Crypt - Development

Development

First known in the early Christian period, in particular North Africa at Chlef and Djemila in Algeria, and Byzantium at Saint John Studio in Constantinople. Where Christian churches have been built over mithraea, the mithraeum has often been adapted to serve as a crypt.

The famous crypt at Old St. Peter's Basilica, Rome, developed about the year 600, as a means of affording pilgrims a view of Saint Peter's tomb, which lay, according to the Roman fashion, directly below the high altar. The tomb was made accessible through an underground passageway beneath the sanctuary, where pilgrims could enter at one stair, pass by the tomb and exit, without interrupting the clerical community's service at the altar directly above.

Crypts were introduced into Frankish church building in the mid-8th century, as a feature of its Romanization. Their popularity then spread more widely in western Europe under Charlemagne. Examples from this period are most common in the early medieval West, for example in Burgundy at Dijon and Tournus.

After the 10th century the early medieval requirements of a crypt faded, as church officials permitted relics to be held in the main level of the church. By the Gothic period crypts were rarely built, however burial vaults continued to be constructed beneath churches and referred to as crypts.