VII.

THE BYZANTINE STYLE.

Constantine and his mother St. Helena built churches in Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Antioch, and embellished Constantinople with numerous splendid edifices. The Eastern basilicas preserved the same character in their construction as those of Italy, but their component parts were more homogeneous, the materials being specially prepared, instead of being borrowed from ancient buildings. The first vigour of emancipated Christianity found vent not only in the erection of edifices devoted to its religious observances, but in the infliction of irreparable injury upon the pagan monuments of Greece and Rome. Constantine brought many fragments of these Classical buildings to the new capital, but they have been destroyed, together with the palaces, churches, and baths which he built there, in successive invasions, by fire, or by earthquakes.

In Thessalonica there are two good examples of early basilicas—the old mosque and the five-aisled church of St. Demetrius; and in Northern Syria there are many admirable specimens. Of these the churches at Rouheilia, Kalb-Louzeh, and Tourmanim deserve special mention.

The latter is a particularly successful building, designed in the new style growing out of the older Roman one, and is a model structure, being constructed exactly in accordance with the requirements of the early Church.

In plan, the Syrian conventual buildings depart but slightly from that of the basilicas of Rome, but in their interior treatment they show a gradual secession from the rules which govern Classical buildings, retaining only their useful and discarding their merely ornamental features.

When the seat of the empire had been transferred to Byzance, the Christians carried with them the principles of the arch and the vault and combined them in a new form of structure. This construction, differing from that employed in Rome, combined with Eastern or late Greek forms of ornament, produced a new style called the Byzantine.

The distinctive feature of this method of construction was the placing of the circular dome, not upon a cylindrical drum, as had been done by the Romans in the Pantheon and other buildings, but upon four walls, square in plan, surmounted by semicircular arches, with the intervening spaces occupied by pendentives. To each side of this central square was joined a nave of the same length, forming thus in plan a Greek cross, that is, one having each arm equally long. These naves were usually short, more frequently semicircular than rectangular, and often terminated by an apse.

[Illustration: THE PENDENTIVE SYSTEM IN BYZANTINE DOMES.]

We have seen, in the baptistery of St. Vitale, at Ravenna (in which Greek artists were undoubtedly employed), a tendency to reduce the number of sides of polygonal buildings supporting circular domes; the architects of Byzance were therefore merely taking another step in the same direction when they placed the dome upon a quadrilateral substructure.

To comprehend the pendentive, let us take a circle and inscribe within it a square; at the four angles of the square we will place solid piers of masonry and connect them with semicircular arches. Let us now suppose that a hemispherical dome had been built upon this circle as plan, and we will see that the planes of the arches and the plane passing at the level of the top of the keystones of the arches, in intersecting this dome, would leave but four triangular portions of it. These triangular portions are called pendentives, and are the only portions of the original hemisphere which are actually built. As this hemisphere would have been necessarily constructed of materials the joints of which would have radiated from the centre of the sphere, so also do the joints of the pendentives radiate from this same centre, which is identical with the centre of the original circle. The plane passing at the level of the top of the keystones in intersecting the hemisphere describes another circle, upon which the actual dome is placed. The question has not been established satisfactorily whether the Byzantine architects really understood the pendentive, as in many instances they resorted to less scientific methods of filling in the vacant spaces between the arches and the upper dome, but the only logical method of constructing it is that which has just been described.

In building domes, it was not uncommon in the East to replace stonework by light terra-cotta pipes, fitting into each other, giving great lightness and comparative strength.

Justinian gave a marked impetus to architectural work and to the building of religious edifices in particular. He commissioned Anthemius of Thralles, and Isidor of Miletus, to execute the plans for the new church of St. Sophia, upon the site of an older building of Constantine, also dedicated to the “Holy Wisdom,” which had been burnt during an emeute soon after it had been repaired by Theodosius.

Justinian had already built the church of Sergius and Bacchus in Constantinople, on a plan nearly identical with that of St. Vitale, at Ravenna, with the exception that the whole structure was externally in the form of a square, enclosing the octagon supporting the dome. This served as a stepping-stone to the conception of the larger church, which became the type of all subsequent Byzantine constructions.

[Illustration: CHURCH OF SERGIUS AND BACCHUS AT CONSTANTINOPLE.]

[Illustration: PLAN OF ST. SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE.]

By comparing the plans of the Pantheon, the temple of Minerva Medica, the baptistery of Constantine, St. Vitale, at Ravenna, and the church of Sergius and Bacchus, in the order in which they are enumerated, with that of St. Sophia, the sequence and continuous progress of domical construction is at once apparent, and such comparison explains the successive steps in a more satisfactory manner than a folio of description.

“The church of St. Sophia,” says M. Texier, “is built on a square plan, 251 feet long by 186 feet wide. In the centre of this square rises the dome, the diameter of which, measuring 108 feet, determines the width of the nave. The dome is supported by four great arches and four pendentives. Two hemispheric vaults abut against the two arches, which are perpendicular to the axis of the nave, giving it an oval appearance. Each of these hemispheres is itself pierced by two smaller hemispheres carried on columns. This superposition of domes, whose points of abutment are not visible, gives to the whole structure a lightness difficult to realize.”

The church is built upon a foundation of béton twenty feet deep. It is preceded by an atrium surrounded by a portico of the Ionic order. The nave is entered by a double narthex, or porch, extending along the whole width of the West front. The interior, both floor and walls, was formerly adorned with rich marbles, and paintings upon a ground of gold. The dome was built of light bricks faced with hard cement and mosaic, and was lighted by forty windows. Originally a painting of the Holy Father was placed in the centre of the dome, and four cherubim in the pendentives. The latter are still to be discerned under the coat of whitewash with which the Turks have hidden the original magnificence of the interior.

The apse, lighted by three windows, contained the throne and seat of the Church fathers. The columns supporting the great arches and the galleries, originally occupied by the women, are of rare marble, eight of them having, it is said, formed part of the temple of Diana at Ephesus, being brought, together with the spoils of many Eastern and Western buildings, to adorn the great edifice. The foliage of their capitals is fine and sharp and intricately interlaced, having no resemblance to the Classic models beyond a debased form of the volute which terminates their upper corners. This style of ornament is a distinguishing feature of the Byzantine style, and reappears in many examples both in the East and West.

The church, commenced in the year 532, took sixteen years to build, during which time incredible sums were expended upon it. When completed, the appearance it presented was most magnificent, resulting not only from the rich marbles, wood-work, paintings, and mosaics with which it was decorated, but also from the countless candelabras, curtains, precious vases, and golden vessels with which it was furnished. After the capture of Constantinople by Mahomet II., in the year 1453, St. Sophia was converted into a mosque, and suffered greatly at the hands of the Turks. It is only within recent years that any attempt at preserving its original splendour has been made.

The architectural principles upon which St. Sophia was constructed were reproduced in all Byzantine buildings in Italy and France as well as in the Orient. In Turkey, indeed, the edifices subsequently erected are almost counterparts of the original structure, the mosque of Suleiman and that of Achmet, built as late as 1610, embodying almost identical features of construction.

In Athens there are two or three small Byzantine churches, which, though differing greatly in point of size, are founded upon the plan of the mother church; and in Asia Minor generally and Armenia especially, there are a great number; notably the churches of Daghour and Pitzounda and the cathedral of Anim.

The decoration of some of the latter differs from the usual Byzantine methods in the frequent revival of Classic forms, and in the use of thin pilasters, carrying blind arches on the exterior.

This feature reappears in the buildings of Italy, influenced by the style, particularly at Pisa.

In some later buildings a new manner of obtaining light was introduced, by raising the dome upon a cylindrical drum, supported by the four arches and pendentives of the older system. St. Nicodemus, of Athens, is one of the best examples of this.

When the body of St. Mark was brought to Venice, having been stolen from Constantinople by means of a clever trick about the year 831, the Doge Partecipazio ordered a church to be built to his memory. The greater part of this building as it stands to-day dates, however, from the tenth century. It resembles St. Sophia in a great degree, the frequent intercourse of the Venetian maritime population with the Orient having enabled them to study the principles of Byzantine art, and to bring spoils from the buildings of the East to their native city.

St. Mark’s has also much affinity with the church of Mone-tes-Koras, in Armenia, the principal façade, with its five large bays decorated with columns and arches framing the five doors which give access to the church, being identical in general conception.

The interior of the building has the form of the Greek cross, the four arms of which and also the central compartment formed by their intersection, are roofed by domes supported on arches and pendentives. The style of ornament is very similar to that of its prototype, with its rich gold mosaics, frescos, and inlaid marble, some of the details being essentially Oriental in character.

The constructors of the pendentives in St. Mark’s do not seem to have properly understood that they formed part of a sphere to the centre of which their joints should have converged, but filled up the spaces between the supporting arches by a series of small superposed arches.

The influence of this Byzantine construction extended into Aquitania, in the South of France. At the close of the tenth century a number of churches were erected there, with the dome as a prominent feature. St. Front, of Perigueux, was built upon a plan closely resembling that of St. Mark’s in Venice, and very nearly upon a similar scale of dimensions. The architects of the church, however, seem to have distrusted the strength of the semicircular arch, and resorted to the ogival[5] or pointed form as a means of securing greater supporting power, although this arch had not as yet been adopted in France.

[5] From augere, to strengthen.

They, too, failed completely to grasp the principle of the pendentive, as those of St. Front are formed of corbelled stones with horizontal beds, instead of voussoirs converging to the centre of the hemisphere of which they should form part.

Besides St. Front, the churches of Fontevrault, Souliac, Angoulême, and others in Aquitania were built with similar characteristics, though in plan they adopted the Latin instead of the Greek cross. The abbey church of Fontevrault is perhaps the most successful of these, the four domes of its nave producing a very pleasing effect. The greater number of these buildings were erected during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in an imported fashion, rather than in a style destined to be engrafted upon French national architecture.

All of them show the want of a clear comprehension of the principles involved, and are evidently foreign to the taste of the people.

The introduction of this style in France, offers a parallel case to the introduction of Gothic architecture in Italy, a century or two later, for in neither case were the styles in accordance with native inspiration.