Abstract
The best-attested and most important endowments of Orthodox Christians in the medieval world were created by means of foundation charters (ktetorika typika). Via a typikon, a founder or ktetor was able to regulate the present and future functioning of his (invariably monastic) endowment, often in minute and voluminous detail. Of particular interest for the topic of this special issue of ENDS are some post-Byzantine monastic foundation charters, which hitherto have received almost no scholarly scrutiny. Among these charters is the testament of the patriarch Jeremiah i for the Stauroniketa Monastery on Mount Athos. His monastic charter demonstrates the continuity of Byzantine endowment practices in the first centuries of Ottoman rule, yet also underlines new difficulties for monastic founders attempting to adapt the quintessentially medieval Christian practice of composing typika to the strictures of an Islamic legal regime.
Keywords
Ottoman Empire – monasticism – patriarch – Orthodox Christianity – Mount Athos –
typika
