ABSTRACT
The development of the public cult of the Theotokos, patron of Constantinople and protector of the Empire, has a long historiographic story, Byzantine as well as modern and contemporary. Many of its aspects have been thoroughly studied, but there is still much to be
1 Akathistos Hymn, strophe 23, verse 13, ed. C. A. Trypanis, Fourteen Early Byzantine Cantica (Vienna, 1968), 9. Romanos, On the Nativity, strophe 23, verse 6, ed. P. Maas and C. A. Trypanis, Sancti Romani Melodi Cantica (Oxford, 1963), 8.
