Crypt
The etymology of the word crypt ( to hide ) indicates its significance rather well. The first crypts (also called in the past crutes , crusts or caves ) or caves crowned were cut in the rock or were built under the ground, for hiding with the eyes of the laymen the tombs of the martyrs; later, above these hypogean S venerated by the first Christians, one raised Chapelle S and vast church S; then one establishes crypts under the buildings intended for the worship to contain there the bodies of the saints collected by the piety of the faithful ones. Many of our old churches have crypts which go back to one very moved back time: the ones are only square rooms, arched in cradle or edges, according to the ancient method, decorated sometimes only of fragmets of columns, and coarsely imitated capitals of Roman architecture; others are true underground churches with collateral, Abside S and Absidiole S. One usually penetrates in the crypts by staircases which emerge on the two sides of the sanctuary, or even in the axis of the chorus.
The churches of France and the edges of the the Rhine present a large variety in the provision and the shape of their crypts; several are built with a certain luxury, are decorated paintings, columns of marble and capitals historiés, and are enough vast to contain a great number of faithful; they generally have two staircases, in order to allow the many pilgrims who came to beseech the assistance of the saints whose remainders were deposited under the vaults, to go down processionnellement by one from the degrees and to go up by the other. One thus avoided the disorder and confusion.
The crypts, except rare exceptions, receive day by narrow windows open on the outside of the church, or the sides of the sanctuary. This last provision appears to be adopted when the crypts were dug under the choruses of the Romance churches surrounded by collateral. Thus the openings which gave air and light in the crypt emerged in the enclosure of the devoted place. Then the choruses were high above the paving stone of the circumference, which added to the solemnity of the religious ceremonies, and what made it possible even the assistance to see, of the side, which occurred in the crypt. The majority of the Rhenish churches still preserve this provision, which we see adopted in a small church of which some parts appear to go back to the 6th century; we want to speak about the church of Saint-Martin-with-Valley of Chartres. “One penetrated originally in the crypt”, says Mr. Paul Durand, in the faithful description which it gave of this building, “by two small doors placed on the right and on the left of its Western part. These doors still exist… It is probable that formerly the spectator, placed in the great nave, could see the interior of the crypt by a median opening, or two side openings practiced in its Western face, as one still sees it in several churches of the center and of the west of France…” There is between the ground of the sanctuary raised and that of the side a sufficient difference in level so that one could practice windows in the base of the arcades of the chorus, so as to light the crypt, and to make it possible to see the interior of this crypt, of which the vaults rest on two lines of four posts each one. Although the church was mutilated and rebuilt partly on several occasions, the bases of the posts of the crypt and some primitive capitals are of a work which belongs to one very moved back time, close still to arts of the Lower Empire, and presenting all the characters of the sculpture of the famous crypt of the Ferté-sous-Jouarre
Source: Purple the Duke
See also
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