Irene of Athens
Near the centre of the plain is the spring called the Life-giving Spring (Ζωοδόχος Πηγή, "Zoodochos Pege"). When it was reported that a blind man had been restored to sight at the touch of its waters, Leo I erected a church over the spring. Justinian, believing that a bath in the spring had cured him of calculus, thriftily enlarged the church by means of the superfluous material that remained after the completion of Hagia Sophia. Twice destroyed by earthquake, it was successively rebuilt by Irene of Athens, wife of Leo IV, in the 8th century, and by Basil I one hundred years later.