Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City (10 page)

Three other mosaic portraits are located in niches at the base of the north tympanum wall and are visible from the nave. They portray three sainted bishops of the early church. In the first niche from the west we have St. Ignatius the Younger, in the central niche St. John Chrysostomos, and in the fifth from the west St. Ignatius Theophorus. All three figures are nearly identical except for the faces; each is clad in sacerdotal robes, the most striking item of which is the wide omophorion, or stole, with two large crosses below the shoulders and a third just below the knee; each holds in his left hand, which is concealed below his cloak, a large book with bejewelled binding; the younger St. Ignatius appears to be touching the top of the book with his right hand, while the other two have their right hands raised in blessing. The faces get older the farther east one goes: the first Ignatius, as his name suggests, is a young man but with a very ascetic face; St. John is in early middle age and his small, compressed lips hardly suggest the”Golden Mouth” from which he receives his name, Chrysostomos; St. Ignatius Theophorus is an old man with white hair and a beard. Chrysostomos and the elder Ignatius were two of the most powerful and contentious patriarchs in the history of Byzantium; each would have seen both Church and Empire wrecked rather than compromise his principles. It was said of Chrysostomos in his time that “he was merciless to sin but full of mercy for the sinner.”

The only other mosaics which are visible from the nave are the famous six-winged seraphim or cherubim in the eastern pendentives. (Those in the western pendentives are imitations in paint done by the Fossatis at the time of their restorations in 1847–9.) These have never been covered; we see them in pictures of Haghia Sophia across the centuries, hovering eerily over the nave. Evliya Çelebi believed them to be talismans, albeit moribund ones, as he tells us in his
Seyahatname
: “Before the birth of the Prophet these four angels used to speak, and gave notice of all the dangers which threatened the Empire and the city of Istanbul; but since his highness appeared all talismans have ceased to act.” Their faces are sometimes exposed, sometimes covered, most recently by the Fossatis’ gold-starred medallions, which are still in place. Unfortunately, these mosaics have not yet been cleaned and restored and are a bit dirty and discoloured. It is not certain whether these heavenly creatures are intended to be seraphim or cherubim; the former are said by Isaiah to have, like these, six wings: “With twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly,” while Ezekiel informs us that cherubim had only four (or eight) wings. But as Cyril Mango amusingly shows, Byzantine artists do not seem to have understood or observed the distinction between the two Orders; he suggests that perhaps we have here one of each. As to date, Mr. Mango points out that since both pendentives were largely destroyed in the collapse of 1346, the mosaics must be subsequent to that time; they doubtless belong to the period of restoration after the collapse, between 1346 and 1355. But they certainly replace, and may closely copy, older mosaics of the same subject.

THE GALLERIES

All of the remaining mosaics are in the galleries and in the rooms adjacent to them. The public entryway to the galleries is at the northern end of the narthex, where an inclined labyrinth leads us to the angle of the western and northern galleries. Before we examine the mosaics we might walk to the central or western gallery, from whence we can orient ourselves and enjoy a splendid view of the nave. Just next to the balustrade at the centre of this gallery we see the spot where the throne of the Empress was located; it is marked by a disc of green Thessalian marble set into the pavement and framed by a pair of coupled columns in green marble. Although Procopius and the Silentiary tell us that in their time the entire gallery was used as the women’s quarter, or gynaeceum, it appears that in later centuries most of the southern gallery was reserved for the use of the royal family, and, on occasion, for synods of the Orthodox Church.

Let us now return to the northern gallery, where the earliest of the visible mosaics is located. This mosaic, the last of those in the church to be uncovered and restored, is found high on the east face of the north-west pier. This panel represents the Emperor Alexander, who came to the throne in May of the year 912, succeeding his elder brother, Leo VI. “Here comes the man of thirteen months,” said Leo with his dying breath, as he saw his despised brother coming to pay his last respects. This cynical prophecy was fulfilled in June of the following year, when Alexander died of apoplexy during a drunken game of polo. This mosaic portrait must surely have been done during Alexander’s brief reign, for so incompetent and corrupt was this mad and alcoholic despot that no one would have honoured him other than in the single year when he was sole ruler. Alexander’s portrait shows him standing full length, wearing the gorgeous ceremonial costume of a Byzantine emperor: crowned with a camelaucum, a conical, helmet-shaped coronet of gold with pendant pearls; draped in a loros, a long, gold-embroidered scarf set with jewels; and shod in gem-studded crimson boots. Four medallions flanking the imperial figure bear this legend: “Lord help thy servant, the orthodox and faithful Emperor Alexander.”

On the west face of the same pier we find one of the most elaborate of the many graffiti which are carved on the walls of Haghia Sophia; it shows a medieval galleon under full sail. Anyone who has ever sat through the whole of a long Greek Orthodox service can appreciate how the artist had plenty of time to complete this sketch. Most of the other graffiti consist merely of names and dates, many of them carved on the marble balustrade. On the inner balustrade of the north gallery we find this inscription: “Place of the most noble Patrician, Lady Theodora.” A short distance farther along there is one which reads: “Timothy, Keeper of the Vessels.” What was Timothy doing in the gynaeceum, we wonder?

We now retrace our steps to view the other visible mosaics, all of which are located in the southern gallery. Before we turn into the gallery, we might pause for a moment at a closed door in the south end of the central gallery. This door leads into a large chamber directly over the Vestibule of the Warriors, and this in turn leads into a suite of rooms on either side. These rooms contain a large number of mosaics, which are thought to date from the second half of the ninth century, just after the end of the iconoclastic period. These fascinating rooms are almost certainly the large and small secreta of the Patriarchal Palace, which adjoined Haghia Sophia to the south. Unfortunately, they are not open to the public.

In the south gallery, between the western pier and buttress, there stretches a marble screen in the form of two pairs of false double doors with elaborately ornamented panels, the so-called Gates of Heaven and Hell. Between them is the actual doorway with a slab of translucent Phrygian marble above it; a sculpted wooden beam forms a kind of cornice to the whole. Neither the date nor the purpose of this screen is known. It is certainly not an original part of the church but a later addition, and it has been suggested that it may have been erected to screen off the portion of the south gallery used for Church synods.

The second in date of the imperial portraits is located at the east end of the south gallery, next to the apse; it depicts the famous Empress Zoe and her third husband, Constantine IX Monomachos. At the centre of the composition we see the enthroned figure of Christ, his right hand raised in a gesture of benediction, his left holding the book of Gospels. On Christ’s right stands the Emperor holding in his hands the offering of a money bag, and to his left is the Empress holding an inscribed scroll. Above the Emperor’s head an inscription reads: “Constantine, in Christ the Lord Autocrat, faithful Emperor of the Romans, Monomachus.” Above the head of the Empress we read: “Zoe, the most pious Augusta.” The scroll in her hand has the same legends as that over the Emperor’s head, save that the words Autocrat and Monomachus are omitted for want of space.

Now the curious thing about this mosaic is that all three heads and the two inscriptions concerning Constantine have been altered. A possible explanation for this is furnished by a review of the life and loves of the extraordinary Empress Zoe, daughter of Constantine VIII and one of the few women to rule Byzantium in her own right. A virgin till the age of 50, Zoe was then married by her father to Romanus Argyros so as to produce a male heir to the throne. Though it was too late for Zoe to produce children, she enjoyed her new life to the full, taking a spectacular series of lovers in the years that were left to her. After the death of her first husband, Romanus III (r. 1028–34), Zoe married Michael IV (r. 1034–41), and after his death she wed Constantine IX (r. 1042–55). It has been suggested that the mosaic in the gallery of Haghia Sophia was originally done between 1028 and 1034 and portrayed Zoe with her first husband, Romanus III, and that the faces were destroyed during the short and fanatically anti-Zoe reign of Michael V, the adopted son of the Empress. When Zoe ascended the throne in 1042 with her third husband, Constantine IX, she presumably had the faces restored, substituting that of Constantine for Romanus and altering the inscriptions accordingly. Zoe died in 1050, aged 72; Michael Psellus tells us that to the end, though her hand trembled and her back was bent with age, “her face had a beauty altogether fresh.” So she still appears today in her mosaic portrait in Haghia Sophia.

The third and last of the imperial portraits is just to the right of the one we have been dealing with. Here we see the Mother of God holding the infant Christ; to her right stands an emperor offering a bag of gold and to her left a red-haired empress holding a scroll. The imperial figures are identified by inscriptions as: “John, in Christ the Lord faithful Emperor, Porphyrogenitus and Autocrat of the Romans, Comnenus”, and “Eirene, the most pious Augusta.” The mosaic extends onto the narrow panel of side wall at right angles to the main composition; we see there the figure of a young prince, identified by an inscription as “Alexius, in Christ, faithful Emperor of the Romans, Porphyrogenitus.” These are the portraits of the Emperor John II Comnenus (r. 1118–43); his wife, the Empress Eirene, daughter of King Ladislaus of Hungary; and their eldest son, Prince Alexius. The main panel has been dated to 1118, the year of John’s accession, and the portrait of Alexius to 1122, when at the age of 17 he became co-emperor with his father. Young Alexius did not live to succeed John, for he died not long after his coronation; we can almost see the signs of approaching death in his pale and lined features. The Emperor was known in his time as Kalo John, or John the Good. The Byzantine historian Nicetas Choniates wrote of John that “he was the best of all the emperors from the family of the Comneni who ever sat upon the Roman throne.” Eirene was noted for her piety and for her kindness to the poor, for which she is honoured as a saint in the Orthodox Church. John and Eirene were full of good works; together they founded the monastery of the Pantocrator, the triple church of which is still one of the principal monuments on the Fourth Hill of the city.

The latest in date of the mosaics in the gallery is the magnificent Deesis, which is located in the east wall of the western buttress in the south gallery. This mosaic, one of the very greatest works of art produced in Byzantium, is thought to date from the beginning of the fourteenth century. It is a striking illustration of the cultural renaissance which took place in Constantinople after the restoration of the Byzantine Empire by Michael VIII Palaeologus in 1261. Although two-thirds of the mosaic is now lost, the features of the three figures in the portrait are still completely intact and unmarred. Here we see Christ flanked by the Virgin and St. John the Baptist; they lean towards him in suppliant attitudes, pleading, so the iconographers tell us, for the salvation of mankind. John looks towards Christ with an expression of almost agonized grief on his face, while the young and wistful Virgin casts her gaze shyly downwards. Christ, holding up his right hand in a gesture of benediction, looks off into space with a look of sadness in his eyes, appearing here as if he partook more of the nature of man than of God, whatever the medieval theologians may have decided about him. The Deesis is a work of great power and beauty, a monument to the failed renaissance of Byzantium and its vision of a humanistic Christ.

Set into the pavement just opposite to the Deesis is the tomb of the man who ruined Byzantium. Carved in Latin letters on the broken lid of a sarcophagus there, we see the illustrious name, HENRICUS DANDALO. Dandalo, Doge of Venice, was one of the leaders of the Fourth Crusade and was the one chiefly responsible for persuading the Latins to attack Constantinople in the years 1203–4. After the final capture of Constantinople on 13 April 1204, Baldwin of Flanders was crowned in Haghia Sophia as Emperor of Rumania, as the Latins called the portion of the Byzantine Empire which they had conquered. But the Latin Emperor did not reign supreme even in his capital city, for three-eighths of Constantinople, including the church of Haghia Sophia, was awarded to the Venetians and ruled by Dandalo. The old Doge now added the title of Despot to his name and thereafter styled himself “Lord of the fourth and a half of all the Roman Empire.” But proud Dandalo had little time to lord it over his fractional kingdom, for he died the following year, 16 June 1205, and was buried in the gallery of Haghia Sophia. After the Conquest, according to tradition, Dandalo’s tomb was broken open and his bones thrown to the dogs.

After the Palaeologian renaissance of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the fortunes of the Empire declined rapidly, and in the last decades of Byzantine rule Haghia Sophia shared in the general decay of the dying capital. Travellers to Constantinople in that period report that the church showed signs of grievous neglect and was beginning to fall into ruins. Then, towards the very end, Haghia Sophia was all but deserted by its congregation, who stayed away in protest over the Emperor’s attempted union with the Church of Rome. The people of the city began returning to their church only in the very last days before Constantinople fell to the Turks, when doctrinal differences no longer seemed important, not even to a Byzantine.