[Illustration: PLATE LXXX. BOGDAN SERAI. APSE OF THE UPPER CHAPEL.]
[Illustration: BOGDAN SERAI. A PENDENTIVE OF THE DOME.]
[Illustration: BOGDAN SERAI. THE CHAPEL FROM THE NORTH-WEST. _To face page 280._]
Opinions differ in regard to the dedication of the chapel. Paspates,[491] following the view current among the gardeners who cultivated the market-gardens in the neighbourhood, maintained that the chapel was dedicated to S. Nicholas. Hence the late Canon Curtis, of the Crimean Memorial Church in Constantinople, believed that this was the church of SS. Nicholas and Augustine of Canterbury, founded by a Saxon noble who fled to Constantinople after the Norman conquest of England. What is certain is that in the seventeenth century the chapel was dedicated to the Theotokos. Du Cange mentions it under the name, Ecclesia Deiparae Serai Bogdaniae.[492]
Mordtmann has proved[493] that Bogdan Serai marks the site of the celebrated monastery and church of S. John the Baptist in Petra,--the title 'in Petra' being derived from the neighbouring mass of rock, which the Byzantines knew as [Greek: Palaia Petra], and which the Turks style Kesmé Kaya, the Chopped Rock.
According to a member of the monastery, who flourished in the eleventh century, the House was founded by a monk named Bara in the reign of Anastasius I. (491-518) near an old half-ruined chapel dedicated to S. John the Baptist, in what was then a lonely quarter of the city, between the Gate of S. Romanus (Top Kapoussi) and Blachernae. The monastery becomes conspicuous in the narratives of the Russian pilgrims to the shrines of the city, under the designation, the monastery of S. John, Rich-in-God, because the institution was unendowed and dependent upon the freewill offerings of the faithful, which 'by the grace of God and the care and prayers of John' were generous. Thrice a year, on the festivals of the Baptist and at Easter, the public was admitted to the monastery and hospitably entertained. It seems to have suffered during the Latin occupation, for it is described in the reign of Andronicus II. as standing abandoned in a vineyard. But it was restored, and attracted visitors by the beauty of its mosaics and the sanctity of its relics.[494]