Embedded in the wall of the chapel of the Hagioi Anargyroi in Vatopedi Monastery

Abstract

Jovan Uglješa is the ktetor of the chapel of the Hagioi Anargyroi (1370) in
Vatopedi Monastery, Mount Athos. In the apse of this chapel a bowl of the
Pula-type is embedded. White glaze, blue and lustre decoration. The bowl is
dated around the mid-fourteenth century. Pula-type ceramics originated in Valencia
in the second or third quarter of the fourteenth century with a distribution
covering the whole of the Mediterranean. A fragment of a Pula-type
bowl survives in the catholicon of Vlatadon Monastery, Thessaloniki. The
chapel of Hagioi Anargyroi and the catholicon of Vlatadon Monastery are the
only byzantine churches in Macedonia with embedded bowls. This custom
spread excessively in Mount Athos only after sixteenth century.