Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/207

 THE CONDITION OF CONSTANTINOPLE IN 1200. 189 it was stripped of its glory and became the chief temple of a rival creed. The builders of the Great Church had plundered other fa- mous edifices in order to decorate what was intended to out- strip the glory of Solomon's temple, and in order to complete what remained for nearly a thousand years the masterpiece of Christian architecture and the dominant model for all churches in Eastern Europe. They had transported the eight large columns of green granite from the temple of Diana at Ephesus; the eight porphyry columns, with beautiful white capitals and pedestals, had been brought from the Ro- man Temple of the Sun, of Aurelian ; the twenty-four columns of granite which support the galleries had come from Egypt. The church was full of costly objects which had been sent from every part of the empire, while the Byzantine architects had covered the ceiling with gold and mosaic pictures which, even in their present form, mutilated in accordance with the requirements of Moslem nakedness, give an idea of the rich and magnificent effect which they must have produced on the spectator six hundred years ago. The altar and the taber- nacle were, even amid so much that was gorgeous, conspicu- ous by their splendor. The octagonal tower surmounting the tabernacle had over it a golden lily upon the imperial orb and cross. The screen secluding the bema or chancel con- tained twelve silver columns. The patriarchal throne and those of the seven priests were covered with the same pre- cious metal. AVithin the vestries were an immense number of chalices and vases and 42,000 robes embroidered with pearls and precious stones. Twenty-four Gospels, written on parchment with all the skill of the East, were preserved in massive gold cases. The chandeliers were of gold, and ever'- thing belonging to the interior of the church Vv-as on a similar scale of magnificence. Add to this that the ceremonial had been arranged with a view to splendor, that barbarous envoys had been so stricken by the magnificence of this ceremonial and by the sense of awe and majesty which it produced that they reported what they saw to be supernatural, and we may realize the effect which the service in Ilagia Sophia produced