Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/55

 PROGRESS OF THE SELJUKS. 37 was suddenly thrown into a thinly populated district. Accord- ing to the illustration of Gibbon, the shepherd had praved for water, and the Ganges was turned from its channel into his grounds and swept away his flock and cottage. Alexis had asked for help, but a devouring host had forced its way through his dominions. There were reputed to be half a million of Crusaders who left their homes and who marched in more or less disorderly fashion to the Holy Land. Anna Comnena describes the army as like the sand of the sea or the leaves of the trees — as Europe loosened from its founda- tions and hurled against Asia. But it was in Asia Minor that the First Crusade met with its chief difficulties, and the obstacles which the Crusaders found it impossible to surmount give us a fair gauge of the difficulties with which the empire had had to contend. Once crnsnders be- i^iorc Nicssa bccamc the centre of interest. The fore Nicsea. aucicnt city which had in great part formulated and had given its name to the creed which is common to all Chris- tians was, as we have seen, in the occupation of the Turks. The Church of the Divine Wisdom, where probably the Second General Council was held, had become a mosque.^ Kilidji Arslan had done all that he could to make the city impreg- nable. Its walls, built partly under the rule of the Eoman emperors immediately after the commencement of the Chris- tian era, but mainly by the Byzantine emperors, were strength- ' Gibbon says, in speaking of the appearance of the Crusaders before Nicsea (vol. vi. Bohn's edition, p. 386) : " The divinity of Christ was de- nied and derided in the same temple in which it had been pronounced by the First General Synod of tlic Catholics/' This is a mistake. The temple which Gibbon had in view was the ancient church of Ilagia Sophia. This Avas converted into a mosque, which is now in ruins, but still bears traces in its form, and in the remains of fresco painting and mosaics on its walls, of its Christian origin. I visited and made a care- ful examination of it in April, 1882, and have no doubt whatever that it is of Byzantine origin, and that it belongs to the middle period of By- zantine architecture. It is built, like most of the Byzantine churches, on the model of the Church of the Divine Wisdom at Constantinople, and is therefore long subsequent to the meeting of the First General Synod, in u25. It may, however, have been the meeting-place of the Second General Council held in Nicaea.