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On the Threshold Paul the Silentiary’S Ekphrasis of Hagia Sophia

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On the Threshold Paul the Silentiary’S Ekphrasis of Hagia Sophia Chapter 1 On the Threshold Paul the Silentiary’s Ekphrasis of Hagia Sophia Emilie M. van Opstall The starting point for this introductory chapter is the Ekphrasis of Hagia Sophia written by Paul the Silentiary in the sixth century CE. With this poem as a guide, I will take the reader on a tour of the actual church of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), built in the same century and still to be admired in the city of Istanbul today. I will discuss in turn each mention of a church door in Paul’s hexameters, with special attention to the main entrance to Hagia Sophia, the so-called ‘Imperial Doors’, originally reserved for the emperor, the patriarch and their retinues. A literary commentary accompanies each reference to a church door, followed by a digression addressing archaeological and cultural- historical issues. Adopting a comparative perspective, other ekphraseis and monuments are taken into account, both Christian and pagan.1 My aim is to reconstruct the wide range of elements that could have shaped the experience of a person entering Hagia Sophia in the sixth century. What would someone entering this church have seen, heard, smelled, or felt? Who was excluded at the church gates, and who was admitted? What symbolic meaning did these doors have? Which continuities or changes can be identified regarding pagan religious culture? This interdisciplinary exploration of a poem and a building is meant to offer the reader a paradigm for the various possible approaches to 1 Besides the present Ekphrasis, there are several other contemporary literary sources for Hagia Sophia: Procopius, De Aed. 1.1.20–78, Malalas, Chron. 18.143 (ed. Thurn), Agathias, Hist. 5.9, Evagrius, Hist. Eccl. 4.31, Romanus the Melodist, Hymn 54 and an anonymous inauguration- kontakion (see ed. Trypanis (1968) 139–147, ‘the popular counterpart of Paul the Silentiary’s erudite ekphrasis of St Sophia’, and Palmer and Rodley (1988) 137–151). Source material from later periods (see Mango (1986) and (1992), Dagron (1984)) will not be taken into consider- ation in this article unless referring to features from the sixth century. The amount of stud- ies on Hagia Sophia is infinite, as is the variety in approach. To cite some recent examples: Nelson (2004) (reception), Fobelli (2005) (translation with an art historical commentary), Moran (2006) (music and liturgy), Mainstone (1988) and Stichel (2010) (liturgy), Guidobaldi and Barsanti (2009) (doors and bronze elements), Bell (2009) (politics), Hauck, Noback and Grobe (2010) (light), De Stefani (2011) (textual edition), Pentcheva (2011) and (2017) (multi- sensory aesthetics), Kostenec and Dark (2011) (archaeology), Schibille (2014) (aesthetics); van Opstall (2017) (rhetorical analysis). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004369009_003 32 van Opstall the theme of this volume: Sacred Thresholds. The Door to the Sanctuary in Late Antiquity. Preliminaries2 Hagia Sophia was built in 532–537 to replace the church that burned during the Nika riots of 532. During the years that followed, political unrest and natu- ral disasters continued to undermine the authority of the emperor Justinian. Several riots, an attempt on the emperor’s life, famine and bubonic plague had left their marks on the imperial authority. In 557–558, the dome and eastern end of Hagia Sophia collapsed during a series of earthquakes. By rebuilding the church quickly and raising its dome higher than before, Justinian clearly aimed to regain authority, at least symbolically, and to this end he organized a series of rededication ceremonies from 24 December 562 to 6 January 563. This was the occasion for which Paul the Silentiary wrote his Ekphrasis of Hagia Sophia. He recited his verses personally, probably on the final day of the ceremonies,3 in the presence of Justinian and the patriarch Eutychius, as well as the clergy and the educated elite. He used the description of the church to extol impe- rial benevolence and power.4 By doing so, he followed the example of his con- temporary Procopius of Caesarea, who in his On buildings was the first to use buildings as a central element of imperial panegyric. Thus, Paul’s poem is a panegyric with a strong political message, attributing an important role to the agency of the emperor in the (re-)construction of the church. Justinian is pre- sented as the highly esteemed patron who quickly rebuilt the church with its magnificent dome, turning it into a beacon of divine light. The extension of his imperial power and influence is shown by the various building materials brought to Constantinople from all over the empire. Paul’s Ekphrasis not only provides us with information on how Hagia Sophia was perceived and used, but also on how the poet wanted it to be perceived and used.5 The Ekphrasis contains over 1000 lines and is structured as follows: 2 For a general introduction to the poem and its context see Whitby (1985), Macrides and Magdalino (1988), Fobelli (2005), Bell (2009). 3 The exact date of the deliverance of Paul the Silentiary’s Ekphrasis is still a matter of debate. 4 See Whitby (2000). 5 For excellent discussions of the phenomenon of ekphrasis in Antiquity and Byzantium, see James and Webb (1991) and Webb (1999a and b, and 2009), and of ekphraseis of buildings in particular, see Webb (2011)..
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