Christian Architecture: Hagia Sophia

Rowland Mainstone fell under its spell almost thirty years ago.In the 1960's he was closely associated with a major study of the church then being undertaken by Dumbarton Oaks.He resumed his research in 1980,bringing to it the expertise of a leading expert on the practical problems of design and construction that would have confronted Justinian's architects.Drawing on the survey of the church by Robert Van Nice for Dumbarton Oaks as well as on his own detailed observations and critical reading of the historical source material,he presents here the first authoritative account of the genesis and development of the design,of the church's building,and of the principal subsequent changes.His descriptions bring alive the achievement of an unprecedentedly ambitious project in a way that has never before been attempted for a structure for which there are no drawings,building accounts or similar records.He looks also,more briefly,at the church's predecessors and,finally,at its use as a setting for the liturgy and for imperial ceremonial,and at its character and influence,both in the Byzantine era and beyond. Dr. Mainstone's specially prepared plans and drawings and his superb photographs perfectly complement the text as well as providing, in themselves, a unique new record.

The Crusaders chose their target shrewdly. Hagia Sophia represented the apotheosis of Byzantine art and wealth. Rare marbles, gathered from the farthest reaches of the empire, shone in its side galleries, gold candelabra glinted from its nave, and breath taking gold mosaics covered every inch of its ceilings.Lying at the very heart of the richest city in the known world, Hagia Sophia had long been coveted by the leaders of both the Moslem East and the Christian West. Its capture in 1204 was an inestimable victory for the soldiers of the cross. But the great church had not endured the last of its woes. Two and a half centuries later Constantinople was besieged and sacked again-this time by the Ottoman Turks. At the behest o their young sultan, Mohammed II, Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque: the church's Christian treasures were pillaged, its spiritual face was turned toward Mecca, and its glorious mosaics were eventually defaced. It was not until the latter half of the nineteenth century that the first tentative efforts were made to restore Justinian's church to its former splendor. By that time,whitewash had obliterated the mosaics and grime had dulled the marbles. In this century, painstaking restoration has gradually revealed the long-hidden glories that led one observer to describe Hagia Sophia as "a spectacle of marvelous beauty".