Podcast episode

August 28, 2024

Episode 192: Hagia Sophia and the Problem of ‘Esoteric Architecture’

We discuss Hagia Sophia, Justinian’s greatest architectural accomplishment and, to this day, a major focal-point for interconfessional politics and symbolic storytelling. We use this extraordinary building to do a few things relevant to the podcast-project both specifically and generally: specifically, we look at the evidence for Hagia Sophia as an esoteric Late Platonist symbolon masquerading as a Christian church and for a coterie of polytheist Platonists operating unseen at the very highest levels of Justinian’s regime; generally, we explore just how treacherous the territory becomes when we try to say that architecture means something, especially when we are saying that it means something esoteric.

Featuring a cameo-appearance from the Great Pyramid at Giza.

Works Cited in this Episode:

Primary:

Justinian:

• For Justinian compared to Solomon, see e.g. Victoria Gerhold. Defeating Solomon: Intertextuality and Symbolism in the Legend of Hagia Sophia / Vencer a Salomón: intertextualidad y simbolismo en la leyenda de Santa Sofía. Scripta, 11(1):1138, 2018.
• Sets out to build Hagia Sophia almost immediately after the Nika riots: Chronicon Paschale 127 [a well-informed Constantinopolitan chronicle].

Hagia Sophia:

• Innovation of construction: see e.g Cyril Mango. The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312-1453. Toronto, 1986, p. 65: ‘No architect at the time could have calculated, even approximately, the thrusts that would be generated by a masonry dome of that size.’
• Used to be clad in marble: see Mango 1986 (cited just above) 59-68.
• Procopius’ ekphrasis of Hagia Sophia’s dome: On Buildings 1.1.46, for which the Loeb edition is handy: Procopius Vol. VII, Buildings, General Index. Translated by H.B. Dewing and Glanville Downey. Cambridge, MA/London Harvard University Press/William Heinemann, 1940.
• Allegedly designed by an angel, who passed the plans on to Justinian: 8th or 9th century text known as Narratio de ædificatione Sanctæ Sophiæ, cited Peter Sarris. Justinian: Emperor, Soldier, Saint. Basic Books, 2023, p. 172.
• The Golden Chain passage in Homer: Il. 8.19.

The Great Pyramid at Giza:

• Hermes’ alchemical laboratory: Ibn al-Nadīm’s Fiḥrist, Book 10, doesn’t exactly say that Hermes’ alchemical laboratory was in the great pyramid, but he almost does: Hermes invented alchemy, is buried in one of the two main pyramids (his wife is in the other one), and, atop the great pyramid, there is a kind of alchemical tomb which, it is implied, holds Hermes’ body.
• As esoteric emblem in stone: see e.g. Athanasius Kircher, Oedipus Ægyptiacus (3 vols., Rome 1652–54).
• In modern occultism: Aleister Crowley of course famously spent a night of his honeymoon in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid, where his wife first made contact with the strange entity who would later dictate the Book of the Law – see somewhere in his autohagiography. Compare e.g. Blavatsky, who saw the chambers in the pyramids as initiation-temples: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. The Secret Doctrine. Theosophical University Press, New York, NY, 1888; II, pp. 462.
  Westminster Abbey pavement: the inscription is now lost, but can be consulted in this article by Ellen Moran.

For Phokas: See Lydus, On the Magistracies 3.76; A.C. Bandy, ed. and tr., Ioannes Lydus On Powers, or, The Magistracies of the Roman State (Philadelphia, PA, 1983); M. Dubuisson, J. Schamp, eds. and tr., Jean Le Lydien: Des magistratures de l’État romain, 2 vols. (Paris, 2006).

John Lydus:

• his teacher Agapius studied under Proclus: On the Magistracies 3.26.
• Agapius admired by Damascius: De vit. Isid. = The Philosophical History fr. 107 Athanassiadi.

For the architects Anthemios and Isodorus, see Procopius, Buildings 1.1.24, 2.3.7–14; Paulos, Ekphrasis of Hagia Sophia 265–271, 550–555; Agathias, Histories 5.6–9.

The sixth-century Dialogue on Political Science, preserved in part by Photius: see Peter N. Bell, trans. Three Political Voices from the Age of Justinian: Agapetus, Advice to the Emperor, Dialogue on Political Science, Paul the Silentary, Description of Hagia Sophia. Number 52 in Translated Texts for Historians. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, 2009;  Dominic O’Meara. The Justinianic Dialogue On Political Science and its Neoplatonic Sources. In K. Ierodiakonou, editor, Byzantine Philosophy and its Ancient Sources, pages 49-62. The University Press, Oxford, 2002.

Secondary:

Umberto Eco. Foucault’s Pendulum. Secker and Warburg, London, 1989 [sorry, I forget the page number, but the reference is definitely there!].

Anthony Kaldellis. The Making of Hagia Sophia and the Last Pagans of New Rome. Journal of Late Antiquity, 6(2):34766, 2013. We quote p. 366.

Michael Maas. John Lydus and the Roman Past: Antiquarianism and Politics in the Age of Justinian. New York, 1992, pp. 72-3.
Dominic J. O’Meara. Geometry and the Divine in Proclus. In T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans, editors, Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study, pages 133-45. Amsterdam, Elsevier Science, 2005.

Recommended Reading:

Listeners interested in the Hagia Sophia in her more exoteric dimensions might wish to consult the lavishly-illustrated scholarly coffee-table book Rowland J. Mainstone. Hagia Sophia: Architecture, Structure, and Liturgy of Justinian’s Great Church. Thames & Hudson, London, 1988; Mango 1986 (cited above); the essays collected at Robert Mark and Ahmet Cakmak, editors. Hagia Sophia from the Age of Justinian to the Present. The University Press, Cambridge, 1992; there are many other fine studies from art-historical, architectural, and other historical perspectives. Check out the Dumbarton Oaks Hagia Sophia resources page here. This interview with Bob Ousterhout on Anthony Kaldellis’ delicious Byzantium and Friends podcast explores some of the many ideological roles the Hag has played down the centuries.

For contemporary and later East-Roman appreciations of the church, see Gilbert Dagron. Constantinople imaginaire. Études sur le recueil des Patria. Gallimard, Paris, 1984; Cyril Mango. Byzantine Writers on the Fabric of Hagia Sophia. In Robert Mark and Ahmet Cakmak, editors, Hagia Sophia from the Age of Justinian to the Present, pages 41-56. The University Press, Cambridge, 1992.

For the construction of Hagia Sophia vis à vis acoustics, light, and other sensoria, see e.g. Nadine Schibille. Astronomical and Optical Principles in the Architecture of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Science in Context, 22(1):27-46, March 2009; Bissera Pentcheva. Hagia Sophia and Multisensory Aesthetics. Gesta, 50:93-111, 2011 and Idem, Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space, and Spirit in Byzantium (Pennsylvania State University Press 2017). There is also an interview with Pentcheva on the sensory space of the Hag, which can be found here on the superb Byzantium and Friends podcast.

This open letter from the International Association of Byzantine Studies to the Turkish authorities has some interesting things to say about the current religio-political-art-historical situation of Hagia Sophia.

For various esoteric Hagia Sophias, see this document:

SHWEP Episode 192 Recommended Reading

Themes

Ammonios Hermeiou, Esoteric Architecture, Esoteric Hermeneutics, Hagia Sophia, John Philoponus, Late Platonism, Orthodoxy, Proclus, Solomonic Tradition, Temple of Solomon