The Second Church: Justinian's Glory

This 3D reconstruction of the Church of the Holy Apostles draws on historical accounts such as Mesarides', as well as surviving analogous architecture, to imagine what the church might have looked like.

Created in 1948 for a symposium on the Church of the Holy Apostles at the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine research center, this cross-section depicts the church's extensive use of Byzantine architectural forms such as domes.

By the middle of the sixth century, the original church—a timber-roofed basilica, according to Eusebius [1]—was showing its age. To replace it, Emperor Justinian ordered the construction of a grand new structure that would serve as his dynasty’s lieu de memoire, supplementing prior emperors’ collective symbolism with elements of his own personality cult. The resulting church, completed in 550, continued to house prior emperors’ tombs, but also contained a mausoleum for Justinian and his family, according to ancient historian Procopius [2]. It would serve as the empire’s second most important church (after the Hagia Sophia) for over seven hundred years, until finally falling into disrepair in the early 14^th century [3].

Records of the new structure survive in Procopius’s account, as well as that of Nikolaos Mesarides, an early thirteenth-century visitor. Through their visual descriptions, or ekphraesis, we can reconstruct the church as an important element of the Istanbul landscape:

This Church, then, as we see it, is raised on five stoas… The stoas, however, are not all stretched out at length, or unfolded side by side, but four of them have their foundations in the form of a cross, and face toward the four quarter of our earth, to the east, I mean, and the west and the north and the sea; while the other in the center stands up above them, and the direction of this one faces toward heaven, calling on the heavenly God-Man, I believe, to descend to it and through it, as though from heaven, and in His portrayed form, to gaze down upon all the sons of men, who by His command dwell upon the earth, but possess their commonwealth in heaven [4].

In Buondelmonti's 1420 map of Constantinople, the Church of the Holy Apostles appears with the label "apostolii" in the map's center.

The five-dome, or “stoa,” structure of the church, as well as its cruciform layout, were important steps in the development of a Byzantine architectural form, as descended from the Hagia Sophia. These domes were visible throughout the city and contributed to the church’s physical preeminence, as we know from maps. In 1420, the Florentine monk Cristoforo Buondelmonti visited the city and created a map which today is one of the only surviving depictions of pre-Ottoman Constantinople. He depicted the Church of the Holy Apostles as one of the city’s major landmarks, despite its decrepit state in the 1400s. “[L]ieux de memoire,” writes Nora, “are fundamentally remains, the ultimate embodiments of a memorial consciousness that has barely survived in a historical age that calls out for memory because it has abandoned it” [5]. Thus, we see that the church still served as a repository for the Byzantine emperors’ “memorial consciousness” even after its own decline, as well as the decline of the Byzantime regime—a clear indicator of its status as lieu de memoire for the people of Constantinople.