The Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople: A Study of Byzantine Building

by W. R. Lethaby; Harold Swainson

The Iconostasis.—For a description of the screen in front of the bema, with its columns, beam, panels, and doors plated with silver, we refer to the Silentiary. A screen of this kind, from the sacred paintings with which it is adorned, is now called the iconostasis, but by the Byzantine writers it is usually named herkos, druphrakta, kinklidai, or kankelloi. Such screens were generally of bronze or marble. The Church of S. John the Evangelist, built by Galla Placidia at Ravenna, had a screen of silver. At the Church of the Apostles at Constantinople, built by Constantine, the iconostasis was gilded bronze. The screen of S. Peter’s in Rome was formed by the twelve beautiful antique columns which figure in Raphael’s tapestry, standing in two rows.[123] Eusebius connects twelve columns which stood about the tomb in the Sepulchre church with the number of the apostles, and it is possible, as De Fleury suggests, that in the six pairs of pillars forming the iconostasis at S. Sophia a reference may be seen to the dismissal of the apostles two by two. From the narrowness of the bema it seems certain that the coupling of the pillars was transversely to the screen as shown on our plan, [Fig. 5]. Thus they easily supported the passage way, where stood a great gemmed cross and a row of branched silver candelabra. This was the “narrow way for the lamp-lighter above the silver columns” described by the Silentiary.

The decoration of the silver plating of the breastwork and the beam by figures of apostles, prophets, and angels, and with circles bearing crosses and monograms, may have been formed in repoussé, like a beautiful gilt panel with a figure of the Virgin and Greek inscription now at Kensington Museum, which formed a part of the decoration of the screen at Torcello, but we think it more probable that it was damascened with gold like the silver work in Basil’s chapel.

The iconostasis probably reached up to the base of the porphyry strip which forms the border of the marble plating of the bema; if so it was about twenty feet high; it had three doors—“The Holy Doors”—that in the centre being the largest.

The “gold and silver columns in the middle of the temple” seen by Benjamin of Tudela, 1173, must refer to the iconostasis.

When the Crusaders practically sacked the church, the iconostasis, ciborium, and altar were broken up and distributed. Nicetas says, “The furniture of surpassing beauty, the silver, which went round the screen of the bema, the ambo, the doors, and many ornaments, in which gold was used, were carried away.” The Novgorod Chronicle[124] gives a fuller account of the eventful morning when the doors were broken through and S. Sophia was invaded. “They broke down the podium of the priests, ornamented with silver, the twelve silver columns, the four panels in the wall, decorated with images, and the Holy Table. They also destroyed the screen walls of the altar placed between the columns, and twelve crosses which stood above the altar; amongst these were crosses of metal, like trees, higher than a man. All these things were made of silver.

“They carried off also the wonderful table, with the gems and a great pearl; so great a crime did they commit in ignorance. Moreover they snatched away forty cups standing on the altar, and silver candelabra, whose number was so great that it is not possible to enumerate them, as well as the silver vessels which the Greeks use, more especially on feast days.

“They stole a Gospel, that was used for the services, and sacred crosses and single images and the covering which was above the altar, and forty censers made of pure gold: they laid hands on all gold and silver and on priceless vessels in the cupboards, walls, and other places, in such quantity that they cannot be numbered.”

Grelot says that before the Turks altered the church the iconostasis had figures of the Virgin and S. John Baptist between the central and side-doors and the Twelve Apostles over.[125]

Prothesis and Diakonikon.—Two chapels that in Byzantine churches almost invariably occur right and left of the bema with which they communicate directly are usually called the prothesis and diakonikon; they were sacristies, used respectively for the preparation of the mass and as a treasury or vestry. Du Cange in both editions placed them in the two exedras of the eastern hemicycle, and in this he is followed by Salzenberg. The impossibility of this arrangement is shown by Neale, who suggests that two chambers on either side of the bema which Du Cange thought were only supplementary were the sacristies in question. The chapels at the east end of S. Sophia have now been built up, but the doors that led into them still exist. We are not however certain that these chapels were built with the church. Paulus does not mention them, and there do not appear to have been chapels in this position at S. Sergius. In regard to the use of the prothesis and diakonikon, Dr. Freshfield[126] considers that the procession with the bread and wine called the Megale Eisodos, described in our last chapter, only became a part of the ritual in the reign of the successor of Justinian, to whose time the Cherubic Hymn sung during the ceremony is referred. The earlier liturgies, he says, contain no directions for this ceremony, but merely speak of the deacon as moving the elements from the prothesis table to the altar, and he concludes that the two side-chapels found in so many churches belong to a time subsequent to Justin II. Two narrow passages however, right and left of the bema, at S. Sophia, S. Sergius, S. Irene, and S. Vitale seem to show that they were intended for access to lateral portions used in connection with the bema, even if these parts were merely screened from the aisles, and a comparison of many early churches in Syria and Asia Minor proves that such chapels were in frequent use if not essential long before Justinian built his church.[127] See our figures [31] and [32], and compare Cattaneo, page 60.

The prothesis and diakonikon of S. Sophia are very infrequently mentioned by those names. In the catalogue of the Constantinopolitan patriarchs we read of “relics being kept in the diaconicum.”[128] The diakonikon is also named where Codinus speaks of the emperor as “hearing the prayers of S. Basil near the diakonikon,” and the prothesis is mentioned in the passage on p. [63]. Certain divisions of the church at the east end are however frequently mentioned by Porphyrogenitus, the Anonymous, and the Russian pilgrims. Thus we have the skeuophylakium (treasury of vessels) and other chapels referred to. The skeuophylakium of the Anonymous seems to be the same as the “lesser sanctuary” of Anthony, by which stood the cross which gave the exact height of Christ. This lesser sanctuary, or skeuophylakium, is probably the diakonikon—“the oratory in front of the metatorion”—where the relics of the Passion were kept.[129] Again we read: “Then by the right-hand side of the bema, they enter the oratory where stands the silver crucifix ... after worshipping they ascend by the cochlea [spiral stair, we suppose at south-east angle where minaret now is] which is by the part called the Holy Well, to the eastern part of the right-hand catechumena.” Again, “Then by the right-hand side of the bema, they enter the oratory where stands the silver crucifix.”[130]