My first interest in Byzantine studies was the hospital. In hindsight, I was influenced by the contemporary politics during my undergraduate years. In the midst of American debates on healthcare, I became fascinated by the medieval concern for the sick that was manifest in the Byzantine hospital.
I wrote my undergraduate thesis and MA thesis on Byzantine hospitals.[1] My doctoral work moved away from this interest in hospitals and into questions of landscape. However, sometimes things you stop looking for can find you instead. Hospitals kept showing up in my research on Byzantine landscapes, often in the guise of the lands in the provinces whose exploitation supported the efforts of healing in the imperial capital.
In this blog post, I want to highlight three Constantinopolitan hospitals, whose estates I have encountered in my research on the landscapes of Western Asia Minor. Linking the hospital with their estate lands reminds us that the charity of the capital often depended upon the labor of the provinces.
Myrelaion
The monastery of the Myrelaion was founded by the emperor Romanos Lepekanos around the year 920 from his own personal mansion. The main church of the monastery is found at Bodrum Camii, which was built upon a late antique rotunda (see photo 1 and 2).
Its hospital is known from a Byzantine medical book, attributed to the Romanos, koukouleisios and protomenutes of the imperial hospital of the Myrelaion in Constantinople (Vind. Med. Gr. 48) who probably also lived during the tenth century.[2]
A dramatic account of the Myrelaion estates in western Asia Minor comes from the Life of Saint Nikephoros of Miletus. Here the managers of these estates are positioned as the villains of the tale, interested in stealing the lands which belong to the metropolitan of Miletus. The titular saint does his best to combat the aggressive growth of these estates, arguing before the emperor in Constantinople that the loss of the episcopal estates was a danger โto both the living and the dead.โ
Pantokrator
The monastery of the Pantokrator was founded by John II Komnenos and his wife, Eirene (formerly Piroska of Hungry) in the twelfth century. The monastery church survives in modern Istanbul as the Zeyrek Camii (see photos 3 and 4).
The Pantokrator hospital is well known due to the detailed account of its operation in its typikon, a type of monastic charter which lays out the liturgical rules and administrative needs of the monastery at its foundation. For those interested in Byzantine hospitals, the English translation of this typikon is a great primary source to start reading.[3] In fact, the monastery operated four hospitals: a leper hospital, a nursing home, a monastic infirmary, and a medical hospital. I had argued for a relationship between the Unkapanฤฑ cistern and the hospital, due to the prescription of bathing in the hospital shown in the typikon (see photo 5).
The typikon also lists the lands given to the monastery. However, my interest is a property given to the monastery after the typikon was composed. The Pantokrator monastery owned the Bare estate in region of Smyrna before the chaos of the Fourth Crusade (1204). Bare is known from the Lembos cartulary, whose new edition and translation should whet the curiosity of anyone interested to learn more.[4]
Sampson
The date of the foundation of the Sampson hospital is less than straightforward.[5] The hospital burned down in the Nika Riots of the sixth century. The hospital, with a wing designated entirely for eyecare, appears in the seventh-century Miracles of Saint Artemios.[6] In another miracle collection, the hospital is the true stage of the action: tenth-century Miracles of Saint Sampson the Hospitable recorded by Symeon Metaphrastis as part of his larger project of rewriting hagiography.
The ruins between Hagia Sophia and Hagia Eirene have been excavated roughly where the hospital is known to be located, although this identification is not certain.
The imperial estate known as Sampson was responsible for renaming the city of Priene in western Asia Minor in the twelfth century (see photo 6). The inhabitants of these estates were bad neighbors; three different thirteenth-century monastic archives preserve documents of court cases against them. The Sampson estates may have originated as imperial support for the Sampson hospital, but the estate was under the control of a relative of the emperor in the twelfth century.
Tyler Wolford, PhD
Byzantine Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship
Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame
[1] Tyler Wolford, Healing on the Fourth Hill: Searching for the Pantokrator Hospital. Ungraduated Honors Thesis, Ball State University, 2012. Partially published as ibid., โTo Each According to their Need: Medical and Charitable Institutions in the Pantokrator Monastery.โ In Piroska and the Pantokrator: Dynastic Memory, Healing, and Salvation in Komnenian Constantinople. Edited by Marianne Sรกghy and Robert G. Ousterhout, 195-224. Budapest, 2019. Ibid., The Hospitals of the Monastery: Contextualizing the Nosokomeion and Xenodocheion in the Monasteries of Late Antique Egypt and Palestine. Masterโs Thesis, Koรง University, 2014. Partially published as Tyler Wolford, โSeparate Places for the Sick in the Monastery: The Late Antique Palestinian Infirmary and Guesthouse.โ In Places of Illness, Spaces for Healing: The Built Environment of Healthcare in Anatolia Through the Ages. Edited by Luciene Thys-ลenocak and Inge Uytterhoeven, 133-154. Istanbul, 2025.
[2] Peregrine Horden, โMedieval hospital formularies: Byzantium and Islam Compared.โ In Medical Books in the Byzantine World. Edited by Barbara Zipser. Bologna 2013. 150-151.
[3] Robert Jordan. โ28. Pantokrator. Typikon of Emperor John II Komnenos for the Monastery of Christ Pantokrator in Constantinople.โ In Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents (BMFD), edited by John Philip Thomas and Angela Constantinides Hero, 725-781. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2000.
[4] Alexander Daniel Beihammer and Despoina Ariantzi. The Cartulary of the Lembos Monastery Near Smyrna: A Thirteenth-Century Monastic Archive of Byzantine Asia Minor. De Gruyter, 2026.
[5] Timothy Miller, โThe Sampson Hospital of Constantinople.โ Byzantinische Forschungen 15 (1990): 101-135.
[6] Virgil S. Crisafulli and John W. Nesbitt. The Miracles of St. Artemios. The Medieval Mediterranean 13. Leiden, New York, and Kรถln, 1997.
