Along the low wall to the left are a number of water taps for the Moslems to perform their ablutions before going to prayer.]
"What is your name?" the first witness was asked. "Mustapha." "What was your father"s name?" "Genouze." "And (to second witness) what may your name be?" "Pirez." "And your father"s name?" "Rustem." "How long is it since Sultan Mehemet took this city?" "Eighty-four years, to a day."
"How old were you then?" "Eighteen." "How old are you now?" "One hundred and two years old." "Mashallah, Mashallah" (G.o.d protect you), exclaimed the members of the Council, and stroked their long beards. "In what capacity did you serve under Sultan Mehemet?" "As janissaries." "How was the city taken, by fighting or by surrender?" "By surrender." Then followed a long garrulous narrative of the circ.u.mstances of the capitulation of the city, all of which went to prove the historical trustworthiness of everything the patriarch had stated on that subject.
Finally, a report of these proceedings was drawn up and presented to the Sultan, who, after expressing his surprise, natural or feigned, ordered that the patriarch should have no further anxiety about the churches of his communion "so long as the world standeth."
Notwithstanding that order, however, the Greek community subsequently lost several churches in its possession at that time, including S. Mary Pammacaristos, then the patriarchal cathedral, with the result that it can now boast of only some six insignificant sanctuaries which were founded in the period of the Byzantine Empire. But excepting certain portions of S. Mary Mouchliotissa in the Phanar quarter, none of them can claim to be ancient fabrics. There are in Turkish hands about twenty-five Byzantine churches, and, though sadly altered, most of them retain enough of their original features to be interesting objects of study.
CHAPTER VIII
AMONG THE CHURCHES
AS historical landmarks, these churches are of very great value, and if Byzantine history were more generally studied they would enjoy wider fame. They enable the historian to fix a date, to give a local habitation to many events and scenes, to grasp a solid fragment of a form a.s.sumed by the life of humanity, and to feel how thoroughly real that life was. In them one touches hands that have vanished, and hears the echoes of voices that are still. The Church of S. Irene, which, under Turkish control, has been employed both as an a.r.s.enal and as a museum, carries the mind back to the foundation of the city. Indeed, there is reason to think that it was one of the Christian sanctuaries of Byzantium before the town was transformed into the capital of the East, for two early authorities a.s.sert that Constantine only enlarged and beautified the church in order to make it match its new surroundings.
But be that as it may, it is certain that, since the destruction of the Church of the Holy Apostles to make room for the Mosque of Sultan Mehemet, S. Irene has been the only sanctuary in the city that can claim connection with Constantine. Within its walls, it is said, the General Council summoned by Theodosius I. to restore the orthodoxy of the Church and Empire in 381 held its meetings. Occasionally, when S. Sophia for any reason was not available, S. Irene served as the patriarchal church, and is therefore sometimes designated the Patriarchate, and the Metropolitan Church. It was burned to the ground during the Nika riot, but was included by Justinian in the splendid restoration of the buildings destroyed on that occasion. It was ruined again by the earthquake of 740, and once more restored by Leo III. the Isaurian. To it, therefore, is attached the memory of the hero who defended Constantinople in the second siege of the city by the Saracens, a service to the world as important as the defeat of the same foe on the field of Tours by Charles Martel fourteen years later. "At this time,"
to quote Professor Bury, "New Rome, not Old Rome, was the great bulwark of Christian Europe, and if New Rome had fallen it might have gone hard with the civilised world. The year 718 A.D. is really an ec.u.menical date, of far greater importance than such a date as 338 B.C. when Greece succ.u.mbed to Macedon on the field of Chaeronea, and of equal importance with such dates as 332 B.C., when an oriental empire (Persia) fell, or of 451 A.D. which marked the repulse of the Huns."
Another church of historical interest is S. Saviour-in-the-Chora (country), now Kahriyeh Djamissi, and popularly known as the Mosaic Mosque, on account of the remarkable mosaics it still contains. It was clearly in existence previous to the year 413, as thereafter it stood within the line of the Wall of Anthemius, and could not then acquire the distinction of being situated "in the country." Accordingly, it is a topographical landmark as regards the original extent of the city, only second in importance to Isa Kapou Mesdjidi, which we have seen indicates the line of the Constantinian Wall, the position of the first Golden Gate, and the situation of the Exokionion. Like every church with so long a life, S. Saviour-in-the-Chora has known many changes. It saw its best days in the fourteenth century, when it was thoroughly renovated by Theodore Metochites, and invested with the splendour which still glows upon its walls, and makes it one of the most beautiful of the old churches of the Byzantine world.
Not less interesting historically is the Church of S. John the Baptist (Mir-Akhor Djamissi), situated in the quarter of Psamatia. It was founded about 463 by Studius, a Roman patrician who, like many other persons, when old Rome was tottering to its fall, fled from the West to the East, as when New Rome neared its end, some thousand years later, men escaped from the East to the West. The church was attached to a large monastery belonging to the order of the Acmetae or Sleepless Monks, who were so named because they celebrated Divine service in their churches day and night without intermission. According to the original const.i.tution of the society the members of the order represented various nationalities, Greek, Latin, Syrian, and were divided into companies which pa.s.sed from hand to hand, in unbroken succession, the censer of perpetual prayer and praise. They sought thus to make the worship of G.o.d"s saints on earth resemble that of the a.s.sembly gathered from all nations and peoples and tongues that serves Him without ceasing in heaven.
Even thus of old Our ancestors, within the still domain Of vast cathedral or conventual church Their vigils kept; where tapers day and night On the dim altar burned continually, In token that the House was evermore Watching to G.o.d. Religious men were they; Nor would their reason, tutored to aspire Above this transitory world, allow That there should pa.s.s a moment of the year, When in their land, the Almighty"s service ceased.
As might be expected from the number and zeal of its inmates, the monastery of Studius was highly venerated, and wielded immense influence. Its abbot ranked first among the abbots of the capital, and to it the Emperor was bound to pay an annual State visit on the 29th August, one of the Baptist"s festival days. On that occasion the Emperor usually came by water in the imperial barge from the Palace beside the Hippodrome, and landed at the Gate (Narli Kapoussi) on the sh.o.r.e below the monastery, where the abbot and his monks waited to receive the sovereign. In this monastery the Emperor Isaac Comnenus in 1059, and the Emperor Michael VII. in 1078, a.s.sumed the monk"s cowl. The former even served as porter at the monastery gate, and so happy was he in his retirement from the pomps and vanities of the world, that when his wife, who had taken the veil at the time of his abdication, visited him, he said to her, "Acknowledge that when I gave you a crown I made you a slave, and that I give you freedom when I took it away." His wife"s last command was "that her body should be buried in the cemetery of the Studion as a simple nun, with no sign to indicate that she was born a Bulgarian princess and had been a Roman empress."
No monks in the history of Constantinople showed themselves so independent of ecclesiastical and State control as the monks of the Studion. Enough to recall the fact that in the controversy which agitated Constantinople and the Church at large for over a century (725-842), as to the lawfulness of using pictures and statues in religious worship, the monks of this monastery were the boldest and most determined opponents of the Iconoclast emperors. The abbot Theodore, who for many years led the opposition to the imperial authority in that matter, is one of the great figures of the Eastern Church. Eight occupants of the Byzantine throne found him a man who for conscience sake defied all their authority, rejected all their favours, and endured any suffering they chose to inflict. When the Synod, held in 815, ordered icons to be banished from the churches, Theodore and his monks carried the sacred pictures in procession through the streets, and gave them an asylum in his monastery. Nor was he only stern. He caused the rejection of the treaty of peace with Crum, the King of Bulgaria, because of the demand it contained to surrender the fugitives from that monarch"s hard rule, many of whom had become Christians. To do so, Theodore argued, would be to make void the gracious words, "Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out." He held the view that no monk should keep slaves, and condemned the persecution of the Paulicians, urging that they who are ignorant and out of the way should be instructed, not persecuted. There is a prevalent impression that the pages of Byzantine history contain nothing but the recital of the life of a servile and ign.o.ble community, of a race of men who trembled at the nod of any despot and were void of all independence of thought and action. That such a spirit often prevailed is undoubted. But if the Byzantines had the faults of our human nature, they were not altogether without some of its virtues. And whatever our opinions on the questions, political or ecclesiastical, that divided parties in Constantinople, may be; although we may think that good men in that city did not always take the wisest course; it is but common justice and fair play to recognise that there also was found, in the face of great difficulties, what we admire elsewhere--a sense of the rights of conscience, some demand for freedom of thought, the feeling that right and truth are the supreme authorities over human life, and that rulers, like other men, should do justly and love mercy. There, as well as elsewhere, men and women were found who preferred to suffer and to die rather than prove faithless to their convictions.
The monastery of Studius is, moreover, celebrated for its attention to hymnology, counting its great abbot Theodore, his brother Joseph, and two monks, both named Simon, among the writers of sacred poetry. It had also a scriptorium in which the Scriptures and other religious works were copied. It was, moreover, famed as an "ill.u.s.trious and glorious school of virtue," and thither youths of the higher cla.s.ses of society went for a part of their education. One of the attractions offered by the school was the facility with which students in an inst.i.tution so near the fortifications could get out of the city to hunt in the open country. The relics preserved in the church drew devout pilgrims to its shrine from far and near. Many Russians visited the monastery on that account, and even entered the order of the Acmetae to live and die beside the sacred remains. The humble tombstone of one of these Russian monks is built in the base of the modern wall enclosing the ground behind the apse. It bears the inscription, "In the month of September of the year 1387, fell asleep the servant of G.o.d, Dionysius a Russian; on the sixth day." The honour of burial in the cemetery in which the Sleepless were at last laid to rest was accorded also to men distinguished for their public services, as in the case of the patrician Bonus, who bravely defended Constantinople in 627 against the Avars and the Persians, while the Emperor Heraclius carried on his daring campaigns far away in Persia itself.
SS. Sergius and Bacchus (Kutchuk Aya Sofia) and S. Sophia still reflect the splendour of the s.p.a.cious days of Justinian the Great; days in which men still dreamed of the restoration of the Roman Empire to its ancient bounds; days in which the justice which Rome had developed was codified and enthroned to be the eternal rule of all nations that seek to establish righteousness between man and man. The former sanctuary was built by Justinian, probably in 527, as a thank-offering to the martyrs to whom the church was dedicated, for having saved him from the death to which he had been sentenced, on account of his implication in a plot against the Emperor Anastasius. No wonder that, when the l.u.s.tre of the imperial diadem shed light upon the full meaning of his deliverance, his saviours became the objects of his special grat.i.tude and veneration. The erection of the church was one of the first acts of his reign; he placed it in the immediate vicinity of his residence while heir-apparent, and at the gates of his palace when Emperor; to it he attached a large monastery, endowed with his private fortune. There cleaves therefore to the building the personal interest that belongs to anything done in a man"s most earnest mood. Among the historical a.s.sociations that gather around the edifice is the fact that it was the church a.s.signed to the Papal Legates at the Court of Constantinople, for the celebration of Divine service in the Latin form. Originally, indeed, that distinction belonged to the basilica of SS. Peter and Paul which stood beside SS.
Sergius and Bacchus. The special regard cherished for the two great apostles in the West would naturally make a church dedicated to them in Constantinople the most acceptable religious home for the Roman clergy on a visit to the city. But the basilica of SS. Peter and Paul soon disappeared, under circ.u.mstances of which we have no record, and then SS. Sergius and Bacchus, virtually a part of it, was placed at the disposal of Latin priests. This fraternal custom was often interrupted by the quarrels which, from time to time, rent Eastern and Western Christendom even before their final separation, but it was restored whenever the two parties were reconciled. Pope John VIII., for instance, thanks Basil I. (867-886) for granting the use of the church again to the Roman See, in conformity with ancient rights. Among the Papal representatives in Constantinople was Pope Gregory the Great (590-614), while still a deacon, and at a time when the ecclesiastical rivalry between the Sees of Old Rome and New Rome was keen. It must have been with something of the feeling that sprang from personal acquaintance with scenes and men in the rival metropolis that he protested, when Pontiff, against the a.s.sumption of the t.i.tle "c.u.menical bishop" by the Patriarch John the Faster in 587, and that he adopted in contra-distinction the well-known style of the Popes "the servant of the servants of G.o.d." Pope Vigilius spent several unhappy years (547-554) in Constantinople, in controversy with Justinian and the patriarch of the day, and in the course of the dispute had occasion to flee to the Church of SS. Peter and Paul, for refuge from the Emperor"s displeasure.
Notwithstanding the right of sanctuary, Justinian gave orders for the arrest of the Pope in his place of retreat. But when the officers sent for that purpose appeared, Vigilius, a man of uncommon size and strength, clutched the pillars of the altar, and refused to obey the imperial summons. Thereupon, the officers pulled him by his feet and hair and beard, to force him to let go his hold. But the bishop held fast, and could not be moved until the pillars to which he clung gave way, and threw him and the altar to the ground. This was too much for the indignation and sympathy of the spectators who crowded the church.
Coming to the rescue, they put the a.s.sailants to flight, and left the Pope master of the situation. It was only after a distinguished deputation, led by Belisarius, waited upon him next day, warning him that resistance to the Emperor"s authority would be vain, and a.s.suring him that submission would prevent further ill-treatment, that Vigilius came forth from the church. This was in 551. The church was attached to a large and rich monastery known as the monastery of Hormisdas, after the name of the district in which it stood. Like the members of other monasteries in the city, the monks of this House took their full share in the theological controversies of their day.
[Ill.u.s.tration: INTERIOR OF S. SOPHIA]
Among the crowd of events witnessed under the dome of S. Sophia, there are three scenes of paramount importance in the religious history of the world that lend to the Great Church an extraordinary interest. The first occurred on the day on which the envoys of Vladimir attended service in the cathedral, and were so overwhelmed by the splendours of the worship, that they hastened back to Russia to tell their sovereign that they had seen the glory of the true G.o.d. "We know not," they are reported to have said, "whether we were not in heaven; in truth, it would be impossible on earth to find such riches and magnificence. We cannot describe to you all that we have seen. We can only believe that there in all likelihood one is in the presence of G.o.d, and that the worship of other countries is there entirely eclipsed. We shall never forget such grandeur.
Whosoever has seen so sweet a spectacle will be pleased with nothing elsewhere." The conversion of the Slavic peoples to the Christian faith, a work commenced in the ninth century by the mission of Cyril and Methodius to the Slavs of Bulgaria and Moravia, is one of the most important services rendered by the Church of the Byzantine Empire to the cause of European civilisation. So far as its political significance is concerned, it can stand comparison with the conversion of the Teutons by the Western Church. It accomplished what the victories of Zimisces failed to achieve.
It was the moral conquest of Russia, and the source of her upward life, until that country was opened also to the influence of Western civilisation. It probably saved Russia from becoming a Mohammedan State.
The Slavic peoples rightly cherish a regard for Byzantine Constantinople, similar to that which Western Europe feels for Athens and Rome.
The second scene, to which we refer, took place on the 15th July 1054.
On the morning of that day, as Divine worship in the cathedral was about to commence, three papal legates, Cardinal Humbert, Cardinal Frederic, and the Archbishop of Amalfi, made their way through the crowd of worshippers to the steps of the altar. Having denounced the Patriarch Michael Keroularius for insubordination to the Holy See, the legates placed upon the altar a bull of excommunication against him and his adherents. They left the church, shaking its dust off their feet, and exclaiming, "Videat Deus et judicet." In due time the patriarch hurled back a counter-anathema; and, thenceforth, the Christian world was divided in two bitterly hostile camps. It was the wave precipitated against the sh.o.r.e by waves that had tossed the ocean"s expanse, for league upon league. It was the consummation of a long process of disruption between the West and the East, the course of which is marked by such events as the foundation of Constantinople, the jealousy between Old Rome and New Rome, the invasion of the Teutons, the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire, race antipathies, and wrangles over the phrase Filioque, the use of images, the celibacy of the clergy, and the employment of unleavened bread in the Eucharist. Behind all this discord, we may be able to detect men groping for the truth, and resisting absolutism in Church and State. But it has left Christendom weakened both as a political and a religious power to this day.
On the 29th or 30th of May 1453, Sultan Mehemet the Conqueror alighted from his horse at the gate of S. Sophia. It was most probably at the "Beautiful Gate," at the southern end of the n.o.ble inner narthex of the church, the entrance through which the Emperors of Constantinople usually proceeded to the cathedral. According to one account, the Sultan stooped down at the threshold, took some earth, and scattered it on his head in token of humiliation before G.o.d. Entering, he saw a Moslem breaking the marble pavement. He struck at the vandal with a scimitar?
for daring to injure a building that belonged of right to the sovereign.
Then, in what to the Eastern world was the Holy of Holies of Christendom, an imaum ascended the pulpit and cried aloud, "There is no G.o.d but G.o.d, and Mahomet is His prophet." And so it has been ever since.
The Church of S. Saviour Pantepoptes, the All-Seeing (Eski Imaret Djamissi), the Church of S. Saviour Pantocrator, the All-Powerful (Zeirek Kilisse Djamissi), and the interior of S. Saviour-in-the-Chora (Kahriyeh Djamissi), recall the period of the Comneni and the Angeli (1081-1204).
In their erection ladies of considerable importance in the history of Constantinople had a part. The first was built by Anna Dala.s.sena, the mother of Alexius I. Comnenus; the last was restored by his mother-in-law, Mary Ducaena, a Bulgarian princess famous for her beauty; the second was an erection of the Empress of John I. Comnenus, the daughter of Geysa I., King of Hungary. These churches represent the age when Constantinople was stirred by the march of the earlier Crusades through the territory of the Empire, when Peter the Hermit and G.o.dfrey de Bouillon encamped their followers within sight of the city walls, to be dazzled by the splendours of the Palace of Blachernae, and cajoled by the diplomacy of Alexius I. Comnenus. They also recall the time when Henrico Dandolo, the Doge of Venice, brought his fleet and the troops of the Fourth Crusade to the Golden Horn, and founded the short-lived Latin Empire of Constantinople. It was on the terraced ground beside the Church of Pantepoptes that the Emperor Alexius Murtzuplus pitched his vermilion tents and drew up his reserve forces. There he stood to see the walls on the sh.o.r.e below attacked by the Venetian ships and carried by Frankish knights. From that position he fled at the approach of a body of the enemy"s hors.e.m.e.n, and under his unstricken vermilion tent Count Baldwin of Flanders and Hainaut, soon to succeed him as Latin Emperor of Constantinople, spent the night of that memorable day.
The monastery of the Church of the Pantocrator became the headquarters of the Venetians during the Latin occupation of the city. In the relations of Western and Eastern Christians to each other during the period of the Crusades there is nothing of which we can feel proud. The former were barbarous, the latter were decadent; neither of them worthy to recover the San Graal in search of which so much heroism and devotion were displayed for two centuries. But it is well to remember that the encounter of the East and the West during those expeditions contributed not a little to the "infiltration," as it has happily been phrased, "of ideas, knowledge, and art from the Grecised Empire into Western Europe."
It brought the influence of an older and riper civilisation to bear upon the younger life that had come into the world, and aided that life to evolve a new and better order of things.
The Venetian occupants of the monastery of Pantocrator, for instance, could learn much from the admirable organisation of the hospital maintained by that House for the benefit of the poor. The hospital contained fifty beds, of which ten formed a ward for surgical cases, eight a ward for acute diseases, ten for ordinary maladies, and twelve a ward for women. A fifth ward contained ten beds for the reception of applicants for admittance into the other wards of the hospital, until the physicians should decide upon the gravity of the cases. Each ward was in charge of two doctors, three medical a.s.sistants, and four servitors.
To the women"s ward were attached a lady-physician, six a.s.sistant lady-surgeons, and two female nurses. All patients were treated gratuitously. Upon arrival at the hospital a patient"s clothes were laid aside, and replaced by a white dress provided by the inst.i.tution. There was a liberal allowance of bread, beans, onions, olive oil, and wine, for all able to partake of such food, while from time to time gifts of money were distributed. The beds were kept clean, and a house-doctor went through the wards every day to inquire of the patients, whether they were satisfied with their treatment, and to examine their diet. In addition to the hospital, the monastery maintained, on the same liberal scale, a Home for Old Men, accommodating twenty-four persons.
The inhabitants of Constantinople were sinners, though not sinners above all men, as they are often represented. But in their hospitals, orphanages, asylums for the aged, free caravanseries, asylums for lepers, and other inst.i.tutions "to give rest to those whom trouble had distressed," which humanised the city with compa.s.sion, they were distinguished also for that charity which covereth a mult.i.tude of sins.
The Churches of S. Mary Pammacaristos (Fethiyeh Djamissi), the Church of S. Theodosia (Gul Djamissi), and portions of S. Saviour-in-the-Chora, carry us to the times of the Palaeologi, the dynasty that occupied the throne of Constantinople during the last one hundred and ninety years of the city"s history as New Rome. It is the period of the long struggle with the Ottoman Turks, and the culmination of the conflict between the Mohammedan world and Christendom which had filled more than eight centuries with its hate and din; when the sign in which the Empire had conquered yielded to the sign of the crescent, and the benediction of the prophet of Islam--"Whoso taketh the city of Constantine, his sins are forgiven"--found at length a man upon whose head it could settle. It is a sad period of Byzantine history; yet one n.o.ble idea, at least, appealed to its mind--the Reunion of Christendom--which, if realised, would have changed the history of Europe. But it was not to be.
Like all the churches of the city situated near the fortifications, the Church of S. Saviour-in-the-Chora was regarded with special veneration as a guardian of the safety of "the G.o.d-defended capital," and there, during the siege of 1453, was placed, as an additional pledge of security, the icon of S. Mary Hodegetria, attributed to S. Luke. But the church was the first sanctuary into which Turkish troops broke on the fatal 29th May for pillage. They spurned to take the icon as a part of their plunder, and in mockery of its vaunted power hacked it to pieces.
The Latin Church of S. Peter in Galata claims to possess one of the fragments.
With S. Theodosia is connected the pathetic a.s.sociation that the festival day of the church coincided with the day on which the city fell in 1453. The area and galleries of the building were packed by a large and earnest congregation that kept vigil through the night-watches, praying for the safety of the Queen of Cities, when suddenly, soon after the sun had risen, the wild rush of soldiers and shouts of victory in strange accents told that the enemy had triumphed, and that the day of vengeance was at the door. No ma.s.sacre ensued, but the whole congregation was doomed to slavery.
The Church of the Pammacaristos served as the cathedral of the patriarchs of Constantinople for one hundred and thirty-five years after 1456, when deprived of the Church of the Holy Apostles.
These churches put the period of the Palaeologi before us in also a pleasing aspect. The mosaics which adorn the narthex and exo-narthex of the Church of S. Saviour-in-the-Chora imply, that love for the beautiful and skill to express it had not fled the city which reared S. Sophia.
The proportions of S. Theodosia are exceedingly fine, and the chapel attached to the Pammacaristos is, at least externally, remarkably attractive. Nor had intellectual life and scholarship altogether ceased.
The historian Nicephorus Gregoras was a monk in the monastery of S.
Saviour-in-the-Chora, and wrote his work in the retirement of his cell.
The historians Pachymeres, Cantacuzene, Phrantzes, Ducas, were not the products of an ignorant age. The Greek scholars who took refuge in the West, and contributed to its intellectual revival, represented a society which, with all its faults, had not lost its interest in the literature of ancient h.e.l.las, or in general knowledge. Indeed, in studying the period of the Palaeologi, one continually meets a spirit akin to that which produced the Renaissance in Western Europe. And, notwithstanding the vanity of indulging in dreams of what might have been but never has been, the mind obstinately asks, What if that upward movement had not been checked by a great political catastrophe? What if it had been accompanied by moral reform and military prowess?
CHAPTER IX
AMONG THE CHURCHES
BUT however interesting the old churches of the city are as historical landmarks, however useful as a clue to guide us through the labyrinth of the life of New Rome, their supreme value after all consists in the fact that they are monuments, one of them the finest monument, of what is styled Byzantine Art--the art which blended artistic elements derived from Greece and Rome with artistic elements borrowed from Nineveh, Persia, Syria, and unfolded a new type of beauty. It was the flower developed by that fusion of Western and Oriental aesthetic ideals and tastes resulting from the long intercourse maintained between Europe and Asia, sometimes at the point of the sword, and sometimes by the peaceful ministries of commerce. Nowhere could that Art find a more congenial atmosphere in which to flourish than in the city which binds the West and the East together. Like all else in the world, Byzantine Art was not a sudden creation, independent of all antecedents, unheralded by previous a.n.a.logous forms. The dome was reflected in the waters of the Tigris and of the Tiber before it was mirrored in the Bosporus. Columns were bound together by arches instead of by a horizontal entablature, in the Palace of Diocletian at Spalato, before they were so united in the Sacred Palace beside the Hippodrome of Constantinople. Walls glistening with variegated marbles, marble floors glowing with colours that vied with meadows in flower, mosaics radiant with the hues of the rainbow, had adorned homes and made palaces beautiful before the witchery of such coloration cast a spell over the courtiers of Justinian, or suffused the light in S. Sophia. Even the pendentive that fills the triangular s.p.a.ce between two contiguous arches at right angles to each other, so characteristic of Byzantine architecture, is claimed to be an earlier device in domical construction. Be it so. In one sense, there is nothing new under the sun. The new grows out of the old, the present is the product of the past. And yet, while a new order of things must spring from an old order, it is not the bare repet.i.tion of what has been; while it must employ materials shaped originally for the use of other days, it is not the mechanical combination of those materials. It employs them in another spirit, under the control of ideas different or more mature than have yet been known, as the utterance of feelings acting with peculiar force at particular moments in history, with more skill, on a larger scale, with happier effect, and the result is that something appears with an individual ent.i.ty perfectly distinguishable from all that ever was before, or that will ever come after. Byzantine Art is its own very self, however many adumbrations prophesied its advent.
The oldest ecclesiastical edifice in the city--the Church of S. John the Baptist, attached to the monastery of Studius--does not, however, represent Byzantine architecture. Built in 463, it is a basilica, and accordingly is a specimen--the only specimen in Constantinople--of the earliest type of a Christian sanctuary. It was well-nigh destroyed in a conflagration that devastated the district of Psamatia in 1782, and its roof was crushed in by a heavy fall of snow some three winters ago. But, though only the shadow of its former self, its primitive character can be clearly recognised. The old atrium before the church is still here, with a phiale or fountain in its centre for the purification of the gathering worshippers. Of the colonnaded cloister along the four sides of the atrium, the western portion, borne by four columns and forming the narthex of the church, still stands. There catechumens and penitents, unworthy to tread the holy ground within the sanctuary, stood outside and afar off. Beautiful trees now spread their branches over the court, and the shaded light falls upon turbaned Moslem tombs, as of yore it fell upon the graves of Christian monks, from the trees growing in the Paradise of the monastery. It is the most peaceful spot in all Constantinople, and as fair as it is calm and quiet. The narthex belongs, undoubtedly, to the original fabric. Its marble pillars crowned by Corinthian capitals of a late type bear a horizontal entablature, and the egg and dart ornament, the dentils, the strings of pearls, familiar in the friezes of Greek and Roman temples mingle with foliage, birds, and crosses, expressive of new ideas and tastes. Within, the interior was a hall 89 feet by 83, divided by a double row of seven columns of verde antique marble, into a nave and two aisles. The proportion of length to breadth is greater than is usual in basilicas of the West, and an indication of the tendency to a.s.sume the square plan which Byzantine architecture so strongly manifests. The long lessening vistas so impressive in Western churches are rarely, if ever, found in an Eastern sanctuary. In the latter the structure is more compact, and the worshipper stands before a Presence that compa.s.ses him about alike on every side. At the eastern end of the nave is the usual apse, semicircular within, a polygon of three sides on the exterior. Triforium galleries, now gone, divided the aisles in two stories, the upper storey bearing also columns of verde antique. The columns of the lower tier were bound by a horizontal entablature, while their fellows above were united by arches, a mingling of old and new forms. The roof was of wood, as in similar basilicas elsewhere. The church recalls the Church of S.
Agnes at Rome. Its disappearance will be a matter of deep regret, not only as an ancient landmark, but as an edifice which preserved the surroundings of early Christian congregations, and reflected, however faintly, the light of cla.s.sic days, through all the changes of the city"s tastes and fortunes.
The Church of S. Irene, notwithstanding the serious restorations it underwent in the sixth century and again in the eighth, retains so much of its early basilican type that it can claim a place among the churches of the older style. In spite of the two domes placed longitudinally upon its roof, it is basilican in the proportion of its length to its breadth, in the retention of lines of piers and columns to divide its nave and aisles, in its single apse, and the galleries on three sides.
The apse has the interest of still preserving the tiers of marble seats for the clergy, as in the Cathedral of Torcello. Its conch is adorned with the mosaic of a large black cross on gold ground, and on the face of the triumphal arch may be read the invocation calling upon the Hope of all on the earth or upon the sea to enter His temple, and pour His Spirit upon His people.
SS. Sergius and Bacchus, styled by the Turks little S. Sophia (Kutchuk Aya Sofia), on account of the resemblance it bears to the greater church of that name, is interesting from more than one point of view. It deserves attention as a thing of beauty. Imagine an octagonal building constructed of eight lofty piers united by arches. Cover that structure with a dome furrowed by sixteen flutings. Let the sides in the diagonals be curved and the sides in the axes be straight, to secure more room, to avoid monotony of contour, stiffness, angularity, and to introduce the variety, freedom, softness, which give wings to fancy. Within each archway, except the one at the east, where the semicircular apse recedes to make room for the altar and the seats of the clergy, place four columns in two tiers, now green mottled with black spots, now cream-coloured marked with red veins, now white marked with veins of dark blue. Crown the lower columns with capitals, whose lobed form has been compared to a melon partly cut open, but which might, more gracefully, be likened to a tulip bud breaking into flower. Bind these columns, after the old fashion, with a horizontal entablature, where acanthus, egg and dart, reeds and reel, dentils, strands of rope and the ornamental letters of an inscription, in honour of S. Sergius and of the founders of the church, Justinian and Theodora, combine to make a splendid frieze. Join the upper columns, according to the new taste, with arches supporting conchs, and resting on long, flattened capitals covered with marble lace. Revet all surfaces up to the cornice with variegated marbles, and above the cornice spread mosaics. Then put this octagonal fabric, with its undulated interior surface, thus carved and coloured and gemmed, into a square edifice, like a jewel into a casket; so that the apse may protrude beyond the square"s eastern side, and the aisle, between the octagon and the square, may be divided into two stories by galleries, and the round dome may soar aloft visible to all without, and you have some idea of the plan and beauty of this gem of Art.
Another consideration that lends interest to SS. Sergius and Bacchus is its striking resemblance to the Church of S. Vitale at Ravenna. The latter was commenced in 526, a year earlier than the former, while Theodoric the Great ruled his Ostrogoths in the fair city beside the Adriatic. It was not completed, however, until 547, after the arms of Justinian had restored Ravenna to the Roman Empire. A comparison between the kindred buildings would be invidious. Let it suffice to say, speaking broadly, that the exterior arrangements of SS. Sergius and Bacchus are superior to those of its western companion, while the interior of S. Vitale is more beautiful than the interior of the church on the sh.o.r.e of the Sea of Marmora. But, leaving comparisons between two beautiful objects alone, it is pertinent to recognise the artistic influence of Constantinople over Art in the West here manifested. For, although the churches are too different for the one to have been copied from the other, they are so similar as to prove the existence of a common school of Art; a school which had its chief seat in the studios and workshops beside the Bosporus. Even some of the materials of S.