The Byzantine imperial palace chapel

Abstract

It has been suggested by Cyril Mango that the concept of a palace chapel, with its own clergy, and reserved exclusively for the use of the Imperial court, did not emerge until the ninth century. St Mary of the Pharos, which was built in the Great Palace at Constantinople was, he concludes, the first documented church of this kind. However, Richard Krautheimer and his disciple Wayne Dynes, had maintained that there were in fact earlier palace chapels, and that they exhibited a distinctive architectural form, exemplified in the octagonal shape of the church of Sts Sergius and Bacchus, a sixth century Justinianic foundation in Constantinople.