thana
(Fig. 97).

[Illustration: FIG. 96.]

[Illustration: FIG. 97. S. NICHOLAS METHANA (Lampakes).]

[473] Pachym. i. pp. 174-75.

[474] _Ibid._ ii. pp. 620-37.

[475] _Ibid._ i. p. 231

[476] Pachym. ii. pp. 174-75.

[477] Muralt, _Essai de chronographie byzantine_, vol. ii. ad annum.

[478] Pachym. ii. pp. 620-21.

[479] _Ibid._ pp. 637-38.

[480] Miklosich et Mueller, i. pp. 312, 317.

[481] Patr. Constantius, pp. 84-86. The Greek community retains also
other churches founded before the Turkish conquest, but they are
wholly modern buildings.

[482] _Ibid._ pp. 85-86.

[483] N. Barbaro, p. 818.

CHAPTER XXII

BOGDAN SERAI

In a vacant lot of ground on the eastern declivity of the hill above the
quarter of Balat, and at a short distance to the east of a mass of rock
known as Kesme Kaya, stands a Byzantine chapel to which the name Bogdan
Serai clings. Although now degraded to the uses of a cow-house it
retains considerable interest. Its name recalls the fact that the
building once formed the private chapel attached to the residence of the
envoys of the hospodars of Moldavia (in Turkish Bogdan) at the Sublime
Porte; just as the style Vlach Serai given to the church of the Virgin,
lower down the hill and nearer the Golden Horn, is derived from the
residence of the envoys of the Wallachian hospodars with which that
church was connected. According to Hypselantes,[484] the Moldavian
residence was erected early in the sixteenth century by Teutal
Longophetes, the envoy who presented the submission of his country to
Suleiman the Magnificent at Buda in 1516, when the Sultan was on his way
to the siege of Vienna. Upon the return of Suleiman to Constantinople
the hospodar of the principality came in person to the capital to pay
tribute, and to be invested in his office with the insignia of two
horse-tails, a fur coat, and the head-dress of a commander in the corps
of janissaries. Gerlach[485] gives another account of the matter.
According to his informants, the mansion belonged originally to a
certain Raoul, who had emigrated to Russia in 1518, and after his death
was purchased by Michael Cantacuzene as a home for the Moldavian
envoys. It must have been an attractive house, surrounded by large
grounds, and enjoying a superb view of the city and the Golden Horn. It
was burnt[486] in the fire which devastated the district on the 25th
June 1784, and since that catastrophe its grounds have been co