Hagia Sophia

After the Nika riots of 532, when the previously existing churches of Constantinople were more or less destroyed, Justianian began reconstruction of the cathedral of the city, Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom). With the plan and fabric of this church, he strove to demonstrate his triumph over the riots and his place as supreme ruler over the Empire. He brought in thousands of workers, and literally tons of marble columns and other spoils from all of the Mediterranean, including Rome. He chose two men, mechanopoioi - more scientists than architects by our standards-Anthemios of Treilles and Isidorus of Miletus and dedicated something the equivalent of $180,000,000 (in 1986 dollars) to the rebuilding. The mechanopoioi constructed a huge building with aisles like a basilica and a huge dome, the size of which had not been seen before. They combined the structural systems and architectural form of several different building conventions, including the basilica, the dome symbolic of Heaven, bath and thermal architecture that features domes and cement. Yet the form of Hagia Sophia is unlike anything that came before it. The dome is supported on four huge piers, forming a square 100 Byzantine feet by 100 (a Byzantine foot in Hagia Sophia is .312 meters). The piers support four arches on each side of the square, above which rise four pendentives supporting a giant dome with forty ribs. The weight of giant towers outside the dome atop the piers, and the later addition of massive buttresses to those piers compress the rim of the dome and support its tremendous breadth. Two half-domes open to the east and west of the central dome, the thrust of which pitches up against the rim of the central dome. The original dome collapsed in 558, perhaps after an earthquake, and it was rebuilt with much steeper pitch. This second dome has stood through numerous subsequent earthquakes, though it has undergone significant structural reinforcements.

Justinian paved the interior of the entire church with glittering mosaics - they have been replaced many times, so we have little idea whether they were figurative or purely ornamental, though we know that the central dome was originally solid gold, and the second dome was emblazoned with a cross. The light through the numerous windows piercing the walls reflects against the mosaics, colored marbles, and ornamented capitals and bathes the entire structure in a heavenly, mysterious light, a phenomenon commented on extensively by contemporary authors. Procopius described the structure as appearing "not to be founded on solid masonry, but to be suspended from Heaven by that golden chain and so cover the space." He refers to line 19 of Homer's Illiad, where Zeus describes his supremacy over the other gods, such that a golden chain from heaven to earth could not drag Zeus out. Procopius uses the allusion to remind the reader of the purpose of the building: an extravagant and lavish testimony to the supremacy of Justianian as the viscount of Christ, and the holiness of the Byzantine Empire.

FOR FURTHER READING:
Krautheimer, Richard. Three Christian Capitals. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

Krautheimer, Richard. Early Christian and Byzantine Capitals, rev. ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986, 205-236.

Lehmann, Karl. "The Dome of Heaven," Art Bulletin 27 (1945) 1-27 and the critique by Thomas Mathews, "Cracks in Lehmann's 'Dome of Heaven', Source: Notes on the History of Art 1/3 (1982).

Mainstone, Rowland. Developments in Structural Form. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983.

Mainstone, Rowland. Hagia Sophia: Architecture, Structure, and Liturgy. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1988.

Mark, Robert. Light, Wind, and Structure. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990.

Mark, Robert and Ahmet Cakmak, eds. Hagia Sophia, from the Age of Justinian to the
Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Mango, Cyril. Byzantine Architecture. New York: Abrams, 1985.

Mathews, Thomas. The Early Churches of Constantinople: Architecture and Liturgy.
University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971.