mperial typicon or charter of the monastery,[367] granted in 1136,
made the monastery an autonomous institution, independent of the
patriarch or the prefect of the city, and exempt from taxes of every
description. At the same time it was provided with vineyards and richly
endowed.

According to Scarlatus Byzantius[368] and the Patriarch
Constantius,[369] a mosaic in the building portrayed the Emperor
Manuel Comnenus (1141-1180) in the act of presenting the model of the
church to Christ. If that was the case the church was completed by that
emperor. As will immediately appear, Manuel certainly enriched the
church with relics.

[Illustration: PLATE LIX.
S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR, FROM THE WEST.
_To face page 220._]

The history of the Pantokrator may be conveniently divided into three
periods: the period of the Comneni; the period of the Latin Empire; and
the period of the Palaeologi.

During the first the following incidents occurred: Here, as was most
fitting, the founders of the church and monastery were laid to rest, the
Empress Irene in 1126,[370] the Emperor John Comnenus[371] seventeen
years later. Here their elder son Isaac was confined, until the
succession to the throne had been settled in favour of his younger
brother Manuel. That change in the natural order of things had been
decided upon by John Comnenus while he lay dying in Cilicia from the
effects of a wound inflicted by the fall of a poisoned arrow out of his
own quiver, when boar-hunting in the forests of the Taurus Mountains,
and was explained as due to Manuel's special fitness to assume the care
of the Empire, and not merely to the fact that he was a father's
favourite son. But when the appointment was made Manuel was with his
father in Cilicia, while Isaac was in Constantinople, in a position to
mount the throne as soon as the tidings of John's death reached the
capital.

The prospect that Manuel would wear the crown seemed therefore very
remote. But Axuch, an intimate friend and counsellor of the dying
emperor, started for Constantinople the moment Manuel was nominated, and
travelled so fast, that he reached the city before the news of the
emperor's death and of Manuel's nomination was known there. Then,
wasting no time, Axuch made sure of the person of Isaac, removed him
from the palace, and put him in charge of the monks of the Pantokrator,
who had every reason to be loyal to the wishes of the deceased
sovereign. The wily courtier then s