Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City by John Freely, Hilary Sumner-Boyd

Orthodox Church. John and Eirene were full of good works; together they founded the monastery of the Pantocrator, the triple church of which is still one of the principal monuments on the Fourth Hill of the city.
    The latest in date of the mosaics in the gallery is the magnificent Deesis, which is located in the east wall of the western buttress in the south gallery. This mosaic, one of the very greatest works of art produced in Byzantium, is thought to date from the beginning of the fourteenth century. It is a striking illustration of the cultural renaissance which took place in Constantinople after the restoration of the Byzantine Empire by Michael VIII Palaeologus in 1261. Although two-thirds of the mosaic is now lost, the features of the three figures in the portrait are still completely intact and unmarred. Here we see Christ flanked by the Virgin and St. John the Baptist; they lean towards him in suppliant attitudes, pleading, so the iconographers tell us, for the salvation of mankind. John looks towards Christ with an expression of almost agonized grief on his face, while the young and wistful Virgin casts her gaze shyly downwards. Christ, holding up his right hand in a gesture of benediction, looks off into space with a look of sadness in his eyes, appearing here as if he partook more of the nature of man than of God, whatever the medieval theologians may have decided about him. The Deesis is a work of great power and beauty, a monument to the failed renaissance of Byzantium and its vision of a humanistic Christ.
    Set into the pavement just opposite to the Deesis is the tomb of the man who ruined Byzantium. Carved in Latin letters on the broken lid of a sarcophagus there, we see the illustrious name, HENRICUS DANDALO. Dandalo, Doge of Venice, was one of the leaders of the Fourth Crusade and was the one chiefly responsible for persuading the Latins to attack Constantinople in the years 1203–4. After the final capture of Constantinople on 13 April 1204, Baldwin of Flanders was crowned in Haghia Sophia as Emperor of Rumania, as the Latins called the portion of the Byzantine Empire which they had conquered. But the Latin Emperor did not reign supreme even in his capital city, for three-eighths of Constantinople, including the church of Haghia Sophia, was awarded to the Venetians and ruled by Dandalo. The old Doge now added the title of Despot to his name and thereafter styled himself “Lord of the fourth and a half of all the Roman Empire.” But proud Dandalo had little time to lord it over his fractional kingdom, for he died the following year, 16 June 1205, and was buried in the gallery of Haghia Sophia. After the Conquest, according to tradition, Dandalo’s tomb was broken open and his bones thrown to the dogs.
    After the Palaeologian renaissance of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the fortunes of the Empire declined rapidly, and in the last decades of Byzantine rule Haghia Sophia shared in the general decay of the dying capital. Travellers to Constantinople in that period report that the church showed signs of grievous neglect and was beginning to fall into ruins. Then, towards the very end, Haghia Sophia was all but deserted by its congregation, who stayed away in protest over the Emperor’s attempted union with the Church of Rome. The people of the city began returning to their church only in the very last days before Constantinople fell to the Turks, when doctrinal differences no longer seemed important, not even to a Byzantine.
    The final Christian liturgy in Haghia Sophia began shortly after sunset on Monday 28 May 1453. The Emperor Constantine XI Dragases arrived in Haghia Sophia an hour or so before midnight, and there made his peace with God before returning to his post on the city walls. The prayers continued in Haghia Sophia throughout the night, and the church filled with crowds of refugees as the sound of the Ottoman artillery grew more intense. Shortly after dawn word came that the defence