ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the author shows that the Virgin's healing powers, combined with the promotion of her cult by Justinian with the sixth-century architectural trend of the loumata, created a model whereby a church of St Anna was placed in the proximity of a healing locus dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The author argues that the sixth century Justinian established a topographical model according to which churches were located next to constructions based around water, which he embellished by incorporating chapels dedicated to the Virgin and her mother. Except for the church in the Deuteron, Middle and Late Byzantine sources refer to three churches or chapels dedicated to St Anna in Constantinople that were integrated into churches dedicated to Mary: the Pege, the Hodegetria and the Chalkoprateia. In Jerusalem and in particular at the Probatic Pool, a church had been dedicated to the Virgin Mary at the spot where in 570 the pilgrim Antonios located the place of her birth.