Church
Historians Procopius and Cedrenus state that Emperor Justinian erected a new church, larger than the first, in the last years of his reign (559-560), utilizing materials that had remained after the erection of the Hagia Sophia. After the erection of the sanctuary, the Byzantines named the Gate that was situated outside the walls of Theodosius II "Gate of the Spring" (Greek: Πύλη τῆς Πηγῆς).
After the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the church was torn down by the Turks, and the stones used to build a mosque of Sultan Bayezid. Only a small chapel remained at the site of the church. Twenty-five steps led down to the site of the spring, surrounded by a railing. In 1547 the French humanist Petrus Gyllius noted that the church no longer existed, but that ailing people continued to visit the spring of holy water.
As a result of the Greek War of Independence of 1821, even the little chapel was destroyed and the spring was left buried under the rubble.
In 1833 the reforming Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II gave permission for the Christians to rebuild the church. When the foundations of the original church were discovered during the course of construction, the Sultan issued a second firman permitting not only the reconstruction of the small chapel, but of a large church according to the original dimensions. Construction was completed on December 30, 1834, and the Ecumenical Patriarch, Constantius II consecrated the church on February 2, 1835, celebrating with 12 bishops and an enormous flood of the faithful.
On September 6, 1955, during the anti-Greek Istanbul Pogrom, the church was one of the targets of the fanatic mob. The building was burned to the ground while the abbot was lynched, and 90 year old Archimandrite Chrisanthos Mantas was assassinated by the mob.
Another small chapel has been rebuilt on the site, but the church has not yet been restored to its former size. The spring still flows to this day and is considered by the faithful to have wonderworking properties.
Read more about this topic: Life-giving Spring
Famous quotes containing the word church:
“If church prelates, past or present, had even an inkling of physiology they’d realise that what they term this inner ugliness creates and nourishes the hearing ear, the seeing eye, the active mind, and energetic body of man and woman, in the same way that dirt and dung at the roots give the plant its delicate leaves and the full-blown rose.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“It is manifest therefore that they who have sovereign power, are immediate rulers of the church under Christ, and all others but subordinate to them. If that were not, but kings should command one thing upon pain of death, and priests another upon pain of damnation, it would be impossible that peace and religion should stand together.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“There warn’t anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn’t any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summertime because it’s cool. If you notice, most folks don’t go to church only when they’ve got to; but a hog is different.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)