Dedication of the Church of the Theotokos at the Pege
The Commemoration of the Dedication of the Church of our Most Holy Lady the Theotokos at the Life-Giving Spring
A fixed commemoration of the Church of Constantinople, kept on July 9: the anniversary of the consecration of the great church of the Mother of God at the Pege — "the Spring" — which stood outside the land walls of the city, near the Golden Gate, over a spring of water long held to be miraculous. The church was the work of the emperor Justinian, and Procopius, who saw it, called it a building remarkable "in beauty and in size." It was thrown down and rebuilt again and again — by the empress Irene the Athenian, by Basil I the Macedonian, by Romanos I Lekapenos — and was destroyed for the last time at the beginning of the fifteenth century. The shrine survives at Balıklı outside the walls of Istanbul, and its spring is the Zōodochos Pēgē, the Life-Giving Font. This July 9 commemoration is the fixed anniversary of the building's dedication, and is not the movable feast of the Life-Giving Font kept on Bright Friday.
The spring outside the Golden Gate
Outside the land walls of Constantinople, in the district beyond the Golden Gate, there rose a spring in a wooded place, and about it, from an early date, a tradition of healing. The tradition of its finding attaches to the soldier Leo the Great (emperor 457–474), who is said to have been directed to the water by the voice of the Mother of God when he came upon a blind man there and could find him nothing to drink; the water restored the man's sight, and Leo, when he came to the throne, built a church over the spring. That account, and the wonders of the shrine gathered after it, belong to the feast of the Life-Giving Font.
Justinian's church, and the dedication kept on July 9
The building whose consecration this day commemorates is the church raised on the site by the emperor Justinian, which the Greek notice dates to the year 559. It was a famous structure: Procopius, the historian of Justinian's buildings, describes it as outstanding "in beauty and in size" (κάλλει τε καὶ μεγέθει), and it stood among the great suburban shrines of the capital, with an imperial ceremonial attached to it — the sovereigns came out to the Pege in procession on the feasts of the Mother of God, and the site is repeatedly named in the Book of Ceremonies.
The encaenia — the dedication or consecration — of a great church was itself entered in the calendar of Constantinople and kept annually, as the dedications of the Anastasis at Jerusalem and of the church of Saint George at Lydda are kept. It is in that class that the Synaxarion of Constantinople enters, under July 9, the memory of the dedication of the church of the Most Holy Theotokos at the Pege, and it is in that character that the Greek day-calendars still print it.
Destructions and rebuildings
The church stood outside the walls, which is to say in the path of every army that came against the city, and its history is a chain of ruin and restoration. It was thrown down more than once and rebuilt each time: by the empress Irene the Athenian (regent and empress, 780–802), by Basil I the Macedonian (867–886), and by Romanos I Lekapenos (920–944) — the three restorations the Greek notice names. It suffered in the earthquakes that repeatedly damaged the suburbs and in the Latin occupation, and it was destroyed finally at the beginning of the fifteenth century, before the fall of the city.
The site was not abandoned. The spring continued to be visited through the Ottoman centuries; the present shrine of the Zōodochos Pēgē at Balıklı — the Turkish name means "the place with fish," from the fish that live in the sacred pool and around which a tale of the fall of the city grew up — was rebuilt in the nineteenth century and remains a place of pilgrimage of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, with the graves of the patriarchs beside it.
Feast and commemoration
July 9 (church date; New Calendar civil July 9, Old Calendar civil July 22), a Constantinopolitan commemoration carried in the Greek day-lists among the fixed observances of the day, with Pancratius of Taormina and the other saints of July 9. It has no proper office; where it is kept it is kept with the common of the dedication of a church of the Mother of God. The Slavonic and American calendars do not enter it.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of the dedication of a church of the Theotokos)
As the heaven of many lights is this house of thy glory shown to be, O Theotokos, enlightening all the faithful; and standing within it we cry to thee: establish this house, O Lady, and preserve it unshaken unto the end, and grant peace to thy people, for thou art the salvation of our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Appointed readings
Epistle — Hebrews 3:1–4
1Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus; 2Who was faithful to him that appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house. 3For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who hath builded the house hath more honour than the house. 4For every house is builded by some man; but he that built all things is God.
Gospel — Matthew 16:13–18
13When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? 14And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. 15He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? 16And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. 17And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. 18And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Iconography
Dedication commemorations are painted as architecture: the church itself, shown in elevation with its domes, held out on the hands of its imperial founder or standing behind him, and above it the Mother of God in the orant posture or enthroned, blessing the building. For the Pege the painters have a further and better-known image to draw on — the Zōodochos Pēgē composition, in which the Theotokos with the Child rises from a great stone or marble font or basin, water pouring from it into a pool below, with the sick and the lame gathered at the rim and the emperors and patriarchs standing by. That image belongs properly to the Bright Friday feast, but it is what fixes the site in the mind of the Orthodox world, and it commonly serves for both.
No storable image has been located for the dedication as such. Nothing pre-1900 depicts this specific commemoration, and the entry is listed under wanted icons.
Disputed questions
- This is not the Bright Friday feast. The great and widely kept commemoration of the Pege is the feast of the Life-Giving Font, which falls on the Friday of Bright Week and is therefore movable: its date depends on Pascha and it belongs to the paschal cycle, not to the fixed year. The commemoration entered here is the separate, fixed anniversary of the dedication of the building, kept on July 9 in the synaxarion of the Great Church. The two share a place and a spring and nothing else, and conflating them is the standing error in calendars of this day.
- Which emperor built which church. The tradition assigns the first church to Leo I and the great church to Justinian; some notices credit Justinian with the original foundation and others make him the rebuilder of Leo's. The Greek notice followed here gives Justinian the building of 559 and names Irene, Basil I and Romanos I as its restorers. The earlier stratum is not certain and is not asserted.
- The date 559. The year comes with the Greek synaxaristic notice; Procopius's description is independent of it and only fixes the church as Justinianic.