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l the recovery of the Empire from the Latins in 1261. In the efforts then made to restore all things, it underwent repairs at the instance of the Empress Theodora,[207] the consort of Michael Palaeologus, and from that time acquired greater importance than it had previously enjoyed. Within its precincts, on the 16th of February 1304, a cold winter day, Theodora herself was laid to rest with great pomp, and amid the tears of the poor to whom she had been a good friend.[208] There, two years later, a splendid service was celebrated for the benefit of the soul of her son Constantine Porphyrogenitus,[209] as some compensation for the cruel treatment he had suffered at the hands of his jealous brother Andronicus. There, that emperor himself became a monk two years before his death,[210] and there he was buried on the 13th of February 1332. The monastery contained also the tomb of the Empress Irene,[211] first wife of Andronicus III., and the tomb of the Russian Princess Anna[212] who married John VII. Palaeologus while crown prince, but died before she could ascend the throne, a victim of the great plague which raged in Constantinople in 1417. The monastery appears once more as the scene of a great religious revival, when a certain nun Thomais, who enjoyed a great reputation for sanctity, took up her residence in the neighbourhood. So large were the crowds of women who flocked to place themselves under her rule that 'the monastery of Lips and Martha' was filled to overflowing.[213] The church was converted into a mosque by Phenere Isa, who died in 1496, and has undergone serious alterations since that time.[214] [Illustration: PLATE XXXIII. (1) S. MARY PANACHRANTOS. THE DIACONICON, LOOKING EAST. (2) S. MARY PANACHRANTOS. THE ARCH UNDER WEST SIDE OF THE CENTRAL DOME IN THE SOUTH CHURCH. _To face page 128._] _Architectural Features_ The building comprises two churches, which, while differing in date and type, stand side by side, and communicate with each other through an archway in their common wall, and through a passage in the common wall of their narthexes. As if to keep the two churches more closely together, they are bound by an exonarthex, which, after running along their western front, returns eastwards along the southern wall of the south church as a closed cloister or gallery. _The North Church._--The north church is of the normal 'four column' type. The four columns which originally supported
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