Crypt

(Gr. κρύπτη, a concealed place; Lat. crypta; Fr. crypte).

I. Among the ancient Greeks and Romans a crypt was primarily a long, narrow gallery, above the level of the ground, surrounding a court-yard, and having walls on both of its sides, with windows in the wall facing the court. These crypts had often a portico lining them or running between them and the open court. They served as a place of promenade during the hot or wet weather, and were finally so extensively used that they were even built for the officers near the Praetorian camps in Rome. Crypts similar in construction and location were built for storing wines, vegetables, and other articles, like the modern subterranean cellar. When all the windows were closed they were dark and cool, and hence the word was applied even by the ancients to any dark and long chamber or passage, as the dark stables where horses were kept under the amphi-theater, the cloaca maxima at Rome, the tunnel at Naples, and to a grotto where Quartilla offered sacrifice.

II. The word crypt was applied by the early Christians to those subterranean burial-places which were afterwards called Catacombs (q.v.). The term was later limited to the larger chambers in the Catacombs where one or more martyrs were buried. These crypts were larger than the other rooms in the Catacombs, and were often ornamented, and devoted to divine worship. For this purpose they were double, one part serving for the men and the other for the women, with small antechambers for the catechumens. Some of these crypts had openings into the fields above.

III. When persecution ceased, and Christians built church edifices above ground, the custom was adopted of placing the remains of martyrs — later of archbishop, bishops, abbots, and other high church officials — in crypts under the intersection of the cross in the plan of the church. In the Basilican period of architecture these crypts were often called by the name confessio. In. the Romanesque period the name crypt was resumed. In the churches of this period, the crypt extended under the high altar and back under the entire choir or apsis, sometimes even including the space under the transept. This crypt formed almost a separate church, and caused the floor above it of the main body of the church to be raised higher than that of the nave, to which the audience had access. Churches founded in the latter part of the Romanesque period, and thereafter, had no crypts. The reason of their disappearance from church architecture is not well understood. — Liibke, Geschichte der Architektur; Rich, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.

(Greek: krypte, hidden) A secret recess or vault. The origin of the crypts of the Middle Ages was the custom which prevailed in Rome, after the catacombs became disused, of bringing martyrs into the city and burying them in tombs under churches. In the basilicas these tombs were called confessiones. The terms is sometimes applied to the lower story of a two-storied building. Such a crypt might be fully above ground and lighted by windows.

(Or LOWER CHURCH).The word originally meant a hidden place, natural or artificial, suitable for the concealment of persons or things. When visits to the burial-places without the walls of Rome fell into disuse there ensued a curious change. The Church, no longer able to go out to honour the martyrs, brought the martyrs within the walls, and instead of building churches above the tombs, dug tombs under the churches in which the precious relics were deposited. This was the origin, first of the confessio of the basilicas, and, at a later period, of the crypt which answered the same purpose in the churches of the early Middle Ages. In this way the Romanesque crypt is the direct descendant of the hypogoeum or excavation of the early Christian catacomb. The term crypt is sometimes used to signify the lower story of a two-storied building, e.g. the lower chapel of the Sainte-Chapelle at Paris, and, of the church San Francesco at Assisi; and in England the overground ground crypt of St. Ethelredra’s Chapel in London which is all that remains of the great episcopal palace called Ely Place.The crypt has a long and venerable history. What was done at Rome set a precedent for Christendom in general. There is an early example of a crypt at Ravenna, at Sant’ Apollinare in Classe (534). At first crypts were sometimes as deepsunk as the cubicula of the catacombs themselves, e.g. in Saint-Germain, at Auxerre, and in the Chartres cathedral. Or they were but partly above ground, and were lighted by small windows windows placed in their side walls, e.g. Ernulph’s crypt at Canterbury. Occasionally their floor was but little below the surface of the ground, as in the eastern crypt at Canterbury; or it was on a level with the pavement of the nave, as in San Miniato, Florence In these latter cases the crypt practically became a second or lower church, e.g. St. Faith’s, under old St. Paul’s, London. Such a crypt, however, entailed a raised choir; hence it is that one ascends high flights of steps to such choirs as those of San Miniato, Rochester, Canterbury, etc. Almost all the crypts now found in England were built during the Norman period, or very early, in the pointed style, That at Glasgow, however, belongs to the perfected style of thirteenth century. Here the crypt extends under and beyond the whole choir. Had there been an opening in the centre of the vault (and it is by no means clear that one was not originally intended), it would be more like a German double church than anything found in England. The earliest crypts in England are those of Hexham and Ripon. In eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries crypts developed into magnificent churches, like those of Gloucester, Rochester, Worcester, Winchester, St. Peter’s at Oxford, Bayeux, Chartres, Saintes, Bourges, Holy, Trinity at Caen, Padua, Florence, Pavia, Palermo and Modena.----------------------------------- GAILHABARD, Ancient and Modern Architecture (London, 1844) II; CARTER, Ancient Architecture of England (London, 18877); BOND, Gothic Architecture in England (New York, 1906); BROWN, From Schola to Cathedral (Edinburgh, 1886); LOWERIE, Monuments of the Early Church (London, 1906); SPENCE, The White Robe of Churches (New York, 1905); BANISTER, A History of Arch. (New York, 1905); PARKER, Glossary of Arch. (London, 1845). THOMAS H. POOLE Transcribed by Wm Stuart French, Jr. Dedicated to Most Rev. John J. Russell The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IVCopyright © 1908 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat. Remy Lafort, CensorImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York