It employs them in another spirit, under the control of ideas different or more mature than have yet been known, as the utterance of feelings acting with peculiar force at particular moments in history, with more skill, on a larger scale, with happier effect, and the result is that something appears with an individual entity perfectly distinguishable from all that ever was before, or that will ever come after. Byzantine Art is its own very self, however many adumbrations prophesied its advent.

The oldest ecclesiastical edifice in the city—the Church of S. John the Baptist, attached to the monastery of Studius—does not, however, represent Byzantine architecture. Built in 468, it is a basilica, and accordingly is a specimen—the only specimen in Constantinople—of the earliest type of a Christian sanctuary. It was well-nigh destroyed in a conflagration that devasted the district of Psamatia in 1782, and its roof was crushed in by a heavy fall of snow some three winters ago. But, though only the shadow of its former self, its primitive character can be clearly recognised.

Catechumens and penitents

The old atrium before the church is still here, with a phiale or fountain in its centre for the purification of the gathering worshippers. Of the colonnaded cloister along the four sides of the atrium, the western portion, borne by four columns and forming the narthex of the church, still stands. There catechumens and penitents, unworthy to tread the holy ground within the sanctuary, stood outside and afar off. Beautiful trees now spread their branches over the court, and the shaded light falls upon turbaned Moslem tombs, as. of yore it fell upon the graves of Christian monks, from the trees growing in the Paradise of the monastery.

It is the most peaceful spot in all Constantinople, and as fair as it is calm and quiet The narthex belongs, undoubtedly, to the original fabric. Its marble pillars crowned by Corinthian capitals of a late type bear a horizontal entablature, and the egg and dart ornament, the dentils, the strings of pearls, familiar in the friezes of Greek and Roman temples mingle with foliage, birds, and crosses, expressive of new ideas and tastes. Within, the interior was a hall 89 feet by 88, divided by a double row of seven columns of verde antique marble, into a nave and two aisles.

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