CHAPTER II
JUSTINIAN’S CHURCH
The New Church.—The pre-Justinian church was burnt on the 15th January, 532[43]—the first day of the sedition—and the work of reconstruction was begun on the 23rd of the following month.[44]
Theophanes[45] says the period employed in the construction was five years eleven months and ten days; the statements therefore of Codinus and Glycas, that it took seventeen years to build, are completely at variance with this more credible author.
The solemn dedication took place, as Marcellinus Comes describes,[46] on 26th December, 537, Indiction 15, in the eleventh year of Justinian’s reign.
A description of this dedication ceremony is given by Theophanes.[47] “The procession started from the church of Anastasia, Menas the patriarch sitting in the royal chariot, and the king walking with the people.”
In the thirty-second year of Justinian’s reign an earthquake destroyed a great portion of the newly erected church.[48]
Now Procopius, whose contemporary history of the edifices built by Justinian was, according to Krumbacher,[49] finished and published in the year 558 or the spring of 559 at latest, makes no mention of this earthquake of 558, though he describes in full how, during the building of the church, which was completed in 537, the piers of the eastern arch threatened to give way before it was finished. We may therefore conclude that he describes Justinian’s church in its first state.
The translation from Procopius here given is based on that of Mr. Aubrey Stewart, published by the Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society, which has been compared with the original. We give in [Fig. 3] a plan of the church as built by Justinian, so far as the evidence will allow of an approximately certain restoration.
As the several different curved portions of the plan are difficult to distinguish, we propose so far as possible to reserve certain words for separate parts. The small eastern semicircle and its vault will be called apse and apsoid respectively. Hemicycle and semidome will refer to the great semicircle at the east or west and its vault. The pairs of curved spaces forming the lateral recesses in the hemicycles we propose to name exedras and their half-domes conchs.