Concerning the Transept Basilicas on the Southern Coast of Anatolia in Late Antiquity

Abstract

The transept, in the most general sense, is the transverse unit of a basilical church located between the nave and the apse. Since it did not originate from Roman architecture and was rarely included in church planning, several scholars have attempted to understand whether the transept functioned differently from ordinary basilicas since the beginning of the 20^th century. Transept basilicas spread over a wide geographical area during Late Antiquity, between the 4^th and the 6^th centuries, and ceased to be employed after the 6^th century in the eastern part of the empire, while they continued to be a substantial unit of churches from the Carolingian through the Romanesque and Gothic periods in the West. Although most transept basilicas seem to occur in Anatolia, no extensive study has been published to date concerning this church type. From this point of view, this study deals with the typology and possible functions of transept basilicas in Anatolia, with special reference to the southern part where the vast majority of the examples were found. Within the scope of this work, including my personal observations on many sites, we can conclude that the transept churches in Anatolia occur in urban environments rather than the countryside and may have functioned mainly as ordinary parish churches, as well as, albeit apparently less often, as episcopal, memorial and funerary.