Posts in category: Η ανάγνωση ως προσευχή 2 – Παντοκράτορος

Since its establishment the monastery has preserved a copy of the canon of St. Savvas Monastery. It is clear that this text served as a model for the practical organization of the monastery of Pantokrator, as it is known for many other monasteries. It refers in every detail to the order of the every day ceremonies around the year and in various special events. Its good condition testifies to its regular use, in the course of the centuries.

This codex of 1084 is a precious illustrated manuscript containing the Psalter and the New Testament. It belongs to the collection of the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Center in Washington, with the number 3, along with two other Pantocrator codexes.

The most important manuscript in the Pantokratoros Monastery is the 9th century parchment psalter with the number 61. It is one of the three surviving psalters which was made immediately after the end of the iconoclastic period and had the unique characteristic of being decorated in the margins of the text with small images. The subjects of these miniature images, which are painted in a relatively free style, are drawn from the psalms as an expression of active defiance to the constraints of the iconoclasts. The parchment sheet of codice 61 had been previously used in another book with capital letters, which was subsequently erased in order to write the psalter; parchment is an expensive material. This palimpsest manuscript, with its long history, is a priceless, living witness to the iconoclastic conflict.

Since the founding of the Pantokratoros Monastery, a bibliographic workshop has operated in the tower, in close collaboration with the library. The niches in the walls where the copiers worked still survive. From the end of the 14th century, we know the names of the monk-scribes Ignatios, Dionysios, Gerasimos and Theoliptos, while David Raidestinos, an important interpreter of music manuscripts, and Kallistos are known from the first decades of the 15th century. A second period of the systematic operation of the bibliographic workshop began in the 16th century, when the coders Neilos, Sabbas, Pafnoutios and Michael worked there, while during the same time in the Pantocratorian kalyvi of St Basileios in Kapsala, the heiromonk Theofilos the Myrovlytis continued his bibliographic work. Despite the invention and dissemination of typography, the bibliographic workshop continued to work into the 19th century.

In the beginning of the 9th century, when Theodoros the Stoudite reorganized the abandoned 4th century monastery in Konstantinople which would come to acquire the greatest reputation and influence not only in that city but also in the entire Christian world, he set the production of books at the centre of the monks’ activities. The τυπικό (book of rules) – which specifies the way the Monastery functions and organizes the daily life of the monks – created for the Stoudios Monastery at the time of its 9th century reorganization was later used as a prototype for the monasteries which were founded in Byzantium and elsewhere. In short, the operation of book production workshops and the books produced by the Stoudios and Pantokratoros monasteries has earned them a place in the international history of knowledge.