A church order in eight books, compiled in Syria in the later fourth century from older manuals and presented as the teaching of the apostles. Its second book tells the bishop how the church building and the assembly within it are to be arranged.
The compiler reworked the third-century Didascalia and other church orders into a single manual of discipline and worship. Book II, on the duties of bishops, includes a short passage on the assembly: the building should be long and turned toward the east, with rooms for the clergy on each side at the east end, so that it resembles a ship; the bishop’s throne stands in the middle with the presbyters seated on either side; the deacons stand by, the laity sit in order, men apart from women, with door-keepers at the men’s doors and deaconesses at the women’s.
The passage is the earliest text that prescribes the eastward orientation of the church building itself rather than of the praying congregation. It reflects the practice of the Greek East; in Rome, Constantine’s great basilicas of the 310s and 320s had turned their entrances to the east and their apses to the west.
The book, part by part
I Book II.57: the assembly
The church oblong and turned to the east, like a ship; vestries at the east end; the bishop’s throne in the middle; the order of clergy and people.