22. Evergetis - Dumbarton Oaks

ELEVENTH CENTURY
document, our manuscript copy of the founder’s typikon was not turned over to another institution
until the sixteenth century. 27 Therefore it seems entirely possible that Evergetis, like the revived
Stoudios monastery, survived down to the fall of the empire in 1453.
No trace of the foundation remains on its presumed site near Tchirpedji-Dere or Hasnadar-
Dere in an industrial district outside the old city walls in Istanbul. 28 Majeska (Russian Travelers,
p. 316) suggests, however, that the existing Greek church of the Mother of God Gorgoepikoos
may have been built in Ottoman times on the site of Evergetis’ Constantinopolitan dependency.
Analysis
This monastery was the leader of an enormously influential reform movement in Byzantine monasticism,
29 which, building on both Basilian and Studite precedents, succeeded in revolutionizing
contemporary attitudes on such important matters as the institutions of monastic governance,
the abolition of privilege, strict financial management, and the desirability of the cenobitic life.
The founder’s typikon is the fundamental text needed for understanding the nature of this reform.
A. Lives of the Monks
1. Number of Monks
Unlike some earlier and contemporary documents, 30 the author of (22) Evergetis [23] declines to
set a fixed number of positions for the monks in Evergetis, preferring to let the monastery’s resources
determine the number who could be supported. A smaller number was acceptable too if it
was not possible to recruit a full complement of pious monks. This too may have been a reform
idea. The old notion of setting a fixed number of positions had the good intent of helping to assure
that a foundation’s expenses did not exceed its available income (see above, Chapter Three, Concerns
of the Authors), but in the era of the charistike must inevitably have led to situations like
(21) Roidion in which unsuitable monks and even laymen were imposed on an institution simply
because there were sufficient livings available to support them. To all appearances, however, the
author anticipated that Evergetis would be a large foundation, judging from the need he saw [7]
for the superior to appoint assistants to help him hear daily confessions and his expectation [36]
that one day there would be too many deceased monks for them to be commemorated individually
(see C.5 below).
The monastic community at Evergetis was divided [7] into monks who lived continuously in
the monastery (engaged in liturgical and other services) and an apparently larger number, including
“the more uneducated majority,” who were assigned to various ministries both within and
outside of the monastery. This division of the monastic community recalls the arrangements seen
in (9) Galesios [182], which describes a foundation in which there were both choir monks and
other mostly illiterate brothers.
2. Liturgical Duties
As in other documents that are part of the Studite liturgical tradition such as (4) Stoudios and (11)
Ath. Rule, the celebration of the canonical hours [4], [5], [6] was an important part of the lives of
the monks. Though the description of the hours is fuller than in the earlier documents, the author
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