H03 Bosra — Church 1 – Northeast Insulae Project

Howard Crosby Butler, Early Churches in Syria: Fourth to Seventh Centuries, Princeton Monographs in Art and Archaeology (Princeton, N.J.: Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, 1929), 119, fig. 117.

Summary information

Location
Description

Another much ruined church in Bosra presents a novelty of interior arrangement. Here we have what seems like a basilica of the ordinary type divided into six bays by columns, like those of Northern Syria (Ill. 117); but at the second bay from the east end the columns were replaced by two cruciform piers, and two pilaster piers in the walls carried three transverse arches across the aisles. The columns to the west of this are all represented by bases or standing columns; the two east of the transverse arches have been restored in the plan. The church is in such a dilapidated state that it is impossible to discover whether there actually were columns at these points, or whether broad, high arches connected the cruciform piers with the responds beside the apse.
Howard Crosby Butler, Early Churches in Syria: Fourth to Seventh Centuries, Princeton Monographs in Art and Archaeology (Princeton, N.J.: Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, 1929), 118–19
Phasing
Bibliogaphy

Characteristics

Apse
- Inscribed mono-apsidal apse with rooms on both sides of the apse
Chancel
- Chancel limited to the apse.
Furnishings/decoration
- Unknown
Flooring
- unknown
Entrances
- Two west entrances
- South entrance
Annexed spaces
- None stated.
Baptistry (if present)
- None
Mulholland protocol
Constantinopolitan
- Protruding apse
- Entrances from the east on either side of the apse
- Π-shaped chancel
- Multiple entrances on all sides
- Ambo on the south
- Exterior chapel to the north
Syrian
- Π-shaped chancel
- Inscribed mono-apsidal
- Rooms on both sides of the apse
- West entrance
- Ambo on south
- Baptistry in room south of the apse or in the south aisle
- Separate south chapel
- South entrances from side rooms/chapels
Roman
- Τ-shaped or bar-shaped chancel
- Tri-apsidal usually inscribed
- Altars in the side apses
- Relics and Reliquaries
- Ambo to the north
- Baptistry outside off the atrium or the north aisle
- Marble furnishings (high status imperial association) and imported fine wares
- Decorative elements on chancel screens [specify]
- Separate north chapel
Syrian to Roman conversion
- Τ-shaped or bar-shaped chancel replacing Π-shaped chancel
- Side apses inserted into rooms adjacent to the main apse
- Separate north chapel (suppressed south chapel)
- Liturgical furniture with decorative motifs like those at St. Clemente in Rome