But we must trace the derivation of a new element which is combined with the Lombard type in the wilds of Germany. In the ninth century, on the designs of a Greek artist, rose the cathedral of Saint Mark, at Venice, the largest Byzantine church in Italy. Saint Anthony of Padua bore this eastern element still nearer its destined goal, and at Pisa it was absorbed into the older and mightier element; but the perfect manner of amalgamation did not obliterate either of the original components. The cathedral at Pisa, whose architect was Buschetto, a Greek, was built in the beginning of the eleventh century, and was completely differenced from the previous basilicas by the addition of transepts, thus assuming the form of a Latin cross. Just half a century earlier, the beautiful church of Saint Miniato, near Florence, had presented the first coupled piers, and made the first timid attempt at vaulting the nave. But the Pisan progress went much further, by boldly extending the Ravenna apse into a spacious choir beyond the transepts, with well-defined triforium galleries over the pier arches. These are all striking approximations toward consummate art, but we still have a five-aisled basilica with the aisles vaulted, and a flat wooden roof covering the nave. The most observable feature of the exterior is the extravagant display of columns and other members not essential to the construction. Arcades rise over arcades, and orders succeed to orders almost without end. All which in the temples of Athens had been rectangular and symmetrical, in the Byzantine churches, and all under their influence, became curved, dwarfed, and rounded; so that, after the Romans had deprived the Greek architecture of its consistency, the Christian Greeks themselves obliterated every trace of excellence yet spared by the Romans, and made the architecture of their heathen ancestors owe its final annihilation to the same nation to whom it had been indebted for its glorious growth.