The article examines the history of the Stoudios monastery during the Late Palaiologan period and traces its impact on Constantinopolitan public life during the last decades of Byzantium. Although Stoudios was already restored in the early Palaiologan period, it was only during the reign of emperor John V Palaiologos (1341-1391) that it began once more to emerge as a leading monastery in a way reminiscent of its Middle Byzantine heyday. In the late 14 th and early 15 th centuries the monks of Stoudios, led by figures such as Patriarch Euthymios II and Joseph Bryennios, often challenged official imperial policies. Later, during the reign of John VIII the monastery was intimately connected with the imperial administration. Throughout this period, Stoudios played an active role in the discussions about the Union of the Churches. The textual evidence also provides information on the appearance and status of the monastery's building complex and reveals its importance within the urban landscape of Late Palaiologan Constantinople.
This article examines textual and material evidence regarding the burials of emperors during the Palaiologan period. It is argued that the Palaiologos dynasty did not initially have a plan to establish an imperial mausoleum: the monastery of Lips, re-founded by Theodora Palaiologina and often regarded by modern scholars as an imperial mausoleum, was instead conceived as a family shrine. Small-scale attempts to establish imperial mausolea are discernible only from the middle of the fourteenth century onwards, with the burials of Andronikos III and John V in the monastery of ton Hodegon and of the last Palaiologoi in the Pantokrator.
The article tests the established view that Gennadios Scholarios, the first
patriarch of Constantinople after the 1453 Conquest, used the church of the
Holy Apostles in Constantinople as the seat of the Patriarchate for a few
months in 1454 before moving to the building complex of the Pammakaristos
monastery. After pointing out that all the sources that narrate the story of
the installation of the Patriarchate in the famous Byzantine church date
from the 16th century or later, the author examines sources contemporary
with the events, including texts written by Scholarios himself. The aim of
the article is to show that Scholarios officiated occasionally in the Holy
Apostles and managed to salvage some of the relics it once held, but this
does not mean that the church functioned as the official seat of the
Patriarchate of Constantinople.
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