Zur „Reliquientopographie“ von Konstantinopel in mittelbyzantinischer Zeit

In this paper I focus on two Problems: One of them concerns the division of relics and their multiple translations within Constantinople. The second is given by the Kniga palomnik” (Book of Pilgrimage) of Anthony of Novgorod. Anthony visited Constantinople in 1200 as a layman, where he inspected a number of churches and recorded their relics and icons. But his text of the Kniga palomnik” poses also two problems: 1.) A considerable part of the lemmata not follows a clear topographical route. 2.) Churches, which are dedicated to same saint, but in different localities were often considered as single one and mistakenly placed. Thereby also the separate routes were conflated in an incorrect manner. In my paper I try to disentangle these contaminations. The main part of the study presents the problem of the Kniga palomnik” under the light of three exemplary cases. Firstly it will be explained how Antonij has used the toponyme Pjaterica both for the quarter ta Petrou and for the Petrion. The churches of this region can be classified in a topographically correct order with the help of a synoptic comparison of the paragraphs in the Latin itinerary (so-called Anonymus Mercati or English pilgrim). The localization of an alleged church of the “Prophet” Elias in the Forum of Constantine rises as one of the important examples to show the mistakes of Antonijs text. In another case Anthony locates the Blachernae und the Chalkoprateia churches in the immediate neighborhood. Both of this sanctuaries preserved parts of the garments of the Virgin Mary. In terms of perception of these relics (maphorion, robe, belt) there are also considerable discrepancies between the Kniga palomnik”, the Latin itinerary and other written sources. Because of the long interval between his visit and his late script one can think that Anthony has difficulties to remember the exact localization of the garment relics. In this section of my study I try to correct such kind of errors of Antony′s text. Conflated churches will be consider separately and assign to two appropriate routes. The following exemplary case concerns the relics in the church of the Holy Apostles. Also here a comparison of the Kniga palomnik”, the Latin itinerary and other catalogues of relics shows considerable differences. This suggests that the bodies or body parts of the saints often moved from a church to another during the “city-internal translations”. The attention is directed  Dieser Beitrag versteht sich als weitere Vorarbeit zu meinem Buch „Untersuchungen zur sakralen Topographie von Konstantinopel anhand der Itinerare des Codex Digbeianus lat.  und des russischen Pilgers Antonij von Novgorod“. S. schon A. Effenberger, Antonij von Novgorod und die Kirche des Theodoros ἐν τοῖς Σφωρακίου – Ein Beitrag zur sakralen Topographie von Konstantinopel, in: Proceedings of the nd International Congress of Byzantine Studies, Sofia – August . Third Plenary Session: Cities and Public Spaces, Sofia , –. Für mancherlei Hilfe und freundliche Hinweise danke ich Wolfram Brandes, Holger A. Klein und dem anonymen peer-reviewer. here on the different parts of the head of St. John the Baptist. They were kept in three churches in Constantinople. Special attention is given to the head of the Lord’s brother St. James, preserved in the Cathedral of Halberstadt since 1206. Among the rest, the last part offers a confrontation of two text versions of the Kniga palomnik”. The correctness of the version Jacimirskij can be proved by a report of 1206. According to this version the face relic of John Baptist was in the church of St. George in the Manganes long before 1200. The secured and not secured examples of relic translations within Constantinople clearly demonstrate the characteristics of Byzantine procedure with relics and also help us for a correction of the topographical inconsistency of the Kniga palomnik”.