HAGIA SOPHIA’S HIDDEN HISTORY
IN HIS ACCOUNT OF the extensive building program undertaken by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, the sixth-century A.D. Greek historian Procopius describes the architectural splendor of Hagia Sophia, the towering cathedral of the capital city of Constantinople:
The church has become a spectacle of marvelous beauty, overwhelming to those who see it, but to those who know it by hearsay altogether incredible. For it soars to a height to match the sky, and as if surging up from amongst the other buildings, it stands on high and looks down upon the remainder of the city.
Completed in 537, Hagia Sophia (“Holy Wisdom”) is, in both style and scale, an architectural marvel. As a physical manifestation of the emperor’s personal authority, it also signified an increasingly close relationship between the state and the Byzantine Church that had begun two centuries earlier, during the reign of the emperor Constantine (r. 306–337). In 326, he had founded his eponymous city, Constantinople, and shifted his imperial operations there, a strategic move that enabled communication between the Roman Empire’s western and eastern parts. The latter encompassed the Balkan Peninsula, Anatolia, the Levant, northern Mesopotamia, and Egypt. By the fourth century, the city already had a bishop and attendant religious administration. “Constantine began a process, which quickened considerably with legislative changes in the late fourth and fifth centuries, that reduced the appeal of polytheistic pagan religions and moved Christianity from an outlawed sect to the official state religion by the early fifth century,” says art historian Joseph Alchermes of Connecticut College. Under Justinian I (r. 527–565), Constantinople’s bishop became one of four patriarchs who oversaw Christian worship throughout the Mediterranean world.
Hagia Sophia was built next to the imperial palace,
