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1919
On the History of the Templon and the
Martyrion of St. Artemios at Constantinople
Cyril Mango
In the past fifteen or twenty years many useful studies bution has remained virtually unnoticed).4
have been written on the development of the templon in a short, but useful article by P. MaasS and a
Byzantine churches. It is now generally accepted that the the Miracles by H. Delehaye. 6 Some social
waist-high screen separating the sanctuary (hierateion or notably A. P. Rudakov,7 have made extensive
hieron) from the nave, such as we find it in the earliest text, but archaeologists have, on the whole,
basilicas, i.e. a screen consisting of slabs slotted into upright so. Yet, with the possible exception of St.
posts, evolved by the end of the 5th century into a taller Thessalonica, there is hardly any other
partition. The vertical posts sprouted colonnettes (or were early Byzantine period whose everyday
replaced by columns) upon which was laid an entablature. portrayed with such a wealth of concrete detail
By Justinian's reign, if not earlier, the entablature began St. Artemios at Constantinople.
to be ornamented with small-scale representations of holy The stories told in the Miracula extend
personages, either incised or embossed. In the period im- of Maurice (582-602) to the year 659 (70. 3
mediately following Iconoclasm, i.e. in the 9th and 10th clear that they were set down by an eyewitness
centuries, no significant change appears to have taken place: ses before the death of Constans II in 668.
the templon remained an open partition in the sense that indication that two authors may have been
the spaces between the colonnettes and above the closure this need not concern us here. It is enough to
slabs were not filled. It may be that the iconographic de- are dealing with a text written in the mid
coration of the entablature was made more elaborate at century with the intention of spreading the
this time, but the dearth of pre-iconoclastic examples does a shrine of the capital where miraculous cur
not allow us to draw a valid comparison. Certainly by the sed by a process of incubation. The shrine'
lith century and possibly by the late 10th painted icons not, it is true, a very grand affair. St.
began to appear on the epistyle. The final stage of develop- cialized in diseases of the male genital
ment was reached when large icons were placed in the clientele was largely drawn from the poor
intercolumniations, thus creating a solid screen - the not even have a church of his own. He
iconostasis as we know it today in Orthodox churches. 1 of a chruch dedicated to St. John the
While there is agreement among scholars on the broad called Oxeia, i.e. not far from the Grand
lines of this evolution, a few questions of detail remain in bul S, then as now a district of artisans a
It is by no means clear by what accide
suspense. One concerns the possible use of veils in the
intercolumniations of the templon; another the precise Artemios, who was dux Aegypti in 360
death by Julian at the request of the peo
date when wooden icons were first introduced into the
( Alexandrinis urgentibus atrocium criminu
same spaces - by the 11th century according to M. Chat-
within two centuries a popular medical
zidakis (whom I would be inclined to follow), not before
tinople. The Passio S. Arternii by John t
the 13th or early 14th according to A. Grabar and V. La-
zarev. Rather than re-open here these problems, I should of Rhodes), a text of uncertain date10 , tellli
the Saint's execution at Antioch, his body
like to introduce an important piece of evidence that ap-
pears to have been overlooked. by a certain Ariste, a deaconess of the
placed it in a lead coffin and sent it
The evidence in question comes from the Miracles of There she deposited it in a conspicuous
St. Artemios, an eminently curious text that has received
much less attention that it deserves. Following its publica-
tion by A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus (whose edition will 4 Topographica Constantinopolitana, Joul1lI'41
31 (1911), 266--68.
be quoted hereafter by page and line),2 it was commented
5 Artemioskult in Konstantinopel, UYL'.-""~"'"
on by S. Kougeas 3 and N. H. Baynes (whose brief contri- 377-80.
6 Les recueils antiques de miracles
(1925), 32-38. J. Tolstol's Un ponc(f
1 For a systematic exposition of the subject see M. Chatzidakis
d' Asklepios et d' Artemius, Byzantion, 3 (1
art. Ikonostas, RbK, III (1973), 326 ff. Among more recent contri- to our purpose.
butions we may mention G. Babic, 0 iivopisanom ukrasu oltarskih 7 Ocerki vizantijskoj kul'tury po
pregrada, Zbornik za Iikovne umetnosti, 11 (1975), 3-49, and M. Moscow, 1917; repro London, 1970,
Chatzidakis, L' evolution de l'icone aux 11e_13e siec/es et la transforma- 8 For the situation see R. Janin,
tion dll templon, XV e Congres Intern. d'Etudes Byzantines, Athenes Echos d'Orient, 36 (1937), 302-04. J
1976, Rapports et co-rapports, III, 159-191. I have not found anything of St. John the Baptist in Les eglises
useful in E. Tsapariis, To ~u~o(\ln\lo\l 't"€[-tl't"AOV: icr't"OPLX1) €1t"Lcrx6l't"1)O"L<;, stantinople, ibid., 37 (1938), 330 and
Ele:OAOY[o( 47 (1976), 908-23. It may be said in passing that the small ['Empire byzantin, 1/3, 2nd ed., Paris,
inlaid icons of the monastery of Lips (Fenari Isa Camii) of A. D. 907, entirely satisfactory.
which have been attributed to a templon by A. Grabar, Sculptures 9 Ammianus, XXII. 11. 2. Cf. A.
byzantines de Constantinople, Paris, 1963, Ill, and described by him and J. Morris, Prosopography of the Later
as the earliest examples of the kind, do not appear to have been used 1971, S.V. Artemius 2.
in this capacity. Cf. the comments of C. Mango and E. J. W. Hawkins
10 The details of Artemios's
in DOP, 18 (1964), 305-06.
were known to the author of the
2 Varia graeca sacra, Zapiski Istor.-Filol. Fak. Imper. St. Pet. invented before the 7th century. For
Univ., 95 (1909), 1-75. St. John Damascene see H.-G. Beck.
3 Review in AO(oypO(<p(O(, 3 (1911), 277-95. byz. Reich, Munich, 1959,482-83.
'T67t"cp) with the intention of building him a suitable shrine.!1 large for patients to lie down in it (17. 24-26; 18. 3) and
41 The Passio does not inform us whether she did so or not. was probably reached by two staircases, since the az~~cX
Nor does John the Monk appear to be aware of the Saint's x()('TIi~()(cr~e; is referred to (18. 8; cf. 24. 5). Next to this »right-
miraculous activities in the capital. It was left to Symeon hand descent« there was an arch ('Tpomx~) which will
Metaphrastes to explain that Ariste had not succeeded in concern us later.
building a shrine and that the holy relics had remained vi. To the right (south) of the main altar was a chapel
»until now in the church of the Prodromos, preserved like of St. Febronia (33. 28-29) who assisted St. Artemios
an inexhaustible treasure. 12 in treating female patients)7
Setting aside the Miracula, our information about this vii. There appears to have been a gallery, since a room
church is very sparse. The Patria of Constantinople (late (xzAAtOV) is described as being az~~cX 'TOU X()('T1JxoufLzvtou
10th century) has this to say: »St. Artemios at Oxeia: The (44.25). This room was once reserved for a person of quality,
church of the Baptist was built by Anastasios Dikoros, the a noblewoman of the palace whose young son had fallen
former silentiarios, the one from Dyrrhachium, for while ill and who evidently had to be segregated from the male
he was protoasekretis he used to live there. After the relic patients on the ground floor.
of St. Artemios had been brought, the church took his viii. There was an ambo in the nave (47. 30).
name.«13 We have no means of verifying the attribution ix. On the north side of church there was a skevo-
of the church to the emperor Anastasius I (491-518), phylakion and there was a door leading to it (48. 19; 69.
but it is certainly not true that it lost its original dedication 1; 70. 20-21). The reference at 48. 19 suggests that it
to St. John the Baptist since it is mentioned by his name was inside the church.
in the synaxaria for 21) October (feast of St. Artemios) x. There was a baptistery, a separate building, whose
and 25 June (feast of St. Febronia).14 If I am not mistaken, situation is not indicated (60.12; 61. 15).
the church is last attested towards the end of the II th cen- xi. Somewhere to the north of the church there was
tury, by which time the head of St. Artemios appears to a hospice (~zvJ>v): 7. 1-2. There were also latrines (xowli)
have been separated from the rest of his relics.1 5 It may described as dark (56. 13-14).
be worth pointing out that there is no mention of the mar- Two of the architectural features deserve a few words
tyrion of St. Artemios as a centre of healing after the period of discussion. The first concerns the crypt. Among the
of Iconoclasm and that in Byzantine iconography the Saint surviving early Byzantine churches of Istanbul four had
is normally portrayed as a warrior having, for some obscure crypts. St John of Studius and St. Mary Chalkoprateia
reason, the features of Christ, not as a physician. both had tiny cruciform crypts, placed more or less beneath
We may now return to the Miracula and begin by the main altar and accessible by a single staircase on the
noting the architectural information that may be gleaned east side.1 8 There was also a crypt of indeterminate size
concerning the church. in St. John of Hebdomon, said to have been accessible from
the outside,19 and a relatively small one, consisting of two
i. The church was a basilica. There are repeated men- chambers, in St. Polyeuktos which could be reached at
tions of its left, i.e. north aisle (~fL~OAOe;) in which the sick substructure level from the west end of the building: 2o
normally slept (7. 1-2; 15. 15; 62. 18). The fourth column we do not know whether it also communicated with the
of the same north colonnade appears at 47. 23. In the nave nave above. None of these (except possibly that of St.
,(fLEcroe; oIxoe;) there were stools for the congregation (42. Polyeuktos) offers an analogy to the crypt that concerns
3-4). us. As we have already noted, the latter must have been
ii. There was a narthex (15. 13; 63. 7) which probably fairly roomy: on one occasion a man of some social stan-
opened into the nave and aisles through three doors, since ding (he was related to a patrician) was allowed to sleep
the middle door is specifically mentioned (47. 28; 48. 10). there on a week night in spite of the rule that incubation
iii. The fLZcr[,,;UAOV at 51. 26 probably refers to the in the crypt was confined to Sunday mornings (17. 25; cf.
atrium. There was here a flight of steps (yp()(a[A~()() and an 69. 15). Another patient slipped down the staircase leading
arch ('Tpomx~),16 probably a porch leading from the atrium down to the crypt - the south staircase already mentioned
into the narthex. - and rolled to the very doors of the soros (24. 5 ff.).
iv. The apse of the main altar (lzp()('Tdov) appears to The doors in question, i.e. those of the screen surrounding
have had a synthronon, since on one occasion a priest the coffin, were normally closed in the evening, but at other
fell asleep there (68. 1-2). times one could enter the enclosed cubicle and lie down
on the coffin itself (27. 20) or under it, {moxli'Tw 'T'lie; fLO-
v. The soros of St. Artemios was situated under the
A~~a~V1JC; -&~x1JC; (52. 29). The closest analogy in the eastern
main altar (33. 27-28). The relics were contained in a lead
Mediterranean is offered by the much-discussed crypt of
coffin (50. 20; 52. 29), the same that is mentioned in the
St. Demetrios at Thessalonica which was originally ac-
Passio, and were protected by a wooden grille, the work
cessible by means of two staircases. The latter were situated
of a shipwright (39. 13-14). The crypt was sufficiently
within the choir enclosure,21 and must have been intended
early date for this object seeing that lead coffins were more wanted to urinate, but he could not get out of the
typical of antiquity than of the Byzantine period. which was locked as were also »the four kankella on
The second point of architectural interest concerns the side.« He therefore stood by the right-hand (south)
presence in our church of screens or grilles that appear of the church, »next to which is the well and the 1-""'11.'''5:
to have been placed between the columns of the two nave of the Samaritan woman« and urinated there.
colonnades. Permanent screens of this kind are, of course, he, who had been in perfect health, developed a
a feature of many Early Christian basilicas, especially in while his ailing master in the crypt was
Macedonia, but no instance of such an arrangement has healed (p. 17 ff.).
yet been found at Constantinople. The evidence to be We have referred to the fourth column of the
considered is not entirely explicit and has, therefore, to be aisle. Now we are told that there were four kankella
set out in detail. each side. This suggests that four intercolumniations
We have said that the patients used to sleep in the screened off. Since the kankella were locked at night
north aisle, probably because of its proximity to the xenon. also p. 36), they were not permanently fixed stone
One of them, Narses by name, while he was thus asleep, but grilles of wood or metal sufficiently high so that
saw in a dream a man dressed like a patrician (i.e. St. Alexandrian could not easily scale them. In other
Artemios) enter the church from the narthex; then, »turning the patients were locked up at night. Normally, they
back, he came to the left-hand portico [i.e. aisle] by way confined to the north aisle, but the Alexandrian, it
of the upper kankella as if he was going to the skevophyla- seem, was left in the south aisle, probably to be closer to
kion, and he stood in front of the patient« (15. 14 ff.). master.22 The passages we have quoted from the N
A similar itinerary occurs in the story concerning a certain and Menas stories confirm this unusual
Menas, an employee of a wine merchant. This man, too, for we have seen that in the first instance St.
had a vision while sleeping in the church. He saw the Saint after entering the nave from the narthex, did not
walk up from the crypt, go through »the kankella of the turn left into the north aisle, but had to go to the east
skevophylakion,« and then approach him where he lay, by of the church, pass through the kankella that faced
the fourth column of the north aisle. Having done so, skevophylakion and only then entered the north aisle.
the Saint went out of the same aisle into the narthex, re- wise in the Means incident Artemios comes up from
entered the nave by the middle door and prostrated himself crypt and has, once again, to go through the kankella
in prayer behind the ambo. How was it, wondered Menas, the skevophylakion in order to enter the north aisle.
that the kankellon and the middle door, which had been
Fig. I. locked, opened forhi~ 'automatically? After the prostration, The above details, on the basis of which I have
Constantinople, tempted a reconstruction (fig. 1), bring out some of
The Martirion Artemios entered the altar space (thysiasterion), kissed the
of St. Artemios, Plan altar table, came out once again through the kankella and unusual arrangements of the church of S1. John the
and serve to warn us that we should not define the
tecture of the capital solely on the basis of existing
, ments. We may now come to the decroation of the
The Miracula mentions several paintings and
icons. They are:
i. A figure of St. John the Baptist in the tropike
bably the lunette of the porch) leading from the
into the narthex. In front of this image hung a lamp
a woman called Anna used to light at her own
(51. 23). Here we have an early example of placing
pat ronal image above the main en~rance into a
a practice known from late~ Byza~tme mon':lme~ts.
ii. Next to this, hence, If our mterpretatlOn IS
on the exterior west wall of the church, there existed
those days« (in the reign of Heraclius), i.e. no longer
at the time of writing, the delineation ([cr't"opta) of the
tyrdom of St. Artemios, i.e. probably a martyrdom
(ibid.). We may recall that a similar. hagiographic
was to be seen in the mid 7th century In the church