“To date the research on the church architecture in Nubia has consistently failed to differentiate, territorially and historically, between two different Nubian kingdoms” (Godlewski 2006b) and one could add the third, Alodian, kingdom to this. The author’s involvement in a project to publish the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago excavations at the Qasr el-Wizz monastery has generated this study of the early architectural history of the katholikon at Qasr el-Wizz and its development, analyzed in the context of studies on Nubian Christianity. Due to a rampant misuse of terminology referring to the functional parts of churches in Nubian studies, a review of this vocabulary was deemed essential as a background for a presentation of the late George T. Scanlon’s views on the development of this particular church, followed by the present author’s addenda et corrigenda, and a discussion and conclusions for the study of Christian Nubian sacral architecture.