Constantinople: The Story of the Old Capital of the Empire

by William Holden Hutton

The second feature is the arrangement which unites the longitudinal with the central building and makes the whole effect of the interior of one piece by relating every piece of work, pillar, arch, semi-dome, to the one vast central dome which crowns the whole. From without, but more clearly from within, the architecture of S. Sophia is seen to form one entire and perfect whole. It is impossible to conceive it deprived of a single feature without the sacrifice of the whole. To mutilate would be to destroy.

Seen then in its grandeur at S. Sophia the work of Justinian changed the appearance of the whole city. Procopius in his Aedifices records what was when he wrote in 558, a complete list of what had been built in the reign. Everywhere there were arising, as though by an enchanter's wand, palaces, churches, baths, aqueducts, great cisterns supported on exquisitely carved columns, new markets, houses for the great nobles, barracks, hospitals, convents. The splendour and beauty of the new city, its richness of decoration, marbles, statuary, mosaics, struck all beholders with amaze. The chroniclers, who in other times would have been satisfied to tell of military successes and court intrigues, now tell of measurements and designs, and collect lists of gems and splendours of decoration. The reign of Justinian, in spite of many foreign dangers, and oppression at home, is the most magnificent period of early Byzantine history; and the magnificence seemed to be expressed in the buildings of Constantinople.

When Procopius in his Ædifices has told of the glories of S. Sophia, he goes on to speak of the Augusteum and its statues. Chiefest among them, one of Justinian himself as Achilles. Then S. Irene, then the churches of the Blessed Virgin at the Blachernae and at Balukli beyond the triumphal way. Church after church follows in his tale, and chief among them those which the mariner sees as he sails up the Golden Horn. "As to the other buildings, it would be hard to name them all." The Hospice of Samson rose again from its ruins, probably close by where the gate of the old Seraglio now stands. The baths of Xeuxippus, which lasted down to the time of Mohammed the Conqueror, with the other buildings near the Augusteum and the forum of Constantine, were restored. "In addition to this he rebuilt and added great magnificence to the house named after Hormisdas, which stands close to the palace, to which he joined it,"—that pathetic ruin whose broken wall hangs over the Marmora to-day. When the eulogist comes to the palace itself, words fail him to repeat its glories, the pictures, mosaics, marbles, that combine to make the walls glitter as with life. After works of beauty come those of use, and the cisterns receive as much praise as works more brilliant yet hardly more beautiful.

It is buildings such as these that enable us to see what Justinian was to the capital of his Empire. Every year it seemed that new victories and new conversions were increasing the power of the Empire and the Church. While Belisarius reconquered Italy and made the name of the Cæsar again honoured at Rome and Ravenna, ended the cruel rule of the Vandals in Africa and Sicily, crushed the Goths of Spain, and kept the strong Persian prince at bay on the eastern frontier of the empire, Christian missions spread the faith of the orthodox Church to the Caucasus and the Sudan. Again and again did processions of returning warriors pass along the triumphal way, but the Emperor alone entered by the Golden Gate. It was in the Hippodrome that Belisarius celebrated his triumph over the Vandals. It was nigh six hundred years, Procopius thought, since any had had the same. But Belisarius walked with a proud humility from his own house to the Hippodrome, and thence from his own tent to the imperial throne. The rich spoils that were spread out were the treasures of all the years of Vandal conquest, and among them some of the vessels that Titus had brought from the temple at Jerusalem and Generic the Vandal conqueror had taken from Rome. These Justinian gave to churches in the Holy City. As the captives were led up to the imperial throne all eyes were fixed on the Vandal chief, Gelimer, wearing the purple, as in mockery, with his kindred about him, "himself the tallest and most beautiful of the Vandals." As he walked up to the throne he looked up, and uttering no lament for his fallen state, said with the poet's simple feeling, "Vanity of vanities." They stripped him of his robe and made him fall on his face before the Emperor. Beside him knelt his conqueror, and supplicated for his pardon, and the day was crowned by generosity such as the Emperor loved to show and the people to applaud.

THE GOLDEN GATE

Such scenes became familiar to the people as the years of victory rolled on. They saw, too, Belisarius, drawn through the streets in his chariot by the captives of his wars, when he received the dignity of Patrician. The empire of Justinian, based upon the old laws which he collected and enlarged, cherishing the traditions of old Rome, was eager to revive every glory of former days. "And then," says Procopius, who himself the bitterest of satirists of the present, looked not unkindly on the past, "men saw things long forgotten thus renewed by time." But the picture, brilliant though it was, was not unclouded. The city of the Cæsars was again and again threatened by barbarians and struck by the visitation of God. In 542 Constantinople was devastated by a terrible pestilence, the bubonic plague, that has lost none of its terrors in fifteen hundred years. For four months it raged, and at its height Procopius declares that as many as ten thousand perished in a day. It spared no constitution and no age, and God alone could be the cause of it. Justinian, who was one of the few who recovered, was assiduous in charitable aid; but the loss to the city could hardly be conceived—no trades, no shops, says the recorder of many horrors, remained, and "many for fear leaving their bad courses, consecrated themselves to God, and many when the danger was passed fell to their old despising of God again."

After plagues came famines and earthquakes, and in the last year of the reign, the dread army of the Huns, under Zabergan, drew nigh even to the walls of Constantinople, murdering and ravaging as they came. Hastily the treasures of the church northwards of the city were brought for safety within the walls, and Belisarius in old age again came forward to save the empire. It was his last victory, and seven years later he passed away, honoured and beloved. The Emperor himself died but a few weeks later in November 565. The glories of the reign had passed away before the aged ruler laid down his power; but he left a reconquered Empire and a capital that was the wonder of the world.

He left too a memory as a theologian, which the church for some centuries continued specially to honour in her most solemn service. Justinian, the legislator, the builder and the organizer of victory, seemed to the vision of Dante to dwell like the sun in perpetual light.