suggestion of a Roman
senator Festus, who on visiting the eastern capital, in 499, was
astonished to find no sanctuary there dedicated to saints so eminent
in Christian history, and so highly venerated by the Church of the
West. As appears from a letter addressed in 519 to Pope Hormisdas by
the papal representative at the court of Constantinople, a church of
that dedication had been recently erected by Justinian while holding
the office of Comes Domesticorum under his uncle Justin I. 'Your son,'
says the writer, 'the magnificent Justinian, acting as becomes his
faith, has erected a basilica of the Holy Apostles, in which he wishes
relics of the martyr S. Laurentius should be placed.' 'Filius vester
magnificus vir Justinianus, res convenientes fidei suae faciens,
basilicam sanctorum Apostolorum in qua desiderat Sancti Laurentii
martyris reliquias esse, constituit.'[93] We have also a letter to the
Pope from Justinian himself, in which the writer, in order to glorify
the basilica which he had built in honour of the apostles in his
palace, begs for some links of the chains which had bound the apostles
Peter and Paul, and for a portion of the gridiron upon which
S. Laurentius was burnt to death.[94] The request was readily granted
in the same year.

The description of the basilica, as situated in the palace then
occupied by Justinian, leaves no room for doubt that the sanctuary to
which the letters just quoted refer was the church of SS. Peter and
Paul which Procopius describes as near ([Greek: para]) the palace of
Hormisdas. In that case the church of SS. Peter and Paul was built
before the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, for the inscription on
the entablature in the latter church, not to mention Cedrenus,
distinctly assigns the building to the time when Justinian and
Theodora occupied the throne. This agrees with the fact that
Procopius[95] records the foundation of SS. Peter and Paul before
that of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, and if this were all he did the
matter would be clear. But, unfortunately, this is not all Procopius
has done. For after recording the erection of SS. Sergius and
Bacchus, he proceeds to say that Justinian subsequently
([Greek: epeita]) joined another ([Greek: allo]) church,[96] a
basilica, to the sanctuary dedicated to those martyrs, thus leaving
upon the reader's mind the impression that the basilica was a later
constructio