Corpus Architecturae Religiosae Europeae (IV-X seac.) - Introduction

The authors deliver a short history of the project Corpus architecturae religiosae europeae (IV-X saec.), begun in 2001: the corpus aims to catalogue the religious buildings of Europe between the 4th and the very beginning of the 11th centuries. Not only will the corpus be an unified catalogue of all European late antique and early medieval ecclesiastical buildings, and thus a comprehensive working tool for the standardization of data, providing plans to a uniform model, but it will also attempt (in the synthesis volumes) to interpret their function and meaning and the relationship between the different churches in each area. In this way, the corpus will be a first step towards new research on Christian architecture and a starting point from which to develop different new interpretations. The first results are reported, such as the chronological framework, the catalogue form, and the structure of the volumes.