Fig. 37.—Plan of Basis of Dome as originally designed, with Additions A A containing stairs.
Fig. 38.—Section between Great and Secondary Orders.
The actual evidence in the church, we believe, fully bears out the interpretation here suggested. What we have called the secondary order of columns would pass exactly beneath the position given to this wall. These columns on the gallery floor are very strong, and a very strong row of arches runs along over them (see [Fig. 38]). Moreover the curtain walls in every other instance throughout the church are flush with the exterior.
That this space is not available to the interior of S. Sophia has caused Choisy to criticise the design in this respect as “a solution undecided, moyen terme, fâcheux; the large arches by a departure from ordinary rule being thrown on the outside so that the space covered by them was lost. S. Sophia Salonica redressed this error.” We wonder that Choisy’s views as to the original base of the dome did not cause him to take the further step we have here suggested. The present form, in which the lateral arches support the square base of the dome, is at least a possible one; but that the arches when they carried nothing and thus were actually vaults (as before shown by Choisy) were not filled with a screen but were mere arches twelve feet on soffite, lying against the sides of the building seems inconceivable. In our [Figure 34] we have amended Choisy’s view in this respect. Looking on these lateral arches as vaults we have filled them with a window like the western vault, and the harmony which results between the sides and the west end amply verifies our conclusions. One point further. The upper surface of the base of the dome on the west side should not be wholly level as shown in [Fig. 34], the central third curves up following the line of the top of semidome. In other words, the great arch of the interior pushes itself up through the base of the dome, and this treatment thus recurred at various heights—over large windows of aisles, over western and lateral lunettes, as we have shown, and over the semidome.
Originally, before the interior was narrowed in the way we have explained, there was a much clearer suggestion of a cross plan: barrel vaults at north and south being filled at their ends with large lunettes like the west vault. We suppose that the failure was mainly in the secondary order, and that the window screen and all possible weight was entirely removed and transferred to the great order. Salzenberg was satisfied that there had been great alterations in this part of the building, and Choisy’s view of the window-wall, Plate xxv., entirely confirms his opinion. If it could be shown that the alteration spoken of by Agathias will not bear the interpretation we put on it, there were earlier troubles at this part mentioned by Procopius. The best proof, however, we suggest is found in the design. It has been before pointed out that Choisy and other writers have too hastily assumed that S. Sophia Salonica was built after the great church of Constantinople. That it preceded it enforces the present argument. Grelot (1680) writes that upper galleries remained in the church in these positions, but he based his assertion on the row of seven arched recesses just above the main cornice which he thought were formerly open. It is clear however from an examination of the section that the arches could only have opened to the vault of the first floor gynaeceum. That these small arches did open to the vault of the first floor, seems to be borne out by the fact that above the centre of the secondary order, where its arch is low, a similar piercing is made, through which (or the higher arches on each side) and through the seven arches, a mysterious perspective into the immensity of the dome might have been obtained by those in the gynaeceum (see Figs. [4], [36], [38]). Shallow arched recesses merely used decoratively seem to have been little known to early Byzantine art, and arches on the first floor through the great piers are blocked in a similar way. Moreover such openings would explain why the vault between the two orders of columns is so much stilted up into mere darkness.
Atrium.—To explain the present confused arrangement of the exterior, we must remember that from the time of the description of the church by the Silentiary to its description by Gyllius was a thousand years—as long as from the time of Alfred to the present day—and in this time we may well expect alterations and accretions.
In Chapter IX. we have shown that the present form of the exonarthex, with its great external piers, was an alteration, made about the time the belfry was added in the ninth century. Before that time the atrium was alike on all four sides—a true quadriporticus—one of the most beautiful features of the ancient churches. (See Figs. [3] and [25].)
North and South Porches.—Much of the confusion at the north-west and south-west angles is the result of Turkish attachments, including the western minarets, which were built in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. The plan of gynaeceum floor furnishes the best key to the former arrangement, for where there is Byzantine work above, it must once have existed below. Comparing the first floor and roof plans in Salzenberg with the ground plan, it becomes apparent that the main block was originally finished both at north-west and south-west angles to the general square of building. The two staircases now at these angles were added as extra buttressing masses; the original stairs being the four in the piers of north and south sides. The north and south porches, with extra building above the latter on the first floor, were also additions. Besides the irregularity and inferior style of these buildings the following evidence should be noticed. The actual form of the north-west angle on the gallery floor; and the natural reading of the three plans when laid one over the other; broad arches, which pass across the porches; the fact that the arch in south porch (dotted in C on [Figure 24], see also Fossati, Plate i.) now has no office; and that above the door at this end of narthex, there is a window which now merely opens into the south porch.