PASTORIO. – The Hellenistic taste led the builders of Christian basilicas to conceal the rounded apse behind a straight wall, thus creating, beside the sanctuary, two more or less large chambers to which two passages in the Apostolic Constitutions (II, 57 and VIII, 13) give the name of pastophoria (from pastos = cell; gōvia = to carry). This architectural type spread from Syria to the Christian basilicas of other regions, especially Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Ravenna.
In pagan usage the word designated the niche or small edicule in which Egyptian priests carried the image of the deity. It is generally said that the northern chamber 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 liturgical vessels and vestments were kept. But recent archaeological investigations by 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 a partial revision of this too simple conception. It is admitted that in the 4th century in Syrian churches these two chambers could serve different, not better-defined purposes; but in the 5th century one of them, generally the southern, 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 wished to touch the reliquary and draw oil from it, access to this pastophorion was enlarged by an arch above the entrance. The other pastophorion, on the other hand, gave access to the sanctuary through a small low door and could serve as a sacristy, receiving various names such as diaconicon, gazophylakion, or skeuophylakion (cf. also BASILICHE; DIACONICON).