MEDIKION MONASTERY
The Monastery of Saint Sergios of Medikion ( Greek Μονή Αγίου Σεργίου του Μηδικίου ), known as the Medikion Monastery ( Μονή Μηδικίου , Turkish Medikion manastırı ), and later as the monastery of the Holy Father ( Μωντντντντνα ωτω from Byzantine era near today's Tirilye in Turkey (in the Middle Ages Trigleia in Bithynia ). It is known for the role its founders played in resisting Byzantine iconoclasm .
The only remnant of the monastery complex is the surrounding wall ( peribolos ), which has a castle-like appearance with its high walls and solid gate. Above the entrance is a badly damaged inscription on which only the date 1801 can be read. The historian Adolphe Hergès writes in his Les monastères de Bithynie that the name Medikios could be derived from the name for shamrock, and that in more modern times the church was referred to by the people as Pateron , which means "fathers".
Tryphon E. Evangelides and William Mitchell Ramsay dated the construction of the monastery to the year 810, but Hergès preferred a date around 780. This is the date accepted today. The founder of the monastery was Nikephoros , who rebuilt a ruined church dedicated to Saint Michael and built the monastery around that church. Nikephorus was the first abbot until his death in 813. Nikephorus attended the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, where he found that the original name of the monastery was "Saint Sergios of Medikion". After Nikephorus' death, his student Niketas became abbot. Niketas was persecuted with the beginning of the second iconoclasm under Emperor Leo V (813-820). He died in 824 and is venerated by the Orthodox Church as an iconodul confessor of the faith. Both Nikephoros and Niketas were buried in the narthex of the monastery church of Saint Michael.
The history of the monastery is then only partially known.
In 1800 the monastery was burned down and rebuilt in 1801, but was in a state of disrepair after Frederick William Hasluck's visit in the last quarter of the century. Hasluck described the Katholikon as "splendid", "magnificent", and wrote that it was decorated with originally vaulted black and white mosaics in the inner courtyard. Pancenko, who came here in 1910, turned his attention to the ancient icons.
literature
- Alice-Mary Talbot: Medikion monastery. In: The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1991, ISBN 978-0-19-504652-6 , Vol. 2, p. 1328.
- John W. Nesbitt, Nicolas Oikonomides: Catalog of Byzantine Seals at Dumbarton Oaks and in the Fogg Museum of Art, Volume 3: West, Northwest, and Central Asia Minor and the Orient. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington 1996, ISBN 0-88402-250-1 , p. 103.