JUST without the walls of the Seraglio stands a building which above all others is connected with Constantinople in the popular mind, the former Church, now Mosque, of St. Sophia. This is one of those particular monuments of history which every one of any pretension to culture wishes to see. A mighty, imposing building, measuring 255 feet from north to south by 250 from east to west. This was the cathedral church of old Byzantium built in the twentieth year of the reign of Constantine the Great, A.D. 325, and dedicated to Divine Wisdom. Constantine’s son Constantius enlarged the building, which was destroyed by fire in the reign of Arcadius, 395-408, in whose time the Goths came down over the hills by Adrianople and devastated the land as far as the Peloponese. It is said that the faction of St. John Chrysostom set fire to this building during one of those religious disturbances which, more than elsewhere in the world, unsettled the minds of men and caused them to overlook the greater truths. Theodosius II, he who built the stout walls that guarded the City of Constantine on the landward side for many centuries, re-erected the cathedral in 415, but little more than a century later, in the reign of Justinian, it fell a victim to the flames again. Twice did this happen in the reign of Justinian, the second time during a revolt of different factions in the Hippodrome, but St. Sophia was rebuilt again in greater splendour and on a larger scale in A.D. 538.
This Church of St. Sophia became the scene of many solemn state functions and religious ceremonies, the fumes of incense curled round its many pillars of porphyry from Phrygia—white marble striped rose-red, as with the blood of Atys slain at Synada; of green marble from Laconia, and blue from Lybia. Celtic marble quarries sent their tribute, black with white veins, and from the Bosphorus came white black-veined marble. Among the most beautiful of all these pillars were those eight which Aurelius had taken from the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec. Then there were monuments of gold, cunningly wrought, enriched with the most precious stones, and about all these glories floated hymns of praise or supplication to the God about Whose Triune Person the citizens wrangled and fought in the Hippodrome and in the narrow streets.
Legend has it that this work of man’s hand was made yet more glorious by angelic influences. An angel appeared to order the work of the ten thousand men engaged in the reconstruction under Justinian; he appeared again, robed in brilliant white, to a boy guarding the masons’ tools by night and ordered an immediate continuance of the pious work, and yet a third time to lead the mules of the Treasury into the vaults to be laden with eighty hundredweight of gold wherewith to decorate the sacred fane. One more angel appeared, this time to the Emperor himself, clad in Imperial purple, wearing red shoes, to ordain that the light should fall through three windows upon the High Altar, this in memory of Holy Trinity. On Christmas Day of 548 Emperor Justinian and Eutychius the Patriarch moved to the newly reconstructed sanctuary with all the pomp and ceremony of the Church. No sooner were the doors opened than the Emperor ran in with outstretched arms crying, “God be praised, Who hath esteemed me worthy to complete such a work. Solomon, I have surpassed thee!”
Not quite ten centuries later, in May of 1453 at Pentecost, the Patriarch was celebrating High Mass within the walls of St. Sophia, the fumes of incense floated heavenward with the supplications of the people, while the Turk was battering down the stout defences of the city and the Emperor and his followers were falling under the sword of Othman about the ruined ramparts. The Mass was interrupted and has never since been resumed, for from that day to this the Crescent has gleamed on the dome, the High Altar has faced towards Mecca, and from the attendant minarets the imam has called the followers of the Prophet to prayer. To the ancient Christian legends of angels the Turks have added traditions of their own. Near the Mihrab is a window facing north; here Sheik ak Shemseddin, the companion of Mohammed the Conqueror, first expounded the Koran.
In this Feast of Bairam, the Turkish Pentecost, the courts of St. Sophia were crowded with Turkish soldiery, some wounded, others stricken with cholera, and in and out of the upper gate of the Seraglio, through which the Sultan was wont to issue for worship in the Mosque of Sophia, convoys of sick were wending their weary way, soldiers and stores were passing, for the enemy was before the gates—not the old enceinte of the City, but the lines of Chatalja stretching from the Sea of Marmora to the Black Sea—and he was demanding admission in order to complete the High Mass interrupted on that day in May four and a half centuries ago.