Despite theological differences, the Abrahamic religions possess many common elements, such as beliefs, rites, stories, and personages. Often people of different religions converge in the same sanctuary because they are animated by a common quest for supernatural help, and seek the protection of a particular saint with a reputation for efficacy. Yesterday as today, many believers – Jews, Christians or Muslims – do not hesitate to pray in the holy place of another religion. The maps of the Mediterranean and the Near East are strewn with examples of shared sacred sites. Chronicles of the three monotheistic faiths are full of examples of conflicts and antagonisms, but also of occurrences of cohabitation, hospitality, and tolerance. In a world torn apart by ethnic, political, and religious struggles, there could be no better illustration of coexistence than the extensive history of sacred sites shared by members of different beliefs and backgrounds. The spatial arrangement of relics in the Pharos Church entered as image-paradigm into the sacred space of many churches all over the Christian world and was represented in iconography. One of the special services held in this church was the service ‘of the Holy City’ which resembled the services at the Resurrection church in Jerusalem. The space of the church, so richly saturated with the relics of the Holy Land, was seen as another Jerusalem, the symbolic image of the Holy Land. The two miraculous images ‘not made with hands’ (Mandilion and Keramion) were also kept in this church as well as the head and hand of John the Baptist and a large piece of the Holy Cross. This ‘Byzantine Holy Sepulchre’ enshrined the collection of 10 most important relics pertaining to the Passions and the Crucifixion and was termed by contemporaries as ‘the Decalogue’. In this study we examine the sacred space of the greatest importance in Byzantium, the church of the Virgin of the Pharos, which served from 864 to 1204 as an imperial repository of the main relics of Christendom. Constantinople was perceived as a Holy City, the Second Jerusalem, an expected place of the Second Coming.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |