History of Europe, ancient and medieval: Earliest man, the Orient, Greece and Rome . nts were constantly performing. Theyhealed the sick, made the blind to see and the lame to walk. Theycalled down Gods wrath upon those who opposed the Churchand invoked terrible punishments upon those who treated herholy rites with contempt. To the reader of to-day the fre-quency of the miracles narrated by medieval writers seems as-tonishing. The lives of the medieval saints, of which hundredsand hundreds have been preserved, contain little else than ac-counts of them, and no one appears to have doubted their
History of Europe, ancient and medieval: Earliest man, the Orient, Greece and Rome . nts were constantly performing. Theyhealed the sick, made the blind to see and the lame to walk. Theycalled down Gods wrath upon those who opposed the Churchand invoked terrible punishments upon those who treated herholy rites with contempt. To the reader of to-day the fre-quency of the miracles narrated by medieval writers seems as-tonishing. The lives of the medieval saints, of which hundredsand hundreds have been preserved, contain little else than ac-counts of them, and no one appears to have doubted their everydayoccurrence. The Rise oj the Papacy 309 479. The Early Churches. A word should be said of the earlyChristian church buildings. The Romans were accustomed tobuild near their market places a species of public hall, in whichtownspeople could meet one another to transact business and inwhich judges could hear cases and public officials attend totheir duties. These buildings, as we have seen, were called basili-cas. There were several magnificent ones in Rome itself, and there. Fig. 76. Santa Maria Maggiore This beautiful church at Rome was built shortly after Constantines time, and the interior, here shown, with its stately columns, above which are fine mosaics, is still nearly as it was in the time of St. Augustine, fifteen hundred years ago. The ceiling is of the sixteenth century was doubtless at least one to be found in every town of consider-able size. The roofs of these spacious halls were usually sup-ported by long rows of columns ; sometimes there were two rowson each side, forming aisles. When, after Constantine had givenhis approval to Christianity, large, fine churches began to be builtthey were constructed like these familiar public halls and, likethem, were called basilicas. During the sixteen hundred years that have passed since Con-stantines time naturally almost all the churches of his day have 3IO History oj Europe disappeared or been greatly altered. But t
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