Hagia Sophia, Church of the Holy Wisdom by Mary Elizabeth Podles

Hagia Sophia, Church of the Holy Wisdom

by Mary Elizabeth Podles

It is as familiar to the world as the Mona Lisa or the Coca-Cola sign. It would be presumptuous to pretend to be able to sum up Hagia Sophia, the Church of the Holy Wisdom, in a thousand words. Its history, at the hands of hasty contractors, iconoclasts, remodelers, Crusaders, Islamists, and the Turkish government, not to mention earthquakes, would fill volumes. Analysis of its geometry has filled volumes. Instead, a more modest proposal: let us walk, in our imaginations, through the church as it might have appeared in the Emperor Justinian's time, to see how it might have been perceived and understood in its own era.

Hagia Sophia was the ambitious project of an ambitious emperor. Justinian I, successful politician, codifier of law, military and diplomatic genius, and rich beyond imagining, set his hand to architecture after the cathedral church of Constantinople burned to the ground in the riots of 532. The designers he chose were not architects, but two theoretical scientists. Isidore of Miletus was a physicist, a theoretical commentator on vaulting methods, and Anthemius of Tralles was a geometer and specialist in statics and kinetics. Both were associated with the Neo-Platonist Ammonius of Alexandria, to whom the manifestation of deity was light and the sun; it is impossible to think of Hagia Sophia apart from its light.

THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:


Mary Elizabeth Podles is the retired curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She and her husband Leon, a Touchstone senior editor, have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland.


more on art from the online archives

33.2—March/April 2020

Christ Chapel at Hillsdale

An Architectural Sign of Mere Christianity by Michael Ward

30.3—May/June 2017

St. Luke the Evangelist

by Mary Elizabeth Podles

32.4—July/August 2019

Sojourner Knight

on Single-Mindedness in Durer's Ritter, Tod, und Teufel by Anthony Costello

calling all readers

Please Donate

"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand

"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor

Support Touchstone

• Not a subscriber or wish to renew your subscription? Subscribe to Touchstone today for full online access. Over 30 years of publishing!


personal subscriptions

Purchase Print &
Online Subscription

Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!


RENEW your print/online
subscription

Purchase
Online Subscription

Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives including pdf downloads for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!


RENEW your online subscription

gift subscriptions

GIVE Print &
Online Subscription

Give six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for the reduced rate of $29.95. That's only $2.50 per month!


RENEW your gift subscription

Transactions will be processed on a secure server.

bulk subscriptions

Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.

kindle subscription

OR get a subscription to Touchstone to read on your Kindle for only $1.99 per month! (This option is KINDLE ONLY and does not include either print or online.)

Your subscription goes a long way to ensure that Touchstone is able to continue its mission of publishing quality Christian articles and commentary.


more from the online archives

30.2—March/April 2017

Keep Them from Idols

The Education of Children Takes Generations of Fidelity by W. Ross Blackburn

29.4—July/August 2016

The Very Idea

on Anselm's God & the Virtue of Existing  by Tara L. Jernigan

31.1—January/February 2018

Vikings Under the Son

on Ragnarök, an Extreme Weather Event & the Paths to Conversion by Timothy J. Burbery

00