THE CHURCH OF ST. SOPHIA.
Few buildings have been the object of such passionate attachment as the great church of Constantinople. To the Greeks of the Lower Empire, St. Sophia was all that their temple was to the Jews—the centre of the national life and the focus of the national religion. There a long train of princes, proudly styling themselves emperors of the Romans, had been consecrated and had worshipped—there a succession of patriarchs had edified the Church, presided over great councils, and defied the rival bishops of Old Rome. The glories of St. Sophia proclaimed that the city of Constantine was not merely the capital of the East, but the one city which had been born and educated in the bosom of the faith, and never polluted by the worship of the older gods. To the modern Greek the gilded Crescent that has supplanted the Cross on its aërial dome is at once a sacrilege and a humiliation, a flashing symbol of political and religious degradation, telling too plainly that the barbarian rules in the palaces of the Cæsars, and that the faith once delivered by the Saviour at Jerusalem has been driven from its noblest temple by the Prophet of Arabia. Nor can the venerable edifice be without interest to all of us when we remember how it is identified with the greatest triumphs and the greatest reverses of Christianity, and with the two great epochs of Christian history—the death of paganism and the birth of free thought: its erection was a proof of the former, and its capture led directly to the Renaissance.
The present church is the fourth which has stood on the same spot and borne the same name. Constantine in A.D. 325—therefore long before his baptism—dedicated the first to the Wisdom of God which was from the beginning (Proverbs viii. 22)—that is, to the Logos, or Word of God. Near it he founded another, dedicated to the Peace of God which passeth all understanding. His son and successor, Constantius, as the former seemed too small for his increasing city, rebuilt St. Sophia, and added to it the latter, the church of St. Irene. This second St. Sophia witnessed the strange pagan revival of Julian and the ascendency of Arianism under Valens. From St. Sophia issued that crowd of satyr-like monks and Jezebel-like women who attacked Gregory Nazianzen in his missionary church Anastasia; and from its gate went forth into poverty and exile Damophilus, the last of the Arian patriarchs, when Theodosius, at the head of his armed soldiers, conducted the triumphant Gregory through streets echoing with cries of rage, grief, astonishment and despair, and in the church, filled with the imperial guards in all the panoply of war, installed him with his own imperial hand on the throne of the patriarchs. But the greatest name in the annals of the church of Constantius is that of St. John Chrysostom. Here he denounced the vices of the rich, the extravagance of female dress, the profuse honors paid to the statue of Eudocia the empress; here, when the fallen minister Eutropius had fled for refuge to the church and lay grovelling in agonies of fear under the holy table, he uttered his great discourse on the instability of human greatness and the forgiveness of injuries.[9] Here, in allusion to the hostility of the empress, he cried, "Herodias is again furious; Herodias again dances; she again demands the head of John"—a sentence not to be forgotten by a woman and a queen. Her revenge came soon. On Easter Eve, A.D. 404, St. Sophia was invaded by the troops, the rite of baptism rudely interrupted, the Catholics driven from the church to the baths, from the baths to the fields: amid the tumult fire burst forth in the sanctuary, and the church perished in the conflagration.
[9] "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! Where are now the splendid surroundings of the consulship? Where are the gleaming torches, the applause, the dances, the banquets, the crowded feasts? Where are the acclamations of the circus, the adulation of the spectators? Perished. A storm has stripped off the leaves and bared the tree, now tottering from its root. Where are the feigned friends, the revellings and drinkings, the swarm of parasites, the various artifices of the cook, the slaves and ministers to the caprices of the powerful? They were but night and a dream—the day has come and they have vanished; they were spring flowers—the spring has ended and they are withered; they were shadows, and they have passed away—a vapor that is dissipated, a bubble that is burst, a spider's web that is torn. Who was higher in place than this man? Who had ascended greater heights of honor? Now he is more wretched than the prisoner, more pitiable than the slave, more indigent than the beggar famishing. What need is there of words when the man is here before us? See the pallor of death on his cheeks, the chattering of his teeth, the trembling of his limbs—the broken voice, the unsteady tongue, the form and figure befitting a stony heart.
"Nor do I say these things as a reproach, but to soften your hearts—to lead you to be content with his present punishment. Let the rich see here the ruin of the mighty: let the poor thank his poverty, which has been a safe asylum, a waveless harbor, a sure defence. To rich and poor, to high and low, to bond and free, here is a lesson to benefit all. Have not I softened your hearts and cast out your anger, extinguished your inhumanity and led you to compassion? Your faces show it, and your streaming tears. Let us pray to the God of mercy to soften the emperor's heart. Thus shall God be favorable to us; thus shall our sins be wiped out; thus shall we adorn the Church; thus to the farthest ends of the world will be spread the fame of our humanity and forgiveness."
The third church was built by Theodosius, A.D. 415, and witnessed a strange occurrence when its throne was occupied by the well-known Nestorius, whose name still gives an appellation to the widespread Nestorian sect. Proclus, the bishop of Cyzicus, was preaching in St. Sophia, and argued in his discourse for the ascription to the Blessed Virgin of the title "mother of God;" but the patriarch rose from his throne and denounced, in the presence of the astonished congregation, the language of the preacher. This church, too, beheld the excommunication of the Monophysite Acacius, when one of the Sleepless Brotherhood, as the body of monks was called, pinned to his vestments, as he was celebrating at the altar, the sentence of the Roman pontiff, Felix II.
From Old Rome, New Rome adopted old vices—among others, the passion for the entertainments of the circus and the factions to which they gave rise. The two chief parties were the Blues and the Greens, and when Justinian ascended the throne the Greens were partisans of heresy and Anastasius—the Blues, of orthodoxy and Justinian. In January, A.D. 532, their rivalry came to a head, or rather the licentious oppressions of the Blues drove the Greens to despair. The arrest of some ringleaders of both parties led to a temporary union: a joint attack on the prefect's palace resulted; the palace was burnt, the prisons thrown open; the city was in the possession of the mob, who encountered with all the fury of religious enthusiasm the wild barbarian soldiery. The women threw from roofs and windows stones on the heads of the troops, who in return darted firebrands against the houses. For five days the tumult raged and the flames spread. The conflagration destroyed St. Sophia, the baths of Zeuxippus, the Brazen Porch of the palace, St. Sampson's Hospital with its inmates, and the porches which led to the Forum. Justinian had lost his throne had not the empress Theodora inspired him with courage. The sedition was at last suppressed, but not before thirty thousand of the rioters, whose watchword had been Νίκα, perished in the contest.
On the fortieth day after the fire the St. Sophia still standing was begun. After prayer by the patriarch Eutychius the foundation-stone was laid by Justinian on the twenty-third of February, A.D. 532. Large purchases of adjacent lots were made for the purpose of enlarging the site. The land on the right hand of the nave, as far as the pillar of St. Basil, was bought from Charito—on the left, as far as the pillar of St. Gregory, from Xenophon, a cobbler; that for the bema, from a eunuch named Antiochus; for the vestry and treasure-house, from a lady named Anna. The three last named did not want to sell. The emperor in person had to wait on the lady, who, overcome by this mark of zeal or condescension, fell at his feet and gave him the ground, stipulating that she might be buried near it, and trusting that at the day of judgment she might have a share in the merit of such a work. Antiochus was more obdurate, but a cruel advantage was taken of his passion for the sports of the circus. He was arrested on some pretext just before the great games and thrown into prison. As the time of the festival approached he gradually weakened, and when the day at length arrived he surrendered at discretion. The circus was crowded, the emperor in his seat, the races just beginning, but the sport was suspended till Antiochus was brought from prison, and in sight of the eager spectators conducted to the emperor's box to conclude the bargain. The poor cobbler Xenophon was treated scurvily. He had a longing to play the great man once in his life, and demanded as a condition of sale that the factions of the circus should give him a royal salute. The condition was literally fulfilled. Clad in white and scarlet, the cobbler was placed in the centre of the arena and the salute given behind his back.
For the materials requisitions were made in all the provinces. The governors of the Themata of the East, the West, the North and the South were ordered to send up to the capital pillars and marbles from the ancient temples, baths and palaces. Eight columns of porphyry, which Aurelian had transported from Baalbec to adorn the temple of the Sun erected by him at Rome, were sent to Constantinople by Marcia, a noble widow, whose dowry they had been; eight pillars of green marble were supplied by the famous shrine of the Ephesian Diana, and the temples of the Delian Apollo, of Cybele at Cyzicus and of Athene at Athens were despoiled of their most valuable portions.