Chapter 7 - Religious Architecture and Mathematics During the Late Antiquity

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the religious architecture. In the Bible, the Temple was a copy of the heavenly Temple “prepared by Thee from the beginning”. The design of the Temple was not left to the architect's personal inspiration. It had been decided by God himself. The earthly Temple was built according to a heavenly plan that was communicated to man through a prophet who acted as intermediary: for the Ark, it was Noah who served as intermediary; for the Tabernacle, it was Moses; for the Temple of Solomon, the intermediary was David, who had received the measurements from God. The four models given by Holy Scripture referred to by the founding fathers of the church were: Noah's Ark, the Tabernacle, the Temple of Solomon, and New Jerusalem. Saint Irenaeus of Lyon wrote about the Ark, which was a copy of the heavenly Temple. The cosmic symbolism of the Tabernacle was set out by Philo of Alexandria: the two-part division of the Tabernacle—the Holy for material things, the Holy of Holies for spiritual matters—was an image of the world. The tituli votivi often refers to the Temple of Solomon: they draw a parallel between the building and the Temple of Solomon. In this way, the person who founded the church is identified with Solomon, the king who had built the Temple in Jerusalem.