The cathedrals and churches of northern Italy

Front matter

THE CATHEDRALS AND CHURCHES OF NORTHERN ITALY

@ M m r ® BY T.

FRANCIS BUM PUS

Chap. I Introductory Sketch of Italian Church Architecture i

II Trent 48

III Verona 58

IV Vicenza 104

V Padua 1 1 5

VI St Mark's , Venice , and Torcello 1 36

VII Ferrara and Bologna 169

VIII Ravenna 204

IX Some Lombard Cathedrals & Churches: Modena , Parma , Piacenza , Cremona ,

Pavia 256

X Milan: St Ambrose' s and the Cathedral 305

List of some of the most Remarkable Pictures 341 Bibliography 365

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

( * These are Colour Plates)

V enice , St Mark's , from a painting by F. L. Griggs Frontis. St Andrea , V ere elli , from the S.W. To face 4

Sta Agata, a Ravennese Basilica 22

The Apse , Sta Maria Maggiore, Bergamo 28

5/ Tomaso in Limine , zz^zr Bergamo 30

Frari Church at Venice , from the S.E. 34

5/ Andrea , V ere elli, interior 38

& Pietro in Concava , 4* ^j/z 40

*The Colleoni Chapel at Bergamo 42

5/ Gaudenzio at Novara 44

Screen in the Certosa near Pavia 46

*Trent, the Cathedral from the S.E. 50

Trent, the Cathedral, interior looking E. 54

^ general view of the City from the North 60

^ front of the Cathedral 64

V erona, the Cathedral, interior looking E. 70

V erona, the Cathedral, South porch 74

V erona, St Giovanni in Fonte ( Baptistery of the Cathedral) 78 V erona, Western doorway of St Fermo Maggiore 82

V erona, Sta Anastasia, interior looking E. 86

V erona, West door of Sta Anastasia 88

V erona, St Zeno from the S.W. 90

V erona, interior of St Zeno, looking E. 92

V erona, the Crypt of St Zeno 94

V erona, interior of St Fermo Maggiore 98

V icenza, the Cathedral from the S.W. 106

V icenza, St Lorenzo, interior looking E. 1 1 2

ix

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Padua , interior of the Arena Chapel looking W. 1 15

Padua,. Baptistery of the Cathedral 1 18

Padua , interior of the Arena Chapel looking E. 122

* Padua, St Antonio from the South 126

Padua , interior of St Antonio looking W. 130

Padua , interior of Sta Giustina looking E. 1 34

For cello, interior of the Cathedral looking E. 140

V enice, interior of St Mark's looking E. 154

Venice, interior of the Frari Church looking E. 160

Bologna, SS. Pietro e Paolo 169

Ferrara, West front of the Cathedral 172

Ferrara Cathedral, details of sculpture on West front 174 Bologna, St Stefano from the West 178

Bologna, interior of St Sepolcro 1 80

Bologna, the shrine of St Dominic 184

# Bologna, St Francesco from the East 186

Bologna, Altar-piece in StXFrancesco 188

Bologna, central Doorway of St Petronio 192

Bologna, interior of St Petronio 196

Ravenna, interior of the Orthodox Baptistery 212

Ravenna, Doorway of St Giovanni Evangelista 226

Ravenna, St Apollinaris Nuovo, looking across nave 240 Ravenna, interior of St Vitalis 246

Ravenna, Sta Maria in Porto Fuori 248

* Ravenna, St Apollinaris in Classe from the North-East 250

Ravenna, St Apollinaris in Classe, interior looking East 254 * Cremona Cathedral, West front 256

Modena Cathedral, West front 260

Modena Cathedral, South side 264

Modena Cathedral, nave looking E. 268

Modena Cathedral, entrance to Crypt 270

Parm,a Cathedral, West front 272

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Parma Cathedral , nave looking E. 276

Parma , interior of the Baptistery 278

Piacenza Cathedral , looking E. 280

Piacenza Cathedral , from the N.E. 282

* Cremona Cathedral , from the E. 284

Cremona Cathedral , looking E. 286

*Certosa , Pavia , Western facade 288

Certosa, near Pavia , interior view across Transept 290 Pavia, West front of St Michele 294

Pavia, W est door of St Michele 296

Pavia, Shrine of St Augustine 300

Pavia, interior of the Cathedral looking S.E. 302

Monza, West front of the Cathedral 305

Milan, Atrium of St Ambrose 308

Milan, interior of St A mbrose looking E. 312

Milan, Altar frontal in St Ambrose 318

Milan Cathedral from the S.W. 324

Milan Cathedral, view across Choir 330

Milan Cathedral, view across Transept 338

Padua, Shrine of St Antonio 346

F 'enice9 Sta Maria Assunta 350

Novara , the Cathedral from the N.W. 362 xt

The Cathedrals and Churches of Northern Italy

CHAPTER I Introductory Sketch of Italian Church ^Architecture

LITTLE did I imagine, as I penned the chapters on Lichfield, Gloucester and St Albans in the third volume of The Cathedrals of England and Wales during the gloomy days of a London November, when the winds were rustling through the denuded boughs and stray leaves were tapping on the panes as they fell, that I should be revising the proofs beneath the sunny skies of an Italian June, while sauntering through the avenues which encircle Modena and Pavia, Vercelli and Novara. But it is the unexpected that happens.

Calling one day in the spring of last year upon my publisher, he proposed that I should undertake the volume on Northern Italy for his “Cathedral Series.”

It may surprise some of my readers when they learn that I did not perform that extraordinary mental gymnastic feat known as jumping at an offer. At first I shrank from the task, under the conviction that it had been accomplished long ago and by far abler pens; indeed, it was only upon reflecting that one’s true, fresh and vivid impressions are worthy of some respeCt, and that a sincere and reverential love of beauty gives one an instructive appreciation of the spirit of the higher forms of art, however deficient the judgement may be in matters of execution and detail, that

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I could prevail upon myself to embark on so serious an undertaking. With a very limited understanding of causes it is possible to feel effe6ts in archite&ure and the arts ancillary to it. Much had to be learnt, as hitherto my only acquaintance with transalpine church architecture had been derived from books and hearsay.

Now, I was to greet what even then seemed like old friends face to face. I was to shake hands with the red and yellow brick of Verona, the white marble of Milan, the mosaics of Ravenna, Venice and Torcello, and the colonnades and domes of Bologna and Padua.

I was to tread the solemn courts of St Michele at Pavia, Sant’ Ambrogio at Milan, and of the cathedrals at Trent, Modena, Parma and Piacenza, and to make acquaintance with some of the Renaissance masterpieces of Palladio, Sanmichele, Bramante, Domenico Tibaldi and Girolamo da Brescia.

The want of a congenial companion to induce and reciprocate remarks would, as on former occasions, have been much felt, had the prescribed seven weeks’ touring been a seven weeks of wandering or of desultory excursionizing in any sort of vague or experimental manner. Fortunately, systematic employment, whose enjoyableness was to be that which comes from incessant a&ivity, and by no means the delight of doing nothing, was to be the order of the day; the route, Bavaria and the Tyrol and home through Dauphine, the Lyonnais, Burgundy, Champagne and French Flanders, was all sketched out beforehand, and this or that place planned to be reached or left behind on such and such a day.

It must, however, be confessed that when, with no impedimenta beyond a knapsack and a portfolio, I entrained on Monday evening, May 21, for Harwich, the Hook of

Holland and Cologne, I could not shake off the feeling that the first plunge into that cold bath of a new life of seven weeks’ entire independence and self-reliance which lay before me had been taken.

The temptation to linger at Cologne, where I found myself at noon on the following day, was too great to be resisted; so, abandoning the idea of proceeding dire&ly to Frankfort, I gave myself up to the enjoyment of the manifold ecclesiological treasures of the “Rome of the North.” With renewed delight I visited the noble basilicas of St Mary in the Capitol, and the Holy Apostles — lately enriched with mosaics in a style thoroughly consonant with its architecture; attended the afternoon Offices in the Cathedral; assisted at the “May devotions” in sundry churches, hearing Pepys-like “a bit here and a bit there”; peeped through the metal grilles at the interiors of St Cunibert’s and St Martin’s, both looking profoundly awful in the fast gathering darkness; paid my respeCts to the shrine of England’s protomartyr in the jejune rococo church of St Mary in the Schnurgasse; thought the western facades of St Andrew’s and St Mary’s of the Lys two of the most charming specimens of thirteenth-century Rhenish architecture of my acquaintance; and next morning reached Frankfort, after a rapid but enjoyable railway ride through old Rhineside towns and villages all embosomed in thick May leaves. The evening of the same day found me at Wtlrzburg, where the greater part of Holy Thursday was spent. Charming was the procession which I encountered on my way to High Mass, making the circuit of the vast Romanesque Cathedral to the familiar strains of “Hursley.”* Brightly

*A melody from the Bavarian chorale books, wedded by the compilers of the first edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern to Sun of my Soul.

did the sun shine on the processional crosses and banners, the curling incense, the rich vestments of the clergy and the glittering Monstrance, borne by the Bishop beneath a silken canopy.

Perhaps the climax of pidturesqueness was reached when, the procession having emerged into the broad square in front of the Cathedral, it ascended the steps leading to the great west entrance, through whose widely flung valves could be seen the thronged interior with the brilliantly lighted high altar in the dim distance. The great bells now added their voices, and from within came the solemn tones of the organ, which increased in volume as the procession advanced up the nave, presently, when all were in their places, merging into the familiar Ascension Day introit, “Viri Galilsei, quid admiramini adspicientes in coelum?” so that I felt as much at home here as in my own church in London. The hearty devotion of the numerous worshippers; the thoroughly church-like character of the music; the vast, but sadly classicized pile in which we were assembled; and especially the grand colossal upright figures of prince bishops — relics of a purer age of architecture — affixed to the nave piers combined to render the scene very religious and solemn.

Divine service concluded, and visits having been paid to several churches, notably the picturesque one of St Burchardus on the opposite side of the Maine, I resumed the journey, reaching Bamberg in time to assist at a very hearty and well attended evening service in the majestically situated Cathedral, remarkable for its quartette of spires, each pair of which flanks an apse or choir — the St George's Choir, rich late Romanesque, at the east, and the St Peter’s Choir in pure early Pointed Gothic at the west end. Very vM. Andrea Vertelli : I rom the >outh Vest.

peaceful and soothing were the precinCts of this Dom at Bamberg as I pervaded them in the freshness of early morning on the subsequent day, while the bells were sending forth their sonorous voices for the Chapter Mass, which was rendered with much ritual dignity and appropriate musical accompaniment.

A great treat was the singing of the Dies Ir<e at a subsequent “Black Mass,” a couple of trombones imparting great force and character to such verses as “Tuba mirum spargens sonum” and “Rex tremendae majestatis.”

I may remind my readers how Sir Walter Scott recurred to this truly inspired composition of Thomas of Celano on his death-bed, and how it gave rise to one of the finest scenes in Goethe’s Faust .

The metre, indeed, is unique. The triple hammer-strokes of the triple rhyme, the wonderful simplicity of the words, the fearful sublimity of the ideas, the telling effeCt of every word, make this, one of the few great sequences that escaped removal from the Roman Gradual in the sixteenth century, stand alone in its unapproachable glory.

Of the manifold architectural treasures of Nuremberg I dare not trust myself to speak, neither may I dilate upon those of Ratisbon, where I spent a rapturous “Sunday after Ascension Day.” My visit to this most majestic of Danubian cities was rendered notable by the Ordination which the Bishop of the diocese was holding in the graceful, if not vast, Complete-Gothic cathedral, so renowned for its painted glass of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

As early as half-past seven an immense congregation began to assemble. At eight o’clock a glorious voluntary was played upon the organ concealed behind the high altar, and during the hour that elapsed before the commencement of the ceremony, the celebrated choir, likewise hidden' from view, sang a series of motets in the style of Orlando di Lasso and Palestrina, and with so sublime an effed: that I found myself constantly in tears.

During the Ordination itself the hymns Vent Creator and Veni sanfte Spiritus were sung alternately, sometimes in their original plain song, sometimes to a severe modern setting in concerted parts.

At the conclusion of every piece a silence like that of death fell upon the church, as if some celestial vision had passed before the living eyes and hushed into stillness every pulse of human feeling. The effed of this invisible music was beyond anything I have ever heard or ever exped to hear. The air seemed stirred with the trembling of angelic wings, or as if the gates of heaven had been opened and a wandering breath from the songs of seraphs had been borne to earth. A few sounds which, under ordinary circumstances, would have been merely a passing luxury to the ear, heard on this solemn occasion and beneath this noble vault, were like a purifying wave, which, for an instant, swept over the soul, bearing away with it all the soil and stains of earth, and leaving it pure as infancy. There was, it is true, a refluent tide; and the world, displaced by the solemn strain, came back with the echo; but, thought we cannot keep the heights we are competent to gain, we are the better for the too brief exaltation.

Another treat awaited me in the afternoon, when Vespers and Compline were sung to the ancient plain chant, according to the use of Ratisbon, by sixty seminarists, who, in cassocks, surplices and birettas, had walked in procession from their college to the Cathedral.

Nor was the crowd, which in the evening filled the

Romanesque Scotch Benedictine Church of St James to overflowing, less impressive; the profound stillness and reverent demeanour of the people contrasting forcibly with the levity that I was to encounter a few days later.

Italy is so often the country of disenchantment that I was hardly surprised at the slovenly irreverence with which many of the Offices were performed even in some of the cathedrals. The nasal chanting, the disorder and flippancy everywhere, the scanty congregations and the general perfunctoriness of things, struck me very unpleasantly after the dignity of the German church services.

However, I suppose we travel to little purpose if we carry with us the standard which is formed in some country of our own predilection, and expert the religious sentiment to manifest itself at all times and in all places in the same manner.

At Venice, Verona and Milan I found a better state of things, due at St Mark’s, presumably, to the work of the present Pope, and at Milan to the zeal of the clergy for the proper dignity of the Ambrosian rite.

The Roman Church appears at its best in Holland and Northern Germany, perhaps by reaction from the arid desolation of Calvinism and Evangelicalism in those countries.

From Ratisbon I pursued the journey through Landshut, Freising, Munich and Innsbruck, to Trent, where I arrived at sunset on the Friday before Whitsuntide. Here I made my first Italian meal outside the Albergo Venezia , and in full view of the Romanesque Cathedral, in which I seemed to trace a line of demarcation between the architecture of Northern and Southern Europe. By entering Italy this gradual way, I found, long before I reached the frontier, forms which prepared me for what was coming, forms which served to indicate how deep was the artistic influence of Rome in the land whose kings claimed to be her emperors. And this influence made itself felt, tarrying as I did at Wilrzburg, Bamberg and Ratisbon, where I felt that here in the heart of Germany I had come within the dired influence of the art of Italy, classical and modern.

I must warn the reader that one of the most important cautions which he should impose upon himself on visiting Italy for the first time is to guard carefully against being too much carried away by the readion against former prejudice. I, in common with many another student of church architedure, visited Italy4 too late, and under the impression that it contained little that exadly coincided with my way of thinking. Before studying the Anglo-Romanesque of Ely, Norwich and Peterborough, the Norman of Caen and its vicinity, or the several varieties of the round arched style to be met with in Germany, I should have made the acquaintance of their Roman, Ravennese and Lombard prototypes, since a stream of Italian art can be traced, first spreading down the Rhine, thence working to the south and south-west of France, and so on in gradual and steady development to the North.

That I found the cities which I visited absolutely filled with objedls of the utmost novelty and interest it were idle to deny; still I did not fly at once to the opposite extreme, and become so much enamoured of these newly discovered beauties as to think them superior to those on which my former ideas and knowledge had been founded.

The Romanesque and Early Pointed of Lombardy charmed me much, but I saw at once that her Complete Gothic of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, though possessing much beauty, was, per sey vastly inferior as an architectural style to the contemporary work of France and England.

Not only are its details mixed with reminiscences of classical antiquity, but its construction falls so far short of carrying out fully the great principles of Pointed architecture that it must ever be considered a far less perfect development of the style than those of Northern Europe.

In the early days of the English Gothic revival, Italian Romanesque and Pointed received but scant attention,* and it was not more than half a century ago, when the writings of Ruskin and the several competitions for ereCting churches on foreign soil sent the current of architectural taste rushing beyond the Alps, that the Gothic of Italy began to be seriously studied.

In 1 848, when Butterfield drew the designs for All Saints’, Margaret Street, it was not an easy thing to conceive of a red-brick church of vast height and costly ornamentation and the highest architectural dignity. Those were the days of timid copyism of ancient precedents. For the most part design was little better than the compilation and recomposition of the disjetta membra of medieval buildings. No one remembered the noble brick architecture of Venice and Verona, and, in default of the costly and almost unattainable hewn stone from Caen or Portland, churches were built of the rudest Kentish rag laid in random courses, and pointed, probably, with black mortar. It was in All Saints’ that Butterfield made the first step forward in that bolder style of design which was to open so hopeful a future for English architecture, and it may be doubted whether the

* As an exception to this, Christ Church, Streatham Hill, should be mentioned. It was built in 1841 from the designs of Wild, and as a specimen of Venetian Gothic elicited the admiration of Ruskin.

CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY chief excellences of this design, however often imitated, have been equalled or approached.

All Saints’, Margaret Street, and St James the Less in Upper Garden Street, Westminster,* are churches in which their respective archite£ts, Butterfield and Street, stepped beyond the mere repetition of English medieval forms to produce buildings in which a free eclectic manipulation of parts was grafted upon a system of polychromatic construction, having its basis in the fad that London is naturally a brick town. Butterfield and Street represented very different phases of what may be called the “ inventive ” or “original ” phase of the Gothic revival movement. At All Saints’ we find the adoption of construdive polychrome, but itsarchitedural detail shows that in the mass it is decidedly Northern and specially English. In St James the Less, Street, who a few years before had uttered his love for Southern Pointed in his Brick and Marble of North Italy , rejeded the old Gothic of England and gave us a building as Italian in the seledion and arrangement of its materials as it was in detail. With the greatest resped for the talents of these two leaders of the Revival, I cannot believe in the infallibility of either, nor can I pretend to strike the balance between their two systems. Both architeds had much to say for themselves, and each had his weaker points, yet it is impossible not to perceive in both these churches, which have long passed the gauntlet of criticism, a bold and magnificent endeavour to shake off the trammels of that antiquarian precedent which had long fettered the progress of the Revival.!* Sir Gilbert

* All Saints’ was completed in 1859 ; St James’s in 1861.

tin All Saints’, Clifton, and St Mary Magdalene’s, Paddington, two churches in which Street was permitted to carry out his ideas unhampered by pecuniary considerations, we perceive some very graceful Italian im-

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Scott likewise introduced certain judicious features from Italian Pointed into many of the churches which in his own peculiar soft style he was sowing over the country about this time, notably in St Mary’s, Stoke Newington, one of the most beautiful and elegant structures that the movement had up to the period of its completion (1858) produced. Since that time Italian Pointed has been introduced into England with no small advantage, and in the hands of accomplished practitioners has been found to supply a fund of material which has been utilized to enrich and render more copious and complete that which we derive from our Northern examples, and which has been imported into our own style without vitiating its nationality to any serious extent.

On the other hand, unfortunately, when introduced by clumsy imitators, it is no wonder that a revulsion against this penchant for foreign forms should, in a short time, have taken place, and that many of our best architects should have retraced their steps and become more insular in their tastes.

To return, however, from this digression. Italian Gothic was never so thoroughly and independently worked out as the Northern types, and therefore never reached their dignity, consistency and perfection ; but when the influence to which the medieval builders in the South were subjected are considered, it is wonderful that the Gothic of that country was even so far developed as it is found. Rome, wedded to her own habits, always regarded the Pointed styles with disdain, and except in the case of Sta Maria sopra Minerva and the Chapel of the Santa Scala, never admitted them in buildings of importance, except in the decorations of

portations. In the latter, details from the Cathedral at Udine between Venice and Trieste seem to have been the favourite models.

CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY distind and subordinate parts, such as tabernacles, shrines and tombs.

The paucity of monuments left by the Middle Ages in Rome is one of the disappointing realities in the modern conditions of that city, but easily to be accounted for by reference to the historic circumstances of those times, so troublous and continually agitated by the shocks of contending parties, in a metropolis whose misfortune it was to exist under a government never stridly defined or guaranteed from disorder, by a general and royal recognition of constituted authority. The senate and aristocracy on the one hand, the popes and their ecclesiastical ministers on the other, and at a distance the vague but powerfully supported claims of the Emperors of the West, produced in the aggregate a confusion contributing to render this city, perhaps, the most unquiet centre for social life throughout that period understood in the term “medieval.” Whilst magnificent cathedrals were rising into grandeur of completeness at Pisa, Siena, Florence and Milan, Rome produced nothing worthy of an enduring place among the great monuments of Christian faith and genius; and during the period most eventful to the study of revived art in Italy her pontiffs were spending their lives in inglorious exile at Avignon, leaving their capital to its gloomy destinies, ruinous, depopulated and torn by fa&ions.

The classical taste can hardly ever be said to have been quite extind in Italy ; her iarchite<5ture, throughout the whole period from the decline to the revival of the arts, bears traces of it, and therefore we cannot wonder at seeing it obtain an early and complete ascendancy, the effect of which was felt by degrees at a distance.

In England, it is needless to remind my readers that, roughly speaking, the history of Gothic architecture begins with the Norman Conquest and ends with the Reformation. During this period of about five hundred years it passed through a certain career of continual movement. It never rested. So it is with all human enterprises that are worth anything, they never rest ; there is nothing peculiar in this respeCt about architecture. Not only so, but in different localities the “mode” came to be carried out with great variety.

Under special influences also, as, for instance, those of the irival religious organizations, there arose of necessity certain corresponding schools of art. Then as now, no doubt, every designer considered that to do a thing well he must do it himself ; and it was almost impossible to find anyone so devoid of self-confidence as to fail to take occasion to improve upon the work of everybody else.

The natural consequence of this is that, while the Gothic cathedrals and churches of England, and to a great extent those of France and Germany, are replete with variety, the student can have little or no hesitation about assigning its proper date to each.

The ecclesiastical architecture of Italy reverses this. Up to a certain period the history of Gothic art in that country can be said to have run parallel with that of the Northern nations, but no one style held undisputed sway. The subject is a vast one for several reasons. Chief among them must be reckoned the foreign influences which introduced strange novelties into a large part of Italy, particularly into that of which this volume is designed to treat,* a fertile

#It lay mainly in what used to be the Veneto-Lombardic kingdom, extending in one dire&ion from Trent to Bologna, and in another from Ravenna to Genoa, the whole district being of all Italy north of the Apennines the richest in typical examples.

and prosperous region which has since the decline of the Roman Empire attracted invaders from all parts, many of whom seized large tracts of territory, and each race bringing with it its own peculiar style of architecture, of which countless monuments still exist. Thus in Sicily we find the Norman and Arabo-Norman ; in Ravenna, the Byzantine; in the North, the Lombard; each of which styles has characteristics differing from the rest. Again, every petty State affected certain peculiarities, either in plan or detail, producing the differences which distinguish the churches of Pavia and Bergamo from those of Pisa and Lucca, Venice and Verona. And if to these causes we add the wandering companies of Freemasons who traversed the country, apparently hailing from Germany, and who have bequeathed at intervals specimens of their art far purer in style than the productions of native talent, it is easy to understand what discernment is required in presenting a general scheme of architectural classification which shall embrace all the differing varieties of style, and to enable the student to form a clear idea of the date of a church from its architecture.

All that I propose attempting in this preparatory chapter is to give some insight into the principles which guided the progress of North Italian church art generally, and to endeavour to describe some of the most distinguishing marks of the different schools, so that the reader may be able to distinguish one style from another, and also be able to decide which churches were built in a comparatively earlier or later period according to the knowledge of construction displayed in them. It is necessary, however, at starting to warn the prospective visitor to Northern Italy that he must be prepared for not a few bitter disappointments. In far too many instances work of the Romanesque and Early Pointed periods has been concealed by the restorations and additions to which the cathedrals and churches were subjected between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.* Still frequently under the superimposed mass of baroque decoration, a shaft, a moulding, or a piece of foliaged ornament can be discerned, speaking of a period of primitive simplicity.

Some of the earliest buildings eredted for the purposes of worship are to be found in Rome, the native soil of Christianity. I say some only, for under Constantine, in whose reign the Christians first enjoyed peace, churches were ere&ed simultaneously in Rome, Constantinople and Jerusalem. These were, generally speaking, similar in plan and arrangement.

During the first three centuries of the Christian era churches can scarcely be said to have existed. The ordinary places of worship of the early Christians were confined to catacombs and other secret places.