Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia revolutionized architecture.

It established a unique Byzantine perspective, an exotic Middle Eastern style far different from that found elsewhere in the far-flung Roman Empire.

Many features of Hagia Sophia can be found in the Blue Mosque, including the massive dome.

Mary and Jesus flanked by Emperors Justinian and Constantine I

Hagia Sophia means "Holy Wisdom" in Greek, foreshadowing by a century when Greek would replace replace Latin as the official language of the Roman Empire.

By the time Byzantine Emperor Justinian commissioned construction of Hagia Sophia in 532 AD, Rome itself had been overthrown by Odoacer, the German Barbarian leader who became the first King of Italy

The pink area was what remained of the Roman Empire at the time of the "Fall."

Many consider the surrender of western Roman Emperor Romulus in 476 AD as the final straw in the Fall of the Roman Empire, but what is now referred to as the Byzantine Empire continued for almost a thousand years more, referring to themselves as Romans.

The remainder of the empire expanded and contracted dramatically over time, as this dynamic map I found in a Vox Media article about Roman maps demonstrates.

Designed by architects Isidore of Militus and Anthemius of Tralles, Hagia Sophia became the world's largest cathedral upon its completion in 537 AD.

It would have remained so until Spain's Seville Cathedral supplanted it in 1520, but in 1453, when Constantinople surrendered to the Ottoman Empire, Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque.

Sultan Mehmed II's soldiers had begun to pillage the church, following the traditional thesis of war that "to the victors go the spoils."

Mehmed, however, stopped his troops from razing the beautiful structure.

Emperor John II Komnenos, Mary with Jesus, Empress Irene

After removing the bells, crosses, altars, relics and other religious artifacts, Mehmed nonetheless had religious mosaics featuring Jesus, Mary and everyone else plastered over.

That's because "Aniconism" forbids depiction of Mohammed and Islamic prophets in art, as you may remember from incidents with cartoons over recent years.

Anicosnism extends further to discourage depiction of any humans or animals in art.

Interior and exterior elements of mosques, including four minarets, were added, and Hagia Sophia served as the primary mosque of Constantinople until Sultan Ahmed's Blue Mosque was completed in 1616.



The former Greek Orthodox Church remained a mosque until 1931, when the Republic of Turkey converted it into a museum.

Since then, restorers have worked to refurbish this masterpiece, stripping away plaster to reveal beautiful mosaics which had been thought lost forever.

Large discs from the mosque era detract from the original interior design.

As the construction of the Blue Mosque to some extent marked the plateauing of the Ottoman Empire, the fall of Constantinople and conversion of the greatest church in Christendom to a mosque marked the true end of the Roman Empire.

Despite having lost Rome and being called "Byzantine" by historians beginning a century after the fall of Constantinople, make no mistake: this was the Roman Empire.

Due to having consistently more competent rulers than the Rome-based western European branch of the Roman Empire, the Constantinople-based Christian Roman Empire had survived considerably longer.

Just to connect the historical dots, on Christmas Day in the year 800, Pope Leo III crowned Frankish King Charlemagne as Emperor, reviving the title in Western Europe, but he had no direct tie to the original Roman Empire.

These ancestors of the former "Barbarians at the Gate," of course, would eventually come to the aid of Christians being tormented in the Holy Lands.

Much of central Europe became confederated as the Holy Roman Empire, which would survive until 1806.