The Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople: A Study of Byzantine Building

Sancta Sophia is the most interesting building on the world’s surface. Like Karnak in Egypt, or the Athenian Parthenon, it is one of the four great pinnacles of architecture, but unlike them this is no ruin, nor does it belong to a past world of constructive ideas although it precedes by seven hundred years the fourth culmination of the building art in Chartres, Amiens, or Bourges, and thus must ever stand as the supreme monument of the Christian cycle. Far from being a ruin, the church is one of the best preserved of so ancient monuments, and in regard to its treatment by the Turks we can only be grateful that S. Sophia has not been situated in the more learned cities of Europe, such as Rome, Aachen, or Oxford, during “the period of revived interest in ecclesiastical antiquities.” Our first object has been to attempt some disentanglement of the history of the Church and an analysis of its design and construction; on the one hand, we have been led a step or two into the labyrinth of Constantinopolitan topography, on the other, we have thought that the great Church offers the best point of view for the observation of the Byzantine theory of building.

It may be well for us to state how, in the main, we have shared our work. The one of us—by the accident of the alphabet, second named—has done the larger part of the reading and the whole of the translation required. The first has undertaken more of the constructive side of the book and the whole of the illustrations. We both visited Constantinople, and wish to thank Canon Curtis for help then and since. Mr. Ambrose Poynter has read the proofs. In our text we have thought it well to incorporate so far as possible the actual words of the writers to whom we have referred. The dates when the more ancient authors wrote are given under their names in the index; so are the years of the accession of the Emperors mentioned in the text. Although we have made full use of Salzenberg’s great work in the preparation of some of our illustrations, none are mere transcripts from his book. In some instances where scales are given to details, the scales are but rough approximations.

Much remains to be observed at S. Sophia; the Baptistery, the Cisterns beneath the church, and the Circular Building to the east are practically unknown, and any fact noted in regard to them will almost certainly be new. But it is still more important that building customs, recipes, and traditions should be recorded. Byzantine art still exists not only on Mount Athos but all over the once Christian East—at Damascus the builders are still Christians, and the Greek masons of Turkey, M. Choisy says, are still the faithful representatives of the builders of the Lower Empire, and their present practice is a sure commentary on the ancient buildings.