Tuesday, January 28, 2014


(The Studite Monastery)
THE CHURCH OF ST JOHN the Baptist AT STUDIOS
(in Istanbul)



T A L M A C H
so much and simple


     Constantinople's oldest Church, the only one of the time-bracket between Constantine the Great and Justinian the Great that has survived, is the Church of St. John the Baptist at Studios [now known in Turkey as Imrahor Camii]. It is referred to as one of the most attractive ruins in today's Istanbul – roofless and romantically overgrown around its edges. 

     The Church was founded in 463 by a Roman patrician [consul] named Studium. Every year on the feast of the beheading of St. John the Baptist (29 August) the Emperor would come by sea to visit the Church whose most sacred relic was the head of the Baptist. [Apparently the latter acquired in the 13th C. the gift of {{{{bilocation}}}}[who's mocking...], for after the Fourth Crusade's loot had been distributed around Europe both Soissons and Amiens boasted the possession of the head of John the Baptist.]

     Today we approach the Church through what was originally the atrium, [or the courtyard of the mosque 1000 or so years later] with the ablution fountain still remaining. The narthex still shows much of its fine entrance portals with magnificently carved capitals, architrave and cornice. Inside, the Church is an empty shell but for the six lovely columns, each formed of a single block of verd antique. The entablature on top of this colonnade is still in place, popped up by scaffolding, but its carving, once rich, is now badly weathered. Originally, above it there was another row of support columns to the wooden roof. We can see parts of the fine opus sectile floor, the gift of Michael VIII Palaeologus after the restoration of the Byzantine Empire in 1261, in place of the flooring destroyed by the Fourth Crusade. The shell of the semi-circular apse still contains some of the structure of the mosque's mihrab with its askew orientation. But only our imagination may re-dress the walls with the rich marble revetments and mosaics of the days of the Church's glory. 

     This is the oldest Church in Istanbul, [the only example there of] a pure basilica, the first type of building used for Christian worship [the secular basilica had long been used for public assemblies of various kinds – from legal to social or imperial].

     The Church of St. John at Studios was originally attached to a monastery whose monks were known as 'Acoemetae', the sleepless ones, from their round-the-clock liturgizing, on a relay basis, with intercessions for the sins of the world. Under the iconoclast Emperors of the 8th C., the monastery clung tenaciously to the use of images in both art and worship; but it was not until 799 – when Theodore the Great became Abbot – that it rose to its full prominence. Under his guidance the monastery became not merely a centre of resistance to iconoclasm with the inevitable persecutions that this entailed but it also became a world-famous centre of scholarship, icon painting, manuscript interpreting, and sacred music composing.

     The Studite monastery produced several Patriarchs; and had two Emperors spending their enforced retirement here as monks in the 11th C., Isaac I Commenus and Michael VII Ducas. Isaac I had also studied here in his youth. Another Emperor, the much-hated Michael V Calaphates, was dragged screaming from his sanctuary here on April 21, 1042 [3 days after banishing his uncle John ... and his aunt Zoe to a convent], to be deposed and blinded [+ 24 August 1042, Estimated value $ 90,000, Gold histamenon nomisma (4.44 gr.), Extremely rare: probably less than eight specimens exist]. A son of the Ottoman Sultan Beyazid I, a covert Christian, was buried here in 1417. 



     After the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Church and monastery remained Christian until about 1500 when Beyazid II's Master of Horse (imrahor) Ilyas Bey evicted the few remaining monks and converted the Church into a mosque – Imrahor Ilyas Bey Camii. Hardly a stone has remained of the monastery. Both it and the mosque were damaged badly in a fire in 1782, and were further destroyed by an earthquake in 1894, which turned the mosque into a roofless ruin.

     [[[where is your treasure?...]]] 

4U2C

4U2C

A Prayer Before Communion
by St Dimitry of Rostov


Open, O doors and bolts of my heart
that Christ the King of Glory may enter!
Enter, O my Light and enlighten my darkness;
enter, O my Life, and resurrect my deadness;
enter, O my Physician and heal my wounds;
enter, O Divine Fire, and burn up the thorns of my sins;
ignite my inward parts and my heart with the flame of Thy love;
enter, O my King, and destroy in me the kingdom of sin;
sit on the throne of my heart and [You] alone reign in me,
O Thou, my King and Lord.



To DOWNLOAD – a PHP /pdf/ Book on 10 Miracle-Working Icons of Theotokos



А има ли друг баир оттатък смъртта?
- Стойко Попович (в писмо до сина си [Георги] Сава Раковски)



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