page_title: Basilica
section_title: Justinianic period
hierarchical_section_title: Basilica / Late Antiquity / Justinianic period
context_page_description: In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica is a large public building with multiple functions, typically built alongside the town's forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek East. The building gave its name to the architectural form of the basilica.
  Originally, a basilica was an ancient Roman public building, where courts were held, as well as serving other official and public functions. Basilicas are typically rectangular buildings with a central nave flanked by two or more longitudinal aisles, with the roof at two levels, being higher in the centre over the nave to admit a clerestory and lower over the side-aisles. An apse at one end, or less frequently at both ends or on the side, usually contained the raised tribunal occupied by the Roman magistrates. The basilica was centrally located in every Roman town, usually adjacent to the forum and often opposite a temple in imperial-era forums. Basilicas were also built in private residences and imperial palaces and were known as "palace basilicas".
  In late antiquity, church buildings were typically constructed either as martyria, or with a basilica's architectural plan.
context_section_description: Justinian I constructed at Ephesus a large basilica church, the Basilica of St John, above the supposed tomb of John the Apostle. The church was a domed cruciform basilica begun in 535/6; enormous and lavishly decorated, it was built in the same style as Justinian's Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. The Justinianic basilica replaced an earlier, smaller structure which Egeria had planned to visit in the 4th century, and remains of a 2,130 foot (650 m) aqueduct branch built to supply the complex with water probably dates from Justinian's reign. The Ephesians' basilicas to St Mary and St John were both equipped with baptisteries with filling and draining pipes: both fonts were flush with the floor and unsuitable for infant baptism. As with most Justinianic baptisteries in the Balkans and Asia Minor, the baptistery at the Basilica of St John was on the northern side of the basilica's nave; the 734 m² baptistery was separated from the basilica by a 3 m-wide corridor. According to the 6th century Syriac writer John of Ephesus, a Syriac Orthodox Christian, the heterodox Miaphysites held ordination services in the courtyard of the Basilica of St John under cover of night. Somewhat outside the ancient city on the hill of Selçuk, the Justinianic basilica became the centre of the city after the 7th century Arab–Byzantine wars.
  At Constantinople, Justinian constructed the largest domed basilica: on the site of the 4th century basilica Church of Holy Wisdom, the emperor ordered construction of the huge domed basilica that survives to the present: the Hagia Sophia. This basilica, which "continues to stand as one of the most visually imposing and architecturally daring churches in the Mediterranean", was the cathedral of Constantinople and the patriarchal church of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Hagia Sophia, originally founded by Constantine, was at the social and political heart of Constantinople, near to the Great Palace, the Baths of Zeuxippus, and the Hippodrome of Constantinople, while the headquarters of the Ecumenical Patriarchate was within the basilica's immediate vicinity.
  The mid-6th century Bishop of Poreč (Latin: Parens or Parentium; Ancient Greek: Πάρενθος, romanized: Párenthos) replaced an earlier 4th century basilica with the magnificent Euphrasian Basilica in the style of contemporary basilicas at Ravenna. Some column capitals were of marble from Greece identical to those in Basilica of San Vitale and must have been imported from the Byzantine centre along with the columns and some of the opus sectile. There are conch mosaics in the basilica's three apses and the fine opus sectile on the central apse wall is "exceptionally well preserved".
  The 4th century basilica at Serdica was rebuilt in the 5th century and ultimately replaced by a new basilica begun in the late 6th century and on which construction phases continued into the 8th century. This basilica was the cathedral of Serdica and was one of three basilicas known to lie outside the walls; three more churches were within the walled city, of which the Church of Saint George was a former Roman bath built in the 4th century, and another was a former Mithraeum. The basilicas were associated with cemeteries with Christian inscriptions and burials. Nearby the Church of Hagia Sophia, is a vaulted burial chamber with Christian painted decoration.
  
  The Miaphysite convert from the Church of the East, Ahudemmeh constructed a new basilica c.565 dedicated to Saint Sergius at ʿAin Qenoye (or ʿAin Qena according to Bar Hebraeus) after being ordained bishop of Beth ʿArbaye by Jacob Baradaeus and while proselytizing among the Bedouin of Arbayistan in the Sasanian Empire. According to Ahudemmeh's biographer this basilica and its martyrium, in the upper Tigris valley, was supposed to be a copy of the Basilica of St Sergius at Sergiopolis (Resafa), in the middle Euphrates, so that the Arabs would not have to travel so far on pilgrimage. More likely, with the support of Khosrow I for its construction and defence against the Nestorians who were Miaphysites' rivals, the b
caption: Justinianic Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, after 529.
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