Extollagy!

Hagia Sophia, the Great Church of Constantinople/Byzantium/Istanbul, is one of the most extraordinary buildings in the world. Dominating the waterway that seperates Europe from Asia, at dusk populated by a Byzantine legion of mice, yet still a struture of collosal beauty and awe — with a reputation that spread to fifteenth-century England, if this contribution by the anonymous author of The Three Kings of Cologne is anything to go by. He’s writing within a few years of its conversion to a mosque…

‘… Saint Sophie … is above all the churches of all the world passingly much and large, so that a passing great ship with her veils spread abroad may easily turn her in her and compass … ‘ [spelling modernised, grammar left untouched]

You can almost see the ocean filling it, lapping up against those echoing marble galleries, and a galleon turning within.

… I guess ‘veils’ means ‘sails’, but isn’t ‘veils’ nice?

… ‘Saint Sophie’, of course, is Hagia Sophia, Greek for ‘Holy Wisdom’, a  mystical way of addressing the Virgin Mary … but that’s another story…