The monastery of Lips was restored in the reign of Leo the Wise; the festival of the dedication of the church being celebrated in the year 908, in the month of June.[204] The emperor honoured the occasion with his presence, and attended a banquet in the refectory of the monastery. But the happy proceedings had not gone far, when they were suddenly interrupted by a furious south-west wind which burst upon the city and shook houses and churches with such violence that people feared to remain under cover and imagined that the end of the world had come, until the storm was allayed by a heavy downpour of rain. As the south-west wind was named Lips, it is not clear whether the historians who mention this incident intend to explain thereby the origin of Constantine's surname, or simply point to a curious coincidence. Near the church Lips erected also a xenodocheion for the reception of strangers.[204] The monastery is mentioned by the Anonymus of the eleventh century,[206] but does not appear again until the recovery of the Empire from the Latins in 1261. In the efforts then made to restore all things, it underwent repairs at the instance of the Empress Theodora,[207] the consort of Michael Palaeologus, and from that time acquired greater importance than it had previously enjoyed. Within its precincts, on the 16th of February 1304, a cold winter day, Theodora herself was laid to rest with great pomp, and amid the tears of the poor to whom she had been a good friend.[208] There, two years later, a splendid service was celebrated for the benefit of the soul of her son Constantine Porphyrogenitus,[209] as some compensation for the cruel treatment he had suffered at the hands of his jealous brother Andronicus. There, that emperor himself became a monk two years before his death,[210] and there he was buried on the 13th of February 1332. The monastery contained also the tomb of the Empress Irene,[211] first wife of Andronicus III., and the tomb of the Russian Princess Anna[212] who married John VII. Palaeologus while crown prince, but died before she could ascend the throne, a victim of the great plague which raged in Constantinople in 1417. The monastery appears once more as the scene of a great religious revival, when a certain nun Thomais, who enjoyed a great reputation for sanctity, took up her residence in the neighbourhood. So large were the crowds of women who flocked to place themselves under her rule that 'the monastery of Lips and Martha' was filled to overflowing.[213] The church was converted into a mosque by Pheneré Isa, who died in 1496, and has undergone serious alterations since that time.[214] [Illustration: PLATE XXXIII. (1) S. MARY PANACHRANTOS. THE DIACONICON, LOOKING EAST. (2) S. MARY PANACHRANTOS. THE ARCH UNDER WEST SIDE OF THE CENTRAL DOME IN THE SOUTH CHURCH. _To face page 128._] _Architectural Features_