Hagia Sophia, A History by Richard Winston

Author:Richard Winston [Richard Winston]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History/Medieval
ISBN: 9781640190689
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2017-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

News of the unexpected capitulation of Constantinople was brought to Emperor Michael Palaeologus in his palace near Smyrna by a messenger carrying - as proof of his claim - the sword and scepter, the scarlet buskins, and the bonnet dropped by Baldwin II in his precipitate flight. Before an assembly of bishops, senators, and nobles, the emperor declared: “The Divine Providence has now restored to our arms the city of Constantine, the sacred seat of religion and empire; and it will depend on our valor and conduct to render this important acquisition the pledge and omen of future victories.”

Twenty days later, Michael Palaeologus, who had already been crowned emperor in Nicaea, made his triumphal entry into the half-ruined city through the Golden Gate. Surrounded by his people and preceded by an image of the Virgin, he went on foot to the monastery of Saint John of Studion, where he gave thanks to the Almighty. He was then crowned for a second time, as Michael VIII, in Hagia Sophia. So began the reign of the Palaeologi, the last dynasty of the Byzantine Empire, which was to endure for two additional centuries.

The revived empire was only a shadow of its former self, but in the fourteenth century, it was suffused with the twilight glow of a cultural renaissance comparable to that which was dawning in Italy. Territorially reduced by the inexorable westward advance of the Turks in Asia Minor, politically divided by dynastic and theological disputes, economically impoverished, socially disturbed, and decimated by the Black Death, which had reduced its population by a third, the latter-day empire nonetheless flourished anew in terms of intellectual and artistic accomplishment. Scholars and artists abounded; philosophers, scientists, doctors, mathematicians, astronomers, theologians, and historians brought new life to the Hellenic tradition. Simultaneously, artist-craftsmen, sculptors, painters, jewelers, and mosaicists raised their art to new heights. New churches were built, smaller in scale but often richer esthetically than the old. State patronage of the arts - virtually nonexistent under an impoverished court that had been reduced to periodically selling its jewels and treasures, and to eating off earthenware and pewter instead of gold and silver plate - began to give way to the private patronage of rich citizens who commissioned mosaics, frescoes, icons, and even the decoration of entire churches.

Even during those lean years, Hagia Sophia remained the imperial church, which made the state responsible for its upkeep. Soon after his recapture of the city, Michael VIII refounded the university in Hagia Sophia’s outbuildings. In the church itself, he restored much of the damage done by the Crusaders: The elaborate doors of the three royal gates, which had been removed, were replaced by bronze doors of a simpler design; the bema, ambo, and solea were restored at the emperor’s expense; and the church was enriched with vestments and sacred vessels. This renewal involved the replacement of “furnishings of surpassing beauty” that the Crusaders had removed and the restoration of the iconostasis, from which they had stripped the silver plating.

Michael

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