floor level is a triple arcade; higher up are three
windows resting on the string-course; and still higher a window divided
into three lights. The arches in the church are enormously stilted, a
feature due to the fact that the only string-course in the building,
though structurally corresponding to the vaulting spring, has been
placed at the height of what would properly be the column string-course.
The three apses, much altered by repairs, project boldly, all of them
showing three sides on the exterior. The roof and the cornice are
Turkish, and the modern wooden narthex has probably replaced a Byzantine
narthex. On the opposite side of the street lies a cruciform font that
belonged to the baptistery of the church.

[Illustration: FIG. 63.]

From a church of this type to the later four-columned plan is but a
step. The dome piers of SS. Peter and Mark are still [Symbol: L]-shaped,
and form the internal angles of the cross. As the arches between such
piers and the external walls increased in size, the piers became
smaller, until eventually they were reduced to the typical four columns
of the late churches.

[Illustration: PLATE LII.
(1) SS. PETER AND MARK. INTERIOR OF THE DOME, LOOKING NORTH.
(2) SS. PETER AND MARK. LOOKING ACROSS THE DOME FROM THE SOUTH-WEST.
_To face page 194._]

[Illustration: FIGS. 64 AND 65.]

[305] Synax., July 2.

[306] _Ancient and Modern Constantinople_, p. 83.

[307] [Greek: Neologou hebdomadiaia epitheoresis], January 3, 1893, p.
205; _Itin. russes_, p. 233.

CHAPTER XI

THE CHURCH OF THE MYRELAION,
BODROUM JAMISSI

The identification of Bodroum Jamissi as the church attached to the
monastery styled the Myrelaion rests upon the tradition current in the
Greek community when Gyllius visited the city. According to that
traveller, the church on the hill rising to the north of the eastern end
of the gardens of Vlanga, the site of the ancient harbour of Theodosius,
was known as the Myrelaion--'Supra locum hortorum Blanchae nuncupatorum,
olim Portum Theodosianum continentium, extremam partem ad ortum solis
pertinentem, clivus a Septentrione eminet, in quo est templum vulgo
nominatum Myreleos.'[308] This agrees, so far, with the statement of the
Anonymus[309] of the eleventh century, that the Myrelaion stood on the
side of the city looking towards the Sea of Marmora. There is no record
of the date when the monastery was founded. But the House must have been
in exis