Architecture, Byzantine; Byzantine Empire; Istanbul (Turkey) -- Description and travel; Justinian I, Emperor of the East, 483?-565
He built another church in her honour in the place which is called
the Fountain, where there is a thick grove of cypress trees, a meadow
whose rich earth blooms with flowers, a garden abounding in fruit, a
fountain which noiselessly pours forth a quiet and sweet stream of
water, in short where all the surroundings beseem a sacred place. Such
is the country around the church; but as for the church itself, it is
not easy to describe it in fitting words, to form an idea of it in the
mind, or to express it in language; let it suffice for me to say thus
much of it, that in beauty and size it surpasses most other churches.
Both these churches are built outside the city walls, the one at the
place where the wall starts from the sea-shore, the latter close
to what is called the Golden Gate, which is near the further end of
the fortifications, in order that both of them might form impregnable
defences for the city walls. Besides these, in the temple of Hera, now
called the Hiereum, he erected a church in honour of the Virgin, which
cannot easily be described.
In that part of the city which is called Deuteron[10] he built a noble
and admirable church in honour of St. Anne, whom some think to have
been the mother of the Virgin, and the grandmother of Christ; for God,
in choosing to become man, subjected Himself to having grand-parents
and a genealogy on His mother’s side like a man. Not very far from this
church, in the last street of the city, there is a fine church built in
honour of the martyr Zoe.
He found the church of the Archangel Michael[11] at Byzantium small,
very dark, and quite unworthy of being dedicated to the archangel,
having been built by one Senator, a patrician in former times, and
in shape very like a small bedroom in a poor man’s house. Wherefore
he razed it entirely to the ground, that no part of its former
unseemliness might be left, and rebuilding it of a goodly size, in
the manner which we now see, changed it into a building of wonderful
beauty. This church is of a quadrangular form, its length apparently
not greatly exceeding its width; of its sides, that which looks towards
the east has at its extremities a thick wall constructed of a great
mass of stones, but in the middle is set back, forming a recess, on
each side of which the roof is supported by columns of variegated
stone. The opposite wall, that towards the west, is pierced with doors
opening into the church.
[Illustration: PLAN OF CHURCH OF SS. SERGIUS AND BACCHUS.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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