CHAPTER 3
The Emergence of the Byzantine Rite and the Church Building as Sacrament
The Founding of Constantinople
After the defeat of Licinius, Emperor of the East, in 324, Constantine visited Byzantium repeatedly, formally marking out its walls on 8 November. He built a palace, erected a statue of himself with rays around his head, and according to the Chronicon Paschale dedicated the city with what appears to have been pagan sacrifice. Later he plundered pagan shrines of the Empire, transferring statues to decorate his new city. In 330 he named it Constantinople with feasting and the celebration of the first games. Eusebius paints a very different picture:
Honouring with special favour the city which is called after his own name, he [Constantine] adorned it with many places of worship and martyrs’ shrines of great size and beauty, some in the suburbs and some in the city itself; by which he both honoured the memory of the martyrs and consecrated the city to the martyrs’ God. Being altogether inspired with the divine wisdom, he determined to cleanse of all idolatry the city which he had decreed should bear his own name; so that there should nowhere appear in it statues of the supposed gods worshipped in temples, nor altars defiled by pollutions of blood, nor sacrifices burnt by fire, nor demonic festivals, nor anything else that is customary among the superstitious.1
The statue of Constantine was itself a deeply ambiguous figure. It is reputed to have originally been a statue of Apollo with a portrait head of Constantine replacing that of Apollo, and the rays were said to have been the nails from Christ’s Passion. So is this the Emperor, and is he to be associated with Apollo, the Invincible Sun, or Christ-Helios? The statue was placed on top of a huge porphyry column in the Forum of Constantine, and beneath the base were relics and the palladium brought by Aeneas from Troy to Italy. On the base was the inscription: ‘O Christ, Ruler and Master of the World, to You now I dedicate this subject City, and these sceptres, and the Might of Rome, Protector, save her from all harm.’ While all this has led some to conclude that we have no reason to doubt Eusebius’ Christian interpretation, others argue that Constantine ‘did not build a conspicuously Christian city’.2 It is entirely possible that interpretation of his position was as wide open for his contemporaries as it remains for us, and it is easy to see why Constantine might have wanted it that way, ruling an Empire of diverse religious allegiances. Churches were undeniably prominent in Constantine’s building programme in his new capital, but even these are not unproblematic.
The First Hagia Sophia and Hagia Irene
Hagia Sophia, originally called the Great Church, was the Cathedral of Constantinople, begun by Constantine himself, but not completed until 360 by Constantius:
At the time of this council of Bishops [which condemned Bishop Macedonius of Constantinople as a heretic], a few days after Eudoxius had been consecrated bishop of Constantinople, was celebrated the dedication of the Great Church of that city, more or less 34 years after its foundations had been laid by Constantine, the Victorious Augustus. This dedication was carried out … the 16th day before the Kalends of March [14 February] …. At the dedication the Emperor Constantius Augustus presented many offerings, namely vessels of gold and silver of great size and many covers for the holy altar woven with gold and precious stones, and furthermore, various golden curtains (amphithura) for the doors of the Church and others of gold cloth for the outer doorways.3
The Great Church was subsequently dedicated to the Holy Wisdom of God, and in form (and liturgical use) was probably closely related to the Great Church at Jerusalem, another double-aisled basilica preceded by an atrium – built, significantly, between 325/26 and 335 by Zenobius and by Eustathios, ‘a presbyter from Constantinople’. It was to this Great Church in Constantinople that the ‘golden-tongued’ John Chrysostom was brought under protest from Antioch to be Bishop of Constantinople in 398. He was a charismatic preacher who might hold forth for two hours, not (as was customary) from his cathedra in the apse which was the symbol of his teaching and governing authority, but from a second throne placed on the ambo.4 He famously and frequently complained of the unruly and noisy congregations who would talk and laugh during the readings, and worse still, even during his sermons.
All that remains of the whole Constantinian complex is the treasure-house or diaconicon to the north-east. Besides being the sacristy, it may also have functioned as the place where the people left their gifts before the service, with doors on either side allowing an orderly passage of the faithful. The gifts would be prepared here, and when they were brought in to the Great Church, it was done simply and with silence. There appears not to have been any singing, and it was performed with so little ceremony that John Chrysostom never mentions the offering in his sermons, which is most remarkable considering later elaborations of the rite. The contemporary Mystagogical Catecheses of Theodore of Mopsuestia in southern Asia Minor, written after 392, do mention the entrance of the gifts:
It is the deacons who bring out this oblation … which they arrange and place on the awe-inspiring altar … by means of the symbols we must see Christ, who is now being led out and going forth to his passion, and who, in another moment, is laid out for us on the altar. … And when the offering that is about to be presented is brought out in the sacred vessels, the patens and chalices, you must think that Christ the Lord, is coming out, led to his passion … by the invisible host of ministers … who were also present when the passion of salvation was being accomplished.5
Theodore goes on to say that it was appropriate for such a fearful moment to be met with complete silence when the very Body of the Lord will undergo the passion and resurrection, and at this point the deacons begin to wave their fans so that nothing will fall on the glorious Body. At some later time, the gravity of the moment began to be marked with singing and greater ceremony.
Chrysostom was deposed in 404 through the influence of the Empress Eudoxia, and in the ensuing disturbances Hagia Sophia was disastrously damaged by a fire which started near his throne on the ambo. From there it quickly spread up the hanging lamps to the wooden roof. Along with what would appear to be a large part of the church, the baptistery near this central section towards the east end of the church was also destroyed. The restored church was not re-dedicated until 10 October 415 under Theodosius II.
Alongside the Hagia Sophia, about a hundred metres north, was Hagia Irene, Church of the Holy Peace, where Constantine made his one recorded appearance at a public liturgy, at the Easter Vigil in 337, shortly before his death. These two major churches shared a common precinct, and together they may have functioned as a double cathedral:6 for example after the fire in the Great Church in 404, Hagia Irene took over its functions until its reopening in 415. Both were destroyed in the Nika riot of 532.
The Church of the Holy Apostles
Nothing remains of Constantine’s Apostoleion, or Church of the Holy Apostles, with the possible exception of the monolithic columns of what became the Mosque of Mehmet the Conqueror, or Fatih Camii, now standing on the site. Eusebius describes the church as taking the form of a cross in the centre of a large courtyard surrounded by halls and baths. Over the crossing was a large drum, well lit by grilled windows and topped by a conical roof. As with so many other Constantinian buildings, the walls shone with polished marble revetment and the coffered ceilings with gold. Only somewhat later, Gregory of Nyssa, in the ‘Laudatio S. Theodori’, gives an impression of what it was like to enter even the relatively obscure Martyrium of S. Theodore at Euchaita, near Amaseia in the Pontus:
When a man comes to a place like the one where we are gathered today, wherein are the memorial and the holy relic of the Just one, he is at once inspired by the magnificence of the spectacle, seeing, as he does, a building splendidly wrought both with regard to size and the beauty of its adornment, as befits God’s temple, a building in which the carpenter has shaped wood into the likeness of animals, and the mason has polished slabs to the smoothness of silver. The painter, too, has spread out the blooms of his art, having depicted on an image (en eikoni) the martyr’s brave deeds, his resistance, his torments, the ferocious faces of the tyrants, the insults, that fiery furnace, the martyr’s most blessed death and the representation in human form of Christ who presides over the contest – all of these he wrought by means of colors as if it were a book that uttered speech, and so he both represented the martyr’s feats with all clarity and adorned the church like a beautiful meadow; for painting, even if it is silent, is capable of speaking from the wall and being of the greatest benefit. As for the mosaicist, he made a noteworthy floor to tread upon.7
The natural quality of these images was valued because it brought the observer into the presence of the action like a particularly vivid form of preaching. The interior, even of a more minor church like this, was intended to be memorably impressive by its size, beauty and costliness. An imperial foundation like the Apostoleion would seek to be utterly breathtaking as a setting for the awe-inspiring holy mysteries.
The focus of the Apostoleion at the crossing, bathed in light, was the sanctuary containing the porphyry sarcophagus of Constantine himself, of which a probable fragment remains.8 Surrounding the sarcophagus were cenotaphs to the Apostles, companions of the Saviour himself, and in 356/57 Constantius translated the bodies of the Apostles Andrew, Luke and Timothy to the Apostoleion, placing them below the altar and enhancing the presentation of Constantine as the thirteenth Apostle. This was an early translation of relics (the first recorded ceremonial movement of relics being of St Babylus to Daphne between 351– and 354), and its imperial sponsorship ensured its emulation. An ivory, dating from the sixth century or earlier and preserved in the cathedral treasury at Trier, shows just such a translation of relics at Constantinople, with prelates in a carriage bearing a reliquary, and the Emperor preceding the horses on foot to the entrance to the church. Jaś Elsner has pointed out the similarity between this image and the description by Herodian of the triumphal arrival of the Baal borne on a chariot to the temple, preceded by the pagan Emperor Elagabalus. During this period of very rapid transition, these two images are both to be read (perhaps worryingly) within the same ambiguous imperial conceptual framework, as are architectural forms and aspects of the ceremonial of the liturgy. Christian processions with relics functioned in ways very similar to the arrival, progress and departure of the statue of a pagan god in civic celebrations. In Byzantium, a similar function would be performed by icons, most particularly of the Virgin, carried in procession for the protection of the city.9
The literary evidence provided by Eusebius and later by Procopius concerning the building of the Apostoleion is at odds, with the former maintaining that Constantine himself built the Apostoleion to house his own tomb, and the latter believing that it was built by his son and successor Constantius. If the section in Eusebius is genuine (which some doubt), then it must have been written between the death of Constantine in 337 and Eusebius’ own death by 340. What pleads for the earlier date of construction by Constantine, and acceptance of Eusebius’ record, is that though it may not have seemed odd to Constantine himself that he should be at the centre of the cult – after all, that had for generations been one of the Emperor’s (albeit pagan) functions – for a Church that was maturing as an institution, such a potentially syncretistic juxtaposition was becoming intolerable.10 For Constantius to have conceived such a problematic liturgical setting and carried it out at a later date against growing opposition seems increasingly unlikely.
Constantine’s death in 337 posed a problem: until now, Emperors had been cremated on an elaborate pyre, aggrandized by an apotheosis, and latterly at least, deified. This was clearly impossible with the first Christian Emperor. The Roman Senate wanted his body returned to Rome, presumably for the traditional pagan ceremonial of consecratio, but the request was refused. In the Life of Constantine (4.64.2), Eusebius used vocabulary that would have been familiar to them, saying that on ‘the Feast of Feasts [Pentecost], about the time of the midday sun the Emperor was taken up to his God’ (4.65.1). The notion that Constantine was the earthly representative of his Lord continued: ‘Tribunes and centurions wept aloud for their Saviour, Protector and Benefactor, and the rest of the troops suitably mourned like flocks for their Good Shepherd’ (4.65.2). The commanders, the ruling class and Senate of New Rome all came in their customary order of precedence to his glittering lying-in-state ‘and saluted the Emperor on the bier with genuflections after his death in the same way as when he was alive … and it is right that he alone enjoyed these things, as the God over all allowed his mortal part to reign among mankind, thus demonstrating the ageless and deathless reign of his soul to those with minds not stony-hard’ (4.67.1 and 4.67.3). The Emperor was taken in procession, led by his second son, Constantius, along with his brothers recently declared Augusti, Eusebius says, although this did not actually occur until 9 September 337.11 There was a military escort, and crowds followed. Constantine was laid to rest in the Apostoleion, where his ‘soul shares the honour of the invocation of the Apostles and is numbered among the people of God, having divine rites and mystic liturgies bestowed upon it, and enjoying participation in sacred prayers, he himself even after death holding on to empire’ (4.71.2). This was by no means a radical departure from tradition, but it was a new idiom which could be read by both Christian and pagan subjects, satisfying the Senates of both New and old Rome. Consecration coins struck in his honour, Eusebius records, showed the ‘Blessed One’ (Constantine) in a veiled portrait on the obverse, and driving a chariot on the reverse, ‘being taken up by a right hand stretched out to him from above’ (4.73). The image could easily be read as the traditional charioteer in the race of life with the hand of Jupiter, or ‘the chariot might evoke the chariot which bore Elijah up to heaven, where the hand could be the hand of God. Surely the imagery is neatly ambiguous, designed to be understood in different ways by the pagan and Christian subjects of the empire.’12 Constantine was granted the title of divus, a title given to deceased Byzantine emperors until the early sixth century; early ambiguities left deep marks on Christianity, some becoming embedded in the ceremonial and in the architecture, as at the Apostoleion.
There were even more extraordinary ceremonies at Constantine’s column in the forum, where mass was celebrated inside the tetrapylon of the base and prayer was offered ‘to Constantine’s image on the column … as if to a god to avert disasters’.13
In his life there had been some difficulty integrating the ceremonial person of the Emperor into the liturgy of the Church; in his death it hardly became less acute. With the celebration of the eucharist, which was liturgically focused on the Emperor of Heaven, in the sanctuary of the Apostoleion, which was architecturally focused on the Emperor of Rome, the long association between the two Emperors, as in Eusebius’ Life of Constantine, became all too real, and bordered on the blasphemous – approaching a Christianized deification of the Emperor. All this constitutes a renegotiation of the relationship between the Church and the world, between the kingdom of this world and the Kingdom of God, between the Emperor of Rome and the Emperor of Heaven. With the absence of the Emperor from Rome since 326, the Bishop of Rome, unlike his brother in Constantinople, was free to concentrate on congregational and pastoral matters. At this point, before a canon has developed, an enormous number of architectural and ceremonial forms were available to be reinvested with the newly negotiated orthodoxy, but the visual, the ceremonial and the doctrinal all had to conform to the same internal logic, which was not at all obvious in the arrangement of the Apostoleion.
The inevitable solution was soon reached with the removal of Constantine from the sanctuary of the Apostoleion to a nearby traditional circular mausoleum and the re-dedication of the whole complex, probably in 370. Enormous trouble had been taken at St Peter’s to overcome the difficulties of the site on the Vatican Hill in order to have the architectural focus on the altar above the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles, but the tomb itself was below floor-level in a confessio. It was only the tomb of the Saviour himself in Jerusalem that was both the architectural and liturgical focus of a great church complex, and its place in the liturgy was carefully controlled by the progression of the service through the architectural spaces. Now the three Apostles together occupied this focal position (again below the altar) at the Apostoleion and many other Churches would follow this pattern during the next century, with the plan in the form of the Cross and its dedication to the Apostles, or some other saint as a local apostle.14 For example, as early as 379 work was begun on the Church of St Babylus in Antioch, clearly modelled on Constantine’s Apostoleion. The square martyrium contained the altar, the grave of the saint and two of his successors as Bishop of Antioch, and from it radiated four long arms with colourful mosaic floors. Around the year 380, Gregory of Nyssa in a letter to Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium, described in great detail a martyrium he was building in his native city which was to be an octagon with four conches alternating with arms ‘coming together in a manner that is inherent in the cruciform shape’.15 The octagonal crossing probably relates to the Golden Octagon, Constantine’s court Church in Antioch. At the turn of the fifth century at Ephesus, a cross-shaped church was built over the grave of St John.16 At about the same time, Mark the Deacon in the ‘Life of Porphyry’ (75) records how the Empress Eudoxia gave money to Bishop Porphyry when he was in Constantinople to build the Cathedral of Gaza, and later sent letters and ‘on another sheet enclosed in the letter was the plan (skariphos) of the holy church in the form of a cross, such as it appears today by the help of God; and the letter contained instructions that the holy church be built according to this plan. … Furthermore, the letter announced the despatch of costly columns and marbles.’17 Imperial patronage and travel between imperial capitals ensured the dissemination of both architectural and liturgical ideas. In the West, St Ambrose, in the dedicatory verses for his Church of the Apostles, Milan in 382, emphasizes the symbolism of the plan:
Forma crucis templum est, templum victoria Christi
Sacra, triumphalis, signat imago locum.18
(The form of the cross is a temple, the temple of Christ’s victory
The sacred, triumphal symbol marks the place.)
Eastern Influence: Milan
Milan, as the main capital of the Emperor of the West, was strongly linked to the other imperial capitals at this period, and competed with Constantinople. That Milan was a very credible competitor is amply demonstrated by surviving fourth-century churches, including San Lorenzo (built before 378; see Figure 3.1), a centralized plan resembling a huge baldacchino indicating that it may have served originally as a chapel for the nearby palace. Ambrose’s Church of the Apostles was a copy of, and a challenge to, its prototype, the Apostoleion: it was a full 200 Roman feet long with arms 50 Roman feet wide. Its walls still exist virtually to their full height within the present S. Nazaro. Here, as in the Apostoleion, the sanctuary and altar were at the crossing, and below the altar Ambrose placed relics of the Apostles in a silver casket. The Martyrologium Hieronymianum records a ceremony on 9 May 386, when the relics of the Apostles John, Andrew and Thomas were brought into the Basilica Apostolorum. Since Andrew’s body had been in the Apostoleion in Constantinople since 356/57, it suggests that the relics may well have been the gift of Theodosius, Emperor in Constantinople. The gift would certainly have had a political dimension considering Ambrose was in 385/86 in conflict with Valentinian, Emperor of the West, and his court based in Milan. The issue at the centre of this conflict was that Valentinian, and his heretical Arian clergy, wished to use one of Ambrose’s churches as a Palatine Chapel. At one point the purple hangings that always accompanied an imperial celebration were damaged in the Portian Basilica. This amounted to a direct assault on the Emperor’s person, which placed Ambrose and his people in very real danger of imperial retribution. What followed was a visionary use of liturgy to strengthen community and defend their church building. Ambrose was blockaded with his congregation in his church. To pass the time and to boost sagging morale, Ambrose divided the congregation into two choirs to chant the psalms antiphonally. The success of the improvisation was built upon in a further encounter, and congregational singing became a distinguishing mark of the Ambrosian liturgy.19
Ambrose won the confrontation with the Emperor over the use of church buildings, the blockade was lifted, and Valentinian appears to have celebrated Easter on the road to Aquileia. When the conflict flared up again, Ambrose and his embattled congregation returned to the singing of psalms, reinforcing their sense of oppression. He also composed rallying hymns which declared their orthodox faith in the Trinity. The hymns were appropriate to different times of the day: ‘a round-the-clock liturgy was thus improvised, each day and night being punctuated by services and song’, at cock-crow, morning, noon and evening, and on special occasions with an all-night vigil. This round of sung services became a characteristic of the Milanese liturgy.20 Typically, Ambrose wrote: ‘What human being would not be ashamed to end the day without the festal recital of psalms, when even the tiniest birds observe the beginning of day and night with solemn devotion and sweet song.’21 Even St Augustine, normally rather austere in these matters, conceded how profoundly moved he had been by the singing of Ambrose’s choirs.22
The shorter vigil appears to have originated during the confrontation with the Imperial court, but on the eve of a festival the vigil would last throughout the night. The midday service preceded the celebration of the eucharist. On days of fasting, the eucharist was delayed until the end of the fast. As at Cyril’s Jerusalem the service consisted of the Liturgy of the Catechumens, after which they were dismissed for the Liturgy of the Faithful. While the catechumens were present, perhaps understandably, but also tellingly, Ambrose describes how difficult it was to maintain order: ‘What a work there is in church to procure silence when the lessons are read!’23 Those lessons were from the Prophets, the Epistles, then the Gospels, interspersed by the singing of psalms. By this time, the lessons for special days at least appear to have been fixed, following the practice of Jerusalem. The sermon followed, and then the catechumens were dismissed. As usual, a degree of reticence is shown by Ambrose concerning the mysteries, which were ‘sealed’. Those details which he does mention concur with the use in Jerusalem, but in addition there are now the words of institution: ‘This is my body … this is my blood …’. At the altar, the celebrant stretched out his arms in the form of the cross, emphasizing the identification between the priest and Christ.
Ambrose had been a governor before his election to the See of Milan, but his political manoeuvrings in relation to the imperial court were now staged in a liturgical context, including preaching in which he condemned his Arian opponents for their practice of re-baptizing converts from orthodoxy. Having won in his confrontation with the Emperor of the West, he consolidated his powerful position architecturally by completing the Basilica Ambrosiana in which he was to be buried under the altar – it was to be his own martyrium, which was a daring gesture in the arrangement of the liturgical setting, further enhancing his prestige; should he be killed for his opposition, the Emperor would have a martyr on his hands. The liturgical gesture was also a political statement – burial under the altar, or nearby, had been unacceptable even for Constantine, but it was appropriate for a bishop. Ambrose was making the authority and independence of the Church abundantly clear.
Within a very short time, the cruciform plan of Ambrose’s Basilica Apostolorum, however conceptually and symbolically appropriate, was proving problematical. The function of the church was multi-layered. It had not been built on the site of a martyr’s grave nor of a martyrdom; its relics were brought into a completed church on the main ceremonial entrance to the city. The church provided the stage for the initial encounter between the Bishop and the Emperor at his adventus, or ceremonial arrival in his capital. The building functioned politically, both in relation to the Emperor of the West and the Emperor of the East (in rivalling its Eastern prototype and in the gift of relics); it announced the equivalence of Milan, as effective capital of the West, with the prestige of Constantinople, capital of the East. Primarily, however, it was a congregational church for the regular celebration of the liturgy, but during the celebration of the liturgy, the headpiece of the cruciform plan became redundant. Still, the presence of the relics of the Apostles made it a very desirable place for the burial of local dignitaries, which duly took place in the apsidal structures in the arms near the crossing. A centralized altar was clearly an unsatisfactory arrangement for a congregational church, and in 395, with the discovery of the remains of a new martyr, Nazaro, close to the church, Ambrose translated him and interred him below a newly relocated high altar at the east end, removing the sanctuary from the crossing. All this took some explaining, and in a poem incised in stone in his newly re-ordered church, he presents the cruciform plan as an appropriate symbol of the victory of the martyr: ‘he whose palm was once a cross now has a cross as his resting place’.24 The relics of the Apostles were there to enhance the prestige of the local saint, and Ambrose was able to transform the Basilica Apostolorum to the liturgically more suitable S. Nazaro through a combination of poetic agility and simply moving the altar into the eastern headpiece of the church over the tomb of his newly discovered martyr.
This type of plan was repeated on a grand scale by Ambrose in Milan in the late fourth century in the still extant (though remodelled) S. Simpliciano. Its basic structure and brickwork with blind arches and buttressing still give a very clear idea of its original appearance. The influence of Milan throughout northern Italy ensured the spread of this new plan, and it is to be found in Como, Ravenna and Verona. Ambrose’s political influence had an even greater reach: in 390, Theodosius I massacred the inhabitants of Thessalonica as punishment for an insurrection. Ambrose demanded that he do penance for the crime, and the Emperor of the East obeyed. The independence of the Church had been asserted.
Liturgically, the Cathedral of Milan, St Tecla’s, built in the mid-fourth century, is revealing of prevailing practice. It was a double-aisled basilica with a deep sanctuary raised above the level of the nave. The chancel had wings on either side reached through colonnades, and used probably for the offerings of the people. In front of the bema, or raised chancel, was a solea, or long pathway, projecting well down the nave. The arrangement was similar to Constantine’s Lateran Basilica, and will be seen to develop further into an array of variations in the Eastern Empire. A good extant comparative example of this arrangement (though with single aisles, and some of the liturgical furnishings have disappeared) is the Acheiropoietos Church in Salonica (c. 450–70), another is the reconstructed H. Demetrios, Salonica, built in the late fifth century. These arrangements would be formative for the emergence of the new Byzantine architecture, though the sheer size of the Empire and diversity of local culture and building traditions would result in a wide variety of artistic and architectural styles.
Constantinople in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries
In the late fourth century, Constantinople had grown in importance until, in 381, the Ecumenical Council held in the city by Theodosius I pronounced that: ‘the Bishop of Constantinople shall have the precedence of honour after the Bishop of Rome, because Constantinople is New Rome’. Of the glories of his New Rome, almost nothing is left. Hagia Sophia was seriously damaged in the fire of 404 which followed the deposition of John Chrysostom, and rebuilding continued until 415. Only elements of the decorative detail of this structure survive, and the very success and wealth of Constantinople in the fifth century has meant that building and rebuilding activities have obliterated all other churches of the period with the exception of the Basilica of St John Studios, which was built in the 450s and survives only as a ruin. Its revetment and fine marble columns are now familiar elements, and its squat proportions, galleries and plan recall the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but its decoration, plan and liturgical furnishings have developed a more recognizably Byzantine quality. There is a synthronon, or bench for the clergy, wrapped round the inside of the apse, the bema, or raised platform, projected 5.45 metres into the nave with parapets and doors placed centrally on the north, south and western or nave side. Here it probably extended down the nave as a raised solea, or pathway, leading to the pulpit, though the solea and ambo are now completely lost. Below the altar was a small crypt in the shape of a cross, which was a deposit for relics. Steps descended from the chord of the apse into the small space only 1.45 metres high. Since the steps descend immediately behind the altar, this is a good indication that, here at least, the celebrant must have faced east.25 A very similar arrangement is indicated in what little remains of the Church of the Theotokos, Chalkoprateia, near the Great Church.26
The liturgy celebrated here may have emerged from the tradition described in the eighth book of the Apostolic Constitutions. Though it claims to be the Apostolic tradition transmitted to the Church of Rome by St Clement, it is generally accepted to reflect the use of Antioch at the end of the fourth century.27 The text speaks of readings from the Law, the Prophets, the Epistles, the Acts and the Gospels, but it is not clear how many readings were expected. They were to be read from an elevated place in the centre, presumably the ambo, or raised pulpitum. Very similar, roughly contemporary, arrangements of basilicas with galleries were to be found (with the addition of round martyria) at St Mary Chalkoprateia, at Hagia Euphemia in nearby Chalcedon, and St Mary Blachernai.
Justinian came to the Imperial throne in 527. He was an autocrat of the first order, and his rule met significant resistance. Most of Constantinople was destroyed in the fire following the popular Nika Riots of 532 which very nearly toppled Justinian, but he rebuilt the city with astonishing speed, completing SS. Sergius and Bacchus, and replacing Hagia Irene, the Apostoleion and Hagia Sophia. The new imperial architecture was to play its part in Justinian’s project of unification, and his official historian, Procopius, dedicated a whole book to these four buildings. Doctrinal disputes over the nature of Christ – human or divine – had fragmented the Church, especially in the East. However, doctrine seemed to intrude surprisingly little into the celebration of the liturgy, with the exception of the use of Trinitarian doxologies by the orthodox, and it was the liturgy that was the determining factor in the new architectural developments under Justinian. The most radical architectural change was to be the increasing centralization of church planning, partly as the result of the increasing fear and awe in the presence of the sacrifice.
The Centralized Church: SS. Sergius and Bacchus
Very early in his reign, Justinian began work on SS. Sergius and Bacchus which was completed by 536 (Figure 3.2). It was fitted into a small site between his former Hormisdas Palace and the Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul, becoming the focus of the whole complex. The structure is supported on eight piers with alternating rectangular and semicircular bays, forming on plan an octagon surmounted by a dome within an irregular square. The centralized plan appears to be relatively simple, but viewed from the ambulatories or the galleries – that is, from the point of view of the congregation – it is difficult to make sense of the complicated space that appears to billow out from the area in which the liturgy is performed. The decoration is superb and finely wrought, mass and void are powerfully handled, light and shade are beautifully modulated, but the irregularities of the site produce unfortunate distortions. Despite this, the little church signals an extremely significant departure and a touchstone of Byzantine architecture. All the elements can be traced historically, and the planning is not without precedent, with roots that go back presumably to the rather enigmatic San Lorenzo built before 378 near the Imperial Palace in Milan and the Golden Octagon begun in 327. That was Constantine’s palatine church and cathedral in Antioch, though it was not completed until 341. Influence from Antioch had certainly been strong during the fourth and fifth centuries, when it was effectively capital of the East under Constantius II. Antioch had previously had ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Byzantium, and since the time of Constantine, the connection had continued to be strong with a number of Bishops of Constantinople coming from Antioch, including St John Chrysostom.28
Here, it is neither the stylistic nor the structural antecedents and refinements that are of greatest significance, but the fact that with the liturgical focus moving between the eastern apse and along the solea to the pulpit in the centre of the nave, the basilica had effectively been wrapped round the action as in centralized palace audience halls. When liturgical patterns change, the architectural setting responds, often drawing from, and reinterpreting if necessary, a wide variety of its historical stock of forms. The galleried basilica was clearly a lineal antecedent, and since SS. Sergius and Bacchus housed relics, perhaps the martyrium was reinterpreted with a poetic dexterity akin to Ambrose’s simple, but skilful, transformation of his Basilica Apostolorum into S. Nazaro. The basilica had been transformed from an imperial audience hall to audience hall for the Emperor of Heaven, and Krautheimer also traces the centralized church to the palace audience hall:
The design of centrally-planned audience halls is transposed from palace architecture into church building, and is thus adapted to the requirements of the sixth-century liturgy of Constantinople. Construction and design, ecclesiastical and Imperial ceremonial interlock. The traditional forms are a source to be tapped, placed into new contexts, adapted to new demands, transformed, and imbued with new life. Such revitalization of a living tradition is a basic trait of Justinian’s architecture as it is of his policies.29
As far back as St Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catechetical Lectures (or more properly Mystagogical Catecheses), there had been an emphasis in the East on awe and fear in the presence of the sacrifice of the mass. By their ordination to the service of the altar, the clergy occupied the sanctuary, but as churches became more centralized, the people withdrew increasingly to the aisles and galleries. The bema had long been screened by parapets, as would the emperor or a magistrate in his basilica, but now the aisles were often similarly marked by a change in the level of the floor, or even by low parapets, as for the bema. Only Justinian and his immediate entourage would occupy the nave in SS. Sergius and Bacchus – the earthly image of the court of Heaven.
SS. Sergius and Bacchus was a highly sophisticated combination of spaces for a highly developed rite, and the conceptual apparatus unfolding the one into the other would need to be theologically and symbolically as subtle and sophisticated. Procopius wrote primarily as a historian, but like Eusebius before him, he also gave anagogical commentary on the structure of the building. Early in his book On Buildings (De Aedeficiis), Procopius writes of Hagia Sophia itself how it was impossible to comprehend the whole of it at once, just as in the liturgy. Similarly, in the spaces of SS. Sergius and Bacchus: ‘Even they who are accustomed to exercise their ingenuity on everything are unable to comprehend this work of art but always depart from there perplexed at the shortcomings of eye and mind.’
These churches required long contemplation and reflection, and the ultimate goal was a better understanding of God: ‘And whenever anyone enters this church to pray, he understands at once that it is not by any human power or skill, but by the influence of God that this work has been so finely turned. And so his mind is lifted up toward God and exalted, feeling that he cannot be far away, but must especially love to dwell in this place which He has chosen.’30
Such commentary was not at all unusual, and an important contemporary example with a Justinian connection is found in the Syrian context. The Cathedral, or ‘Great Church’ at Edessa was built in 313 according to the Chronicle of Edessa and completed between 325 and 328. It was destroyed in a flood in 525, and Procopius relates how rebuilding began almost immediately with Justinian’s help. The new building was re-dedicated in about the middle of the sixth century, and a hymn exists that appears to have been written for the service. The reconstruction from the sparse details given in the hymn suggests that the church was of the cross-in-square type, with a dome covering almost the entire church31 – a plan similar to SS. Sergius and Bacchus:
In a broader sense the hymn on the Church of Edessa may be appropriately characterised as architectural theoria, a contemplation of the church building. The fundamental theological postulate underlying the hymn is that God is a mystery, who is both revealed and hidden (str. 3). Although beyond the comprehension of creatures, God may be truly known if approached through three modes of contemplation: (1) theological: the Godhead in Itself, the Trinity (strs. 12–13); (2) Scriptural: God as Savior revealed in the Bible (strs. 11, 14–19); (3) cosmological: God as Creator revealed through the creation (str. 4–8). Each of these three ways of contemplating the mysterious God is accessible through the contemplation of the church building (strs. 3, 20–21). Consideration of each of the architectural features of the building – the structural components as well as the major liturgical furnishings – leads to one of the three essential ways of knowing God. So the building is a prefatory means of contemplation, which leads to the three major routes to the mystery of the Godhead Itself.32
Contemplation could be focused on the architecture, on scripture and the liturgy. When focused on the liturgy, this contemplation was called mystagogia, as in Cyril’s Mystagogical Catecheses. Those lectures explained the rite to the newly baptized as an aid to their contemplation of the action of the liturgy. Within the liturgy, scripture would be read and a sermon given as explication to aid contemplation. Finally, the hymn as architectural theoria was an aid to the contemplation of the setting, and the instruments of the action of the liturgy.
The tradition of liturgical theoria represented by Gregory of Nyssa reflected on the Jewish Tabernacle, and the tradition in Antioch similarly followed this line of thought, through the ceremonial of the Tabernacle, towards an understanding of the Christian liturgy as the earthly image of the angelic liturgy where Christ is both priest and victim. This is made explicit in the later prayer at the Great Entrance (of the bread and wine), where in its address to Christ it says: ‘for it is you who offer and are offered’. These are all examples of the transposition of meanings: ‘That is, in its more developed phase the contemplation might proceed from Christian temporal reality (the church building) to heavenly reality (the pre-existent Church), or it would clearly subordinate the Jewish antitype (the Tabernacle) to its type (the Church).’33 Not surprisingly, there was another strand that explored the Temple as antitype. Within these integrated layers of contemplation of the divine, the architecture becomes sacramental space, the permanent manifestation of the liturgy, and more than that, heaven on earth.
A gilded image of the heavenly liturgy showing Christ administering communion is seen on the silver paten found near Riha (Plate 2), about 55 kilometres south-east of Antioch, and dated by its stamps to the time of Justin II (565–78). In front of a silver revetment, or fastigium, Christ administers bread to the right and chalice to the left. In the Apostolic Constitutions, just after the anaphora, or eucharistic prayer, the deacon made a series of petitions, the first of which was: ‘Let us pray for the gift which is offered to the Lord God, that the good God may, through the mediation of his Christ, receive it upon his heavenly altar for a sweet-smelling savour.’34 ‘The gift’ at the altar of the Church was in this petition identified with the offering in Heaven. The dedicatory inscription round the rim of the paten reads: ‘For the repose of the souls of Sergia, [daughter] of Ioannes, and of Theodosios and the salvation of Megas and Nonnous and of their children’. It has been speculated that, as donor, Megas may also have given a similar silver fastigium and other silver vessels depicted on the paten to the church.35 In this way, the paten acts as a point of intersection for the action of the liturgy in which it is used, the architectural setting which it depicts, and scripture to which it refers (the Last Supper in Matthew 26: 26–8). Within the liturgy, these offerings would be made and dedicated, and in the prayers that took place between the dismissal of the catechumens and the sacrament itself, the donor would be mentioned along with those whose names appear in the inscription. In this way, it can be seen as the physical equivalent of the Edessa Hymn, reflecting on the Godhead, the liturgy, the architecture, and placing the individual within the whole, through a finely wrought work of art.
The Second Hagia Irene
Hagia Irene was also destroyed in the fire following the Nika riots, and was rebuilt between 532 and 548. In 564 this new building was again damaged by a fire which destroyed the atrium and narthex, and c. 570 there was further damage from an earthquake. The church as seen today is as remodelled after 740, but the main fabric and layout all appear to have survived from the rebuilding of 532 and still gives a remarkably clear impression of the liturgical space of a ‘domed basilica’, with the central dome supported here on transverse barrel vaults (Figure 3.3). There are two barrel-vaulted bays in the nave providing large arched galleries supported on colonnaded aisles. The aisles end in square chambers which may have been for the offerings of the people, though at one time the arrangement was interpreted as a ‘triple sanctuary’. More recently, these have been demonstrated to be entrance bays, a significant characteristic of church planning in Constantinople itself.36 Between these at the east end is a sanctuary with a stepped bema, as at Hagia Sophia and SS. Sergius and Bacchus, and a magnificent synthronon with six levels of seating below the protective sweep of the semi-dome of the apse. The third level of the synthonon is divided into eight seats, with the gaps between providing light for a semi-circular corridor beneath, an arrangement that may well have existed at the Hagia Sophia, although at the time of Justinian there was apparently a seventh level. In front of the chord of the apse the stones in the floor indicate the position of the altar.
Although the rest of the liturgical furnishings have been lost, from what is left it is clear that despite the remarkable architectural development under Justinian, the liturgical arrangement remained very much the same as it was a century earlier in 463 at St John Studios. It is worth noting in passing that the Cross decorating the semi-dome of the apse dates from after the remodelling of 740, and was placed there by the iconoclast Emperor Constantine V.
The Second Apostoleion
After the Nika riots, it seems to have taken a few years before the rebuilding of the Apostoleion and it was finally re-dedicated on the eve of the Feast of the Prince of the Apostles, 28 June 550. The plan was modified, but unlike Ambrose’s Basilica Apostolorum in the Western context, there was no need to remove the altar to an eastern apse since a centralized plan, with two tiers of aisles and galleries in all four arms, was well suited to recent developments in the Byzantine rite. It was rebuilt with a well-lit dome over the sanctuary at the crossing, ‘and the dome that curves above seems to be somehow hovering in the air and not standing on solid masonry, although it is perfectly secure’.37 Each of the arms was covered by another unlit dome. Though there is some debate about the precise arrangement,38 the sanctuary itself appears to have been square with a semicircular synthronon containing the cathedra on the eastern side. The usual parapet enclosed the other three sides. The silver altar over the graves of the three Apostles was probably central under the dome, and was sheltered by a ciborium with a pyramidal roof: ‘John Chrysostomos, referring to the rebuilding which made the family mausoleum where the emperors were buried into an annex of the church which housed the relics of the apostles, pretended to see this as proof of the humility of the sovereigns, who “considered that they should be content to be buried not next to the apostles [that is, inside the church] but in their ‘external antechamber’, so becoming ‘their doorkeepers’.”’39 On the north side of the altar was the grave of St John Chrysostom, and on the south that of St Gregory Nazianzus. Like Ambrose’s Basilica Apostolorum, ‘the incomparable church of the Holy Apostles’ became a highly desirable place for burial, ‘wherein emperors and priests are given the burial that is due to them’.40
The influence of the domed cross pattern was immense, becoming a standard throughout Justinian’s dominions from St John Ephesus (which was focused on the shrine of the saint), to St Mark’s Venice (see Figure 3.4).41 Entry was via a colonnaded atrium and western narthex into a space that was much simpler and more easily comprehended than SS. Sergius and Bacchus. The Apostoleion was a much more sober, standardized structure lacking the refined decoration.
Justinian’s Hagia Sophia
The masterpiece of all Justinian’s churches was undoubtedly Hagia Sophia, which became the mother church and touchstone of all orthodoxy (Figure 3.5 and Plate 3). By this point it was a commonplace that the church building was seen as an allegory, even a sacrament, of the union of the people of God and of the Kingdom of God, but the potency of the image created here was truly astonishing in both size and richness. On the day of the church’s consecration, Justinian is reputed to have said: ‘Solomon, I have vanquished thee!’42 The church is almost square (71 m by 77 m), with the spaces billowing both outwards and upwards and the great dome seemingly free-floating in the air above the whole (see Figure 3.6). The relationship of this magnificent interior with the spatial complexity of SS. Sergius and Bacchus is apparent in the inability of the observer to comprehend the entirety, but the gradual unfolding to the mind of the interlocking spaces, together with the ingenuity of revolutionary structural design on such an immense scale, is like an encounter with the Architect of the universe himself. If those relegated to the galleries and aisles, separated as they were by columns from the nave, were further screened by curtains as suggested by Krautheimer, then the space, and the liturgy too, would have been impossible to comprehend.43 The Empress herself watched from one of the side galleries, and scholars generally understand Procopius as saying that the galleries were reserved for women, but Mathews in particular points to Evagrius, who refers to those in the galleries in a masculine grammatical form.44
Contemporary writers recorded with amazement the details of this new architectural system and their further significance. Columns, marble, silver, gold and craftsmen were collected from throughout the Empire, and within five years of the riots the structure itself could be consecrated on 27 December 537, a staggering feat accomplished by the engineers Isidorus of Miletus and Anthemios of Tralles:
Indeed, our emperor, who has gathered all manner of wealth from the whole earth, from barbarians and Ausonians [subjects of Rome] alike, did not deem a stone adornment sufficient for this divine, immortal temple in which Rome has placed all its proud hopes of joy. He has not spared, too, an abundant enrichment of silver. The ridge of Pangaeus and the cape of Sunium have opened all their silver veins, and many a treasure-house of our lords has yielded its stores.45
The church was an embodiment of the Empire, and the end of the south aisle (or, some maintain, at the eastern end of its central colonnade;46 see Figure 3.7) ‘contains a space separated by a wall, reserved for the Ausonian emperor on solemn festivals. Here my sceptered king, seated on his customary throne, lends his ear to [the reading of] the sacred books’.47 The sacred books were read from the ambo, which in reconstructions stretched out from the solea almost to the middle of the central domed space. It is from this spot that both the liturgy and the architecture unfold.
Paul the Silentiary described the ambo in great detail, including its position, shape and materials: ‘In the centre of the wide church, yet tending rather towards the east, is a kind of tower, fair to look upon, set apart as the abode of the sacred books.’ Like the sanctuary, the oval platform was set about with marble parapets sheathed in silver. The whole was supported on columns with gilded capitals which sheltered ‘as it were, another chamber, wherein the sacred song is raised by fair children, heralds of wisdom’. Flights of steps rose to west and east, the latter leading via the solea to the sanctuary. Judging by the amount of text Paul lavished on the colour and detail of the various marbles, the materials and their qualities were of immense importance. The use of materials and the architectural arrangement gave word and sacrament equal prominence, and Paul presents a lively impression of the spatial unfolding of the rite that gives the idea that usually the nave was also occupied by the congregation:
And as an island rises amidst the waves of the sea, adorned with cornfields, and vineyards, and blossoming meadows, and wooded heights, while the travellers who sail by are gladdened by it and are soothed of the anxieties and exertions of the sea; so in the midst of the boundless temple rises upright the tower-like ambo of stone adorned with its meadows of marble, wrought with the beauty of the craftsman’s art. Yet it does not stand altogether cut off in the central space, like a sea-girt island, but it rather resembles some wave-washed land, extended through the white-capped billows by an isthmus into the middle of the sea. …
Such, then is the aspect of this place; for, starting at the last step to the east, there extends a long strait (aulon [or solea]) until it comes near the silver doors and strikes with its lengthy plinth the sacred precinct. On either side it is bounded by walls. They have not used lofty slabs for this fence-wall, but of such a height as to reach the girdle of a man standing by. Here the priest who brings the good tidings passes on along on the return from the ambo, holding aloft the golden book; and while the crowd strives in honour of the immaculate God to touch the sacred book with their lips and hands, the countless waves of the surging people break around. …
Such works as these our bountiful Emperor built for God the King … to the Governor of the world, Christ the universal King.48
The Liturgical Furnishings
When it came to the sanctuary with its vessels and treasures, Justinian’s historian Procopius was satisfied simply to relate in his book On Buildings (I, i) that it ‘exhibits forty thousand pounds of silver’. Paul the Silentiary adds more detail (682):
For as much of the great church by the eastern arch as was set apart for the bloodless sacrifice is bounded not with ivory or cut stone or bronze, but it is all fenced under a cover of silver. Not only upon the walls which separate the priest from the choir of singers has he set plates of naked silver, but the columns too …. Elsewhere it [the tool wielded by a skilled hand] has carved the host of winged angels bowing down their necks, for they are unable to gaze upon the glory of God, though hidden under a veil of human form – He is still God, even if He has put on the flesh that removes sin. Elsewhere the sharp steel has fashioned those former heralds of God by whose words, before God had taken on flesh, the divine tidings of Christ’s coming spread abroad. Nor has the artist forgotten the images of those who abandoned the mean labours of their life – the fishing basket and the net – and those evil cares in order to follow the command of the heavenly King, fishing even for men and, instead of casting for fish, spread out the nets of eternal life. And elsewhere art has depicted the Mother of Christ, the vessel of eternal life, whose holy womb did nourish its own Maker. … And the screen gives access to the priests through three doors. …
And above the all-pure table of gold rises into the ample air an indescribable tower, reared on four arches of silver. … And on columns of gold is raised the all-gold slab of the holy table, standing on gold foundations, and bright with the glitter of precious stones.
Not surprisingly, none of this vast amount of silver, gold and precious stones survives, but an impression of what an altar covered with revetment of precious metal would be like is given by a single remarkable survival in the Sion Treasure, now in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection in Washington, DC. The treasure is an almost complete set of liturgical silver (including an interesting flabellum worked with a seraph and peacock feathers in gold; Figure 3.8) produced during the reign of Justinian, giving a very clear idea of what the even grander altar-plate of Hagia Sophia would have been like. Silver and precious materials had long been invested with theological importance and used to provide liturgical emphasis, and this reaches its definitive statement at Justinian’s Hagia Sophia.
Procopius’ description continues with the silk, gold and purple embroidered altar-cloth, the lamps and candles lit via catwalks above the columns. Examples of silver lamps in open work, standing lamps in the shape of cups, and various shapes of polycandelion each to hold 12–16 glass lamps. These were elaborately pierced discs and crosses, as Paul the Silentiary wrote of Hagia Sophia: ‘Yet not from discs alone does the light shine at night, for in the circle you will see, next to the discs, the shape of the lofty cross with many eyes upon it, and in its pierced back it holds many luminous vessels.’49
The Liturgy
The spectacle, for spectacle it surely was, viewed from the galleries or the aisles, or evidently from the nave amongst the waves of humanity, or even the Emperor’s own area (the imperial metatorion) in the south aisle, must have been stirring in the extreme, with the glittering light reflecting off polished marble, the movement, the incense, and the whole of society ranged in its hierarchical stratification. According to the Book of Ceremonies of Constantine VII Porphyrogenetus in the tenth century, the Emperor himself participated in the liturgy 17 times a year (four of which are post-Justinian). On these occasions he would have processed in with the Bishop and then appeared again at the offering of the gifts at the Great Entrance, and the second-ranking bishop of Christendom would preside from his throne on the silver-covered synthronon, very like the structure still in position in the apse of Hagia Irene. None of this arrangement was radically new by any means, but here the pattern received its definitive statement.
What does appear to have developed considerably by this time (though it may also have been true of the liturgy celebrated in the Theodosian church) is the way the symbolic figure of the Emperor has been absorbed into the ceremonial of the liturgy on those relatively rare occasions when he was present. What had been incipient with Constantine, and was now more fully developed, was the quasi-priestly status of the Emperor. Constantine’s rule and the advent of a Christian Empire was seen as providential; he was chosen by God, and the ceremonial acclamations for a new Emperor became ‘a New David’ and ‘a New Constantine’, and though there appears not to have been an anointing even as late as the Book of Ceremonies, it records that the Patriarch prayed that God himself might ‘deign to anoint with the oil of gladness your faithful servant’.50 It had been difficult for Constantine to be present at the liturgy, but by Justinian’s day, the Emperor’s presence, in his new Hagia Sophia, had been structurally integrated, to some extent by this quasi-priestly status, but to an even greater extent by the architectural and ceremonial arrangement by which his appearances and access to the chancel were very closely controlled. By the tenth century, the Book of Ceremonies records the elaborate approach of the Emperor to the Great Church across the political landscape, being met at different points by the ‘democrats’ of the political parties and court officials as a way of displaying the balance of temporal power. The Emperor, the people and the clergy all had their allotted place within the significance of the ceremonial topography. There were secret sudden and ceremonial means for the Emperor to arrive in his private apartments, or mini-palace, in the east end of the south aisle and the gallery above: ‘In fact he was leaving a place [the palace] where the emperor was both a soldier and high priest, directly delegated by Christ to the government of men, to a place where all power belonged to Christ through the intermediary of the clergy and where the cross was not that of imperial victory [as in Constantine’s vision] … but a replica of that of Jerusalem.’51
At the Great Church itself, the ceremonial appears to have varied according to season and specific occasion, but the general pattern was this. The congregation would throng the atrium in anticipation. The Emperor arrived in the south vestibule of the narthex and removed his crown in a screened-off area, then entered the narthex proper, where the Patriarch was waiting.52 The Emperor would first bow to the Gospel Book, then greet the Patriarch. They proceeded to the Imperial Doors and prostrated themselves three times, giving thanks to God. The Patriarch repeated the prayer of entry, which in the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom in the Codex Barberini, reads:
Benefactor and Creator of all Creation, receive the Church which is advancing, accomplish what is good for each one: bring all to perfection, make us worthy of your Kingdom; by the grace and mercy and love for men of your only-begotten Son, with whom you are blessed, together with your holy and good and life-giving Spirit, now and always …53
In the later eighth-century text of the liturgy, this is found at the Little Entrance (of the Gospel); Wybrew points out that it perfectly describes the first entrance of the whole congregation to the church.
After the prayer of entry by the Patriarch, he would accompany the Emperor through the central imperial door. In contrast to Western practice, preceded only by the Gospel book and its attendants, they would lead the procession and the people into the church during the introit psalm, with a troparion, or refrain, sung by the congregation. At this date the trisagion, ‘Holy God, holy and strong, holy and immortal! Have mercy on us’, was used as the troparion. Not surprisingly, the Trinitarian formulation of the trisagion became a point of doctrinal controversy.54 On entry, Emperor and Patriarch were preceded by a deacon bearing the jewelled Gospel book, representing Christ himself, accompanied by candles and a thurifer with incense. The procession followed the axis of the church past the ambo and entering the solea. On reaching the sanctuary, the Patriarch entered, leaving the Emperor before the entrance, praying with a lighted candle. The Gospels were placed reverently on the altar, the Emperor prostrated himself three times, entered the chancel, prostrated himself before the Patriarch, and kissed the altar-cloth. He left his offering of gold, or on occasion a liturgical vessel (as shown in the San Vitale mosaic in Plate 4; note also how Hagia Sophia itself and even the city are portrayed as such offerings in Plate 3). He was then led behind the altar to venerate, then cense, the great golden cross before retiring to his metatorion, or area screened off for his throne. The Patriarch mounted the synthronon and greeted the people with the words: ‘Peace be with you all.’ In his Ecclesiastical History and Mystical Contemplation, Germanos (Patriarch 715–30) invested this action with spiritual meaning: ‘That the celebrant ascends into the synthronon and blesses the people, this is the Son of God [who], when he fulfilled the work of salvation, lifted up his hands, and blessed his holy disciples telling them, “Peace I leave you,” meaning that Christ gave the same peace and blessing to the world through his apostles.’55 The whole action so far is seen as the coming of salvation in Christ and his enthronement at the right hand of God.
After two readings by lectors in sequence, the Gospel procession, with its candles and incense, bore the Gospels (which looked and was treated very much like a reliquary or an icon of Christ) from the altar along the solea to the ambo. The Gospel proclaimed, the procession returned along the solea through the surging crowd to replace the Gospel book on the altar; then the Patriarch would preach, customarily from his throne, though it is difficult to imagine that he could make himself heard from the synthronon of the Hagia Sophia, and even Chrysostom is recorded preaching from the pulpitum. After this, the catechumens would be formally dismissed before the beginning of the sacrament itself, though there is some doubt that the catechumenate continued even by Justinian’s time, in which case these prayers and the dismissal became a mere formality.56
The Patriarch now descended from the synthronon to prepare the altar, and the Emperor emerged for the entrance of the eucharistic elements – bread and wine – and took up a place just west of the ambo along with his chamberlains, ministers and senators. The Emperor took a lamp and accompanied the gifts via the solea as far as the Holy Door of the sanctuary then retired to his place in the south aisle. The gifts had been brought by the deacons along with flabella (ritual fans; see Figure 3.8) and the great veil from the skeuophylakion, or sacristy – the only surviving part of Constantine’s Great Church. On great occasions the procession would necessarily be very large, considering the number of vessels needed for adequate bread and wine for the number of communicants. All this was again accompanied by chant, probably Psalm 24 with the verse ‘Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors: and the King of Glory shall come in.’57 In the later sixth century, the Cherubic Hymn was introduced here.
The Cherubic Hymn became a hinge to the celebration of the sacrament emphasizing the parallel worship in heaven and on earth as the congregation sang: ‘We who mystically represent the Cherubim and sing the thrice holy hymn to the life-giving Trinity, let us lay aside all worldly care to receive the King of All, escorted unseen by the angelic hosts. Alleluia.’58 After the proskomide, or preparatory prayer, the Patriarch greeted the people with ‘Peace be with you all’ and met the Emperor again at the chancel barrier for the kiss of peace. The singing of the Nicene Creed followed as a sign of orthodoxy. Then followed the mysteries. On the Riha chalice, also mid-sixth-century and thought to have been from the same hoard as the Sion Treasure, there is an unusual inscription: ‘Thine own, of Thine own, we offer unto Thee, O Lord’ – the very words the celebrant would use at the offering of the gifts. The Chalice of Antioch, which appears to be roughly contemporary, emphasizes the theological importance of the ensuing section of the service by showing two images of Christ, once enthroned on earth giving the Law, and once enthroned above an eagle, clearly in heaven. The consecration united these two ‘moments’.59
Finally, at the culmination of the mysteries, the Patriarch would process to the Emperor, who by now was at the entrance to the sanctuary, to administer communion. During processions, the ceremonial and the mysteries (with an indication that even at this time many of the prayers and much of the anaphora were said quietly by the celebrant), hymns, chants, antiphons and psalms would be sung by choirs and congregation, giving the rite a high degree of simultaneity and movement. The ceremonial continued to be the earthly reflection of the angelic, heavenly worship, knit together in the various carefully controlled encounters between the Emperor and the Patriarch:
Similarly, the Emperor, one wants to recall, had his assigned place in the celestial hierarchy as mirrored on Earth. Since Constantine’s time he had been considered equal to the apostles, and perhaps more than equal. Certainly in the tenth century he acted the part of Christ on solemn occasions – breaking and blessing the bread and raising the cup of wine to his lips after state dinners; swathed in white bands as Christ resurrected and surrounded by twelve apostles on Easter Sunday Emperor and Patriarch were the ‘two halves of God’.60
The unity of the Empire sought by Constantine in and through the Church was enacted in this liturgical ceremonial, for example at the exchange of the peace first between Patriarch and Emperor, then between the Emperor and key members of the court in turn. It could well be seen as the fulfilment of prophecy: ‘The kingdom of the world has become the Kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ’ (Rev. 11:15). The hymn written for the dedication of the Cathedral of Edessa is almost contemporary (perhaps a decade or two later), and with the building of Justinian’s Hagia Sophia, is only a small step away from its liturgical and ceremonial reality. Such displays of power and unity present risks as well, as in 390, when Theodosius I was refused entry to the church in Milan by St Ambrose because the Emperor had abused his power against the people. The pious Emperor was brought to public repentance, and this became a model for potential, and actual, future confrontations. Ecclesiastical power over the sovereign’s ‘entry’ into the church building to perform his ceremonial duty during the liturgy was the single ‘constitutional’ constraint on imperial power.
The flip side of the ceremonial was that behind the scenes, the management of ritual, and crowds, on this scale took a huge clerical establishment and ‘Justinian found it necessary to limit the establishment of the Great Church to not more than 60 presbyters or priests, 100 deacons, 40 deaconesses, 90 sub-deacons, 110 lectors, 25 psalmists [singers] and no less than 100 ostiarii or doorkeepers.’61 Finally, except on those relatively few occasions when the Emperor was expected to take a very visible part in the service, he might choose to worship privately from the south gallery, which was reserved for imperial use.
The Liturgy and its Setting
Some generalizations can now be made about the relationship between the liturgy and the architecture. The atrium was for the gathering of the congregation before worship, and its colonnades provided a degree of shelter. The narthex provided for the hierarchical forming up of the procession for the Entrance, and the double narthex at Hagia Sophia attests to both the size of the processions and their elaborate protocol. The many doors were necessary to allow the large congregation to flood in and be in their places by the time the Patriarch reached the synthronon for the blessing.
The longitudinal axis remained dominant as long as the entrance began in the narthex, while the dome and centralized space dominated when, during the Middle Byzantine period, the Little Entrance began in the sanctuary circling round through the north door of the sanctuary and returning via the Holy Doors back to the altar. By that time it was also necessary to have auxiliary spaces at the east end for the clergy to robe (the diaconicon), and for the prothesis ceremony or preparation of the gifts – which resulted in a tripartite east end (though the specific arrangement differed between Constantinople and the provinces62). The readings by the lectors took place on the ambo, and cantors also led the singing from there. The solea with its parapets provided protection for the Gospel procession, and the semicircular synthronon represented the teaching and magisterial authority of the celebrant, standing in the place of Christ: ‘The repeated representations in Early Christian Art of Christ teaching, seated in the semi-circle of his disciples, contained for the faithful a very specific point of comparison with the view they had every Sunday of the bishop teaching, seated in the semi-circle of his clergy.’63
The Great Entrance of the gifts required a skeuophylakion, or a separate area to the north of the sanctuary for the liturgical vessels and the preparation of the gifts. The ‘bloodless sacrifice’ needed an altar and protective ciborium, and deacons had fans with which they ensured nothing fell on the elements. These were associated with angels hovering about the throne, and silver hoards have contained superb examples of silver fans, or flabella, engraved with cherubim, but by the time those were made they had probably become purely symbolic and decorative items.
In manuscripts, the templon (fastigium, or superstructure of the sanctuary screen) was sometimes shown with curtains, as were ciboria (though rarely and with only very short hangings) over the altar, and Krautheimer also supposes that the aisles and galleries were also curtained. There is little firm evidence that any of these were used during the early or middle Byzantine periods to screen the mysteries, but their use at some point would of course be consistent with the transition from open templon to closed iconostasis, and the shutting of such curtains after the creed is specifically attested by Nicholas of Andida in the eleventh century.64 On the other hand, the low type of sanctuary parapet without superstructure continued to exist at Chalkoprateia into the sixth century at least. If curtains in the templon were so little attested, then they can hardly have been of great importance, and then only at a late date. It was the medieval orthodox liturgy that closed the screen.65
Ravenna and the Provinces
The most vivid portrayal of imperial liturgical ceremonial is to be seen in the mosaic in the apse of San Vitale in Ravenna (Plate 4), built by Julianus, a wealthy local banker, soon after the re-conquest of the area by Justinian. On the north side of the apse (the Gospel side), Justinian appears holding a magnificent golden paten in procession with Bishop Maximian on his left wearing a pallium and bearing a cross. They are preceded by two deacons, one bearing a jewelled Gospel book and the other with a thurible, or censer. They are followed by two members of the court and a guard of honour, just as they would be ranged for entering the church and processing to the sanctuary, where indeed they now stand. Opposite is a mosaic showing the Empress Theodora bearing a large golden chalice and wearing a chlamys with the hem embroidered with the three magi (Plate 5). She and her attendants are in a very clearly architectural setting walking past a fountain about to enter a curtained doorway.
The identities of the main figures are not in doubt, and the objects and dress are clearly liturgical and would appear to relate to the dedication of the church, but Justinian and Theodora never went to Ravenna, and the two panels cannot refer to a single procession, for the Empress would have remained hidden in the gallery. The interpretation is fraught with controversy, centring primarily on the date when the grand entry of the Emperor at the liturgy was first introduced – some maintaining that it was only under Justin II, who succeeded Justinian.66 Even the Justinian panel may not be of a single procession, since it contains the Gospel book, the offering and the guard of honour, and so can refer to the entrance into the church and perhaps the gospel procession too.
It may be that the book, the paten (or dish for bread) and the chalice are dedicatory tokens sent by the imperial couple to show their favour and symbolic presence. The Augusta Theodora died in 548, so the mosaic was presumably completed for the dedication of the church by Maximian in 547. Despite both processions moving clearly towards the east, indicated by their feet, the fall of various garments and the courtier pulling the curtain aside for the Augusta to pass, the main figures turn to fix the viewer with their gaze, emphasizing their presence. Bishop Maximian was an imperial nominee against the wishes of the people of Ravenna, and these images confirmed his imperial authority. The sign of a bishop’s authority was his throne, and remarkably, Maximian’s throne, thought to be Justinian’s gift, still exists (see Figure 3.9). It has a wooden frame, originally entirely covered in ivory, and still largely intact. The panels are in two sets, the Old Testament one of the life of Joseph, and the New of the life of Christ. It was not designed to be sat on, and so remains a symbolic object, probably used as a throne for the Gospels. An attempted interpretation of its symbolism has suggested that ‘perhaps the parallel to be drawn from these scenes is that Maximian was expected to be to Justinian what Joseph was to Pharaoh’.67 Just as Joseph engineered a reconciliation with his brothers, the same was expected of Maximian and the brethren of his flock. Furthermore, if the throne was actually to be a throne for the gospels, then it fittingly had Eucharistic imagery in the scenes of changing water into wine at the marriage in Cana, and also the feeding of the multitude.
Notably, St Vitalis, to whom the church was dedicated, was not an early martyr, but one of those saints discovered by St Ambrose in Bologna in 395 and reputed to be the father of SS. Gervasius and Protasius, whose cults were prominent in Milan. This would have been important in establishing the relationship of Ravenna with Milan. The other major dedication in the city was to S. Apollinare in Classe, the port of Ravenna. The marble for these churches came from the quarries on Prokonnesos in the Sea of Marmara near Constantinople, and the imperial workshops carved the major architectural features, including capitals, bases, the columns themselves, as well as the liturgical furnishings, including parapets, ambo and altars. If the liturgical furnishings were imported, not just imitated, then the liturgy was likely to have been as well. In the apse mosaic (Plate 6), S. Apollinaris himself is shown in the ‘orant’ position for liturgical prayer, and on either side of the apse are mosaics of archangels bearing banners inscribed with the Sanctus ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ in Greek.
During his reign in the seventh century between 668 and 685, Constantine IV Pogonatus recorded his bestowal of privileges on the church with a mosaic closely paralleled with that of Justinian and Maximian. In it, however, not only the Emperor, but also his brothers, his son Justinian II and the Archbishop Reparatus have haloes. They too are led by two deacons, one with the elements and another with a thurible, which places the scene in a liturgical setting, specifically the eucharist at which those privileges were granted, but it is more clearly a laurata, or (composite) memorial to the occasion, than any possible moment within the liturgy. The net result is the same: it gives imperial authority to the relevant claims.
In the sixth century, from the Monastery of St Catherine on Mt Sinai to Rome itself at the Church of SS. Cosmas and Damian, there was a controlling influence by Constantinople to the extent that the liturgical furnishings and decorative architectural elements for some churches were ‘pre-fabricated’ in the imperial workshops.68 This religious, architectural and liturgical dominance conquered what would become another eastern empire when, as famously recorded in the Primary Russian Chronicle, the emissaries of Prince Vladimir of Kiev attended a service in Hagia Sophia in 987:
We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendour or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We only know that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty.69’
However much this may have been exaggerated, it none the less points to the power of liturgy and architecture together, and attributes to them the evangelization of Russia, and bringing that vast empire into the fold of orthodoxy.
Conclusion
No other orthodox church would ever rival Hagia Sophia in its vast scale – either during Justinian’s reign or afterwards – but many of its characteristics would be used again and again. Most churches, for instance, would be vaulted with a centralized dome. Though the clergy continued to occupy the apse, the synthronon disappeared. The bema housed the altar centrally at the east end, but in addition, in later churches there were two apsed chapels: the one to the south was the diakonikon for the vestments and books, the one to the north being the prothesis where the communion vessels were kept and where the bread and wine were prepared for communion. Liturgically, they correspond respectively to the Little and Great Entrances, which already by the tenth century had been very considerably reduced in scale, and this in turn was paralleled in architecture, with its increased centralization.70 A screen, which developed into the iconostasis, separated the three spaces from the body of the church, though each was provided with a door. The sacred mysteries were increasingly protected from view, and the iconographic programme that came to cover the iconostasis and the whole of the interior emphasized the heavenly nature of the rite. By the fourteenth century the iconostasis became totally closed. This had gradually created two separate worship spaces: one for the clergy, and the nave for the people. The solea and ambo disappeared, the readings took place below the dome, and processions would emerge from one of the doors in the screen and return by the central Royal Doors; even the beginning of the service was marked by the singing of antiphons rather than by a procession into the church. All this was in response to an increasingly centralizing tendency in the liturgy recognized in a less axial and increasingly centralized architecture, perfectly reflected in the cross-in-square which made its initial appearance immediately before Justinian’s magnificent building projects.71 The exterior could be seen as the outward manifestation of the internal arrangement and function. In the fully developed iconographic scheme, in the space and in the massing of the building, the structure of the liturgy was visible, reinforcing the old symbolic interpretation of both as heaven on earth. In the Historia Mystagogica attributed to Germanos, every element of the liturgy, vestments, liturgical furnishings and the architecture were interpreted theologically:
The church is heaven on earth wherein the heavenly God ‘dwells and walks’ [2 Cor. 6:16 and Lev. 26:12]. It typifies the Crucifixion, the Burial and the Resurrection of Christ. … The conch is after the manner of the cave of Bethlehem where Christ was born, and that of the Cave where He was buried as the Evangelist saith, that there was a cave ‘hewn out of the rock, and there laid they Jesus’ [Mk 15:46; Jn 19:42]. The holy table is the place where Christ was buried, and on which is set forth the true bread from heaven, the mystic and bloodless sacrifice, i.e. Christ. … It is also the throne on which God, who is borne up by the cherubim, has rested. At this table, too, He sat down at His last supper …. The ciborium stands for the place where Christ was crucified. … The place of sacrifice is after the manner of Christ’s tomb where Christ has given Himself in sacrifice to God the Father by the offering of His body, as a sacrificial lamb, but also as a high priest and as the Son of Man who offers Himself and is offered. … The place of sacrifice is so named after the spiritual one in heaven, and the spiritual and immaterial hierarchies of the heavenly host are represented by the material priests on earth who stand by and worship the Lord continually. … The bema is a place like a footstool and like a throne in which Christ, the universal King, presides together with his apostles. … The cancelli denote the place of prayer, and signify that the space outside them may be entered by the people, while inside is the holy of holies which is accessible only to the priests.72
At the end of Germanos’ patriarchate, iconoclasm became the official doctrine of the Empire under Leo III, who replaced the iconophile Germanos with the iconoclast Anastasios. Leo’s edict requiring the removal of images from churches was most seriously enforced under Constantine V until it was rescinded in 787. A second period of iconoclasm lasted between 814 and 843, when the making and venerating of icons was restored – the Triumph of Orthodoxy which continues to be celebrated in a special liturgy on the first Sunday of Lent. St John Damascene stated the orthodox position in his De Fide Orthodoxa:
Inasmuch as some people blame us for reverencing and honouring the images of the Saviour, of our Lady and furthermore of the other saints and servants of Christ, they should hearken to [the statement] that in the beginning God made man in his own image. Why is it indeed that we revere each other, if we had not been made in God’s image? As the God-inspired Basil, who was learned in things divine, says, ‘the honour [shown] to the image is conveyed to its prototype.’73
The orthodox position is very careful to insist that there is nothing novel either in the doctrine or in the images themselves – all is compatible with received tradition, though elaborated. The tradition was increasingly elaborated and fixed in the distribution of the programme of images, with the dome covered by Christ as Pantocrator, the eastern apse by Mary as Mother of God, the upper range showed the life of Christ with Nativity, Baptism, Crucifixion and Ascension in the pendentives of the dome, and the lower range of icons portrayed the saints.
Just as imperial and secular ceremonial were intertwined, so too the iconographic scheme of Hagia Sophia has its parallel in the iconographic scheme of the palace. After the end of Iconoclasm in 843, a poem celebrated their return:
Behold, once again the image of Christ shines above the imperial throne and confounds the murky heresies; while above the entrance is represented the Virgin as divine gate and guardian. The emperor [Michael III] and Bishop [Photius] are depicted close by, along with their collaborators inasmuch as they have driven away error, and all round the building, like guards [stand] angels, apostles, martyrs, priests. Hence we call ‘the new Christotriklinos’ that which aforetime had been given a golden name [a pun on Chrysotriklinios or ‘Golden Hall’ and Christotriklinios or Christ’s Hall], since it contains the throne of Christ our Lord, the forms of Christ’s Mother and Christ’s heralds, and the image of Michael, whose deeds are filled with wisdom.74
These twin tendencies of fixed tradition and elaboration characterize both the architecture and the liturgy of the Orthodox Church, producing a very clear lineage from Byzantium to the present while allowing variety and considerable development of core themes. Across the Empire, local liturgical and architectural traditions produced widely divergent results. One intriguing example of this is the variety of rock-cut churches in Cappadocia dating from the fifth or sixth century onwards. The forms, carved from the ‘living rock’, use the whole Byzantine architectural vocabulary, and the liturgical arrangements combine the familiar Byzantine elements in surprising combinations, and even multiplications – double, triple and transverse naves, and multiple sanctuaries, even in single naves. The explanation offered for this multiplication of altars is that at the time there was a prohibition on celebrating the liturgy more than once a day on an altar, many of these were mortuary chapels, and ‘besides funeral services, there were a variety of other liturgical services for various occasions’. Another explanation for this multiplication of altars and chapels, also found at Constantinople, Alexandria, Lips and St Catherine’s Sinai, concerns the ‘privatization’ of the liturgy (in a variety of forms, including baptism), particularly within the monastic and domestic contexts.75
A contrasting example of this diversity comes from the centre of Empire in the intertwining of imperial and religious ceremonial and the identification of the Emperor as Christ’s representative on earth. In the Book of Ceremonies of the Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (913–59), he recounts the form of court and religious ceremony for Palm Sunday, which began in the Golden Chamber of the palace. The court assembled before the enthroned Emperor, above whom always hung an icon of Christ. Each official bore in his hand the cross given by the Emperor the night before in the Church of St Demetrius, and in order of precedence they saluted the Emperor. Other groups presented crosses to the Emperor and prostrated themselves before him. The Emperor descended from his throne and took up his place. What happened next reinforces the identification of his authority and Christ’s:
The deacon places the Gospels on the imperial throne and the usual litany is recited. The emperor goes with the people of his Bedchamber to the Church of the Holy Virgin in Pharos, and the patricians leave after acclaiming the emperor. Then if the emperor so orders, they summon the patricians and they take part with the emperor in the liturgy at the church of the all-holy Virgin: if not, they celebrate the liturgy outside at the church of St Stephen in the Hippodrome.76
The Emperor’s purpose in writing the book, he claimed, was to record and revive ritual, to reinforce and to develop traditional ceremonial. As in other areas, however, the visibly rigid, glittering and unified structure was required, in part at least, to mask the divisions and instability beneath the surface. Then, as earlier, the imperial liturgy and the architecture were designed to ‘put people in their place’ – and, it was hoped, to keep them there.
The one instance of a deliberate, obvious and violent break with historic continuity of architectural forms is in the conversion of pagan temples to churches. This was not easily done, and provision of appropriate space for Christian worship could have been more satisfactorily accomplished, at least in a practical sense, by starting afresh. However, some of the most famous ancient pagan temples, including the Parthenon at Athens, the Temple of Apollo at Didyma and the Temple of Athena at Syracuse, were converted, often with great difficulty, for Christian worship. The Parthenon was visibly still a classical and pagan building with the limited Christian alterations left in stark contrast. The Temple of Apollo at Didyma was virtually unchanged on the exterior, with a complete basilican church built within. In the seventh century, what had been the Temple of Athena at Syracuse became the Cathedral. The conversion wholly encased the ancient temple, leaving very few architectural features still visible, half buried, in the new structure. Clearly, this was to demonstrate the triumph of Christianity: ‘Probably no Christian worshipper in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries could have experienced the interior of a temple converted into a church without a feeling of deep satisfaction: the pagan cult statue had been removed, abhorrent practices had been discontinued, and the pagan site had been sanctified by its conversion into a church.’77
However, since the sixth century Arabs had been pressing at the borders of the Eastern Empire. The fact that from the seventh century the Muslims were militarily so successful and strictly against the use of images was part of the reason that Emperor Leo III thought that God was displeased with the iconophile tendencies of orthodoxy. By the end of the century, the Byzantines were no longer the dominant power in Christendom, and in 800 Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperor in Rome. The coronation was contemporary with the production of the Codex Barberini, the earliest surviving text of the Byzantine rites of SS. Chrysostom and Basil. The fiction of seamless continuity with the greatness of the past is exemplified by the early tenth-century mosaic in the south-west vestibule of Hagia Sophia, which shows Constantine offering a model of Constantinople itself, and Justinian offering a model of the church to the Virgin and Child (Plate 3). The response of acceptance and blessing of the Christ child is either hopeful of a return to past glory or simply a denial of the reality which by now was closing in on ‘the New Rome’. But however diminished the political power of Constantinople, it was still the liturgy of the Great Church that was the standard of orthodoxy in the ancient patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, as well as the new Slav Churches.
Notes
1 Eusebius, Vita Constantini, III, 48, translated in Mango (1986), pp. 10–11; for confiscations, see Barnes (1981), p. 247; for the transfer of pagan cult images, see Kartsonis (1998), pp. 67–8.
2 Beckwith (1979), pp. 75–6, quoting Sherrard (1965), pp. 8ff., accepts Eusebius; Lowden (1997) does not, see pp. 33–4.
3 Chronicon Paschale, I, 544, translated in Mango (1986), p. 26.
4 Mathews (1971), pp. 13 and 150–51, referring to Sozomen, Socrates, Van de Paverd and Taft.
5 Theodore of Mopsuestia, quoted in Wybrew (1989), p. 53.
6 Krautheimer (1986), p. 460 n. 27.
7 Mango (1986), pp. 36–7.
8 Beckwith (1979), p. 76; Vasiliev (1948), pp. 1ff.; Grierson (1962), pp. 3ff.
9 See Elsner (1998), pp. 202 and 231; Lane Fox (1986), pp. 678–9.
10 See Ward-Perkins (1966), p. 36; see also Krautheimer (1983) on Constantine as the ‘earthly double of Christ’.
11 Cameron and Hall (1999), p. 345.
12 For an analysis of imperial funerals, see Price (1987); the quotation is on p. 101. See also Cameron and Hall (1999), pp. 347–50.
13 Krautheimer (1983), p. 67.
14 Krautheimer (1986), p. 70.
15 The letter is translated in Mango (1986), pp. 27–9.
16 See Krautheimer (1986), p. 106, but Peeters (1969), p. 152, maintains that ‘it is more likely, that Ephesus had been the example for the Apostoleion’.
17 Translated in Mango (1986), pp. 30–32, 31.
18 Quoted in Ward-Perkins (1966), p. 34.
19 See McLynn (1994), pp. 194–5; the relics at the Basilica Apostolorum may have included Peter and Paul, see pp. 230–31.
20 See Homes Dudden (1935), vol. II, p. 442; McLynn (1994), pp. 201 and 223.
21 Quoted in Homes Dudden (1935), vol. II, p. 444.
22 Confessions, 9.16.14, translated in Chadwick (1991), p. 166.
23 Homes Dudden (1935), vol. II, p. 447 n. 6.
24 McLynn (1994), p. 235.
25 See Peeters (1969), pp. 134–5, with measured drawings; Wybrew (1989), p. 55, and Mathews (1971), pp. 19–27.
26 Ibid., pp. 32–3.
27 Bradshaw (2002), p. 84.
28 Wybrew (1989), pp. 29 and 47.
29 Krautheimer (1986), p. 232; see also p. 230.
30 Quotations from Wybrew (1989), p. 74, and McVey (1984), p. 98.
31 Ibid., p. 106, referring to Grabar (1947), pp. 29–67.
32 McVey (1984), p. 110.
33 The Apostolic Constitutions is quoted in Wybrew (1989), p. 44; the second quotation is from McVey (1984), p. 111.
34 Apostolic Constitutions, quoted in Wybrew (1989), p. 43.
35 Lowden (1997), pp. 80–81; for the dating of the paten, see also Beckwith (1979), p. 98.
36 Mathews (1971), pp. 84 and 105.
37 Procopius, De Aedeficiis, I, iv, translated in Mango (1986), p. 103
38 Peeters (1969), p. 151.
39 Dagron (2003), pp. 142–3, quoting Contra Judaeos et Gentiles, 9.
40 Evagrius, Hist. Eccles., IV, 31, translated in Mango (1986), p. 80.
41 See the discussions in Peeters (1969), pp. 150–53, and Krautheimer (1986), pp. 106–7 and 242–5.
42 Krautheimer (1986), p. 206.
43 Ibid., p. 216.
44 Mathews (1971), pp. 130–32, especially p. 131.
45 Paulus Silentiarius, Descr. S. Sophiae, 682, translated in Mango (1986), pp. 86–7.
46 See Mathews (1971), p. 134.
47 Paulus Silentiarius, Descr. S. Sophiae, 682, translated in Mango (1986), p. 85.
48 Paul the Silentary, Descr. ambonis, 224 and 240, translated in ibid., pp. 95–6.
49 Detailed discussion and many illustrations of Byzantine silver are found in Boyd (1998), pp. 152–83; the quotation is from p. 170; see also Leader-Newby (2004), p. 71.
50 Dagron (2003), p. 50; on anointing, see p. 58 and n. 17.
51 Ibid., p. 97.
52 Ibid., p. 92.
53 Translated in Wybrew (1989), p.77; Mathews(1971), p. 141.
54 See Wybrew (1989), pp. 77–80, for a fuller discussion.
55 Germanos, Hist. eccl., ch. 26, translated in Mathews (1971), p. 143.
56 See Mainstone (1988), p.230; Wybrew (1989), p. 81; Mathews (1971), p. 127.
57 See Taft (1975), p. 84.
58 Translated in Mainstone (1988), p. 228; see also Wybrew (1989), pp. 83–4.
59 The Chalice is reproduced, with commentary, in Peña (1997), pp. 81–2.
60 Krautheimer(1986),p.218.
61 Mainstone (1988), p. 229.
62 See Mathews (1971), pp. 105–7.
63 Ibid., p. 150.
64 Translatedin ibid., p. 171; see also Cormack (2000), pp. 150–52.
65 The traditional view, presented by Maxwell (1936), pp. 38–9, is that ‘after the fourth century this curtain became a screen, and, except in Egypt and Cappadocia, this screen became solid’. This implies that the process was relatively swiftly completed. Though the clergy were separated off from the nave in the middle of the sixth century at Hagia Sophia, perhaps by a curtain during parts of the service which was known by the second half of the eleventh century, there was certainly no solid screen. The more recent view places the completion of this tendency around 1100 (Lowden, 1997, p. 366) or even as much as a thousand years later than Maxwell maintains, in the fourteenth century, for which see, for example, Wybrew (1989), p. 147.
66 Beckwith (1979), p. 116; also Mainstone (1988), p. 234 and Mathews (1971), pp. 146–7.
67 Beckwith (1979), p. 116.
68 Ibid., pp. 104–5.
69 Translated in Mainstone (1988), p. 11.
70 See the discussion in Mathews (1982), p. 126.
71 For a detailed discussion of the origins and development of the cross-domed church, see Krautheimer (1986), pp. 296–9.
72 Brightman (1908), pp. 257–9; for a discussion of the symbolism of the liturgy and vestments, see Wybrew (1989), pp. 123–8.
73 Translatedin Mango (1986), p. 169.
74 Mango (1986), p. 184; see also the commentary in Cameron (1987), pp. 133–4.
75 The first explanation is offered by Teteriatnikov (1996), see especially pp. 27, 33–5 and 42–5; on multiple altars, see pp. 72–3; the second by Mathews (1982), pp. 127–37.
76 See Cameron (1987), p. 116, where the text is also quoted.
77 Buchwald (1999), p. 9; see also Cormack (1990).