The type of church which we have described influenced church architecture in Italy down to the eleventh century, and such buildings as the beautiful church (Fig. 155) of San Miniato, near Florence (A.D. 1013), and the renowned group of Cathedral, Baptistery, Campanile, and Campo Santo (a kind of cloistered cemetery) at Pisa, bear a very strong resemblance in many respects to these originals; though they belong rather to the Romanesque than to the Basilican division of early Christian architecture. FOOTNOTE: [28] 'Gothic and Renaissance Architecture,' chap. ii. p. 6. [Illustration: FIG. 158a.--FRIEZE FROM THE MONASTERY AT FULDA.] CHAPTER XII. BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE. Constantine the Great, who by establishing the Christian religion had encouraged the erection of basilicas for Christian worship in Rome and Italy, effected a great political change, and one destined to exert a marked influence upon Christian architecture, when he removed the seat of empire from Rome to Byzantium, and called the new capital Constantinople,[29] after his own name. Byzantium had been an ancient place, but was almost in ruins when Constantine, probably attracted by the unrivalled advantages of its site,[30] rebuilt it, or at least re-established it as a city. The solemn inauguration of Constantinople as the new capital took place A.D. 330; and when, under Theodosius, the empire was divided, this city became the capital of the East. With a new point of departure among a people largely of Greek race, we might expect that a new development of the church from some other type than the basilica might be likely to show itself. This, in fact, is what occurred; for while the most ancient churches of Rome all present, as we have seen, an almost slavish copy of an existing type of building, and do not attempt the use of vaulted roofs, in Byzantium buildings of most original design sprang up, founded, it is true, on Roman originals, but by no means exact copies of them. In the erection of these churches the most difficult problems of construction were successfully encountered and solved. What may have been the course which architecture ran during the two centuries between the refounding of Byzantium and the building of Santa Sophia under Justinian, we can, however, only infer from its outcome. It is doubtful if any church older than the sixth century now remains in Constantinople; but it is certain that, to attain the power of designing and erecting so great a work as Santa Sophia, the architects of Constantinople must have continued and largely modified the Roman practice of building vaults and domes. There is every probability that if some of the early churches in Byzantium were domed structures others may have been vaulted basilicas; the more so as the very ancient churches in Syria, which owed their origin to Byzantium rather than to Rome, are most of them of the basilica type.