Architecture, with special reference tu the Screen in Stockton Church. 5 



proportions, and formed a solid wall, separating the sanctuary 

 from the worshippers ? 



So far we have been treating of Eastern Churches, in order to 

 traverse Dr. Baron's theory that the dividing wall at Stockton was 

 an 8th century adaptation of an Eastern model. But we must 

 not forget that the arrangement of such Churches was adopted 

 and assimilated in the West. Dean Milnian, in his work on Latin 

 Christianity, enlarges on this point : — 



" For some considerable (it cannot but be an undefinable) part of the first 

 three centuries, the Church of Rome, and most, if not all, the Churches of 

 the West were, if we may so speak, Greek religious colonies ; their language 

 was Greek, their organization Greek, their writers Greek, their Scriptures 

 Greek, and many vestiges and traditions show that their ritual, their liturgy, 

 was Greek." 



Let US hear also what Baldwin Brown says on this point in his 

 fascinating work, " The Arts in Early England," p. 13 : — 



" Christianity was not indigenous at Eome. Eome was colonized by the 

 adherents of a religion that had its original centres in the East, and 

 Christianity radiated from these original centres over the Empire along lines 

 that by no means necessarily passed through Eome. Hence the Christian 

 forms and institutions which are sometimes called ' Eoman,' because they 

 are found all over the regions of the Empire, were in their birth and de- 

 velopment independent of the city, and in dealing with them we must re- 

 member that Eome was only one out of many centres of Early Christian 



life The early Christian meeting-house, known as the basilica, 



appears in substantially the same form over the whole of the lands of the 

 Empire in its eastern as well as its western moiety." 



Again : — 



"The Christianity of Gaul and Britain was at first independent of Eome 

 and in touch rather with the East ; and it will be remembered in this con- 

 nection that the language in the chief centres of the Gallic Church in the 2nd 

 century was Greek, and not Latin." (Ihid., p. 11.) 



Dr. Baron truly observes that " the whole Western Church was 

 Eastern and Greek before it was Latin." Still, as regards the 

 solid screen or wall, I think it must be admitted, in view of the 

 careful and exhaustive investigations of Philimonoff, that the 

 partition-wall which forms so remarkable a feature in Stockton 

 Church cannot be assigned to an early date, or regarded as a copy 

 of the type prevailing in Eastern Churches at the time when S. 

 Aldhelm filled the See of Sherborne. 1 am told that the oldest 



