But the minarets beckon; they prove the best of guides. Their white spires give a sure clue to the whereabouts of the ancient mosques and churches. And here, through my window, I could count most of these landmarks by which I steered. Nearest and tallest rose the minaret of Sancta Sophia, Holy Wisdom, the cathedral church of the Metropolitan.
During the ceremonies of Holy Week and Easter great crowds had gathered here. Good Friday was the day of the people’s procession. The peasants from the scattered villages brightened the town with the cheerful reds and blues of their national costumes, and at night all the world walked singing solemn chants, following the bishops in their glittering copes and jewelled mitres and the simple flower-arched bier.
Easter Eve proved to be the official festival of the Greek army and government. A dense mass of people filled the church and surged confusedly in the darkness of the open square outside it; each man, woman, and child, holding an unlit candle in their hands—some large, some small—painted with holy symbols and flowers; careful souls, mindful of their gala clothes, taking pains to hold their candle gingerly by its long cotton wick.
Within the building the deep gloom was hardly broken by the lights at the two lecterns, at which the laity read by turns, and the glimmer from where behind the icon-screen came the murmur of priests intoning. After what felt an interminable period of waiting, it was midnight. ‘Christ is risen,’ came the cry. The heavy gold embroidered curtain rose, disclosing within the sanctuary the long, low Altar of the Last Supper. Out poured a brilliant procession of ecclesiastics, marching down the nave to take their stand on the platform in the outer court; everyone in the crowd lighting his candle from his neighbour’s as the cortège passed along. In a moment the church was bright from end to end. The massive pillars stood like rocks in a waving flickering sea of gold. Then, for the first time, the great Madonna of the apse shone revealed. Enthroned on high, against the hollow, glowing background of mosaic, She held out Her Son to bless a strange assemblage under the dome, where British and French officers stood with their Greek comrades, headed by the Greek General Commanding, and all his staff, each holding a lighted taper in honour of His resurrection.
What a night for the German aircraft, suddenly flashed across our minds! In the very street outside, now lit with a thousand lights and packed with human beings, I had seen their ugly work only a few weeks before. I shuddered as we forged our way home.
Up the hill directly above Sancta Sophia, the somewhat stumpy minaret of St. Paraskevi reared its head. This grand fourth-century basilica, finer than any building of its kind at Constantinople, is now given over to the Greek refugees from Asia Minor. Their carpets and piteous coloured rags hang in complete disorder from its high wooden galleries.
The platform for the Mihrab, facing towards Mecca, remains aslant the apse; although a tiny altar at its northern end claims the church back for its Christian builders—an altar so small and poor, adorned by such dim, feeble lights, I hardly noticed it at first the day I found my way in there. Here were no crowds, no pomp of a church militant, only the begging children who trotted in my wake. The place appeared empty except for a solitary peasant woman, bowed in prayer before the icon on the little shrine, praying, no doubt, for a safe return to her distant home in Syria—her dress proclaimed how far the wars had driven her. She stood there, a strange impassive figure in her full dark purple trousers and dull red veil, silhouetted sharply against the cream plaster walls and the cipollino columns brown with age and dirt. A faint blue smoke curled from under the unseen cooking-pots in the gallery behind her, blurring the light from the large windows and drifting out across the wide open space. Through it, the arches of the nave and triforium gleamed with the rose and gold and green of their splendid floral mosaics.
Two more great churches the minarets pointed out. St. Demetrius, dedicated to the City’s patron saint, is a basilica not unlike that of the refugees. The mosaics here have a curious silvery sheen, but the marbles are the church’s special glory. By some piece of good fortune the original Byzantine casing of the walls is almost intact. Remembering how this much coveted city has suffered, how, time after time, it has been besieged, burnt, sacked—for it stands where two famous highways cross, from Rome to Byzantium, from Vienna to the Aegean and the East—it is little short of marvellous that any fine old buildings are left; still more so that these treasures should have escaped the general doom of such things. A wonderful mellow tone pervades the great interior, where the one spot of brilliant colour is the gold flag of the Double Empire, which holds the eagles of the East and West aloft.
Alas, that modern Greece should have St. Demetrius in its clutches! The Turks at least left the marbles much as they found them. The Greeks have written their recent triumph in huge black letters right across the apse; October 1912—there is no escaping that or the monstrous Austrian stove—another claimant for the double eagles, which stretches its ugly arms over the nave.
St. Demetrius, as is only right, was used to shelter soldiers rather than refugee civilians. Sketching there I often wondered why so many Greeks in khaki wandered in and out. Very devout people, I thought, though their casual lounge and bored air rather belied them. Anyway, I decided, they cannot all be former sacristans on leave. To Frenchmen of every rank I soon grew accustomed; the blue field uniform was invariably to be seen admiring, drawing, or measuring, each time I went there. Even a British officer strayed in at times, some odd, adventurous spirit who cared for such things—unlike his kind. But why all these shabby Greek Tommies?