International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Petros M. Koufopoulos
, 
The Byzantine Library Buildings of the Sinai Monastery
Anastasios Tantsis
, 
Sponsorship of Religious Institutions in Mistras: A Re-Evaluation

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Robert Ousterhout
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA, United States; 
[e-mail]
Three Cappadocian Hermitages Reconsidered
Buildings are forever in the process of becoming, their meanings often manifest in their 
temporal dimensions. In this short communication I reconsider the development of three rock-cut 
complexes in Byzantine Cappadocia, all of which are known to scholarship, however incompletely 
examined. As I argue, a clue to understanding the complicated design at each site comes by 
unraveling its relative chronology. Critical to all three is the respect paid to the presence of an 
isolated hermitage. This is reflected in the architectural design of the later phases and accounts for 
numerous irregularities in planning.
At the well-known Tokalı Kilise in Göreme, the Old Church is dated ca. 913-20 and the New 
Church before ca. 963/4 (both on the basis of painting). A hermit’s cell, usually dismissed as a 
storeroom, must have existed before the carving of the Old Church and accounts for its irregular 
trapezoidal plan. The entrance to the hermitage was aligned with the entrance to the Lower Church 
and its burials. More importantly, a small window in the northwest corner of the Old Church allowed 
the hermit to see directly into the sanctuary. When the large, transverse barrel-vaulted New Church 
was added, it was set at an odd angle to the Old Church, but this maintained the sightline from the 
hermit’s window into the central sanctuary of the New Church. At the same time, the axis of the Old 
Church was aligned with a niche in the New Church containing a venerated image of the Theotokos. 
Church 2 in the Kepez Valley, near Ürgüp, has a similarly complex design that may be divided 
into two distinct phases, perhaps late tenth and early eleventh centuries. The first included two tiny 
cruciform chapels – one easily accessible at the lower level, the other much higher in the rocky 
outcropping, part of a small, isolated hermitage. In a second phase, the two chapels were connected by 
the carving of a transverse barrel-vaulted church with three sanctuaries. The apse of the lower chapel 
was removed, so that it became the narthex of the new church. Two of the three sanctuaries of the new 
church are set below the upper chambers, with the south sanctuary below the chapel, and the central 
chapel below a burial chamber – presumably to align the altar with venerated tombs above.
The same separation of spaces must have characterized the first phase of the Karabaş Church 
in the Soğanlı Valley, now an odd complex with four interconnecting spaces on different levels. The 
first phase – perhaps late ninth century – consisted of the accessible north chapel on the lowest level 
and the isolated southern two spaces on the upper level. The southern space was the hermitage, 
accessed from the adjacent chapel by means of a low tunnel and a small window. A narthex 
originally opened to the exterior, probably with steps cut into the rock face. In the second phase, 
another chapel was added at mid-level, connecting to the flanking naves through an open arcade 
and a narrow staircase. The openings strategically align the window into the hermit’s cell above with 
the entrance to the sanctuary in the north chapel below.

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