Many of the points in this celebration of the wonders of S. Sophia seem to be traceable to the writer’s absorbing traditions of the work of Basil--who built like a goldsmith at his new church--into his account. In the destructive rapacity of the Crusaders and the interregnum that followed while they occupied S. Sophia we find such a satisfactory cause for this half-mythical retrospect undertaken in all good faith that we cannot think it was written until after the Frankish ascendency. We need not suppose that the Anonymous invented even the wildest of these stories; such stories grow up as a matter of course, and to-day various forms of some of them are told within the walls of many other buildings. The accounts given by the Russian pilgrims (see Chapter VI) agree so closely in many respects with the Anonymous description that we might think the writer had been their guide in the church. That the stories were widely told in Constantinople at this time is proved by the account of S. Sophia given by El Harawi, an Arab traveller, who visited the city in the thirteenth century. “Here is also Agia Sophia, the greatest church they have. I was told by Yakub Ibn Abd Allah that he had entered it: within are 360 doors. And they say one of the angels resides there; round about this place they have made fences of gold, and the story they relate of him is very strange.”[230] This story of the angel recalls the Wingless Victory of the Athenian acropolis, but it is probably more closely related to the “Angels of the Churches” in the Revelation. An interesting reference to this thought is made by Palladius in his Life of Chrysostom. Before he left S. Sophia for ever the patriarch entered it saying, “Come let us pray and say farewell to the Angel of the Church;” but, adds his biographer, “the Angel departed with him.” We give here an account of the church from a thirteenth-century English MS., in the British Museum, _Vit. A._ xx. 14, which refers to the more commonplace part of the story as told by the Anonymous. “That famous city is endowed with wonderful and inestimable wealth. In it may be seen the famous church Agia Sophia, that is the Holy Wisdom; an angel of God appeared and taught the workmen as they were building. Underneath the church in its cisterns there is refreshing water, some of which is salt and some of it rainwater. The church below is borne on one hundred and seventy-three columns of marbles, and above on two hundred and forty-six. Round the choir from the top to the bottom it is covered with silver gilt. And this same choir has an altar ‘starred’ (_stellatum_) all over with most wonderful and precious stones. In the church are lamps of the purest silver and gold, and their number cannot be counted. The church is opened and closed by seven hundred and fifty-two double doors, and there are windows innumerable. There are seven hundred prebendary priests, of which three hundred and fifty take each week in turn. Now