SAINT SOPHIA AT CONSTANTINOPLE.* IT is surely a remarkable and
redeeming feature in the reputation of the unspeakable Tark that, in the midst of all the destruction with which he is credited, he has left practically
untouched the church of St. Sophia, the most ancient and greatest church of Christendom. Indeed, far more damage seems to have been done by the Crusaders when they sacked the church and crowned Baldwin in 1204, and for fifty-seven years superseded the Greek by the Latin rites. It was they,
and not the Turks, who destroyed the enamelled altar, " the holy table made of all kinds of precious materials, cemented together by fire, and formed into a many-coloured harmony, so as to be the wonder of all nations." The story of the salvation of the church is striking :—
" On the morrow, at the first capture of the city, the janissaries rushed to the great church, which they conceived was filled with gold, silver, and precious stones. They found the doors fastened, but broke them open and at once began to pillage. The Sultan, as soon as possible, rode to St. Sophia. Dismounting on the threshold he stooped down, and collecting some earth, let it fall on his turbaned head as an act of humiliation. Then he entered the edifice, but stopped in the doorway some moments and gazed in silence around him. He saw a Turk breaking the floor with an axe. Wherefore dolt thou that ? ' inquired the con- queror. 'For the faith,' replied the soldier. Mehemet, in an impulse of anger, struck him, saying, Ye have got enough by pillage and enslaving the city, the buildings are mine."
But at the hands of the Turks it has not escaped that most fatal enemy of ancient buildings, the restorer. In 1847 the Sultan, Abdul Mesj id, began to repair it under the guidance of an Italian architect, Fossati, and it is probably a too pro- fessional opinion which makes the authors say that "notwith-
standing some alterations and ' restorations' in the worst sense, he deserves our gratitude for probably saving the building."
It was all very well to put straight "thirteen columns of the gynasceum which were inclining under the thrust of the great arches which supported the dome ; " but to relieve the dome of four heavy buttress arches, whose function was taken by a double cincture of iron around its base, was a terrible form of " restoration." When one reads of these things, one always feels that the restoring architect is paid on the wrong basis. If only he was paid in inverse proportion to the work done, if his commission was reckoned on the cost of work left undone, how much richer should we be in ancient buildings!
• The Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople : e Study of Byzantine Building. By W. B. Lethaby and H. Swainson. With Llaatrationa. London : Macmillan and Co.
The oldest hall in Cambridge, condemned on the ground of being unsafe not twenty years ago, but which was so hard to destroy that it had to be blown up, would still remain Troiaque nuns stares, Priamique arx alto maneres !
St. Sophia, however, has escaped in the main not only from Turk and heretic, from Vandals and restorers, but also from the more destructive effect of earthquakes. A learned German has reckoned from the Byzantine historians twenty- three earthquakes at Constantinople, from the seventh to the fifteenth centuries, "one of which, in 1033, lasted inter- mittently for one hundred and forty days,"—an earthquake which reminds us of the old saying as to the daring of the Greek liar in history. From 1511 to 1765, ten more earth- quakes are recorded by the Turks. Yet the fabric of the church itself is far less changed since its rebuilding by the Emperor Justinian in 563, than is Westminster Abbey as it was left by Henry III. in 1245. The church had been originally built by Constantius, not by Constantine, and was dedicated in 360. It was burnt to the ground, having then a wooden roof, in the Nika outbreak under Justinian, and rebuilt by him in about six years, and dedicated on December 26th, 537. An earthquake, however, brought down the dome in 558; and it was rebuilt 20 ft. higher and more solidly, and finished, as stated, in 563.
- The authors of this book, Messrs. W. R. Lethaby and Harold Swainson, have combined to produce an architectural history of this most famous building, so complete that it is difficult to suppose that anything can be added to it. Exact -translations are given from the contemporary Procopins, who wrote before the dome fell, and from the wonderful descrip- tion of Paul the Silentiary (a kind of Royal secretary), in his poem, which the authors think was recited at the re-dedication ceremony. Later writers, Greek, Latin, Frank, Russian, carry the story down to the Turkish Conquest ; while modern writers, French, German, and English, are each allowed to tell their own tale in their own words. There is only one defect in the book (a very serious one, too),—that there are absolutely no illustrations or elevations to accom- pany and explain the plans. The book is surely not written for architects only, on nine-tenths of whom all this wealth of historic learning would be showered in vain. For others, the book would be thrice as valuable if illustrated. We could have wished also that more had been made of the con- stitutional history of the church, which, together with the ritual, must have exercised a great effect on its architecture. "In the time of Justinian the total number of clergy was 525, bat at the time of Heraclius this had been increased to 600. They were thus divided :—Presbyters, 80 ; deacons, 150 ; deaconesses, 40; sub-deacons, 70; readers, 160; singers, 25; doorkeepers, 75,"—an enormous staff contrasted with that of one of our great churches, like York Minster, which numbered only about 150 all told. The size of the staff perhaps partly accounts for the remarkable shape of the building, which is nearly a square, the breadth being within a few feet of the length, of 250 ft. These proportions form a striking contrast to the enormous lengths, 400 ft. and upwards, of our great churches compared with their narrow breadth of 70 ft. or 80 ft. We have, however, the same great officers. The Protopapas or Dean, the Protopsaltee or Precentor, the Skeuophylax or Treasurer, the Chartophylax or Chancel- lor. We trace the very word Ekonomus or steward, used for the churchwardens in Sonthwell Minster down to the Reformation. The Chancellor is so called from the Cancelli or screen which separated the private part of the Basilica where the judges sat, from the part open to the public, and the Chartophylax (or deed-keeper) stood by the "holy doors " and pronounced the words of the service, " Approach, ye priests." This enormous church, built to hold this crowd of clergy, described with such raptures by its first poet, "the dome like the firmament sprinkled with the stars of heaven, and the fresh green marble below like the flower-bordered streams of Thessaly," is built of brick. The gorgeous marbles and stones are only a veneer on the walls. And its builders were Asiatics. 4' The architects who built it, as well as the historians who chronicle the work, all, so far as their birthplaces are known, came from Syria and Asia Minor." St. Sophia was due to " the re•orientalisation of classic art—the linking of simple massive Roman building to a new decoration, vividly alive and inventive, frank, original, and full of colour, and yet as rational in its choice and application as the construction.
In the modern sense, the Romans may be said to have invented building, and the Byzantine Greeks, architecture." And the architects were, as in our great cathedrals, builders :— " The master builders not only designed the church, they came and worked at every part,' and lived with their building till their death ; they certainly graduated as workmen, and we hear nothing of their honours or position, only of their genius Like western workmen the Greek artisans were affiliated to
corporations which have lived to our days The existence of the guilds is the most significant fact of the social history of the middle ages. In such craft-organisation of labour, free of the financial middlemen, who now rightly call themselves contractors, we see the only hope that building for service and ornamenting for delight, can be made possible," —words which dement a penser.
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