§ lOT. THE BYZANTINE STYLE. 555
spot of Christ, ou tlie Mount of Olives in memory of tbe aseen sion, and over the holy sepulchre on Mount Calvary. Justinian also sometimes built basilicas, for variety, together with his splendid Byzantine churches; and of these the church of St. Mary in Jerusalem was the finest, and was destined to imitate the temple of Solomon, but it w^as utterly blotted out by the Mohammedans. '
§ 107. The Byzantine Style.
pBonopius : De sedificiis Justiniani. L. i. c. 1-3. Cak. Dofeesne Dom, Du Oange: Constaatinopolis Christiana. Venet. 1729. Salzenbekq tJND Kortum: Altchristliche Baudenkmale Constantinopels vom V. bis XII. Jahrh. (40 magnificent copperplates and illustrations). Berlin, 1854.
The second style which meets us in this period, is the Byzantine, which in the West modified the basilica style, in the East soon superseded it, and in the Russo-Greek church has maintained itself to this day. It dates from the sixth century, from the reign of the scholarly and art-loving emperor Justinian I. (527-565), which was the flourishing period of Constantinople and of the centralized ecclesiastico-political despotism, in many respects akin to the age of Louis XIY. of France.
Tlie characteristic featiire of this style is the hemispherical dome, which, like the vault of heaven with its glory, spanned the centre of the Greek or the Latin cross, supported by massive columns (instead of slender pillars like the basilicas), and by its height and its prominence ruling the other parts of the building. This dome corresponds on the one hand to the centralizing principle of the Byzantine empire,^ but at the same
' Comp. the more minute descriptions of these churches in the above-mentioned fllustrated work of Guttensohn and Knapp : Monumenta di religione christ., etc., 1822-'27, and the explanatory text by Bunsen: Die Basiliken des christl. Roma. Milnchen, 1843. Also Gottfried Kinkel: Gesehichte der bildeuden Kiinsten bei den ?hristlichen Volkern, i. p, 61 sijq., and Ferd. von Quast: Die Basilika der Alten.
" Kurtz, in his large Handbuch der K. Gesch., 3d ed. i. 372, well says : " Tho Kyzantine state, in that maturity of it which Constantino introduced and Justinian completed, was, in polity, as astonishing, gorgeous, majestic a centralized edifice, ai
556 TIIIED I'EKIOD. A.D. 311-590.
time, and far more clearly than the flat basilica, to that i.pward striving of the Cliristian spirit from the earth towards the height of heaven, wliich afterwards more phiinly expressed itself in the pointed arches and the towers of the Germanic cathedral. " While in tlie basilica style everything looks towards the end of the building where the altar and episcopal throne are set, and by this prevailing connection the upward direction is denied a free expression, in the dome structure everything concentrates itself about the spacious centre of the building over which, drawing the eye irresistibly upward, rises to an awe-inspiring height the majestic central dome. The basilica presents in the apse a figure of the horizon from which the sun of righteousness arises in his glory ; the Byzantine building unfolds in the dome a figure of the whole vault of heaven in sublime, imposing nuijesty, but detracts thereby from the prominence of the altar, and leaves for it only a place of subordinate import."
The dome is not, indeed, absolutely new. The Pantheon in Rome, whose imposing dome has a diameter of a hundred and thirty-two feet, dates from the age of Augustus, b. c. 26. But here the dome rises on a circular wall, and so strikes root in the earth, altogether in character with tlie heathen religion. The Byzantine dome rests on few columns connected by arches, and, like the vault of heaven, freely spans tlie central space of the church in airy lieight, without shutting up that space by walls.
Around the main central dome' stand four smaller domes in a square, and upon each dome rises a lofty gilded cross, which in the earlier churches stands upon a crescent, hung with all sorts of chains, and fastened by these to the dome.
The noblest and most complete building of this kind is the
the church of St. Sophia in arch'tccture. Tlie imperial power, as absolute autocracy, was the all-ruHiig, all-moving centre of the whole state life. The main dome, over-topping all, the full expression of the majesty of the centre, towards which all parts of the building strove, .o which all were subservient, in the fij)li'ndor of which all basked, was the court and the residence; on it the provinces and the authrrities pet over them leaned, as the subordinate side-domes or half-domes on tlie main one."
' 96\os.