Architecture and Visual Culture in the Late Antique and Medieval Mediterranean © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER (original) (raw)
The Oxford University Byzantine Society’s XXI International Graduate Conference, "Contested Heritage: Adaptation, Restoration & Innovation in the Late Antique & Byzantine World", 2019
The Monastery of St. John the Forerunner Stoudios, today known as the Imrahor Ilyas Bey mosque, is located at the Yedikule district, near to the Golden Gate of Theodosian Walls, and just at the south of the Mese, the processional way of Byzantine Constantinople. The church is Constantinople’s oldest remaining ecclesiastical building, and the degree of preservation of the initial fifth-century construction is unique. The monastery was founded in the mid-fifth century by the consul Stoudios and was dedicated to St. John the Baptist. In the course of its history, the building played a leading role in the social and spiritual life of the Byzantine Empire. It housed a number of religious objects which included relics, manuscripts, and also was a part of several imperial and ecclesiastical processions. The paper focuses on the two ceremonies; the feast of the beheading of St. John the Forerunner and the commemoration of Theodore the Studite, the celebrated church father of the monastery. Both annual ceremonies are well documented and recorded in ancient literary works and manuscripts. By discussing the complex relationship between Byzantines’ memories of the ceremony and their interactions with associated monuments, the close reading of these public events will elucidate different modes of interaction between memory, experience, and architecture in the context of the ceremony in the Byzantine mind, particularly in reference to the ancient Roman ceremonial traditions.