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MARIO BAGHOS
1
Here nature and the cosmos are considered as interchangeable.
2
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans.
Willard R. Trask (New York: Harcourt Inc., 1987), 12-13.
Religious Symbolism and Well-being in Christian Constantinople 325
3
Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 23-24.
4
Lewis Mumford, The City in History: its Origins, its Transformations, and its
Prospects (London: Secker & Warburg, 1961), 414-15.
5
By the modern city, I mean cities that have been conditioned to such a degree by
economic forces that their centres, whether geographical or symbolic, are
comprised of either the central business district or CBD, or the various skyscrapers
associated with corporations and other business, or both.
6
For instance, Charlemagne’s cathedral church in Aachen resembles Byzantine
buildings. Gunter Bandmann, Early Medieval Architecture as Bearer of Meaning,
trans. Kendall Wallis (New York-Chichester-West Sussex: Columbia University
Press, 2005), 200.
7
Krijnie N. Ciggarr, Western Travellers to Constantinople: The West and Byzantium
962–1204: Cultural and Political Relations (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 32.
326 Chapter Thirteen
Ancient Cities
It is important to make clear the manner in which humans create their
cities as sacred centres that epitomise the cosmos (or, their representation
of the world) and which reveal that the sacred was conducive to well-
being. According to Mircea Eliade, archaic, ancient and medieval persons
could not endure the formless expanse of undifferentiated space. 8 Thus
they needed to assume a certain place within that space, and organise it in
a way that reflected the order in the cosmos.9 Although there were some
exceptions, ancient cultures perceived the natural world, identified with
the cosmos, as revealing the sacred through natural objects that were
architecturally duplicated within their towns or cities. Ziggurats, for
example, reflected the cosmic mountains from where the demiurge created
the world and obelisks reflected rays of the sun, etc.10 Eliade referred to
the natural environment as this amorphous space that needed to be
organised. In contrast to this view, Karen Armstrong has pointed out that
the psychological propensity for “cosmicisation” was motivated not only
by an inability to endure the expanse of nature but also by the creation of
the first cities at the end of the Neolithic period, around 5000 BC. As
Armstrong argues, “in the cities […] the rate of change accelerated, and
8
Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 23-24.
9
Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton
and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), xxvii, 20.
10
For ziggurats, see Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, 14-15. For obelisks,
see Fekri A. Hassan, “Imperialist Appropriations of Egyptian Obelisks”, in Views
of Ancient Egypt Since Napoleon Bonaparte, ed. David Jeffreys (Portland, OR:
UCL Press, 2003), 19-68, esp. 27.
Religious Symbolism and Well-being in Christian Constantinople 327
people became more aware of the chain of cause and effect […] (and) they
were becoming increasingly more distinct from the natural world”.11
It was this dissociation between human beings and nature that resulted
from the rapid flux of early city life that had to be addressed in such a way
as to retrieve the natural order and the sacred manifested within it. Dean
A. Miller reiterates this sentiment, affirming that it was the city that caused
the dissociation between human beings and nature—between the subject
and its co-extensive object—and that this needed to be mended. 12
Paradoxically, this could only be done by constructing the city in such a
way as to make it “the simulacrum of total order, a cosmic system”.13
11
Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth (Melbourne, VIC: The Text
Publishing Co., 2005), 58.
12
Dean A. Miller, Imperial Constantinople (New York: John Wiley & Sons Inc.,
1969), 2.
13
Miller, Imperial Constantinople, 3.
14
The evidence for this comes from Göbekli Tepe, a pre-pottery Neolithic tell that
was built around 11,600 years ago and that, according to the main archaeologist
working on the site, Klaus Schmidt, demonstrates “that organized religion could
have come before the rise of agriculture and other aspects of civilization” insofar
as no settlements have been found around the site. Charles C. Mann, “The Birth of
Religion”, National Geographic (June, 2011), 34-59, esp. 57. This is important
because it means that religious beliefs were an impetus for human beings to come
together as communities, meaning that settlement was organised around, and thus
328 Chapter Thirteen
conditioned by, sacred structures; and this was done well before they settled for
ostensibly utilitarian, or materialistic, reasons.
15
Armstrong, A Short History of Myth, 15-16. The primary definition of the first
person verb βάλλω is “I throw”. Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-
English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 304. In composite verbs, σύν
means “with, along with, together, at the same time”. Liddell and Scott, A Greek-
English Lexicon, 1690. Hence, σύμβολον means “throw together”, as indicated
above.
16
This is implied in Paul Ricoer’s definition of the symbol, which consists of “any
structure of signification in which a direct, primary, literal meaning designates, in
addition, another meaning which is indirect, secondary, and figurative and which
can be apprehended only through the first”. Paul Ricoer, “Existence and
Hermeneutics”, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin, in The Conflict of Interpretations, ed.
Don Ihde (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 3-24, esp. 12-13. For
Eliade, it was these “figurative” meanings that reflected the “deepest aspects” of
“humanity”, and thus, whilst secondary in terms of the process of signification,
take on a primary or fundamental importance. Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols:
Studies in Religious Symbolism, trans. Philip Mairet (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1991), 12.
17
Armstrong, A Short History of Myth, 16.
18
Eliade, Images and Symbols, 52.
19
Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 45, 47.
20
To the circle and the square can be added the triangular or pyramidal shape
which symbolises fire, as made clear by the etymology of the word pyramid (from
the ancient Greek πύραμις) which includes in the first part of its compound the
word “fire” (πύρ). Liddell and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 1555. The triangle,
in its pyramidal form, can also symbolise heavenly ascent. Robert J. Wenke, The
Ancient Egyptian State: The Origins of Egyptian Culture (c. 8000–2000BC)
(Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 298.
Religious Symbolism and Well-being in Christian Constantinople 329
So far we have seen that the natural world revealed the sacred, and so
the dissociation between human beings and nature, involved a retrieval of
the natural order and the sacred revealed through it. This retrieval,
executed by human beings who were inherently religious, involved the use
of geometric and other symbols within the cityscape. We have examples of
21
Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 209.
22
David Dorin’s translation of the following passage in the Romanian edition of
Eliade’s Patterns of Comparative Religion is relevant for this point: “The main
religious stances of human [beings] had been given once and for all, since the
moment the man became conscious of his existential situation inside the
Universe”. From Mircea Eliade, Tratat de Istorie a religiilor [Patterns in
Comparative Religion] (Bucureşti: Humanitas, 1992), 422-23, translated by Dorin
David in his article “Homo Religiosus in the Scientific Work and Fantastic Prose
of Mircea Eliade”, Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov, Series IV:
Philology and Cultural Studies vol. 6, 55.1 (2013), 21-28, esp. 22.
23
Karen Armstrong, A History of God (London: Vintage, 1999), 3.
24
Armstrong, A Short History of Myth, 2.
25
I wrote “early modern” instead of “modern” here because even though there are
religious tendencies in many modern persons—even if they believe they are
secular—still generally speaking early modern (beginning c. sixteenth century)
persons were consciously more religious. Also, by homines religiosi I mean
“people as religious” in an inclusive sense.
330 Chapter Thirteen
how this retrieval took place from the Mesopotamian city of Eridu, one of
the oldest urban settlements in the world. Eridu was considered a locus
and recapitulation of a cosmogony that revealed the sacred through its
ziggurat which, it was believed, represented a cosmic mountain.26 Similar
perceptions could be found not only in other ancient Mesopotamian cities
but also in Egypt (where cities contained no characteristic structures apart
from temples),27 Palestine (especially Jerusalem),28 Greece29 and Rome.30
This process continued with Christian cities, but instead of temples at their
centres, there were now churches whose symbolic architecture indicated
the worship of the triune God, revealed through the God-man Jesus Christ
and his saints. Thus, for Christians, the life of Christ and his saints were
the main source of sacredness in the world, a sacredness that they desired
to participate in and that could be manifested in cities. But if we are to
consider Constantinople as the Christian city par excellence, then a
preliminary assessment of the Christian approach to cities should precede
our assessment both of Constantinople and of the modern city.
26
Samuel Noah Kramer, Sumerian Mythology: A Study of Spiritual and Literary
Achievements in the Third Millennium B.C. (Philadelphia: University of
Philadelphia Press, 1961), 62-63.
27
Jan Assmann, The Search for God in Ancient Egypt, trans. D. Lorton (London:
Cornell University Press, 2001), 1.
28
According to Eliade, “Palestine [Israel], Jerusalem, and the Temple severally
and concurrently represent the image of the universe and the Center of the World”.
Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 42.
29
According to Numa Denis Fustel De Coulanges, “the Greeks, like the Italians,
believed that the site of a city should be chosen and revealed by the divinity. So,
when they wished to found one, they consulted the oracle at Delphi”. Numa Denis
Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study of the Religion, Laws, and
Institutions of Greece and Rome, trans. Willard Small (Mineola, NY: Dover
Publications, 2006), 138.
30
The literature on Rome as caput mundi or as eternal (Roma aeterna) is long and
complex. See Eliade’s comments regarding the location of the mundus, the
gateway to the underworld, in the Roman Forum, the symbolic heart of the city:
“the mundus was clearly assimilated to the omphalos, to the navel of the earth; the
city (urbs) was situated in the middle of the orbis terrarum”. Eliade, The Sacred
and the Profane, 47.
Religious Symbolism and Well-being in Christian Constantinople 331
This dual approach, where Christians could be said to participate in the life
of a terrestrial city without becoming affected or circumscribed by its
rhythms, is made possible because they anticipate the coming of God’s
City. But if, according to the author of the Epistle to Diognetus, Christians
already participated in heaven—where heaven, the city of God, and God’s
kingdom can be considered mutually inclusive—then why did they bother
to Christianise the ancient cities that they occupied by building churches
and monuments covered in Christian symbols? What purpose could this
serve? I will suggest two possible reasons, one theological and one
historical, for the early Church’s Christianisation of space.
31
As described, for instance, in Daniel chapters 9 and 10.
32
Hebrews 13:11 describes “[t]he high priest [who] carries the blood of animals
into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the
camp”. Christ is here likened to the animals—a “sin offering”—whose blood
sanctifies people in the same way that the blood of the animals does. However, it
remains significant that this sacrifice, through which the Lord Jesus is able to
“sanctify the people by his blood” (13:12), happens outside the city. The author
therefore exhorts the Hebrew Christians to go out to him there: that is, outside of
Jerusalem.
33
Epistle to Diognetus 5, in The Apostolic Fathers, trans. Bart D. Ehrman, vol. 2
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 139, 141.
332 Chapter Thirteen
34
To give one example of such symbols: since the Church has as its ultimate
aspiration holiness wrought by God within her, then the icons, images of Christ
and his saints, contribute to the “schooling” that is meant to sanctify the people of
God. The definition of the second council of Nicaea—the seventh ecumenical
council—held in 787 in Constantinople is important in this regard; but I will not
address it here since I explore it in more detail below. Suffice it to supply the
reference: “Second Council of Nicaea—787”, in Decrees of the Ecumenical
Councils: Nicaea I–Lateran V, ed. Norman P. Tanner (Washington DC: Georgetown
University Press, 1989), 133-37.
35
St. Athanasius the Great, The Greek Life of Antony 2, in The Life of Antony: The
Coptic Life and the Greek Life, trans. Tim Vivian and Apostolos N. Athanassakis
(Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2003), 59, 61.
36
St. Sophronius of Jerusalem, Life of St. Mary of Egypt 22-24, trans. Maria Kouli
in Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints’ Lives in English Translation, ed. Alice-
Mary Talbot (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and
Collection, 1996), 82-83.
37
Of course, saints also “cosmicise” the space around them, but they do this
differently. As immediate participants in the grace of God, they are able to shape
the natural world. See St. Serapion of Thmuis’ description of St. Antony in
Serapion of Thmuis, To the Disciples of Antony 5, 7, in The Life of Antony (cit. n.
35), 42.
Religious Symbolism and Well-being in Christian Constantinople 333
that we need to undertake and the fact that we should continue on the
Christian journey. I will return to these aspects later. For now suffice it to
state that ordinary Christians needed to cosmicise their space with the use
of Christian symbols in order to fulfil the existential desire and need to
participate in Christ, a participation achieved perfectly in the saints. In
sum, this is the first reason for the Christianisation of space in cities. The
second reason, which in fact led to the creation of monumental church
architecture, is that the historical circumstances from the fourth century
onwards facilitated an unprecedented imperial beneficence towards the
Church by the Roman emperors beginning with Constantine the Great.
This beneficence expressed itself in the building projects that any emperor
or king since time immemorial would have typically carried out to express
their patronage of a religious cult (or to express their own power and
prestige).
The current state of the city has been aptly summed up by Mumford,
who argues that “in our time the ultimate fate of the commercial city is to
become a backdrop for advertising”. 38 Although movements such as
“green building” have attempted to make us aware of the need to connect
with nature in the cityscape,39 still, the fact that we belong to a cosmos
seems to be something that only ancient and medieval persons were able to
integrate into their buildings.40 Moreover, both in CBDs and commercial
areas (such as Times Square in New York), corporations display their
symbols far above any temple or church. The brands they sell appear on
billboards, posters, and bus stops, advertising their material products as
essential for a human being’s identity and conducive to one’s well-being.
41
Recent studies by neuroscientists, however, have shown that mental
health issues are compounded in the current civic space. Overcrowding in
cities can lead to social stress that increases “the risk of depression and
anxiety, and the rate of schizophrenia is markedly higher in people born
and brought up in cities”.42 The physiological impact of cities on urban-
dwellers, affected by the above disorders, has been amply demonstrated:
38
Mumford, The City in History, 445.
39
Charles J. Kibert, “Introduction”, in Construction Ecology: Nature as the basis
for green buildings, ed. Charles J. Kibert, Jan Sendzimir, and G. Bradley Guy
(London and New York: Spon Press, 2002), 1.
40
I thank Protopresbyter Dr Doru Costache for this nuance.
41
The extent to which we are conditioned is made clear by Joel Bakan, who
affirmed that corporations “…determine what we eat, what we watch, what we
wear, where we work, and what we do. We are inescapably surrounded by their
culture, iconography, and ideology”. Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological
Pursuit of Profit and Power (New York: Free Press, 2004), 5.
42
Daniel P. Kennedy and Ralph Adolphs, “Stress and the City”, Nature 474 (23
June, 2011): 452-53, esp. 452. See also Alison Abbott, “Urban Decay: Scientists
are Testing the Idea that the Stress of Modern City Life is a Breeding Ground for
Psychosis”, Nature 490 (11 October, 2012): 162-64. For details on the higher
levels of schizophrenia in cities, see Lydia Krabbendam and Jim van Os,
“Schizophrenia and Urbanicity: A Major Environmental Influence—Conditional
on Genetic Risk”, Schizophrenia Bulletin 31.4 (2005): 795-99.
Religious Symbolism and Well-being in Christian Constantinople 335
Apart from anxiety disorders and depression, the amygdala has also been
connected to “other behaviours that are increased in cities, such as
violence”.44 It is estimated that by 2050 seventy per-cent of the world’s
population will live in cities, and thus attempts to mitigate health risks are
of paramount importance to scientists working in the field of mental
health.45 Although the link between “urban upbringing and habitation” and
social stress processes has been empirically established, with the former
impacting the latter, still other possible reasons, posited by Florian
Lederbogen, for the negative impact of modern cities on humans, have
been limited to “pollution, toxins, crowding, noise, or demographic
factors”. 46 Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, director of the Central Institute for
Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany, has suggested that “the common
urban experience of feeling different from your neighbours because of
socioeconomic status or ethnicity” could also be a stress-producing factor
in cities.47 Psychiatrist and epidemiologist Jim van Os has hypothesised
that “the risk of progressing from disturbance to full-blown psychosis” has
to do with a distortion in the subject’s learning, regarding which elements
of a new environment are rewarding and which are a threat.48
43
Kennedy and Adolphs, “Stress and the City”, 452.
44
Florian Lederbogen et al., “Letter: City Living and Urban Upbringing Affect
Neural Social Stress Processing in Humans”, Nature 474 (23 June, 2011): 498-501,
esp. 499.
45
Lederbogen et al., “Letter: City Living and Urban Upbringing Affect Neural
Social Stress Processing in Humans”, 498.
46
Lederbogen et al., “Letter: City Living and Urban Upbringing Affect Neural
Social Stress Processing in Humans”, 500.
47
Abbott, “Urban Decay”, 164.
48
Abbott, “Urban Decay”, 164.
336 Chapter Thirteen
was founded, according to St. Jerome, “by denuding nearly every other
city (Constantinopolis dedicatur, pene omnium urbium nuditate)”,49 it was
filled with pagan art and architecture. The statue of Constantine as the sun-
god Apollo atop a column in the centre of his Forum—which was, at least
topographically, in the centre of the city—attests to this.50 So too do the
Hippodrome and the Baths of Zeuxippus which were filled with spolia that
demonstrated that the New Rome superseded its predecessor, Delphi, and
even Troy as the most prominent city of the empire.51
49
St. Jerome, Chronicle, the 277th Olympiad, the 334th year after the birth of Christ
(PL 27, 677-678); my translation.
50
Philostorgius affirmed that construction on the city began “at the place where the
great porphyry column bearing his statue now stands”. Philostorgius: Church
History 2.9a, trans. Philip R. Amidon (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature,
2007), 25.
51
Sarah Bassett, The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople (Cambridge,
NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 62, 69, 77.
52
Charles Matson Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, Second Edition
(London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 240. See also map on ibid., 233.
53
Jonathan Bardill affirms that at least three or four churches were built by
Constantine within the city itself. Bardill, Constantine: Divine Emperor of the
Christian Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 254. Mark
J. Johnson mentions five. Johnson, “Architecture of Empire”, in The Cambridge
Companion to the Age of Constantine, ed. Noel Lenski (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), 292. Above, I am following the latter.
54
Richard Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 1986), 69.
338 Chapter Thirteen
rebuilt twice over, and although the latter does not survive, the extant
edifices of the former two are the result of the extensive building campaign
of the emperor Justinian in the sixth century.
55
Gilbert Dagron commented that the canonisation of Constantine the Great,
which must have come into effect by the sixth century, defused the “scandal of a
cult or an imperial priesthood grafting itself on to the Christian religion”. G.
Dagron, Emperor and Priest: The Imperial Office in Byzantium, trans. Jean Birrell
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 144. Still, this did not prevent
emperors from depicting themselves as semi-divine and thereby coming into
conflict with the Church. See, for this early period, St. Athanasius the Great’s
criticism of Constantine’s son, Constantius II, in Mario Baghos, “The Traditional
Portrayal of St. Athanasius according to Rufinus, Socrates, Sozomen, and
Theodoret”, in Alexandrian Legacy: A Critical Appraisal, ed. Doru Costache,
Philip Kariatlis and Mario Baghos (Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Newcastle
upon Tyne, 2015), 139-71, esp. 155. However, by and large—and especially after
iconoclasm—the Byzantine emperors were not considered gods in the way that
ancient Roman emperors were.
56
Stephen Williams and Gerard Friell, Theodosius: The Empire at Bay (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), 55-57.
57
Williams and Friell, Theodosius: The Empire at Bay, 57.
58
David Watkin, The Roman Forum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2009), 87, 92.
59
Sarah Bassett insightfully addresses this issue in her article “‘Excellent
Offerings’: The Lausos Collection in Constantinople”, The Art Bulletin 82.1
(2000): 6-25, esp. 18-19.
Religious Symbolism and Well-being in Christian Constantinople 339
oversaw the rebuilding of St. Paul “Outside the Walls” in Rome,60 as well as
the dedication of three other churches in Constantinople:61 to St. John the
Baptist, the Holy Notaries, and St. Mark. 62 This Christianisation of the
cityscape went hand in hand with the Christological debates that the
Church was preoccupied with at the time—represented by the second
ecumenical council held by Theodosius I within the city—which were
repeated on the popular level in the city’s thoroughfares. To quote St.
Gregory of Nyssa, who commented on the events at this time:
For the whole of this city is full of it (Πάντα γὰρ τὰ κατὰ τὴν πόλιν τῶν
τοιούτων πεπλήρωται), the alleys, the forums, the squares, the streets: the
clothes-sellers, money-changers, and those who sell us food. If you ask
someone about the obol, he philosophises to you about the begotten and
the unbegotten; and if you ask about the price of bread, the answer is the
Father is greater and the Son inferior. If you ask, “Is my bath ready?” the
divisive answer you receive is that the Son was made out of nothing.63
St. Gregory is here summarising some of the Arian arguments against the
orthodox tenet that God the Son is homoousios or “of one essence” with
God the Father and hence entirely divine; but what one can surmise here is
the degree to which the debate regarding Christ’s divinity had impacted
the city streets. In any case, the Christianisation of space continued under
Theodosius II, grandson of Theodosius I. He and his sister, Pulcheria,
were famous for procuring relics, and Theodosius II undertook the second
rebuilding of Hagia Sophia in 415 AD.64 But it is the third Holy Wisdom,
rebuilt by Justinian—who also built or rebuilt thirty-three other churches
in the city—that I want to focus on.65
60
Deno John Geanakoplos, “Church Building and Caesaropapism, A.D. 312–565”,
Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 7 (1966): 167-86, esp. 178.
61
See fn. 66 in Ine Jacobs, “The Creation of the Late Antique City: Constantinople
and Asia Minor during the ‘Theodosian Renaissance,’” Byzantion 82 (2012): 113-
64, esp. 132.
62
Jacobs, “The Creation of the Late Antique City”, 132.
63
St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Deity of the Son and the Spirit (PG 46, 557B); my
translation.
64
Nadine Schibille, Hagia Sophia and the Byzantine Aesthetic Experience (Surrey,
ENG: Ashgate, 2014), 50.
65
Brian Croke, “Justinian’s Constantinople”, in The Cambridge Companion to the
Age of Justinian, ed. Michael Maas (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press,
2005), 79.
340 Chapter Thirteen
T
66
Hans A. P Pohlsander affiirmed that the designations H Holy Wisdom and Holy
Eirene, givenn by Constantinne to the two churches
c that hhe commissioneed, “would
not be offennsive to paganns”. Pohlsander, The Emperror Constantinee, Second
Edition (Londdon and New York:
Y Routledgee, 2004), 71.
67
Schibille, H
Hagia Sophia annd the Byzantin
ne Aesthetic Expperience, 50.
68
Zofia Brzozowska, “The Church
C of Divin
ne Wisdom or of Christ—Thee Incarnate
Logos? Dediccation of Hagiaa Sophia in Co onstantinople inn the Light of Byzantine
Sources from m 5th to 14th Ceentury”, Studia
a Ceranea 2 (22012): 85-96, esp.
e 87-90.
Robert G. Ouusterhout disagrrees, affirming that
t the church was “famously y dedicated
Religious Symbolism and Well-being in Christian Constantinople 341
In plan, Hagia Sophia follows the model of an early Christian basilica, with
a nave flanked by side aisles, but it differs dramatically in elevation, with
vaulting introduced throughout the building, framing an enormous,
centrally positioned dome. Thus, in addition to the longitudinal axis of the
plan, a centralizing focus is introduced into the interior. The great dome,
100 feet in diameter, is the dominant theme of the building’s design, as it
soars 180 feet above the nave.70
to a concept and not to a person”. Ousterhout, “The Sanctity of Place and the
Sanctity of Buildings: Jerusalem versus Constantinople”, in Architecture of the
Sacred: Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium (New
York: Cambridge, 2012), 286.
69
In referring to the reconstruction of Hagia Eirene by Justinian, Procopius
mentioned that the building was located next to the “Great Church” (Ἐκκλησίᾳ δὲ
τῇ μεγάλῃ) that is, Hagia Sophia. Procopius, Buildings 1.2, in Procopius VII:
Buildings, trans. H. B. Dewing (London: Harvard University Press, 2002), 36-37.
70
Ousterhout, “The Sanctity of Place and the Sanctity of Buildings”, 288.
71
Falter stated emphatically that “the cross, the square and the circle” are used in
the church and that, whilst the building’s outline is a square, the “interior is a cross
with a longitudinal axis”. Holger Falter, “The Influence of Mathematics on the
Development of Structural Form”, in Architecture and Mathematics from Antiquity
to the Future, vol. 1: Antiquity to the 1500s, ed. Kim Williams and Michael J.
Ostwald (London: Birkhäuser, 2015), 83.
72
Colossians 1:18-20; 1 Corinthians 15:12-23.
342 Chapter Thirteen
central axis.73 To the cross’ cosmic significance can be added the circle
represented by Hagia Sophia’s dome, insofar as for ancient persons “the
observable cosmos represented itself as inescapably circular—not only the
planets themselves […] but also their cyclical movements and the
recurring cycles of seasons”.74
This was the case especially in ancient Greece and Rome. One need
only think of the ancient Athenian prytaneion, marked by the presence of
the fire of Hestia in its centre,75 upon which was modelled the temple of
Vesta in Rome, which was also circular and which Plutarch interpreted as
a symbol of the universe.76 The Pantheon was also circular, with an oculus
facilitating communication between heaven and earth,77 and so were the
mausoleums of various emperors including Augustus. 78 That the
Byzantines, with their Greco-Roman inheritance, would continue such
dispositions and designs should not surprise us, and the architects that
designed and built the structure, Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of
Pelusiam, were by all accounts well versed in the crafts of ancient
geometry and architecture. 79 When Procopius described Hagia Sophia’s
“spherical dome” (σφαιροειδὴς θόλος), he emphatically stated that it
seems to be “suspended from Heaven” (ἀπὸ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ἐξημμένη). 80
Holger Falter described the dome as “the circular space […] representing
everything spiritual”,81 and indeed, the circle, representing eternity, can in
73
The Great Catechism 32 [i.e. the Catechetical Oration], in Gregory of Nyssa:
Selected Works and Letters, trans. William Moore and Henry Austin Wilson,
NPNF (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1979), 500.
74
The Complete Dictionary of Symbols: In Myth, Art and Literature, ed. Jack
Tresidder (London: Duncan Baird Publishers, 2004), 108.
75
Jean-Joseph Goux, “Vesta, or the Place of Being”, Representations 1 (1983): 91-
107, esp. 92.
76
Plutarch, The Life of Numa 11, in Plutarch’s Lives I, trans. Bernadotte Perrin
(London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1967), 345.
77
William Lloyd MacDonald, Pantheon: Design, Meaning, and Progeny
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 89.
78
Mark J. Johnson, The Roman Imperial Mausoleum in Late Antiquity
(Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 19.
79
Procopius, Buildings 1.1 (Dewing, 11, 13).
80
Procopius, Buildings 1.1 (Dewing, 21).
81
Falter, “The Influence of Mathematics on the Development of Structural Form”,
83.
Religious Symbolism and Well-being in Christian Constantinople 343
82
See fn. 48 in Schibille, Hagia Sophia and the Byzantine Aesthetic Experience,
55.
83
For the “earthly” dimension of Hagia Sophia, see the excerpts from Paul the
Silentiary’s Descriptio S. Sophiae translated by Bissera V. Pentcheva in her article
“Hagia Sophia and Multisensory Aesthetics”, Gesta: International Centre for
Medieval Art 50:2 (2011): 93-11, esp. 97, 99.
84
Falter, “The Influence of Mathematics on the Development of Structural Form”,
83.
85
Falter, “The Influence of Mathematics on the Development of Structural Form”,
83.
86
The eighth day was transcendent because, according to early Christian saints
such as Basil the Great, it went beyond the recurrent cycle of the seven-day week
outlined in Genesis. Mario Baghos, “The Recapitulation of History and the ‘Eighth
Day’: Aspects of St. Basil the Great’s Eschatological Vision”, in Cappadocian
Legacy: A Critical Appraisal, ed. Doru Costache and Philip Kariatlis (Sydney: St.
Andrew’s Orthodox Press, 2013), 151-68, esp. 159-60.
87
Bardill, Constantine, 258. See the church’s design on ibid., 260.
88
Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, 203.
344 Chapter Thirteen
Although this image was not painted in the dome of Hagia Sophia until
1355—and described by a contemporary, Nicephorus Gregoras, as “the
enhypostatic Wisdom of God”92—it can be traced as early as the Christian
catacombs. 93 It begins to appear on portable icons by the end of late
antiquity, such as the famous sixth-century image from St. Katherine’s
monastery in Sinai,94 a complex that was, incidentally, commissioned by
Justinian and Theodora. 95 By the Middle Ages, the Pantokrator would
appear in central domes, apses and wall panels in the palatine chapels of
Aachen 96 and Constantinople, 97 in the churches of the Theotokos
89
Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, NY:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), 227.
90
In Ravenna, the Pantokrator is “seated on a blue globe” and “holds a scroll
closed with the seven seals of the Apocalypse”. Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late
Antiquity, 237.
91
John Lowden affirmed in relation to Byzantine church domes that “the standard
post-iconoclast formula employed the medallion bust of Christ alone, in the form
we call ‘the Pantokrator.’” J. Lowden, Early Christian and Byzantine Art (London:
Phaidon, 1997), 194.
92
Nicephorus Gregoras, Historiae Byzantinae XXIX, 47 f., in The Art of the
Byzantine Empire 312–1453: Sources and Documents, trans. Cyril Mango
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 249.
93
The “idea of Christ as Ruler of the Universe finds clear expression in the
Catacomb of Commodilla [mid 4th century] where, within a frame coloured red and
brown, the Master’s head and shoulders are set in a manner expressing authority”.
One can detect in this image the origins of what would later become the image of
Christ the Pantokrator. Robert Milburn, Early Christian Art and Architecture
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), 47; see image
on 46.
94
Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of
Culture (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), 93.
95
Judith Herrin, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire (Princeton
and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), xxii.
96
Derek Wilson, Charlemagne: Barbarian and Emperor (London: Pimlico, 2006),
75.
Religious Symbolism and Well-being in Christian Constantinople 345
97
Specifically, in the Chrysotriklinos, where “an image of the enthroned Christ
[was] depicted in the apse right above the emperor’s throne”. Alexei M. Sivertsev,
Judaism and Imperial Ideology in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge
University Press, 2011), 182.
98
Guy Freeland, “The Lamp in the Temple: Copernicus and the Demise of a
Medieval Ecclesiastical Cosmology”, in 1543 and All That: Image and Word,
Change and Continuity in the Proto-Scientific Revolution, ed. Guy Freeland and
Anthony Corones (Dordrecht: Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V., 2000),
189-270, esp. 215.
99
Lowden, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, 415.
100
Lowden, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, 231, 235.
101
Lowden, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, 260, 264.
102
John Beckwith, Early Christian and Byzantine Art (New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 1979), 260.
103
Beckwith, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, 259.
104
Beckwith, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, 260.
105
Slobodan Ćurčić, “Gračanica and the Cult of the Saintly Prince Lazar”, Recueil
des travaux de l’Institut d’études byzantines XLIV (2007): 465-72, esp. 466.
106
Elizabeth S. Bolman, “Theodore’s Program in Context: Egypt and the
Mediterranean Region”, in Monastic Visions: Wall Paintings in the Monastery of
St. Antony at the Red Sea, ed. Bolman (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 2002), 99.
107
“Refashioning Byzantium in Venice, ca. 1200-1400”, in San Marco, Byzantium,
and the Myths of Venice, ed. Henry Maguire and Robert S. Nelson (Washington
D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2010), 208.
108
Margherita Cecchelli, “Il Complesso Monumentale Della Basilica dal IV al VII
Secolo”, in San Paolo Fuori Le Mura a Roma, ed. Carlo Pietrangeli (Firenze:
Nardini Editore, 1988), 37-54, esp. 50-51.
109
Marina Righetti Tosti-Croce, “La Basilica Tra Due E Trecento”, in Santa Maria
Maggiore a Roma, ed. Carlo Pietrangeli (Firenze: Nardini Editore, 1988), 129-70,
esp. 132-33, 134-35, 136-37. The same is also the case in the apse of Santa Maria
in Trastevere, Rome.
346 Chapter Thirteen
T
image, whiich spread evene to the West in moodern times with the
proliferationn of Orthodoxy via its diasp
pora communiities and missiions.
110
This is eviidenced by the fact that many emperors depiicted themselvees as being
crowned by aand in obeisannce to Christ. See,
S for instancce, the mosaic above the
imperial doorrway in Holy Wisdom,
W wheree the emperor LLeo VI the Wisse (r. 886–
Religious Symbolism and Well-being in Christian Constantinople 347
The fact that the main church of any Byzantine monastery was, and still is,
called the katholikon—the place where the “fullness of the church” was
summed up—is indicative of this mentality, and in monasteries, as in
cities, these churches literally or symbolically constituted the centre of
orientation for the inhabitants.111 The location of the place of worship as
the focal point of the community, one that can be traced back to the first
cities in Mesopotamia, and later in Egypt, Israel, Greece, Rome, and
elsewhere, was thus continued in the Christian era, and the city of
Constantinople had no small part to play in establishing a paradigm that
would be repeated in cities throughout the world.
912) is depicted in obeisance to the enthroned Christ, and Christ crowning the
twelfth century Norman king Roger II of Sicily in a panel mosaic in the Martorana
church in Palermo. Beckwith, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, 191 and 258
respectively.
111
The third and fourth definitions of katholikos (καθολικός) given in Lampe’s
Patristic Dictionary are relevant in this respect. They refer to “the fullness of
Christian doctrine” and “the whole Church”. G. W. H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek
Lexicon (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1961), 690.
112
Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Art and Architecture (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1999), 21-23.
348 Chapter Thirteen
the revered and holy images, whether painted or made of mosaic or other
suitable material, are to be exposed in the holy churches of God, on sacred
instruments and vestments, on walls and panels, in houses and by public
ways (οἴκοις τε καὶ ὁδοῖς)…116
113
John Anthony McGuckin, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its
History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008),
222.
114
D. J. Deletant, “Some Aspects of the Byzantine Tradition in the Rumanian
Principalities”, The Slavonic and Eastern Europe Review 59:1 (1981): 1-14, esp. 5-
6.
115
Thomas E. A. Dale, “The Monstrous”, in A Companion to Medieval Art:
Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph (Oxford:
Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 253-73, esp. 255-57.
116
“Second council of Nicaea—787”, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 135-
37.
117
This was destroyed by the iconoclasts in either 726 or 730. Leslie Brubaker,
“Icons and Iconomachy”, in A Companion to Byzantium, ed. Liz James (Oxford:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 323-37, esp. 328-29.
Religious Symbolism and Well-being in Christian Constantinople 349
It has been argued that Constantinople, just like any other ancient or
medieval city, was an “archetectonic [sic] metaphor of eternal order and
harmony, peace, justice and life”.120 The emperor was also “the imitator of
the cosmos”, 121 and the imperial presence in no less than ten liturgies
celebrated within the Great Palace (albeit officiated by the patriarch), nine
ceremonies that began at the palace and culminated with the liturgy in
Hagia Sophia, and seventeen processions that culminated in various urban
churches, 122 underscores the fact that the emperor construed himself as
integral to the functioning of this city as an image of the cosmos. But, as
we mentioned above, the emperor was also subordinate to Christ the
Pantokrator, and in the absence of the emperor after the conquest of the
city, churches influenced by the legacy of Byzantium continued to
function in the same way: as recapitulations of the Christian vision of an
ordered cosmos mastered by Christ, with the saints as intercessors, and
118
Ernst Kitzinger, “The Cult of Images in the Age Before Iconoclasm”,
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 8 (1954): 83-150, esp. 118.
119
Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium
(Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 57.
120
Miller, Imperial Constantinople, v.
121
Miller, Imperial Constantinople, 5.
122
Carolyn L. Connor, Saints and Spectacle: Byzantine Mosaics in their Cultural
Setting (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 106.
350 Chapter Thirteen
Concluding Remarks
At the beginning of this chapter I asserted that ancient, medieval, and early
modern persons wanted to be closer to nature and the cosmos because they
perceived the sacred as manifested through them. This is reflected in
ancient and later Christian cities. In the Byzantine churches in Constantinople
(and beyond) that I addressed above, the whole cosmos is considered as
symbolically recapitulated into the cross-in-square or octagonal design,
capped with domes that signify the firmament. The Pantokrator, the image
of Christ giving the blessing of peace, is one amongst many images that
123
For the Orthodox this is typified at the end of the liturgy, just before the
dismissal, when the priest exhorts the faithful with the following words—ἐν εἰρήνη
προέλθωμεν—meaning “let us go forth in peace”, which can be interpreted as the
faithful being encouraged to take the existential state of peace, received in the
Church, with them into the world. The Divine Liturgy of our Father among the
Saints, John Chrysostom (Sydney: St. Andrew’s Orthodox Press, 2005), 104. I
thank Protopresbyter Dr Doru Costache for this nuance.
124
Dagron, Emperor and Priest, 91.
Religious Symbolism and Well-being in Christian Constantinople 351
filled the churches within the city of Constantinople, but the fact that he
marked the underside of the dome indicated, for the Byzantines, that
Christ is the Master of all. The saints that adorned the inside of these
churches and the streets of the city, who are acclimatised to Christ’s divine
life by his grace, are depicted as serene, dispassionate, and also giving the
blessing of peace. As homines religiosi in Christ, attending church was a
regular activity for the Byzantines, both in Constantinople and in the many
cities throughout the empire. As such the constant exposure of the
Byzantines to sacred images, bolstered by hymns that praised these figures
in a spirit of prayer, would undoubtedly have had a lasting effect.
That the silence, stillness, and peace revered in the Byzantine world—
and, paradoxically, by many in a capital city like Constantinople—leads to
well-being should be taken as a matter of fact. From a Christian point of
view, this well-being is augmented by the grace of the Trinitarian God,
whom the Byzantines worshipped and who was manifested in the saints,
many of whom were “produced” precisely by the ecclesial framework,
with its manifold symbols, promoted by the Byzantines. I believe the fact
that modern persons in the public or civic sphere are not exposed to these
existentially significant symbols—which have been relegated more or less
125
I thank Professor Vrasidas Karalis for this nuance.
126
I thank Protopresbyter Dr Doru Costache for this nuance.
352 Chapter Thirteen
127
Churches nevertheless do impact the public space by virtue of their external
symbols (crosses, etc.), but these are often overshadowed by the kinds of symbols
that we saw above that were intrinsic to modern cities.
128
Of course, the presence of churches and Christian symbolism in a city does not
assure well-being: one needs to be consciously aware of the functions of these
symbols in order for them to do any good.
Religious Symbolism and Well-being in Christian Constantinople 353
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354 Chapter Thirteen