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Architectural history books distinguish between Roman architecture and Byzantine architecture (C. Mango, Byzantine Architecture, Milano: Electa Editrice, 1978; Idem, Approaches to Byzantine Architecture, Murqarnas 8, K.A.C. Creswell and his Legacy, 1991, 40-44, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1523151). As David Talbot Rice commented, the most famous of the Byzantine churches, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, was not the beginning of a new dome tradition in Byzantine architecture but the culmination of the soaring vault architecture of the Roman West but in brick and not concrete (D. Talbot Rice (ed.), The Great Palace of the Byzantine Emperors. Second Report, Edinburgh: The University Press, 1958, 103). What did distinguish the Byzantine dome from the Roman was function, its use almost entirely in religious structures, the commemorative and the congregational churches, with a few utility building exceptions, such as in a Byzantine bath or the refectory or kitchen in a monastery (F. Revithiadou and K. T. Raptis, Restoration-Consolidation of the Byzantine Bath in Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki: Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, 2014; A. Oρλaνδος, Μοναστηριακὴ Ἀρχιτεκτονική, Athens 1958). It will also be contended that the shift from the gable roofed basilica type church after the sixth century to the domed type involved a human factor. The dome was also an architectural feature of Christian baptisteries that began in Italy during the fourth century and spread during the following century (Encyclopedia Britannica, s.v. “Baptistery Architecture”; B. Fletcher. A History of Architecture, 19th ed., London: The Butterworth Group, 1987, 285; J. F. Baldovin, The Empire Baptized, in G. Wainwright – K. B. Westerfield Tucker (eds.), Oxford History of Christian Worship, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, 84).

Dome Terminology

The Byzantine church dome – an astute architectural or art historian could point out two anachronisms. First, the term Byzantine was never used in the Eastern Roman Empire itself during the centuries of its existence. The people of the Empire referred to themselves as Ρωμαῖοι while the Emperor considered himself as heir of the old Caesars (G. Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2002, 28). In historical studies, however, the term Byzantine is now well established to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries AD ever since the publication of Corpus Historiae Byzantinae by the German historian and humanist Hieronymus Wolf (1516-1580) (G. Mezger, Wolf, Hieronymus, Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 43(1898), 755-757, https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/gnd100706460.html#adbcontent). Then, second, the word dome, derived from the Latin domus and the Italian duomo refer to the rounded vault forming the roof of a building or chief part of it. The term was first used in 1513 after the Byzantine Empire no longer existed. Furthermore, from 1549 onward, a rounded vault could also be called a cupola from the Latin cuppa. Remarkably the authoritative The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium does not have an entry for “cupola.” Architects distinguish between a dome and a cupola where the dome is a hemispherical vault over a circular or polygonal space compared to a cupola which is a spherical roof placed like an inverted cup over a square, circular or polygonal space (Fletcher, A History, 1532). A dome could also be called a τροῦλλος as in the Πάτρια description of the construction of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople by Justinian (A. Kazhdan, A history of Byzantine Literature 650-850, Athens 1999, 308-313).

Dome Typology

D. S. Robertson ably traces the development of the hemispherical vault from the simple semicircular dome of the Romans in the second century BC to the dome supported on an octagonal drum of the Byzantines in the eleventh century AD (Robertson, Greek and Roman Architecture, Chapter 15: Roman Construction. Arches, Vaults, and Domes, 231-266. See also J. Bardill, Vaulting: Building Materials and Techniques, in The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies [as in n.5], 340-344; H. J. Cowan, A History of Masonry and Concrete Domes in Building Construction, Building and Environment 12 no. 1 (1977), 1-24; E. A. Dumser, Dome, in M. Gagarin and E. Fantham, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome. 1, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc. 2010, 436-438; R. Mark – A. S. Cakmak – K. Hill – R. Davidson, Structural analysis of Hagia Sophia: a historical perspective, Transactions on the Built Environment 4 (1993), 33-46; M. G. Melaragno, An Introduction to Shell Structures: The Art and Science of Vaulting, New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1991; J. B. Ward-Perkins, Notes on the Structure and Building Methods of Early Byzantine Architecture, in D. Talbot Rice (ed.), The Great Palace [as in n. 3], 77-95). What is clear is that there was a continued development in the architectural form, structure, and construction methods of domes from the Roman through to the Byzantine period. The form of Roman domes was originally conical but then mainly hemispherical covering a circular or octagonal space that became typical in Roman architecture during the reign of Trajan (r. AD 98 – 117) primarily in θέρμαι or bath complexes but also in palaces, mausolea and other edifices (Figure 1). Structurally domes were at first solid but then coffers were introduced to lighten the load.

To decrease the weight even further the ribbed dome with infill panels was developed. Roman domes were initially constructed out of wood but this material was eventually replaced by masonry and then from the second century BC a new and revolutionary material, concrete, was used. Methods of building are conjectural but some form of wood centering would have been necessary. In general Byzantine vaulting initially followed Roman typology but over time developed a number of refinements (Figure 2). A distinguishing feature of the typical Byzantine dome was a hemisphere raised on a drum punctured by windows (Ousterhout, Churches and Monasteries, 208) (Figure 3).
Recent research has shown the influence of the Roman and Byzantine dome extended to the Near East, as well as to the Balkans, Southern Italy, Calabria, and Aquitaine (Morvarid Mazhari Motlagh, A Comparison between Sassanid Vaults and those of the Roman and Byzantine Periods, Iran 48 (2010), 43-58; S. Ćurčić, The Role of Late Byzantine Thessaloniki in Church Architecture in the Balkans, DOP 57 (2003), 65-84; C. E. Nicklies, Builders, Patrons, and Identity: The Domed Basilicas of Sicily and Calabria, Gesta 43, 2 (2004), 99-114; R. Ousterhout, An Apologia for Byzantine Architecture, Gesta 35, 1 (1996), 21-33). Construction materials could be timber (all of which have disappeared now), brick or stone (E. Baldwin Smith, The Dome: A Study in the History of Ideas, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971, Chaps. II, III, IV, 10-94; Ch. Bouras, Twelfth- and ThirteenthCentury Variations of the Single Domed Octagon Plan, ΔΧΑΕ 9 (1977-79), 21-34).

Symbolism of the dome shape

The roots of the symbolism of the domical shape as the cosmic house go back in time (Smith, The Dome, 5 ff). In different parts of the ancient world cultures desired to make permanent their primitive domed shelter as a revered and eternal home of the dead. In Syria and Palestine, for example, the conoid or beehive shape of the ancestral hut was venerated for centuries as a cosmic house (Figure 4). The Hellenistic ideas regarding the θόλος and the Roman conception of the dome as a mortuary symbol merged into the image of a celestial covering in the Christian martyrium and ciborium (Smith, The Dome, 61). The Christian preoccupation with life after death led them to attach much significance to the shape of the dome as a sepulchral symbol. When martyrs became to be thought of as the successors of the classical heroes all the cosmic meanings associated with the dome were transferred to Christian imagery. Christian theologians turned to the book of Isaiah to support their view of dome symbolism where they read that God as the builder of the world who “… lives above the circle of the earth … [who] has stretched out the heavens like a cloth, spread them like a tent …” (40, 22) and in the question “… what house could you build me.” (66, 1) (A. Jones, The Jerusalem Bible, New York, NY: Double Day & Co., 1966).

Gregory of Nazianzus depicted the vault of the Great Church at Antioch as οὐρανὸς that “flashes down upon us from above, and it dazzles our eye with the abundant sources of light” (Gregory of Nazianzos, Oratio XVIII). The 6th century traveler Cosmas Indicopleustes, imagined the universe as a rectangular box with four walls and a vaulted lid representing the “heaven of heavens” and described the sky (οὐρανὸς) as a θόλος (The Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes, edited with geographical notes by E. O. Winstedt, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1909, IV. 8, 130). He also listed a number of Syrian churchmen who pictured the universe as a domical house. An influential religious teacher, the Antiochian Diodorus of Tarsus, wrote: “Two heavens there are, one visible, the other invisible; one below, the other above: the latter serves as the roof of the universe, the former as the covering of our earth …. not round or spherical (like the former), but in the form of a tent or arch” (Diodoros of Τarsus, in Photius, Bibliotheca, cod. 223 (ed. R. Henry, Paris 1965), 42). The tent metaphor, a four-sided tent pegged down at the corners, would be apparent to a worshipper in a Byzantine church when envisaging four anchored arches supporting a circular dome merged with pendentives.

Antecedents of the cosmic tent may have stretched back to Egypt as the hieroglyph for “sky” was an image for a tent or canopy (A. Gardiner, Standard Sign List, in Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs. Third Edition, London: Clarendon Press, 1957, N1). Then the Persians used the term “heaven” for the name of the round awning coverings for their royal tents (K. Lehmann, The Dome of Heaven, The Art Bulletin 27 no. 1 (Mar. 1945), 18). The custom of decorating temporary awnings with heavenly representations was continued in the audience tents of Alexander the Great with its celestial decorations, in those of Achaemenid and Indian rulers, and into the Roman imperial age. Roman emperors, who saw themselves as a divine being and a cosmic ruler, represented a heavenly covering symbolizing the cosmic tent in the vaults of their palace throne rooms and audience halls (Lehmann, The Dome of Heaven, 26). One of the few Byzantine literary references appears in the twelfth-century short ἔκφρασις of the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople by Michael of Thessalonica (Ἀλλὰ τι ταῦτα πρὸς τὰ ἐντὸς μεγέθη καὶ κάλλη τῆς ἀντιτύπου τῶν οὐρανίων σκηνῆς … : C. Mango – J. Parker, A Twelfth-Century Description of St. Sophia, DOP 14 (1960), 233-245). He wrote that even though the interior of the church was an immense space with a gold hand-wrought roof it could not compare to the ‘‘tent of the heavens’’. The difficulty in finding direct literary references to Byzantine church symbolism is that Byzantine descriptive tradition largely failed to link the appearance of the church with its religious purpose (R. Macrides – P. Magdalino, The architecture of ἔκφρασις: construction and context of Paul the Silentiary’s poem on Hagia Sophia, ΒMGS 12 (1988), 51).

In his Ecclesiastical History Eusebius further envisages the architecture of the church as reflecting the structure of the universe as when the Creator built the whole world beneath the sun he formed again “this spiritual image upon the earth of those vaults beyond the vaults of Heaven” (Eusebius Εcclesiastical History X, IV, 69). The church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople was depicted by Niketas Choniates in his Ἱστορία as a “most great and holy of all churches, thou heaven on earth” (Νicetae Choniatae Historia, ed. J. L. Van Dieten [CFHB 25], Berlin:de Gruyter, 1975, 592), On earthquakes and fires sang of Hagia Sophia as a replica of the dome of heaven (P. Maas – C. A. Trypanis, Sancti Romani Melodi Cantica. Cantica Genuina, Oxford 1963, 471), and in the fifteenth century Pseudo-Phrantzes in his Chronicon Maius wrote that “the beautiful Cathedral of the Heavenly Wisdom, that heaven on earth” (Georgios Sphrantzes. Memorii 1401-1477, ed. V. Grecu [Scriptores Byzantini 5. Bucharest: Academia Republicae Romanicae, 1966], 45). Other symbolic allusions are Paul the Silentiary’s description of Hagia Sophia as Wisdom building herself a house; the church as heaven on earth; comparisons with Solomon and the Temple; and the dome as a vault in which the “wandering eye reaches up to the great circle of heaven itself” (Macrides – Magdalino, The architecture of ἔκφρασις, 77). It was not until the eighth century that the Patriarch of Constantinople, St. Germanos, could write: “The church is heaven upon earth, the place where the God of heaven dwells and moves” (Germanos, Ἱστορία Ἐκκλησιαστικὴ καὶ Μυστικὴ Θεωρία, PG 98: 381).

The seventh century St. Maximus Confessor had expressed the church as a symbol of heaven (J. Wilkinson, Christian Worship in the Byzantine Period, in Ancient Churches Revealed, Yoram Tsafir (ed.), Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1993, 21). From now on the church building as a model of heaven on earth began more frequently to be depicted as a material manifestation of immaterial beauty under the influence of Neo-Platonic philosophy (P. A. Michelis, Neo-Platonic Philosophy and Byzantine Art, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 11 no. 1 (Sept. 1952), 21-45). Constantine of Rhodes in his tenth century poem conveys the message that the Holy Apostles church was a divinely-ordered construction with mystical numbers (2, 4, 5, 7, 12 and 48) and geometrically ordered with cubes, domes and the cross “like another star-composed celestial heavenly arc …” (line 457) (Liz James, Constantine of Rhodes: On Constantinople and the Church of the Holy Apostles, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2012, 15-85). The building was shaped as a cross “for it is the glorious sceptre of Christ …” (line 465) and the ceiling was meant to evoke a heaven that sparkled with marvelous stars and its own constellations (lines 505-529). Symbolic allusions continued to be made as late as the fifteenth century when Symeon of Thessalonica wrote: “The temple, as the House of God, is the image of the whole world … (where) … the sanctuary is the symbol of the higher and supra-celestial spheres … the vault, the visible heaven …” (Père S. Salaville, Liturgies Orientales, Paris 1938, 123).

These testimonies indicate a growing recognition of the symbolic allusion that the Byzantine church was heaven on earth. Perhaps the most extensive evidence for the religious symbolism of church architecture comes from the seventh century Syriac hymn, known as Another Sogitha (A. Grabar, Le temoignage d’une hymne syriaque sur l’architecture de la cathedrale d’Edesse au Vie siècle et sur la symbolique de l’edifice, Cahiers archéologiques 2 (1947), 59-60), composed in praise of the church of Hagia Sophia at Edessa. The church was rebuilt sometime between AD 543 and 554 after serious damage in the great flood of 525 but it was destroyed in 1031 (K. E. McVey, The Domed Church as Microcosm: Literary Roots of An Architectural Symbol, DOP 37 (1983), 91). It is a significant literary document as it is one of the earliest texts that interpret the symbolism of a precise monument expressed poetically as a cosmic house. The church is presented as an admirable replica of the universe as its smallness should be similar to the vast World. This cosmology compared the dome as the four ends of the earth (flat earth cosmology) (McVey, Domed Church., Text & Trans., II: strophes 5-7). In the eyes of the poet the four great arches represent the four quarters of the world that contribute to the cosmic symbolism of the church designed by Asaph and Addai for the Bishop Amidonius (A. Dupont-Sommer, Une Hymne syriaque sur la cathédrale d’Edesse, Cahiers archéologiques 2 (1947), 34).

Symbolism of interior dome decoration

Celestial connotations are first evident in ancient civilizations which were accustomed to associate the curved ceilings of their revered buildings with the sky. Hence the presence of blue ceilings with stars in Egyptian tombs, Babylonian palaces, and decorated coffers in Greek and Roman temples (V. Hammond, The Dome in European Architecture, in D. Stephenson (ed.), Visions of Heaven: The Dome in European Architecture, New York, NY: Princeton University Press, 2005, 169). But in Christian art the approach became more cosmic, the dome as a vision of heaven. At Ravenna, for example, in the dome of the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia a golden cross is set in blue sky studded with golden stars (G. Bustacchini, Ravenna: Mosaics, monuments and environment, Ravenna: Cartolibreria Salbaroli, N.D., fig. 14). There was continuity between antique and Christian monuments in interior dome decoration in that the sky images in the ceilings of the villas, palaces, and baths of antiquity gave way in Christian church iconography to the image of heaven that exceeded ornamental allusion to the sky.

Painted reproductions of domes appear in Etruscan rock-cut tombs and Pompeian wall paintings with great importance to Early Christian architecture (K.A.C. Cresswell, Early Muslim Architecture: Umayyads AD 622-750, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969, I, 42 ff., 83 ff). The decoration of a blue sky with ornamental stars in the bathing domes of second and first centuries BC in Pompeii continued in early imperial times, in the large stone domes of the Roman thermae, such as in the so-called Temple of Mercury in Baiae (Lehmann, The Dome of Heaven, 21). But it is Nero’s (r. AD 54-68) Domus Aurea which marks an important development in both the construction of monumental domes and painted vision of heaven on the ceilings. The revolving wooden cupola of the grand room with its astronomical decorations became the impetus for imperial domes in Roman palace architecture(Smith, The Dome, 53). Nero issued a special decree for a celebration in the theaters and as described by Dio Cassius “the curtains stretched overhead to keep off the sun were of purple and in the center of them was an embroidered figure of Nero driving a chariot, with golden stars gleaming all about him”.

Perhaps the most famous building as a symbol of heaven was the Pantheon in Rome which derived its name, according to Dio Cassius, “because of its vaulted roof, it resembles the heavens” (Dio Cassius, Historiae, LIII 27). Hadrian (r. AD 117–138), who was responsible for building the Pantheon, also had elaborate celestial ceiling decorations in his villa at Tivoli (Lehmann, The Dome of Heaven, 23). In a lost ceiling decoration from the Villa of Hadrian the sky with the stars is shown the belt of the zodiac on a vault that is clearly a tent-like canopy ( Lehmann, The Dome of Heaven, ). Lehmann notes that the starry dome symbolism most like spread from Syria and Palestine to the Italian mainland converting celestial images such as the gilded rosettes as stars in the Pantheon dome, the vault of the Stabian baths in Rome, the dome in the house of Caecilius in Pompeii and most clearly in the blue mosaic ceiling embedded with golden stars in the vault of the fifth century mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna (Lehmann, The Dome of Heaven, 21). In some Byzantine dome decorations there is a central circular motif surrounded by radial or concentric patterns and groups of symbolic features (Patricios, Sacred Architecture, 31, 261-299, fig. 736; H. Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy: The Development of the Eucharistic Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990, 30-31).

The dome should not be seen in isolation as it is part of an iconographic program that reflects the theological dogmas of the Eastern Orthodox Church (C. Kalokyris, The Essence of Orthodox Iconography. Trans. by Peter Chamberas, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1985, 20). Along with Christ Ὁ Παντοκράτωρ the chief dogmas are Jesus as Teacher placed at the entrance to the church and the Theotokos positioned in the sanctuary apse (Cavarnos, Orthodox Iconography, 23). In a domed church the floor symbolizes earth and the large dome heaven. They are united by the semi-dome of the apse which contains an image of the Theotokos, known as Ἡ Πλατυτέρα, holding the child Jesus and escorted by two archangels. She is the one who unites the upper world of heaven with the lower level of the earth by means of the divine child in her arms. Overall, the symbolism of the Byzantine church in Byzantine literature was either cosmic or theological, the church as a small-scale model of the universe with the association of the dome as the vault of heaven (Mango – Parker, A Twelfth-Century Description of St. Sophia, 241). There was also cosmic symbolism alluded to in the number of doors, windows, and other architectural elements that was inspired by theological concepts such as the trinity of the Godhead.

Dome Function

After Emperors Constantine and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan in AD 313 Christianity became an officially recognized religion in the Roman Empire (M. White L., 2 vols., The Social Origins of Christian Architecture, Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1997, I, 115). New purpose-built Christian churches could now be erected and some had a dome, an architectural feature previously of Roman θέρμαι and palaces. The purpose-built churches that were constructed from the early fourth century onward can be divided into two classes, the commemorative and the congregational. In his book Martyrium André Grabar calls the commemorative churches shrines and the congregational as regular churches (R. Krautheimer, The Art Bulletin 35 no. 1, Mar. (1953), 57-61; J. B. Ward-Perkins, Memoria, Martyr’s Tomb and Martyr’s Church, J. Theol. Studies XVII no. 1 (1966), 20-37). He points out that each was a clearly distinct kind of building. Until the fifth century the distinction between an ἐκκλησία and a μαρτύριον was quite clear (W. Mayer – P. Allen, The Churches of Syrian Antioch (300 – 638 CE), LeuvenParis-Walpole MA, 2012, 166-174). Whether a ‘church’, ‘palace church,’ ‘chapel,’ or ‘cathedral’ the building was a place of assembly for Christians who met in the building on a regular basis for worship, that is a congregational church (J. B. Ward-Perkins, Constantine and the Origins of the Christian Basilica, Papers of the British School at Rome 22 (1954), 69-90). The martyrium, on the other hand, was a commemorative church and was traditionally viewed as a chapel or shrine, built over a martyr’s tomb where an annual celebration was held in the martyr’s memory. Prior to the fourth century shrines consisted of reliquary chapels and tombs. After the recognition of Christianity, shrines developed into the commemorative church with the growing popularity of the Cult of the Martyrs.

1. The congregational or regular churches Grabar describes as the meeting places for Eucharistic assemblies of Christian congregations. In the fourth century Emperor Constantine began the process of constructing brand new church buildings to provide an architectural setting for the liturgy, the celebration of the Eucharist. There followed in the fourth and fifth centuries the construction of a large number of churches throughout the Roman Empire that displayed a number of architectural forms but more so in the East than the West. For Byzantine congregational churches a number of scholars have proposed a taxonomy (Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, 68-73. Η. Buchwald, Form, Style and Meaning in Byzantine Church Architecture, Ashgate Variorum, 1999, VII, 1-19; R. Ousterhout, Contextualizing the Later Churches of Constantinople: Suggested Methodologies and Examples, DOP 54 (2000), 241; M. Savage, Dome Typology in Byzantine Constantinople, Transactions of the State Hermitage Museum LII, Architecture of Byzantium and Kievan Rus from the 9th to the 12th centuries, St. Petersburg: The State Hermitage Publishers, 2010, 132-147).
2. The cruciform type of congregational church seemed to be favored in northern Italy as evidenced by the fifth century churches (Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, 58). Three congregational churches of the cruciform type have also been identified in Palestine, those at Gerasa, Salona, and Gaza with domes constructed of timber (J. W. Crowfoot, Early Churches in Palestine, College Park, Maryland: McGrath Publishing Company, 1971, 85-90). In the sixth century the dome was fitted to the basilican form to create a new type – the domed basilica. Justinian after building the centralized Church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, completed before AD 536, and restoring the Church of Hagia Eirene (Figure 11) completed about the same time AD 532 to 537, rebuilt the other more famous domed basilica, the nearby monumental Ἡ Μεγάλη Ἐκκλησία or as it is better known, Hagia Sophia (Patricios, Sacred Architecture, 137-138; Fletcher, A History, 286-293).

From the ninth century until the end of the Byzantine era the dominant church design was the cross-in-square type, a small structure that had either a single central dome or five domes with a large central dome and four smaller domes over the arms of the cross, such as the Church of the Prophets, Martyrs and Apostles (AD 464-465) at Gerasa (Figure 12), and the Νέα Ἐκκλησία built by Emperor Basil I at Constantinople around AD 880 (W. MacDonald, Early Christian & Byzantine Architecture, New York: George Braziller, 1962, fig 67). The five domed church became the ideal97 (Figure 13). There has been much dispute regarding the origins of the cross-in-square church98. In Greek texts it is called τετρακάμαρον (literarily “four rooms,” that is, those four vaulted spaces that form the corners of the inscribed square around the central cross shape) and appears late, AD 781 (Ruggieri, Byzantine Religious Architecture, 139).

Dome Anthropics

An intriguing question has been raised by the distinguished Byzantine scholar Cyril Mango: “… one of the central problems of Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture, namely, why it was that the timber-roofed basilica went out of fashion after the sixth century and was replaced by the domed or vaulted building for all types of church, whatever its exact destination” (Mango, Approaches to Byzantine Architecture, 43). The Roman imperial princess Anicia Juliana, the great-granddaughter of Galla Placidia and a direct descendant of the distinguished family of Emperor Theodosius the Great, was very involved with religious affairs in Constantinople and embellished many churches in the city114. The turning point in her life was due to two great disappointments. The first was when her husband refused the throne of the Eastern Roman Empire following a revolt in AD 512115. The second was when her son did not succeed to the throne when his father-in-law died in AD 518 but instead passed to Justin I, an elderly, probably illiterate soldier of peasant background. Anicia Juliana’s antipathy toward Justin increased when he brought to Constantinople his peasant nephew Flavius Peter Sabbatios from the province of Illyria who in time actually ran the empire as co-emperor. All this did not sit well with Anicia Juliana who had profound and undisguised contempt for both men116.

Further evidence of Justinian’s political rivalry with Anicia Juliana is provided in a recent study with regard to the circumstances surrounding the construction of the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus in Constantinople (B. Croke, Justinian, Theodora, and the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, DOP 60 (2006), 25-63).

Conclusion

1. There is no exact line that separates the architectural form and structure of Roman and Byzantine domes as there was continual development during these periods. Roman hemispherical domes evolved into the Byzantine semicircular and then domes supported on octagonal drums and in the Near East eventually replaced the traditional conical and pyramidal forms. Early domes in the Roman world were of wood that were superseded gradually by brick, stone and concrete as a construction material except in the Near East where the change occurred very late. The Romans sought to lighten the weight of their domes through ribbed construction and placing hollow pots in the dome but it was the Byzantine builders who perfected the pendentive dome form and found ways to eliminate centering. The Byzantine church is unique in integrating architecture, art, symbolism, and liturgy (Figure 19). The symbolism of the dome is twofold, first in its shape and second in its interior decoration. For Byzantine Christians the shape of the dome could represent the cosmic tent or the cosmic house. The decoration of the interior the ceiling of the dome that could symbolize the celestial vault or sky, on the other hand, followed more of a development path as theological images replaced the astronomical and astrological symbols that decorated the ceiling in antiquity. From the sixth century onward the Byzantine church dome in both its shape and interior decoration was viewed as an allusion to heaven on earth.
2. The powerful image of Christ as Ὁ Παντοκράτωρ in the central dome begins to dominate Byzantine church interiors only from the thirteenth century. But it was not only the dome that was being imbued with symbolism more and more but also the narthex, naos, aisles, holy bema, apse, synthronon, and solea (Patricios, Sacred Architecture, Chapter 7: 389-404). It is the central vault, however, represented as the “dome of heaven” (Lehmann, The Dome of Heaven, 1-27) that dominates all the metaphorical allusions.