PASTOPHORION. - Hellenistic taste led the builders of Christian basilicas to conceal the apse's rotunda behind a straight wall; hence the creation, beside the sanctuary, of two spaces more or less large, to which two passages of the Apostolic Constitutions (II, 57 and VIII, 13) give the name παστοφόρικ (from πάστος = cell; φόρτιο = to carry). This architectural type radiated from Syria into the Christian basilicas of other regions, especially in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Greece and Ravenna.
The word, in pagan usage, designated the niche or small aedicula in which Egyptian priests carried the image of the deity. It is generally said that the northern room was the prothesis, the place where the faithful deposited their offerings and where the priests prepared the elements of the Eucharistic sacrifice, and the southern one the diaconicon, where the liturgical vessels and vestments were kept. But the recent archaeological investigations of J. Lassus, Sanctuaires chrétiens de Syrie. Essai sur la genèse, la forme et l'usage liturgique des édifices du culte chrétien, en Syrie, du IIIe siècle à la conquête musulmane (Paris 1947), lead to changing in part that overly simple conception. It is admitted that in the 4th century in the churches of Syria these two spaces could be used for different purposes, not better determined, but in the 5th century one of the two, generally the southern one, received a new destination that broke the symmetry of the building; it became a martyrion where the relics of a saint were placed; and since the faithful wanted to touch the reliquary and take oil from it, the access to this p. was enlarged with an arch above the entrance. The other p., instead, gave passage to the sanctuary through a small low door and could serve as a sacristy and receive various names, diaconicon, gazophylàkion or skenophylàkion (v. also BASILICHE; DIACONICOM).