Part 32 (1/2)

[476] Pachym. ii. pp. 174-75.

[477] Muralt, _Essai de chronographie byzantine_, vol. ii. ad annum.

[478] Pachym. ii. pp. 620-21.

[479] _Ibid._ pp. 637-38.

[480] Miklosich et Muller, i. pp. 312, 317.

[481] Patr. Constantius, pp. 84-86. The Greek community retains also other churches founded before the Turkish conquest, but they are wholly modern buildings.

[482] _Ibid._ pp. 85-86.

[483] N. Barbaro, p. 818.

CHAPTER XXII

BOGDAN SERAI

In a vacant lot of ground on the eastern declivity of the hill above the quarter of Balat, and at a short distance to the east of a ma.s.s of rock known as Kesme Kaya, stands a Byzantine chapel to which the name Bogdan Serai clings. Although now degraded to the uses of a cow-house it retains considerable interest. Its name recalls the fact that the building once formed the private chapel attached to the residence of the envoys of the hospodars of Moldavia (in Turkish Bogdan) at the Sublime Porte; just as the style Vlach Serai given to the church of the Virgin, lower down the hill and nearer the Golden Horn, is derived from the residence of the envoys of the Wallachian hospodars with which that church was connected. According to Hypselantes,[484] the Moldavian residence was erected early in the sixteenth century by Teutal Longophetes, the envoy who presented the submission of his country to Suleiman the Magnificent at Buda in 1516, when the Sultan was on his way to the siege of Vienna. Upon the return of Suleiman to Constantinople the hospodar of the princ.i.p.ality came in person to the capital to pay tribute, and to be invested in his office with the insignia of two horse-tails, a fur coat, and the head-dress of a commander in the corps of janissaries. Gerlach[485] gives another account of the matter.

According to his informants, the mansion belonged originally to a certain Raoul, who had emigrated to Russia in 1518, and after his death was purchased by Michael Cantacuzene as a home for the Moldavian envoys. It must have been an attractive house, surrounded by large grounds, and enjoying a superb view of the city and the Golden Horn. It was burnt[486] in the fire which devastated the district on the 25th June 1784, and since that catastrophe its grounds have been converted into market gardens or left waste, and its chapel has been a desecrated pile. But its proud name still haunts the site, calling to mind political relations which have long ceased to exist. The chapel stood at the north-western end of the residence and formed an integral part of the structure. For high up in the exterior side of the south-eastern wall are the mortises which held the beams supporting the floor of the upper story of the residence; while lower down in the same wall is a doorway which communicated with the residence on that level. Some of the substructures of the residence are still visible. It is not impossible that the house, or at least some portion of it, was an old Byzantine mansion. Mordtmann,[487] indeed, suggests that it was the palace to which Phrantzes refers under the name Trullus ([Greek: en to Troulo]).[488] But that palace stood to the north of the church of the Pammakaristos (Fetiyeh Jamissi), and had disappeared when Phrantzes wrote. Gerlach,[489] moreover, following the opinion of his Greek friends, distinguishes between the Trullus and the Moldavian residence, and places the site of the former near the Byzantine chapel now converted into Achmed Pasha Mesjedi, to the south of the church of the Pammakaristos.[490]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE Lx.x.x.

BOGDAN SERAI. APSE OF THE UPPER CHAPEL.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOGDAN SERAI. A PENDENTIVE OF THE DOME.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOGDAN SERAI. THE CHAPEL FROM THE NORTH-WEST.

_To face page 280._]

Opinions differ in regard to the dedication of the chapel.

Paspates,[491] following the view current among the gardeners who cultivated the market-gardens in the neighbourhood, maintained that the chapel was dedicated to S. Nicholas. Hence the late Canon Curtis, of the Crimean Memorial Church in Constantinople, believed that this was the church of SS. Nicholas and Augustine of Canterbury, founded by a Saxon n.o.ble who fled to Constantinople after the Norman conquest of England.

What is certain is that in the seventeenth century the chapel was dedicated to the Theotokos. Du Cange mentions it under the name, Ecclesia Deiparae Serai Bogdaniae.[492]

Mordtmann has proved[493] that Bogdan Serai marks the site of the celebrated monastery and church of S. John the Baptist in Petra,--the t.i.tle 'in Petra' being derived from the neighbouring ma.s.s of rock, which the Byzantines knew as [Greek: Palaia Petra], and which the Turks style Kesme Kaya, the Chopped Rock.

According to a member of the monastery, who flourished in the eleventh century, the House was founded by a monk named Bara in the reign of Anastasius I. (491-518) near an old half-ruined chapel dedicated to S.

John the Baptist, in what was then a lonely quarter of the city, between the Gate of S. Roma.n.u.s (Top Kapoussi) and Blachernae. The monastery becomes conspicuous in the narratives of the Russian pilgrims to the shrines of the city, under the designation, the monastery of S. John, Rich-in-G.o.d, because the inst.i.tution was unendowed and dependent upon the freewill offerings of the faithful, which 'by the grace of G.o.d and the care and prayers of John' were generous. Thrice a year, on the festivals of the Baptist and at Easter, the public was admitted to the monastery and hospitably entertained. It seems to have suffered during the Latin occupation, for it is described in the reign of Andronicus II.

as standing abandoned in a vineyard. But it was restored, and attracted visitors by the beauty of its mosaics and the sanct.i.ty of its relics.[494]

In 1381 a patriarchal decision conferred upon the abbot the t.i.tles of archimandrite and protosyngellos, and gave him the third place in the order of precedence among the chiefs of the monasteries of the city, 'that thus the outward honours of the house might reflect the virtue and piety which adorned its inner life.'[495] Owing to the proximity of the house to the landward walls, it was one of the first shrines[496] to become the spoil of the Turks on the 29th of May 1453, and was soon used as a quarry to furnish materials for new buildings after the conquest.

Gyllius visited the ruins, and mistaking the fabric for the church of S.

John the Baptist at the Hebdomon, gave rise to the serious error of placing that suburb in this part of the city instead of at Makrikeui beside the Sea of Marmora.[497] Gerlach[498] describes the church as closed because near a mosque. Portions, however, of the monastic buildings and of the strong wall around them still survived, and eikons of celebrated saints still decorated the porch. On an eikon of Christ the t.i.tle of the monastery, Petra, was inscribed. Some of the old cells were then occupied by nuns, who were maintained by the charitable gifts of wealthy members of the Greek community.