Theodora: Empress of Byzantium (Mark Magowan Books) (43 page)

The minarets and other extraneous structures that were added later to the building’s exterior, and the changes to the interior decoration, distort the viewer’s perception of the structure as originally intended by the architects, as approved by Justinian and Theodora, and as it was subsequently built. The point of departure of the edifice is a great square almost one hundred feet per side. At each corner an enormous pier rises [
fig. 37
]. About sixty-eight feet up, four connecting arches branch off from the piers: two of these are absorbed into the walls, while the other two stretch up into semicircles in the central space. The arches are connected by four pendentives. From the top of the arches and the top of the connecting pendentives (more than 130 feet up) an extraordinary, surprisingly light dome rises up, a giant shell one hundred feet in diameter. Other half-domes and small shells cover the structural spaces [
fig. 38
].

37. Plan of the basilica of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia).

38. Longitudinal section of the basilica of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia).

39. Marble impost capital with Theodora’s monogram, c. 540–50(?), basilica of Saint John, Ephesus.

The central section and its appendages are enclosed by a large, nearly square wall (232 by 253 feet) with connecting aisles, a loggia story (with the throne for the empress), and a narthex. The supporting walls and the surrounding volumes create an interplay of gigantic spaces, so the whole structure feels suspended: the building seems not to sit on the earth but to be poised lightly on it.

From his vantage point on the throne, Justinian’s eye could roam across impossibly wide spaces, or trace convoluted designs where each form receded into another and each shell recalled another, with the candlelight flickering across the golden mosaics on the walls and the dome, the silver highlights of the furnishings, and the greenish cast of the floor marbles. That enormous space pulsed with its own visual rhythm. It was the powerful sequence of the impost capitals, their embroideries and flower clusters deeply carved into the marble in a continuous wave. The center of each capital bore the imprint of the imperial presence and the imperial will—the carved monograms of the Augusti: Justinian’s intricate one [figs. 34, 40] and Theodora’s more graphic and linear one [figs. 39, 41].

40,
41. Graphic renderings of Justinian’s (left) and Theodora’s monograms.

Justinian’s persona was two-sided: his specific, individual identity was complemented by an imperial identity, and the unbreakable bond between the two was clear for all to see when the basilica was officially consecrated.

The Holy Wisdom is the temple of that divine wisdom that several passages of the Bible link to the law of God and to awe of Him. More specifically, the book of the Bible dedicated to wisdom—like the
Song of Songs
and
Ecclesiastes
, mentioned earlier—was thought to have been written by Solomon, the Israelite king who had always been Justinian’s model and archetype. Whenever he legislated, the emperor followed the wise king’s legendary standards of justice; in the Holy Wisdom he was comparing himself to Solomon the great builder of the Temple of Jerusalem, which had won him so much admiration and fame.

In December 537, a little less than six years after the Nika insurrection, Justinian entered the completed church for its consecration. When he alighted from his imperial coach, he was received by the patriarch, and led a procession into the spectacular basilica; he gave thanks to God and immediately added: “Solomon, I have defeated you!” (
enikêsa se
).
²²
The ruler of the Romans, leader of the “new Christian Israel,” believed that he had surpassed his ancient model; this was no rhetorical cliché: he considered his succession both real and ideal, a succession that would secure a place in sacred history for The Emperor Justinian.

There is also a hint of the individual, private voice of Flavius Petrus Sabbatius, the man behind the emperor Justinian, who had a
competitive, smaller soul. His
enikêsa
(“I won”) uses the same root as
nika
, the term that gave voice to the insurrection that had destroyed the earlier basilica in 532. (In that year the rebels had translated the Latin
tu vincas—
may you win!—and used it against him; now he used the profane shout against Solomon.) Justinian lacked the open mind that would have allowed him to comprehend historical cycles broader than his individual fate, or to see “another self”
²³
in a defeated person. Indeed, he had been deaf to the (equally Solomonic) refrain “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” that Belisarius’s prisoner Gelimer had repeated (for himself and for the emperor) during the scene of triumph and prostration in the Hippodrome.

42. Mosaic depicting Constantine offering the city of Constantinople to the Mother of God, and Justinian offering the basilica of the Holy Wisdom, 10th century, basilica of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia), Istanbul.

The theme of victory and defeat, of continuity and metamorphosis, is inextricable from the construction of the basilica and its history. The basilica was always marked by insecurity: it was damaged by several earthquakes, and each time it was repaired and reconsecrated. More to the point, it is marked by perseverance, not only because the outer structure has survived through the centuries, but because, like the Coliseum or Saint Peter’s in Rome, oral tradition and prophecies have identified the survival of the edifice with the duration of history itself: its end will also mark the end of all time.

So the basilica of Justinian became a myth—the myth of Constantinople, the last great ancient city as well as the first major city of the Christian Middle Ages. The architectural miracle of the Holy Wisdom made it unique in each of several diverse cultural traditions: Western and “Latin,” Slavic, Scandinavian, Arab, Turkish. Those of the Byzantine Middle Ages were especially cognizant of this, as we can see from a celebrated mosaic in the basilica that showed two emperors offering gifts to the Mother of God: Constantine, the city’s founder, offers the city itself, and Justinian offers the Holy Wisdom, the symbolic heart of the city [
fig. 42
].

Almost one thousand years—an eon—later, in 1453, the city was stormed by the Ottoman Turks of Mohammed II Fatih. It was not the end of all time, but it was the end of a world: the world of the Christian basilica, of the idea of the city that it mirrored and crowned. The conqueror, Mohammed II, entered the temple of the defeated people, the temple that he would later turn into a mosque. He looked, he admired, but he did not speak; he was filled with a spirit of regret rather than triumph. Later, he recited the following Persian verses:

The spider is a watchman in the palace of Khosrow.

The owl plays its watch music in the fort of Afrâsijâb.
²⁴

In his victory, he also saw defeat; in his dominance, he saw the enemy’s end. Not like Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Justinianus, but like Publius Cornelius Scipio Emilianus, who wept on seeing the enemy city of Carthage in flames, because it prefigured the destruction of his own Rome.

For the emperor and empress who
re
founded them, Constantinople and the Holy Wisdom, no matter how precious or ostentatious, were still part of a greater plan wherein a unitary, shared Christian faith was expressed in ideas and laws,
and
in urban planning. It was important to affirm and maintain their program, their dream, in cities ravaged by
the wrath of God or the fury of enemies or of the elements. In Antioch, the third-largest city of the Ecumene, the Augusti sponsored intense reconstruction after the earthquakes of 526 and 528 and the sack by the Persians in 540. The town plan was revised, and although the traditional colonnaded streets, porticoes, and squares were kept, the famous main boulevard was now studded with churches. Right outside the city rose the monastery of Saint Simeon Stylite the Younger: it was no faraway anchorite retreat, but a visible call to virtue for the city’s residents.

In another eastern metropolis, Jerusalem, a church dedicated to the Virgin called the New Church (or “Nea”) was famously huge: it was 300 feet long and 156 feet wide. The town plan was reworked around a central artery sixty-six feet wide, flanked by porticoes and colonnades as a sort of monumental stage set for the new city center characterized by a network of Christian elements. Something similar was done in Apamea (now the village of Qal’at al Mudīk) which was capital of the province of Syria Secunda. The great central artery and its columns were restored, and wide sidewalks were built along the porticoes. It was an ideal setting for city life in late antiquity, a sort of perpetual agora filled with churches instead of forums and theaters.

All this rebuilding followed a standard town plan that called for a number of structures to be adapted and modulated in accordance with local preferences. First there had to be fortified walls, then an adequate supply of food staples and water. The urban centers were concentrated around the headquarters of the authorities, which were sometimes both civilian and religious (for example, when the bishoprics were also involved in city administration). The old baths survived and sometimes new ones were built, as were hippodromes, but the theaters and amphitheaters were becoming extinct. All this was happening at a time when new social opportunities were being created for “repentant” actresses. Justinian and Theodora had freed them not only from their sins but also from their vocations and their jobs. The only necessary “show” took place in the city’s churches, and it dealt with eternal salvation.