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[email protected]ancient near eastern studies Supplement 47 istanbul and water Edited by Paul Magdalino and Nina Ergin Peeters leuven – paris – bristol, ct. 2015 96912_Anes_Supp47_Voorwerk.indd 3 8/10/15 15:44 tABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Notes on Transliteration and on Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Paul Magdalino The Yenikapı Excavations The Riverine and Lacustrine Settings Along the Sea of Marmara as the Habitat of Neolithic Settlements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Mehmet Özdogan A Holocene-Aged Swamp Area in Yenikapı-Istanbul and Its Relation to the Neigh- boring Neolithic Settlement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 M. Namık Yalçın, Özlem Bulkan, Oya Algan and Ay≥ın Konak Of Harbors and Trees: The Marmaray Contribution to a 2367-Year Oak-Tree-Ring Chronology from 97 Sites for the Aegean, East Mediterranean, and Black Seas . . 47 Peter Ian Kuniholm, Charlotte L. Pearson, Tomasz J. Wazny and Carol B. Griggs A Middle-Byzantine-Period Cargo Vessel from the Yenikapı Excavations in Istanbul: A Preliminary Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Michael R. Jones The Distribution and Consumption of Water in Byzantine Times Water and the Creation of a New Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 James Crow Thermae, Balnea / Loutra, Hamams: The Baths of Constantinople . . . . . . . . 129 Marlia Mundell Mango Holy Springs and Pools in Byzantine Constantinople . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Alice-Mary Talbot 96912_Anes_Supp47_Voorwerk.indd 5 8/10/15 15:44 vi table of contents The Social Impact of Water in Ottoman Times Water Resources Management and Development in Ottoman Istanbul: The 1693 Water Survey and Its Aftermath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Deniz Karaka≤ “So, we’ll go no more a-roving”: Sailors, Soldiers and Their Home-Folk in Seven- teenth-Century Istanbul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Rhoads Murphey The Aesthetics of Water Dionysius “Mythistoricus”: Story-Telling and History on the Bosphorus . . . . . 223 Adrian Saunders The Power of Glittering Materiality: Mirror Reflections between Poetry and Archi- tecture in Greek and Arabic Medieval Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Bissera V. Pentcheva 96912_Anes_Supp47_Voorwerk.indd 6 8/10/15 15:44 HOLY SPRINGS AND POOLS IN BYZANTINE CONSTANTINOPLE Alice-Mary Talbot Introduction The notion of holy springs and pools was a familiar one to the Byzantines, inherited from both their Hellenic and Judaeo-Christian heritage. All would know the episode of Moses striking the rock in the desert which gushed forth water to parch the thirst of the Israelites (Numbers 20:1-13); they would also be familiar with the Sheep Pool of Bethesda in Jeru- salem, traditionally a place of healing, but best known for the episode in John 5:1-14 where Jesus cured a man who had been bedridden for 38 years by saying: “Take up your bed and walk!” Those educated in the classical tradition would also have read of the sacred Castalian spring at Delphi and the sacred springs associated with the healing shrines of Asklepios, as on the Akropolis in Athens. In this paper I propose to discuss the evidence for holy water springs and pools that functioned in the Byzantine era. A volume published by Nikos Atzemoglou in 1990, entitled T’agiasmata tes poles, lists around 500 Christian holy water shrines (hagiasmata) which have existed at one point or another in Constantinople or post-Byzantine Istanbul; the region surveyed by Atzemoglou, however, ranges far afield from Constantinople, and many of the 500 hagiasmata are located in Thrace, the Asian shore of the Bosphorus, and the Princes Islands. The majority of the entries refer to post-Byzantine springs. My own survey of the mediaeval Greek sources reveals a surprisingly limited number of holy water shrines for Byzantine Constantinople, and for most of them there is very little information. I note as well that there is no chapter on the subject in Raymond Janin’s Constantinople byzantine. Two Shrines of the Mangana Region Two monasteries within the city walls did have pools or fountains considered to have healing properties. One was located at the monastery of Christ Philanthropos in Mangana at the easternmost tip of Constantinople, a double monastery founded or restored by the princess Irene-Eulogia Choumnaina in the early fourteenth century.1 The Russian pilgrims of the Palaiologan period record that it was an important healing shrine.2 The sacred spring was apparently located in a crypt beneath the main church (as we will see was true also at the Hodegoi and Pege), and the water flowed out into a cistern located near the sea. 1 For a fragment of the typikon, or founder’s rule, for this monastery, and further information, see Thomas and Hero 2000, vol. 4, pp. 1383–1388; see also Janin 1969, pp. 527–529. 2 Majeska 1984, pp. 371–374. 96912.indb 161 9/10/15 10:12 162 a.-m. talbot Overflow water gave curative properties to the sand as well. In the words of the fifteenth- century Russian anonymous pilgrim, “[t]here is holy water below the Savior [church] in a stone cistern enclosed between the city wall and the sea. People wash with this water and drink it and healing comes from it. Ailing legs are buried in the sand along the sea here, near the holy water, and they become healthy when the worms run out of the legs and out of the whole body.”3 Zosima, who visited the shrine between 1419 and 1422, adds that lepers in particular were helped by burying their legs in the healing sands.4 The hagiasma continued to function in the Ottoman period, up to the nineteenth century. French excava- tions in 1920–1922 located the site of the church as 60 m northeast of the now destroyed Incili Kö≥k.5 Close to the Philanthropos monastery at Mangana was another healing water source, at the monastery of the Hodegoi, a shrine that originally specialized in restoring sight to the blind.6 The evidence for this hagiasma is skimpy and must be pieced together from disparate texts of very different eras. The earliest reference to an hagiasma at the Hodegoi is a notice in a late-tenth-century text which mentions a ninth-century restoration of an earlier chapel with a spring that restored the sight of many blind people in miraculous fashion.7 It is assumed that the monastery took its name of Hodegoi or “Guides” from attendants who led blind pilgrims to the holy water. In the late twelfth century, an epigram of Theodore Bal- samon describes a portrait of emperor Isaac II Angelos (1185–1195) at the hagion louma or “holy bath” which he restored after the structure that housed it had fallen into disrepair and the water had lost its cleansing and healing properties.8 The chamber is described as a thermokentrion (qermokéntrion) or warm room, which would be appropriate for the site of a holy bath, and the spring is described as having warm waters. Balsamon calls the pool a “Siloam spring,” alluding to the healing pool in Jerusalem where Jesus cured the man blind since birth (John 9:1-41). A fourteenth-century text, the Logos Diegematikos on the founda- tion traditions of the Hodegoi shrine, provides the most explicit information. It states that “there is here a spring gushing forth purest water which up to this day is in the crypt of this all-holy and divine church.”9 The Logos recounts the traditional foundation story that two blind men passing by were guided by a holy voice to wash their faces in the spring water and immediately recovered their sight. The healing water cult at the Hodegoi seems to have continued through the Byzantine centuries. The Logos, of Palaiologan date, describes how holy water from the spring (êk t±v pjg±v tò †giasma) was distributed to sick pilgrims,10 and the anonymous Russian pilgrim 3 Majeska 1984, p. 140. 4 Majeska 1984, p. 182. 5 Demangel and Mamboury 1939, pp. 49–68. 6 Janin 1969, pp. 199–207; Majeska 1984, pp. 362–366. 7 Patria CP, ed. Preger 1901–1907, p. 223. 8 Horna 1903, p. 190, no. XXVII; for an English translation, see Magdalino and Nelson 1982, p. 154. 9 Angelidi 1994, pp. 136–137. Archaeological excavations by the French in 1923 and 1933 found two superimposed pools in the region of the Hodegoi, the lower of bricks, the upper of Proconnesian marble. Demangel and Mamboury identified these with the healing pool (Demangel and Mamboury 1939, pp. 81–93, 99–109), but Berger remains skeptical (Berger 1988, pp. 376–378). 10 Angelidi 1994, pp. 148–149. 96912.indb 162 9/10/15 10:12 holy springs and pools in byzantine constantinople 163 refers to holy water in his fifteenth-century account, but is the only Russian pilgrim to do so.11 For as reconstructed by Angelidi and Papamastorakis, over time the primary healing cult at the Hodegoi shifted to the famous Hodegetria icon.12 As is described in several trave- lers’ accounts, such as those of Clavijo and Pero Tafur in the fifteenth century, this heavy stone icon was carried in weekly procession through the streets of Constantinople and had a great reputation for healing the sick. The one factor which links this icon procession with the healing spring is that the eyes of the man who carried the icon were blindfolded so that he could not see where he was going, but he was directed by the icon, evidently a reminis- cence of the original healing cult of the blind at Hodegoi. The procession was organized and carried out by a group of men dressed in red, who took turns carrying the icon, evi- dently a kind of confraternity devoted to the icon. Angelidi, Papamastorakis, and Magda- lino all have argued that this confraternity must also have had some responsibility for the hagiasma, although there is no explicit evidence.13 The Holy Bath at Blachernai A third holy water shrine within the city walls was of a very different character. The complex of buildings at the Blachernai, in the northwestern corner of Constantinople, com- prised the Church of the Virgin, the chapel of the Soros that housed her precious relic of the holy robe, and the adjoining holy bath or hagion louma — the same term, it should be noted, used for the holy spring at the Hodegoi.14 The bath, fed by a spring, was first built in the mid-fifth century by Leo I and was lavishly restored by Basil II at the beginning of the eleventh century.15 Our information on the hagion louma comes primarily from two sources, the Book of Ceremonies and a liturgical typikon, both describing the weekly ritual bath of the emperor or co-emperors that took place at Blachernai. Every Friday (the same day as the usual miracle of the spontaneous unveiling of the Virgin’s icon at Blachernai) the emperor would go to Blachernai, accompanied by the entire senate. After visits to the church and the chapel of the Soros, the emperor would then go to a changing room (apodyta), remove his clothes, and don a golden towel (lention). Then he would proceed to the hagion louma, which had a pool (kolymbos) filled with holy water that flowed through holes in the hands of a marble icon of the Virgin. The emperor bathed twice, apparently the first time to cleanse his body, the second time for a ritual bath, being submerged three times in the pool.16 There was a special coterie of attendants for the hagion louma, including a balnearites and a protembatarios, plus other loustai or bathing attendants. 11 Majeska 1984, pp. 138, 363. 12 Angelidi and Papamastorakis 2000, pp. 373–387. 13 Angelidi and Papamastorakis 2000, p. 380; Magdalino 1986, p.180. 14 Janin 1969, pp. 161–171; Majeska 1984, pp. 333–337. 15 Patria CP, ed. Preger 1901–1907, pp. 242, 283. 16 Reiske 1829–1830, vol. 1, pp. 551–556 (ch. II.12). 96912.indb 163 9/10/15 10:12 164 a.-m. talbot The typikon provides some further details, giving us the names of other attendants like the soap carrier (saponas) and the oil carrier (ho tou elaiou). It also details the prayers to be recited by the priest at each stage of the ceremony, prayers appropriate for the cleansing of sins. The priest also prayed for the sanctification of the waters of the pool through the visi- tation of the Holy Spirit, and for the purification of the emperor’s soul and body.17 Curiously there is no reference to the hagion louma in the Palaiologan period, even though by that time the emperors had abandoned the Great Palace and were residing in the Blachernai complex. The Russian pilgrims, for example, make no allusion to the existence of this holy bath. The sacred spring which once supplied the water for the hagion louma still survives, however, although virtually no archaeological remains of the church complex are visible today.18 The Shrine of the Zoodochos Pege The best-documented holy spring in Byzantine Constantinople was located just outside the city walls, a few hundred meters west of the Pege Gate — that is, the Gate of the Spring (Fig. 1).19 Prokopios, in his On Buildings, describes the beautiful natural setting of the spring: “In that place is a dense grove of cypresses and a meadow abounding in flowers in the midst of soft fields, a park abounding in beautiful shrubs, and a spring bubbling silently forth with a gentle stream of sweet water.”20 Information on this hagiasma is found in mul- tiple sources, including two miracle accounts, references in historical texts, several epigrams, and a letter describing an unsuccessful attempt to find healing at the spring. A tenth-century anonymous account of miracles performed by the spring water relates the “foundation narrative” of the shrine, originally called simply Pege or spring.21 It states that the spring was first discovered by the future emperor Leo I, before he ascended the imperial throne. He happened to be walking by the spring, at that time stopped up with mud and obscured by a marsh, and came to the aid of a blind man who was desperate for a drink of water. Prompted by the voice of the Virgin, he located the blocked-up spring, took some of the mud and water, and smeared it on the eyes of the blind man, who imme- diately regained his sight (ch. 2). Note the similarity with the foundation legend of the spring at the Hodegoi shrine which involved two blind men and the guidance of a holy voice. Also Leo is described as “leading” the blind man “with his hand,” again reminiscent of the guides at the Hodegoi shrine. Once Leo became emperor he carried out the Virgin’s instructions to construct a chapel on the site of the miraculous spring and “built the so-called Refuge (Kataphyge) […] above the holy spring, after clearing out the spring in appropriate fashion.”22 (Fig. 2) Again there 17 Dmitrievskij 1917, vol. 3, pp. 1042–1052. 18 Schneider 1951, p. 119; Atzemoglou 1990, pp. 37–40. 19 Janin 1969, pp. 223–228; Majeska 1984, pp. 325–326. 20 Procopius, transl. Dewing 1961, p. 40, I.iii.6. 21 For the Greek text of the anonymous miracle account see Acta Sanctorum 1910, pp. 878–889, and for discussion see Talbot 2002a, pp. 222–228. For the English translation of the Greek text, see Talbot 2012. 22 Acta Sanctorum 1910, p. 878. 96912.indb 164 9/10/15 10:12 holy springs and pools in byzantine constantinople 165 Fig. 1. Icon of the Zoodochos Pege, nineteenth century. Source: Private collection, London. 96912.indb 165 9/10/15 10:12 166 a.-m. talbot Fig. 2. The spring in the crypt of the present-day church of the Zoodochos Pege, Balıklı, Istanbul. Source: Author’s photograph. 96912.indb 166 9/10/15 10:12 holy springs and pools in byzantine constantinople 167 is a parallel with the legend of the Hodegoi, where the spring was also located in a crypt or kataphyge. In the sixth century, Justinian, who had been cured of a urinary problem by holy water from the Pege spring, built a great church above the crypt, an act confirmed by the testimony of Prokopios. The anonymous miracle collection recounts numerous miraculous healings at the Pege up to the middle of the tenth century, as well as the benefactions of various emperors who restored or further beautified the shrine complex. Most notably Basil I restored the dome of the church which collapsed during the earthquake of 869. The anonymous miracle collection lists an impressive number of individuals healed at the shrine of the Pege. Many of them suffered from urinary problems or abdominal ailments and were cured by drinking holy water from the spring. Sick people who were bedridden might send relatives or servants to the shrine to fetch holy water to bring back home with them (ch. 3, 23, 25), or they might be carried to the shrine in litters (ch. 15, 32). The emperor Romanos I was so impressed with the miraculous healing from which he and his family members had benefited that he began to drink a cup of Pege water on a daily basis, as a preventative health measure (ch. 28)! Others anointed themselves with the holy water and with mud from the spring to relieve the symptoms of cancer (ch. 5, 7), fever, and brain inflammation (ch. 22, 26). A Thessalian who died while en route to the Pege shrine was resurrected when his companions poured three buckets of holy water over his head (ch. 12), while the magistrissa Artavasdina was cured of a urinary complaint by bathing in heated water from the spring (ch. 15). The healing power of the holy spring spread to other objects and substances at the Pege shrine; thus Zoe Karbonopsina, the future fourth wife of Leo VI (886–912), was relieved of sterility by wrapping around her loins a skein of silk equal in length to the icon of the Virgin in the crypt (ch. 26), while a demoniac woman was cured by drinking oil from the lamp that hung before the icon of the Virgin Episkepsis (ch. 17). Many pilgrims spent one or more nights at the shrine, a practice very similar to the incu- bation practiced at the ancient shrines of Asklepios; the above-mentioned demoniac woman is reported to have stayed a full thirty days before being healed (ch. 17). A space was dele- gated for bedridden pilgrims, who might keep a prayer vigil (ch. 10) or fall asleep and have dream visions of the Virgin or her agent, the physician saint Panteleimon (ch. 31, 32). Some provision for nursing care was available, since a boy with a kidney stone was furnished with a chamber pot into which he excreted the stone after drinking the holy water (ch. 40). It seems that both the larger Justinianic church and the crypt were used as a place of incuba- tion; the location is variously described as “the church of the spring” (ch. 38), the “church of the Theotokos” (ch. 10, 31), the “church of the all-praised Virgin” (ch. 17), and the “church of our Lady” (ch. 32). It may be that the crypt was too small to accommodate large numbers of recumbent pilgrims, and so some of them spread out their pallets in the larger church above. The text hints at various attendants who ministered to the visiting pilgrims and helped to perform the rites of the cult. One miracle tale specifies that the sacristan drew a cup of holy water to give to the boy with kidney stones (ch. 40), while the protospatharios John had a dream vision of a woman distributing water from the spring (ch. 32). She should probably be identified as the Virgin, but the vision may also indicate the presence of female 96912.indb 167 9/10/15 10:12 168 a.-m. talbot attendants who assisted in ministering to sick pilgrims. Some ministrants who performed liturgical functions were themselves grateful recipients of miraculous cures. Thus, in the mid-tenth century Romanos Kourkouas, after being healed several times at the Pege, became a depotatos there, and “constantly led the procession at the time of the liturgy of the holy eucharist” (ch. 35). Around the same time Stephen Katzator, after being healed of a hip problem by drinking water from the Pege, gave a written pledge that he would become a “servant of the Theotokos” (ch. 41). He later became the leader or protos of “the brethren of the presbeia,” an allusion to a lay confraternity of devotees of the Theotokos of the Pege whose responsibilities may have included the performance of special liturgical services or carrying the icon of the Virgin of the Pege in procession.23 Members of this confraternity may have also assisted ailing pilgrims. Let us turn now to an early-fourteenth-century account of the miracles of the Pege, composed by the ecclesiastical historian Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos, who was a particular devotee of the shrine of the Pege. He wrote a very lengthy Logos on the shrine,24 consisting in part of a metaphrasis or rewriting of the earlier anonymous miracles of the fifth to tenth centuries, couched in a more elevated style and greatly expanded, with detailed descriptions of the diseases from which the pilgrims suffered, theories on the causes of their afflictions, and even on occasion rational explanations of how the holy water functioned within the body to effect cures. As we learn from Xanthopoulos, the monastery of the Pege was taken over by Latin monks after the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders in 1204, and thereafter the holy water lost its miraculous powers. Even after the recovery of the capital by Michael VIII the spring water remained ineffective because of Michael’s support of the Union of Lyons in 1274; it began to function again during the reign of Andronikos II (1282–1328), Michael’s son, who repudiated the Union with the Church of Rome. As I have described elsewhere, the early fourteenth century was a time of vigorous renewal of the cult of the Pege which now took on the name of Zoodochos Pege, which literally means “the life-receiving source,” a reference to the Virgin’s conception of Christ.25 This was the occasion for Xanthopoulos’ composition of his Logos, as well as an akolouthia or service for the new feast day of Zoodochos Pege, celebrated on the Friday of the week fol- lowing Easter. A new iconography developed for the Virgin of the Source, in which she is depicted sitting in a fountain.26 Xanthopoulos’ Logos included a completely fresh narrative of fifteen miracles which took place in his lifetime. The Logos is a fascinating and rewarding text that still awaits a proper critical edition, translation and commentary. As we shall see, it offers some new details on the architectural layout and operations of the holy water shrine and the care of pilgrims. 23 The Logos of Xanthopoulos adds the detail that Stephen was in charge of the censer, although there is no evidence of this in the Anonymous Miracles. Xanthopoulos also embellishes the tale of the demoniac woman, stating that on the night of her possession her husband was in an exhausted sleep, worn out by his service to the cult on March 25, the feast of the Annunciation (Pamperis 1802, p. 38). On the presbeia and such confra- ternities in medieval Byzantium, see S¯evcenko 1995, pp. 547–553; 1991, pp. 50–57. 24 Ed. Pamperis 1802. See Talbot 2002b, pp. 605–615. 25 Talbot 1994, pp. 135–165. 26 Teteriatnikov 2005, pp. 225–238. 96912.indb 168 9/10/15 10:12 holy springs and pools in byzantine constantinople 169 Xanthopoulos included in his Logos an invaluable ekphrasis of the church that housed the sacred spring, as it appeared in the early fourteenth century.27 This is the church called Kata- phyge in the tenth-century Anonymous Miracles. Although the text is sometimes difficult to interpret, the description of the overall layout is fairly clear and very detailed. According to Xanthopoulos, the church originally founded by Leo I in honor of the Mother of God over the site of the spring was set deep into the earth, but protruded above ground for an equal distance. It was rectangular, with a length triple that of its width. It had a domed ceiling, supported on arches; windows were inserted to provide abundant light. The ceiling was cov- ered in gold mosaic, the walls revetted with gleaming marble. On each side of the church 25 steps, with marble balustrades, led down to the spring, which was located in the middle of the building, in a rectangular space about 12 feet wide, fenced off by a marble parapet. On both sides of the rectangle a flight of six steps provided access to the upper part of the spring. Before the mouth of the spring stood a basin (phiale) perforated with holes so as to provide an outlet for the flowing water. A covered channel divided the crypt in two; it had two open- ings, one fitted with a round stone cover; from the second opening attendants “extract[ed] the holy and purifying mud with a pestle-shaped shovel.”28 Further details can be gleaned from Xanthopoulos’ description of an accident that occurred on the feast day of the Zoodo- chos Pege in 1306, when an unusually large throng of pilgrims was crowding the crypt with the holy spring. The crush of people caused a column supporting the balustrade on the stair to break off from its base, strike the basin (phiale), and knock it to the ground. The column was twelve feet tall and made of black stone. Miraculously no one was injured.29 An epigram of Manuel Philes, describing the offering of the gift of a water reservoir to the shrine by the monk Hilarion Kanabes, may well refer to the new water basin that replaced the damaged one.30 We must also imagine that the crypt was filled with dedications to the Virgin by grate- ful recipients of healing miracles, such as the icons, textiles and glass lamp described in other epigrams of Philes.31 Xanthopoulos also reports that several healed pilgrims commissioned the painting of their miraculous cures to adorn the crypt.32 At the end of his description of the church of the spring, Xanthopoulos described the mosaic image of the Virgin of the Zoodochos Pege recently installed in the domed ceiling in his time. The newly developed iconography depicted the Virgin, holding the Christ child, and sitting in a basin from which water flowed: In the middle of the dome, where there is the ceiling of the church, the artist perfectly depicted with his own hands the life-bearing Source [i.e., the Virgin] who bubbles forth from her bosom the most beautiful and eternal infant in the likeness of transparent and drinkable water which is alive and leaping; upon seeing it one might liken it [the Source] to a cloud making water flow down gently from above, as if a soundless rain, and from there [sc. above] looking down toward the water in the phiale so as to render it effective [i.e., miracle-working], incu- bating it, so to speak, and rendering it fertile.33 27 Pamperis 1802, pp. 11–13. This ekphrasis was later inserted by Xanthopoulos in his Ecclesiastical History, XV, ch. 25–26 (Xanthopoulos 1865, vol. 147, pp. 72–77B). 28 Pamperis 1802, p. 12. 29 Pamperis 1802, pp. 85–86. 30 Talbot 1994, pp. 147–148. 31 Talbot 1994, pp. 147–161. 32 E.g., Pamperis 1802, pp. 60, 67, 83. 33 Pamperis 1802, p. 13. Further on the iconography, see Teteriatnikov 2005 and Starodubcev 2009. 96912.indb 169 9/10/15 10:12 170 a.-m. talbot In other words, it was the mosaic of the Virgin reflected in the basin that gave the water its miraculous power. Xanthopoulos relates that at times the basin was plugged to stop the flow of water, and thus provide a still surface which would reflect the mosaic image. The Logos of Xanthopoulos not only provides a clearer image of the physical setting of the holy spring, but adds new information on the treatment of pilgrims and the ministra- tions of the special attendants. These details are found not only in his descriptions of the miraculous healings that occurred in his own time, some of which he himself witnessed, but also in his rewriting of older miracles. In his expanded versions he sometimes adds details that must reflect the procedures and practices followed at the Pege in the early Palaiologan period. For example, he relates how a man with intestinal problems, seeking healing through incubation, lay down next to the drain channel for the spring water, thus, on the floor of the crypt.34 A prostitute with dropsy, on the other hand, lay in the narthex as she awaited healing. Another dropsy sufferer, the Varangian John Rodelphos, who spent two months at the shrine, slept somewhere on an upper level, since he is described in a dream vision as descending stairs to the spring. Most interesting are the indications that the attendants may sometimes actually have offered some form of medical treatment and nursing care to the ailing pilgrims who visited the shrine. For example, a prostitute with a grotesquely swollen abdomen dreamed of a woman sprinkling her with water and pouring water into her mouth.35 The protospatharios John, ill with an unspecified disease, is said to have had a vision of the physician saint Pan- teleimon, carrying a medicine box and holding a scalpel. He palpated various parts of John’s body, diagnosed an internal infection, and made an incision in John’s chest. When John awoke the next morning he could see the incision (mir. 35).36 This leads one to wonder whether in fact physicians were present to perform minor operations such as the lancing of abscesses. In the case of the Varangian John Rodelphos, in his dream vision he was treated at the spring by a woman who first squeezed into his mouth cotton saturated with holy water, then gave him more water in a clay vessel. Then she raised up the man’s tunic and palpated his bladder, so that he urinated copiously. When he awoke the next morning, he found his clothes and mattress drenched.37 One unusual method of healing was used for a man from Serres suffering from a tumor in his lower abdomen, who spent some time at the shrine. On account of his illness he became incontinent and soiled his clothes so that he smelled terribly. The man responsible for the church ordered him to move outside in the courtyard so as not to bother the other pilgrims with his stench. Since his friends could not apply the holy mud directly upon an internal tumor, they dried the mud, pounded it to dust, and blew it inside the man’s abdo- men with a tube.38 Xanthopoulos’s text also indicates that some pilgrims visited a place at some distance from the church where the outflow of the spring was evidently conveyed by 34 Pamperis 1802, p. 23. 35 Pamperis 1802, p. 75. 36 Pamperis 1802, pp. 53–54. 37 Pamperis 1802, pp. 78–82. 38 Pamperis 1802, pp. 68–69. 96912.indb 170 9/10/15 10:12 holy springs and pools in byzantine constantinople 171 a pipe. A leper, for example, went there to bathe, and rubbed himself with hyssop and mud and some plants growing there.39 A contemporary of Xanthopoulos, Michael Gabras, has left important testimony about the healing cult at Pege in a letter he wrote about the death of his brother John from dropsy.40 The letter, dated to 1327, describes John’s unsuccessful attempt to find healing at the Pege shrine and provides important confirmation of the information from hagiographi- cal sources. Just as happens in the miracle accounts, when John fell ill, he consulted physi- cians but to no avail. He then decided to go to the Pege, “for already his body had begun to swell and his lower legs seemed to be inflated with air, and a not inconsiderable swelling was encroaching upon his eyes, so that no one could look at him without horror.”41 Since he was unable to walk or ride to the shrine, he gave instructions that he be tied to a chair and carried by several porters. Upon reaching the church, he descended the steps to pray to the Virgin. Then he was laid out on a bed and began to drink the holy water. For a while he vowed that he would subsist on the water alone, although his comrades urged him to eat solid food, including meat. Finally he was persuaded to partake of some fish. He drank enormous quantities of holy water, until he became completely waterlogged. But John’s pilgrimage proved fruitless and he soon died. Thus, Michael Gabras’s account is a sober reminder that not everyone who visited the Pege was cured, but at the same time confirms that we can trust the basic outlines of the operations of the cult as described in the two miracle accounts. Conclusion As best I can determine, the Philanthropos and the Hodegoi at Mangana, and the Pege were the primary holy water shrines of Byzantine Constantinople, with the hagion louma at Blachernai fulfilling a rather different role in imperial ceremonial. Thus there were three monasteries with healing springs, and one church with a ritual bath. There are interesting connections and similarities among the four sites: three of the shrines were dedicated to the Virgin, in at least three cases the spring was housed in an underground crypt, two of the foundation legends involve the healing of the blind, and three of the shrines had special confraternities of devotees who helped to perpetuate the cult rituals. As early as the sixth century, Prokopios had linked the churches of the Pege and Blachernai, describing them as guardians of the city wall. The Book of Ceremonies states that after the emperor took his ritual bath at Blachernai, he sometimes visited the church of Pege, although we do not know if it was to pray or drink the holy water.42 The Book of Ceremonies also describes the emperor’s annual visit to the Pege on Ascension Day, when he attended the liturgy and dined with the patriarch.43 Curiously there is no mention of any visit to the spring, although 39 Pamperis 1802, pp. 70–71. 40 Michael Gabras, ed. Fatouros 1973, pp. 699–705, no. 457. 41 Michael Gabras, ed. Fatouros 1973, p. 701. 42 For further connections between Blachernai and Pege, see Teteriatnikov 2005, pp. 232–233. 96912.indb 171 9/10/15 10:12 172 a.-m. talbot the Anonymous Miracles place great emphasis on members of the imperial family who were cured by the Pege water and their benefactions to the shrine. Two of the holy springs survive to this day, the Blachernai hagiasma at present-day Ayvansaray, in a church restored in 1960, and the Zoodochos Pege in Balıklı. The Zoodo- chos Pege had continued to function until the end of the Byzantine Empire. Popular legend recounts that at the time of the entrance of Ottoman troops into Constantinople in 1453 a monk at Pege was frying fish for dinner. At the news of the conquest the fish jumped half- cooked into the holy basin, thus giving the site its Turkish name of Balıklı. Post-Byzantine iconography shows fish swimming in the phiale. But already in 1390 the Russian anony- mous pilgrim refers to holy fishes at the shrine, so the tradition must predate the conquest of Constantinople.44 During the Ottoman period the monastery church disappeared, but pilgrims continued to visit the hagiasma in the sixteenth century, according to Pierre Gylles and Leunclavius. A small chapel was built at the site in the eighteenth century, and the present church and crypt in 1835.45 Thus, the Pege spring has functioned for over 1600 years, although with some lengthy interruptions during the Ottoman period. At the end of his Logos Xanthopoulos engages in a rather daring rhetorical synkrisis or comparison in which he claims that the spring of the Pege surpasses the famed pools and springs of the Bible, including Siloam and the Sheep Pool, because of the way in which it healed such a variety of diseases and because of the longevity of the cult of the healing water. Xanthopoulos would surely be pleased to know that pilgrims visit the Pege spring to this day at Balıklı and that the healing cult has survived the vicissitudes of time. References Acta Sanctorum 1910 “De sacris aedibus deque miraculis Deiparae ad Fontem,” in Acta Sanctorum Novem- bris. Vol. 3, pp. 878–889. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes. 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C. 2000 Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, 5 volumes. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks. Vogt, A., ed. and transl. 1935 Le livre des cérémonies, edited and translated by A. Vogt, vol. 1. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Xanthopoulos, N. K. 1865 Ecclesiastical History in Patrologia Graeca, ed. J. P. Migne, 145: 559–147: 448. Alice-Mary Talbot
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