Carlos Bethencourt

The transformation of the Roman Empire is known as an Empire that had collapse in a glance, but the real fact is that the Roman Empire had gradually changed over more than a century, basically transforming from a pagan empire to a Christian one. A new religion was emerging and also a new empire, lead by the Christian authority.

After the Roman Empire fell, there was no central government to commission buildings. But the Christian authority takes over whatever is left from the Empire and takes the lead. New buildings were made and a whole new era started growing. All the new buildings had to have a Christian presence, in fact, these buildings were created only because of the Christian church and for the need of a facility where the faithful could gather together and share the faith. For example, in the case of Constantine, he took the basilicas and changed it into the first churches ever made. Roth says, “ The basilica had originally been devised for public gatherings… It was a simple matter to replace the small altar devoted to the emperor with one at which the Eucharist, or ritual communal mean, could be celebrated” (Roth 280). I was then that the presences of Christianity made Constantine build the first basic Churches.

Later on, buildings started to develop and become bigger and bigger together with Christianity. So much that new buildings were created just and only for monks. These types of buildings were called monasteries.  These monasteries had a strong presence of Christian meaning since only monks and nuns lived there. Sometimes the monasteries had a duality function, that is, it also hosted the few newcomers that traveled from the outside. In other words, the monasteries were set apart of society purposely so that the monks and nuns had no contact with the outside world, but it also worked as a hotel for visitors during the middle ages.

Also “ these monasteries provided throughout the West the stabilizing international influence that had formally been exercised by the roman government bureaucracy”(Roth 308). This aspect was very important, because the fact that these monasteries were stabilizing international influence meant that there was finally some kind of order in the world of art and architecture. But still after that, there is a strong precedent of Roman and Greek architecture, working as a guide for the subsequent events and that is what precedent means. But since there was no specific correct way to build, a lot of experimenting was made in regard of building styles and ideas. Out of this Roman and Greek precedent, new idea emerged with time, such as Gothic, Renaissance, etc.

The moments of the middle ages had arrived. These moments in history are describe as Early Middle Ages (450 to 1000), the High Middle Ages (1000 to 1500), and Late Middle ages (1150 to 1500). In every moment we find different aspects of how buildings and art evolved. In the case of the early middle Ages basically “includes the end of the Roman Empire and the subsequent Dark Ages”(Roth301). Later the high middle Ages were “characterized by the development of a more stable feudal system, the gradual resumption of travel and trade across Europe”(Roth301). This era was interesting because the remarkable Carolingian renaissance had emerged trying to recapture the classical achievements. Also the Gothic had emerged in this moment. But there was also the metric standard of measurement introduced. The geometrical order was used to create a better space within the buildings. The geometrical order had only been possible with the metric measurement.

This week prompts we focused on the development of architecture and art after the fall of the Roman Empire. The fact that Rome had collapsed had the world in this complete darkness where people did not know what to do. The feudal system, building projects and many things more had just disappeared. But Christianity had been growing all this time and managed to take over the disaster creating a “Cesaropapism” regime.  Christianity became the presence of every building made after the Roman Empire fell and since there was no one to look for advice, there was a lot of experimenting in regard of building. New ideas of architecture emerged out of this darkness, such as, the Romanesque that later was better known as Gothic.  In short, we see that all this time art and architecture had been growing in different ways by different voices telling them what to do and nothing was wrong or right.