Panagia Blachernitissa

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Name ambiguity

It is possible that the Blachernitissa and the Blachernae might not be one and the same icon. There are two places with the name "Blachernae." The first location is in Constantinople, and the second is a village in Greece.


  • The Church of Panagia of Blachernae, Constantinople
The best known and most celebrated shrine of the Holy Virgin in Constantinople is the church of Panagia of Blachernae.
  • The Shrine of Blachernai
Blachernai, near the northern tip of the walls of Theodosios, was the site of major shrine of the Virgin Mary in Constantinople built by the Empress Pulcheria (ca. 450). A circular chapel (the Soros), was built by Emperor Leo I (457-474) next to the church to hold the robe of the Virgin Mary, brought from Palestine in 473. The church was burnt down in 1070. It was rebuilt by 1077 by either Romanos IV Diogenes (1067-71) or Michael VII (1071-87) and then destroyed again in 1434. Next to it was a bathhouse where a spring flowed, and which still flows in the modern church on the site.[2]
From the time of the Patriarch Timotheos [511-18] there was a procession—the "panhgur j"—which took place each Friday from Blachernai to the Church of the Chalkoprateia, near Hagia Sophia, at the other end of the city.[3]
  • The Circular Chapel ("Soros")
The chapel of the Virgin's robe was covered in silver and considered a "reliquary of architectural dimensions." Lay people were not allowed inside but could pray in the main church.[4] There was a specific icon, the Panagia Hagiosoritissa, associated with this shrine.[5]
  • Pontikonisi (Corfu, Greece)



  1. Blachernitissa at Wikipedia
  3. Janin, Eglises CP, 177.
  4. ODB 3:1929.
  5. ODB 3:2171.


External links