“He saw a Turk breaking the floor with an axe. ‘Wherefore dost thou that?’ inquired the conqueror. ‘For the faith,’ replied the soldier. Mahomet in an impulse of anger struck him, saying, ‘Ye have got enough by pillaging, and enslaving the city, the buildings are mine.’”
A letter to Pope Nicholas V., written in 1453, describes how “the profane heathen broke into the marvellous temple of S. Sophia, unsurpassed by Solomon’s; they reverenced not the sacred images, nay, rather broke them in pieces; they put out the eyes of the priests, scattered the relics of the saints, and seized on the gold and silver.”[217]
Ducas, who died eleven years after the Fall, bewails “the Great Church, a new Sion which has now become an altar of the heathen, and is called the house of Mahomet.” “The dogs hewed down the holy ikons, tore off the ornaments, the chains, the napkins, and the coverings of the holy table. Some of the lamps they destroyed, and others they carried away. They stole the sacred vessels from the skeuophylakium. Everything made of silver and gold or other precious materials was taken away, and the church was left naked and desolate as it had never been before.”
With the exception of the removal of much of the treasure, the church did not immediately suffer great harm from its new masters.
On the outside however the destruction of many of the low attached chambers, and the addition of the minarets, have very much changed its appearance. The first minaret, which was indeed the first in Constantinople, was built at the south-east corner by Mahomet the Conqueror. Selim II., who reigned from 1566 to 1574, built the second at the north-east corner, and also restored the eastern apse which had been again damaged by an earthquake: Amurath III. erected the last two minarets at the western corners.[218]
“The description of the church of S. Sophia as it now appears,” which forms one of the chapters in Gyllius’ († 1555) Topography of Constantinople, describes the church before the addition of these three last minarets. It is interesting to note that he remarks how little the building had been altered, “and it is despoiled of nothing, except a little of the metal work [mosaic?] which shows itself in great abundance through the whole church. The Sanctum Sanctorum, formerly holy and unpolluted, into which the priests only were suffered to enter, is still standing, though there is nothing remaining of the jewels and precious stones which adorned it, these having been plundered by its sacrilegious enemies.” This is later supported by Grelot,[219] who writes, “It is decorated with everything that human industry and skill could devise to render the work absolutely perfect.... I say nothing about the beautiful pictures, the faces of which have been destroyed by the Turks.” It is clear from Tournefort (1702) and Lady Mary Montagu (1717) that the mosaics were not wholly obliterated; the latter writes, “the figures were in no other way defaced but by the decays of time: for it is absolutely false that the Turks defaced all the images they found in the city.” On the other hand, an Italian MS. description of S. Sophia in the British Museum, written in 1611, says, “The Turks took away all the beautiful work and covered everything with whitewash.”[220] It is evident from Dr. Covel’s MS., quoted later, that much was destroyed, defaced, and plastered over. Dr. Walsh tells us that one of the smaller vaults fell in about 1820, scattering its mosaic over the floor.
§ 2. THE ANONYMOUS ACCOUNT.
We must now examine the description of the church by the writer generally called the Anonymous of Combefis (otherwise of Banduri or Lambecius). Codinus, who is believed to have died soon after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, has so closely copied the Anonymous that the accounts differ only in a few minor particulars. Combefis says that the text of the Anonymous was collated by Lambecius, “who produced it from the royal archives” with the Chronography of the Logothetae, a tenth-century work to which the same account is added as a separate treatise. Labarte however considers that it was written in the eleventh century: Choisy assigns it to the fourteenth, a view with which we are inclined to agree; but in any case we cannot think it earlier than the twelfth century.
The description by Paulus is so precisely accurate where we can—as is so largely the case—check it by the existing work, that there cannot be a doubt of his entire accuracy. With the Anonymous this is not so; and it must first of all be borne in mind that he professes not to write of the church as he saw it, but to celebrate its splendour when first completed by Justinian; in this his account differs entirely from the Silentiary’s, which there is no sign to show that he had ever read. The Anonymous has been very largely used by scholars of the ability of Labarte and Bayet, but we believe him to be entirely unreliable where he speaks of the former state of the church. He simply gathers the legends which had grown up, because facts were forgotten, and enumerates the relics.
“The great church,[221] known as S. Sophia [formerly a place of heathen worship—Codinus], was first built of an oblong (dromica) form, like those of S. Andronicus and S. Acacius. On its completion it was adorned with many statues. This building lasted seventy-four years. But in the reign of Theodosius the Great, at the time of the second synod of Constantinople, an Arian uproar arose, during which the roof of the church was destroyed by fire. The most holy patriarch Nectarius took up his office at S. Irene, a church which was also built by Constantine. Then for two [Codinus and Glycas say sixteen] years S. Sophia was without a roof, until Theodosius, with Rufinus as his master workman (magistros), covered it with cylindrical vaults. After this it remained unhurt for thirty-nine years, making altogether eighty-five years (sic) from the time of Constantine, until the fifth year of Justinian’s reign. This was after the massacre in the Circus, in which thirty-five thousand men were killed, when a faction elected Hypatius emperor. However, in the fifth year of Justinian’s reign, the Most High God put it into his mind that he should build a temple to surpass all that had ever been built from the time of Adam.