The Collegia and the Barbarian Invasions 31ded that several centuries later, the Crusaders had trouble recognizing
their own religion among the various Christian sects of Asia Minor.
Architecture also transformed at this time. The curved shapes of
circular churches replaced the straight lines of the Roman basilica, and
eventually the domes, each more audacious than the one built before,
took on an appearance that indicated their architects had found mod-
els among the Persian Seleucca and Ctesiphon. This period marked the
birth of Byzantine art, a synthesis of Greco-Latin art and the teachings
of Asia Minor, Egypt, and Syria, which themselves were descended
from Persia. The same synthesis that took place in art and architecture
also affected philosophy. Under the influence of the collegia, Byzantine
art spread throughout the empire. There was an Asia Minor school of
Byzantine art (the churches of Ephesus, Sardes, and Philadelphia in the
fifth century), a Syrian Byzantine art (the cathedrals of Basra and Ezra
in the sixth century), and a Byzantine art of Egypt. The most powerful
marvel of this architecture is Santa Sophia of Constantinople, which
was built from 532 to 537 by Anthenius of Tralles and Isidorus of
Miletus. Never had the genius of Rome and the East been combined in
a more amazing and harmonious whole.
Byzantine builders at this same time erected churches in
Thessalonica, Parenzo, and Ravenna, the city where the collegia
endured, and followed this with a prodigious blossoming of monu-
ments that spread throughout the entire empire: the Byzantine palaces
of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries and the churches of
Constantinople, Thessalonica, and Greece built in the tenth and
eleventh centuries. Because the Byzantine capital was located at the cen-
ter of the civilized world, Byzantine art could not help but wield great
influence both far and wide. It was this art that left its imprint on the
oldest structures of Christian Russia, such as Saint Sophia in Kiev
(eleventh century). Armenia and Georgia also have an abundance of
Byzantine buildings. The Arabs of Syria and Spain and the Christians
of the West also experienced this influence. During the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, the scholoe of the builders of Venice, which was
entirely Greek with respect to mores, built a cathedral in the purest
Byzantine style in honor of Saint Mark. Works that are admirable tes-
taments to Byzantine art can also be found in central Italy and Sicily,