Christian building, either detached or part of a larger structure, that may be intended for worship. but is neither a parochial nor a neighbourhood church, and may not be for the use of the faithful as a whole. Owing to its great diversity of function, nature, style, and historical period, the chapel does not have a specific form. A tradition states that the term is derived from the cape (Lat. capella) of St Martin, the half given to the beggar being preserved in a special, separate building. The origins of the chapel as a defined liturgical area may be traced to the Early Christian tradition of martyria: funerary and reliquary buildings of the kind founded by Constantine the Great on the sites of events in the New Testament (see Martyrium). These can be seen as the source of large separate buildings (or attached structures and exedrae), which are themselves precursors of chapels dedicated to saints and martyrs, to the personal remains and/or possessions of such people, or to other holy figures. Byzantine churches of, for example, the 4th and 5th centuries ...