The orphans of Byzantium: child welfare in the Christian empire

VII. The Orphanotropheion: Administration

VII THE ORPHANOTROPHEION ADMINISTRATION At the center of the Byzantine program to assist orphans stood the great Orphanotropheion of Constantinople, founded by Saint Zotikos probably during the reign of the emperor Constantius and still functioning nine hundred years later at the beginning of the fourteenth century. As the orphanage of the imperial city in a society that the capital dominated politically , economically, and culturally, it is not surprising that this philanthropic institution eclipsed all other orphan schools, whether those controlled by bishops or those attached to monasteries. It is surprising, however, that it also eclipsed all the other charitable institutions of the empire, including some of the large imperial hospitals of Constantinople . Its director, the orphanotrophos, came to supervise not only the Orphanage proper, but a wide range of philanthropic services, including an emergency grain supply of some sort for Constantinople. The Orphanotropheion evolved into such a sprawling institution with such a complex administrative structure that I must devote two chapters to explain it adequately. This present chapter will examine the administrative structure of the institution and the duties of the orphanage director. The following chapter (Chapter Eight) will focus on the orphan school proper by presenting as much information as the sources reveal about its curriculum, its teachers, and its students. Before beginning our survey, it will be useful to discuss briefly how Byzantine sources identified the Orphanage of Constantinople. The  citizens of the Byzantine capital originally referred to the city’s principal asylum for homeless children as the Orphanage of Zotikos, after its fourth-century founder. In many of their novels, however, the emperors of the fifth and sixth centuries identified the institution simply as the pious Orphanotropheion.1 Sometime before , the emperor Herakleios issued the last decree that used the name Zotikos Orphanotropheion.2 Several decades earlier, the emperor Justin II had constructed a large church within the precincts of the Orphanotropheion, a church he dedicated to the apostles Peter and Paul.3 Although thereafter most sources continued to call the orphan asylum the Orphanotropheion, a few texts began identifying the institution as that of Paul.4 References to the apostle Peter seem to have fallen out of use, but occasionally the busts of both the apostles appeared on the lead seals used by orphanotrophoi .5 Beginning with the twelfth century, however, Byzantine sources made more frequent use of the name Paul. For example, when Cyril Phileotes praised the emperor Alexios for his generous support of the orphanage, undoubtedly in the same location as the ancient Zotikos asylum for homeless children, he called the institution the Orphanotropheion of Paul. Moreover, Leo of Rhodes, a teacher at the Orphanage during the twelfth century, addressed a prayer to Saint Paul as the sole patron of the institution.6 PREEMINENCE In studying the Orphanotropheion, one must first consider its preeminent position among all other philanthropic institutions of the empire and also the high rank that its directors enjoyed in both the church hierarchy and the state bureaucracy. The clearest evidence that Zotikos’s Orphanage outranked all other charitable institutions comes from the imperial legislation of the fifth century.   . JCod, .. (), identifies the Orphanage in Latin as orphanotrophium; JNov, ., uses the Greek ojrfanotrofei'on. . Novel  (Herakleios), RP, : . . Theophanes, : . . Genesios, . (pp. –). . Zacos, nos.  (anno –) and no.  (late seventh or early eighth century); Schlumberger, p.  (sixth century). . Vie de Cyrille le Philéote, . (p. ); for Leo of Rhodes, see Vaticanus Palatinus gr, , fols. v and v . As we learned in Chapter Three, Leo I issued a decree in  that granted the Orphanotropheion and all its properties and dependent agencies the same legal and fiscal privileges that then belonged to Hagia Sophia or would be given in the future to the patriarchal church of Constantinople.7 At that time, no other philanthropic institution in the capital or the provinces enjoyed this status. Seventy years later Justinian conferred these same privileges on the Hospital of Saint Sampson, also one of the original charities of Christian Constantinople.8 Thereafter , no emperor granted this status to any other philanthropic institution . When in the eleventh century Constantine IX established his vast Mangana palace and attached a hospital and gerokomeion (old-age home) to it, he never extended to these philanthropic foundations the privileges of Hagia Sophia, nor a century later did the emperor John II Komnenos grant such rights to his famous Pantokrator Xenon.9 At the beginning of the twelfth century, after her father Alexios I...