Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

942 31. building and architecture
some monasteries existed within city walls from an early date. The first
monastery at Constantinople, that of Dalmatios, was founded in the late
fourth century, and by 536 there were nearly eighty monasteries in and
around the capital. In the Holy Land, many monasteries were founded at
pilgrimage sites to care for the shrine and its visitors; others were foundations
of élite individuals, like the empress Eudocia, who wished to be buried
in their own establishments with their own clergy praying for their souls. In
Palaestina Secunda, a monastery at Scythopolis, founded in c. 560 by a family
(titled members of which were buried there), had rooms decorated with
floor mosaics and sculpture and was laid out around a hall with a chapel at
one corner (Fig. 11,p.339 above). 43
Aside from churches, little monastic architecture has survived or been
excavated in cities. More is known of the architecture of rural monasteries,
from both texts and excavations, which reveal that they contained
dormitories, a refectory, stables, workshops, storage buildings, communal
tombs and a church or chapel – also, possibly, a bath, an infirmary and an
inn. Peter the Iberian’s monastery, built near Gaza in c. 488, was described
as having two-storey cells, porticoes, courtyards, gardens, cisterns, a
tower and a walled church. In many ways, rural monasteries resembled
the self-sufficient Roman villa as described by Palladius in the fourth
century and by earlier writers. Rural monasteries took two main social and
architectural forms – the laura, where monks lived separately in cells scattered
around the church and service buildings, and the coenobium, where
monks had communal quarters and refectory and a variety of buildings
usually arranged around a courtyard and enclosed by a quadrangular
wall. 44
In Egypt, where monasticism originated, the huge laura settlement of
Kellia, built in the sixth to the eighth century in the Nile delta, had c. 1,600
walled units, now partially excavated, each containing separate rooms for
two monks, a reception room, a kitchen and an oratory, all grouped
around a courtyard and often with a well, garden and watch tower, and,
sometimes, a small church (Fig. 49). The larger complexes at Kellia
serving as community centres also have towers, refectories and several
churches. At Bawit in upper Egypt the monastery of Apa Apollo is
composed of two churches and several complexes, some with chapels,
transverse halls with painted niches interpreted as prayer halls, and
tombs. At Saqqara, the necropolis of Memphis, the monks of Apa
Jeremias first settled in abandoned mausolea and had a mud-brick chapel
and single-aisled refectory; better premises were built only after the Arab
conquest. 45
43 Mango, Studies on Constantinople i.125; Hirschfeld (1992) 18–58; Scythopolis: Fitzgerald (1939).
44 Mango, M. M. (1984) Gazetteer, vii.b.44.
45 Kellia: Bridel (1986); Bawit: Maspero (1931–43); Saqqara: Quibell (1909–12).
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