The Ossuary of the Bachkovo Monastery

Abstract

The Bachkovo Monastery, known in the past as the Monastery of the Holy Mother of God Petritzonitissa, was founded in 1083 by Gregorios Pakourianos (d. 1086), a high-ranking Byzantine military o cial (megas domestikos) of Georgian origin. Situated not far from the city of Plovdiv, ancient Philippoupolis, it remains, to this day, one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Bulgaria. The oldest monument of the Bachkovo Monastery that survives in its original form is the monastic ossuary. It is not known whether it was built at the time of the monastery’s foundation because the Typikon does not mention it. It is possible that the ossuary was constructed after a few years, at the end of the 11th century, when a small burial ground became insu cient for the lack of space, or perhaps, on account of its frescos dated to the 12th century, even later. If the latter hypothesis is correct, it might be that its original pictorial program was planned in advance, together with the speci c architectural design. The Bachkovo Ossuary is a rectangular two-story building raised outside the walls of the monastery on a steep slope of a hill next to the cemetery. The convenience of the two levels enabled the construction of a funerary chapel above a crypt designed to hold the earthly remains of the monks after bodily decomposition was completed. Therefore, the funerary service was performed in the chapel, whereas the bones were stored in the fourteen-oor openings of the crypt. It is also interesting that both spaces are preceded by the originally opened narthexes that were eventually walled up in the 14th century. While the Bachkovo Ossuary is not the only surviving monument of its kind (e.g. the two-story mortuary of St. Luke in the Nea Mone Monastery on Chios from the 11th century), it is the only ossuary that preserves a painted program.