f bishop
might marry, but only before ordination to the higher orders. In the
East it would seem that the number of persons connected in some way
with ecclesiastical office was very large. Even excluding the
monks,--a numerous and continually increasing body--the hermits, the
Stylites (who remained for years on a pillar, where they even received
Communion, in a special vessel made for the purpose), the different
orders of celibate women--there was still a very considerable number of
persons attached to all the important churches, in different positions
of ministry. The famous poem of Paul the Silentiary on S. Sophia
revels in a recital of the number of persons employed as well as in the
beauty of the magnificent building itself.

In architecture, indeed, the Byzantine Church of the sixth century was
supreme. No more glorious edifice has ever been consecrated to the
service of Christ than the Church of the Divine Wisdom at
Constantinople; and the arts which enriched it in mosaic, marble,
metals, were brought to a perfection which excited the wonder of
succeeding centuries. Before we end this sketch of the history of a
great age in the life of the Eastern Church, a word must be said about
its most splendid and enduring memorial. Among the most striking
passages in the {26} chronicles of the age are the famous descriptions
by Procopius and by Paul the Silentiary of the splendours of the great
church of Constantinople in the sixth century after Christ. [Sidenote:
S. Sophia at Constantinople.] In the wonderful art of mosaic, as it may
be seen to-day in some of the churches of the New Rome, in S.
Sophia--though much there is still covered--and in the Church of the
Chora, the West, with all the beauty that we may still see in Ravenna,
was never able to equal the East. In solemn grandeur of architecture
fitted for open, public, common worship, expressive of the profoundest
verities of Christ's Church, it would be difficult to surpass the work
of the great age of Byzantine art. Of this S. Sophia, the Church of
the Divine Wisdom, at Constantinople, built by the architects of the
Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, is the most magnificent
example. There the eye travels upward, when the great nave is entered
from the narthex, from the arches supporting the gallery to those of
the gallery itself, from semi-domes larger and larger, up to the great
dome itself, an intricate scheme merging in a central unity. "The
lengt