In the past we've discussed here the lost Eastern Roman church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. We have already detailed, albeit at a very high level, the general historical background of this particular church in a previous article, but the reason for this particular follow up is that I recently came across some digital reconstructions that have been made of this particular church that seemed to be of interest.
Of course, it goes without saying that reconstructing something, anything, that has been lost to the sands of time, is an exercise that is wrought with a certain amount of subjectivity, and one naturally has to look to other period examples for at least some inspiration. We do have some extant historical sources however that describe the church (such as Nikolaos Mesarites' Description of the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople written in the twelfth century, or the writings of Constantine of Rhodes on the same written in the tenth century.) What is of particular note to me in exercises such as these are ascertaining the architectural elements and ordering that unite both East and West.
The original church of the Holy Apostles was built under the Emperor Constantine, however it is the second church, build under Justinian, that we are considering today, as very little is known about Constantine's church regrettably. Justinian's church boasted five domes and was set into a cruciform plan likely as follows:
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| Reconstructed plan of the church of the Holy Apostles by G. A. Soteriou |
The historian Procopius, a contemporary of the time, describes the altar and sanctuary as having sat within the middle of the church at the crossing, as can be seen in the diagram above. Behind it, in the Eastern arm, was the synthronon.
Typical features of a church of this period would include a chancel screen, or balustrade, which would separate the altar and sanctuary from the rest of the church, while the altar itself would be covered with a ciborium. We know the particular forms these took because of the testimony of the likes of Nikolaos Mesarites who describes the synthronon, an altar ("holy table") made of pure silver containing the relics of St. Luke, St. Andrew and St. Timothy, as well as the shape of the ciborium which he described as a "little roof which lies over the holy and sacred table" that "begins in the shape of a square supported by four columns, and ends in the shape of a pyramid made of triangular sawn slabs of royal stone."
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| Altar and sanctuary |
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| A view toward the narthex |
Of the domes of the church, Procopius has this to say:
That portion of the roof which is above the sanctuary, as it is called, is built, in the center at least, on a plan resembling the Church of Sophia, except that it is inferior to it in size. The arches, four in number, rise aloft and are bound together in the same manner and the circular drum which stands upon them is pierced by windows, and the dome which arches above this seems to float in the air and not to rest upon solid masonry, though actually it is well supported. Thus, then, was the central part of the roof constructed. And the arms of the building, which are four,... were roofed on the same plan as the central portion, but this one feature is lacking: underneath the domes the masonry is not pierced by windows.
Of the stonework of the church, Nikolaos Mesarites had this to say:
The whole Church, for the sake of strength and beauty, is bound round about, from the pavement to the summit, by three girdles, one might say, woven out of stone, placed at symmetrical intervals from each other... In the remainder of the space, down to the pavement, the whole wall is covered with many-colored sawn stone. The craftsman in finishing the stone brought it to such thinness that the wall seems to be covered with many-colored woven cloths. Indeed the stone bursts forth into such a shimmer that its glistening surface vanquishes any flower. Thus astonishing and completely surpassing is the native excellence of the stone, or rather the skill of the craftsman, who strove to add beauty to nature. It is supported, for the rest, with columns which are both numerous and of varied appearance, which begin and, so to speak, sprout up out of the pavement and come to an end at the dressing of stone which is over the faces of the colonnades.
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| One of the side naves |
By way of note, buried within the church of the Holy Apostles were several of the Eastern Roman emperors, not least of which the Emperor Constantine himself as well as Justinian and his wife Theodora.
In his description of the church, Nikolaos Mesarites says of it:
This Church, O spectators, is in its great size the greatest and in its beauty the most beautiful, as you see, and adorned by its great artistry and brilliancy, is an indescribable loveliness, an unimaginable creation, a work of art of human hands surpassing human thought, visible to the eye but incomprehensible to the mind . It does not please the senses more than it impresses the mind. For it fills the sight with the beauty of its colors and by the golden gleam of its mosaics...An agonizingly tantalizing description for a great historical church of the Eastern Roman Empire that is all but lost to us today.
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