Chora Monastery in Constantinople

The main function of religious art is to embody the abstract idea of God in a form that allows its easiest perception. A central problem of any religious system is God’s presence and its adequate description. Theophanic events are never single-layered and this is a challenge for both the spiritual writer and the spiritual artist.
One of the most enduring trends in religious beliefs in all ages and cultures is the designation of the diversity of manifestations of the divine power, presence and action with unifying notions. Probably the most sustainable and universal in this respect is the concept of the “glory” of gods, through which their divinity is expressed most emphatically, most sensually, and at the same time most unattainably for mankind. This concept is expressed through the term “the glory of God”, which is used in the theological language of all organized religious systems to denote the manifestations of the sacred.
The radiance, which symbolizes the divine grace, power and superiority over all the senses is a common and invariable part of the outward expression of the supernatural character of the events connected with the manifestations and actions of God’s glory. Therefore, one of the key problems facing the visual language of any religion is to find a concise, clear, easily doable and easily understandable form in which to express the theophanic radiance. Thus, two of the most ancient sacred symbols in human history – the nimbus and the aureole (mandorla) were born.
In Christian art, the mandorla has been used to depict the manifestations of God’s presence and actions. The human consciousness perceives the verbal descriptions of theophanic events differently and is not able to create a general convention for their uniform understanding, so the iconographic canon uses certain symbols capable of presenting the necessary universal ideas. The mandorla is an oval, oval-pointed or round outline, which in certain iconographic subjects encompasses the figure of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Trinity and the Theotokos or in rare cases those of some saints. It serves as a visual epitome of the phenomenon of God’s glory.

This paper traces the seminal notion of khora from the Platonic Timaeus to Derrida's apophatic theology. John Caputo's and Richard Kearney's criticism of the latter are presented and discussed. The essay concludes with an "excursus" to the enigmatic frescos and mosaics of the Monastery of Chora.

An auspicious event for the history of Byzantine studies took place in 1884.  It was of lasting importance for shaping scholarly understanding of an iconic monument of Istanbul.  The first comprehensive scholarly study and extensive photographic corpus of the Chora mosaics were completed that year.  The key protagonists in this event were the Russian Byzantinist Nikodim Kondakov and his collaborator, the French photographer Jean Xavier Raoult.  The pairing of cutting-edge, photographic technology with Russian scholarly expertise rescued the Chora mosaics from claims of Western influence and forever cemented their centrality in the corpus of Byzantine art.

Th is issue of Minima medievalia hosts fourteen original studies, which, following the tradition of the series, starting from a specifi c point of view converge around the monographic topic chosen for the occasion. In the following essays, Byzantine sculpture is approached in its various forms, iconographies, techniques, and typologies, over a chronology that spans from the Proto Byzantine period to the Palaiologan era. From the point of view of artistic geography, ample space is given to works of art distributed in areas that are also considerably distant from each other: from the Balkans to the capital Constantinople, including peripherical areas if compared to the main centers of cultural elaboration.

This paper traces the seminal notion of khora from the Platonic Timaeus to Derrida's  apophatic theology. John Caputo's and Richard Kearney's criticism of the latter are presented and discussed. The essay concludes with an "excursus" to the enigmatic frescos and mosaics of the Monastery of Chora.

According to some sources and scholars, the full name of the katholikon of the Chora monastic complex was “the church of the Holy Savior εν τη χώρα” and it was dedicated to Christ. However, this name is first and foremost a characterization not of Christ but of the monastery itself. It is author’s belief that the name of the monastery should be interpreted mostly as an epithet of Mary, which turned into a place of refuge for Theodoros Metochites, rather than as an epithet for Christ; it signifies the monastery of the Zoodotes, indicating with this the major dedication of the central church. Using theological and iconological approach the author shows that the name of the Chora Monastery means “the monastery within the walls of Constantinople”; that the word chora as an iconographical epithet refers mainly to the Theotokos; it derives from hymnography and was preserved in the Ottoman period.

Обект на изследването е начинът на изобразяване на библейския концепт за Божията слава в късновизантийската иконографска традиция. Предмет на изследването е произходът и семантиката на новия тип мандорла, използвана като основен иконографски символ за визуализация на Божията теофания в късновизантийското изкуство от XIV в. нататък. Целта е да се очертае мястото и времето на възникване на усложнената форма на мандорлата, появила се паралелно с развитието на духовното движение на исихазма, както и да се изясни функционирането й като визуална екзегеза на теологическата концепция за нетварната светлина в късновизантийската иконография.
С помощта на case study относно хронологията и интервизуалността на иконографските програми на храма „Св. Апостоли“ в Солун и храма „Иисус Христос Спасител“ на манастира Хора се формулира хипотезата, че т. нар. „исихастки тип“ мандорла се е появил в Константинопол, а не в Солун или Мистра. Като допълнителен довод в полза на столичния произход на модела служат изводите от проведеното case study на иконографската програма на Гробница Е от външния нартекс на манастира Хора. Фреската „Св. Богородица Влахернитиса“ тук има акатистово значение и би следвало да бъде сюжетно определена като „Св. Богородица Достойно ест“. Композицията й показва вероятна връзка между възникналата ок. 1300 г. в Константинопол иконографска схема на цикъла на Богородичния Акатист и формирането на „исихасткия тип“ мандорла.
Линията на разпространение на новия модел може да бъде проследена от Константинопол, през Солун и Атон към цяла Византия, а от там към България, Сърбия, Румъния и Русия.

In medieval Greek manuscripts, scribes often compared their completion of the transcription of a codex to a ship reaching a harbor. Scholars have noted that this nautical imagery shaped how poets conceptualized their work as an author, but the harbor metaphor also carried over to metaliterary and ekphrastic passages theorizing the affect of images and the built environment. Thus, a technical metaphor born to describe the physical labor of book-making was adapted to describe the intellectual labor of book-writing, image-making, and building. In the present study, I discuss the harbor metaphor via the concept of “terminality,” an impulse towards closure that inscribed the content of an object (logos, eikôn) or space (chora) within an experiential horizon. The terminus offers an opportunity to appreciate the often-overlooked importance of the letters themselves (the graphai) in the world before print. The graphê, quite simply, traced the contours of how other media were understood and perceived, providing assurance that literature and art were as well-regulated as the practice of scribal transcription.

This work retraces observations concerning insufficiently known emblems, represented on some examples of late Byzantine architecture. Also, should an emblem be invested with a role of a codified sign, without being literally visible, could it function as a segment of the imagery employed in the articulation of the facades of late Byzantine and Serbian medieval architecture.

,,ШТО ЈЕ НА НЕБУ И НА ЗЕМЉИ, ВИДЉИВО И НЕВИДЉИВО“: ТРИЈУМФАЛНИ ЛУК НА ЗАПАДНОЈ ФАСАДИ ЦРКВЕ БОГОРОДИЦЕ ЉЕВИШКЕ У ПРИЗРЕНУ. СТРУКТУРА И ЗНАЧЕЊЕ

      Артикулација зидне површине као и концептуални елементи фасаде представљају кључне упоришне тачке византијске архитектуре крајем XIII века. Западна фасада цркве Богородице Љевишке у Призрену садржи доминантан тријумфални лук у средини којије додатно акцентован тзв. ,,акведукт“ системом изнад. Начин на којије изведено петокуполно решење од нарочитог је значаја за перцепцију архитектонске слике призренског храма.Како се не би нарушавао визуелни наратив западне фасаде, протомајстор Никола је конструктивно приближио средњој куполи западни пар купола. На тај начин је постигнут ефекат наративности централног регистра и целокупне западне фасаде као геометријске слике тријумфалног лука, а тако и отелотворења идеје тријумфа ктитора. У раду се додатно указује на интерпретативне хоризонте западне фасаде, пре свега повезаност ктиторског портрета и Cимеона Немање изнад западног портала  као символа стуба вере на који се значењски ослања и хоризонтална оса храма са параклисима посвећеним Светим ратницима.

Based on the complex interrelations between word and image, present paper aims to elucidate penetrating correlation of the theological thought of the time with the art of a specific epoch. Accent is putted on the Hesychasm and its influence over Byzantine iconography in the fourteenth century AD, especially what concerns the formation of a new, unusual form of mandorla, called “hesychastic”. In order to explain its rise and further development in Byzantine and Post Byzantine iconography, we will discuss the earliest few patterns of “hesychastic mandorla” from the very beginning of the century and will compare them with several subsequent examples. Central point of our research will be to find out which one is the earliest known “hesychastic mandorla”, and where this type of mandorla has emerged. Generally shared view claims that the new form has been produced firstly in Thessaloniki, in the partially survived Transfiguration mosaic of the Holy Apostles Church. Here we will proceed from the assumption that the prime model originates from Constantinople, caused by the theological and artistic milieu in the metropolis and probably found its place first in the wall paintings of the Chora Church. In order to support this hypothesis we will pay special attention to the relationships between the first and the second city in the Empire, we will discuss intervisuality between the iconographic models in both churches and will try to propound a new interpretation of the timing of the wall decorations in the Holy Apostles Church.

Key words: Hesychasm, Hesychastic mandorla, Transfiguration, Holy Apostles Church, Chora Church

In Byzantium, rhetorical training, based on authors writing in the Attic dialect, was an important part of the regular curriculum and opened the doors to a career in the high administration (imperial or ecclesiastical). Indeed, ancient writings (up to the Late Antiquity) served as direct models for the Byzantines, who thus had at their disposal a rich repertoire of rhetorical formulas and ideas while addressing the ruler. In particular, writers of the Palaiologan period are known for their outstanding ability to imitate: for example, it took time to identify Thomas Magistros as the author of speeches long attributed to Aelius Aristides. For this particular conference, I choose to examine the last work by Theodore Metochites, the Comparison of Demosthenes and Aristides, which also happens to be the topic of my PhD thesis. I choose it because this rhetorical piece was composed during the very last years of Metochites’ life somewhere between 1330 and 1332 (the year of his death), that is after the fall of Andronicus II and his protégé Metochites. Metochites was, so to say, under house arrest at the Chora monastery. So, in this context, the Chora monastery becomes a place of culture and, more appropriately, rhetorical erudition, based on ancient orators. But does Metochites always follow the rules of ancient rhetoric? Do ancient models always prevail? My aim is to show, first of all, some features of the Comparison of Demosthenes and Aristides which are consistent with traditional teaching in Byzantium: which ancient authors does Metochites quote? And how does Metochites assert his rhetorical skills and knowledge? Second, we will try to assess the extent to which Metochites innovates at the Chora monastery, with reference to stylistic matters.