A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volume 1, 3rd ed. / From the Earliest Times to the Present Day

by James Fergusson

Constantinople.

As before mentioned, all the churches of the capital which were erected before the age of Justinian, have perished, with the one exception of that of St. John Studius mentioned above (page [421]). This may in part be owing to the hurried manner in which they were constructed, and the great quantity of wood consequently employed, which might have risked their destruction anywhere. It is, however, a curious, but architecturally an important, fact that Byzantium possessed every conceivable title to be chosen as the capital of the Empire, except the possession of a good building-stone, or even apparently any suitable material for making good bricks. Wood seems in all times to have been the material most readily obtained and most extensively used for building purposes, and hence the continual recurrence of fires, from before the time of Justinian down to the present day. That monarch was the first who fairly met the difficulty; the two churches erected during his reign, which now exist, are constructed wholly without wood or combustible materials of any sort—and hence their preservation.

The earliest of these two, popularly known as the “Kutchuk Agia Sophia,” or lesser Sta. Sophia, was originally a double church, or more properly speaking two churches placed side by side, precisely in the same manner as the two at Kalat Sema’n (Woodcut No. [298]). The basilica was dedicated to the Apostles Peter and Paul; the domical church, appropriately, to the Martyrs Sergius and Bacchus. The former has entirely disappeared, from which I would infer that it was constructed with pillars and a wooden roof.[^[226]] The latter remains very nearly intact. The frescoes and mosaics have, indeed, disappeared from the body of the church, hidden, it is to be hoped, under the mass of whitewash which covers its walls—in the narthex they can still be distinguished.

311. Church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus.

312. Section of Church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.

313. Capital from Church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus. (From Lenoir.)

314. Entablature from Church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus. (From Lenoir.)

The existing church is nearly square in plan, being 109 ft. by 92 over all, exclusive of the apse, and covering only about 10,000 sq. ft. It has consequently no pretensions to magnificence on the score of dimensions, but is singularly elegant in design and proportion. Internally, the arrangement of the piers of the dome, of the galleries, and of the pillars which support them, are almost identical with those of St. Vitale at Ravenna, but the proportions of the Eastern example are better, being 66 ft. in height by 52 in diameter, while the other, with the same diameter, is nearly 20 ft. higher, and consequently too tall to be pleasing.

The details of this church are generally well designed for the purposes to which they are applied. There is a certain reminiscence of classical feeling in the mouldings and foliage—in the latter, however, very faint. The architrave block (No. [313]) here seems almost to have superseded the capital, and what was once a classical entablature has retained very little of its pristine form (No. [314]), and indeed was used constructively only, for the support of a gallery, or some such mechanical requirement. The arch had entirely superseded it as an ornamental feature long before the age of Justinian.