The work was pressed forward vigorously. The stones were paid for on delivery; the workmen had extra pay twice a week; the emperor, staff in hand, dressed in white linen robe with a white linen kerchief on his head, daily visited and encouraged his workmen. The architects, Anthemius of Tralles and Ignatius of Miletus, had under their orders, according to the Greek stories, one hundred master architects, each superintending one hundred men. The lime was tempered with barley-water, and the foundations of the great central piers, fifty feet square and twenty feet deep, were laid with concrete in which the same barley-water and chopped willow-bark, poured in lukewarm, were chief ingredients. The mosaics and marbles of the interior were laid in lime and oil. The bricks for the cupola were made of Rhodian clay, under the direction of Troilus the chamberlain, Theodore the patrician of Seleucia, and Basil the quæstor, and were so light that twelve of them weighed only as much as one ordinary brick. This last statement, however, of the Byzantine writer is described by Salzenberg as a pure fiction. The building was fireproof, no wood being used except in some of the doors.
While human skill and foresight and industry were thus engaged in their sacred task, the heavenly host, according to the Greek traditions, did not fail to inspire and protect the toilers. Three visions are narrated. One day, when the laborers had retired, leaving their tools under the care of a son of the architect Ignatius, there appeared before the lad, at the right-hand side of the pier of the upper semi-dome as you ascend to the dome, a figure like one of the eunuchs of the court, in white and shining apparel, bidding him recall the workmen to the work of Heaven, and, to give confidence that nothing would be lost during the absence of the messenger, adding, "I swear by the Holy Wisdom I will not depart before thou returnest." The sequel was unfortunate for the boy. By the emperor's orders, all the officials of the court were brought for identification before the stripling: he could recognize none as the one who sent him. Of course, he must have had a vision; and to ensure the perpetual presence and protection of the celestial visitor according to his oath, the boy was sent for the rest of his life to the Cyclades.
Again, one Saturday, as the day was declining, the same figure appeared to the emperor: "Why art thou disquieted for money? Send hither to-morrow some of thy great men, and I will supply thy needs." On the morrow came Strategius the treasurer, Basil the quæstor, Theodore the prefect, and a train of fifty servants and twenty mules. The radiant figure led them through the Golden Gate, and on and on till they stood before an immense palace. They ascended its magnificent portico, and followed their guide through long corridors till they reached a door which he opened with a brazen key, and disclosed a chamber where the floor was covered with gold coin. The mules were loaded with the treasure, and the officers, returning, laid at Justinian's feet eight thousand pounds weight of gold. Astonished at the tale told by the officials, the emperor despatched a messenger to the spot described. No palace there towered aloft: the spot was desolate and unbuilt on.
A third time the angel—in the imperial dress, with the purple buskin—presented himself to the architect, and bade him change his plan from a double to a triple apse τρίφωτον μύακα. He remonstrated, when he next met the emperor, about his contradictory directions, and was awestruck to hear that on the day when the vision came to him in the building Justinian had not quitted his palace.
Thus under angelic guidance the work went on, and after five years, eleven months and ten days of ceaseless toil the stately fane was completed. Largesses of enormous amount were distributed: one thousand oxen, as many sheep, as many swine, six hundred deer, ten thousand fowls, thirty thousand measures of corn, were given to the poor. In long procession, on Christmas Eve, A.D. 538, the emperor, accompanied by the patriarch, came to the door of St. Sophia; thence, unaccompanied by priest or courtier, as though making the final offering alone, he ran to the foot of the ambo, and with hands outstretched in the attitude of prayer exclaimed, "Glory to God, who hath deemed me worthy of such a work! I have conquered thee, Solomon." Well might he so exclaim as he gazed on the temple resplendent with gold and jewels and flashing marbles and decked with the spoils of heathen shrines. There was the white marble of Paros, the blue of Libya, the green of Croceæ, the black-streaked Celtic marble, the rosy-veined Phrygian, the granite and porphyry of Egypt; supporting the four smaller semi-domes were the eight pillars from the temple of the Sun; on either side of the nave the eight columns which had once adorned the temple of Diana of the Ephesians; the seats of the priests and the throne of the patriarch were silver-gilt; the dome of the ciborium over the holy table was of pure gold, bearing a cross weighing seventy-five pounds and encrusted with precious stones. The sacred vessels—the chalices, the flagons, the patens—were of the same metal; the hangings of the altar were of cloth of gold embroidered with gems; the candlesticks on the altar, the ambo, in the women's gallery and elsewhere, six thousand in number, were all of gold, as were the crosses on the bema, the covers of the holy books, the pillars of the iconostasis screening off the bema. In the altar itself pious ingenuity had surpassed itself. Into the fluid mass of liquid gold were thrown pearls, rubies, crystals, topazes, sapphires, onyxes and amethysts to enhance the costliness of the holiest of holies. The expense was enormous—Byzantine writers say three hundred and twenty thousand pounds weight of gold, or between sixty and seventy millions of dollars.
In marked contrast to the pagan temples, where the resources of art were lavished on the exterior, the outside of St. Sophia is remarkably plain and unornamented. To some extent this is due to the removal of all the statues by the Turks; but even when they were in their places it must have been merely a huge rectangular mass. The length of the building is two hundred and forty-one feet, the breadth two hundred and twenty-six feet, the diameter of the dome one hundred feet, the height to the centre of it one hundred and seventy-nine feet. East and west of the great dome spring two large semi-domes, the eastern supported by three smaller semi-domes, of which the centre one covers the bema; the western by two smaller semi-domes. The effect of this arrangement is that the spectator sees at once the lofty dome in the centre, whereas in modern buildings of like design the full view of the dome is not obtained till we are nearly under it. St. Sophia thus seems great at first sight—St. Peter's only after reflection. Around the dome are twenty-four windows; at the four angles are four colossal seraphim; in the centre the face of Christ, the sovereign Judge, looked down in mosaic. The porch or narthex is double, one hundred feet in depth. In the outer one stood the phiale, with the inscription that reads the same backward and forward: ΝΙΨΟΝ ΑΝΟΜΗΜΑΤΑ ΜΗ ΜΟΝΑΝ ΟΨΙΝ— "Wash thine iniquities, not the face alone." Five marble portals, with bronze gates wrought in floriated crosses, admit to the inner narthex, whence nine doors of bronze, exquisite in workmanship, admit to the church. Over the centre doorway is a group in mosaic, where Justinian is represented kneeling with a nimbus round his head. Over this second narthex and the side aisles is the gynœconitis or women's gallery, adorned with sixty-seven pillars, so that the whole number of columns in the church is the prime number one hundred and seven. In the interior was the nave for the laity, divided from the soleas, or the part for the clergy, by the ambo, a stately and elaborate structure with a canopy of gold and a cross of pure gold weighing one hundred pounds. The ambo was at once pulpit and reading-desk. The soleas supplied accommodation for three hundred and eighty-five ministers of various ranks, including sixty priests, one hundred deacons and thirty deaconesses. On the left of the soleas was the seat of the emperor—on the right, the throne of the patriarch. From the soleas projected the apse of the bema, or sanctuary, flanked by the diaconicon, or vestry, and the prothesis, where the elements were prepared for the Eucharist. The bema was divided from the soleas by the iconostasis, or screen, made of silver, and exhibiting in oval medallions the icons or pictures of Our Lord, His Virgin Mother, the prophets and apostles. In the iconostasis were the three holy doors—above the middle one a massive cross of gold. Behind the holy table ran a semicircular row of seats for the officiating clergy, the stalls of silver-gilt, the columns dividing them of gold. In the chord of the bema stood the holy table with its ciborium or canopy of gold.
But in addition to the marble and alabaster which gleamed in various hues from wall and pavement, St. Sophia was bright with mosaics. On the great west arch was represented the Blessed Virgin and Sts. Peter and Paul; on the sides still exist the figures of St. Anthemius, Basil, Gregory, Dionysius the Areopagite, Nicholas of Myra, Gregory the Armenian, and the prophets Jeremiah, Isaiah, Jonah and Habakkuk. On the eastern arch is again a representation of the Virgin Mother, of St. John the Baptist and of John Palæologus, the last Christian restorer of the church; on the arch of the bema, Our Lord, His Mother and the archangel Michael.
On great festivals the emperor went to St. Sophia in state, in embroidered robes, with purple buskins and close diadem. This diadem was a high cap of cloth or silk covered with jewels, the crown formed of a horizontal circle and two arches of gold, bearing at their intersection a cross or globe. With him went the rest of the imperial family, the cæsar or sebastocrator in open diadem and green buskins, the panhypersebastos, the protosebastos and the despots. In attendance were the great officers—the curapalata, or lord steward, with his silver rod; the great logothete, or chancellor; the great domestic, who commanded the infantry; the protostrator, who commanded the cavalry; the stratopedarch, or quartermaster-general; the protospathaire of the guards; the constable of the Franks; the æteriarch of the barbarians; the acolyte of the English or Varangians. In the Byzantine administration the great duke commanded the fleet, having under him the great drangaire and the emir or admiral, an Arabic designation borrowed from the Norman kings of Sicily. To this long array of officials and courtiers must be added the patriarch and his clergy in the magnificent vestments of the Greek Church, if we wish to form an idea of the splendid ceremonial which gave to dome and arch a life and a significance now lost in the simpler forms of Mohammedan worship.
Twenty years after Justinian in his pride had exclaimed, "Νενίκηκά σε, Σαλομών," the great dome and the eastern semi-domes fell and destroyed the holy table and the rich apparatus of the bema; but the zeal and energy of Justinian did not experience any diminution. A nephew and namesake of one of the original designers, Ignatius, was employed to restore the work. He gave the dome its present form, making its height twenty-five feet more than that of its predecessor, thus diminishing the lateral thrust. The church remains substantially the same as thus restored in A.D. 561, but needed and received in after years many repairs. In A.D. 896 the tower at the west end was erected by the emperor Michael, and in A.D. 987 a thorough renovation was carried out by Basil the Bulgaricide. The conquest of the city by the Latins in A.D. 1204 led to the entire destruction of the rich interior arrangements, and we read of the repairs effected by Andronicus in 1307 A.D., and, the eastern semi-dome showing signs of giving way, by John Palæologus IV. in 1345.
The Mohammedan conquest of course swept away the ornaments of the interior—the ambo, the iconostasis and the holy table. The heads of the crosses were chiselled off, so as to destroy the cruciform shape, and the numerous groups and figures portrayed in mosaic were covered with coats of whitewash. During the restoration of the church in the reign of Abd-ul-Medjid these works of art were once more brought to light by Fossati, and sketches of them made by this architect and by Herr Salzenberg before they were again hidden from sight. The figures of the four seraphim were never covered, and still look down upon the desecrated temple: on the four piers hang huge shields bearing in Arabic characters the names of Aboo-bekr, Omar, Osman and Ali, the four companions of the Prophet, whom the orthodox Soonees reverence as the true khalifs. The floor is covered with rich carpeting. As the Mussulman at prayer turns to the Kebla at Mecca—that is, to the south-east—and as the church was built nearly east and west, the pulpit, the carpet, the long lines of worshippers are now arrayed obliquely to the length of the building.