The Column of Justinian and The Legend of Red Apple
The Column of Justinian was a Roman triumphal column erected in Constantinople by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I in honour of his victories in 543.
It stood in the western side of the great square of the Augustaeum, between the Hagia Sophia and the Great Palace, and survived until 1515, when it was demolished by the Ottomans.
But, the interesting fact is thatThe Column of Justinian is closely related to the Turk Legend of Red Apple (Kizil Elma).
The Column of Justinian was made of brick, and covered with brass plaques.
The column stood on a marble pedestal of seven steps, and was 100 feet long, it was topped by a colossal bronze equestrian statue of the Emperor Jusitnian I The Great of Byzantine Empire, The Justinan was wearing a triumphal attire (the “dress of Achilles” as Procopius calls it or the “dress of God Hercules), wearing an antique-style muscle cuirass, a plumed helmet of peacock feathers (the toupha), holding a globus cruciger on his left hand and stretching his right hand to the East.
The mysterious thing in the statue was globus cruciger which in english we can called “cross-bearing orb” or the “orb and cross”.
It is just like holding the world in one’s hand.
To citizens of the Roman Empire, the plain spherical globe held by the god Jupiter represented the world or the universe, as the dominion held by the Emperor.
According to Europeans, It also shows the dominance of Christianity over the entire world as the Holy Cross surmounted the Orb (World) while the Christians also see this Column with the respect of honour.
On the other hand, Globus Cruciger is known as Kizil Elma (Red Apple) in Turks which also means the dominance over the world.
The Column of Justinian and The Legend of Red Apple
According to Turk legends, whoever Conquer the Constantinople and bear the Red Apple or Globus Cruciger in his hand, he will be the king of the entire world.
By the 15th century, the statue, by virtue of its prominent position, was actually believed to be that of the city’s founder, Constantine the Great.
Other associations were also current: the Italian antiquarian Cyriacus of Ancona was told that it represented Heraclius.
Some said, it was the statues of Justinian The Great.
It was therefore widely held that the column, and in particular the large globus cruciger, or “apple”, as it was popularly known, represented the city’s genius loci [protecting holy spirit]. Consequently, its fall from the statue’s hand, sometime between 1422 and 1427, was seen as a sign of the city’s impending doom.
There was a Famous Turkish Legend, “Where there is the Red Apple, there will be stones”but when the stones for the Red Apple fell in Constantinople in 1453, the Romans didn’t knew that they were weighed 600 kilograms and would have been made of granite and will blown down the Great Walls of Constantinople like straws.
In 1453, the Ottoman Army attack the Constantinople and conquer it.
Shortly after their conquest of the city in 1453, the Ottomans removed and dismantled the statue completely as a symbol of their dominion over the entire worl, while the column itself was destroyed around 1515.
