The Church that knows how to Survive.
Humans are not only bound by predetermined destinies, but are also capable of great and innovative creations that defy expectations. The secret of Light in Hagia Sophia has an awesome power.
Hagia Sophia has a unique history. Since its inauguration, its use has changed multiple times and the church remained standing and sacred despite earthquakes, fires and raids for more than 1500 years.
By consensus Hagia Sophia, also known as the Church of the Holy Wisdom built at Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) in the 6th century (532–537 AD) under the direction of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I is the most important Byzantine structure and one of the world’s great monuments.
Numerous legends have been associated with it ever since it was first built.
It was a time when the king in Constantinople rejected one architectural plan of the church after the other, presented to him by his master-builder, since nothing was to his liking. He wanted something else, much more important. And the master builder was always thinking what new design to make.
Legend has it that during a religious ceremony he grabbed a piece of bread which was taken way from him by a bee. In search to find it the bee and the kings bread ,they opened up all of the kingdom beehives until they found what they were looking for stuck inside a honeycomb, shaped into a magnificent church carved with all details and grandeur that the king was looking for .
The master-builder saw the church inside the beehive and was amazed by its perfect design. The king then saw her too and was overjoyed. The plan, made by the bees, became the final architectural plan of the church.
Hagia Sophia was for centuries the beating heart of the Orthodox world. During the 13th century, when the crusaders were in control of Constantinople, it was briefly a Catholic cathedral, too.
After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II had it repurposed as a mosque, with the addition of a wooden minaret (on the exterior, a tower used for the summons to prayer), a great chandelier, a mihrab (niche indicating the direction of Mecca), and a minbar (pulpit). Either he or his son Bayezid II erected the red minaret that stands on the southeast corner of the structure. The original wooden minaret did not survive.
Art historians consider the building’s beautiful mosaics to be the main source of knowledge about the state of mosaic art in the time shortly after the end of the Iconoclastic Controversy in the 8th and 9th centuries. The Hagia Sophia is a component of a UNESCO World Heritage site called the Historic Areas of Istanbul (designated 1985), which includes that city’s other major historic buildings and locations.
The great paradox of the Ottomans towards the temple was their respect after the fall of some mosaics such as the ‘Pantocrator” in the Dome, the “Platytera” and the Archangels Gabriel and Michael in the niche of the sanctuary as well as the four seraphim under the dome which have remained intact for centuries.
The remaining mosaics depicting faces were covered with smear as the Islamic religion did not favor their emergence. Sultan Abdul Mesit in 1849 decided to eliminate all the crosses that were the main decorative element in many parts and even covered the seraphim with golden radial cones, turning the old and sacred Christian church into something that had fallen from the initial purpose.
In 1935, Kemal Ataturk, the leader of the secular march of Turkey in the 20th century, turned it into a museum. This decision was changed a few weeks ago by the current president of Turkey and once again in its history, Hagia Sophia became a mosque.
In a postmodern age, like ours, an age of absence of god and generalised infidelity, where is the power and significance of this temple today?
Everyone speaks as soon as they wander through it for its light. Everyone from the beginning attributes its power to its light. So what is this light? Where does it come from? And why does it exert so much awe and metaphysical influence on almost all its visitors? What is the secret? Is there anyone?
Let us try to move mentally inside the temple. Wander slowly to understand what we are talking about. The main entrance consists of three central gates that lead in turn to five large doors and from there to a new nine entrance gates. The light here is scarce.
As we enter a sweet dim light surrounds us and we see the light of the great royal gate. The light is strong and its source creates for the first time a contrast. A dialogue between darkness and dim light and strong light in the mind and the heart of the visitor.
As we cross the Imperial Gate the entrance of emperors and patriarchs everything is bathed in a golden like mystique light. Bright and clear. Countless windows everywhere create a sense of direction to the dome that seems to be the cause of the bright celebration.
The light seems like a sun, directed from above like a river but it has no enmity towards the human eye. It is friendly and familiar, sweet and pleasant. Three large windows direct beam light to the visitors of the temple.
The alternation of strong light from the dome, dim light from the wise windows, and their triangular shapes make obvious that a metaphysical agreement of light has been made in here. It is as if the light creates the temple and not the walls and the materials. The light reaches from 56 meters high from the dome.
Four huge columns of magnificent deep green granite brought from the ancient Greek temple of Artemis in Ephesus create a sense of security and trust.
The marbles that dress them and follow them are from porphyritic stone, jasper and serpentine stone. With their wavy waters, their nerves, creating light surfaces without gravity as the light that falls on them is absorbed in their colored waves and is reflected on the white surfaces.
We are at the core of the temple. The light intensifies as it reaches the height of the columns. In the second row in the attic, it has the same intensity as the dome. The light coming in through the 40 windows of the dome as it goes down and attenuates its intensity amplifies and is amplified in a harmonious arrangement coming in from 24 total windows of the walls.
As the south wall receives sunlight all day, it illuminates clearly to the opposite side of the temple. From above a large beam of light from the west comes from a huge semicircular window and compensates for the diffusion in space. The beam of light comes here horizontally and intersects with the other sources inside the temple.
It joins with the wonderful central light beam from the dome and here is the big secret. The meeting of vertical and horizontal light sources creates a feeling that the light moves upwards towards the dome makes it hover and hover. The dome has something of the grace of the god for whom the temple was built, of the holy god of wisdom. Everything is light, secret, festive.
I turn my gaze to “Deisi” (the Prayer), one of the magnificent mosaics of the temple that contains in its faces the sadness and kindness of being a Christian in the years of prosperity of this temple.
A legend says that shortly before the temple was finished, the workers and builders stopped for rest and food.
The master-builder Ignatius left his child in one of the columns to keep the tools. Then a beardless man in white appeared to the child and ordered him to go and shout at them not to delay work.The child explained that he had been ordered not to leave and he told him “In the name of Hagia Sophia that you are building now, I will stay in your place until you return”. The child left and told the Master Builder the order he had received because it seemed to him that he was an official eunuch of the emperor and he had no beard. Justinian the emperor understood that he was an angel.
He did not let the child return, he sent him away to another place so that he would never return to the temple and so that the angel would remain there forever faithful to his oath, being her eternal guardian.
In Hagia Sophia, the matter has been distorted by light in and meets the light at the same time, not to hide it, not to absorb it, not to alter it. Especially in the center of the temple at the level of the human eye. Thus the large size of the temple creates grace of light, a human meter that does not exhaust and makes the huge height not distant but accessible and tangible.
The depth is eliminated and the height is equal. Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles the architects succeeded in Designing the temple in this way and brought the light inside the temple to elevate the Christian soul with a Human meter before the god.
As christians, the metro, the harmony, the rhythm made them create a temple where it leaves the gaze and the spirit as well as the heart to be instilled and to pray beyond the senses and the natural world,
In a meeting with their living god in the Holy of God Sophia. With light as a guide and angel.
The same angel that has promised to stay in place to protect it, many centuries ago.
PS. The Christian church of Hagia Sophia is now officially converted into a mosque. On July 24, the current leader of the country will take part in a religious prayer inside Hagia Sophia to celebrate this new change in its use. Once again, mosaics and icons related to the Christianity of the church will be covered. Whether the architecture of the light inside the temple will be affected is something we cannot know at this time.
Christians, however, do not have the right to pray within it and perform their religious duties.
As C.C. Sahner, associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Oxford recently wrote in an article in WSJ “Hagia Sophia is the most famous example of a phenomenon that is fairly widespread in Islamic history (as well as many cultures around the world): the competitive conversion of sacred space. In North Africa, Egypt, Syria, and beyond, the oldest mosques were often built on the sites of Christian churches. These churches, in turn, had often replaced synagogues and temples, creating an architectural palimpsest layered by conquest and conversion”