l the recovery of
the Empire from the Latins in 1261. In the efforts then made to restore
all things, it underwent repairs at the instance of the Empress
Theodora,[207] the consort of Michael Palaeologus, and from that time
acquired greater importance than it had previously enjoyed. Within its
precincts, on the 16th of February 1304, a cold winter day, Theodora
herself was laid to rest with great pomp, and amid the tears of the poor
to whom she had been a good friend.[208] There, two years later, a
splendid service was celebrated for the benefit of the soul of her son
Constantine Porphyrogenitus,[209] as some compensation for the cruel
treatment he had suffered at the hands of his jealous brother
Andronicus. There, that emperor himself became a monk two years before
his death,[210] and there he was buried on the 13th of February 1332.
The monastery contained also the tomb of the Empress Irene,[211] first
wife of Andronicus III., and the tomb of the Russian Princess Anna[212]
who married John VII. Palaeologus while crown prince, but died before
she could ascend the throne, a victim of the great plague which raged in
Constantinople in 1417. The monastery appears once more as the scene of
a great religious revival, when a certain nun Thomais, who enjoyed a
great reputation for sanctity, took up her residence in the
neighbourhood. So large were the crowds of women who flocked to place
themselves under her rule that 'the monastery of Lips and Martha' was
filled to overflowing.[213]

The church was converted into a mosque by Phenere Isa, who died in 1496,
and has undergone serious alterations since that time.[214]

[Illustration: PLATE XXXIII.
(1) S. MARY PANACHRANTOS. THE DIACONICON, LOOKING EAST.
(2) S. MARY PANACHRANTOS. THE ARCH UNDER WEST SIDE OF THE CENTRAL DOME
IN THE SOUTH CHURCH.
_To face page 128._]

_Architectural Features_

The building comprises two churches, which, while differing in date and
type, stand side by side, and communicate with each other through an
archway in their common wall, and through a passage in the common wall
of their narthexes. As if to keep the two churches more closely
together, they are bound by an exonarthex, which, after running along
their western front, returns eastwards along the southern wall of the
south church as a closed cloister or gallery.

_The North Church._--The north church is of the normal 'four column'
type. The four columns which originally supported