The Church of Mary in the Probatic Pool and the Haghiasmata of Constantinople

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The Virgin Mary was from the sixth century associated with the Probatic Pool, a church dedicated to her in Jerusalem. The fact that the church was dedicated in the fifth century to the healing of the Paralytic (the miracle performed by Jesus and which we know from the Gospel of John) and then to Mary, set the ideological background for associating Mary and her mother Anne with healing qualities, which in the topography of Constantinople is expressed in the connection of Mary to holy waters (haghiasmata). The article addresses the elements that formed this development and discusses factors that influenced Constantinopolitan architecture from the sixth century onwards.