From the Galata Bridge to Sehzadebasi - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 217

decoration, including the marble pavement, the handsome door-
frames of the narthex, and the almost complete marble revetment
of the apse. Work by the Byzantine Institute has brought to light
again the magnificent opus sectile floor of the church itself, arranged
in great squares and circles of coloured marbles with figures in the
borders. One of these, which the imam of the mosque will uncover, is
a panel tentatively identified as one of the labours of Samson. Notice
also the curious Turkish mimber made from fragments of Byzantine
sculpture, including the canopy of a ciborium. One of these spolia
has been identified as a sculptural fragment from the church of
St. Polyeuktos, whose ruins we will see later on this itinerary. The
investigations of the Byzantine Institute discovered also fragments of
stained glass from the east window, which seem to show that the art
of stained glass was a Byzantine rather than a western discovery.
After Eirene's death her husband John decided to erect another
church a few metres to the north of hers, dedicated to the Virgin Eleousa,
the Merciful or Charitable. It is somewhat smaller but of essentially the
same type and plan as Eirene's church, and here again the columns have
been replaced by piers. When this church was finished, the idea seems
to have struck the Emperor of joining the two churches by a chapel,
dedicated to the Archangel Michael. This is a structure without aisles
and with but one apse, covered by two domes; it is highly irregular in
form to make it it between the two churches. Parts of the walls of the
churches were demolished so that all three sections opened widely into
one another. John also added an outer narthex, which must once have
extended in front of all three structures, but which now ends awkwardly
in front of the mortuary chapel. The middle church was designed to
serve as a mortuary chapel for the Comneni dynasty, beginning with
the Empress Eirene, who was reburied there after its completion. Her
verd antique sarcophagus was opened up and robbed by the knights of
the Fourth Crusade when they sacked Constantinople in 1204. Her
looted sarcophagus stood outside the Pantocrator up until the middle
of the last century, when it was removed to the exonarthex of Haghia
Sophia, where it is preserved today.
A programme of restoration and study of the Pantocrator has
been undertaken by Professor Robert Osterhaut of the University of