Ναός τῆς Ἁγίας τοῦ Θεοῦ Σοφίας

For nearly one thousand years, the Hagia Sophia (Ἁγία Σοφία, which means "Holy Wisdom") was the largest Christian cathedral in the world. Construction began in 532 by order of Emperor Justinian and completed five years later. The church included a silver iconostasis fifty feet tall, and was filled with jeweled mosaics and columns of granite and marble, beneath a dome more than one hundred feet wide, and 182 feet high. It was an architectural wonder, filled with arcades, frescoes, marble tiled floors, rich colors and treasures beyond price. When the cathedral was complete, the emperor declared "Νενίκηκά σε Σολομών!" ("Solomon, I have outdone thee!")

For more than a millennium, spanning the reigns of over one hundred Byzantine emperors, Constantinople was the center of the Christian world. That all ended on this date (May 29 by the Church calendar) 556 years ago.

On that Tuesday morning in 1453, the siege of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks ended and the city was sacked, ravaged, looted, desecrated, pillaged, burnt, violated, and brought under control of the Muslims where she remains to this day.

According to the diary of Nicolo Barbaro, who was present during the invasion,

The Turks made eagerly for the piazza, five miles from the point where they made their entrance at San Romano, and when they reached it, at once some of them climbed up a tower where the flags of Saint Mark and the Most Serene Emperor were flying, and they cut down the flag of Saint Mark and took away the flag of the Most Serene Emperor, and then on the same tower they raised the flag of the Sultan. When they had taken away these two flags, those of Saint Mark and of the Emperor, and raised the flag of the Turkish dog, then all we Christians who were in the city were full of sorrow because it had been captured by the Turks. When their flag was raised and ours cut down, we saw that the whole city was taken, and that there was no further hope of recovering from this.

For the rest of the day these flags were kept flying on the houses, and all through the day the Turks made a great slaugh­ter of Christians through the city. The blood flowed in the city like rainwater in the gutters after a sudden storm, and the corpses of Turks and Christians were thrown into the Dardanelles, where they floated out to sea like melons along a canal.

The cross which topped the dome of the Hagia Sophia was torn down and replaced by a crescent. Minarets were erected, and what was for centuries the largest, most imported and most beloved Christian church in the world became a mosque. The mosaics and frescoes were plastered over or chiseled away. The iconostasis was looted and the relics of saints and other treasures disappeared. The Hagia Sophia served as a mosque until 1932 when the Turkish president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, had it made into a museum. At that time, work began to uncover the mosaics that had long been hidden behind plaster.

Two worthwhile blog posts concerning this tragic event can be found here and here. And there is, I was surprised to learn, a movement underway to restore the Hagia Sophia to use as a Christian church. The organization behind this effort is called the Free Agia Sophia Council of America.

See also: Paintings and photos of Hagia Sophia