28. Pantokrator - Dumbarton Oaks

28. PANTOKRATOR
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, several Russian pilgrims, attracted by Pantokrator’s
famous icons and relics, visited the foundation and left brief accounts, including Stephen of
Novgorod (ca. 1349), Alexander the Clerk (1394–95), Zosima the Deacon (1419–22), and the
Russian Anonymous (1424–34). 17
Sometime between 1422 and 1425, the courtier and historian George Sphrantzes got Manuel
II to choose his friend Makarios Makres as superior of Pantokrator. 18 Pantokrator had fallen on
hard times, its buildings in bad shape and its community down to only six monks. Sphrantzes and
Makres collaborated in restoring and improving the monastery. They also managed to double the
number of resident monks. At about this same time, Manuel II’s son Andronikos, once despot of
Thessalonike, retired to Pantokrator as a monk and died there in 1426. Later in 1429–30, Makarios
served as John VIII’s envoy to Pope Martin V (1417–31) for negotiations on the reunification of
the Greek and Latin churches. 19 After the conclusion of his mission, Makarios returned to
Pantokrator, where he died in 1431.
Makarios’ immediate successor may have been Gerontios, perhaps Pantokrator’s last superior.
20 Though Gerontios took part at the reunification council of Ferrara-Florence (1438–39) and
signed the decree of union in 1439, he became an ardent anti-unionist on his return to Constantinople
in 1440.
E. Conversion into a Mosque under the Ottoman Empire
The monastery apparently ceased operation upon the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
Zeyrek Mehmet Efendi converted the triple church into a mosque towards the end of the fifteenth
century under its present name, Zeyrek Kilise Camii. 21
F. Fate of the Typikon
The original typikon came into the manuscript and book collection of John Nicolas Mavrocordato,
dragoman or “official interpreter” of the Sublime Porte, the court of the Ottoman sultan in
Constantinople, who later served as voivode or governor of Moldavia (1709) and Wallachia
(1716). 22 His library was dispersed after his death in 1730 and the typikon came into the possession
of the monastery of Blakserai, a dependency in Constantinople of the Peloponnesian monastery
of Mega Spelaion. Copies were made, one before 1740, that is now in the Bibliothèque
Nationale in Paris (Parisinus graecus 389), and another in 1749, which also contains a transcription
of (19) Attaleiates, that was once in the library of the Theological School on the island of
Halki and is now in the Patriarchal Library, Istanbul (Halki 85, nunc 79). 23 By discovering the
Halki manuscript and another copy derived from it on a journey to the Ottoman Empire, the
Russian scholar P. Bezobrazov was able to publish short excerpts from (28) Pantokrator for the
first time in 1887. 24 The editio princeps by Dmitrievsky in his collection of monastic typika
followed in 1895, is based on the same Halki manuscript. 25
In 1902, however, Spyridon Lampros discovered the original typikon at the Mega Spelaion
monastery near Kalavrita, still bearing the autograph signature of John II Komnenos. He published
some extended excerpts from the document in 1908, but unfortunately (as fate would have
it), neither he nor Nikos Bees, who announced his intention to do so in 1909, prepared an edition.
26 On July 17, 1934, a fire swept the monastery library, destroying the original typikon and
virtually all of the other manuscripts in its collection. 27
[ 727 ]