1 12 Architecture and Mosaics of Wilton Church. 



appearance of the Byzantine cupola in Italy ; to which may be added 

 St. Mark's, at Venice, which was mostly built by Greek architects, 

 during the 11th and 12th centuries. 



This style, under various names and modifications, has flourished 

 to the present day wherever the Oriental church or Mohamed- 

 anism exist. The Arabs adopted it from the first. The 

 Kremlin of Moscow, the Alhambra of Granada, the Saracenic 

 remains in Sicily, and the tombs of the Memlook kings near 

 Cairo, all claim the same unmistakeable origin. These two 

 new Christian styles, then, which had risen at Rome and Constan- 

 tinople, were each destined to a long and uncontested supremacy, 

 respectively in the East and West, and, in their combination, to 

 become the parents of the architecture of Lombardy, and ultimately 

 of the Pointed or Gothic. 



The influence of the Lombards in Italy, and the iconoclastic 

 rupture of the 8th century (by which a multitude of Greek artists 

 were scattered over the continent), gave a new impulse to Western 

 Europe. Italy became politically independent of the Byzantine 

 Empire, and the Church of Home thenceforward independent of 

 that of Constantinople. A more advanced style of architecture, 

 with a complete and connected system of forms, soon prevailed 

 wherever the Latin Church spread its influence, and the associated 

 body of freemasons powerfully contributed to its diffusion over 

 Europe. It has been called Lombardic, or perhaps, more conve- 

 niently Romanesque, connecting the Basilica of the Western Em- 

 pire with the buildings destined for the same purpose in the East ; 

 it forms a connecting link between the Classic and Gothic styles of 

 architecture. 



It retained the cupola as well as the the cruciform plan of the 

 Byzantine style, not, however, in the form of a Greek cross of four 

 equal limbs, but by an elongation of the nave opposite the sanc- 

 tuary, now distinctively called the Latin Cross. The apsis or 

 tribune is retained, but generally pierced with windows, narrow in 

 proportion to their height, as at Wilton. The columns of the nave 

 round and plain ; at a later date, no longer isolated, but clustered 

 so as to form compound piers. The smaller and more ornamental 



