AMONG THE CHURCHES
AS historical landmarks, these churches are of very great value, and if
Byzantine history were more generally studied they would enjoy wider
fame. They enable the historian to fix a date, to give a local
habitation to many events and scenes, to grasp a solid fragment of a
form assumed by the life of humanity, and to feel how thoroughly real
that life was. In them one touches hands that have vanished, and hears
the echoes of voices that are still. The Church of S. Irene, which,
under Turkish control, has been employed both as an arsenal and as a
museum, carries the mind back to the foundation of the city. Indeed,
there is reason to think that it was one of the Christian sanctuaries of
Byzantium before the town was transformed into the capital of the East,
for two early authorities assert that Constantine only enlarged and
beautified the church in order to make it match its new surroundings.
But be that as it may, it is certain that, since the destruction of the
Church of the Holy Apostles to make room for the Mosque of Sultan
Mehemet, S. Irene has been the only sanctuary in the city that can claim
connection with Constantine. Within its walls, it is said, the General
Council summoned by Theodosius I. to restore the orthodoxy of the Church
and Empire in 381 held its meetings. Occasionally, when S. Sophia for
any reason was not available, S. Irene served as the patriarchal church,
and is therefore sometimes designated the Patriarchate, and the
Metropolitan Church. It was burned to the ground during the Nika riot,
but was included by Justinian in the splendid restoration of the
buildings destroyed on that occasion. It was ruined again by the
earthquake of 740, and once more restored by Leo III. the Isaurian. To
it, therefore, is attached the memory of the hero who defended
Constantinople in the second siege of the city by the Saracens, a
service to the world as important as the defeat of the same foe on the
field of Tours by Charles Martel fourteen years later. "At this time,"
to quote Professor Bury, "New Rome, not Old Rome, was the great bulwark
of Christian Europe, and if New Rome had fallen it might have gone hard
with the civilised world. The year 718 A.D. is really an ecumenical
date, of far greater importance than such a date as 338 B.C. when Greece
succumbed to Macedon on the field of Chæronea, and of equal importance
with such dates as 332 B.C., when an oriental empire (Persia) fell, or
of 451 A.D. which marked the repulse of the Huns."
Another church of historical interest is S. Saviour-in-the-Chora
(country), now Kahriyeh Djamissi, and popularly known as the Mosaic
Mosque, on account of the remarkable mosaics it still contains. It was
clearly in existence previous to the year 413, as thereafter it stood
within the line of the Wall of Anthemius, and could not then acquire the
distinction of being situated "in the country." Accordingly, it is a
topographical landmark as regards the original extent of the city, only
second in importance to Isa Kapou Mesdjidi, which we have seen indicates
the line of the Constantinian Wall, the position of the first Golden
Gate, and the situation of the Exokionion. Like every church with so
long a life, S. Saviour-in-the-Chora has known many changes. It saw its
best days in the fourteenth century, when it was thoroughly renovated
by Theodore Metochites, and invested with the splendour which still
glows upon its walls, and makes it one of the most beautiful of the old
churches of the Byzantine world.
Not less interesting historically is the Church of S. John the Baptist
(Mir-Akhor Djamissi), situated in the quarter of Psamatia. It was
founded about 463 by Studius, a Roman patrician who, like many other
persons, when old Rome was tottering to its fall, fled from the West to
the East, as when New Rome neared its end, some thousand years later,
men escaped from the East to the West. The church was attached to a
large monastery belonging to the order of the Acoemetæ or Sleepless
Monks, who were so named because they celebrated Divine service in their
churches day and night without intermission. According to the original
constitution of the society the members of the order represented various
nationalities, Greek, Latin, Syrian, and were divided into companies
which passed from hand to hand, in unbroken succession, the censer of
perpetual prayer and praise. They sought thus to make the worship of
God's saints on earth resemble that of the assembly gathered from all
nations and peoples and tongues that serves Him without ceasing in
heaven.
Even thus of old
Our ancestors, within the still domain
Of vast cathedral or conventual church
Their vigils kept; where tapers day and night
On the dim altar burned continually,
In token that the House was evermore
Watching to God. Religious men were they;
Nor would their reason, tutored to aspire
Above this transitory world, allow
That there should pass a moment of the year,
When in their land, the Almighty's service ceased.
As might be expected from the number and zeal of its inmates, the
monastery of Studius was highly venerated, and wielded immense
influence. Its abbot ranked first among the abbots of the capital, and
to it the Emperor was bound to pay an annual State visit on the 29th
August, one of the Baptist's festival days. On that occasion the Emperor
usually came by water in the imperial barge from the Palace beside the
Hippodrome, and landed at the Gate (Narli Kapoussi) on the shore below
the monastery, where the abbot and his monks waited to receive the
sovereign. In this monastery the Emperor Isaac Comnenus in 1059, and the
Emperor Michael VII. in 1078, assumed the monk's cowl. The former even
served as porter at the monastery gate, and so happy was he in his
retirement from the pomps and vanities of the world, that when his wife,
who had taken the veil at the time of his abdication, visited him, he
said to her, "Acknowledge that when I gave you a crown I made you a
slave, and that I give you freedom when I took it away." His wife's last
command was "that her body should be buried in the cemetery of the
Studion as a simple nun, with no sign to indicate that she was born a
Bulgarian princess and had been a Roman empress."
No monks in the history of Constantinople showed themselves so
independent of ecclesiastical and State control as the monks of the
Studion. Enough to recall the fact that in the controversy which
agitated Constantinople and the Church at large for over a century
(725-842), as to the lawfulness of using pictures and statues in
religious worship, the monks of this monastery were the boldest and most
determined opponents of the Iconoclast emperors. The abbot Theodore, who
for many years led the opposition to the imperial authority in that
matter, is one of the great figures of the Eastern Church. Eight
occupants of the Byzantine throne found him a man who for conscience
sake defied all their authority, rejected all their favours, and
endured any suffering they chose to inflict. When the Synod, held in
815, ordered icons to be banished from the churches, Theodore and his
monks carried the sacred pictures in procession through the streets, and
gave them an asylum in his monastery. Nor was he only stern. He caused
the rejection of the treaty of peace with Crum, the King of Bulgaria,
because of the demand it contained to surrender the fugitives from that
monarch's hard rule, many of whom had become Christians. To do so,
Theodore argued, would be to make void the gracious words, "Him that
cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out." He held the view that no
monk should keep slaves, and condemned the persecution of the
Paulicians, urging that they who are ignorant and out of the way should
be instructed, not persecuted. There is a prevalent impression that the
pages of Byzantine history contain nothing but the recital of the life
of a servile and ignoble community, of a race of men who trembled at the
nod of any despot and were void of all independence of thought and
action. That such a spirit often prevailed is undoubted. But if the
Byzantines had the faults of our human nature, they were not altogether
without some of its virtues. And whatever our opinions on the
questions, political or ecclesiastical, that divided parties in
Constantinople, may be; although we may think that good men in that city
did not always take the wisest course; it is but common justice and fair
play to recognise that there also was found, in the face of great
difficulties, what we admire elsewhere--a sense of the rights of
conscience, some demand for freedom of thought, the feeling that right
and truth are the supreme authorities over human life, and that rulers,
like other men, should do justly and love mercy. There, as well as
elsewhere, men and women were found who preferred to suffer and to die
rather than prove faithless to their convictions.
The monastery of Studius is, moreover, celebrated for its attention to
hymnology, counting its great abbot Theodore, his brother Joseph, and
two monks, both named Simon, among the writers of sacred poetry. It had
also a scriptorium in which the Scriptures and other religious works
were copied. It was, moreover, famed as an "illustrious and glorious
school of virtue," and thither youths of the higher classes of society
went for a part of their education. One of the attractions offered by
the school was the facility with which students in an institution so
near the fortifications could get out of the city to hunt in the open
country. The relics preserved in the church drew devout pilgrims to its
shrine from far and near. Many Russians visited the monastery on that
account, and even entered the order of the Acoemetæ to live and die
beside the sacred remains. The humble tombstone of one of these Russian
monks is built in the base of the modern wall enclosing the ground
behind the apse. It bears the inscription, "In the month of September of
the year 1387, fell asleep the servant of God, Dionysius a Russian; on
the sixth day." The honour of burial in the cemetery in which the
Sleepless were at last laid to rest was accorded also to men
distinguished for their public services, as in the case of the patrician
Bonus, who bravely defended Constantinople in 627 against the Avars and
the Persians, while the Emperor Heraclius carried on his daring
campaigns far away in Persia itself.
SS. Sergius and Bacchus (Kutchuk Aya Sofia) and S. Sophia still reflect
the splendour of the spacious days of Justinian the Great; days in which
men still dreamed of the restoration of the Roman Empire to its ancient
bounds; days in which the justice which Rome had developed was codified
and enthroned to be the eternal rule of all nations that seek to
establish righteousness between man and man. The former sanctuary was
built by Justinian, probably in 527, as a thank-offering to the martyrs
to whom the church was dedicated, for having saved him from the death to
which he had been sentenced, on account of his implication in a plot
against the Emperor Anastasius. No wonder that, when the lustre of the
imperial diadem shed light upon the full meaning of his deliverance, his
saviours became the objects of his special gratitude and veneration. The
erection of the church was one of the first acts of his reign; he placed
it in the immediate vicinity of his residence while heir-apparent, and
at the gates of his palace when Emperor; to it he attached a large
monastery, endowed with his private fortune. There cleaves therefore to
the building the personal interest that belongs to anything done in a
man's most earnest mood. Among the historical associations that gather
around the edifice is the fact that it was the church assigned to the
Papal Legates at the Court of Constantinople, for the celebration of
Divine service in the Latin form. Originally, indeed, that distinction
belonged to the basilica of SS. Peter and Paul which stood beside SS.
Sergius and Bacchus. The special regard cherished for the two great
apostles in the West would naturally make a church dedicated to them in
Constantinople the most acceptable religious home for the Roman clergy
on a visit to the city. But the basilica of SS. Peter and Paul soon
disappeared, under circumstances of which we have no record, and then
SS. Sergius and Bacchus, virtually a part of it, was placed at the
disposal of Latin priests. This fraternal custom was often interrupted
by the quarrels which, from time to time, rent Eastern and Western
Christendom even before their final separation, but it was restored
whenever the two parties were reconciled. Pope John VIII., for instance,
thanks Basil I. (867-886) for granting the use of the church again to
the Roman See, in conformity with ancient rights. Among the Papal
representatives in Constantinople was Pope Gregory the Great (590-614),
while still a deacon, and at a time when the ecclesiastical rivalry
between the Sees of Old Rome and New Rome was keen. It must have been
with something of the feeling that sprang from personal acquaintance
with scenes and men in the rival metropolis that he protested, when
Pontiff, against the assumption of the title "oecumenical bishop" by
the Patriarch John the Faster in 587, and that he adopted in
contra-distinction the well-known style of the Popes "the servant of the
servants of God." Pope Vigilius spent several unhappy years (547-554) in
Constantinople, in controversy with Justinian and the patriarch of the
day, and in the course of the dispute had occasion to flee to the Church
of SS. Peter and Paul, for refuge from the Emperor's displeasure.
Notwithstanding the right of sanctuary, Justinian gave orders for the
arrest of the Pope in his place of retreat. But when the officers sent
for that purpose appeared, Vigilius, a man of uncommon size and
strength, clutched the pillars of the altar, and refused to obey the
imperial summons. Thereupon, the officers pulled him by his feet and
hair and beard, to force him to let go his hold. But the bishop held
fast, and could not be moved until the pillars to which he clung gave
way, and threw him and the altar to the ground. This was too much for
the indignation and sympathy of the spectators who crowded the church.
Coming to the rescue, they put the assailants to flight, and left the
Pope master of the situation. It was only after a distinguished
deputation, led by Belisarius, waited upon him next day, warning him
that resistance to the Emperor's authority would be vain, and assuring
him that submission would prevent further ill-treatment, that Vigilius
came forth from the church. This was in 551. The church was attached to
a large and rich monastery known as the monastery of Hormisdas, after
the name of the district in which it stood. Like the members of other
monasteries in the city, the monks of this House took their full share
in the theological controversies of their day.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF S. SOPHIA]
Among the crowd of events witnessed under the dome of S. Sophia, there
are three scenes of paramount importance in the religious history of the
world that lend to the Great Church an extraordinary interest. The first
occurred on the day on which the envoys of Vladimir attended service in
the cathedral, and were so overwhelmed by the splendours of the worship,
that they hastened back to Russia to tell their sovereign that they had
seen the glory of the true God. "We know not," they are reported to have
said, "whether we were not in heaven; in truth, it would be impossible
on earth to find such riches and magnificence. We cannot describe to you
all that we have seen. We can only believe that there in all likelihood
one is in the presence of God, and that the worship of other countries
is there entirely eclipsed. We shall never forget such grandeur.
Whosoever has seen so sweet a spectacle will be pleased with nothing
elsewhere." The conversion of the Slavic peoples to the Christian faith,
a work commenced in the ninth century by the mission of Cyril and
Methodius to the Slavs of Bulgaria and Moravia, is one of the most
important services rendered by the Church of the Byzantine Empire to the
cause of European civilisation. So far as its political significance is
concerned, it can stand comparison with the conversion of the Teutons by
the Western Church. It accomplished what the victories of Zimisces
failed to achieve.
It was the moral conquest of Russia, and the source of her upward life,
until that country was opened also to the influence of Western
civilisation. It probably saved Russia from becoming a Mohammedan State.
The Slavic peoples rightly cherish a regard for Byzantine
Constantinople, similar to that which Western Europe feels for Athens
and Rome.
The second scene, to which we refer, took place on the 15th July 1054.
On the morning of that day, as Divine worship in the cathedral was about
to commence, three papal legates, Cardinal Humbert, Cardinal Frederic,
and the Archbishop of Amalfi, made their way through the crowd of
worshippers to the steps of the altar. Having denounced the Patriarch
Michael Keroularius for insubordination to the Holy See, the legates
placed upon the altar a bull of excommunication against him and his
adherents. They left the church, shaking its dust off their feet, and
exclaiming, "Videat Deus et judicet." In due time the patriarch hurled
back a counter-anathema; and, thenceforth, the Christian world was
divided in two bitterly hostile camps. It was the wave precipitated
against the shore by waves that had tossed the ocean's expanse, for
league upon league. It was the consummation of a long process of
disruption between the West and the East, the course of which is marked
by such events as the foundation of Constantinople, the jealousy between
Old Rome and New Rome, the invasion of the Teutons, the establishment of
the Holy Roman Empire, race antipathies, and wrangles over the phrase
Filioque, the use of images, the celibacy of the clergy, and the
employment of unleavened bread in the Eucharist. Behind all this
discord, we may be able to detect men groping for the truth, and
resisting absolutism in Church and State. But it has left Christendom
weakened both as a political and a religious power to this day.
On the 29th or 30th of May 1453, Sultan Mehemet the Conqueror alighted
from his horse at the gate of S. Sophia. It was most probably at the
"Beautiful Gate," at the southern end of the noble inner narthex of the
church, the entrance through which the Emperors of Constantinople
usually proceeded to the cathedral. According to one account, the Sultan
stooped down at the threshold, took some earth, and scattered it on his
head in token of humiliation before God. Entering, he saw a Moslem
breaking the marble pavement. He struck at the vandal with a scimitar?
for daring to injure a building that belonged of right to the sovereign.
Then, in what to the Eastern world was the Holy of Holies of
Christendom, an imaum ascended the pulpit and cried aloud, "There is no
God but God, and Mahomet is His prophet." And so it has been ever since.
The Church of S. Saviour Pantepoptes, the All-Seeing (Eski Imaret
Djamissi), the Church of S. Saviour Pantocrator, the All-Powerful
(Zeirek Kilissé Djamissi), and the interior of S. Saviour-in-the-Chora
(Kahriyeh Djamissi), recall the period of the Comneni and the Angeli
(1081-1204).
In their erection ladies of considerable importance in the history of
Constantinople had a part. The first was built by Anna Dalassena, the
mother of Alexius I. Comnenus; the last was restored by his
mother-in-law, Mary Ducæna, a Bulgarian princess famous for her beauty;
the second was an erection of the Empress of John I. Comnenus, the
daughter of Geysa I., King of Hungary. These churches represent the age
when Constantinople was stirred by the march of the earlier Crusades
through the territory of the Empire, when Peter the Hermit and Godfrey
de Bouillon encamped their followers within sight of the city walls, to
be dazzled by the splendours of the Palace of Blachernæ, and cajoled by
the diplomacy of Alexius I. Comnenus. They also recall the time when
Henrico Dandolo, the Doge of Venice, brought his fleet and the troops of
the Fourth Crusade to the Golden Horn, and founded the short-lived Latin
Empire of Constantinople. It was on the terraced ground beside the
Church of Pantepoptes that the Emperor Alexius Murtzuplus pitched his
vermilion tents and drew up his reserve forces. There he stood to see
the walls on the shore below attacked by the Venetian ships and carried
by Frankish knights. From that position he fled at the approach of a
body of the enemy's horsemen, and under his unstricken vermilion tent
Count Baldwin of Flanders and Hainaut, soon to succeed him as Latin
Emperor of Constantinople, spent the night of that memorable day.
The monastery of the Church of the Pantocrator became the headquarters
of the Venetians during the Latin occupation of the city. In the
relations of Western and Eastern Christians to each other during the
period of the Crusades there is nothing of which we can feel proud. The
former were barbarous, the latter were decadent; neither of them worthy
to recover the San Graal in search of which so much heroism and devotion
were displayed for two centuries. But it is well to remember that the
encounter of the East and the West during those expeditions contributed
not a little to the "infiltration," as it has happily been phrased, "of
ideas, knowledge, and art from the Grecised Empire into Western Europe."
It brought the influence of an older and riper civilisation to bear upon
the younger life that had come into the world, and aided that life to
evolve a new and better order of things.
The Venetian occupants of the monastery of Pantocrator, for instance,
could learn much from the admirable organisation of the hospital
maintained by that House for the benefit of the poor. The hospital
contained fifty beds, of which ten formed a ward for surgical cases,
eight a ward for acute diseases, ten for ordinary maladies, and twelve a
ward for women. A fifth ward contained ten beds for the reception of
applicants for admittance into the other wards of the hospital, until
the physicians should decide upon the gravity of the cases. Each ward
was in charge of two doctors, three medical assistants, and four
servitors.
To the women's ward were attached a lady-physician, six assistant
lady-surgeons, and two female nurses. All patients were treated
gratuitously. Upon arrival at the hospital a patient's clothes were laid
aside, and replaced by a white dress provided by the institution. There
was a liberal allowance of bread, beans, onions, olive oil, and wine,
for all able to partake of such food, while from time to time gifts of
money were distributed. The beds were kept clean, and a house-doctor
went through the wards every day to inquire of the patients, whether
they were satisfied with their treatment, and to examine their diet. In
addition to the hospital, the monastery maintained, on the same liberal
scale, a Home for Old Men, accommodating twenty-four persons.
The inhabitants of Constantinople were sinners, though not sinners above
all men, as they are often represented. But in their hospitals,
orphanages, asylums for the aged, free caravanseries, asylums for
lepers, and other institutions "to give rest to those whom trouble had
distressed," which humanised the city with compassion, they were
distinguished also for that charity which covereth a multitude of sins.
The Churches of S. Mary Pammacaristos (Fethiyeh Djamissi), the Church of
S. Theodosia (Gul Djamissi), and portions of S. Saviour-in-the-Chora,
carry us to the times of the Palæologi, the dynasty that occupied the
throne of Constantinople during the last one hundred and ninety years of
the city's history as New Rome. It is the period of the long struggle
with the Ottoman Turks, and the culmination of the conflict between the
Mohammedan world and Christendom which had filled more than eight
centuries with its hate and din; when the sign in which the Empire had
conquered yielded to the sign of the crescent, and the benediction of
the prophet of Islam--"Whoso taketh the city of Constantine, his sins
are forgiven"--found at length a man upon whose head it could settle. It
is a sad period of Byzantine history; yet one noble idea, at least,
appealed to its mind--the Reunion of Christendom--which, if realised,
would have changed the history of Europe. But it was not to be.
Like all the churches of the city situated near the fortifications, the
Church of S. Saviour-in-the-Chora was regarded with special veneration
as a guardian of the safety of "the God-defended capital," and there,
during the siege of 1453, was placed, as an additional pledge of
security, the icon of S. Mary Hodegetria, attributed to S. Luke. But the
church was the first sanctuary into which Turkish troops broke on the
fatal 29th May for pillage. They spurned to take the icon as a part of
their plunder, and in mockery of its vaunted power hacked it to pieces.
The Latin Church of S. Peter in Galata claims to possess one of the
fragments.
With S. Theodosia is connected the pathetic association that the
festival day of the church coincided with the day on which the city fell
in 1453. The area and galleries of the building were packed by a large
and earnest congregation that kept vigil through the night-watches,
praying for the safety of the Queen of Cities, when suddenly, soon after
the sun had risen, the wild rush of soldiers and shouts of victory in
strange accents told that the enemy had triumphed, and that the day of
vengeance was at the door. No massacre ensued, but the whole
congregation was doomed to slavery.
The Church of the Pammacaristos served as the cathedral of the
patriarchs of Constantinople for one hundred and thirty-five years after
1456, when deprived of the Church of the Holy Apostles.
These churches put the period of the Palæologi before us in also a
pleasing aspect. The mosaics which adorn the narthex and exo-narthex of
the Church of S. Saviour-in-the-Chora imply, that love for the beautiful
and skill to express it had not fled the city which reared S. Sophia.
The proportions of S. Theodosia are exceedingly fine, and the chapel
attached to the Pammacaristos is, at least externally, remarkably
attractive. Nor had intellectual life and scholarship altogether ceased.
The historian Nicephorus Gregoras was a monk in the monastery of S.
Saviour-in-the-Chora, and wrote his work in the retirement of his cell.
The historians Pachymeres, Cantacuzene, Phrantzes, Ducas, were not the
products of an ignorant age. The Greek scholars who took refuge in the
West, and contributed to its intellectual revival, represented a society
which, with all its faults, had not lost its interest in the literature
of ancient Hellas, or in general knowledge. Indeed, in studying the
period of the Palæologi, one continually meets a spirit akin to that
which produced the Renaissance in Western Europe. And, notwithstanding
the vanity of indulging in dreams of what might have been but never has
been, the mind obstinately asks, What if that upward movement had not
been checked by a great political catastrophe? What if it had been
accompanied by moral reform and military prowess?