Εγκυκλοπαίδεια Μείζονος Ελληνισμού, Κωνσταντινούπολη

1. Foundation and ktetor (patron)

The Monastery of Christ Pantepoptes was a religious institution of Anna Dalassene, emperor Alexios I Komnenos’ mother. Its foundation date can not be defined with absolute certainty, yet in all probability Anna Dalassene built her monastery in the beginning of her son’s reign, who assumed power and was crowned emperor on the 1^st of April 1081.

Without doubt by 1087 the monastery was completed and had started operating, because, then, estates are mentioned, donated much earlier by queen mother to her foundation. Based on evidence we know that the Monastery of Christ Pantepoptes until 1187 possessed the islands of Leros, Leipsoi and Pharmakos (Farmakonisi),¹ though it is not possible to name with accuracy the estates the monastery received, nor to estimate their real extent. Anna Dalassene, as one of the most powerful persons in the empire during the first decade of Alexios Komnenos’ reign, was able to make rich donations in the monastery she had recently erected, as well in other religious institutions.² Particularly discernible is the care Anna Dalassene took of the Monastery of Christ Pantepoptes as well of the Myrelaion Monastery in Constantinople (an emperor Romanos I Lekapenos’ foundation, built in 920-922) in order that they receive important donations on estates. With regard to the organization of Pantepoptes Monastery there is no evidence. Anna Dalassene retired into her foundation after 1095, where she died and was buried at the beginning of the 12th century.

2. Consecration of the katholikon

The consecration of the monastic katholikon to Christ Pantepoptes is unique in the Byzantine history. No other monastery in the capital city (and, as far as we know, nowhere else in the empire either) from all those dedicated to Christ, ever bore this epithet. Anna Dalassene’s decision to dedicate her church to Christ Pantepoptes reveals a clear theological, as well as political statement. Anna Dalassene, who became a nun right after her husband’s death, protovestiarios John Komnenos, on the 12^th of July 1067, by taking care her family’s future and by working skillfully on secular policy, disclosed on Christ’s epithet the right expression for her intensions. Christ Pantepoptes, from whose view and judgment nothing can escape, was the main foothold for Anna Dalassene in the huge political struggle for supremacy over the interior of the byzantine aristocracy during the ’60 and the ’70 of the 11^th century. Christ Pantepoptes had a special symbolic meaning for Anna Dalassene, by operating as a guarantee for the rightness of her positions and her efforts as well as a judge to whom she could trust the fate of her adversaries from rival aristocratic families.

In this sense Anna Dalassene perceived this particular epithet of Christ, something that can be verified from the fact that it became one of the basic key-words during the following decades. This epithet of Christ, which occurs very rarely in the oldest Byzantine ecclesiastical literature,³ became very important since the time Anna Dalassene brought it into relief, by dedicating to Christ Pantepoptes her monastic church. Already in the Precepts of emperor Alexios Komnenos to his son John – the Muses–, a text written late in Alexios Komnenos’ reign or in the beginning of his son John’s reign (around 1118), the word “pantepoptes” occupies a very prominent place. In this work “pantepoptes” has a slightly threatening meaning, in the way Anna Dalassene understood and used it, too · Alexios Komnenos advises his son to be fair and just, because Christ is Pantepoptes (All-seeing) and from Him nothing can be hidden.

The epithet “pantepoptes” has also a special meaning for the next Comnenian generations, as it is mentioned in the mid-12^th century typikon of the Monastery of Panagia Kosmosoteira (Saviour of the World), near the city of Pherae in Thrace, which was erected by sebastokrator Isaak, emperor Alexios I Komnenos’ third son. This ex-insurgent against his brother John II Komnenos resigned from his initial thought to be buried in the Chora Monastery in Constantinople, which he had restored and was dedicated to Christ Saviour, and decided to retire in Thrace. In his new monastic typikon, sebastokrator Isaak highlights his toil for the monastery’s erection as well the difficulties of his life, consigning all of his hopes to Christ Pantepoptes and to Panagia, which he also names “pantepoptria”.⁴ That way he also projected the political significance of Christ’s epithet “pantepoptes”, which Anna Dalassene, the “mother of Komnenoi”, set the norm of, by her personal imposition in Byzantine politics and everyday life. Her descendance by using the epithet “pantepoptes” referred to her own authority and political legacy.

3. Location

The Monastery of Christ Pantepoptes was located in Constantinople’s Region X, a part of the city in which all of the Komnenoi, starting with Anna Dalassene, paid particular attention. The katholikon until recently was identified with certainty with Eski Imaret Camii, based on the assumption that from the whole monastic complex only this still remains. Cyril Mango,⁵ based on a plan that had never been studied before, tried in 1998 to prove that the Monastery of Christ Pantepoptes was laying a little northern and much closer to the Golden Horn than it was previously considered to be, but his opinion remains also a theory for the time being.

4. Architecture

The Christ Pantepoptes church (if the identification of Eski Imaret Camii is correct) was of middle size (inner dimensions: 14,5 × 11 m.). This is a typical example of the complex four-column domed cross-in-square type. The church has three apses in the east. The central one, the widest, is semi-circular enclosed in a five-sided external wall, while the two lateral apses, the smaller ones, are semi-circular enclosed in a three-sided external wall.

The dome rests on a twelve-sided drum, 13 m. in diameter: the edges of all sides are articulated with built colonnettes. Each side has an arched window. The windows are inscribed into shallower small niches, while the colonnettes also support arched rows of dog-tooth frets that crown the recessed small niches of the windows and form the corrugated cornice of the dome. That way the dome is formed in a plastic manner and gives the impression of much lighter proportions.

The church has two narthexes: an exonarthex, roofed lower than the rest of the church, obviously an addition during the Palaeologan period, and an esonarthex. Both narthexes are divided on the inner side into three parts connected with each other through arched openings. The compartments of the narthexes are groin-vaulted, except the central part of the exonarthex, crowned with a small dome. Particular interest presents the gallery that extends over the esonarthex and the western lateral compartments of the main church. On the east side of the gallery, at the center (on the drum of the western arm of the cross), there is a tribelon towards the main church, the lobes separated from each other with marble colonnettes. The gallery must have been for the donor. On its corners small areas are formed, with windows which open into the main church, thus offering more isolation. The areas of the gallery are roofed with groin vaults.⁶

In the main church, the four columns that must have initially borne the weight of the dome were replaced during the Ottoman period by octagonal pilasters. The north and the south cross arms ended in three-foiled openings, replaced now with walls. On the drums above these openings were two rows of windows, according to the south side, which preserves its initial phase. The lower row included three single-light windows at the same level, while of the higher row the central window was higher than the lateral ones. On the east side there is a three-partite sanctuary. The areas of the pastophories are broadened with niches on their north, west and south walls and are groin-vaulted. With groin vaults are roofed the lateral compartments of the main church, too.⁷

The church combines elements of the Macedonian church-building with experimentations that are about to become typical elements of the Comnenian church-building. The new elements are visible mainly on the church’s outer formation and decoration. The recessed small niches that shape the walls, the formation of the central apse with niches and windows, the corrugated cornice of the dome with the dog-tooth fret and the brickwork patterns and the use of stone testify the evolution of the 11^th-century church-building. The recessed brick technique, which spread the following decades in Constantinople, was applied to the church wall-masonry, while on its upper part ashlar, following the cloisonné masonry technique, was used for decorative reasons. Meanders and rosettes are used among other brickwork patterns, while the cornices were articulated with dog-tooth frets.⁸

5. Later history

The Monastery of Christ Pantepoptes also played an important role during the following centuries because of its status and wealth. It was often used (along with the nearby Monastery of Christ Pantokrator) as a place of confinement for eminent functionaries. After the Fall of Constantinople by the knights of the IV Crusade, the monastery came under the authority of the Benedict monks of the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, while after the Recapture of Constantinople by the Byzantines it returned to Orthodox hands. The Pantepoptes monks are mentioned during the reign of Michael VIII Palaiologos and his son Andronikos II relating to the Arsenite affair: In 1268 the monks of the Monastery of Christ Pantepoptes, ardent Arsenites, were the main opponents of Patriarch Joseph and of Michael VIII himself. From the monastic ranks of this particular monastery came also the patriarch Athanasios (1289-1293 and 1303-1309).⁹

After the Fall of Constantinople, the church was converted into a mosque, for whose needs a minaret was built in the southwest corner of the church. Buildings of the monastery were used to house the clerical school and the poor house (Imaret, from which the Turkish name of the church derives) of Fatich Camii, the mosque of Mehmed the Conqueror (where the Church of the Holy Apostles once tood). It is presumed that various buildings of the monastery were gradually destroyed by fire, while even the minaret of the Ottoman period is not preserved today except at foundation level. In 1970 the monument was restored.¹⁰

1. Miklosich, F. – Müller, J. (ed.), Acta et diplomata graeca medii aevi sacra et profana 6 (Wien 1890), pp. 26-27 and 32-33.

2. Janin, R., La géographie ecclésiastique de l’Empire byzantin 1: Le siège de Constantinople et le Patriarcat Œcuménique 3: Les églises et les monastères (Paris ²1969), p. 513.

3. In the period before the erection of the monastery by Anna Dalassene, Michael Psellos in one of his poems mentions this epithet of Christ, which became important after the monastery’s erection by Anna Dalassene. See Michaelis Pselli Poemata, Westerink, L. G. (ed.) (Stuttgart – Leipzig 1992), no. 56, col. 125. Cf. also Constantine Manasses, who used the epithet “pantepoptes” in his Chronicle, see Constantini Manassis Breviarum chronicum, Lampsidis, O. (ed.) (Athens 1996), p. 130. 2367 and 243. 4461), and in his poem on the embassy to Antioch, see. Horna, K. (ed.), “Das Hodoiporikon des Konstantin Manasses”, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 13 (1904), pp. 333.

4. Isaak writes in his monastery’s typikon: «Εὔχομαι οὖν τῷ παντεπόπτῃ Θεῷ παραταθῆναι τὸ ἐπίλοιπον τῆς ἡμετέρας ζωῆς εἰς ἀποπλήρωσιν ἀσφαλεστέραν τῶν διατεταγμένων καὶ εἰς ἀνέγερσιν τῶν ἐν τῇ Αἴνῳ» ("Typikon of Kosmosoteira", col. 1294-1296)· and above, in the beginning of the text: «...τῇ πρὸς τὴν ἡμῶν εὐεργέτιδά τε Θεοτόκον καὶ κοσμοσώτειραν, ἣν οὕτως ἐν ἅπασιν ἀρραγῆ συνεργὸν προκαλούμεθα, ἐπειδήπερ ὦ πανόπτρια παμβασίλισσα, λέξαιμι τῇ σῇ ἐπικουρίᾳ τὰ τοῦ ἀθλίου κατὰ τὸ παρὸν νοός μου γεννήματα και βουλήματα» (as above, col. 15-17). For the most recent edition of the typikon, see Pappazoglou, G., «Τυπικόν Ισαακίου Αλεξίου Κομνηνού της μονής Θεοτόκου της Κοσμοσωτείρας», Θρακική Βιβλιοθήκη 3 (1994), p. 33-154.

5. Mango C., “Where at Constantinople was the Monastery of Christos Pantepoptes?”, Δελτίον Χριστιανικής Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας 20 (1998), pp. 87-88.

6. Mathews, T. F., The Byzantine Churches of Istanbul: A Photographic Survey (University Park – London 1976), p. 59

7. Krautheimer, R., Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (New Haven – London ⁴1986), p. 361; Mathews, T. F., The Byzantine Churches of Istanbul: A Photographic Survey (University Park – London 1976), p. 59. For a brief presentation of the monument’s architecture, see also Freely, J. – Çakmak, A. S., Byzantine Monuments of Istanbul (Cambridge – New York 2004), pp. 204-206.

8. Krautheimer, R., Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (New Haven – London ⁴1986), p. 361; Mango, C., Byzantine Architecture (London 1986), p. 134.

9. Janin, R., La géographie ecclésiastique de l'Empire byzantin 1: Le siège de Constantinople et le Patriarcat Œcuménique 3: Les églises et les monastères (Paris ²1969), p. 514.

10. Mathews, T. F., The Byzantine Churches of Istanbul: A Photographic Survey (University Park – London 1976), p. 59. See also Freely, J. – Çakmak, A. S., Byzantine Monuments of Istanbul (Cambridge – New York 2004), p. 204.