Hagia Sophia in Context: An Archaeological Re-examination of the Cathedral of Byzantine Constantinople

Chapter 1

Introduction

Hagia Sophia, the cathedral of the Byzantine capital city of Constantinople (modern Istanbul), is probably the best known sixth-century structure to survive today anywhere in Europe (studies of the Byzantine cathedral as a whole include: Kleinbauer 2007; Nelson 2004; Cimok 2004; Freely and Çakmak 2004, ch. 6; Hoffman 1999; Mango and Ertuğ 1997; Mark and Çakmak (eds) 1992; Krautheimer 1988, 205–217; Mainstone 1988; Jantzen 1967; Kähler 1967; Van Nice 1965–1986; Swift 1940; Ebersolt 1910; Lethaby and Swainson 1894). The present building was constructed in its original form in 537 on the orders of the emperor Justinian I as the cathedral of the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church (on the Patriarch of Constantinople Gastgeber 2017; Cobham 2016). The physical expression and symbol of the empire’s Christian identity, this was the principal church of both the city and the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) empire as a whole. As the church of the Patriarch of Constantinople, it was the seat of governance of the entire Byzantine Orthodox Church, whose Patriarchal complex, or ‘palace’ as it is usually termed, was adjacent to the church building. Its innovative design is widely considered by architectural historians to be a turning-point in world architectural history and played an important, if long-debated (e.g. Nelson 2004; Buchwald 1998), role in the subsequent development of Byzantine, Ottoman, and later Orthodox Christian architecture (e.g. Ahunbay and Ahunbay 1992).

The church building of Hagia Sophia remains so impressive that it has often been used in efforts to promote twenty-first century tourism in both Istanbul and Turkey as a whole. It is early twenty-first century Turkey’s most visited tourist attraction and few modern tourists probably visit Istanbul without at least seeing the exterior of the building.

The history of the church of Hagia Sophia was shaped both by that of the Byzantine state and the city in which it stands. Established as the city’s cathedral under the emperor Constantius II in the fourth century (see Chapter 2), it was reconstructed in the early fifth century during the reign of Theodosius II, before being rebuilt again in the sixth century by Justinian. After over half a millennium of use for its original purpose as an Orthodox Christian place of worship, it became the Catholic cathedral of the city after the capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, before being restored to its Orthodox and Patriarchal role in 1261, after the city was recaptured by the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaeologos. It then remained in use as an Orthodox church until the capture of Constantinople on the 29th May 1453 by the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II, after which it became an Ottoman imperial mosque until 1931. On 1st February 1935 it was reopened on the orders of the founder of the modern Turkish Republic, Kemal Atatürk, as a secular museum (Ayasofya Müzesi) and has been in use for that purpose since that time (Akgündüz et al. 2006).

It is often said, both popularly and by scholars, that the church of Hagia Sophia stands today as it was built in the sixth century. While this is largely true of the church building itself, the situation is far more complicated than it might at first seem. In fact, the structural history of Hagia Sophia is more than just that of a sixth-century church with few unimportant later Byzantine alterations and additions. Few of the major ecclesiastical buildings which surrounded it as part of the same sixth-century complex survive in anything other than fragmentary form. Consequently, as we shall demonstrate in this book, the complexity of both the sixth-century and later Byzantine components of the building have been greatly underestimated, and the character and significance of the surrounding complex largely ignored. However, it is worth noting here that no revision to the dating of the Justinianic church itself is required by any of the new data in this book: it remains firmly established that the present building was completed in its original form in 537.

While what one sees today is, as usually supposed, essentially the Justinianic church building, this differs in many details from the church completed within Justinian’s reign. Indeed, the structural sequence and function of substantial parts of the building as it stands, such as the buttresses (see especially Chapter 4), have previously been little studied or discussed. This refutes another popular misconception – that the building has been so extensively examined by previous scholars that nothing new could possibly be found there. This was already called into question by recent discoveries of previously unrecorded brickstamps, masons’ marks or graffiti (e.g. Thomov 2014, 2015) and other ‘minor’ features overlooked by earlier studies, which understandably focused on the structure and the major works of art contained within it. As we shall see, far more than minor details have been overlooked, even in the Justinianic church building.

The Justinianic church was designed by two Byzantine academics, neither of them primarily architects, Isidorus of Miletus and Anthemios of Tralles (Krautheimer 1988, 206. On Byzantine architects and building-design: Schibille 2009a, 2014; Zanini 2008. The important study of Byzantine building-practice by Robert Ousterhout (1999) largely concerns the Middle and Late Byzantine periods). The former was a mathematician, engineer and expert on Archimedes, the latter also a mathematician and experimental scientist in the Classical tradition. Perhaps for this reason, much recent work has been devoted to identifying and understanding the geometrical principles behind the church building, as it survives today. Although a Christian religious building, its architectural origins lay, therefore, at least partly in the Classical heritage of the Early Byzantine world. In this way, it may be seen as the last great building of Classical Antiquity as well as a turning point in religious architecture.

It is this background that has led to much modern scholarship being devoted to identifying the structural precedents of the Justinianic church. This search has led to some long-lasting debates in Byzantine studies and art history, for example over the possible significance of the church of Sts Sergius and Bacchus to the architectural origins of Justinian’s Hagia Sophia, and mostly recently the paper by Jonathan Bardill (2017) re-dating Sts Sergius and Bacchus to after 532 (see also Bardill 2000).

However, despite the church designers’ credentials in mathematics and engineering, the initial design of the sixth-century cathedral proved only partly successful, as it was damaged by a series of earthquakes in August 553 and December 557, leading to the collapse of the main dome in an earthquake in May 558 (Çakmak et al. 2009; Taylor 1996; Emerson and Van Nice 1951a and b; Conant 1939). Justinian had the dome remodelled by Isidorus of Miletus’ son, Isidorus the Younger, and the restored church was completed by December 562, when its rededication was celebrated in a lengthy poem by Paul the Silentiary (on the poem and its context: Fobelli and Andaloro 2005; Valiavitcharska 2005–2006; Macrides and Magdalino 1988; Whitby 1985, 2003). Although damaged by fire and earthquake in the ninth, tenth, fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, the building remains essentially that rededicated in 562. The principal post-sixth century Byzantine structural addition to which previous scholars have drawn attention is a series of buttresses constructed in 1317 on the orders of emperor Andronikos II (see Chapter 4).

Further additions to the building were made when it was adapted to Muslim use in the Ottoman period, during Ottoman-period and later restoration, and later for use as a museum. The Byzantine complex around the church has survived much less completely, with only two structures remaining today largely in their original form. The first of these is known today as the Baptistery, although this is a function which it seems to have served perhaps only from the ninth century onward (see Chapters 3 and 4). The other, today called the Skeuophylakion, stood on the opposite side of the church, to its north-east. This is a domed rotunda, usually considered to have been the treasury and store-room (that is, the Skeuophylakion) of the Byzantine cathedral (see Chapters 2, 3 and 4). Fragmentary remains of the rectilinear Byzantine atrium west of the church also survive. This was more complete than at present into the nineteenth century, although the elaborate fountain that once stood in its centre is known only from textual accounts (Broilio 2009, 11–12. For the broader context of fountains in Byzantine ecclesiastical and other Constantinopolitan contexts, see also: Shilling and Stephenson (eds) 2016; Jacobs and Richard 2012; Broilo 2009). Otherwise, prior to the research project that forms the basis of the present book, very little was known of the Byzantine structures forming the remainder of the Hagia Sophia complex between the fourth and fifteenth centuries.

In addition to the sixth-century building, it is the elaborate Byzantine polychrome mosaics in the interior of the church that have attracted most previous scholarly interest, especially from art historians (e.g. Sasaki 2017; Taddei 2015; Riccardi 2012; Cutler 2010; Teteriatnikov 1996, 1998a, 2004, 2012; 2013, 2017, 2018a; Smith 1987; Strube 1983, 1984; Cormack and Hawkins 1977; Hawkins 1968; Mango and Hawkins 1965; Mango 1962; Cormack 1961; Underwood and Hawkins 1961; Underwood 1951, 1956; Whittemore 1933, 1936, 1942, 1952). Several well-preserved wall mosaics are visible inside the building today and others are known from earlier depictions, along with less completely preserved fragments of mosaic and fresco decoration. Consequently, much of what has previously been written about the building has been by art historians rather than archaeologists. Although recently an impressive array of analytical techniques has been brought to bear on the materials used in the building as it stands today by Antonia Moropoulou and her colleagues (Moropoulou et al. 2002a and b, 2010, 2012a and b, 2016), specifically archaeological study of the Byzantine Hagia Sophia complex has been extremely limited, and largely confined to twentieth-century excavations (see Chapters 2 and 3). No previous archaeological study has attempted to use the material evidence from it as a source for social, economic or cognitive archaeology.

Art-historical study of Hagia Sophia has concentrated on the stylistic, aesthetic and comparative analysis of its mosaics and other decorative elements, such as the beautifully carved architectural sculpture (Barsanti and Guiglia 2010; Guidobaldi and Barsanti (eds) 2004) and colourful marble wall veneers (e.g. Mainstone 1998, 10, 12, 126). Although the mosaics and frescoes were mostly covered over during the Ottoman use of the Byzantine church building as a mosque, many were first re-exposed during renovation in 1847 by Giuseppe and Gaspare Fossati (Nelson 2004, esp. ch. 7; Hoffmann 1999; Schlüter 1999; Teteriatnikov 1998a). Subsequent restorations and discoveries of ‘new’ mosaics, mosaic fragments and frescoes on the walls of the building have been made ever since (e.g. Yücel 1995), especially by the work of the Byzantine Institute of America from the 1930s to the 1960s (Nelson 2004, ch. 7). Together, this has allowed both the Byzantine church structure and what remains of its decoration to play a central role in both the development of, and present study of, the history of Byzantine, and world, art- and architectural-history.

Nevertheless, although the sixth-century Byzantine church building is generally well preserved, some parts of the structure were demolished in the Ottoman period, or have remained until recently obscured by Ottoman additions or redecoration, such as the plastering of wall surfaces (e.g. Taddei 2015). There are parts of the building where this is still true after over 80 years as a museum, so that all existing studies of the structure and its decoration are necessarily based only on a partial understanding of what existed at any point in the Byzantine period. Consequently, even the standard structural survey of the church by Van Nice (1965–1986), while a truly monumental and seminal work, is demonstrably incomplete (see Chapters 3 and 4). Nineteenth-century sources show parts of Hagia Sophia that had disappeared by the mid-to-late twentieth century, such as an inscription (‘Holy God dwells here’) outside the south-west gate of the enclosure surrounding the Byzantine buildings and an inscribed ablution basin in the sixth-century atrium (the inscription is reported as ‘do not cleanse just your hands cleanse your soul’), to which John Freely (2002, 18) drew attention.

This research project has cast new light on the extent to which such an apparently well-known and intensively-studied building is, in fact, incompletely understood. Indeed, the archaeological work reported here has been able to show that even the ground plan of the church itself, supposedly a ‘fixed point’ in its modern study, is in fact in need of substantial revision. As a consequence, this volume presents the most complete plan of Justinian’s building so far published, one which differs in substantial respects from the ‘established’ plan of the sixth-century church used in previous scholarly studies.

When the building was designated a museum, other aspects of its Byzantine-period decoration than the mosaics or frescoes on its walls were exposed. The most important of these discoveries was a consequence of the removal of the Ottoman-period mosque carpets that covered its final Byzantine marble floors. A striking feature of the exposed floor (for a general description of the floor, see Freely and Çakmak 2004, 114), which had hitherto been known only from textual descriptions, was shown to be the use of opus sectile within the generally white marble floor, including green marble bands (Stichel 2010; Majeska 1978) and an elaborate omphalos design made up of multiple circles of different sizes (Pedone 2011; Stichel 2010; Van Nice 1965–1986, Fig. 10.). The latter (shown on Fig. 1) is in the exact centre of the south-eastern quarter of the square nave under the dome (Pedone 2011, Fig. 3), the diagonal crossing the square of the church (for further discussion of these features, see Chapter 3).

Indeed, the cathedral building itself has been studied (for the history of its scholarly study, see: Kleinbauer 2007; Nelson 2004; Mainstone 1988) so intensively that it might seem nothing might possibly remain to be done on its architecture, art or the sensory experiences associated with its Byzantine Christian use, such as its lighting and the use of natural light within the structure (e.g. Schibille 2009b, 2014; Bouras and Parani 2008; Isar 2004), the role of music and the acoustics of the church (e.g. Woszczyk 2017; Pentcheva and Abel 2017; Pentcheva 2011, 2014) and the disposition and use of space within it (e.g. Ovali et al. 2016). Studies have examined and re-examined its surviving and lost marble sculpture, frescoes, bricks, mortar, plaster and stucco (e.g. Miriello et al. 2017; Sodini 2005; Bardill 2004; Guidobaldi and Barsanti (ed.) 2004; Moropoulou et al. 2002a and b; Hawkins 1964). Geophysical techniques have been used to examine its floors and walls (e.g. Yalçıner et al. 2017; Yilmaz and Eser 2005), and visualisation studies have attempted to recreate its Byzantine appearance (e.g. Foni et al. 2002). A 3D database has been established (Cura et al. 2014) and the building has also attracted many recent studies aimed at assessing its ability to withstand earthquakes, its general structural principles and stability (e.g. Çaktı et al. 2018; Yalçıner et al. 2016, 2017; Zhang et al. 2014; Wenzel and Duppel 2005).

The exterior of the building was significantly altered during the Ottoman period by the addition of minarets and the construction of a series of Ottoman imperial tombs to the south of the main building. The smaller Byzantine building, known as the Baptistery, was reused as another Ottoman tomb in the seventeenth century. These Ottoman additions, which had begun with two minarets in the late fifteenth century (Emerson and Van Nice 1950), gathered pace under Sultan Selim II (1566–1574) when two other minarets were added and the sultan’s lodge was constructed. Selim II was the first sultan buried at the site, his türbe (mausoleum) being constructed there in 1576–1577. These constructions, and especially the building of the southern minaret in 1575, led to the demolition of Byzantine buildings belonging to the Patriarchate, the official residence and administrative headquarters of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the head of the Byzantine Orthodox Church. This, and other demolition of pre-Ottoman structures around the Byzantine church, highlights the fact that it had been the centre of a much larger complex of ecclesiastical buildings. However, despite Ousterhout’s call for scholars to consider the urban context of Constantinopolitan buildings (Ousterhout 2000), the area around the sixth-century church has received surprisingly little attention from recent art historians or archaeologists.

Fig. 1 Plan of Hagia Sophia showing features referred to in the text (adapted by N. Westbrook from Van Nice 1965–1986, pl. 1 and Müller-Wiener 1977, 90, Fig. 75): 1 – atrium, 2 – Theodosian propylaeum, 3 – west flying buttresses, 4 – south wing of the atrium, 5 – Patriarchal palace, 6 – south-west vestibule, 7 – south-west ramp, 8 – Baptistery, 9 – south-west buttress, 10 – south-west buttress pier, 11 – south-east buttress pier, 12 – south middle buttress, 13 – south-east buttress, 14 – two buttresses at the south-east corner of the church projecting south and east of the building, 15 – south-east vestibule, 16 – two east flying buttresses, 17 – buttress beside the north-east vestibule, 18 – north-east vestibule and ramp, 19 – room on the north side of the north-east ramp, 20 – Skeuophylakion, 21 – north-east buttress, 22 – north-east buttress pier, 23 – north-west buttress pier, 24 – north middle buttress, 25 – area of hypogeum, 26 – north-west buttress, 27 – north-west ramp, 28 – north-west vestibule, 29 – north wing of the atrium, 30 – Ottoman medrese.

The Patriarchal complex

Written sources tell us something of the Patriarchal complex from the fifth until the fifteenth century (Taddei 2017; Kidonopoulos 1994, 164–165; Dirimtekin 1963–1964; Janin 1962, 1964, 177–180; Mango 1959, 53–55), although as Cyril Mango (1959, 53–55) pointed out, these sources contain insufficient information to reconstruct either the layout or architecture of that complex in much detail. Furthermore, these sources provide us with little indication of how the Patriarchal buildings altered, either in appearance or function, over time. The latter is especially significant because as the complex adjacent to Hagia Sophia was in use for over a millennium as the organisational centre of the Orthodox Church, significant functional and, perhaps, architectural alterations might be anticipated over that long period.

Texts suggest that the sixth-century and later Patriarchate was inside a high-walled enclosure immediately south-west of the sixth-century cathedral, containing reception and dining rooms and offices, with a residential area adjacent to a courtyard. There was also a guesthouse, library and archives, apparently in a building with three or four storeys (Ceylan 2007, 173). At least in the later part of the Early Byzantine period there was a large reception building (Guilland 1956) called the Thomaites or Makron, and one building apparently with a terrace or balcony from which it was possible to look out over the small adjacent square, the Augustaion (regarding which, see Chapter 5), between the Patriarchal palace and the imperial palace (the Great Palace) to its south. A raised passage connected the imperial palace with part of the church (again, see Chapter 5), which, in addition to other written evidence, demonstrates that Patriarchal structures spread across the whole south side of the church, between it and the north side of the Augustaion.

Although these Patriarchal buildings are referred to in texts, and their approximate location is certain, very little is known of their architecture or exact layout. Unlike the Great Palace, which served as the context for the emperors and their courts, where written sources allow many architectural details, even whole buildings, to be reconstructed with some accuracy, it would be impossible from texts alone to reconstruct the general exterior appearance of the Byzantine Patriarchate of Constantinople. None of its buildings was described in detail, except of course for the church of Hagia Sophia itself. Nor are any of the descriptions of Patriarchal receptions or Church councils sufficiently detailed to enable us to reconstruct how exactly the Patriarchal complex was used.

Furthermore, when the Patriarchal complex was established on the present site of Hagia Sophia is far from obvious. This is a question that, at present, can be addressed only by means of historical analysis. The crucial evidence for the location of the Patriarchate prior to the sixth century concerns the history of the Convent of Olympias (Taddei 2018, 85–86; Panczová 2011; Hatlie, 2007, 67, 72–74, 96–98, 245, 443; Magdalino 2007, Study I, 4; Janin 1969, 381; Dirimtekin 1962b; Mango 1959, 54–56). According to the Vita of St Olympias (usually dated to the fifth century), the convent founded by her in the late fourth century stood on the south side of the cathedral and communicated directly with its narthex, being separated from the cathedral complex only by a wall (Taddei 2018, 85; Mango 1959, 54–56. On Olympias, see also: Panczová 2011; Mayer 1999). However, Nicephorus Callistus, writing in the fourteenth century, says that the convent was situated between the churches of Hagia Sophia and Hagia Eirene (Peschlow et al. 1977), that is, to the north of the former. Although one might be more inclined to accept a near-contemporary source over one almost a millennium later, Mango (1959, 54–56) has pointed out that Callistus may have had before him a more correct version of the Vita, or other information that is not available to us today. It is, therefore, uncertain on the basis of textual evidence whether the convent was on the north or south of the cathedral (pace Taddei 2018, 86), but it certainly stood adjacent to its narthex.

It could be imagined that the apparent contradiction in regard to the location of the Convent of Olympias would be resolved if one assumed that Hagia Eirene was the city’s cathedral when the convent was established (Taddei 2018, 21–30), with the Patriarchate originally next to Hagia Eirene, and only re-located to adjacent to the church of Hagia Sophia when the Justinianic church was built (on the question of the city’s fourth-century cathedral(s): Mayer 2000). If this was true, the convent would indeed be in the area north of Hagia Sophia and south of Hagia Eirene and may have only been relocated when the Justinianic church of Hagia Sophia was built.

It has been claimed that two architectural features of Hagia Eirene support its interpretation as the original Patriarchal church. First, a connection between the church and the partially-excavated buildings to its south, usually interpreted as the textually-attested Hospital of Samson, has been claimed by Ferudun Özgümüş to demonstrate that the so-called hospital ruins are those of an adjacent fourth-century episcopal complex (only published to date in the form of quotations in media reports, e.g. Anon. 2009, 2009b). However, this is impossible as the church with which they would connect was itself rebuilt in its present form only after the sixth-century Nika Riot. Any connection between the church and the Hospital of Samson structures to its south must, then, be sixth century or later and so offer no evidence for the role of the fourth or fifth-century churches on the same site.

Second, the apse of Hagia Eirene contains a synthronon (semi-circular bank of seats for clergy) typical of episcopal churches elsewhere in the Byzantine Empire (see Chapter 5). Again, the date of the extant structure precludes the possibility that these seats were part of the fourth- or fifth-century church. More plausibly, the inclusion of Hagia Eirene within the sixth-century Patriarchal complex at Hagia Sophia might explain the presence of a synthronon in that church, which could have been used for meetings in addition to its other ecclesiastical functions.

Consequently, there is no material evidence for a fourth- or fifth-century Patriarchal church at Hagia Eirene. Moreover, the first cathedral on the present site of Hagia Sophia was consecrated in 360 (see Chapter 2), whereas Olympias was probably born no earlier than the 360s. The cathedral next to which she built her convent must, therefore, be that of 360, rather than any earlier building. Thus, one can locate both the late fourth-century Patriarchal buildings and the Convent of Olympias in the immediate vicinity of the sixth-century cathedral, possibly in approximately the same location as it was in the sixth and later centuries.

Although it is unknown whether the convent had been affected by the fire of 404, which destroyed the nearby cathedral, like many buildings in the city centre it was burnt in 532 during the Nika Riot. Nevertheless, we are told that it was re-founded by Justinian as part of the emperor’s large-scale renovation programme in the city centre. The nuns, while waiting for the completion of the new convent, lived for six years at the church of St Menas on the acropolis (Janin 1969, 381). When they returned to a site nearer to the cathedral, it is not known whether their new convent, built by Justinian, stood on the same site as its predecessor. Perhaps it was then that the convent was located between Hagia Sophia and Hagia Eirene, explaining Callistus’s reference to it, although the convent is last mentioned in the early seventh century under the Patriarch Sergius (610–638), when Sergia was its igumena (Riehle 2012), so it had probably disappeared, at least as anything but a ruin, more than 600 years before he wrote.

Apart from the church of Hagia Eirene and the Hospital of Samson, what actually stood north of the sixth-century church of Hagia Sophia in the Byzantine period is even more obscure. Again, written evidence provides some hints: there was a large bapistery (the Great Bapistery) immediately outside the central doorway in the north wall of Justinian’s church from at least the sixth century onward, the Skeuophylakion (church treasury) toward the eastern end of the church, and a chapel of St Peter somewhere nearer to Hagia Eirene (Taft 2001, Study VII, 9–12). The church of Hagia Eirene was also within the cathedral complex, encompassed within a single enclosing wall. Nevertheless, these sources give less detail about the area north of the church than they do for that to its south.

Thus, while texts make it certain that the Byzantine cathedral was surrounded by other buildings associated with it, they contain insufficient information to reconstruct the appearance of these buildings, let alone to understand how they were used. One might look to archaeological analogy with other Roman or Late Antique structures to assist in identifying structures mentioned in texts, for example to other baptisteries (Kostof 1965; Katchatrian 1962), but it is uncertain how appropriate to Hagia Sophia many of the possible structural analogies are. For example, while other Roman period and Byzantine libraries are known, both from written and archaeological sources (e.g. Nicolls 2018; Nedelcu 2016; Houston 2014; König, Oikonomopoulou and Woolf (eds) 2013; Too 2010; Kazhdan and Browning 1991; Lorne 1986; Casson 2001; Wilson 1967), the physical form of most of these is unknown, or they are known from sites of very different character and date to the Patriarchate at Hagia Sophia, such as the Library of Celsus in Ephesus (e.g. Finley 2014).

The state of current scholarly knowledge of the fourth- and fifth-century churches of Hagia Sophia is much more limited than that of the Justinianic building. The sixth-century reconstruction of Hagia Sophia followed a fire started as part of the Nika Riot, which had destroyed the existing church. This earlier church, built in 404, followed a traditional basilican design and, judging from surviving architectural fragments known from the 1930s excavations in the atrium of the Justinianic church, closely followed Classical stylistic conventions. However, apart from the western side of this fifth-century structure (known by scholars as the propylaeum), currently preserved in front of the west of the sixth-century building, nothing was known archaeologically of the church built after the fire of 404, let alone its fourth-century predecessor, prior to this project (on the identification of what are probably fourth-century walls at the site, see Chapter 2).

Consequently, it is striking that the scholarly neglect of both the immediate surroundings of the sixth-century church and of the fifth- and fourth-century complex contrasts with the