corners of a quadrangular space, they raised four piers of massive proportions to uphold an equal number of arches, each of which was to have a span of 100 feet. Blocks of stone were used for the construction of these piers, and, instead of mortar, melted lead was poured into the interstices to knit them more firmly together.[1] At each corner, the triangular intervals left above the junctions of the arches were filled up with brickwork, and thus were formed four pendentives to sustain the base of the dome.[2] To resist the thrust of the great arches, four lesser ones, two on each side, crossed the aisles of the church to the external walls, which in that position were provided with heavy masses of masonry to receive them.[3] Forty windows ranged in a great
- [Footnote: measures one hundred and forty-two feet across, but this is a circular
hall which supports the dome all round. Anthemius himself, probably, had lately finished the church of St. Sergius and Bacchus in Hormisdas (now called Little St. Sophia), but in this case eight pillars were given to the dome, and he was doubtless dissatisfied with the effect. Earlier domes in Syria are noticed in Voguë's work. By the use of iron or steel frame-work, much greater domes have been erected in modern times than anything known in earlier ages, e.g., Vienna Exhibition, 1873, 360 feet. In London we have the Albert Hall and British Museum (219 and 140 feet), the latter a reproduction of the Pantheon.]
- ↑ Procopius, loc. cit.; Paulus, 479. According to the Anon., relics of saints and martyrs were deposited in cavities of the masonry in various places.
- ↑ The earliest known dome on pendentives is a Roman mausoleum in Palestine of the second century; East. Pal. Mem.., 1889, p. 172 (Lethaby and S., op. cit., p. 200).
- ↑ Procopius (loc. cit.) gives some indications of the difficulties they had to contend with through the piers threatening to give way, etc. The Anon. remarks that the dome was said to be made of pumice stone, but that it was in reality of bricks from Rhodes, one-twelfth the weight of ordinary bricks. The main theme of Choisy's work (L'Art de bâtir chez les Byz.) is that domes were built without "centreing" (wooden proppage), simply by working in circumferentially till closure.
