Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/325

 x] ARCHTTECTURE 307 St. Sophia represents a new style of edifice. The skill of its construction, the excellence and beauty of its interior, are known to all. The genius of Chris- tianity was here operative, and yet did not reach complete expression of itself. The lack of sculpture prevented the building from declaring its end and aim in the speech most germane to architecture. There was an aversion in the Greek Church to statuary smacking of idolatry. Byzantine carving is decorative rather than expressive. Yet architecturally St. Sophia was as truly a Christian creation as the stately hymns of Romanos, who may have lived while its domes were rising. Like those hymns, St. Sophia was a Christianizing of art through the strength and genius of the civilized and mature Greek race, and with no infusion of young blood; and, like those hymns, St. Sophia was not imaffected by the formalism of an over-mature civilization in which the culture and prin- ciples of the great classic past had become lifeless conventions. In the West, meanwhile, the old basil- ica style of antique Christian building continued its unprogressive existence, and antique metres remained supreme in Latin Christian poetry. It required cen- turies for the religious genius of the North to free itself from metre, and create true heart-expressing Christian hymns ; likewise centuries passed before the Germanic genius attained the power and knowl- edge to create a Christian architecture. The West latter method may be seen in the church of S. Giovanni dei Eremiti or in the Capella Palatina, at Palermo. The juncture between the square base and the dome is effected — not very gracefully — by three adraDcing arobet springing from the corners of the base.