Advancing Knowledge on liturgical practice and worship

Understanding the role of worship, liturgy and the Christian faith, within the Church as well as within a broader spiritual context, is fundamental to comprehending the synchronous development between the role of liturgy and changing in architectural form of physical churches. There is a clear link between the progression of Christianity as a practised faith and the evolution in the function of a church or religious space, which in turn allowed for these architectural changes.

In the first few centuries of Christianity, churches were not built for a variety of reasons; Christianity was not a legally recognised religion amongst Europe and the Roman Empire and therefore faced oppression, which in turn meant that Christians would practice liturgy in ‘private homes’. This method of liturgy made for interesting sonic characteristics, it was the beginning of the idea of “collective singing” and “chanting”. These intimate spaces where these verses were performed allowed for a more collective and community type of worship that valued the human voice and acoustic intimacy; an idea that is carried on up until and through the construction of ‘proper’, public spaces of worship, particularly longitudinal basilicas. As Christianity developed as a faith and a religion, differences between “eastern” and “western perspectives began to arise regarding theological ideas.

“Eastern” or “orthodox” perspectives expanded further east from Greece and present-day Turkey and maintained ‘architectural and spatial legacy of early Byzantine churches’, a characteristic that is underlined by traditional orthodox worship ritual; people would value individualistic worship less and would put more focus on community. This division gave Orthodox Christians more freedom to construct more centrally-planned churches (such as the Hagia Sofia) in order to be able to achieve this ‘cosmic intermingling’ between heaven and earth; sound would travel upwards, from floor to top of the dome, and back downwards as though voices were emanating from heaven or angels. Aside from liturgical practice, a centrally-planned church allowed people to congregate easier in order to communicate with God as a community. It can be perceived that orthodox perspective placed more value on the idea of sound as a communicative