A COUNTRY TOWN OF LYCAONIA. 



39 



of construction, and thus acquire some idea of Byzantine 

 architecture, on one single site through a number of centuries ? 



Secondly, tlie historical side. What is the history of this 

 city ? AVhat name should we give it ? and how should we 

 acquire some idea of the people who lived there ? What were 

 they doing ; what was their feeling towards the great struggle 

 of Mahometanism ? Here was a city Christian in the early 

 centuries, now a Mahometan village of about thirty families. 

 How did this change take place ? 



The architectural subject was taken by Miss Gertrude Bell. 

 I only touch on architectural points so far as they affect the 

 historical position. You cannot isolate architecture from history. 

 You must date these buildings and you cannot date them on 

 grounds of style alone. 



It will doubtless become possible after further study to date 

 a Byzantine church roughly from its style to at least a century,, 

 but at present this cannot be done. We know too little to 

 venture upon any such method. Other ways of dating the 

 churches have therefore to be found. So we are under the 

 necessity of having recourse to the epigraphical date to find 

 the order of their building. By this method the construction 

 of these churches can be dated from the fourth or fifth to as 

 late as the tenth century. 



On the historical side we cannot do without tliese churches^ 

 for churches are almost the only historical monuments in the 

 cities. The church is the centre and remains the only land- 

 mark. In the Greek and early Roman periods there are many 

 other public monuments out of which to evolve materials for 

 the historian. In the Byzantine period there are only the 

 churches and remains that lie about the o-round around them. 

 Thus it is an interesting fact that in the country of Anatolia 

 you come back again to the state of things at the beginning of 

 Christianity. We find an organised life of men and society 

 where religion and its intluence on life is the main feature of 

 the State. Keligion and the relation of religion to the life 

 of the community is the one great fact. Between the two 

 great extremes there is the influence of the Greek civilisation 

 over Europe and Western Asia. The Greek had the first idea, 

 of the development of individual character, individual freedom 

 and individual property as apart from family life. The 

 separation of property from the family, and making property 

 the appanage for the individual under his own control, comes 

 to us from the Greek idea of freedom developing for the 

 individual. The Greek spirit hardly affected such a town as 



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