the highest part of the structure it's the main space all the way at the end here we have the alter in the apps and this is where the congregation is going to stand or kneel at this point people do not sit today when you go into a church there are benches in the naves that's where people sit at this point in history we do not have people doing that uh now on either side here we have the isles so the aisles allow people to move through the space and you can see that the isles and nave they're all separated by columns here typically columns or piers are used to separate the two okay now what we can't see in the spaces in north x because we're sort of if you think about it we're kind of standing in the north x one other element vocabulary term that i would like to point out here is the windows up here these are called clair story windows put a c right there clear story windows these are windows placed high in a wall generally above the lower roofing elements and so they are in a space between the roofing for the aisles and the roofing for the knave okay so in between that space you have the claire story windows because of the design of basilica plain churches it is um hard to get a lot of direct light initially into the nave and so the clear story windows provide that light because the rest of the light has to filter in through the aisles and so in a structure of this scale like old saint peter's that is um quite difficult okay so old saint peters this was the church it is also important because it was initiated by constantine by a roman emperor so that marks a level of acceptance of christianity i will also note that constantine's mother who was also the wife of a previous emperor she was secret secretly a practicing christian as well so there were christians within the roman empire and within the elite of the roman empire but they were just um practicing in secret all right so the point of this video is really to set the forms we know the layout of a basilica floor plan we know it's inspired by the roman basilica and it's really inspired by the room basilica because it can hold a lot of people inside and also in ancient rome the basilica was a administrative building it does not have any religious connection which is important for making that difference between roman state religion and christianity now to understand what this space really looked and felt like because um you know this building has been torn down we can't look at this building there is a video that is going to take you inside a different structure santa sabina so this is the exterior santa sabina um here is the interior this is also an early christian church that is built in a manner similar to old saint peter's but a little bit later and on a much smaller scale so there will be another video that's going to look at this space between the two this one and the next video you should have a really good understanding of what the early christian basilica church was like