Story of Constantine Lips

Ali Sami Boyar, "Fenari İsa Mosque", c.1960, The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey art collection 2042.

North church of the Constantine Lips Monastery is the earliest surviving cross-in-square planned church in Constantinople.

However, Constantine Lips' name was forgotten until the 19th and 20th centuries. The story of the Constantine Lips Monastery Church's discovery and its repairs demonstrates the importance of language in maintaining a culture, and it also shows how a cultural heritage is also lost when a historical structure is used differently than it was intended to be.

The original church of this monastery was constructed in 907 by a prominent official of the Byzantine state, presumably the admiral of the fleet named Constantine, and it was dedicated to Theotokos Panakrantos, according to Byzantine sources. Emperor Leo VI (866–912) is reported to have attended the consecration event. But during this ceremony a windstorm, called λήψ (Lips), coming from the south started and while the roofs of the houses were blowing away with this storm, people started to run away to hide, and the rain poured right after this wind storm. It is possible that this wind storm was the ‘lodos’ in Turkish. Istanbul is still severely affected by the southwest wind (lodos), thus this account of the inaugural ceremony can be taken as fact. Therefore, it is probable that Lips was only the name of the wind that disrupted this consecration ritual in 907 and later became the nickname of this church’s founder as a reminder of this incident. Perhaps this is the reason why two separate individuals are referred to as Constantine Lips in ancient texts; one of them must be the elder's son who erected the north church.

There is a Greek inscription surrounding the façade of the northern church’s apsis walls. Constantinople Patriarch Constantios I was the first scholar who transcribed and translated this inscription in the 19^th century, and he understood that this church was dedicated to Mary. Patriarch Constantios I misidentified this church in his book Constantiniade (1846), because he thought that this was the Panachrantos Church mentioned in historical resources located near Hagia Sophia. That is why this church was called at first “St. Mary Panachrantos” (Millingen, 1912).

However, this church is situated a great distance from Hagia Sophia. Another translator who was born in Pera, Istanbul, Johannes Heinrich Mordtmann, made the actual finding of this church (1852, Pera - 1932, Berlin). Mordtmann accurately recognized Fenari İsa Camii as the monastery tou Libos in 1892 after studying the Russian sources and observing that Russian pilgrims frequented this monastery.

Two churches make up Fenari sa Camii; the northern church is the older of the two and is occasionally referred to as Theotokos. Theodora, the dowager empress and widow of Michael VIII Palaiologos, erected the second church to the northern structure around the end of the 13th century, and it was devoted to Saint John.

The southern church’s typicon (foundation document) which was discovered in Athens in the 17^th century, was translated into French in 1921, and then this church complex named as “Constantine Lips” (Delehaye, 1921; Talbot, 1992; Thomas and Hero, 2000; Karakaya, 2021).

At the early years of the Turkish Republic, Theodore Macridy, assistant curator at the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, conducted an excavation in this church. He moved from Istanbul to Athens in 1931 to serve as the Benaki Museum's director, but he passed away in 1940. Cyril Mango later released Macridy's report on this church in 1964.

Macridy did some restorations and remove the plaster from both the interior and exterior walls. In 1960, after a minor restoration of Evkaf, an extensive restoration project was carried out by Byzantine Institute of America. The reports of this restoration published respectively in 1963 and 1968.

The northern church was the subject of Greek scholar Vasileios Marinis' PhD thesis at the University of Illinois in 2004. His thesis is the most in-depth study of this structure.

The Greek inscription from the 10th century that surrounds the northern church's apsis façade is the most significant feature of the northern building. According to Spingou (2012), this inscription's writing style is extremely complex and could only be understood by the most educated members of the Byzantine empire in the tenth century. Semavi Eyice further emphasizes the significance of this inscription because it makes it very evident that someone by the name of Constantine dedicated this church to Mary.

The Greek used in this inscription is from the Middle Byzantine period. However, the palmette motifs of the Constantine Lips Monastery's north church come in a variety of shapes and styles that are not Byzantine in style but rather quite reminiscent of ancient patterns.

According to Marinis (2004), recycled materials were used in the decorating of the north church, including recurved antique slabs for the cornices and pilaster capitals. According to Mango and Hawkins (1968), the initial location of these recycled materials was Cyzicus (Mysia, Balkesir).

The story of the North Church’s discovery demonstrates the necessity to view historical sites as both architecturally significant landmarks and sources of literature and visual culture.

And the most crucial element for maintaining a culture is language. The Greek population in Istanbul spoke the same language as their Byzantine ancestors, but nobody could read a Byzantine inscription from the 10th century until the 19th century because Byzantine culture has been completely lost. This is similar to how the name of Constantine Lips was lost until the 19th and 20th centuries.

 Even though the architecture survives, when a language is lost, a culture inevitably disappears.

Bibliography:

Delahaye, H. (1921). Deux typica byzantins de l'époque des Paléologues. Bruxelles, M. Lamertin.

Karakaya, E. (2021). Kuruluş Vakfiyesi ve Arkeolojik Belgelerin Işığında Bir İmparatorluk Medfeni-Lips Manastırı. In M. Kurtoğlu (ed.). Fenari İsa Camii Koruma ve Restorasyon 2013-2018. İstanbul, T.C. Vakıflar Genel Müdürlüğü ve Yılmaz Yapı, p.15-32.

Macridy, T. (1964). The Monastery of Lips (Fenari Isa Camii) at Istanbul. Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 18, p. 249-277.

Mango, C., & Ernest J. W. Hawkins. (1968). Additional Finds at Fenari Isa Camii, Istanbul. Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 22, p. 177–184.

Marinis, V. (2004). The Monastery Tou Libos Architecture, Sculpture, and Liturgical Planning in Middle and Late Byzantine Constantinople [PhD thesis in Art History, University of Illinois] Illinois Library. https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/items/88652

Millingen, A.V. (1912). Byzantine Churches of Constantinople. London, Macmillian.

Spingou, F. (2012). Revisiting Lips Monastery. The Inscription at the Theotokos Church Once Again. The Byzantinist, p. 16–19.

Talbot, A.-M. (1992). Empress Theodora Palaiologina, Wife of Michael VIII. Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 46, p. 295–303. https://doi.org/10.2307/1291662

Thomas, J.P. Hero, A.C. (2000). Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents: A Complete Translation of the Surviving Founders’ Typika and Testaments. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University.