Before the end, however, of the fourth century the strong hand of Theodosius had imposed peace; and building activities were resumed. The ruins of Gethsemane, whose earliest basilica dates from this period, indicate that Christian architecture had already become to a certain extent emancipated from classical traditions: the rigid proportions of the classical basilica have undergone modification, and ornamental sculpture has assumed a new form. This emancipation proceeded farther during the first quarter of the fifth century, when the generosity of the great Roman ladies, such as Paula and the two Melanias, who had established themselves in Jerusalem, gave a fresh impetus to religious building. The interesting octagonal Church of the Ascension, of this period, introduced into Jerusalem a type of building as yet little known in the Christian world.
A particularly fruitful epoch for Jerusalem was inaugurated by the exiled Empress Eudocia, wife of Theodosius II. A zealous builder and possessed of an ardent devotion to the Holy Places, Eudocia was responsible for a large number of new constructions. Apart from churches of modified basilican type, such as the Martyrium of S. Stephen, and the Church of the Paralytic built over the Piscina Probatica, there begin to appear new types of buildings, such as the domed church over the Pool of Siloam, and, above all, the tri-apsidal church which survives to-day almost unchanged in the crypt of the Church of S. John the Baptist (cf. Part II., § 11). This church appears to be the earliest known dated example of a form in architecture subsequently introduced by Justinian in the Constantinian basilica at Bethlehem.
The curious domed edifices inside the Double Gate of the Haram enclosure, and the remarkable Golden Gate, also date in all probability from the time of Eudocia. Assisted by the development of monasticism and the donations of the Christian world to the Holy Places, the impetus given by the Empress to Christian architecture in Palestine endured until, in the first half of the sixth century, Justinian gave to it a new life and made of Jerusalem the ἅγια πόλις
