A.

LECTURER ON ARCHITECTURE, COLLEGE OF ART, EDINBURGH

W. S. GEORGE, A.R.C.A., AND A. E. HENDERSON, F.S.A.

WITH MAPS, PLANS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1912

COPYRIGHT

PREFACE

This volume is a sequel to the work I published, several years ago,
under the title, _Byzantine Constantinople: the Walls of the City, and
adjoining Historical Sites_. In that work the city was viewed, mainly,
as the citadel of the Roman Empire in the East, and the bulwark of
civilization for more than a thousand years. But the city of Constantine
was not only a mighty fortress. It was, moreover, the centre of a great
religious community, which elaborated dogmas, fostered forms of piety,
and controlled an ecclesiastical administration that have left a
profound impression upon the thought and life of mankind. New Rome was a
Holy City. It was crowded with churches, hallowed, it was believed, by
the remains of the apostles, prophets, saints, and martyrs of the
Catholic Church; shrines at which men gathered to worship, from near and
far, as before the gates of heaven. These sanctuaries were, furthermore,
constructed and beautified after a fashion which marks a distinct and
important period in the history of art, and have much to interest the
artist and the architect. We have, consequently, reasons enough to
justify our study of the churches of Byzantine Constantinople.

Of the immense number of the churches which once filled the city but a
small remnant survives. Earthquakes, fires, pillage, neglect, not to
speak of the facility with which a Byzantine structure could be shorn of
its glory, have swept the vast majority off the face of the earth,
leaving not a rack behind. In most cases even the sites on which they
stood cannot be identified. The places which knew them know them no
more. Scarcely a score of the old churches of the city are left to us,
all with one exception converted into mosques and sadly altered. The
visitor must, therefore, be prepared for disappointment. Age is not
always a crown of glory; nor does change of ownership and adaptation to
different ideas and tastes necessarily conduce to improvement. We are
not looking at flowers in their native clime or in full bloom, but at
flowers in a herbarium so t