A third was a cobbler, called by the classic name of Xenophon. His sole earthly possession was the stall in which he exercised his trade, abutting on the wall of one of the houses doomed to demolition in the clearance of the new site. A liberal price was offered for the stall; but the cobbler, although he did not refuse to surrender it, whimsically exacted, as a condition precedent, that the several factions of the charioteers should salute him, in the same way as they saluted the emperor, while passing his seat in the hippodrome. Justinian agreed; but took what must be considered an ungenerous advantage of the simple man of leather. The letter of Xenophon's. condition was fulfilled. He was placed [{647}] in the front of the centre tribune, gorgeously arrayed in a scarlet and white robe. The factions, as they passed his seat in procession, duly rendered the prescribed salute; but the poor cobbler was balked of his anticipated triumph, being compelled, amid the derisive cheers and laughter of the multitude, to receive the solute with his back turned to the assembly! [Footnote 135]
[Footnote 135: Anonymi, p. 59.]
But it is around the imperial builder himself that the incidents of the history of the work, and still more its legendary marvels, group themselves in the pages of the anonymous chronicler. For although the chief architect, Anthemius, was assisted by Agathias, by Isidorus of Miletus, and by a countless staff of minor subordinates, Justinian, from the first to the last, may be truly said to have been the very life and soul of the undertaking, and the director even of its smallest details. From the moment when, at the close of the inauguratory prayer, he threw the first shovelful of mortar into the foundation, till its solemn opening for worship on Christmas-day, 538, his enthusiasm never abated, nor did his energy relax. Under the glare of the noon-day sun, while others were indulging in the customary siesta, Justinian was to be seen, clad in a coarse linen tunic, staff in hand, and his head bound with a cloth, directing, encouraging, and urging on the workmen, stimulating the industrious by liberal donations, visiting the loiterers with his displeasure. Some of his expedients, as detailed by the chronicler, are extremely curious. We shall mention only one. In order to expedite the work, it was desirable to induce the men to work after-hours. The natural way of effecting this would have been to offer them a proportionate increase of pay; but Justinian chose rather to obtain the same result indirectly. Accordingly, he was accustomed—if our authority can be relied on—to scatter a quantity of coins about the building; and the workmen, afraid to search for them in the open day, were led to continue their work till the shades of evening began to fall, in order that they might more securely carry off the spoil under cover of the darkness!
Some of the building operations which this writer describes are equally singular. The mortar, to secure greater tenacity, was made with barley-water; the foundations were filled up with huge rectangular masses, fifty feet long, of a concrete of lime and sand, moistened with barley-water and other glutinous fluid, and bound together by wicker framework. The tiles or bricks of which the cupola was formed were made of Rhodian clay, so light that twelve of them did not exceed the weight of one ordinary tile. The pillars and buttresses were built of cubical and triangular blocks of stone, with a cement made of lime and oil, soldered with lead, and bound, within and without, with clamps of iron.
It is plain, however, that these particulars, however curious they may seem, are not to be accepted implicitly, at least if they are judged by the palpable incredibility of some of the other statements of the writer. The supernatural appears largely as an element in his history. On three several occasions, according to this chronicler, the emperor was favored with angelic apparitions, in which were imparted to him successive instructions, first as to the plan of the building, again as to urging on its progress, and finally as to finding funds for its completion. One of these narratives is extremely curious, as showing the intermixture of earth and heaven in the legendary notions of the time. A boy, during the absence of the masons, had been left in charge of their tools, when, as the boy believed, one of the eunuchs of the palace, in a resplendent white dress, came to him, ordered him at once to call back the masons, that the work of heaven might not be longer retarded. [{648}] On the boy's refusing to quit the post of which he had been left in charge, the supposed eunuch volunteered to take his place, and swore "by the wisdom of God" that he would not depart from the place till the boy should return. Justinian ordered all the eunuchs of the palace to be paraded before the boy; and on the boy's declaring that the visitor who had appeared to him was not any of the number, at once concluded that the apparition was supernatural; but, while he accepted the exhortation to greater zeal and energy in forwarding the work, he took a characteristic advantage of the oath by which the angel had sworn not to leave the church till the return of his youthful messenger. Without permitting the boy to go back to the building where the angel had appeared to him, Justinian sent him away to the Cyclades for the rest of his life, in order that the perpetual presence and protection of the angel might thus be secured for the church, which that divine messenger was pledged never to leave till the boy should return to relieve him at his post! [Footnote 136]
[Footnote 136: Anonymi, p. 61.]
Without dwelling further, however, on the legendary details, we shall find marvels enough in the results, such as they appear in the real history of the building. And perhaps the greatest marvel of all is the shortness of the period in which so vast a work was completed, the new church being actually opened for worship within less than seven years from the day of the conflagration. Ten thousand workmen were employed on the edifice, if it be true that a hundred master-builders, each of whom had a hundred men under him, were engaged to accelerate and complete the undertaking. For the philosophical student of history, there is a deep subject of study in the bare enumeration of the materials brought together for this great Christian enterprise, and of the various quarters from which they were collected. It is not alone the rich assortment of precious marbles—the spotless white of Paros; the green of Croceae; the blue of Libya; together with parti-colored marbles in a variety hardly ever equalled before—the costly cipolline, the rose-veined white marble of Phrygia, the curiously streaked black marble of Gaul, and the countless varieties of Egyptian porphyry and granite. Far more curious is it to consider how the materials of the structure were selected so as to present in themselves a series of trophies of the triumphs of Christianity over all the proudest forms of worship in the old world of paganism. In the forest of pillars which surround the dome and sustain the graceful arches of the gynaeconitis, the visitor may still trace the spoils of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec, of the famous Temple of Diana at Ephesus, or that of the Delian Apollo, of Minerva at Athens, of Cybele at Cyzicus, and of a host of less distinguished shrines of paganism. When the mere cost of the transport of these massive monuments to Constantinople is taken into account, all wonder ceases at the vastness of the sums which are said to have been expended in the work. It is easy to understand how, "before the walls had risen two cubits from the ground, forty-five thousand two hundred pounds were consumed." [Footnote 137] It is not difficult to account for the enormous general taxation, the oppressive exactions from individuals, the percentages on prefects' incomes, and the deductions from the salaries of judges and professors, which went to swell the almost fabulous aggregate of the expenditure; and there is perhaps an economical lesson in the legend of the apparition of the angel, who, when the building had risen as far as the cupola, conducted the master of the imperial treasury to a subterranean vault in which eighty hundred weight of gold were discovered ready for the completion of the work! [Footnote 138]
[Footnote 137: Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," vol. iii. p. 633.]
[Footnote 138: Anonymi, p. 62.]
Even independently of the building itself and its artistic decorations, the value of the sacred furniture and appliances exceeded all that had ever before been devised. The sedilia of the [{649}] priests and the throne of the patriarch were of silver gilt. The dome of the tabernacle was of pure gold, ornamented with golden lilies, and surmounted by a gold cross seventy-five pounds weight and encrusted with precious stones. All the sacred vessels—chalices, beakers, ewers, dishes, and patens, were of gold. The candelabra which stood on the altar, on the ambo, and on the upper gynaeconitis; the two colossal candelabra placed at either side of the altar; the dome of the ambo; the several crosses within the bema; the pillars of the iconastasis; the covers of the sacred books—all were likewise of gold, and many of them loaded with pearls, diamonds, and carbuncles. The sacred linens of the altar and the communion cloths were embroidered with gold and pearls. But when it came to the construction of the altar itself, no single one of these costly materials was considered sufficiently precious. Pious ingenuity was tasked to its utmost to devise a new and richer substance, and the table of the great altar was formed of a combination of all varieties of precious materials. Into the still fluid mass of molten gold were thrown pearls and other gems, rubies, crystals, topazes, sapphires, onyxes, and amethysts, blended in such proportions as might seem best suited to enhance to the highest imaginable limit the costliness of what was prepared as the throne of the Most High on earth! And to this combination of all that is most precious in nature, art added all the wealth at its disposal, by the richness of the chasing and the elaborateness and beauty of the design.
The total cost of the structure has been variously estimated. It amounted, according to the ancient authorities, to "three hundred and twenty thousand pounds;" but whether these were of silver or of gold is not expressly stated. Gibbon [Footnote 139] leaves it to each reader, "according to the measure of his belief," to estimate it in one or the other metal; but Mr. Neale [Footnote 140] is not deterred by the sneer of Gibbon from expressing his "belief that gold must be intended." According to this supposition the expenditure, if this can be believed possible, would have reached the enormous sum of thirteen millions sterling!