Riflessi di Santa Sofia attraverso la produzione letteraria in lingua greca del VI e del IX-X secolo

This article intends to analyse the way Hagia Sophia, Byzantium’s greatest church and most celebrated monument, has been central to various literary texts and genres. The paper takes into account some examples of the Byzantine literary production in Greek (centuries 6th to 10th) reflecting a variety of forms and ways of reception beginning with the sentiment of amazement, reverential awe and challenge enhanced in front of the “iconicity” of the monument, along with its exceptional material and spiritual allure. Such attitude seems to bear a new shape when the monument becomes the subject of stories and legends in the post-iconoclastic era under the Amorian and the Macedonian dynasties. When, in the ninth-tenth century, the age of Justinian and the historical events associated with the building were distant memories, a revival of the history of the Hagia Sophia was projected with adaptations suitable for the new medieval public in a plethora of different sources, all however characterized by a notable difference in their “resonance” especially when compared to the courtly culture of the age of Justinian and its conventions.