Forum Bovis
The Forum Bovis ( Latin name; Middle Greek ὁ Βοῦς ho Bous "the bull") was a public place in Byzantine Constantinople (now Istanbul ). The forum was also used as a site for public executions and torture and completely disappeared after the end of the Byzantine Empire .
location
The forum was located on the southwest axis of the main street of Constantinople, Mese, in the valley of the Lycus river between the seventh and third hills of the city. The place was in Region XI. The De Cerimoniis of Emperor Constantine VII reported that two imperial processions came from the Great Palace each year towards the Church of Our Lady of the Life-Giving Spring and Saint Mocius across the square. From the descriptions it can be concluded that the square must have been in today's Aksaray district in the Istanbul district of Fatih .
In the vicinity of the forum were also the palace of Eleutherios above the Eleutherios port on the Marmara Sea, which had been built by Empress Irene , and a bath built by the patrician Nicetas under Theophilos . The Forum Bovis was well connected to other important parts of the city: the Mese to the east connected the forum with the Amastrianum and led to the Grand Palace . In a westerly direction one followed the Mese up the seventh hill, reached the Arcadius Forum and finally came to the golden gate of the Theodosian wall .
According to one source, in the 1950s the shape was still recognizable as a space bounded in the north by 7 to 8 meter high terraces. According to other sources, the square was southeast of the Ottoman Murat Pasha mosque .
history
The square may have been part of Constantine the Great's original town planning and was built in the 4th century. The name of the square comes from the large, hollow bronze statue that stood here and represented a bull or a bull's head. The statue, which was brought to Constantinople from Pergamon , was used both as an oven and as a device to carry out torture: people were locked inside. A fire was then lit under the statue until the tortured suffocated and burned. During the first persecution of Christians in Asia Minor under the Roman Emperor Domitian , the bull in Pergamon was used to execute Antipas of Pergamon . According to the Patrologia Latina , during the reign of Emperor Julian (361–363), many Christians were burned inside the bull, which at that time had already been brought to Constantinople. The body of the usurper Phocas was also cremated in the cop after his impeachment. In 562 the forum, which at that time was already surrounded by shops and warehouses, burned down.
According to some sources, the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius melted the statue down to mint coins to pay for his army in the last Roman-Persian War (602–628). However, this is not certain, because there are Byzantine sources that report executions with the bull after Heraclius' reign. Emperor Justinian II (reign from 685 to 695 and 705 to 711) is said to have burned two patricians in the statue because both were involved in a failed plot against him. The same emperor enlarged and decorated the square. During the Byzantine iconoclasm , Theodosia of Constantinople († 729) and Andreas of Crete († 766), both defenders of icon worship, were executed on the square. Theodosia was executed by hammering a ram's horn in her throat.
The area in which the forum was located was spared from the great fires of Istanbul in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1956, during the construction work for the Millet and Vatan Caddesi, two two-meter high columns and a 3-by-4-meter base were found on the south wall of the Murat Pasha Mosque. These columns, possibly belonging to a triumphal arch, were most likely part of the forum. In addition, individual parts of the building were found during these excavations. In the years 1968 to 1971, during the road works for the construction of the intersection southeast of the Valide Sultan Mosque (Ataturk Boulevard / Ordu-Caddesi / Turgut Özal Millet Caddesi), however, no remains of the square were discovered.
architecture
The forum was a rectangular square 250 meters wide and 300 meters long. In Byzantine times, the square was surrounded by colonnades decorated with reliefs and niches with statues. Among these statues were Constantine the Great and his mother Helena, who held their hands on a gilded silver cross - a representation that became very popular in Byzantine art. One entered the Forum Bovis through mighty arches. The square and arches were decorated with statues and reliefs.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Raymond Janin: Constantinople Byzantine . Institut français d'etudes byzantines, Paris 1964, p. 70
- ↑ a b c d e f Ernest Mamboury : The Tourists' Istanbul . Çituri Biraderler Basımevi, Istanbul 1953, p. 74
- ↑ a b c d e f Wolfgang Müller-Wiener : Pictorial dictionary on the topography of Istanbul: Byzantion, Konstantinupolis, Istanbul up to the beginning of the 17th century . Wasmuth, Tübingen 1977 ISBN 978-3-8030-1022-3 , p. 254
- ↑ a b c d e f Wolfgang Müller-Wiener : Pictorial dictionary on the topography of Istanbul: Byzantion, Konstantinupolis, Istanbul up to the beginning of the 17th century . Wasmuth, Tübingen 1977 ISBN 978-3-8030-1022-3 , p. 253
- ^ A b c Raymond Janin : Constantinople Byzantine . Institut français d'etudes byzantines, Paris 1964, p. 69
- ^ A b Alessandra Bravi: Greek works of art in the political life of Rome and Constantinople . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2014, p. 286
- ↑ Alexander van Millingen : Byzantine Churches of Constantinople . MacMillan & Co, London 1912, p. 168
Coordinates: 41 ° 0 ′ 36 ″ N , 28 ° 57 ′ 11 ″ E