Chora Monastery
Chora Monastery
(Turk. Kariye Camii), located in the northwestern region of Constantinople near Edirne Kapi. The early history of Chora (Ξώρα, lit. “dwelling place”) is obscure. A legendary tradition attributes the foundation to the 6th-C. saint Theodore (BHG 1743), supposed uncle of Justinian I's wife Theodora; a more reliable source identifies the founder as Krispos, son-in-law of the 7th-C. emperor Phokas. In the 9th C. Chora was a center of resistance to Iconoclasm; the iconodule saints Theophanes Graptos and Michael Synkellos were associated with the monastery and buried there. Restored in the 11th C. by Maria Doukaina, mother-in-law of Alexios I, Chora was again renovated in the 12th C. by her grandson, Isaac Komnenos the sebastokrator. Like its predecessor, Isaac's church was a domed basilica built of recessed-brick masonry on a cross-in-square plan with, however, a larger, single apse. Traces of its mosaic decoration remain in the south window of the nave.
The church deteriorated during the Latin occupation of Constantinople, but Theodore Metochites restored it magnificently (1316–21). He rebuilt the dome over the nave and replaced the narthexes and parekklesion, decorating them with resplendent mosaics and frescoes. Of the mosaics in the nave, only panels of Christ, the Virgin, and the Dormition remain. The well-preserved mosaics of the narthexes and the frescoes of the parekklesion are critical for our understanding of the style of monumental painting of this period. In the outer narthex esp. notable are the image of Christ, identified as he chora ton zonton, “the dwelling place of the living,” on axis with the entrance; the cycle of his Infancy with long sequences on the Magi and the Massacre of the Innocents; and that of his Ministry in the domical vaults. The focus of the inner narthex is the donor portrait of Metochites offering his foundation to the Lord. In this area are mosaics of the Deesis with Christ Chalkites, but without the Prodromos, accompanied by images of Isaac Komnenos and “Melania the Nun”; 17 scenes of the life of the Virgin; and an unusually full complement of 70 ancestors of Christ. The eastern half of the parekklesion, used as a mortuary chapel, is fittingly devoted to the Last Judgment and culminates in the Anastasis, abnormally placed in the conch of the apse. On the chapel walls are frescoes of military saints, some partly covered or destroyed by the finely carved hoods of sepulchral monuments. Along the south walls are Old Testament prefigurations of the Virgin.
Metochites also endowed the monastery with substantial estates, added a hospital and public kitchen, and donated his important collection of books. During the Palaiologan period, Chora housed Constantinople's most comprehensive library and was frequented by scholars such as Maximos Planoudes and Nikephoros Gregoras, as well as Metochites himself. Sultan Bayezid II (1481–1512) transformed the church into a mosque.
P.A. Underwood, The Kariye Djami, 4 vols. (New York 1966; Princeton 1975).Find this resource:
R.G. Ousterhout, The Architecture of the Kariye Camii in Istanbul (Washington, D.C., 1987).Find this resource:
Ø. Hjort, The Sculpture of Kariye Camii, DOP 33 (1979) 199–289.Find this resource: