International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Anastasios Tantsis
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki,
School of History and Archaeology, Thessaloniki, Greece; 
[e-mail]
Sponsorship of Religious Institutions in Mistras: A Re-Evaluation
Mistras’ history has been studied intensively. Yet there are many persisting questions regarding 
its fate and changing status. It has been called “a new capital” for the province of Morea, a notion 
that equates Mistras to the other late Byzantine cities which acquired the status of peripheral 
administrative centre (i.e. Trebizond, Arta or even Thessaloniki). But when examining its particular 
historical circumstances, Mistras is a different case altogether. To a great extent this observation 
offers a starting point for exploring the history of its religious foundations again. 
The paper aims at exploring the historical context of the major churches in Mistras in 
connection to the city’s history and the way it developed from the 13
th
to the 15
th
c. The goal is to 
investigate the particular circumstances that led individual sponsors into making specific choices 
regarding the form and function of the institutions they financed as an expression of their desire for 
their work to be visible and part of the city’s image. 
Re-examination of the city, its monuments and the sponsors responsible for them, leads into 
challenging certain notions regarding art and architectural production in the area. More specifically 
there have been certain characteristics of the monuments that are classified either as part of the 
‘Greek School’, the ‘School of Constantinople’ or they are seen as foreign and therefore imported. 
Their application is usually explained through linking them to specific patrons that are locals, 
Constantinopolitans or foreigners. As there is no clear barrier in the classification of these features, 
the explanation offered for their introduction is usually too simplistic and fails to account for a 
process that is far more complex. We are in need of a re-evaluation of the forces and sources that 
shape artistic production in Mistras. 
A re-examination of the data available in the study of the Hodegetria and the Pantanassa 
katholika offers interesting results. By revisiting their art, architecture, funerary monuments and 
inscriptions we propose a new revised chronology for both of them. In both cases all evidence 
points to the sponsorship of the Palaiologan family whose prominent members resided in Mistras 
in the last decades of the 14
th
c. 
Therefore, it is indicated that we are in need of a comprehensive study of the history of Mistras’ 
religious foundations focusing on sponsors and their motives in order to better understand the way 
patronage shaped architectural production in the city.

---