ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the two extant ekphraseis of Hagia Sophia transformed the objects of sense perception into potential objects of intellection, and how Procopius and Paul the Silentiary transcended the material reality of the building of Hagia Sophia into a monument of wisdom. Famed for its 'marvellous beauty', the architectural structure and interior decoration of Hagia Sophia was not only innovative in its own time, but would prove paradigmatic for the architecture of later periods, while epitomising Byzantine identity. Viewing Hagia Sophia through sixth-century eyes is to succumb to this aesthetics of light grounded in an ideology of vision that allows for uncertainties and that requires the intellectual engagement of the viewer's mind. The visual and the intellectual are thus merged in order to reach beyond mere surface appearances and to open up for spiritual and philosophical contemplation of the divine immanence manifest in the material reality of Hagia Sophia.
