Justinian's Hagia Sophia
Emperor Justinian dedicates the Great Church of Holy Wisdom in Constantinople, for nearly a thousand years the heart of Orthodox worship.
- Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire — Judith Herrin, Allen Lane (2007)
- The Orthodox Church — Timothy Ware, Penguin (1993)
- The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire — J. M. Hussey, Oxford University Press (1986)
After riots burned the old cathedral in 532, Emperor Justinian had it rebuilt in under six years by the architects Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus. Its vast dome seemed, as the court historian Procopius wrote, to hang from heaven. For the next nine centuries Hagia Sophia was the cathedral of the Patriarch of Constantinople and the stage for the empire’s liturgy, where emperor and patriarch performed together the ideal of symphonia, church and state in harmony. Byzantine worship, music and architecture, shaped here, became the pattern for Orthodox churches from Georgia to Moscow.
- Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire — Judith Herrin, Allen Lane (2007)
- The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire — J. M. Hussey, Oxford University Press (1986)
- The Orthodox Church — Timothy Ware, Penguin (1993)
Why it matters today
Hagia Sophia is still the symbol of Byzantine Orthodoxy, the church whose beauty, according to the chronicle, won the Rus' to the faith. Its conversion to a mosque in 1453, its time as a museum and its reconversion in 2020 are felt by Orthodox Christians everywhere as part of their own story.