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.
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?...]]]
