The Church of Theotokes Pammakaristos, the Joyous Mother of God.
CHURCH OF THE THEOTOKOS PAMMAKARİSTOS
We now return to the main avenue, which here changes its name to Fethiye Caddesi, and continue on in the same direction for about 200 metres. Then, just before the road bends sharply right, we turn left and almost immediately come to a Byzantine church standing on a terrace overlooking the Golden Horn. This is the church of the Theotokos Pammakaristos, the Joyous Mother of God. Since the church sits inthe middle of a large open area you can view it from all sides, unlike most of the other Byzantine churches in the city. The south and east façades are especially charming with their characteristic ornamental brickwork, the marble cornices beautifully and curiously inscribed, the three little apses of the side chapel, and the multiplicity of domes on high and undulating drums.
The building consists of a central church with a narthex; a small chapel on the south; and a curious “perambulatory” forming a side aisle on the north, an outer narthex on the west, and two bays of an aisle on the south in front of the side chapel. Each of these three sections was radically altered when it was converted into a mosque in 1591. The work of the Byzantine Institute has at last cleared up many of the puzzles arising from the various periods of construction and transformation. It now appears that the main church was built in the twelfth century by an otherwise unknown John Comnenus and his wife Anna Doukaina.
In form, the church was on the ambulatory type, a triple arcade on the north, west and south dividing the central domed area from the ambulatory; at the east end were the usual three apses, at the west a single narthex. At the beginning of the fourteenth century a side chapel was added at the south-east as a mortuary for Michael Glabas and his family; this was a tiny example of the four-column type. In the second half of the fourteenth century, the north, west and part of the south sides were surrounded by the “perambulatory”, which ran into and partly obliterated the west façade of the side chapel.
When the building was converted into a mosque, the chief concern seems to have been to increase the available interior space. Most of the interior walls were demolished, including the arches of the ambulatory; the three apses were replaced by the present domed triangular projection; and the side chapel was thrown into the mosque by removing the wall and suppressing the two northern columns. All this can scarcely be regarded as an improvement. Indeed, the main area of the church has become a dark, planless cavern of shapeless hulks of masonry joined by low crooked arches. This section has now been divided of from the side chapel and is again being used as a mosque.
The side chapel has been most beautifully restored, its missing columns replaced, and its mosaics uncovered and cleaned. The mosaics of the dome have always been known, for they were never concealed, but they now gleam with their former brilliance: the Pantocrator
surrounded by 12 Prophets; in the apse Christ “Hyperagathos” with the Virgin and St. John the Baptist; other surfaces contain angels and full-length figures of saints. Only one scene mosaic survives: the Baptism of Christ.though much less in extent and variety than the
mosaics of Kariye Camii, these are nevertheless an enormously precious addition to our knowledge of the art of the last renaissance of Byzantine culture in the early fourteenth century.
The Church of the Pammakaristos remained in the hands of the Greeks for some time after the Conquest; in fact, in 1456 it was made the seat of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate after the Patriarch Gennadius abandoned the Church of the Holy Apostles. It was in the side-chapel of the Pammakaristos that Mehmet the Conqueror came to discuss questions in religion and politics with Gennadius.
The Pammakaristos continued as the site of the Patriarchate until 1568; five years later Murat III converted it into a mosque. He then called it Fethiye Camii, the Mosque of Victory, to commemorate his conquest of Georgia and Azerbaijan.