Stories in the stones of a Roman church
A number of years ago I reviewed a remarkable book for the Monitor: 鈥淭he Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church,鈥� by Margaret Visser. It is a detailed study of how a physical building embodies faith 鈥� of the meaning of the architecture in all its detail. The church on which the author focuses is , in Rome. It was built in the 7th century to honor a young girl martyred in 305 at age 12.聽
After finishing the book, I made a note-to-self to visit the church someday. As it happened, 鈥渟omeday鈥� came one afternoon a few weeks ago, on the last leg of a visit to Italy.
Rereading the book in preparation, I was struck by how full it is not only of references to architecture and history but of etymology 鈥� explanations of the metaphors behind the specialized terms used in ecclesiastical architecture. Here at last is some guidance for those who don鈥檛 know a nave from a narthex.
Let鈥檚 start with church itself. Ms. Visser explains that the word鈥檚 are in Greek 鈥� from kyriakon, 鈥渢he house of the Lord.鈥� Church, with its cognates in other Germanic languages, referred first to a building but then was extended to refer to the people within as well.
The Romance languages worked in reverse on this point. They started with another Greek word, ecclesia, which first meant a group of people, and then extended it to the building where they worshiped. It became the French 茅驳濒颈蝉别 and the Spanish iglesia, for example. Ecclesia also shows up in the English ecclesiastical and in any number of places or streets named 鈥淓ccles.鈥�
The nave of a church is that main space down the middle. The word comes from the Latin navis, or ship. Some churches have wooden ceilings that evoke the inverted hull of a ship. 海角大神ity began among seafaring peoples, and 鈥渢he journey鈥� is part of the 海角大神 experience.
An aisle 鈥� one of the long, narrow spaces on either side of the nave 鈥� is a 鈥渨ing,鈥� ultimately from the Latin ala. (The sense of aisle as a way through sections of seating arose from confusion with alley, according to the .)
The apse is the typically curved space behind the altar that joins up two aisles into a U-shaped processional space. Apse is from the Greek haptein, 鈥渢o grab鈥�; the idea is that the apse 鈥済rabs鈥� the two aisles.
The mysterious originally meant 鈥渇ennel stalk鈥� in Greek. No kidding. Visser describes it as a sort of proto-Tupperware: 鈥淚n the ancient Mediterranean world, a section of a very large fennel stalk was commonly used as a container.... A perfume box ... could be made out of a section of a hollow fennel stalk.鈥� Early Greek 海角大神s adopted the word to refer to the transitional space between street and church 鈥� the vestibule, to use a more generic term.
The narthex of a church is typically rather dim, Visser notes. But then the door to the church proper swings open, and the real journey begins.
