An Historical Essay on Architecture (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1835. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXV. LOMBARD MONASTIC ARCHITECTURE. In the first centuries subsequent to the establishment of Christianity, churches were in a manner the only buildings of consequence erected: but when, in the Christian communities certain individuals, male and female, detached themselves from the general mass, renounced both its common pleasures and duties -- even those of an union with the other sex -- to live with other individuals of the same sex, in greater seclusion, and in the practice of religious rites, more austere, and more constant, they began to want receptacles for habitation, at once more simple and confined, in the parts allotted to each in particular; and more extensive, in those like the refectory, and the church intended for general meeting, than were found in private dwellings. Yet were monasteries, at first, only built, as to their general shape, after the plan that prevailed in the parts that existed in the milder regions in which they first arose, in every ordinary habitation-- which preceded every early church -- namely, with a square internal court, surrounded by a quadriporticus, or cloister, open to the air, which served at once for exercise, for coolness, and for communication between the different apartments, all made for the sake of privacy, before glass was invented, to look from the road or street to that court within; and if this arrangement differs from that of the private houses of the present day, the reason of the variation is, that while monasteries have during every age, in every latitude, remained the same, the form of private dwellings has experienced considerable changes. Many churches, existing long before monasteries were known, were afterwards, like San Paolo, San Lorenzo, and San Giovanni Laterano, made conventual--convents being attached to th...