ABSTRACT

The preceding chapters explored how the sixth-century architectural structure and interior decoration of Hagia Sophia responded to the late antique aesthetic of light, colour and their ephemeral effects. The sensuous perception of the beauty and luminosity of early Byzantine church buildings more generally was seen as the starting point for the spiritual journey (theoria) and assimilation to the divine (theurgy). On account of being the most important Greek Orthodox Church, Hagia Sophia undoubtedly helped to shape and promulgate this aesthetic of light within the Byzantine Empire. Unlike a basilica, Hagia Sophia’s architectural structure with its different spatial layers and cascading dome and semi-domes established a centralised, seemingly circular space (χορός/χορα), filled with light.1 Light and its effects that created scintillating surface appearances, contributed to the sense of animation (ἔμψυχος) that in turn served to articulate the otherwise ineffable divine. These phenomenal effects of light evidently led to the intense aesthetic reactions that were expressed in the sixth-century rhetorical descriptions, highlighting light as a major component of the aesthetic experience. The ecclesiastical interior animated through the tangible presence of light imbued the architectural structure of Hagia Sophia with divine pneuma and thus engaged the viewers’ aesthetic as well as spiritual response.2 The church of Hagia Sophia was literally brought to life through the agency of (divine) light

1 Nicoletta Isar discussed the concept of chora/choros in context of the circular architectural space of Hagia Sophia. Nicoletta Isar, ‘The iconic Chôra: A kenotic space of presence and void’, Transfiguration: Nordisk Tidsskrift for kunst og kristendom 2 (2000); Nicoletta Isar, ‘“Xopos of light”: Vision of the sacred in Paulus the Silentiary’s poem Descriptio S. Sophia’, Byzantinische Forschungen 28 (2004).