The Pantokrator Monastery in Constantinople () || The Foundation of the Pantokrator Monastery in Its...

The Foundation of the Pantokrator Monastery in Its Urban Setting

Paul Magdalino / Istanbul

In the surviving evidence for the religious establishments of Byzantine Constantinople, the monastery of Christ Pantokrator presents a unique profile. In only two other cases, the monasteries of Stoudios and Lips, have both the foundation document and the church building come down to us.1 The detailed information of the founder’s typikon is supplemented by a stream of literary references. The typikon is one of only three, and the earliest, attributed to the authorship of a reigning Byzantine emperor.2 The overseer of the church’s construction, Nikephoros, is one of the very few Byzantine architects known to us by name. No other Byzantine building, apart from the church complex of the Holy Apostles, received quite so many imperial burials.3 No subsequent Byzantine monastery, inside or outside Constantinople, appears to have been founded or endowed on a comparable scale.

It is not hard, indeed, to get the impression that the Pantokrator was in a class of its own. Yet uniqueness of documentation does not necessarily constitute evidence of uniqueness. If the Pantokrator was the culmination of all previous urban monastic foundations, which is questionable, it took shape in relation or in reaction to its predecessors. If it was unique, it was a unique variation on existing trends in pious benefaction. To evaluate the niche that the new foundation of John II occupied in the religious history of Byzantium, we need to consider its place in the urban fabric of Constantinople; to situate it within the pattern of options and pressures experienced by an imperial patron seeking to make a pious investment in the fourth decade of the twelfth century. The present chapter will therefore examine the foundation of the Pantokrator in the context of the other urban establishments with which it invites comparison. We will evaluate the distinctive features of the complex established by John II and Eirene – its site, composition and layout – and attempt to contextualise

1 For a brief recent introduction to these buildings, see J. Freely / A. Çakmak, Byzantine Monuments of Istanbul (Cambridge 2004); for the latest analysis of the Pantokrator, with bib-liography, see R. Ousterhout / Z. Ahunbay / M. Ahunbay, Study and Restoration of the Zeyrek Camii in Istanbul: Second Repοrt, 2001-2005. DOP 63 (2011) 1-22. For the typika, see J. Thomas / A. Constantinides Hero (eds), Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents [hereafter BMFD], 1-5. DOS, 35, Washington DC 2000, nos. 3-4, 28, 39.

2 The others are Auxentios and Kellibara, foundations of Michael VIII Palaiologos: BMFD, nos. 37, 38

3 On imperial burials at the Holy Apostles, see P. Grierson, with C. Mango / I. Ševčenko, The Tombs and Obits of the Byzantine Emperors (337-1042). DOP 16 (1962) 1-63.

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34 Paul Magdalino

and to explain the choices they represent. We will conclude by considering the ways in which the Pantokrator’s distinctiveness was maintained and enhanced in the reign of John II’s son and successor Manuel I.

The Foundation by John II and Eirene

The main sources for the initial complex are the surviving church buildings and the foundation document. Additional insights can be gleaned from the literary works produced shortly after the completion of the building. Of particular significance are two texts written for annual liturgical commemorations in the monastery church of Christ Pantokrator: the anonymous epigram celebrating the formal inauguration (enkainia) of the church on 4 August, and the short vita of the empress Eirene that commemorated her death on 13 August.4

The Site

The Zeyrek Camii is one of the most panoramically sited of the surviving Byzantine monuments of Istanbul. It stands on a spur of the so-called fourth hill of the historic peninsula, looking south-east across the valley to the third hill, called Oxeia in Byzantine times and now crowned by the Suleimaniye Mosque, while to the east and north it overlooks the Golden Horn at the area of modern Unkapanı, the Zeugma and Heptaskalon of Byzantine times.5 The splendid view, which is noted in the epigram composed for the feast of the church’s dedication, may have influenced the choice of location, as with many other monasteries, both inside and outside Constantinople. A case in point was the monastery of Christ Pantepoptes, which John II’s grandmother, Anna Dalassene, had built next to the cistern of Aspar, on or near the spot where the

4 New critical editions of both texts are provided, by Ioannis Vassis and Sofia Kotzabassi respectively, in this volume. English translations will be found in an appendix at the end of this article.

5 On the correct location of the Zeugma, see G. Prinzing / P. Speck, Fünf Lokalitäten in Konstantinopel, in: H.-G. Beck (ed.), Studien zur Frühgeschichte Konstantinopels. Munich 1973, 179-227; A. Berger, Untersuchungen zu den Patria Konstantinupoleos. Poikila Byzantina, 8. Bonn 1988, 486-7; P. Magdalino, Aristocratic Oikoi in the Tenth and Eleventh Regions of Constantinople, in: N. Necipoğlu (ed.), Byzantine Constantinople: Monuments, Topography and Everyday Life. The Medieval Mediterranean, 33. Leiden 2001, 53-69: 61-62 and n. 52 [repr. in: P. Magdalino, Studies on the History and Topography of Byzantine Constantinople. Aldershot 2007, no. II]. On the Heptaskalon, see Berger, Untersuchungen, 464-468, and P. Magdalino, The Maritime Neighborhoods of Constantinople: Commercial and Residential Functions, Sixth to Twelfth Centuries. DOP 54 (2000) 221 [repr. in idem, Studies, no. III]. The idea, expressed by both authors, that the name Heptaskalon refers to seven skalai (landing stages) has been questioned by A. Effenberger, Die Klöster der beiden Kyrai Martha und die Kirche des Bebaia-Elpis Klosters in Konstantinopel. Millennium 3 (2006) 264-265, who interprets it as a reference to seven staircases. An alternative explanation is that it means the landing stages of the Seventh Region of Constantinople, to which the stretch of coast in question belonged: A. Berger, Regionen und Straßen im frühen Konstantinopel.Istanbuler Mitteilungen 47 (1997) 349-414.



The Foundation of the Pantokrator Monastery in Its Urban Setting 35

mosque of Selim I now stands.6 However, a more immediate priority in planning a new foundation within the city walls was to find a property that was both available and suitable for development. The situation of new monastic foundations in medieval Constantinople can generally be explained by the previous history of the site, where this is known. To cite just the major imperial foundations of the tenth and eleventh centuries: the Myrelaion was converted from the house that Romanos I had occupied before he became emperor;7 the Peribleptos of Romanos III was converted from an aristocratic house that the emperor had purchased, possibly on advantageous terms due to the legal difficulties of the owner’s heirs;8 the Kosmidion of Michael IV was attached to an existing church of SS Kosmas and Damian;9 Constantine IX added the monastery of St George to the imperial oikos of the Mangana.10 It therefore seems likely that John II and Eirene established the Pantokrator on the site of some pre-existing imperial or aristocratic unit that was ripe for redevelopment. We know of one such unit in the general area of the Pantokrator: an aristocratic mansion that had become a convent at the end of the eighth century, and had then been converted into a hospital by the emperor Theophilos (829-842).11 The last mention of the hospital is at the end of the tenth century, in the Patria, which says that it was ‘at the so-called Zeugma, on top of the hill’.12 There are only two hilltop locations that answer to this description: the summit of the third hill, now occupied by the Suleimaniye, and the site of the Pantokrator-Zeyrek Camii. Of these, the Suleimaniye hill is the less likely, partly because it was more commonly known as the Oxeia (‘steep’), and partly because its steepness and height made it less easy of access from the Golden Horn, whereas we know that the hospital of Theophilos, like the later Pantokrator, involved only a short detour from the coastal route.13

6 This location of the Pantepoptes, formerly identified with the Eski Imaret Camii, has been established by C. Mango, Where at Constantinople was the Monastery of Christos Pantepoptes?, DChAE 20 (1998) 87-88.

7 Theophanes Continuatus, ed. I. Bekker. CSHB. Bonn 1838, 402, 404, 473; C. L. StrIker, The Myrelaion (Bodrum Camii) in Istanbul. Princeton 1981.

8 Ioannes Scylitzae Synopsis Historiarum, ed. H. Thurn. CFHB, 5. Berlin/New York 1973, 384; cf. P. MagdalIno, Justice and Finance in the Byzantine State, Ninth to Twelfth Centuries, in A.E. LaIou / D. SImon (eds), Law and Society in Byzantium, Ninth-Twelfth Centuries.Washington DC 1994, 104-105.

9 Michael Psellos, Chronographia, ed. E. Renauld. 2nd edition. Paris 1967, I, 72.10 N. OIkonomIdes, St. George of Mangana, Maria Skleraina, and the “Malyj Sion” of Novgorod,

DOP 34-35 (1980-1981) 239-246; repr. in Idem, Byzantium from the 9th Century to the 4th Crusade. Aldershot 1993.

11 P. MagdalIno, Medieval Constantiniople, in P. MagdalIno, Studies on the History and Topography of Byzantine Constantinople. Aldershot 2007, I, 50-51.

12 Scriptores rerum Constantinopolitanarum, ed. Th. Preger. Leipzig 1901-1907, 185: ἐν τῷ καλουμένῳ Ζεύγματι, ἐπάνω τοῦ λόφου.

13 The Logothete Chronicle records that prior to refounding the convent as a hospital, Theophilos ‘turned aside’ (ἐκνεύσας) from his weekly procession to the Blachernae in order to inspect the building: Symeonis Magistri et Logothetae Chronicon, I, ed. S. Wahlgren. CFHB, 44/1. Berlin/New York 2006, 230-231. The Pantokrator typikon prescribes that the Friday presbeia should ‘turn aside’ (παρεκνεύειν) to the monastery on its return from the Blachernae.



36 Paul Magdalino

The idea that John II and Eirene made their foundation on the site of, and as a replacement for, the xenon of Theophilos makes further sense in view of the important place of the hospital in the Pantokrator typikon. This must, of course, remain hypothetical, given that neither the typikon nor any other source for the foundation makes the slightest allusion to any pre-existing institution, and the archaeology of the Zeyrek Camii has not produced evidence for the remains of any previous structure incorporated in the building. However, it is inconceivable that such a prominent and central urban site, close to the aqueduct on one side, and to a major coastal market on the other, could have remained vacant until the twelfth century. The silence of the sources must therefore be regarded as deliberately deceptive. This would not be the first time that a text recording an imperial building project failed to give credit to the emperor’s predecessors, and in any case, Theophilos, the last iconoclast emperor, was not a good precedent to invoke.

The composition and layout of the Pantokrator complex

According to the typikon, the foundation of John II and Eirene was made up of the following units:14

A. Units on the site of the main complex1. The monastery of Christ Pantokrator, centred on its katholikon, which is now

the south building in the Zeyrek complex. The monastic community consist-ed of 80 monks, of whom 30 were of lower status and served the other 50.15

2. The church of the Theotokos Eleousa, now the north church in the Zeyrek complex. The church had a staff of 50, including 8 priests and 10 deacons.16

3. The church of the Bodiless Archangel Michael, situated between the Pantokra-tor and Eleousa churches. The typikon refers to this as “an oratory in the form of a burial chamber (heroon) from”, which was specifically designed to accom-modate the founders’ tombs. Liturgical responsibility for the church was di-vided between the monastic community of the Pantokrator, which took care of the daily offices, and the clergy of the Eleousa, who performed the hymns and vigils commemorating the deceased.17

4. Annexes that were to be used by the Friday evening procession (presbeia) of the Virgin when, according to the typikon’s prescription, it diverted from its route between the Blachernae and the Chalkoprateia to join the clergy of the Eleousa in a litany of supplication beside the imperial tombs in the oratory of the Archangel Michael. The annexes mentioned by the typikon in this con-nection were: (a) the porticoed side-street (embolos) by which the procession

14 Edition and French translation by P. Gautier, Le typikon du Christ Sauveur Pantokrator. RÉB 32 (1974) 1-145; English translation by R. Jordan, BMFD (as in note 1) 725-781.

15 Gautier, Typikon (as in note 14) 30-69; BMFD (as in note 1) 738-752.16 Gautier, Typikon (as in note 14) 72-81; BMFD (as in note 1) 752-756.17 Gautier, Typikon (as in note 14) 72-73, 80-83; BMFD (as in note 1) 754, 756-757.




reached the monastery complex from the public embolos (along the Golden Horn); (b) two fountains (phialai) at which the participants in the procession could refresh themselves.18

5. A hospital (xenon) with beds for 50 patients, served by a large medical and ser-vice staff. There were separate wards for male and female patients. In addition to its service quarters, the hospital comprised a bath and two churches for the male and female sections respectively.19

6. An old-age home (gerotropheion) with twenty-four inmates and six service staff. It seems to have had its own oratory chapel.20

7. Living quarters (kellia), some already built and others awaiting construction, for the founder’s own use when he visited the monastery.21

The inauguration epigram confirms the general composition of the complex, and provides some further insights as to the layout. The monastic living quarters (including, presumably, the refectory) were built around a courtyard that was planted with flowers and cypresses, and irrigated with waterworks including open channels, hidden pipes, and fountains – presumably corresponding to the two phialai mentioned in the typikon (above, 4a). The hospital and the old-age home were associated with another enclosed space that is described as very large. The complex thus appears to have consisted essentially of two courtyards with their surrounding buildings, one for the monastic community, and one for the philanthropic institutions. The poem insists that both the monastery and the hospital were exposed to healthy breezes.22 Given the configuration of the terrain, and the layout of the church buildings, we may suppose that one courtyard unit lay to the west of the churches, which opened on to it via their narthex and exonarthex. The other may have occupied the broad terrace to the east, or possibly the area to the south where Byzantine ruins have been found. It is perhaps likely that the monastery courtyard lay to the west, in view of the fact, evident from the typikon, that the fountains were accessible to people entering the churches. Traditionally, the western side of the church was the normal place for the atrium with a fountain at its centre. Local precedents that were very well known to the builders of the Pantokrator were Hagia Sophia and the Nea Ekklesia of the Palace; the latter, which also, unusually, had two phialai, may have been the direct source of inspiration.23

18 Gautier, Typikon (as in note 14) 74-77; BMFD (as in note 1) 753-755.19 Gautier, Typikon (as in note 14) 82-109; BMFD (as in note 1) 757-765.20 Gautier, Typikon (as in note 14) 108-111; BMFD (as in note 1), 766-767. 21 Gautier, Typikon (as in note 14) 124-125; BMFD (as in note 1) 772.22 A detail reminiscent of the description of Theophilos’ hospital in Theophanes Continuatus,

ed. Bekker, 95.23 For Hagia Sophia, see the 6th-c. ekphrasis by Paul the Silentiary, lines 590-604, ed. C. de

Stefani, Descriptio Sanctae Sophiae; Descriptio ambonis. Berlin/New York 2011, 40-41; C. Mango / J. Parker, A Twelfth-Century Description of St. Sophia. DOP 14 (1960) 233-245: 236, 242. For the Nea Ekklesia, see Theophanis Continuati Liber V: Vita Basilii imperatoris, ed. and tr. I. Ševčenko. CFHB, 42. Berlin/New York 2011, 85 (p. 276-279).



38 Paul Magdalino

The epigram confirms the importance of the porticoed street linking the foundation with the coastal road from the Blachernae. The ‘stoa’ is emphasised as a particularly prominent and admired feature of the complex, impressively long (πρὸς τοσοῦτον μῆκος) but direct (ἰθυτενῶς ἄγουσαν) in leading the Friday procession up to ‘these heavenly and divine houses’ to pray for the Virgin’s intercession.

B. Units in other parts of the city and suburbs1. Six dependent monasteries on the Asian side of the Bosporos and Sea of Mar-

mara: Nossiai, Monokastanon, ta Anthemiou, Medikarion, Satyros, and Gal-akrenai.24

2. The cemetery of the Pantokrator hospital and old-age home, which John II es-tablished at the dependent monastery of Medikarion.25

3. The leper-hospital, for an unspecified number of ‘brothers’, seems to have been an annexe to the main leprosarium of St Zotikos, to the north of the Golden Horn.26

C. The endowmentThe typikon lists 85 revenue-bearing properties, mostly outside Constantinople and in the European territories.27 Of these, the vast majority (75) had been donated by the emperor, and the remainder by the empress. This confirms the impression conveyed by the Life of Eirene that the empress could not establish the foundation on the scale that she desired solely on the basis of her own resources.

A family, personal and imperial foundation

When John II and Eirene founded the Pantokrator monastery the Komnenian dynasty had been in power for over fifty years. During that period, the extended imperial family, which included both the Komnenoi and the Doukai, had left a conspicuous and

24 Gautier, Typikon (as in note 14) 68-73; BMFD (as in note 1) 752-753.25 Gautier, Typikon (as in note 14) 106-107; BMFD (as in note 1) 766.26 Gautier, Typikon (as in note 14) 110-113; BMFD (as in note 1) 767-768. The location may

be deduced from the following information: (1) the leper-hospital could not be situated near the monastery, because this lay in a populous residential area; (2) the patients could not be accommodated for administrative reasons in the other ‘halls’ in the place set aside from the beginning ‘for this whole group of brothers’; (3) they were therefore housed close to those other buildings, next to the gerokomeion of the emperor Romanos – evidently a special old-age home for lepers. Of the four Byzantine emperors of this name, Romanos I (920-944) and Romanos III (1028-1034) were noted for their pious benefactions. The latter is perhaps the most likely in view of the fact that he restored the leper hospital: Skylitzes, ed. Thurn (as in note 8) 389. For the leper-hospital on the Constantinopolitan ‘Mount of Olives’, north of the Golden Horn, see D. J. Constantelos, Byzantine Philanthropy and Social Welfare. New Brunswick 1968, 164ff; Berger, Untersuchungen (as in note 5) 691-692; on the location, see most recently C. Mango, Constantinople’s Mount of Olives and Pseudo-Dorotheus of Tyr. Nea Rhome 6 (2009) 157-158.

27 Gautier, Typikon (as in note 14) 114-125; BMFD (as in note 1) 768-772.



indelible mark on the sacred topography of Constantinople, by founding, re-founding and sponsoring numerous monasteries.28 The Pantokrator appears naturally as the culmination and realization of this trend: the monument to dynastic piety, solidarity and success towards which previous Komnenian founders had been working. This appearance is not completely deceptive, because the Pantokrator shows some clear similarities with other Komnenian foundations, and notably the other two whose typika have survived, that of the Theotokos Kecharitomene in Constantinople,29 founded by John’s mother Eirene, and that of the Theotokos Kosmosoteira near Ainos in Thrace, founded by his brother, the sebastokrator Isaac.30 All three typika show the influence of the ‘reformed’ monasticism of the eleventh century, with its concern for monastic self-government and a strict community regime, while privileging the position of the aristocratic founder and his close associates.31 All three monasteries contained a residence for the founder’s private use. All three foundations were envisaged as places of family commemoration and burial, and the same can be supposed for other Komnenian foundations whose typika have not survived, to infer from the epigraphic record of the monastery of the Theotokos Pammakaristos.32 One striking feature that all the early Komnenian foundations had in common was the fact of their dedication to either the Virgin or Christ under a particular epithet. In dedicating his monastery to Christ Pantokrator, John II was surely conscious of echoing his grandmother’s monastery of Christ Pantepoptes (‘the all-overseeing’),33 his parents’ monastery of Christ Philanthropos (‘who loves mankind’),34 and his cousin’s monastery of Christ Evergetes (‘the benefactor’).35

Yet if John II was working to a Komnenian model of pious foundation, he applied it with all the individualism of which Byzantine monastic founders were capable.36 Unlike his mother and brother, he did not quote from, and was not obviously inspired by, the typikon of the Theotokos Evergetis, the most popular exemplar of ‘reformed’

28 See A. Berger / V. Stanković, The Komnenoi and Constantinople before the Building of the Pantokrator Complex, 3-33 in this volume.

29 Ed. with French translation by P. Gautier, Le typikon de la Théotokos Kécharitomenè. RÉB 43 (1985) 5-165; English translation by R. Jordan, BMFD (as in note 1) no. 27, 649-724.

30 Ed. L. Petit, Typikon du monastère de la Kosmosotira près d’Ainos. IRAIK 13 (1908) 19-75; English translation by N. P. Ševčenko, BMFD (as in note 1) no. 29, 782-858.

31 BMFD (as in note 1) 607-620.32 P. Schreiner, Eine unbekannte Beschreibung der Pammakaristoskirche (Fethiye Camii)

und weitere Texte zur Topographie Konstantinopels. DOP 25 (1971) 217-248, at 226-229; H. Belting / C. Mango / D. Mouriki, The Mosaics and Frescoes of St Mary Pammakaristos (Fethiye Camii) at Istanbul. Washington DC 1978; J.-C. Cheynet / J.-F. Vannier, Études prosopographiques. Paris 1986, 15.

33 R. Janin, La géographie ecclésiastique de l’empire byzantin I: Le siège de Constan tino ple et le patriarchat œcumé nique 3: Les églises et les monastères. 2nd ed. Paris 1969, 513-515.

34 Janin, La géographie (as in note 33) 525-527.35 B. Aran, The Church of Saint Theodosia and the Monastery of Christ Evergetes. JÖB 28 (1979)

211-228.36 For the variety of Byzantine monastic typika, and their tendency to emphasise either aristocratic

or ascetic priorities, a good introduction is still C. Galatariotou, Byzantine ktetorika typika: A Comparative Study. RÉB 45 (1987) 77-138.




40 Paul Magdalino

monasticism in the twelfth century, which owed its popularity to the influence of an Evergetine monk, Kyr Anthony, who was almost certainly identical with Eirene Doukaina’s brother – and therefore John II’s uncle – John Doukas.37 John II also did not follow the contemporary fashion for starting a typikon with the regulations governing communal life, but began, as was traditional before the late eleventh century, with instructions concerning liturgical ritual.38 If there was a model for the Pantokrator typikon, it was probably the monastery of Hagia Glykeria, on the island of that name, later rededicated to the Theotokos Pantanassa. The first known superior of the Pantokrator, Joseph, had previously been head of this community and maintained his ties with it after his transfer.39

The Komnenian monasteries also differed significantly in their prescriptions for commemoration and burial. In the Kecharitomene typikon, Eirene Doukaina arranged for the annual commemoration of 24 relatives, of whom only seven – her husband, parents, parents in law, one brother and one sister – were already deceased, while all the others – her children, their spouses, another brother and sister, and one grand-daughter – were still alive. She also provided for her daughters to be buried in the convent church, as long as they had taken the veil.40 The commemoration list of the monastery of Christ Philanthropos, which she founded in the joint names of herself and her husband, was even longer, numbering 35.41 By contrast, her third son Isaac, when composing the typikon of the Kosmosoteira in 1152, was much more restrictive. Apart from the commemoration of his parents, Alexios I and Eirene, he mentions only his loyal servants and his foster-child, who were to be provided after his death with livings from the monastery’s estate; they and his household chaplain were the only people, apart from himself, to be allowed burial within the monastic precinct.42 The spiritual family represented by the foundation therefore excludes almost the entire Komnenian kin-group and privileges only the core of the private household with which the founder ended his days. The Pantokrator typikon takes an intermediate position. On the one hand, John II stipulates the daily commemoration

37 See BMFD (as in note 1) 441-506; R.H. Jordan / R. Morris, The Hypotyposis of the Monastery of the Theotokos Evergetis, Constantinople (11th-12th Centuries). Farnham 2012, esp. 4-5, 28-31, 253-255.

38 D. Krausmüller, The Abbots of Evergetis as Opponents of Monastic Reform. Monastic Discourse in 11th and 12th-century Constantinople. RÉB 69 (2011) 111-24.

39 C. Mango, Twelfth-Century Notices from Cod. Christ Church Gr. 53. JÖB 42 (1992) 221-228. Joseph had been tonsured by the monastery’s founder, Gregory Taronites, who himself was a ‘graduate’ of the imperial monastery of the Peribleptos. A Gregory Taronites, probably a different person but of the same family, was put in charge of the public finances by John II at the beginning of his reign: Niketas Choniates, Historia, ed. J.-L. van Dieten. CFHB, 11/1. Berlin/New York 1975, 9. The typikon of the Peribleptos has not survived, but the description by Psellos suggests that the monastic regime was fairly lax: Chronographia, ed. Renauld, I, 43-44.

40 Gautier, Kécharitôménè (as in note 30) 118-125; BMFD (as in note 1) 700-702.41 M. Kouroupou / J.-F. Vannıer, Commémoraisons des Comnènes dans le typikon liturgique

du monastère du Christ Philanthrope (MS. Panaghia Kamariotissa 29). RÉB 63 (2005) 41-69.42 Petit, Kosmosotira (as in note 31) 26, 46, 52, 61-62, 69-70, 74-75; BMFD (as in note 1) 804,

823, 829, 836-837, 844-845, 844-849.




of his paternal grandmother, parents and late wife, the weekly commemoration of 22 other deceased family members, and, for the future, the daily commemoration of himself and his children after his death.43 On the other hand, the commemoration list includes 8 non-relatives.44 The reasons for their inclusion are not clear, but we can infer from their functions or from mentions of them elsewhere that four were valued for their military service and the other four for their household service to the emperor. In any case, their presence undoubtedly reflects their personal loyalty to the founder, and gives a personal, individual touch to his dynastic foundation.

The personal character of the foundation is underlined by John’s affectionate reference to his wife as his partner in the undertaking, and by the insistence, in the literary sources, that he helped her to realise her pious initiative. In other words, the Pantokrator was a work of conjugal devotion, and a monument not so much to the extended imperial kin-group as to the emperor’s nuclear family. The priority of the nuclear family is clear from the burial restrictions that the typikon implicitly imposes on the monastery’s funerary chapel: this was designed only for the tombs of the founder, his wife, and their eldest son, Alexios. The emperor subsequently made one exception: in what is clearly a later insertion he granted the request of John Arbantenos, husband of his niece, to be buried and commemorated in the monastery in return for his donation of some highly lucrative real estate.45 There is nothing to indicate that Arbantenos’ tomb was in the imperial burial chapel.

It is significant, moreover, that the general restriction on burial in the monastery applied not only to the wider imperial family, but also the other seven children of the marriage – the four daughters, and the three sons who did not have the title of emperor. This points to the feature that most clearly distinguished the Pantokrator from other Komnenian monastic foundations: its status as a work of imperial piety and civic benefaction.

The Pantokrator was an imperial monastery in the fullest possible sense. It enjoyed the emperor’s protection and patronage, being answerable to no other earthly authority, and was very much the creation of the emperor and his Augusta as ktetores. John II not only authored, or at least authorised, the typikon in his capacity as ktetor, but also issued it as an official imperial act, written in the person of ‘my majesty’ (ἡ βασιλεία μου), and authenticated with his autograph signature. The monastery was probably built on the site of an earlier imperial foundation, as we have seen. It was built with imperial funds, and endowed with rich estates donated by the imperial couple, some of which are explicitly mentioned as having belonged to the public fisc (ὁ δημόσιος λόγος).

The Pantokrator foundation was also characteristically imperial in its size and composition as a social and spatial unit. The Life of the empress Eirene asserts that

43 Gautier, Typikon (as in note 14) 40-45; BMFD (as in note 1) 742-742; cf. P. Gautier, L’obituaire du typikon du Pantokrator. RÉB 27 (1969) 235-262.

44 Gautier,Typikon (as in note 14) 44-45; BMFD (as in note 1) 743; Gautier, Obituaire (as in note 43) 255-257.

45 Gautier, Typikon (as in note 14) 44-47; BMFD (as in note 1) 743; Gautier, Obituaire (as in note 43) 260-261.



42 Paul Magdalino

she wanted the Pantokrator to be the first among monasteries, and that this is what John II helped her to achieve. The unique evidence of the typikon does not confirm, but neither does it contradict, this assertion. The community of 80 monks, of whom 30 were the servants of the other 50, seems rather modest compared with the figures of 700-1000 given for some other urban monasteries.46 However, the evidence for these figures is anecdotal, and can no more be trusted than the supposedly eyewitness statement of Anselm of Havelberg that the Pantokrator monastery numbered 700 monks.47 Even at 80, the Pantokrator was undoubtedly larger than any non-imperial private or aristocratic foundation.48 In any case, whatever it may have lacked in the size of the monastic community, it more than made up for with the other units of which the complex was composed: the collegiate church of the Eleousa, the imperial funerary chapel of the Archangel Michael, the hospital, the old-age home, and the annexe to the leper-hospital. The precedents for multifunctional institutions of this kind were all imperial, and only one of them, the state Orphanage renovated by Alexios I, was Komnenian. John II and Eirene would have looked for inspiration not only to this but to the earlier foundations of which Alexios himself had clearly been aware, above all the Mangana of Constantine IX, which stood next to the Orphanage and in which, in the imperial apartments that formed part of the complex, Alexios breathed his last.49

The Pantokrator belonged to imperial tradition not only through the precedents for its multifunctional ensemble, but also in the typology of its individual units that were added to the core monastic community. Hospitals and old-age homes had depended mainly, if not exclusively, on imperial patronage since the sixth century. The sanctuary of the Theotokos Eleousa was neither a public church nor a private oratory; it was the equivalent of a collegiate church in the west, and its closest Byzantine antecedents are to be found in the churches that were added to the imperial Great Palace in the middle Byzantine period: the Nea Ekklesia of Basil I,50 and the Chalke of Romanos I Lekapenos and John I Tzimiskes,51 to which one might add the church of the Pharos, although its origins are obscure and its separate status among the Palace

46 Notably the Stoudios as re-founded by St Theodore (Theophanes, Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor. Leipzig 1883, I, 481); the joint monastery of Manuel and Ophrou-Limen, established by Romanos I (Theophanes Continuatus, ed. Bekker, 432-433); and the monastery of Kosmidion, established by Michael IV (L. Deubner, Kosmas und Damian. Leipzig/Berlin 1907, 30-31).

47 PL 188, 1156; see in the present volume I. Taxidis, The Monastery of Pantokrator in the Narratives of Western Travellers, 97-106, esp. 97-98.

48 For a general survey of the sizes of Byzantine monastic communities, see P. Charanis, The Monk as an Element of Byzantine Society. DOP 25 (1971) 61-84.

49 Anna Komnene, Alexias, ed. D. R. Reinsch / A. Kambylis. CFHB, 40. Berlin/New York 2001, XV. 11, 9 (p. I, 497); John Zonaras, Epitome historiarum, III, ed. Th. Büttner-Wobst. Bonn 1897, 761-5.

50 See P. Magdalino, The Nea Ekklesia of Basil I. JÖB 37 (1987) 51-64 (repr. in: idem, Studies, no. IV).

51 Patria, ed. Preger, Scriptores (as in note 12) 282; C. Mango, The Brazen House. Copenhagen 1959, 159ff; S. G. Engberg, Romanos Lekapenos and the Mandilion of Edessa, in: J. Durand/ B. Flusin (eds), Byzance et les reliques du Christ. Paris 2004, 123-142.




chapels and the Palace clergy is uncertain.52 A palatine model seems very likely in view of the fact that John II prescribed that the clergy of the Eleousa should chant “the hagiopolites office according to the order of the great church in the palace”.53 As for the funerary chapel of the Archangel Michael, it is surely significant that the typikon refers to this as a heroon, using the classical word for a hero’s shrine that the Romans adopted to describe the mausoleum of a divinised emperor. In Byzantium, we otherwise only encounter it as a designation of the imperial burial chambers of Constantine and Justinian annexed to the church of the Holy Apostles.54 That John was consciously recalling the mausoleum of Constantine is further suggested by the architectural form of the oratory of the Archangel Michael, which, with its proportionally wide dome resting on the walls of the naos without internal supports, can be read as an adaptation of a late antique rotunda to Middle Byzantine liturgical requirements.55 There was also possibly a reminiscence of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.56 The emperor was not just following the trend, which had started with Romanos I and become permanent with Romanos III, for emperors to choose burial in the churches of their own pious foundations; he was redirecting this trend towards the older tradition of imperial burial in a dedicated ‘hero-shrine’, in effect adding a third heroon to those of Constantine and Justinian. It may not be mere coincidence that the Pantokrator is, of all the imperial monasteries and all the Komnenian monasteries in Constantinople, one of the closest geographically to the church of the Holy Apostles.

Like all pious benefactors and monastic founders, John II was heavily and explicitly preoccupied with the salvation of his soul through the prayers of his monks and those who received his charity. Yet he was also concerned with imperial tradition, which in Romano-Byzantine political culture meant above all two things: imperial victory and the imperial city, both dependent, by the twelfth century, on the prostasia, the patronage and protection, of the Virgin Mary. Both themes are implicit in the typikon, and are made eloquently explicit in the inauguration epigram of the Pantokrator. This begins by presenting the foundation as a work of public benefaction, which the imperial couple offers to the imperial city to give it new lustre in return

52 P. Magdalino, L’église du Phare et les reliques de la Passion à Constantinople (VIIe/VIIIe-XIIIe siècles), in: Durand/ Flusin, Byzance et les reliques du Christ (as in note 51) 15-30.

53 The hagiopolites was the so-called ‘monastic rite’ of the hours, imported from the churches and monasteries of Jerusalem, and by this time practised in all the monasteries and churches of Constantinople, as opposed to the ‘cathedral rite’ that was limited to Hagia Sophia: S. Parenti, The Cathedral Rite of Constantinople: Evolution of a Local Tradition. OCP 77 (2011) 449-469. By the ‘great church in the Palace’ is meant either the Pharos or, more probably, the Nea, since this was officially referred to in the tenth century the ‘New Great Church’.

54 G. Downey, The Tombs of the Byzantine Emperors at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. JHS 79 (1959) 27-51.

55 Note the resemblance with the katholikon of Nea Moni on Chios, which according to local tradition was modeled on the mausoleum of Constantine: Ch. Bouras, Nea Moni on Chios: History and Architecture. Athens 1982, 139ff.

56 R. Ousterhout, Architecture, Art and Komnenian Ideology at the Pantokrator Monastery, in: N. Necipoğlu (ed.), Byzantine Constantinople (as in note 5) 133-50, at 149-50.



44 Paul Magdalino

for the brilliance of their coronation. The poem climaxes with a prayer in which the whole community of monks and clergy call upon Christ Pantokrator to grant the emperor victory over his enemies, especially the ‘offspring of Hagar’. The emphasis throughout is on the varied beauty of the constructions, which are enumerated, but the dominant and repeated motif is that of the portico (stoa). It first appears with an evocation of the Stoa Poikile, which ‘many years ago, adorned the mother of learning, golden Athens’, and to which the Pantokrator is compared. It returns in the climax to the enumeration of the buildings, when the spectator stands in wonder at the stoa by which the presbeia of the Theotokos ascends to the ‘heavenly and divine houses’ of the Pantokrator.57 This is, in part, a poetic conceit interweaving various allusions, among them an implicit association between Athens the mother of learning (τῶν λόγων τὴν μητέρα), with the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Word (μητέρα τοῦ Λόγου). But it also conveys a serious message about the Pantokrator foundation: this is a civic monument, tied by its own colonnaded street into the monumental network of porticoes that were perhaps the most essential articulations of urban space in Constantinople.58 The typikon does not contradict this message, despite its inevitable concern to isolate the monks from the perils of urban living. Indeed, the palpable presence of the city is perhaps what most distinguishes the Pantokrator typikon from other Byzantine monastic foundation documents. The foundation provides important welfare services. It is set in a densely inhabited urban neighbourhood, which makes it unsuitable as a site for a leper colony. Above all, it is deeply and regularly enmeshed in the popular, civic rituals of devotion to the Virgin Mary.59 Not only is it a station for the weekly procession from the Blachernae, where the pious lay faithful involve the monks, the clergy and the entombed imperial founders in their processional icons, hymns and prayers;60 it is also a place where the city’s most revered and popular icon, that of the Theotokos Hodegetria, comes to dwell among the imperial tombs on the days when the emperor, his wife and heir are commemorated. Again, the emperor insists that it is to come escorted by its cortège of ordinary faithful, who are to sing litanies of supplication on its arrival and departure.61

57 The typikon describes this portico in the plural as τοὺς ἐμβόλους τοὺς παρακειμένους τῷ δημοσίῳ ἐμβόλῳ καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἄνοδον ὁμοῦ καὶ τὴν κάθοδον ... χρηματίζοντας (ed. Gautier, Typikon, as in note 14, 1475). Neither Gautier’s French translation (p. 74) nor the English translation in BMFD (as in note 1, p. 754) conveys the precise topographical information of the Greek, which makes it clear that this was a side street, lined with two porticoes, going up to the monastery from the main public thoroughfare.

58 See e.g. Constantine of Rhodes, ed. E. Legrand, Description des oeuvres d’art et de l’Église des saints Apôtres à Constantinople. Poème en vers iambiques par Constantin le Rhodien. RÉG 9 (1896) 37; Patria, ed. Preger, Scriptores, 148-149. Cf. M. Mango, The Porticoed Street at Constantinople, in: Necipoğlu (ed.), Byzantine Constantinople (as in note 5) 29-50.

59 B. V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power. The Mother of God in Byzantium. University Park, PA, 2006, 165-87.

60 N. Ševčenko, Icons in the Liturgy. DOP 45 (1991) 45-57.61 Gautier, Typikon (as in note 14) 80-83; BMFD (as in note 1) 756-757. On the icon, see

Pentcheva, Icons and Power (as in note 59) 109-43; C. Angelidi / T. Papamastorakis, The Veneration of the Virgin Hodegetria and the Hodegon Monastery, in: M. Vasilaki (ed.), Mother of God. Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art. Athens/Milan 2000, 373-87.




These ritual innovations prescribed in the typikon can be seen as a dynastic appropriation of the traditional sacred symbolism of Constantinople, as well as an imposition of a new, dynastic landmark on the city’s ritual landscape. Yet they can also be seen as an integration of imperial piety into the popular devotions of the community that the new imperial monument enriched with its beauty and its welfare services. It is notable that John II chose to appropriate – or, more exactly, borrow – sacred symbols that were popular and freely accessible, rather than transferring relics that were locked up in Hagia Sophia or the imperial palace. It would certainly be difficult to maintain that these borrowings were for the benefit of the extended imperial family, for the idea that the Pantokrator was the supreme dynastic monument to Komnenian family solidarity and success must be subject to careful qualification. The foundation placed the founder in the line of his imperial predecessors, and not so much in the context of his family forebears and relatives – except by reaction. For, while the Pantokrator represented the spiritual unity of those family members who were commemorated in the monastery’s prayers, it owed its existence partly to the tensions and divisions at the heart of the imperial kin-group. In his introduction to the typikon, John II explains that his pious foundation is a thank-offering to Christ for raising him to the throne, and helping him to overcome both his external and internal enemies. He names the former as the Turks, Pechenegs, Serbs, and Hungarians; he alludes to the latter as ‘those of my friends and my close relatives who stood against me and wrongfully removed themselves from brotherly concord’.62 The allusion can only be to the plots of his sister Anna and his brother Isaac, which are well attested in other sources for John’s reign.63

The Pantokrator monastery is thus presented by its founder as a monument to imperial victory: victory over external barbarians, and victory over the aristocratic factionalism that had arisen from the Komnenian system of privileging the imperial family at the expense of the imperial office and the imperial city. John II looked over his shoulder at the monastic patronage that was symptomatic of Komnenian aristocratic privilege, but he did not imitate it closely. His response is encapsulated in his choice of dedication. He may have followed his father, grandmother, cousin and brother in dedicating his monastery to Christ, but his Christ, the Pantokrator, was more imperial than theirs.

The elaborate Pantokrator complex was clearly the result of a carefully deliberated choice, perhaps made in consultation with an ideological adviser. There is one telling indication, however, that John II’s vision for his foundation was reactive and short-

62 Gautier, Typikon (as in note 14) 26-29; BMFD (as in note 1) 737-738.63 F. Chalandon, Jean II Comnène (1118-1143) et Manuel Ier Comnène. Paris 1912, 1-8, 32-

33. For the internal rivalries of the Komnenian family, and their impact on both culture and politics under John II and Manuel I, see P. Magdalino, The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos, 1143-1180. Cambridge 1993, 192-3; idem, The Empire of the Komnenoi (1118-1204), in: J. Shepard (ed.), The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire, c. 500-1492. Cambridge 2008, 627-63 at 629-34; idem, The Pen of the Aunt: Echoes of the Mid-Twelfth Century in the Alexiad, in: Th. Gouma-Peterson (ed.), Anna Komnene and Her Times. New York/London 2000, 15-43 at 17-24.



46 Paul Magdalino

term rather than proactive and long-term. This is his provision for a mausoleum in the church of the Archangel Michael. He envisaged, at least when drafting the typikon, that the heroon would accommodate only himself, his wife, and his eldest son and co-emperor, Alexios. The dimensions of the chapel tend to confirm that he was not planning much beyond the next generation. He even conceded that Alexios might want to be buried elsewhere, which suggests that he considered it perfectly possible that the next generation would invest in its own nuclear family foundation. Thus the future of the Pantokrator was by no means self-evident at the time of John’s death in 1143, and the attitude of the emperor who did succeed him in the event proved crucial to its continuing importance. Manuel I did eventually make a new monastic foundation, at Kataskepe near the northern end of the Bosporos, in reaction against the Pantokrator and other wealthy urban monasteries.64 But Kataskepe did not challenge or overshadow the role of the Pantokrator in its urban context as a dynastic religious institution. Manuel adopted his parents’ foundation as his own sacred and imperial inheritance. It was there that he arranged for his own burial in an elaborate sarcophagus.65 He also oversaw three developments that increased the sacred capital of his parents’ investment. Early in his reign he fulfilled his father’s wish to have the tomb cover from the shrine of St Demetrios in Thessalonica brought to Constantinople and installed in the church of the Pantokrator.66 At the end of his reign, the Pantokrator became the final destination of the last of the Passion relics to be translated to Constantinople: the Stone of Unction on which Christ’s body had been prepared for burial.67 This addition linked the Pantokrator symbolically to the Palace church of the Pharos, the traditional repository of Passion relics, where the stone had indeed first rested on its arrival from Ephesos via Chalcedon in 1169/70. The placing of the Sepulchral slab close to Manuel’s tomb also had echoes of the original funerary symbolism of Constantine’s mausoleum at the church of the Holy Apostles, which identified the deceased emperor with Christ.68

There was, moreover, another monument associated with the church of the Holy Apostles that may have helped to inspire another boost to the sanctification of the

64 Choniates, Historia, ed. van Dieten (as in note 30) 206-207; M. Angold, Church and Society in Byzantium under the Comneni, 1081-1261. Cambridge 1995, 287-291.

65 C. Mango, Three Byzantine Sarcophagi. DOP 16 (1962) 398-399; idem, Notes on Byzantine Monuments. DOP 24 (1969-1970) 372-375; N. Ševčenko, The Tomb of Manuel I Komnenos, Again, First International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Studies Symposium, Proceedings. Istanbul 2010, 609-616.

66 Narrative ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Ἀνάλεκτα Ἱεροσολυμιτικῆς Σταχυλογίας. St Petersburg 1891-1898; repr. Brussels 1963, IV, 236-248; see new edition in the present volume by S. Kotzabassi, Feasts at the Monastery of Pantokrator, 183-189.

67 Ioannis Cinnami Epitome rerum ab Ioanne et Alexio Comnenis gestarum, ed. A. Meineke. CSHB. Bonn 1836, 277-278; Choniates, Historia, ed. van Dieten, 222. Akolouthia by George Skylitzes, ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Ἀνάλεκτα Ἱεροσολυμιτικῆς Σταχυολογίας, V. St Petersburg 1888 (repr. Brussels 1963), 180-189 with some notes on 424-426; new edition in the present volume by Th. Antonopoulou, George Skylitzes’ Office on the translation of the Holy Stone. A Study and Critical Edition, 109-141, esp. 123-136.

68 See J. Bardill, Constantine, Divine Emperor of the Christian Golden Age. Cambridge 2012, 367-376.




Pantokrator in Manuel’s reign. The church of All Saints, which was virtually an annexe to the Holy Apostles complex, had a secondary dedication to the empress Theophano, the first wife of Leo VI, who promoted her as a saint after her death.69 A similar quasi-canonisation took place at the Pantokrator in the commemoration of the empress Eirene. As we have seen, both the anniversary of the foundation’s consecration and the anniversary of her death found their way into the festal calendar of the church of Constantinople. Eirene was commemorated – at least, one presumes, in the monastery – with an annual synaxis on 13 August, for which an anonymous author composed a short hagiographical text extolling her saintly qualities, above all the ardent piety that drove her to found the monastery, making a dramatic scene to persuade her husband to provide a generous endowment. This hagiographical celebration was clearly not introduced by John II. The text refers to him as deceased, neither the typikon nor the inauguration epigram makes a great deal of Eirene’s saintliness, and the typikon does not make a special liturgical occasion of 13 August. Moreover, the hagiography distinctly echoes the wording of the inauguration epigram. At the same time, it is difficult to imagine that a cult of the empress would have been promoted under an emperor who was not personally attached to her memory and to the Pantokrator. All this points to her son, Manuel I, as the most likely instigator of her ‘canonisation’. It should perhaps be seen in connection with his Hungarian policy and his efforts to win support in Hungary for a Byzantine protectorate in the 1160s.70

If Manuel thus promoted the ‘cult’ of his mother at the Pantokrator, it is inconceivable that he would have failed to ensure that both his parents were commemorated in the monastery’s prayers as stipulated in the typikon. Yet it has been suggested that these stipulations of the typikon were neglected after John II’s death, because a letter of the monk James of Kokkinobaphos to John’s daughter-in-law, the sebastokratorissa Eirene, warns her of the unreliability of commemoration and points to the example of her late κηδεστής.71 Either this does not refer to the Pantokrator, or it does not refer to John II.

The foundation of the Pantokrator, as created by John II and Eirene, and promoted by Manuel I, may or may not have fulfilled Eirene’s ambitions for it to prevail over all other monasteries in the size of its endowment. Yet of all Byzantine monasteries on the eve of the Fourth Crusade, it was undoubtedly the most imperial and the most urban. The most imperial, because it was a monument to imperial victory, the most important imperial burial place after the Holy Apostles, and the monastery most explicitly associated with the sacralization of the imperial image. The most urban,

69 G. Downey, The Church of All Saints (Church of St Theophano) near the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople. DOP 9-10 (1956), 301-305; G. Dagron, Theophanô, les Saints-Apôtres et l’église de Tous-les-Saints. Symmeikta 9 (1994) 201-218; S. Gerstel, Saint Eudokia and the Imperial Household of Leo VI. The Art Bulletin 79 (1997) 699-707; J. M. Featherstone, All Saints and the Holy Apostles: De Cerimoniis II, 6-7, Nea Rhome 6 (2009) 235-248.

70 Magdalino, Empire of Manuel (as in note 63) 78-83; P. Stephenson, Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900-1204. Cambridge 2000.

71 Ed. E. Jeffreys / M. Jeffreys, Iacobi Monachi Epistulae. CChr, 68. Turnhout 2009, no. 15; see M. Jeffreys / E. Jeffreys, Immortality in the Pantokrator? JÖB 44 (1994) 193-201.



48 Paul Magdalino

not only because of its downtown location in a densely built-up commercial quarter near the geographical centre of the intramural urban space, but also because of its participation in the city’s most popular urban cults. In all these respects it had the edge over its closest competitors, the Stoudios in the south-west corner of the city and the Mangana at the eastern end.

The imperial status and the urban setting of the Pantokrator ensured its relatively smooth survival and high profile after the capture of the city by the crusaders in 1204. It lay within the large area along the Golden Horn that the Venetians added to their commercial quarter as their share of the spoils. Since it was undoubtedly one of the most large and well-appointed building complexes within the area, and perhaps one of the very few that had not been ravaged by the recent fires, the Venetian podestà, Marino Zeno, made it the headquarters of his administration under the Latin Empire of Constantinople. 72 He also appropriated from the Latin Patriarchate the icon of the Theotokos Hodegetria, and it was from the Pantokrator that the icon was brought to participate in the triumphal entry of Michael Palaiologos into Constantinople on 15 August 1261.73 The monastery maintained its prestige and its status throughout the last two centuries of Byzantium. In the empire’s last, declining years, it was governed by a distinguished abbot, Makarios Makres, and it made a final appearance as a place of imperial burial, receiving the mortal remains of the penultimate Byzantine emperor, John VIII Palaiologos.74 Not suprisingly, therefore, the Pantokrator caught the eye of the conquerors in 1453, and was one of the first urban foundations to be appropriated for Islamic use, as the new Ottoman capital’s first Madrasa.75

72 D. Jacoby, The Venetian Government and Administration in Latin Constantinople, 1204-1261: A State within a State, in: G. Ortaali / G. Ravegnani / P. Schreiner (eds), Quarta Crociata. Venezia–Bisanzio–Impero Latino. Venice 2006, I, 19-79, at 36-38.

73 Georges Pachymérès, Relations historiques, ed. A. Failler, tr. V. Laurent. CFHB, 24/1. Paris 1984, II 31 (p. 216-217); cf. R. L. Wolff, Footnote to an Incident of the Latin Occupation of Constantinople: the Church and Icon of the Hodigitria. Traditio 6 (1948) 319-28.

74 Janin, Églises (as in note 34) 518.75 Ç. Kafescioğlu, Constantinopolis/Istanbul: Cultural Encounter, Imperial Vision, and the

Construction of the Ottoman Capital. University Park, PA, 2009, 22.




Appendix

On the same day are celebrated the encaenia of the beautiful and divine church of the imperial and almighty monastery of our God

the Saviour Christ Pantokrator

Many years ago, the mother of learning,Golden Athens, the famous cityHad a stoa of the richly decorated kindThat embellished it with outstanding paintings

5 In a palette of colours. It was dazzlingIn its lustre, and was called Poikile.The present city now rules among all othersIn the construction of flowering churches and stoasWith many other beautiful spectacles

10 And the delightful forms of brilliant houses.The flower of the Purple and king before his crowning– for the heart of the king is in the hand of God – The brightest light among emperorsThe most great lord John

15 With his beloved spouse the empressThinking rightly that it was not right for this cityTo show its brightness only in buildings that were old,And that it was grievous, Time having made these wither, If something were not added on their part

20 In return for their resplendent coronation.So they deliberated, and a mostWondrous result sealed their deliberation.The lord seeing the queen impetuouslyRushing to the foundation of a monastery

25 Gave impetus to her good deliberation.As master collaborator and overseerHe appointed the worthy Nikephoros, Who proved a true Beseleel and more.Pushing at once all other things aside

30 She erected decorously fashioned churchesIn which constructions lined with goldAcquire their harmony from art,And their delightful view from their location.As for the rest, how may words represent it?



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35 Giving up on that, since words are impotent,I am simply astounded at the beauty of the workmanship.Everyone who sees rejoices as he glorifiesThe maker of these novel spectacles, From which the grace of golden rays, emitting<.......................................................... bedazzles>

40 With beauty those who gape with upward gaze.She raised in addition monastic dwellingsArranging them around, and in their midst,Verdant and full of variegated flowersA kind of lovely garden pleasing to the eyes,

45 Irrigated by gushing waters,Some obvious to the eyes, others in pipes;A garden coloured with the hues of sweet delights,In cypresses and artificial fountains,And as the wind blows in pleasantly,

50 It soothes to satisfaction with gentle breezesAnd invigorates those who are afflicted by illness.She raised walls enclosing in their circuitA space that even the eye of a deer cannot take in,And she raised up accommodations for strangers

55 Greatly superior in beauty and in sitingExpelling the illnesses of men and womenBecause they have well modulated ventilationFrom the winds that blow in thereAs a tonic for the convalescing patients.

60 She also raised up homes for the elderlyWho suffer from advanced old age and illnessGranting supplies to feed them fullyAnd all else that is needful for their bodies.She raised up also the structures of porticoes

65 For a compelling cause of great pietyAnd dedication to the All-chaste one alone.Their extraordinary construction is dumbfounding, And when one learns the reason, why it isThat they are built over such a distance,

70 He stands in awe as he gives glory,Thus mirroring the sovereigns' desireTo bring about the porticoes' construction,In order that through them the Sabbath routeMight thus be crowned, in its ancient manner,

75 As the people who come ritually from the BlachernaeSinging hymns, are led by it directlyTo these heavenly and divine mansions.




Wishing to extol in hymns and canticlesTheir Lady and Virgin par excellence,

80 And judging as in no way adequateAll that had been done so far, if she was not supreme,They appointed this fine and most melodious clergy,In hymns and intensive prayersIn special hymns and vigil services,

85 To supplicate for their benefit, So that their plans and actions may advance,Being directed to a major outcome,And that the lasting heritage on highThey may possess, and live eternal years.

90 Thus having fashioned everything most wiselyThey raised a thing of beauty to the queen [of the cities}While honoring the Word that gave the crownFor he alone is PantokratorThe ruler of all things, both old and new.

95 To welcome him with words of [inaugural] celebrationAn ancient and most excellent ritual lawPrescribes that on the day on which thisChurch, whose beauty is inimitable,Received the final touches to its building.

100 To offer hymns of thanksgiving is in orderAnd supplications from a fervent heartThat may incite him to be sympathetic,That cry aloud and groan from inner depths.'Almighty, come and take pity, Word!

105 We are your people, your elected lot.Break our ungodly enemies with your strengthWho are ever breathing murder against us.Grant victory to the emperor, who in you aloneNurtures his hopes of salvation.

110 You see the all-night prayers that come from us,What congregations there are from the monksAnd what again from the All-chaste one's church.You know the rest, there is no need to say.Acknowledge us just with your nod,

115 For enemies will be seized at once with fearTheir hands will be restrained by terror,Immediately they will know that you alone are God.Now we, extending thanks,Will say, acclaiming as is customary,

120 «Glory to your right hand, glory to your might,You have broken our foes, reducing them utterly,



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Let them take notice: you God alone are great.O how can you reject the entreating voicesOf us the unworthy, who have transgressed so much?

125 ‘Ask and ye shall receive’, Saviour, these are your words.Give to the emperor your right hand in battle, Bring this unbeatable weapon against the foe,To the glory of your strength.Facilitate for him fulfilment of his wishes,

130 And more, make smooth his pathway to success.On top of this, extend his health and strength,Bring defeat to the offspring of HagarAvenging those for whom you took on flesh.Give to the deeds in which he showed his longing

135 From your side, in return, the recompense in kind.As for the founder now, Queen Xene, Who loved you as a stranger, Word, and proved herselfTo the whole world and to all vain appearancesA stranger too, she whom you previously removed,

140 Enrol her in the choir of the saints,Granting her ageless life, and finallyGlorify her who glorified you – you said it.And strengthening us, unworthy as you know,Make straight, facilitate the way on which we tread.

145 With Father and Spirit, glory to you is fitting».




On the same day, commemoration of Eirene, the celebrated and most blessed empress

and founder of the venerable monastery of the Pantokrator Saviour Christ,who was renamed as the nun Xene on taking the holy and angelic hhabit

It was necessary that this most great and supreme city should not just take pride in the beauty of things given over to corruption, and take delight and rejoice in tales of men of old who are renowned for their virtue. Rather, it was right for [Constan-tinople] to boast of and be embellished by the celebrated empress and founder of the Pantokrator monastery. On the one hand, since the things of old had faded with time, and their beauty was extinguished, they no longer served as sources of delight to their beholders. Not even if they had undergone restoration would they have been sufficient to delight the eye; they still looked neglected. For such were the beauty and brightness of the buildings raised from their very foundations by the celebrated empress, with the consent and approval of the mighty emperor, in glorification and thanks to the Pantokrator our God and Saviour Jesus Christ who glorified them with coronation, that the city was dignified by them, and by the rays that they emitted, they illumined and brightened the buildings that grown old and faded with time. On the other hand, the empress, who had acquired all the virtues from childhood and was a receptacle of all good things – this is why she was joined in marriage to the God-crowned and Purple-born emperor – showed herself to be a veritable ornament, not only to the offspring of the imperial Porphyra raised as emperors, in that she was reckoned to be, as indeed she was, the one who set the seal on all the empresses be-fore her, as well as a root of all good qualities and archetypal mould for those who came after her; she was also an adornment to the Queen of Cities.

This celebrated empress, then, came from parents who were fortunate western kings; from the cradle, so to speak, like the noblest of plants, she showed the way that things would turn out, so that her progress in excellence belied her tender age. For virtue tends to reveal and proclaim those who pursue it, even if they are hidden away in a corner.

When a search for a good-looking and virtuous girl was conducted by the cele-brated and pious imperial couple Alexios Komnenos and Eirene, and they found this one brimming with excellent qualities, they joined her to their God-given offspring, the Purple-born emperor; then everything was filled with joy and gladness.

Having borne him male children and as many females to a total of eight, she rai-sed them in a royal and splendid manner, but reckoned the pleasures of life and even the royalty itself at nought, whispering to herself the words of David, ‘What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit?’ (Ps. 29,10 [30,9]). She did not desist from ministering to God, by her good intercessions with the imperial power, repre-senting the causes of petitioners, and guiding them in every way.



54 Paul Magdalino

But she also rejoiced in almsgiving, more than in receiving money. Before her coronation, she gave everything that came into her hands to the poor, and after it she became just as much a protector of orphans and widows, and she enriched monastic dwellings with money. How shall I tell of the rest? Her gentleness, her quietness, her humility, her compassion, her cheerfulness, her approachability, her placid nature, for she was never moved to anger, and neither did she malign or insult anyone. And if ever she ventured a smile, this too was done with modesty, for she was ever grie-ving and sorrowful in private, because the psalter was ever on her lips. She was di-stinguished by continence, she delighted in the wasting of the flesh, and partaking of a lowly and simple diet, she lived an ascetic life.

Yet considering all this inadequate to the God-loving purpose that she nurtured, slowly and latterly, after receiving the imperial crown and being elevated to impe-rial power, she disregarded everything else, and setting at nought all necessary and urgent matters, she established from its very foundations the imperial monastery that is named after the Pantokrator Saviour Christ our God. She erected the beauti-ful churches that can be seen there now, hostels and old-age homes, all of which in beauty, situation and construction technique take first place among all previous buil-dings, both old and recent. In everything she was greatly assisted by the most wor-thy Nikephoros, her most trusted household man, truly a new Beseleel, He fittingly ordered the harmonious design of the buildings, driving the construction work with great energy, so that he neither allowed his eyes sufficient sleep, nor rest to his head.

And thus constructing and establishing the whole complex with his collaborati-on, she set it up as a delightful embellishment for the imperial city, rejoicing in the beauty of the successful result and giving thanks to God.

Now that she needed a greater helping hand, she found it. For on one occasion, taking her husband the emperor by the hand, and entering the lovely church of God the Pantokrator our Lord Jesus Christ, she suddenly threw herself down, pressing her head to the sacred floor. „Receive, O Lord, the church that God has built for you“, she exclaimed in tears, adding tears to tears and affirming that she would not get up if the thing that she desired did not receive fulfilment.

As she washed the sacred floor with her tears, she heard the emperor promise what she wanted, to fulfil every one of her wishes, and to do all that was in his po-wer and more, in every way, in the dedication of sacred vessels and in the donation of landed property, in order to contrive that this venerable monastery should prevail over all others in moveable and immoveable property and in annual revenues, just as Our Lord and God the Pantokrator Jesus Christ, who is honoured and revered therein, takes precedence over all things. Hearing this, she rose to her feet full of in-expressible joy and cheerfulness.

And so the celebrated empress, as if casting off a weight that had been oppres-sing her, was glad from that moment and rejoiced. Not long afterwards, when she was in the province of Bithynia, she departed to Christ Pantokrator for whom she longed. She was laid to rest in this monastery, which she had raised from its founda-tions. The promise that she had received from the pious emperor had been fulfilled and the imperial Pantokrator monastery had been extended to take first place over




all and among all others. And it was not long before the most pious and celebrated emperor John himself, laying aside the earthly empire, migrated to the Lord and King who is in heaven. His body was laid to rest in the imperial Pantokrator monastery that had been made splendid by him, to the glory of the Pantokrator Christ our true God, for to Him is due glory unto the ages of ages, Amen.





Date post:	19-Dec-2016
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