Church of Our Lady of the Life Giving Spring
The Church of Our Lady of the Life-Giving Source ( Greek Μονὴ τῆς Θεοτὸκου τῆς Πηγῆς Moni tis Theotóku tis Pigis , Turkish Balıklı Meryem Ana Rum Manastiri ; Greek for short Ζωοδόχος ωοδόχος Πηγspendende Quelle , for example, Greek-orthodox, German is the Greek-orthodox Zoodochos Monastery in Istanbul . The current church was built in 1835, but its history dates back to the 5th or 6th century AD. In the first half of the 15th century, the church was destroyed by the Ottomans. The complex takes its name from the sacred spring located on the church grounds, which is said to have healing properties. Around 600 AD, the place was considered one of the most important pilgrimage sites in the Eastern Church.
location
The church is located in the Balıklı district in the Zeytinburnu district of Istanbul on Balıklı Sivrikapı Sokak . The building is a few hundred meters outside the Theodosian Wall and around 500 meters in front of the Silivri Gate. The complex is surrounded by a high wall and is surrounded by Greek Orthodox and Armenian cemeteries.
history
Byzantine era
According to the historians Prokopios of Caesarea and Georgios Kedrenos , the original church was built by the Roman Emperor Justinian I in the last years of his reign (559/60) near a well of a holy spring ( ancient Greek ἁγίασμα hagiasma , Turkish ayazma ), which is outside the Theodosian wall of Theodosius II . Legend has it that during the hunt the emperor saw a small chapel surrounded by women. When he asked about the importance of the building, he was answered that a “miraculous spring” rises here. Justinian then ordered the construction of a church with the material that was left over from the construction of Hagia Sophia .
According to another legend, the building was built by Emperor Leo I (reign 457–474). The reason for this was a miracle that happened to the emperor as a soldier. Before coming to town, Leo is said to have met a blind man who asked him for water. A female voice is said to have told the future emperor to wet the old man's eyes with water from a nearby spring. The voice added that she had chosen this place as a sanctuary and that one day it would wear the crown of the empire. Leo followed her instructions and the old man regained his sight. After his accession to the throne, the emperor had a church built on the site. The legend could perhaps have been an invention of the monks of the monastery. It could be that a smaller monastery already existed in front of Justinian's building.
The building has been renovated again and again over the centuries. In 790 an earthquake damaged the building under Irene of Athens and a major earthquake in 869 under Basil I. On September 7, 924, Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria burned down the building complex, which the Byzantine Emperor Romanos I then rebuilt . Three years later, Simeon's son, Peter , married Irene Lakapene , a granddaughter of Romanos.
Due to its location outside the city, the monastery served more often as a place of refuge and exile. In 1078 the Dux Georgios Monomachos was exiled here by Dyrrhachion , and in 1084 Emperor Alexios I Komnenos imprisoned the philosopher John Italos here in the monastery because of his Neoplatonic ideas.
After the fourth crusade (1204), the church was occupied by the Latin clergy and, according to Byzantine sources, this put an end to the worship of miracles.
In 1328 Andronikos III used. Palaiologos used the monastery as the base for his attack on Constantinople. When he was dying in the city of Didymoteicho two years later , he is said to have drunk from the spring and recovered.
During the first siege of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1422, Sultan Murad II slept in the monastery. It is not known if the Byantinians rebuilt the building before the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453. Russian pilgrims did not mention the monastery in their records, but did mention the source.
Ottoman era
The French scholar Pierre Gilles wrote in 1547 that the church no longer exists, but that the sick still made pilgrimages to the spring.
In 1727 Nicodemus, Metropolitan of Dercos , built a small chapel over the spring. An icon found in the ruins of the old church was worshiped in the new chapel. The Armenians tried to take possession of the spring, but several fermans (decrees) confirmed the Greek property rights. The complex was controlled by Ottoman guards who also collected a tax that was used to support the empire's prisons. The church later came under the ownership of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople until Janissaries destroyed the chapel in 1821 and poisoned the spring. In 1833 a Ferman allowed the patriarch Constantius I to rebuild the church, which was consecrated in 1835.
After the founding of the Republic of Turkey
During the Istanbul pogroms in September 1955, the church was the target of anti-Christian riots. During the pogroms, the Ecumenical Patriarchs' open-air sarcophagi were opened and the remains scattered. The church and the monastery were burned to the ground. The destruction was subsequently restored.
The monastery is one of the few religious institutions with a Byzantine background that survive in modern Istanbul.
architecture
According to the church historian Nikephoros Kallistu Xanthopulos , the church was a basilica in the 14th century with a rectangular floor plan and partly underground. On the west and east sides there were two outer and two inner nartices on the north and south sides. The light was concentrated inside on the source, which was reached via two flights of 25 steps. Each step was bordered by a marble balustrade and spanned by a marble arch. The water fell into a marble basin and a system of canals distributed it throughout the church. The building was decorated with frescoes and a gilded dome. Around the church were chapels dedicated to Theotokos and Saints Eustratios and Anna .
The current church was built over a rectangular floor plan. The building expands from east to west. The interior is divided into three naves, separated by columns and with a narthex in front of them. In the northwest corner of the building there is a bell tower.
The interior of the church is richly decorated. On the right side of the central nave there is a pulpit, at the end a richly painted iconostasis . On the right of the iconostasis is an icon that is said to have been painted by Luke .
The spring is located in a crypt outside the church and is accessible via a staircase in the churchyard. The crypt is decorated with paintings and icons and is spanned by a dome with a portrait of Christ. The water flows into a marble pool with fish. These fish have been in the basin for centuries and gave the district its Turkish name ( balikli , English "fish place"). According to legend, on the day Constantinople was conquered by the Ottomans, a monk fried fish at the spring. When a brother brought the news of the fall of Constantinople, the monk is said to have replied that he would only believe it if the fish were to come back to life on the spot. After these words, the fish should have jumped out of the pan into the spring water and swam around.
In the courtyard in front of the church is a cemetery with marble tombs, most of which date from the 9th and 12th centuries and belonged to wealthy Constantinople Greeks. Several patriarchs were also buried here. Some tombstones bear inscriptions in Karamanli , the language of a Turkic-speaking, Christian Orthodox ethnic group.
The Greek hospital Balıklı Rum Hastanesi is around one kilometer south of the church .
Festivals
The church is headed by a titular bishop and is one of the most famous of the Orthodox Church in Istanbul. In the Middle Byzantine period, the spring water was mostly used to treat diseases of the urinary organs, and later to treat skin diseases such as leprosy, ulcers and tumors.
Believers come here mainly on the Friday after Easter and on September 14th (Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross ). Also Exequien the people who are buried in the nearby cemetery are celebrated here.
In Byzantine times, the church was one of the most important in Constantinople. On Ascension Day , the emperor came by ship to the small port at the Golden Gate. From here he rode to the church and was received there by political dignitaries who handed him a cross and garlands. Then he retired to his chambers and put on his ceremonial clothes. Then he met the Patriarch and the two walked hand in hand into the church. After the church celebration, the emperor received the patriarch for a meal.
Every future empress who came to Constantinople was received here by her future husband.
The patronage festival is celebrated annually on July 9th. The Ascension Day, the wedding in Cana (January 8th) and the anniversary of the miracle of Leo I on August 16th are celebrated here.
A “life-giving source” gave names to many churches and monasteries in the Greek-speaking world. Most were not built until after the end of the Byzantine Empire.
The venerated icon shows the Mother of God blessing and hugging the child. She is surrounded by two angels and sits on the higher of two bowls of a marble fountain. The Byzantine emperor with his guardian, the Patriarch of Constantinople and his bishops stand around the fountain basin. You can also recognize Emperor Leo I and the old blind man whom the Emperor heals. In the foreground, the sick are healed with the water from the spring.
literature
- Ernest Mamboury : The Tourists' Istanbul . Çituri Biraderler Basımevi, Istanbul 1953
- Raymond Janin: Le Siège de Constantinople et le Patriarcat Oecuménique. (= 1st part of the 3rd volume Les Églises et les Monastères from La Géographie ecclésiastique de l'Empire byzantin ). Institut Français d'Etudes Byzantines, Paris 1953
- Semavi Eyice : Istanbul. Petite Guide a travers les Monuments Byzantins et Turcs . Istanbul Matbaası, Istanbul 1955
- Wolfgang Müller-Wiener : Pictorial dictionary on the topography of Istanbul: Byzantion, Constantinople, Istanbul up to the beginning of the 17th century . Wasmuth, Tübingen 1977, ISBN 978-3-8030-1022-3
- George P. Majeska: The Monastery of the Virgin at Pege . In: Russian Travelers to Constantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries . Dumbarton Oaks, 1984, pp. 325–326 ( digitized from Google Books )
- Basil Blackwell: Some karamanlidika inscriptions from the monastery of the Zoodokos Pigi, Balikli, Istanbul . In: Richard Clogg (Ed.): Anatolica - Studies in the Greek East in the 18th and 19th Centuries . Variorum, Aldershot 1996, ISBN 0-86078-543-2
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Janin (1953), p. 232
- ↑ After the construction of the sacred building, the Byzantines called the nearby city gate Quellentor . Müller-Wiener (1977), p. 416
- ↑ a b c d e Janin (1953), p. 233
- ↑ a b c d e f Mamboury (1953), p. 208
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Janin (1953), p. 234
- ↑ a b c d e f Janin (1953), p. 235
- ↑ Κλοκίδου Γεωργία: Η ελληνική μειονότητα στην Κωνσταντινούπολη μετά την συνθήκη της Λωζάννης και μέχρι το 1991 . University of Macedonia, January 1, 2014, p. 66
- ↑ Speros Vryonis: Asia Minor / Smyrna - September 1922; Constantinople - September 6 & 7, 1955: a lecture . Order of Saint Andrew the Apostle, 2000, p. 14
- ^ A b Jan Olof Rosenqvist: The Byzantine Literature. From the 6th century until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 . De Gruyter, 2007, p. 165
- ↑ a b Janin (1953), p. 236
- ↑ Mamboury (1953), p. 208
- ↑ Eyice (1955), p. 123
- ↑ Blackwell (1978), p. 62
- ↑ a b Janin (1953), p. 237
Coordinates: 41 ° 0 ′ 23.8 " N , 28 ° 54 ′ 56.9" E