_Nicephorus_ inveighs bitterly against the Empress _Anna_, who in the Reign of _Catacosmus_, sacrilegiously robb’d the Church of all its Furniture and Ornaments, and exclaims heavily, that the Tyranny, Oppression, and the different Sects and Opinions of those Times, were the chief Occasion of the Destruction of this Church: For, as he subjoins, one Midnight when the Sky was very clear, one of the Eastern Arches fell to the Ground, and brought that Part of the Roof, which it supported, after it, which broke down the Pulpit, the Images which adorn’d it, and demolished the middle Galleries. He adds farther, that it was the Opinion of many in those Times, that if _Andronicus_ the Emperor had not built Buttresses on the East-side of the Church, it had wholly sunk into Ruines. _Evagrius_ determines the Length of the Church in the following manner: From the Arch, where the bloodless Sacrifice is offer’d, to the Gate opposite to it, it is an hundred and ninety Foot long; from North to South it is a hundred and fifteen Foot broad; and from the Pavement to the Center of the Roof, it is a hundred and eighty Foot high. It was dangerous for me to measure its Length from East to West, so that I was obliged to have the Dimensions of it taken for me by a _Turk_, who made his Report, that the Church was two hundred and thirteen Foot in Breadth, two hundred and forty in Length, and from the Pavement to the highest Curvature of the Arches, a hundred and forty two Foot in Height. The Fellow never measured the Roof; If he had taken the Height of it true, he had found but a small Difference between his own Account and that of _Evagrius_. Should the Reader desire to be inform’d more at large of the Dimensions, and the Architecture of this Church, as it stood in former Times, let him consult _Procopius_, _Agathius_, _Paulus Florus_, and _Evagrius_. What the Architecture and Dimensions of it are at present, I shall, as far as my Observations have reach’d, describe more fully in the following Chapter. CHAP. IV. _A Description of the Church of St._ Sophia, _as it now appears_.