ABSTRACT
The Bulgars, pursuing their imperial ambitions, besieged Constantinople three times between 814 and 924. The resurgence of commerce inside and outside the rump of the empire, following the establishment of viable Muslim polities, was the condition: the venerable capital lay on the east-west and north-south crossroads of trade, pilgrimage, diplomacy and thought. By the opening of the Macedonian era in Byzantium a centralized space crowned by a dome was widely seen as the ideal theatre for the performance of mass in accordance with the liturgy as it had developed from Justinian's day: the mystery of the Eucharist was celebrated in a curtained enclosure from which the priests emerged into the naos to minister to the laity crowded into the ancillary spaces. In central and southern Greece the quincunx dominates as elsewhere but individuality of style derives from sharper geometry, limited planar variation and mixed masonry.
