28 



KNOWLEDGE, 



;Fei;ruaey, 1903. 



decide the conversion of the Kossian nation to the 

 Orthodox Greek Church. 



1054. The envoys of Pope Leo IX. excommunicate the 

 Eastern Church on the great altar of St. Sophia. 



1204. Capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders. 

 Wanton profanation of the sanctuary by the soldiery. 

 Baldwin, of Flanders, is crowned first Latin Emperor of 

 Constantinople in St. Sophia, which is converted into a 

 Eoman Catholic church. The Te Deum resounds in the 

 dome for fifty-seven years. 



1261. Constantinople is reconquered by the Greeks 

 and St. Sophia restored to the Orthodox faith. 



1317. Andronicus Paleolo»os, the Elder, erects the 

 hu^e buttress masses disfiguring the outside. 



1346. Earthquakes. ColIap.se of the great eastern arch 

 and of all that part of the dome resting on it. 



1360±. Eestoration of the vault by John V. Paleologos. 



1452. A Te Deum is again sung in St. Sophia, by order 

 of the last Constantine. But this alienates the sympathies 

 of the people, who, from that day, avoid the church as a 

 Jewish synagogue or a heathen temple. 



H.I.M. Sultan Abdul Hamid II., after the earthquake of 

 1804, was to appoint a commission of architects in order 

 to study the damage, and to at once order a general 

 repair. It is only fair, therefore, to acknowledge the 

 great debt of gratitude we owe to the Sultans of Turkey 

 for having preserved to the archaeologist, practically 

 intact, the grandest architectural conception the world 

 has seen. 

 I Desceiption of St. Sophia. 



' The following description is a very condensed pri'cis of 

 I some of the writer's conclusions regarding the former 

 I condition of St. Sophia. The illustrations are, of course, 

 invariably original, and rest on data obtained either in 

 sight of, or within the mosque. For the artistic effects of 

 Figs. 1 and 2, the writer is indebted to his friend, Mr. 

 Shirley Fox, r.b.a., whose valuable suggestions have 

 been most welcome. 



Tlii Orientation. — This is 83|° south of east.* Labarte 

 thought! this direction was given in order to render the 

 new edifice parallel to the already existing structures of 



^£r^ 



t '.t9w«-"^ -• ■ ~1 ^i i u..<u»i- ii .itjmii i jj « i > . I 



i R j ^-^ -^-h /Si^ .^|^?^!-i-i||pi^Tli lii 



H- c^^l ■ ill ;ii|^Pl«l|,v.l] ^« i' ill ^ '-^.i 







fiG. 2. — The West Front of St. Sojjhi;i. toward? 870 i.u. 



1453. Fall of Constantinople. Mohammed II. respects 

 St. Sophia, which he solemnly dedicates to Islam. 



A few words regarding the treatment of St. Sophia by 

 the Turks would form a fitting conclusion to this brief 

 historical sketch. Contrary to what is generally believed, 

 the building did not suffer much from its new masters. 

 The damage reduces itself to the partial scratching of the 

 arms of some crosses in bas-relief and to the whitewash 

 cover of the majority of the mosaics. Many mosaics 

 have been removed as a measure of precaution, through 

 the cracking and precariousness of the mortar in which they 

 were fixed. This toleration for images whose representation 

 is forbidden by the faith was attended with a pious zeal 

 towards the preservation of the building. In 1573, Sultan 

 Selim II. repaired the eastern arch ; in 1847-1849, Sultan 

 Abdul Mesjid spent nearly a quarter of a million sterling 

 for a general restoration, while the first care of his son 



the Imperial Palace of Constantinople. The writer takes 



* During his star in Constantinople last summer, the writer found 

 that the axis of St. Sophia, as determined by him from Kadikoy, 

 formed an angle of 127° with the magnetic north Messrs. 

 Crommelin and Xash, of the Royal Obserratory, Greenwich, were 

 kind enough to give him the value, 3° 20' West, of the declination of 

 Constantinople for 1902. This value has been computed from a 

 German magnetic map of the earth for 188.5 and cannot be trusted to 

 the minute. We thus have for the orientation — 



127° — (90* -1- 3" 20) = 33° 40'. 



t Le Palais Imperial de Constantinople ef ses Ahords, p. 18. 

 Labarte commits a grave error in affirming that " it is very important 

 to state that the major axis of the Hippodrome and the major axis 

 of St. Sophia produced, form a right angle at their intersection." 

 This angle actiially has a value of lO.i, and it is impossible to see 

 how it could ever have had another value. Labarte's work is 

 eminently misleading ; but is it not hard to accurately describe from 

 the rooms of a western library, a building 1499 miles off, and of 

 which every trace has long since disappeared ? 



