Fig. 28.—Semantron at Constantinople, from Lenoir.
The upper story of the narthex, Grelot tells us was supported by six flying buttresses, and both his exterior views show three complete piers and flying arches on each side of the tower. The bay next the belfry on the right was occupied by a low building with a pent roof, in which were descending steps, at the bottom of which they drew off water from “the great cisterns under the church, from which it was said a boat might reach the sea.” As to the doors there were three towards the west, used when Grelot made his plan, two being those at the extreme north and south, opposite the lateral atrium walks, and the other, which was less, and little used, was next the belfry on the left, and is in fact the left one of the three present doors. The arches, which cover two of the spaces between the piers and make them into porches, are shown in the view by Fossati of the unrestored state of the front.
Fig. 29.—West Front as altered in the Ninth Century.
Comparing the drawings of Grelot and the plan given by Du Cange, both published in 1680, with the present remains, it would appear that there were formerly ten of these buttresses; two being merged in the central belfry, and the two outside ones incorporated in the minarets, on the sides of which traces of them may still be seen. Two others have either been destroyed by the Turks, or Grelot’s drawings are wrong to this extent, as no trace seems to remain of more than eight. Of these eight which now in part remain, Salzenberg only reserves the four at the centre, on which he places the horses. Our Figs. [26] and [29] represent the original west front and the altered façade of the ninth century; see also Plan, [Fig. 24].
Cisterns.—On the south side of the right-hand pier is a small arch which gives access to a little recessed chamber in the buttress. From this and from a similar recess north of the central entrance, water from the cisterns beneath the church was probably obtained: a cross on the wall of the little chamber would seem to show that it was a “holy well.”[326]
Clavijo says the cisterns beneath the church would float ten galleys, and C. Lebrun (1714) speaks of ten cisterns and forty columns standing in the water. The only real description of the cistern we have been able to find is in Dr. Covel’s MS. diary in the British Museum. In 1676 he writes, “We went to see the vaults under S. Sophia; they were full of water, then 17 feet deep, and overhead, from the water up to the top of the arch was about 2 yards and 6 inches. Every pillar is square (4½ feet), and distant from another just 12 feet. The bricks are very broad, thin, and well baked; [it is] not plastered within, the mortar very hard. They say it goes under [the] At-Meidan, but we could not enter it. The waste water of the Aqueduct enters into it, and [going] out of it passing through the Seraglio, goes into the sea by the dunghill. [There is] severe punishment to [those who] have houses with offices [draining] into it; or [for those who] throw any filth into it: the well of S. Sophia [opens] into it and many wells in the Seraglio.” He gives a diagram plan, showing two rows of eight piers and a third row of three, although, as no boundary is shown, it is impossible to say if this is the whole extent (see below).[327]
Generally.—Some of the exterior was doubtless cased with marble like S. Mark’s; indeed some of the marble plating remained in Salzenberg’s time. “The walls outside (the Anonymous writes) were covered with large and valuable stones.” Where not so incrusted the narrow coursed brickwork showed in thin red lines, almost equalled by the thick joints of the mortar. From this brickwork the marble lattices of the windows, each with its slab at the bottom charged with a cross, shone out fair, and the gray lead of the many domes rose above all, curve on curve in pearly gradation of light. The courts were doubtless closely set with cypresses, like those which now rise about the turbehs on the south side.
Many passages in the Byzantine authors show how much beauty of site was regarded as essential for a fair church.[328] Procopius, describing the Church of the Fountain at Constantinople, says, “there was a grove of cypresses in a rich meadow of blooming flowers, a garden abounding in fruit, with a gently bubbling spring of sweet water, everything suggested the site of a church.”