Pharos Palace Chapel

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The Pharos Palace Chapel (actually the chapel of St. Mary's Church on Pharos in the Imperial Palace , gr. Θεοτόκος του Φάρου ), mostly just called Holy Chapel in western Latin reports of the Middle Ages , was the central repository for relics in Constantinople for a long time during the early and high Middle Ages as well as all of Christianity. After the Arab conquest of Jerusalem, it was supposed to take over the function of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for the Christian world. In the Pharos palace chapel all relevant passion relics, two larger pieces of the holy cross, two nails, the sponge, the lance, a vial with Christ's blood, the crown of thorns and the mandylion were kept.

history

The crown of thorns, now kept in Notre Dame in Paris, came from the Pharos palace chapel like some of the relics from the Saint-Chapelle that are no longer preserved

The church was built by Constantine V as the palace chapel of the Byzantine emperors and was first mentioned in the church in 769 on the occasion of the marriage of Leo IV and Irene . After the end of iconoclasm , the church was under Michael III. renewed and richly decorated. The new church was probably consecrated in 864. In the meantime the church became the repository of the most important imperial relics as well as one of the manifestations of the “Triumph of Orthodoxy” ( Feast of Orthodoxy ) in the reintroduction of icon worship in 843. The collection of relics of the church was unique in its comprehensive nature in the Christian world took place over several centuries. It then became one of the central places of pilgrimage in Christianity. More than fifteen descriptions of pilgrims from the eleventh to the beginning of the thirteenth century give a complete picture like no other destroyed church in Constantinople.

After the Fourth Crusade in 1204, many of the relics were either brought to the West as booty by the Crusaders or sold by the Latin emperors for astronomical sums. Among other things, the Limburg Staurothek was an original relic of the Pharos Palace Chapel. After Louis IX. the precious passion relics ("Christ's crown of thorns " and parts of the "True Cross ") as well as the tip of a lance, which is said to have belonged to the Roman captain Longinus , bought in 1237 from the Latin emperor Baldwin II for an astronomical sum, was modeled on the Pharos Chapel the Saint-Chapelle was built in the Gothic style as the new central mystery shrine of Christianity.

architecture

Although the church was destroyed under the Latin rule and there are no archaeological findings on the actual place and the architectural evidence of the church, the appearance of the church and its furnishings can be better reconstructed through the extensive literary representations than in any of the lost churches of Constantinople. One of the most important sources is the homilies of Patriarch Photius from 864. They contain a detailed description of the decoration of the church and its iconographic program. The facade was built from flat and smooth marble stones that went seamlessly into one another. The quality of the marble facade was described by Photios as being carved from a single stone. Photios' description of the cladding of the church is an essential source for the architecture of the Middle Byzantine period. The ground plan was that of an inscribed Greek cross with a dome resting on four columns.

The interior of the church consisted of polychrome marble panels and figural mosaics. All surfaces that were not clad with marble were covered with gold and silver. The capitals were adorned with silver and had gold belts underneath. All of the sanctuaries in the church were made of silver, including the altar table and ciborium and doors. There were golden doves set with precious stones above the altar table. In their beaks they held cross-shaped beaded branches.

The church's mosaic decorations were the first known to have been made after the iconoclasm period . Therefore the iconographic program of the church soon became a model for later churches in the capital as in the empire. The dome received an image of Christ (presumably Christ Pantocrator ). A procession of angels was arranged below. In the apse there was a picture of Mary ( Maria orans ), who raised her hand in blessing.

meaning

The concept of the church was of universal importance not only through the presence of the Passion relics, but also in the concept of replacing the Church of the Nativity in Jerusalem. The material evidence of the main Christian relics in the Pharos palace chapel outside Jerusalem, which was ruled by the Arabs, thereby determined the Byzantine emperors as rulers anointed by God. In doing so, they determined the Great Palace of Constantinople with the Pharos Chapel to be the universal center of power for Christianity. As a result, the building type of the cross-domed church of the Pharos Chapel with its dogmatic iconographic interior decoration became an ideal that became a model for Byzantine art. The Pharos Palace Chapel was regarded as the ideal dimension for church building in the Orthodox world in order to mediate the 'prototype' of the Church of the Nativity in Jerusalem. The metaphysical level of the magnificently decorated sanctuary as an image of the Heavenly Jerusalem had a great influence on architects and painters in Eastern and Western Europe over the Middle Ages, when the metaphysical was perceived as part of reality.

It was a direct model of the Sainte-Chapelle , the palace chapel of the French kings in Paris, as well as the primate church of the Serbian Nemanjids in the Studenica monastery .

literature

  • Jannic Durand (ed.): Le trésor de la Sainte-Chapelle . Exposition Paris, Musée du Louvre, May 31, 2001 - August 27, 2001. Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-7118-4275-4 .
  • Holger A. Klein : Sacred Relics and Imperial Ceremonies at the Great Palace of Constantinople . In: Franz Alto Bauer (Hrsg.): Visualizations of rule: early medieval residences, form and ceremonial . Ege Yayınları, Istanbul 2006, ISBN 975-807-126-2 , pp. 79-99 ( digitized version ).
  • Alexei Lidov: A Byzantine Jerusalem. The Imperial Pharos Chapel as the Holy Sepulcher . In: Annette Hoffmann, Gerhard Wolf (ed.): Jerusalem as narrative space - Erzählraum Jerusalem (= Visualizing the Middle Ages Vol. 6). Brill, Leiden-Boston 2012, pp. 63-103 ( digitized version ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alexei Lidov: A Byzantine Jerusalem. The Imperial Pharos Chapel as the Holy Sepulcher . In: Annette Hoffmann, Gerhard Wolf (ed.): Jerusalem as narrative space - Erzählraum Jerusalem (= Visualizing the Middle Ages Vol. 6). Brill, Leiden-Boston 2012, pp. 63-103, here p. 103.
  2. ↑ Alexei Lidov 2012, p. 82.
  3. ↑ Alexei Lidov 2012, p. 73.
  4. ↑ Alexei Lidov 2011, p. 72.
  5. ↑ Alexei Lidov 2012, p. 103.
  6. ↑ Jelena Erdeljan: Studenica. A new perspective . In: Mabi Angar (Ed.): Serbia and Byzantium: proceedings of the international conference held on 15 December 2008 at the University of Cologne . Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 2013, pp. 32–43, here p. 43 ( digitized version ).

Coordinates: 41 ° 0 ′ 21 ″  N , 28 ° 58 ′ 38 ″  E