TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) THE GREAT SCHISM OF 1054 IN THE HAGIA SOPHIA
2) THE CONQUEST OF CONSTANTINOPLE BY THE OTTOMANS
3) THE VERY FAR-REACHING IMPLICATIONS OF THE GREAT SCHISM OF 1054 IN THE HAGIA SOPHIA
4) THE EASTERN ORTHODOX CHURCH BASED IN MOSCOW
5) THE NESTORIAN CHRISTIANS AND THE CHURCH OF THE EAST
6) SUMMARY OF WORLD-CHANGING EVENTS IN THE HAGIA SOPHIA
7) IMITATIONS OF THE HAGIA SOPHIA
8) THE THEORY OF ST. GEORGE
1) THE GREAT SCHISM OF 1054 IN THE HAGIA SOPHIA
Volumes have been written about the architectural influence alone of the Hagia Sophia. it is almost 1,500 years old, and was the largest Christian cathedral in the world for about a thousand years. It's location also gives it importance, since this is the traditional bridge between east and west.
In the year 1054 a papal legate was dispatched from Rome to Constantinople, which was the center of the Catholic Church in the east. Help was being sought to counter the Norman invasion of southern Italy, as well as to insist on the primacy of Rome and the Vatican in the Catholic Church.
The meeting, in the Hagia Sophia, did not go well and the papal legate and the Patriarch of Constantinople ended up excommunicating each other. This caused a split in the Catholic Church, with the eastern part breaking away from the control of the pope and becoming the Eastern Orthodox Church as it remains today, nearly a thousand years later.
I believe the historical precedent of this split was the earlier political split of the Roman Empire into eastern and western halves, and also the split in the Old Testament between Judah and Israel, after the death of King Solomon. This split of the Catholic Church into two halves could thus be said to have inaugurated the modern world with a repetition of the split which came not long before the end of the ancient world. The end of the Roman Empire is generally considered as the end of ancient times.
The theological differences, aside from the authority of the pope, were primarily over iconography and which of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, in the early church primarily concerning the exact nature of Jesus, were accepted.
The world has never been the same since, and the Hagia Sophia (or, House of Holy Wisdom), is where it began.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Hagia_Sophia_Mars_2013.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Gaspare_Fossati_-_Louis_Haghe_-_Vue_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9rale_de_la_grande_nef,_en_regardant_l%27occident_(Hagia_Sophia_-_Ayasofya_Mosque_nave).jpg
.jpg){kind=link}
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Istanbul_036_(6498284165).jpg
.jpg){kind=link}
My feeling is that the Crusades of the Middle Ages, the ultimately unsuccessful efforts ordered by the pope to reclaim the Holy Land from Moslem control, were motivated at least in part by the loss of the eastern territories in this Great Schism of 1054. The crusaders also sacked Constantinople, now the center of the Eastern Orthodox Church, clearly in vengeance for splitting away. The Hagia Sophia was forcefully converted from an Orthodox church, back into a Catholic church.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Constantinople_(1204)#/media/File:PriseDeConstantinople1204PalmaLeJeune.JPG
#/media/File:PriseDeConstantinople1204PalmaLeJeune.JPG){kind=link}
The Four Horses of St. Mark, now on St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, were taken by the crusaders. Six hundred years later, Napoleon would "borrow" the horses. But then he had a copy made, which is today atop the Arc du Triomphe Carrousel in Paris, and gave the original back to Venice.
The Crusades, with the travel to the Holy Land by ship, set the pace for the "Age of Discovery" that would follow. Europeans had been introduced to a part of the world that few of them had seen before, and this would lead them to later explore and colonize the entire planet.
Of course, the term "Crusaders" has never been forgotten by Moslems. The modern state of Israel is considered not as a restoration of the Jews to their historic homeland, but as an extension of the Medieval Crusades. The same can be said for the two Gulf Wars, against Saddan Hussein. The crusaders, unfortunately, behaved very poorly in both the Holy Land that they were trying to liberate, as well as the lands that they crossed to get there.
The crusader assault began the death spiral of the Byzantine Empire, which had built Hagia Sophia. It was ultimately conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the name of Constantinople was changed to Istanbul. The Hagia Sophia was re-purposed as a mosque, and the minarets were built around it. To show that they too were capable of such architecture, the Ottomans built the Blue Mosque, adjacent to and facing Hagia Sophia. But the Hagia Sophia is more than a thousand years older than the Blue Mosque:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultan_Ahmed_Mosque#/media/File:Sultan_Ahmed_Mosque_Istanbul_Turkey_retouched.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultan_Ahmed_Mosque#/media/File:Inside_Blue_Mosque_3.jpg
We use the word "byzantine" today to refer to something that is unnecessarily complicated, but it was actually a great Christian empire that constructed what might be the single most important building in the world, the Hagia Sophia. The Ottomans tried to conquer further into Europe, reaching Vienna on two occasions, but not managing to conquer it. The second of these Ottoman assaults on Vienna was led by the legendary Sulieman. the trouble with the Middle East today is that it has yet to reach a new equilibrium, following the end of the Ottoman Empire, and this also is ultimately rooted in the ill-fated meeting that took place in the Hagia Sophia nearly a thousand years ago.
After the conquest of Constantinople by Moslems, the center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity moved to Moscow, which became known as the "Third Rome" as Constantinople had been the "Second Rome".
It is true that while Europe was going through what is referred to as the "Dark Ages", with regard to learning and progress, it was the Moslems which kept the "torch of learning" alive. India came up with the vital concept of zero, and China contributed ideas such as rockets, gunpowder and, the magnetic compass. Paper, which was absolutely essential to the modern world that would eventually emerge, was a Chinese development which Moslems brought to Baghdad.
This Great Schism of 1054 also, of course, set the precedent for the Reformation, and it's split in the church, nearly 450 years later, and all of it's ramifications.
One thing that I am amazed to have never seen written about the Hagia Sophia regards the brilliant light that appeared in the sky while the cataclysmic split was going on in 1054. The supernova that began on July 4, 1054, resulted in what we refer to today as the Crab Nebula. The light must have been brilliant. It was easily visible in the daytime and lasted about two years. Was it a warning from God about what would be the monumental consequences of the split? The supernova is recorded in Arab, Chinese and, Japanese sources, and the Aztecs reportedly began their calendar from it, but I cannot see that Europeans paid any attention to it.
2) THE CONQUEST OF CONSTANTINOPLE BY THE OTTOMANS
The Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople in 1453, renaming it as Istanbul. But that drove many Christian scholars to move westward, bringing copies of ancient classic stories with them. Some of these scholars made their way to northern Italy. This brought an interest in reviving the literature and learning of ancient times, most of which had previously been lost and forgotten. This great revival is referred to as the Renaissance, a French word meaning "rebirth". The invention of the printing press would greatly help in disseminating these old classics.
But among these revived old classics would be the texts of the Bible itself, in original Greek and Hebrew. This is what would lead to the Reformation, the comparing of the teaching and traditions of the church to the original Bible itself, not the Catholic Church's Latin translation of it, the Vulgate. And the chance to read the Bible for oneself, rather than relying on the interpretation of the church.
Learning was done in ancient times, but then largely forgotten during the Middle Ages. The Renaissance was a multi-faceted rediscovery of these ancient classics and learning, that brought an atmosphere of progress and change. The Reformation brought that atmosphere of progress and change to religion. The Industrial Revolution was the bringing of that atmosphere of progress and change to technology. The Enlightenment was the bringing of that atmosphere of progress and change to science and reasoning. The French Revolution, and the American Revolution which shortly preceded it, was a bringing of that atmosphere of progress and change to politics.
So much of the European and world history that followed were based on this series of events. The split in the Catholic Church of 1054, followed by the Crusades, followed by the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans, and the move of the center of the Eastern Orthodox Church to Moscow, which was sometimes referred to as "The Third Rome", the migration of scholars from the conquered Constantinople to western Europe with copies of previously forgotten ancient literature which set off the Renaissance, and all of the following revolutions that it brought about.
The historic rivalry between Greece and Turkey is a continuation of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Greece went with the Eastern Orthodox Christian side in the Great Schism of 1054, and remained Orthodox Christian when Constantinople fell under Ottoman control. Greece was ruled by the Ottomans for some time, but managed to free itself. Considerable damage had been done to the Parthenon when the Ottomans stored gunpowder there and a Venetian shell landed and ignited the gunpowder. This historic frontier between Orthodox Christianity and the Moslem Ottomans was most recently reenacted in the Turkish occupation, and creation of a generally unrecognized state, in northern Cyprus.
The Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople in 1453, renaming it as Istanbul. But that drove many Christian scholars to move westward, bringing copies of ancient classic stories with them. Some of these scholars made their way to northern Italy. This brought an interest in reviving the literature and learning of ancient times, most of which had previously been lost and forgotten. This great revival is referred to as the Renaissance, a French word meaning "rebirth". The invention of the printing press would greatly help in disseminating these old classics.
But among these revived old classics would be the texts of the Bible itself, in original Greek and Hebrew. This is what would lead to the Reformation, the comparing of the teaching and traditions of the church to the original Bible itself, not the Catholic Church's Latin translation of it, the Vulgate. And the chance to read the Bible for oneself, rather than relying on the interpretation of the church.
Learning was done in ancient times, but then largely forgotten during the Middle Ages. The Renaissance was a multi-faceted rediscovery of these ancient classics and learning, that brought an atmosphere of progress and change. The Reformation brought that atmosphere of progress and change to religion. The Industrial Revolution was the bringing of that atmosphere of progress and change to technology. The Enlightenment was the bringing of that atmosphere of progress and change to science and reasoning. The French Revolution, and the American Revolution which shortly preceded it, was a bringing of that atmosphere of progress and change to politics.
The historic rivalry between Greece and Turkey is a continuation of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Greece went with the Eastern Orthodox Christian side in the Great Schism of 1054, and remained Orthodox Christian when Constantinople fell under Ottoman control. Greece was ruled by the Ottomans for some time, but managed to free itself. Considerable damage had been done to the Parthenon when the Ottomans stored gunpowder there and a Venetian shell landed and ignited the gunpowder. This historic frontier between Orthodox Christianity and the Moslem Ottomans was most recently reenacted in the Turkish occupation, and creation of a generally unrecognized state, in northern Cyprus.
3) THE VERY FAR-REACHING IMPLICATIONS OF THE GREAT SCHISM OF 1054 IN THE HAGIA SOPHIA
Both the Eastern Front of the Second World War, in which the deadliest combat of human history took place, and the Iron Curtain which followed it, were modern manifestations of the frontier line between Catholic west and Orthodox east, brought about by the Great Schism of 1054.
Yugoslavia was an artificial country that was put together from the remnants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, following the First World War. It would come apart in a nasty civil war 75 years later. The underlying reason is that it's founding did not take into account that they were trying to bridge two historic divisions, which dated back centuries, and it was ultimately doomed to fail. First, there was the 1054 split between Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. Croatians were Catholic and Serbs were Orthodox, and these were the two largest ethnic groups of the country. This can be seen in their language, Serbo-Croatian. The language is spoken in one way but can be written in two ways, either by Croatians using the Latin Alphabet, or Serbs using the Cyrillic (Russian) Alphabet. Second, there was the presence of Moslems, in Bosnia, which were the legacy of the area once being a part of the Ottoman Empire.These two historic fault lines broke Yugoslavia apart, after the Communism that had been holding it together disintegrated.
This scenario is by no means as black and white as it seems. There is actually quite a bit of nostalgia for the former Yugoslavia. I was reading about a theme park dedicated to the memory of the country. Living there was described as "We weren't rich, but we had what we needed, and everybody had a good time".
The split in the Ukraine, between the Europe-looking western half and the Russia-looking eastern half which led to the conflict of 2014 and a renewal of the Cold War, was a very clear split along the lines of the frontier of the Great Schism of 1054. Even in our secular time, the western part of Ukraine represents Catholicism and the eastern part Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
One reason for the end of the Cold War is also based on this split in the church of 1054. The Warsaw Pact, the control of eastern Europe as part of the Soviet Bloc, was an overreaching by the domain that had been Eastern Orthodox Christianity into the domain that had been Catholicism. It did not matter that the world had become secularized, that historic fault line of 900 years before could not be denied, and Soviet control of eastern Europe could not last. The Berlin Wall was yet another manifestation of the Great Schism of 1054, but it was built too far west so that it did not fit the historical pattern.
Have you ever wondered why, in the more secular Twentieth Century, the west was Capitalist and the Soviet Bloc was Communist, so that it brought about the Cold War?
For one thing, Moscow had become the new center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, after Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, and the rivalry with the west just continued, this time in a secularized political-economic form, as the Cold War between Capitalism and Communism.
The best-known sight in the Kremlin, and quite possibly the most attractive building in the world, is actually the Eastern Orthodox St. Basil's Cathedral:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil%27s_Cathedral#/media/File:Moscow_05-2012_StBasilCathedral.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil%27s_Cathedral#/media/File:St_Basils_Cathedral_closeup.jpg
When Karl Marx, a Nineteenth-Century German Jew living in exile in London, wrote his economic theories of Communism, his target was Britain. I am sure that he could never have imagined that the first Communist nation would be not Britain, but Russia. Marx actually deserves more credit than he gets, but one thing he simply did not understand was religion. Consider that the very egalitarian administrative structural pattern of the Eastern Orthodox Church fit perfectly with the collective egalitarianism of Communism. Times had become more secular, but Communist theory fit right onto the pattern of the Eastern Orthodox Church that the people were used to. Communism was organized in a way similar to that of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
In Contrast, the west was shaped by the individualism of the Protestant Reformation, as well as the way that both the Protestant and Catholic churches were improved by the competition between them after the Catholics launched the Counter-Reformation. This led to Capitalism, as an economic system, as well as socialism as an attempt to get the best of both systems, with the worst of neither.
This three-way pattern of rivalry between the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church which broke away from it, and the Ottomans which conquered Constantinople, which was the center of the Eastern Orthodox Church, has by no means faded into history.
Since Pope John Paul, the Catholic Church has had a tradition of the Pope being a global celebrity. Turkey, which underwent an intensive modernizing and secularizing revolution, after the First World War that made the Hagia Sophia from a mosque into a museum, now has President Erdogan who is in the process of reviving state Islam and celebrating Turkey's Ottoman history. Russia is led by Vladimir Putin, who has set about completely reversing the official atheism of Communist times and making Russia into a holy Eastern Orthodox Christian state, standing in contrast to the perverted decadence of the west.
Communists had destroyed the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, in Moscow:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_Church#/media/File:Christ_saviour_explosion.jpg
But now, it has been rebuilt:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Christ_the_Saviour#/media/File:Moscow_July_2011-7a.jpg
It all began at the Hagia Sophia, the House of Holy Wisdom.
Here is some scenes of the Hagia Sophia, and the facing Blue Mosque. The Hagia Sophia is the one that appears red on the outside, while the Blue Mosque (or Sultan Ahmed or Ahmet) Mosque does not appear red. The two structures do not appear to be vastly different, from the outside, but the Hagia Sophia is more than a thousand years older than the Blue Mosque, which was completed in 1616. The Blue Mosque is still used as a mosque, while the Hagia Sophia is considered as a museum. The scenes in the enclosed courtyard are in that of the Blue Mosque. The first scene is inside the Hagia Sophia. John F. Kennedy was a friend of Turkey, and nearby is Kennedy Avenue.
Both the Eastern Front of the Second World War, in which the deadliest combat of human history took place, and the Iron Curtain which followed it, were modern manifestations of the frontier line between Catholic west and Orthodox east, brought about by the Great Schism of 1054.
Yugoslavia was an artificial country that was put together from the remnants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, following the First World War. It would come apart in a nasty civil war 75 years later. The underlying reason is that it's founding did not take into account that they were trying to bridge two historic divisions, which dated back centuries, and it was ultimately doomed to fail. First, there was the 1054 split between Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. Croatians were Catholic and Serbs were Orthodox, and these were the two largest ethnic groups of the country. This can be seen in their language, Serbo-Croatian. The language is spoken in one way but can be written in two ways, either by Croatians using the Latin Alphabet, or Serbs using the Cyrillic (Russian) Alphabet. Second, there was the presence of Moslems, in Bosnia, which were the legacy of the area once being a part of the Ottoman Empire.These two historic fault lines broke Yugoslavia apart, after the Communism that had been holding it together disintegrated.
This scenario is by no means as black and white as it seems. There is actually quite a bit of nostalgia for the former Yugoslavia. I was reading about a theme park dedicated to the memory of the country. Living there was described as "We weren't rich, but we had what we needed, and everybody had a good time".
The split in the Ukraine, between the Europe-looking western half and the Russia-looking eastern half which led to the conflict of 2014 and a renewal of the Cold War, was a very clear split along the lines of the frontier of the Great Schism of 1054. Even in our secular time, the western part of Ukraine represents Catholicism and the eastern part Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
One reason for the end of the Cold War is also based on this split in the church of 1054. The Warsaw Pact, the control of eastern Europe as part of the Soviet Bloc, was an overreaching by the domain that had been Eastern Orthodox Christianity into the domain that had been Catholicism. It did not matter that the world had become secularized, that historic fault line of 900 years before could not be denied, and Soviet control of eastern Europe could not last. The Berlin Wall was yet another manifestation of the Great Schism of 1054, but it was built too far west so that it did not fit the historical pattern.
Have you ever wondered why, in the more secular Twentieth Century, the west was Capitalist and the Soviet Bloc was Communist, so that it brought about the Cold War?
For one thing, Moscow had become the new center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, after Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, and the rivalry with the west just continued, this time in a secularized political-economic form, as the Cold War between Capitalism and Communism.
The best-known sight in the Kremlin, and quite possibly the most attractive building in the world, is actually the Eastern Orthodox St. Basil's Cathedral:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil%27s_Cathedral#/media/File:Moscow_05-2012_StBasilCathedral.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil%27s_Cathedral#/media/File:St_Basils_Cathedral_closeup.jpg
When Karl Marx, a Nineteenth-Century German Jew living in exile in London, wrote his economic theories of Communism, his target was Britain. I am sure that he could never have imagined that the first Communist nation would be not Britain, but Russia. Marx actually deserves more credit than he gets, but one thing he simply did not understand was religion. Consider that the very egalitarian administrative structural pattern of the Eastern Orthodox Church fit perfectly with the collective egalitarianism of Communism. Times had become more secular, but Communist theory fit right onto the pattern of the Eastern Orthodox Church that the people were used to. Communism was organized in a way similar to that of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
In Contrast, the west was shaped by the individualism of the Protestant Reformation, as well as the way that both the Protestant and Catholic churches were improved by the competition between them after the Catholics launched the Counter-Reformation. This led to Capitalism, as an economic system, as well as socialism as an attempt to get the best of both systems, with the worst of neither.
This three-way pattern of rivalry between the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church which broke away from it, and the Ottomans which conquered Constantinople, which was the center of the Eastern Orthodox Church, has by no means faded into history.
Since Pope John Paul, the Catholic Church has had a tradition of the Pope being a global celebrity. Turkey, which underwent an intensive modernizing and secularizing revolution, after the First World War that made the Hagia Sophia from a mosque into a museum, now has President Erdogan who is in the process of reviving state Islam and celebrating Turkey's Ottoman history. Russia is led by Vladimir Putin, who has set about completely reversing the official atheism of Communist times and making Russia into a holy Eastern Orthodox Christian state, standing in contrast to the perverted decadence of the west.
Communists had destroyed the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, in Moscow:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_Church#/media/File:Christ_saviour_explosion.jpg
But now, it has been rebuilt:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Christ_the_Saviour#/media/File:Moscow_July_2011-7a.jpg
It all began at the Hagia Sophia, the House of Holy Wisdom.
Here is some scenes of the Hagia Sophia, and the facing Blue Mosque. The Hagia Sophia is the one that appears red on the outside, while the Blue Mosque (or Sultan Ahmed or Ahmet) Mosque does not appear red. The two structures do not appear to be vastly different, from the outside, but the Hagia Sophia is more than a thousand years older than the Blue Mosque, which was completed in 1616. The Blue Mosque is still used as a mosque, while the Hagia Sophia is considered as a museum. The scenes in the enclosed courtyard are in that of the Blue Mosque. The first scene is inside the Hagia Sophia. John F. Kennedy was a friend of Turkey, and nearby is Kennedy Avenue.
There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0084419,28.9798565,3a,75y,188.88h,112.69t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-yiCpgHHD61Q%2FVBQT0AdokFI%2FAAAAAAAAEr4%2FttIu_LRbBxQ!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2F-yiCpgHHD61Q%2FVBQT0AdokFI%2FAAAAAAAAEr4%2FttIu_LRbBxQ%2Fw203-h101-n-k-no%2F!7i3584!8i1792
For the first thousand years of Christianity Greek-speaking Byzantium, which was the former eastern half of the Roman Empire, did not see why it should be subservient to Rome. Their view was that the five main centers of Christianity, Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and, Alexandria, should be equal in authority.
Constantinople, where the Hagia Sophia was located in the Byzantine Empire, had been named for the Roman Emperor Constantine, who had legalized Christianity and had become a Christian himself. His mother, Helena, had gone to the Holy Land, where she began construction of the original Church of the Holy Sepulcher which we saw in the posting on this blog, "Esau And The Temple Mount".
The pope created the Holy Roman Empire in an effort to reestablish the Roman Empire, in Christian form, in order to bring the eastern domains back under it's full control. The Holy Roman Emperor was to be an emperor of Europe that was under the control of the papacy. The pope crowned Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor in the original St. Peter's Basilica in the year 800.
My conclusion is that a prominent factor in the ultimate split between the Catholic Church in Rome and the Orthodox Church in Constantinople, the Byzantine Christians did not see why they should be subservient, is that Rome had no church that could compare with the Hagia Sophia.
It seems certain that the split between eastern and western Christians, in 1054 with the mutual excommunication that took place in the Hagia Sophia, incited the pope to, not long afterward, launch the Crusades in an effort to recapture the Holy Land from the Moslems. The Fourth Crusade, in 1204, attacked Constantinople instead of going to the Holy Land, and this temporarily restored Constantinople to Catholic control. But it weakened the Byzantine Empire so that it would ultimately be conquered by the Ottomans. The Crusades also, of course, profoundly affected the history of the world.
(Note-This east-west split was not, of course, the first division among Christians. There were the divisions over the nature of Christ, in relation to God, which could not be entirely resolved by a series of councils early in the history of the church. The vast majority of Christians today, including Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and, Protestants, are what is known as Chalcedonian Christians, after the Council of Chalcedon. Chalcedonian Christians believe that Christ's human and divine natures are as "two natures in one", with both natures being equal. So-called Nestorian Christians, or Church of the East, which are very important in the history of the church, but of whom there are few today, believe that Christ's two natures remained completely separate. The third major branch of christology is the Miaphysites, sometimes referred to as monophysites, who hold that Christ had only one nature, with both human and divine components, but that the human is completely absorbed by the divine nature. The best-known miaphysite churches today are the Armenian Church, the Egyptian Coptic Church and, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Part of this disagreement was certainly due to language differences, the difficulty of coordinating exact meanings in the different languages used by Christians).
For the first thousand years of Christianity Greek-speaking Byzantium, which was the former eastern half of the Roman Empire, did not see why it should be subservient to Rome. Their view was that the five main centers of Christianity, Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and, Alexandria, should be equal in authority.
Constantinople, where the Hagia Sophia was located in the Byzantine Empire, had been named for the Roman Emperor Constantine, who had legalized Christianity and had become a Christian himself. His mother, Helena, had gone to the Holy Land, where she began construction of the original Church of the Holy Sepulcher which we saw in the posting on this blog, "Esau And The Temple Mount".
The pope created the Holy Roman Empire in an effort to reestablish the Roman Empire, in Christian form, in order to bring the eastern domains back under it's full control. The Holy Roman Emperor was to be an emperor of Europe that was under the control of the papacy. The pope crowned Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor in the original St. Peter's Basilica in the year 800.
My conclusion is that a prominent factor in the ultimate split between the Catholic Church in Rome and the Orthodox Church in Constantinople, the Byzantine Christians did not see why they should be subservient, is that Rome had no church that could compare with the Hagia Sophia.
It seems certain that the split between eastern and western Christians, in 1054 with the mutual excommunication that took place in the Hagia Sophia, incited the pope to, not long afterward, launch the Crusades in an effort to recapture the Holy Land from the Moslems. The Fourth Crusade, in 1204, attacked Constantinople instead of going to the Holy Land, and this temporarily restored Constantinople to Catholic control. But it weakened the Byzantine Empire so that it would ultimately be conquered by the Ottomans. The Crusades also, of course, profoundly affected the history of the world.
(Note-This east-west split was not, of course, the first division among Christians. There were the divisions over the nature of Christ, in relation to God, which could not be entirely resolved by a series of councils early in the history of the church. The vast majority of Christians today, including Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and, Protestants, are what is known as Chalcedonian Christians, after the Council of Chalcedon. Chalcedonian Christians believe that Christ's human and divine natures are as "two natures in one", with both natures being equal. So-called Nestorian Christians, or Church of the East, which are very important in the history of the church, but of whom there are few today, believe that Christ's two natures remained completely separate. The third major branch of christology is the Miaphysites, sometimes referred to as monophysites, who hold that Christ had only one nature, with both human and divine components, but that the human is completely absorbed by the divine nature. The best-known miaphysite churches today are the Armenian Church, the Egyptian Coptic Church and, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Part of this disagreement was certainly due to language differences, the difficulty of coordinating exact meanings in the different languages used by Christians).
4) THE EASTERN ORTHODOX CHURCH BASED IN MOSCOW
In a very important decision in world history, Vladimir the Great, the Grand Prince of Kiev, decided between four religious choices for the kingdom which he had unified, known as the Kievan Rus. This kingdom was the forerunner of nations like Russia, Belarus and, Ukraine. Vladimir made the choice of Orthodox Christianity, it is said because he was so impressed by the Hagia Sophia, and Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev was named after the Hagia Sophia.
After the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans, who were Moslems, Kiev became the center of Orthodox Christianity, which had broken away from Catholicism in the split of 1054. Ultimately, the attack on Kiev by the Mongols would lead to the center of Orthodox Christianity being moved to Moscow.
St. Basil's Cathedral would seem to be the Eastern Orthodox replacement for the Hagia Sophia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil%27s_Cathedral#/media/File:Moscow_05-2012_StBasilCathedral.jpg
Just how impressive the Hagia Sophia must have been is shown by how the Ottomans were compelled to show that they too could build such a structure and they built the Blue Mosque, facing the Hagia Sophia. If Rome had had anything to match the Hagia Sophia then Vladimir might have chosen Catholicism for the Kievan Rus, and Orthodox Christianity might have faded away when Constantinople was conquered by the Ottomans, and renamed Istanbul.
We can scarcely imagine how different world history might have been since, as we saw in the posting on this blog, "The Far-Reaching Legacy Of The Holy Roman Empire", that split between east and west has been with us ever since, including in it's modern secular forms as the Eastern Front of the Second World War and as the Cold War. Without Vladimir's choice of Orthodox Christianity, based on the impression made by the Hagia Sophia, all would have been Catholicism and there would have been no historical reason for the historical division between western Europe and the east ever since.
The Conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans led to Byzantine scholars leaving and bringing ancient documents and knowledge, from Greece and Rome, to Florence, which was then part of the Holy Roman Empire. This set off the Renaissance, with all of it's implications for the modern world. The religious result of the Renaissance was the Reformation, the scientific result was the Enlightenment, the political result was the French Revolution, and the technical result was the Industrial Revolution.
The Renaissance is what led to the building of the present St. Peter's Basilica, which is the largest church in the world. The former St. Peter's Basilica, believed to be built on the burial site of St. Peter where Charlemagne had been crowned as the first Holy Roman Emperor, had fallen into disrepair and was dismantled to make way for the present Basilica.
This is the present St. Peter's Basilica:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Petersdom_von_Engelsburg_gesehen.jpg
This is believed to be what the original St. Peter's looked like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Basilica_di_San_Pietro_1450.jpg
I am certain that both St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and St. Basil"s, in Moscow, were built as Christian replacements for the Hagia Sophia, which was re-purposed into a mosque following the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453. This is simply because there could be no rival to it, and no replacement for it, when it was the largest church on earth.
The raising of money to build St. Peter's Basilica, which was to replace the lost Hagia Sophia which had brought about the split between east and west, as the greatest Christian church, ironically brought about another great split in Christianity. Like the split with the east, in 1054, the Reformation did not happen suddenly. It had been building for generations. One thing that upset the soon-to-be Protestants was the sale of indulgences, a certificate that one's sins were forgiven, in order to raise money to build St. Peter's Basilica. This was one of the fundamental factors in bringing about the Reformation.
Also like the split with the east, language was a factor. We think of the Orthodox Church today as being mostly Slavic, rather than Greek-speaking, but that was because of Vladimir's choice of Orthodox Christianity as the religion of the Kievan Rus. The western Catholic Church spoke Latin, while the east spoke Greek.
I actually believe that the Reformation split, between Protestants and Catholics, can be traced back to the very early days of Christianity, in the dispute over whether new converts had to essentially become Jews, and following Jewish rituals, when becoming Christians, but the liberal side won out. In this way, we could say that St. Peter is representative of the Catholic Church, in the same way that St. Paul, who was on the liberal side in the dispute over rituals, represents the Protestants. This dispute is described in the Book of Galatians, Chapter 2.
Jerusalem would have been the logical choice as the center of the Christian religion, as it had been for Judaism. The diaspora of the Jews, and eventual occupation of the city by Moslems, removed this possibility. Western history since then has been the seeking of an equilibrium about where the new, if there was to be a new, center of Christianity would be located. Either Rome, Constantinople, Canterbury, or anywhere else, other than Jerusalem, that claims rights as the center of Christianity can be questioned simply because Jesus himself had never been there.
In sharp contrast with Islam, Mecca and Medina have always been the center of the religion, where Muhammad lived and where the events of his life took place. The other major monotheistic religion, Judaism, spent 1,878 years away from it's homeland, after rebelling against the Romans in 70 C.E., but regained control over the Old City of Jerusalem in 1967.
In the Bible prophecies, Jesus will rule over the world for the foretold Millennium from the center at Jerusalem. We could say that Christianity cannot have a definite center until then. These diverse centers of Christianity, with no overall agreement on any one, could be said to represent Christians being sent out to convert the world. A globally unified church is not part of the plan until the Millennium. This is reflected in modern secular form in many ways, such as the split during the Cold War.
One related thing that crossed my mind is how the story in the Book of Genesis about the Tower of Babel might have influenced western history. It leads to believe that people are supposed to be speaking different languages. Could this be a reason why Latin split into the Romance Languages, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, French and Romanian, while the predecessor of the Germanic Languages of northern Europe split into German, English, Dutch, Frisian, Danish, Norwegian and, Swedish?
In contrast, Arabic is spoken over the vast distance from Morocco to Yemen, but has not come close to a similar fragmentation. Chinese is an ancient language that is spoken over a wide area, as Mandarin, and is still written in the same way among the different ways of speaking it, such as Cantonese and Fujianese, and neither has come close to anything like the fragmentation of the Romance and Germanic languages of Europe. The common ancestor of the Slavic languages of eastern Europe has undergone similar fragmentation that could be historically rooted in the language division in the story of the Tower of Babel.
5) THE NESTORIAN CHRISTIANS AND THE CHURCH OF THE EAST
We have seen how so much of the modern western world is rooted in the Hagia Sophia, the House of Holy Wisdom, and events that took place there. But what we have seen thus far is mostly looking westward from the site of the Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul. But that is only half of the story because the Hagia Sophia had just as monumental an influence in the opposite direction, going eastward.
This is, again, what the House of Holy Wisdom looks like today. The structure is nearly 1,500 years old and was the largest building in the world for about a thousand years. It was founded as a Christian cathedral, the minarets and the facing Blue Mosque were constructed after the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453, re-purposed the cathedral as a mosque and renamed the city as Istanbul:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Hagia_Sophia_Mars_2013.jpg
But this was not the first Hagia Sophia on the site, it is actually the third. The first Hagia Sophia dates from around the year 360. The second, of which a few parts still remain, lasted from 415-532.
In the second Hagia Sophia there was based a patriarchate of Constantinople known as Nestorius, who will be our focus today.
We rarely hear of the topic of "christology" today. The spell-checker on this blog doesn't even recognize it as a word. Christology refers to the nature of the relationship between God and Jesus. There are basically three ways of looking at this relationship. One way is that Jesus had both a divine and a human nature, but the two natures remained completely separate. The second way is just the opposite, Jesus had both a divine and a human nature but the human nature was completely absorbed into the divine nature. The third way is a median between the two other ways, that Jesus had the two natures in one.
The reason that we do not hear about this much today is that all three of the major branches of Christianity, Protestants, Catholics and, Eastern Orthodox, agree that the third definition is the correct one, that Jesus had both a divine and an equal human nature in one. These three main branches of Christianity are known as Chalcedonian Christians because this relationship between the two natures was established at the Council held at Chalcedon, in the year 451.
But not all Christians accepted the conclusions of the Council of Chalcedon. One group is the Monophysites or, as they generally preferred to be called, the Miaphysites. These Christians believe that the second way of looking at christology is correct, that the human nature of Jesus was completely absorbed by his divine nature. Miaphysites today include the Coptic Church of Egypt, and the main churches of Armenia, Ethiopia and, Eritrea. These are certainly Christians, but are neither Protestant nor Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox., because they have a different concept of the relationship between God and Jesus.
The third group, believing that the two natures of Jesus remained completely separate, are known as Nestorians. When Nestorius was patriarch of Constantinople, and based in the Second Hagia Sophia, he became the focus of the christological controversy of the time by stating that "Mother of Christ" would be a better definition of Mary than "Mother of God", because saying "Mother of God" would seem to deny the human nature of Christ.
Nestorius thus became to be perceived as the center of the christological dispute. The Miaphysite, or Monophysite, position, which holds that the human nature of Jesus was completely absorbed by the divine nature, developed as a reaction to Nestorianism.
The christological dispute did not come about all of a sudden. Nestorius had been a monk at what is known as the School of Antioch before becoming patriarch of Constantinople. The School of Antioch favored the separation of the divine and human natures of Jesus. The rival School of Alexandria emphasized the union of the human and divine natures. After the time of Nestorius, his follower Babai the Great better defined Nestorian christology and, brought it somewhat closer to the Chalcedonian concept of two equal natures in one.
Christology was not a factor either in the much later Schism of 1054, between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, or in the Reformation which was the split between Protestants and Catholics, beginning in 1517. All of these three main branches of Christianity remained Chalcedonian, believing that Jesus had both a divine and a human nature but that they were united in one. But the question over christology was very important in the early church.
The complexity of Christianity is sometimes obscured by the fact that most Christians, or at least large numbers of Christians, agree on the basic concepts. There are, for example, actually more than twenty Catholic Churches. All recognize the authority of the pope, but have different liturgies and other ways of doing things. But this is rarely brought to attention simply because the vast majority of these Catholics belong to only one of these churches, known as the Latin Catholic Church. The rest are generally known as Eastern Catholic Churches.
The christological debate, centering around Nestorius the patriarch of Constantinople from 428-431, led to what is known as the Nestorian Schism. Nestorius was removed from his position for his allegedly heretical views, but many Christians never accepted his removal. These supporters of Nestorius left the Roman Empire and moved eastward, into Sassanid Persia. They formed what became known as the Church of the East. This Nestorian Schism was, of course, a historical prelude to the later schisms that would rend the church, that of 1054 and that of the Reformation.
The Church of the East was once the largest Christian church, in terms of geographic area, and were some of the earliest Christians. The Church of the East was sometimes referred to as the Assyrian Church. Their main language was Syriac, which was a dialect of Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus. They tried to evangelize the Jewish diaspora in the Middle East.
It is difficult to imagine Iran as a Christian country today, but it was once part of the homeland of the Church of the East even though there was conflict with native Zoroastrians. Perhaps the best known Nestorians today are the so-called Thomas Christians, of the area of Kerala in India. These Christians trace their heritage all the way back to the apostle St. Thomas, who is believed to have journeyed to India.
The Nestorians, the Church of the East, put a heavy emphasis on learning. Gaining knowledge was very important to them. They were very proficient in understanding different cultures and in translating from one language to another. Many believe that it was they who founded the first universities. The Nestorians became a powerful influence in the Mongol court and would later write out alphabets for Mongol tribes, so that they could read the Bible.
In western Europe, there was the medieval legend of Prester John. Few people had any idea what was further east, and a legend arose of a king called Prester John ruling over a great kingdom of Nestorian Christians, somewhere in the east, which could be a potential ally against the Moslems. There was a "Letter of Prester John" that, while apparently a forgery, was circulated widely.
Lands that now comprise much of the Moslem world were once Nestorian Christian. The truth is that Nestorians had a great influence on the world, but did their most important work while under Moslem rule. The Nestorian Christians generally had freedom, except to convert Moslems, and went as far east as India, China and, Korea.
There were two routes of ancient Greek knowledge to modern Europe. Both revolve around events at the Hagia Sophia. One route, which we have already seen, was scholars leaving Constantinople, and carrying vast numbers of ancient written works that had long been forgotten in western Europe. The translation of these works into western European languages is what led to the Renaissance which, with all of it's implications, was the beginning of modern Europe.
The second route of knowledge to the west came earlier. It was the translation of ancient Greek knowledge, as well as knowledge of many lands at the so-called "House of Wisdom", in Baghdad. This "House of Wisdom" is not directly related to the House of Holy Wisdom in Constantinople. The House of Wisdom was founded by the Abassid Caliphate of Islam, and is where the Golden Age of Islam was centered. The Abassids had built Baghdad to be the capital of their caliphate, replacing Damascus which had been the focal point of the Umayyad Caliphate.
The Golden Age of Islam was a time when the lands that were under Moslem control increased dramatically. These lands included Spain and Sicily, although Spain actually remained under the control of the earlier Umayyad Caliphate. The pursuit of knowledge during the Golden Age of Islam is why so many of the stars in the sky today have Arabic names.
The numbers that we use, the 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0, most likely originated in India. Certainly the concept of zero originated in India. The reason that our numerals are referred to as "Arabic numerals" is that they were brought to the west during the Golden Age of Islam, to which the Nestorian Christians working in the House of Wisdom were vital.
The House of Wisdom in Baghdad lasted from the Ninth to Thirteenth Centuries, and held by far the largest collection of manuscripts in the world. Works of the knowledge accumulated in ancient Greece had earlier been stored in the Imperial Library of Constantinople.
In their quest for knowledge, the Abbassid House of Wisdom in Baghdad imitated the methods of the Nestorian Christian Academy at Gundeshapur, and employed many of it's former students. Moslems had learned the secret of paper-making from the Chinese, and a vast amount of knowledge was translated into Arabic from other languages.
But most of the translators working at the House of Wisdom were actually Nestorian Christians. The best-known name from the House of Wisdom is that of Hunayn. who knew several languages and wrote many of his own books. Hunayn was a Nestorian Christian Arab, and was instrumental in translating Greek philosophy for the House of Wisdom. The Abassids so valued the abilities of the Nestorian Christians that were under their rule that, according to one account, they were invited to move their patriarchate to Baghdad.
The advances in knowledge, and the spreading of the knowledge that had been accumulated by the ancient Greeks, during the Golden Age of Islam did not only take place at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, where Nestorian Christian scholars were so important. There was also the university founded by the Fatimid Caliphate in Cairo, Al Azhar, as well as the great university at Cordoba, in Spain, which remained under the control of the Umayyad Caliphate. But the House of Wisdom in Baghdad is generally recognized as the most important center for the propagation of knowledge during this period.
A Nestorian by the name of Alopen was the first Christian missionary to reach China. Nestorian manuscripts translated into Chinese are known as the Jesus Sutras. Nestorian Christianity did not last in China, but was later reintroduced by the Mongols.
The Nestorian Stele, dating from 781, described the meeting between Alopen and the Chinese emperor during the Tang Dynasty:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestorian_Stele#/media/File:Nestorian-Stele-Budge-plate-X.jpg
The destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols, and with it the House of Wisdom, in 1258, effectively ended the Golden Age of Islam. The conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans, nearly two hundred years later, moved the golden age of learning westward, by contributing to the beginnings of the Renaissance in Europe.
The Nestorian Church in the east never recovered from the conquests of Tamerlane (or Timur). After this time, Nestorian Christians were confined to upper Mesopotamia and the Malabar Coast of India. The Assyrian Church of the East today is Nestorian in it's theology.
But through the accomplishments of the Nestorian Christians, particularly translation of the knowledge of many lands in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, which made it's way to form the modern world, we can trace the west that we have today back to events that took place in the Hagia Sophia, in this case beginning with the controversial removal of Nestorius.as patriarch due to his allegedly "heretical" views about christology.
In a very important decision in world history, Vladimir the Great, the Grand Prince of Kiev, decided between four religious choices for the kingdom which he had unified, known as the Kievan Rus. This kingdom was the forerunner of nations like Russia, Belarus and, Ukraine. Vladimir made the choice of Orthodox Christianity, it is said because he was so impressed by the Hagia Sophia, and Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev was named after the Hagia Sophia.
After the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans, who were Moslems, Kiev became the center of Orthodox Christianity, which had broken away from Catholicism in the split of 1054. Ultimately, the attack on Kiev by the Mongols would lead to the center of Orthodox Christianity being moved to Moscow.
St. Basil's Cathedral would seem to be the Eastern Orthodox replacement for the Hagia Sophia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil%27s_Cathedral#/media/File:Moscow_05-2012_StBasilCathedral.jpg
Just how impressive the Hagia Sophia must have been is shown by how the Ottomans were compelled to show that they too could build such a structure and they built the Blue Mosque, facing the Hagia Sophia. If Rome had had anything to match the Hagia Sophia then Vladimir might have chosen Catholicism for the Kievan Rus, and Orthodox Christianity might have faded away when Constantinople was conquered by the Ottomans, and renamed Istanbul.
We can scarcely imagine how different world history might have been since, as we saw in the posting on this blog, "The Far-Reaching Legacy Of The Holy Roman Empire", that split between east and west has been with us ever since, including in it's modern secular forms as the Eastern Front of the Second World War and as the Cold War. Without Vladimir's choice of Orthodox Christianity, based on the impression made by the Hagia Sophia, all would have been Catholicism and there would have been no historical reason for the historical division between western Europe and the east ever since.
The Conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans led to Byzantine scholars leaving and bringing ancient documents and knowledge, from Greece and Rome, to Florence, which was then part of the Holy Roman Empire. This set off the Renaissance, with all of it's implications for the modern world. The religious result of the Renaissance was the Reformation, the scientific result was the Enlightenment, the political result was the French Revolution, and the technical result was the Industrial Revolution.
The Renaissance is what led to the building of the present St. Peter's Basilica, which is the largest church in the world. The former St. Peter's Basilica, believed to be built on the burial site of St. Peter where Charlemagne had been crowned as the first Holy Roman Emperor, had fallen into disrepair and was dismantled to make way for the present Basilica.
This is the present St. Peter's Basilica:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Petersdom_von_Engelsburg_gesehen.jpg
This is believed to be what the original St. Peter's looked like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Basilica_di_San_Pietro_1450.jpg
I am certain that both St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and St. Basil"s, in Moscow, were built as Christian replacements for the Hagia Sophia, which was re-purposed into a mosque following the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453. This is simply because there could be no rival to it, and no replacement for it, when it was the largest church on earth.
The raising of money to build St. Peter's Basilica, which was to replace the lost Hagia Sophia which had brought about the split between east and west, as the greatest Christian church, ironically brought about another great split in Christianity. Like the split with the east, in 1054, the Reformation did not happen suddenly. It had been building for generations. One thing that upset the soon-to-be Protestants was the sale of indulgences, a certificate that one's sins were forgiven, in order to raise money to build St. Peter's Basilica. This was one of the fundamental factors in bringing about the Reformation.
Also like the split with the east, language was a factor. We think of the Orthodox Church today as being mostly Slavic, rather than Greek-speaking, but that was because of Vladimir's choice of Orthodox Christianity as the religion of the Kievan Rus. The western Catholic Church spoke Latin, while the east spoke Greek.
I actually believe that the Reformation split, between Protestants and Catholics, can be traced back to the very early days of Christianity, in the dispute over whether new converts had to essentially become Jews, and following Jewish rituals, when becoming Christians, but the liberal side won out. In this way, we could say that St. Peter is representative of the Catholic Church, in the same way that St. Paul, who was on the liberal side in the dispute over rituals, represents the Protestants. This dispute is described in the Book of Galatians, Chapter 2.
Jerusalem would have been the logical choice as the center of the Christian religion, as it had been for Judaism. The diaspora of the Jews, and eventual occupation of the city by Moslems, removed this possibility. Western history since then has been the seeking of an equilibrium about where the new, if there was to be a new, center of Christianity would be located. Either Rome, Constantinople, Canterbury, or anywhere else, other than Jerusalem, that claims rights as the center of Christianity can be questioned simply because Jesus himself had never been there.
In sharp contrast with Islam, Mecca and Medina have always been the center of the religion, where Muhammad lived and where the events of his life took place. The other major monotheistic religion, Judaism, spent 1,878 years away from it's homeland, after rebelling against the Romans in 70 C.E., but regained control over the Old City of Jerusalem in 1967.
In the Bible prophecies, Jesus will rule over the world for the foretold Millennium from the center at Jerusalem. We could say that Christianity cannot have a definite center until then. These diverse centers of Christianity, with no overall agreement on any one, could be said to represent Christians being sent out to convert the world. A globally unified church is not part of the plan until the Millennium. This is reflected in modern secular form in many ways, such as the split during the Cold War.
One related thing that crossed my mind is how the story in the Book of Genesis about the Tower of Babel might have influenced western history. It leads to believe that people are supposed to be speaking different languages. Could this be a reason why Latin split into the Romance Languages, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, French and Romanian, while the predecessor of the Germanic Languages of northern Europe split into German, English, Dutch, Frisian, Danish, Norwegian and, Swedish?
In contrast, Arabic is spoken over the vast distance from Morocco to Yemen, but has not come close to a similar fragmentation. Chinese is an ancient language that is spoken over a wide area, as Mandarin, and is still written in the same way among the different ways of speaking it, such as Cantonese and Fujianese, and neither has come close to anything like the fragmentation of the Romance and Germanic languages of Europe. The common ancestor of the Slavic languages of eastern Europe has undergone similar fragmentation that could be historically rooted in the language division in the story of the Tower of Babel.
5) THE NESTORIAN CHRISTIANS AND THE CHURCH OF THE EAST
We have seen how so much of the modern western world is rooted in the Hagia Sophia, the House of Holy Wisdom, and events that took place there. But what we have seen thus far is mostly looking westward from the site of the Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul. But that is only half of the story because the Hagia Sophia had just as monumental an influence in the opposite direction, going eastward.
This is, again, what the House of Holy Wisdom looks like today. The structure is nearly 1,500 years old and was the largest building in the world for about a thousand years. It was founded as a Christian cathedral, the minarets and the facing Blue Mosque were constructed after the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453, re-purposed the cathedral as a mosque and renamed the city as Istanbul:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Hagia_Sophia_Mars_2013.jpg
But this was not the first Hagia Sophia on the site, it is actually the third. The first Hagia Sophia dates from around the year 360. The second, of which a few parts still remain, lasted from 415-532.
In the second Hagia Sophia there was based a patriarchate of Constantinople known as Nestorius, who will be our focus today.
We rarely hear of the topic of "christology" today. The spell-checker on this blog doesn't even recognize it as a word. Christology refers to the nature of the relationship between God and Jesus. There are basically three ways of looking at this relationship. One way is that Jesus had both a divine and a human nature, but the two natures remained completely separate. The second way is just the opposite, Jesus had both a divine and a human nature but the human nature was completely absorbed into the divine nature. The third way is a median between the two other ways, that Jesus had the two natures in one.
The reason that we do not hear about this much today is that all three of the major branches of Christianity, Protestants, Catholics and, Eastern Orthodox, agree that the third definition is the correct one, that Jesus had both a divine and an equal human nature in one. These three main branches of Christianity are known as Chalcedonian Christians because this relationship between the two natures was established at the Council held at Chalcedon, in the year 451.
But not all Christians accepted the conclusions of the Council of Chalcedon. One group is the Monophysites or, as they generally preferred to be called, the Miaphysites. These Christians believe that the second way of looking at christology is correct, that the human nature of Jesus was completely absorbed by his divine nature. Miaphysites today include the Coptic Church of Egypt, and the main churches of Armenia, Ethiopia and, Eritrea. These are certainly Christians, but are neither Protestant nor Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox., because they have a different concept of the relationship between God and Jesus.
The third group, believing that the two natures of Jesus remained completely separate, are known as Nestorians. When Nestorius was patriarch of Constantinople, and based in the Second Hagia Sophia, he became the focus of the christological controversy of the time by stating that "Mother of Christ" would be a better definition of Mary than "Mother of God", because saying "Mother of God" would seem to deny the human nature of Christ.
Nestorius thus became to be perceived as the center of the christological dispute. The Miaphysite, or Monophysite, position, which holds that the human nature of Jesus was completely absorbed by the divine nature, developed as a reaction to Nestorianism.
The christological dispute did not come about all of a sudden. Nestorius had been a monk at what is known as the School of Antioch before becoming patriarch of Constantinople. The School of Antioch favored the separation of the divine and human natures of Jesus. The rival School of Alexandria emphasized the union of the human and divine natures. After the time of Nestorius, his follower Babai the Great better defined Nestorian christology and, brought it somewhat closer to the Chalcedonian concept of two equal natures in one.
Christology was not a factor either in the much later Schism of 1054, between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, or in the Reformation which was the split between Protestants and Catholics, beginning in 1517. All of these three main branches of Christianity remained Chalcedonian, believing that Jesus had both a divine and a human nature but that they were united in one. But the question over christology was very important in the early church.
The complexity of Christianity is sometimes obscured by the fact that most Christians, or at least large numbers of Christians, agree on the basic concepts. There are, for example, actually more than twenty Catholic Churches. All recognize the authority of the pope, but have different liturgies and other ways of doing things. But this is rarely brought to attention simply because the vast majority of these Catholics belong to only one of these churches, known as the Latin Catholic Church. The rest are generally known as Eastern Catholic Churches.
The christological debate, centering around Nestorius the patriarch of Constantinople from 428-431, led to what is known as the Nestorian Schism. Nestorius was removed from his position for his allegedly heretical views, but many Christians never accepted his removal. These supporters of Nestorius left the Roman Empire and moved eastward, into Sassanid Persia. They formed what became known as the Church of the East. This Nestorian Schism was, of course, a historical prelude to the later schisms that would rend the church, that of 1054 and that of the Reformation.
The Church of the East was once the largest Christian church, in terms of geographic area, and were some of the earliest Christians. The Church of the East was sometimes referred to as the Assyrian Church. Their main language was Syriac, which was a dialect of Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus. They tried to evangelize the Jewish diaspora in the Middle East.
It is difficult to imagine Iran as a Christian country today, but it was once part of the homeland of the Church of the East even though there was conflict with native Zoroastrians. Perhaps the best known Nestorians today are the so-called Thomas Christians, of the area of Kerala in India. These Christians trace their heritage all the way back to the apostle St. Thomas, who is believed to have journeyed to India.
The Nestorians, the Church of the East, put a heavy emphasis on learning. Gaining knowledge was very important to them. They were very proficient in understanding different cultures and in translating from one language to another. Many believe that it was they who founded the first universities. The Nestorians became a powerful influence in the Mongol court and would later write out alphabets for Mongol tribes, so that they could read the Bible.
In western Europe, there was the medieval legend of Prester John. Few people had any idea what was further east, and a legend arose of a king called Prester John ruling over a great kingdom of Nestorian Christians, somewhere in the east, which could be a potential ally against the Moslems. There was a "Letter of Prester John" that, while apparently a forgery, was circulated widely.
Lands that now comprise much of the Moslem world were once Nestorian Christian. The truth is that Nestorians had a great influence on the world, but did their most important work while under Moslem rule. The Nestorian Christians generally had freedom, except to convert Moslems, and went as far east as India, China and, Korea.
There were two routes of ancient Greek knowledge to modern Europe. Both revolve around events at the Hagia Sophia. One route, which we have already seen, was scholars leaving Constantinople, and carrying vast numbers of ancient written works that had long been forgotten in western Europe. The translation of these works into western European languages is what led to the Renaissance which, with all of it's implications, was the beginning of modern Europe.
The second route of knowledge to the west came earlier. It was the translation of ancient Greek knowledge, as well as knowledge of many lands at the so-called "House of Wisdom", in Baghdad. This "House of Wisdom" is not directly related to the House of Holy Wisdom in Constantinople. The House of Wisdom was founded by the Abassid Caliphate of Islam, and is where the Golden Age of Islam was centered. The Abassids had built Baghdad to be the capital of their caliphate, replacing Damascus which had been the focal point of the Umayyad Caliphate.
The Golden Age of Islam was a time when the lands that were under Moslem control increased dramatically. These lands included Spain and Sicily, although Spain actually remained under the control of the earlier Umayyad Caliphate. The pursuit of knowledge during the Golden Age of Islam is why so many of the stars in the sky today have Arabic names.
The numbers that we use, the 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0, most likely originated in India. Certainly the concept of zero originated in India. The reason that our numerals are referred to as "Arabic numerals" is that they were brought to the west during the Golden Age of Islam, to which the Nestorian Christians working in the House of Wisdom were vital.
The House of Wisdom in Baghdad lasted from the Ninth to Thirteenth Centuries, and held by far the largest collection of manuscripts in the world. Works of the knowledge accumulated in ancient Greece had earlier been stored in the Imperial Library of Constantinople.
In their quest for knowledge, the Abbassid House of Wisdom in Baghdad imitated the methods of the Nestorian Christian Academy at Gundeshapur, and employed many of it's former students. Moslems had learned the secret of paper-making from the Chinese, and a vast amount of knowledge was translated into Arabic from other languages.
But most of the translators working at the House of Wisdom were actually Nestorian Christians. The best-known name from the House of Wisdom is that of Hunayn. who knew several languages and wrote many of his own books. Hunayn was a Nestorian Christian Arab, and was instrumental in translating Greek philosophy for the House of Wisdom. The Abassids so valued the abilities of the Nestorian Christians that were under their rule that, according to one account, they were invited to move their patriarchate to Baghdad.
The advances in knowledge, and the spreading of the knowledge that had been accumulated by the ancient Greeks, during the Golden Age of Islam did not only take place at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, where Nestorian Christian scholars were so important. There was also the university founded by the Fatimid Caliphate in Cairo, Al Azhar, as well as the great university at Cordoba, in Spain, which remained under the control of the Umayyad Caliphate. But the House of Wisdom in Baghdad is generally recognized as the most important center for the propagation of knowledge during this period.
A Nestorian by the name of Alopen was the first Christian missionary to reach China. Nestorian manuscripts translated into Chinese are known as the Jesus Sutras. Nestorian Christianity did not last in China, but was later reintroduced by the Mongols.
The Nestorian Stele, dating from 781, described the meeting between Alopen and the Chinese emperor during the Tang Dynasty:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestorian_Stele#/media/File:Nestorian-Stele-Budge-plate-X.jpg
The destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols, and with it the House of Wisdom, in 1258, effectively ended the Golden Age of Islam. The conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans, nearly two hundred years later, moved the golden age of learning westward, by contributing to the beginnings of the Renaissance in Europe.
The Nestorian Church in the east never recovered from the conquests of Tamerlane (or Timur). After this time, Nestorian Christians were confined to upper Mesopotamia and the Malabar Coast of India. The Assyrian Church of the East today is Nestorian in it's theology.
But through the accomplishments of the Nestorian Christians, particularly translation of the knowledge of many lands in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, which made it's way to form the modern world, we can trace the west that we have today back to events that took place in the Hagia Sophia, in this case beginning with the controversial removal of Nestorius.as patriarch due to his allegedly "heretical" views about christology.
6) SUMMARY OF WORLD-CHANGING EVENTS IN THE HAGIA SOPHIA
Here is a review of the world-changing events that happened at the Hagia Sophia, which is a very old structure and was the largest church in the world for about a thousand years..
A) The Nestorian Schism over christology, or the nature of Christ, originated with the excommunication of a priest named Nestorius, who insisted that the human and divine natures of Christ had to be completely separate. The Orthodox Chalcedonian Christians said that the divine and human natures had to be "two natures in one". But the Christians to the east never accepted this excommunication and they became known as the Nestorian Church.
It was this church which reached far to the east, sending missionaries to the Mongols and to China. Most importantly, it was the Nestorian Church which did most of the translating of western ideas and literature into Arabic for the House of Wisdom, under the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad. This is what did so much to keep knowledge and learning alive while the west was going through the "Dark Ages".
B) Prince Vladimir of Kiev chose the Byzantine rites of Christianity for the religion of his people, over the Roman Catholic rites, or Islam, or Judaism, simply because the emissary that he sent to investigate was so impressed with the Hagia Sophia. The Byzantine rites became the Eastern Orthodox Church, with different rites and organization from the Catholics to the west. The pope, trying to bring the eastern Christians back into line, founded the Holy Roman Empire, which he expected to control.
But the Holy Roman Empire turned out to be more of a rival to the power of the pope, and all of the developments which sprang from it are ultimately rooted in the Hagia Sophia. The Age of Discovery likely began with Spain and Portugal simply because they were not part of the Holy Roman Empire. The focus of the Holy Roman Empire was to the east, so these two countries were the first to think that there might be much to be discovered by sailing west. Hitler's "Third Reich" considered the Holy Roman Empire as the "First Reich", and they put it back together before confronting the Soviet Union, to the east, which was a modern secular version of the Holy Roman Empire being created to bring the eastern Christians back into line.
C) The split of the Christian Church, in the Schism of 1054, was the mutual excommunication of the pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople, who was based in the Hagia Sophia. Not long after, the Pope began the Crusades to regain the Holy Land from the Moslems. I am sure that it was the sudden loss of a large part of the church which prompted this decision. The east developed largely separately due to this split, and it's modern manifestation is the Cold War, and the mutual distrust between east and west.
D) The Renaissance, which has been so important to the history of the west and the entire world, began when Constantinople, which was centered around the Hagia Sophia, was conquered by the Ottomans in 1453. Many of the scholars that had been based in the Hagia Sophia, the "House of Holy Wisdom", loaded all of the manuscripts that they could onto pack animals, and moved westward. This led to what could only be described as a "great awakening" in western Europe, what is now referred to as the Renaissance. The printing press was invented at just the right time to spread this rediscovered knowledge.
The impact of the Renaissance, which really began with the scholars who had been based in the Hagia Sophia, is simply incalculable. The way I see it, learning was done in ancient times, but then largely forgotten during the Middle Ages. The Renaissance was a multi-faceted rediscovery of these ancient classics and learning, that brought an atmosphere of progress and change. The Reformation brought that atmosphere of progress and change to religion. The Industrial Revolution was the bringing of that atmosphere of progress and change to technology. The Enlightenment was the bringing of that atmosphere of progress and change to science and reasoning. The French Revolution, and the American Revolution which shortly preceded it, was a bringing of that atmosphere of progress and change to politics. But it was ultimately rooted in events at the Hagia Sophia.
What I would like to do today is to see the great influence of the Hagia Sophia, by the many structures that were built to imitate it.
The following scenes are a reminder of what the inside and outside of the Hagia Sophia, the House of Holy Wisdom, looks like. The Ottomans built the Blue Mosque on an axis with the Hagia Sophia. Some ways to tell the difference is that the Hagia Sophia is partially red in color. The Blue Mosque has six minarets, while the Hagia Sophia has four, and the Blue Mosque has an internal courtyard. The Topkapi Palace is also nearby, this was the original residence of the Ottoman sultans.
There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0085903,28.9800356,3a,75y,124.42h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMKliiNu5k0bufOcuKL2QtQ06SOmsq0CqYMVvH4!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMKliiNu5k0bufOcuKL2QtQ06SOmsq0CqYMVvH4%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi0-ya21.749521-ro-0-fo100!7i7168!8i3584
Following are the imitations, which show the great influence of the Hagia Sophia, and sometimes that of it's lost sibling church, the Church of the Holy Apostles. The order of these imitation churches and buildings is approximately chronological. The Hagia Sophia, the House of Holy Wisdom, has not been a church for over 550 years, but we can still see it's tremendous influence in so many ways.
A) THE BASILICA OF ST. MARK IN VENICE
The Hagia Sophia was the largest church in the world for about a thousand years. It had a sibling church not far away called the Church of the Holy Apostles. After the Great Schism of the year 1054, the Hagia Sophia was the center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and it's rivalry with Roman Catholicism. It was attacked by Crusaders in the Fourth Crusade of 1204, and finally conquered by the Ottomans in 1453. The Ottomans re-purposed the Hagia Sophia into a mosque, and built four minarets around it. They then built the matching Blue Mosque facing it, to show that they too were capable of such architecture.
The First Hagia Sophia, the present one is the third, was built by the Roman emperor Constantine, for whom the city of Constantinople was named. Venice, once under the control of the Byzantines, is remembered for it's naval battles with the Ottomans after becoming an independent city-state. The Republic of Venice thrived on trade, and lasted altogether for around a thousand years. It's importance declined when the bulk of trade shifted toward the Atlantic, and it was finally brought to a conclusion by the conquests of Napoleon.
It was considered vital to have a secure theological foundation for the newly-important city-state. Two Venetian merchants managed to procure the bones of the apostle St. Mark from Alexandria in Egypt, where he had been martyred. What is now the Basilica of St. Mark, in Venice, was built and the sacred bones kept inside. Now one of the best-known basilicas in the world, it began not as a basilica or even a church, but as the chapel for the palace in Venice.
But the Basilica of St. Mark was built very much in the style of the Hagia Sophia, or it's sibling church the Church of the Holy Apostles, in Constantinople. Unlike the Hagia Sophia, which was re-purposed as a mosque upon the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453, or the Church of the Holy Apostles, which had fallen into disrepair and was razed by the Ottomans so that the present Fatih Mosque could be built on the site, the Basilica of St. Mark is still an active church.
This shows, once again, the great influence of the Hagia Sophia and it's sibling church. The Basilica of St. Mark, built in the same style, was built by the Venetians as their most important and best-known building.
We can see that the arches and the multiple domes on the roof of St. Mark's very much resemble those shown in the only known illustration that we have of the Church of the Holy Apostles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Apostles#/media/File:Kokkinobaphos_Holy_Apostles.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Veneza47.jpg
Here are the domes of the Basilica of St. Mark, as seen from above. You can see the resemblance to the Church of the Holy Apostles. The floor plan of the basilica is supposed to be based on the Church of the Holy Apostles. The two buildings to the south are the palace, with it's open courtyard. To the lower left is the clock tower:
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.4344715,12.3399595,133m/data=!3m1!1e3
Look at this mosaic, in the Basilica of St. Mark, and how much it resembles the Church of the Holy Apostles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Mosaico_traslazione_San_Marco_Venezia.JPG
To the Byzantines who built the Hagia Sophia, gold represented the Kingdom of God. Look at the following gold mosaics, on both the outside and the inside of St. Mark's Basilica, and then those in the Hagias Sophia.
These gold mosaics are in St. Mark's Basilica:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Veneza118.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Meister_der_Ikone_des_Erzengels_Michael_001_adjusted.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Venice_SMarco_Vault2.jpg
Now, look at some of the gold-backed mosaics in the Hagia Sophia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Hagia_Sophia_Imperial_Gate_mosaic_2.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Hagia_Sophia_Southwestern_entrance_mosaics_2.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Apse_mosaic_Hagia_Sophia_Virgin_and_Child.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Empress_Zoe_mosaic_Hagia_Sophia.jpg (The writing is Greek).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Comnenus_mosaics_Hagia_Sophia.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Johnchrysostom.jpg
To make it even easier to see how St. Mark's Basilica is yet another tribute to the Hagia Sophia, look at the structure of the inside of each. This is St. Mark's Basilica:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Veneto_Venezia2_tango7174.jpg
And this is the Hagia Sophia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Istanbul_036_(6498284165).jpg
Venice had a great attachment to its patron saint of St. Mark, surpassing even that of Ireland to St. Patrick. In Venice, St. Mark was everything. As one Venetian said, "You have two feet and you have St. Mark". When the Republic of Venice was finally coming to an end, the defiant cry was "Viva San Marco". Like no other Catholic place and it's patron saint, St. Mark was Venice.
But how did Venice honor the bones of St. Mark? With a virtual copy of the Hagia Sophia, and it's sibling church.
Why would the Venetians build a church for the bones of their venerated patron saint that so resembled the great churches of distant Constantinople, instead of those in the much-closer Rome? There was the original St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, where Charlemagne was crowned. The present St. Peter's Basilica was built to be the most important of churches only after the Hagia Sophia had fallen to the Moslems, and had been re-purposed as a mosque.
This shows, once again, the tremendous influence of the Hagia Sophia and it's sibling church, when they were still active churches. The Basilica of St. Mark was built before the split between Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, in 1054, so that the Hagia Sophia was still a Catholic church at the time. The idea of a church built over, or for, holy relics.of course goes back to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, over what the Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Churches believe includes both the crucifixion and burial sites of Jesus. Coincidentally, this church was commissioned by Helena, the mother of Constantine, the first Roman Emperor to become a Christian, and who built the original Hagia Sophia.
The importance of artifacts as symbolism in Venice, which venerated the bones of St. Mark and which is a close relation to the Vatican's basis of it's authority on being built over the bones of St. Peter, can be seen in the artifacts that were removed from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, and have been on prominent display in Venice ever since. The city of Constantinople was so important to the Venetians obviously because they know the Hagia Sophia, and it's sibling church, to be located there, of which their own Basilica of St. Mark was a copy. Ironically, Constantinople (now Istanbul) is the city that was named for the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine.
These artifacts taken by the Venetians from Constantinople, during the Fourth Crusade, include the Piraeus Lion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Venice#/media/File:Arsenale_(Venice)_-_First_Ancient_Greek_lion.jpg
The best-known artifact to have been removed from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade is, of course, the Horses of St. Mark. The four horses atop Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe du Caroussel, in Paris, is a copy of this. The original horses were removed from outside the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice, due to automotive air pollution, and placed inside the basilica. The four horses now on the outside of the basilica are another copy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_of_Saint_Mark#/media/File:Horses_of_Basilica_San_Marco_bright.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Veneza38.jpg
I think that it is safe to say that we can consider St. Mark's Basilica in Venice to be a western tribute to the great Hagia Sophia and it's long-destroyed sibling church, the Church of the Holy Apostles.
B) FATIH MOSQUE
When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453, they re-purposed the Hagia Sophia, which had been the largest church in the world for a thousand years, into a mosque, and built the four minarets around it. Then, to show that they too were capable of such architecture, they built the Blue Mosque along an axis with the Hagia Sophia.
The Hagia Sophia had the sibling church, known as the Church of the Holy Apostles, which we saw above. But that church, which had been the burial site of Byzantine royalty as well as the bones of three apostles, had fallen into disrepair. The Ottomans razed the church, and built what is now the Fatih Mosque in it's place. But I think that we can easily see that the Fatih Mosque was designed to look like the Church of the Holy Apostles, and it's sibling church, the Hagia Sophia.
Following are the illustration of the Church of the Holy Apostles, and then scenes beginning inside the Fatih Mosque. Near the Fatih Mosque is an ancient acqueduct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Apostles#/media/File:Kokkinobaphos_Holy_Apostles.jpg
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.019631,28.950022,3a,75y,99.99h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPAQL3CCkJWnyCK2wZyv8_ErAmFiip6C5GRLSVS!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPAQL3CCkJWnyCK2wZyv8_ErAmFiip6C5GRLSVS%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya229.147-ro0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352
C) ST. SOPHIA CATHEDRAL
The St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev is not designed as a replica of the Hagia Sophia, although there is a definite resemblance. But it is named for the Hagia Sophia. Remember that Vladimir, whose religious center was Kiev, chose the Byzantine rites of the then-Catholic Church as the religion of his land because the emissaries that he sent were so impressed with the Hagia Sophia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Sophia%27s_Cathedral,_Kiev#/media/File:Kij%C3%B3w_-_Sob%C3%B3r_M%C4%85dro%C5%9Bci_Bo%C5%BCej_02.jpg
D) TEKKIYE MOSQUE
The Tekkiye Mosque in Damascus, not far from the much-older Umayyad Mosque, is a sign of the Ottoman occupation of the city. The broad dome, modeled on the Hagia Sophia, is like announcing "The Ottomans Were Here".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekkiye_Mosque#/media/File:Takiyya_as-S%C3%BCleimaniyya_Mosque_01.jpg
E) CAIRO CITADEL
The most famous sight in Cairo, other than the Pyramids of Giza, is the Citadel. Atop the Citadel, the most prominent structure is the Mosque of Muhammad Ali. This was the founder of the Pasha Dynasty, which ruled Egypt after originating with the Ottomans. Pasha Egypt operated as a kind of an autonomous region of the Ottoman Empire, before eventually breaking away entirely. But the Ottoman connection explains why this copy of the Hagia Sophia is so prominent in Cairo.
https://www.google.com/maps/@30.0288255,31.2598311,3a,75y,139.66h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipOEblXWKf_rZbXetSYQ8m-LXb-HZ7qrRosVr68!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOEblXWKf_rZbXetSYQ8m-LXb-HZ7qrRosVr68%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi1.5280809-ya8.671044-ro0.07035197-fo100!7i5376!8i2688
F) WESTMINSTER CATHEDRAL AS A TRIBUTE TO THE HAGIA SOPHIA
Britain went to the Protestant side during the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, but did retain a significant proportion of Catholics. The center of British Catholicism today is Westminster Cathedral. This is not the same thing as the nearby, far older, and much better-known, Westminster Abbey.
Westminster Cathedral does not look like a typical northern European cathedral at all. It is actually designed to be a copy of Byzantine architecture. Remember that Byzantium was where the Hagia Sophia was built in Constantinople, which was the original center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and was where the split with Catholicism took place. Upon the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by the Ottomans, and it's re-naming as Istanbul, the center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity ended up in Moscow.
Why would the central cathedral of Catholicism in Britain, a country far to the west, be designed to look like the old churches in Byzantium? It is not a perfect copy of the Hagia Sophia, and is not extremely old, being opened in 1903. Was this cathedral meant as a symbol of reunion between eastern and western Christians?
Little more than a decade after the opening of this cathedral came the somewhat over-reaching British military landing at Gallipoli, in the First World War. With this cathedral in the public consciousness, as a semi-copy of the Hagia Sophia, was the landing, at least in part, an effort to liberate the Hagia Sophia? Remember the historic influence that Britain had been a prominent participant in the Crusades, and the Fourth Crusade in 1204 had temporarily restored Constantinople to western Christian, Catholic, control.
Later, just before the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople and the Hagia Sophia, Savoy had launched a counterattack, in landing at Gallipoli and temporarily recapturing it from the Ottomans. Did the presence of this then-new cathedral prompt Britain to land at Gallipoli and "finish the job"?
From the outside, Westminster Cathedral does not look at all like a British or northern European cathedral.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Westminster_Cathedral_at_Dusk,_London,_UK_-_Diliff.jpg
The interior of Westminster Cathedral invokes that of the Hagia Sophia. There are also many interior photos of the Hagia Sophia in the Wikipedia article about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_Cathedral#/media/File:Westminster_Cathedral_Nave,_London,_UK_-_Diliff.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_Cathedral#/media/File:Westminster_Cathedral,_London_-_02.jpg
Here, for comparison, is the interior of the Hagia Sophia itself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Istanbul_036_(6498284165).jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Apse_mosaic_Hagia_Sophia_Virgin_and_Child.jpg
There are far-ranging views of central London from the tower of the cathedral, which could be considered as congruent to the minarets around the Hagia Sophia. Three photos on the travel photos of Europe blog were taken from there.
This is looking north. The British Telecom Tower is in the center of the photo. Nearby Buckingham Palace, with the golden Victoria monument in front, is also seen from the side of the palace:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3879/3734/1600/dc_250887.jpg
This is looking south, toward the old Battersea Power Station. Many cities, including nearby Tonawanda, have such massive old coal-burning power plants that they do not really want to tear down, but are trying to figure out what to do with:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3879/3734/1600/dc_250888.jpg
This is looking east, toward the Parliament Buildings and Westminster Abbey. The Victoria Tower of the Parliament Buildings is to the right in the photo. The top of Big Ben can be seen behind the twin towers of Westminster Abbey, in the center of the photo. The distant dome of St. Paul's Cathedral can be seen at the upper right corner of the black building to the left of the photo:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3879/3734/1600/dc_250889.jpg
G) KRONSTADT
The magnificent Russian Navy Cathedral on Kronstadt Island, west of the city of St. Petersburg, is a very obvious, and maybe the best, tribute to the Hagia Sophia. Although it looks much more like the Hagia Sophia from the inside than from the outside.
https://www.google.com/maps/@59.9916778,29.777839,3a,75y,120.73h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipNxyNRqKs5lGo4f8K--2mHG1tKloj2VCHaZJ250!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipNxyNRqKs5lGo4f8K--2mHG1tKloj2VCHaZJ250%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya141.92317-ro0-fo100!7i5632!8i2816
H) CAIRO OPERA HOUSE
The opera house in Cairo was built long after the time of the Ottomans and the Pashas. I do not have a view of the inside, but the outside with the broad dome is a definite imitation of the Hagia Sophia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Opera_House#/media/File:Cairo_opera_house.jpg
I) THE "HEART OF CHECHNYA"
This is a mosque that was built in the style of the Blue Mosque, which was the matching mosque that the Ottomans built facing the Hagia Sophia, after their conquest of what is now Istanbul, to show that they were capable of such architecture too.
8) THE THEORY OF ST. GEORGE
How did this pervasive legend of St. George slaying the dragon come to be?
George is not a biblical name. There was a real St. George, he was a Roman legionnaire who was martyred for his Christian faith when being a Christian was still illegal.
There is a story in the Bible, in the Book of Revelation, about Satan, referred to as the Dragon, being thrown out of Heaven after he had rebelled against God. Satan was once the lead angel, named Lucifer, until he decided that he should be at least equal to God in power and authority. But it was the archangel Michael that ejected Satan, not anyone named George.
The following paragraph is the Bible quotation, copied and pasted from the Wikipedia article, "War in Heaven". It is quoting Revelation 12: 7-10
7 Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
So how did St. George get associated with doing battle with the Dragon, rather that Michael? I think I know the answer.
St. George had been a saint, due to his martyrdom, since Roman times. But he actually wasn't credited with battling the Dragon until the 11th Century. What does that tell us?
There was, of course, a major event in Christendom that took place in the 11th Century. That was the split between the Catholic Church and what would become the Eastern Orthodox Church, in 1054. A delegation was sent from Rome to meet with the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, in an attempt to reconcile with the increasingly independent-minded eastern part of the church.
They meeting, which took place at the Hagia Sophia, didn't go well. The delegation from Rome decided to excommunicate Michael Cerularius, who responded with his own excommunication against them. That began the split which has continued to the present day.
The split did not take place suddenly. Relations between the Catholic Church and it's eastern domains had been deteriorating for several centuries. The reason for the creation of the Holy Roman Empire, Charlemagne was crowned as it's first emperor in 800, was to unite in an effort to rein in the easterners.
Before the time of Michael Cerularius the best-known historical name from the eastern part of the church, known as Byzantium, had been the empress Theodora. It was her, with her husband Justinian, who had built the third structure on the site of the Hagia Sophia, the one which stands today.
There was also a Catholic saint, named St. Theodore, who was associated with battling a dragon. He was the patron saint of Venice. But he was abandoned and St. Mark was made the patron saint of Venice. His bones were procured from Egypt and brought to St. Mark's Basilica, where they remain today.
The reason for the replacement of St. Theodore by St. Mark is that St. Theodore was heavily associated with the east, with Byzantium, and Venice wanted to distance itself from Constantinople. 28 years after the Holy Roman Empire had been founded to rein in the eastern Christians, the bones of St. Mark were brought to Venice to replace St. Theodore, and the predecessor of St. Mark's Basilica was built to house them.
Why would it be that the story of St. George had been around since his martyrdom in Roman times but he was not credited with battling the dragon until the 11th Century, seven hundred years after his death?
The answer that I arrived at has to do with a name, the name of Michael. The Book of Revelation is clear that it was the archangel Michael that threw Satan, the Dragon, out of Heaven after he rebelled against God. But Michael was also the name of the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius.
The dispute he had with the representatives from Rome, which resulted in the splitting away of the Eastern Orthodox Church, was so acrimonious that the story ended up being transferred onto someone with a name other than Michael. St. George, like St. Theodore, was a military saint. Both had been Roman legionnaires that were martyred for their faith in the eastern domains of the Roman Empire.
But the western Christians, the Catholic Church based in Rome, did not associate St. George with the rebellious east as much as St. Theodore. So, the story of the battle with the Dragon was transferred to St. George.
It seems that many eastern Christians did not want the split, and efforts would be made to reconcile particularly during the time of the Crusades and when Byzantium was slowly being conquered by the Ottomans. The split would not really become permanent until the center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity moved northward, to Kiev and then to Moscow.
Not only was St. George, with the story of the Dragon, popular also in the east, but the country of Georgia was indirectly named for him and the country's regalia shows him battling the Dragon..
Here is a review of the world-changing events that happened at the Hagia Sophia, which is a very old structure and was the largest church in the world for about a thousand years..
A) The Nestorian Schism over christology, or the nature of Christ, originated with the excommunication of a priest named Nestorius, who insisted that the human and divine natures of Christ had to be completely separate. The Orthodox Chalcedonian Christians said that the divine and human natures had to be "two natures in one". But the Christians to the east never accepted this excommunication and they became known as the Nestorian Church.
It was this church which reached far to the east, sending missionaries to the Mongols and to China. Most importantly, it was the Nestorian Church which did most of the translating of western ideas and literature into Arabic for the House of Wisdom, under the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad. This is what did so much to keep knowledge and learning alive while the west was going through the "Dark Ages".
B) Prince Vladimir of Kiev chose the Byzantine rites of Christianity for the religion of his people, over the Roman Catholic rites, or Islam, or Judaism, simply because the emissary that he sent to investigate was so impressed with the Hagia Sophia. The Byzantine rites became the Eastern Orthodox Church, with different rites and organization from the Catholics to the west. The pope, trying to bring the eastern Christians back into line, founded the Holy Roman Empire, which he expected to control.
But the Holy Roman Empire turned out to be more of a rival to the power of the pope, and all of the developments which sprang from it are ultimately rooted in the Hagia Sophia. The Age of Discovery likely began with Spain and Portugal simply because they were not part of the Holy Roman Empire. The focus of the Holy Roman Empire was to the east, so these two countries were the first to think that there might be much to be discovered by sailing west. Hitler's "Third Reich" considered the Holy Roman Empire as the "First Reich", and they put it back together before confronting the Soviet Union, to the east, which was a modern secular version of the Holy Roman Empire being created to bring the eastern Christians back into line.
C) The split of the Christian Church, in the Schism of 1054, was the mutual excommunication of the pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople, who was based in the Hagia Sophia. Not long after, the Pope began the Crusades to regain the Holy Land from the Moslems. I am sure that it was the sudden loss of a large part of the church which prompted this decision. The east developed largely separately due to this split, and it's modern manifestation is the Cold War, and the mutual distrust between east and west.
D) The Renaissance, which has been so important to the history of the west and the entire world, began when Constantinople, which was centered around the Hagia Sophia, was conquered by the Ottomans in 1453. Many of the scholars that had been based in the Hagia Sophia, the "House of Holy Wisdom", loaded all of the manuscripts that they could onto pack animals, and moved westward. This led to what could only be described as a "great awakening" in western Europe, what is now referred to as the Renaissance. The printing press was invented at just the right time to spread this rediscovered knowledge.
The impact of the Renaissance, which really began with the scholars who had been based in the Hagia Sophia, is simply incalculable. The way I see it, learning was done in ancient times, but then largely forgotten during the Middle Ages. The Renaissance was a multi-faceted rediscovery of these ancient classics and learning, that brought an atmosphere of progress and change. The Reformation brought that atmosphere of progress and change to religion. The Industrial Revolution was the bringing of that atmosphere of progress and change to technology. The Enlightenment was the bringing of that atmosphere of progress and change to science and reasoning. The French Revolution, and the American Revolution which shortly preceded it, was a bringing of that atmosphere of progress and change to politics. But it was ultimately rooted in events at the Hagia Sophia.
F) When Constantinople, now Istanbul, was conquered by the Ottomans in 1453, they re-purposed the Hagia Sophia into a mosque, and built the four minarets around it. It had been the largest church in the world for about a thousand years, and was a great loss to Christianity. The Catholic Church set about planning a replacement, which would be the largest church in the world. The original St. Peter's Basilica, the one where Charlemagne had been crowned, had fallen into disrepair. A new St. Peter's Basilica would be built on the site.
To raise money, the church began selling what were known as indulgences. These were certificates, purchased for money, that stated that a person's sins had been forgiven. This outraged many people, particularly in northern Europe, and became perhaps the most prominent driving force of the Reformation, of which 2017 was the 500th anniversary of, and after which the world has never been the same since.
It all began in the Hagia Sophia.
7) IMITATIONS OF THE HAGIA SOPHIA
7) IMITATIONS OF THE HAGIA SOPHIA
The following scenes are a reminder of what the inside and outside of the Hagia Sophia, the House of Holy Wisdom, looks like. The Ottomans built the Blue Mosque on an axis with the Hagia Sophia. Some ways to tell the difference is that the Hagia Sophia is partially red in color. The Blue Mosque has six minarets, while the Hagia Sophia has four, and the Blue Mosque has an internal courtyard. The Topkapi Palace is also nearby, this was the original residence of the Ottoman sultans.
There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0085903,28.9800356,3a,75y,124.42h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMKliiNu5k0bufOcuKL2QtQ06SOmsq0CqYMVvH4!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMKliiNu5k0bufOcuKL2QtQ06SOmsq0CqYMVvH4%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi0-ya21.749521-ro-0-fo100!7i7168!8i3584
Following are the imitations, which show the great influence of the Hagia Sophia, and sometimes that of it's lost sibling church, the Church of the Holy Apostles. The order of these imitation churches and buildings is approximately chronological. The Hagia Sophia, the House of Holy Wisdom, has not been a church for over 550 years, but we can still see it's tremendous influence in so many ways.
A) THE BASILICA OF ST. MARK IN VENICE
The Hagia Sophia was the largest church in the world for about a thousand years. It had a sibling church not far away called the Church of the Holy Apostles. After the Great Schism of the year 1054, the Hagia Sophia was the center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and it's rivalry with Roman Catholicism. It was attacked by Crusaders in the Fourth Crusade of 1204, and finally conquered by the Ottomans in 1453. The Ottomans re-purposed the Hagia Sophia into a mosque, and built four minarets around it. They then built the matching Blue Mosque facing it, to show that they too were capable of such architecture.
The First Hagia Sophia, the present one is the third, was built by the Roman emperor Constantine, for whom the city of Constantinople was named. Venice, once under the control of the Byzantines, is remembered for it's naval battles with the Ottomans after becoming an independent city-state. The Republic of Venice thrived on trade, and lasted altogether for around a thousand years. It's importance declined when the bulk of trade shifted toward the Atlantic, and it was finally brought to a conclusion by the conquests of Napoleon.
It was considered vital to have a secure theological foundation for the newly-important city-state. Two Venetian merchants managed to procure the bones of the apostle St. Mark from Alexandria in Egypt, where he had been martyred. What is now the Basilica of St. Mark, in Venice, was built and the sacred bones kept inside. Now one of the best-known basilicas in the world, it began not as a basilica or even a church, but as the chapel for the palace in Venice.
But the Basilica of St. Mark was built very much in the style of the Hagia Sophia, or it's sibling church the Church of the Holy Apostles, in Constantinople. Unlike the Hagia Sophia, which was re-purposed as a mosque upon the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453, or the Church of the Holy Apostles, which had fallen into disrepair and was razed by the Ottomans so that the present Fatih Mosque could be built on the site, the Basilica of St. Mark is still an active church.
This shows, once again, the great influence of the Hagia Sophia and it's sibling church. The Basilica of St. Mark, built in the same style, was built by the Venetians as their most important and best-known building.
We can see that the arches and the multiple domes on the roof of St. Mark's very much resemble those shown in the only known illustration that we have of the Church of the Holy Apostles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Apostles#/media/File:Kokkinobaphos_Holy_Apostles.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Veneza47.jpg
Here are the domes of the Basilica of St. Mark, as seen from above. You can see the resemblance to the Church of the Holy Apostles. The floor plan of the basilica is supposed to be based on the Church of the Holy Apostles. The two buildings to the south are the palace, with it's open courtyard. To the lower left is the clock tower:
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.4344715,12.3399595,133m/data=!3m1!1e3
Look at this mosaic, in the Basilica of St. Mark, and how much it resembles the Church of the Holy Apostles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Mosaico_traslazione_San_Marco_Venezia.JPG
To the Byzantines who built the Hagia Sophia, gold represented the Kingdom of God. Look at the following gold mosaics, on both the outside and the inside of St. Mark's Basilica, and then those in the Hagias Sophia.
These gold mosaics are in St. Mark's Basilica:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Veneza118.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Meister_der_Ikone_des_Erzengels_Michael_001_adjusted.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Venice_SMarco_Vault2.jpg
Now, look at some of the gold-backed mosaics in the Hagia Sophia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Hagia_Sophia_Imperial_Gate_mosaic_2.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Hagia_Sophia_Southwestern_entrance_mosaics_2.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Apse_mosaic_Hagia_Sophia_Virgin_and_Child.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Empress_Zoe_mosaic_Hagia_Sophia.jpg (The writing is Greek).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Comnenus_mosaics_Hagia_Sophia.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Johnchrysostom.jpg
To make it even easier to see how St. Mark's Basilica is yet another tribute to the Hagia Sophia, look at the structure of the inside of each. This is St. Mark's Basilica:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Veneto_Venezia2_tango7174.jpg
And this is the Hagia Sophia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Istanbul_036_(6498284165).jpg
Venice had a great attachment to its patron saint of St. Mark, surpassing even that of Ireland to St. Patrick. In Venice, St. Mark was everything. As one Venetian said, "You have two feet and you have St. Mark". When the Republic of Venice was finally coming to an end, the defiant cry was "Viva San Marco". Like no other Catholic place and it's patron saint, St. Mark was Venice.
But how did Venice honor the bones of St. Mark? With a virtual copy of the Hagia Sophia, and it's sibling church.
Why would the Venetians build a church for the bones of their venerated patron saint that so resembled the great churches of distant Constantinople, instead of those in the much-closer Rome? There was the original St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, where Charlemagne was crowned. The present St. Peter's Basilica was built to be the most important of churches only after the Hagia Sophia had fallen to the Moslems, and had been re-purposed as a mosque.
This shows, once again, the tremendous influence of the Hagia Sophia and it's sibling church, when they were still active churches. The Basilica of St. Mark was built before the split between Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, in 1054, so that the Hagia Sophia was still a Catholic church at the time. The idea of a church built over, or for, holy relics.of course goes back to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, over what the Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Churches believe includes both the crucifixion and burial sites of Jesus. Coincidentally, this church was commissioned by Helena, the mother of Constantine, the first Roman Emperor to become a Christian, and who built the original Hagia Sophia.
The importance of artifacts as symbolism in Venice, which venerated the bones of St. Mark and which is a close relation to the Vatican's basis of it's authority on being built over the bones of St. Peter, can be seen in the artifacts that were removed from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, and have been on prominent display in Venice ever since. The city of Constantinople was so important to the Venetians obviously because they know the Hagia Sophia, and it's sibling church, to be located there, of which their own Basilica of St. Mark was a copy. Ironically, Constantinople (now Istanbul) is the city that was named for the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine.
These artifacts taken by the Venetians from Constantinople, during the Fourth Crusade, include the Piraeus Lion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Venice#/media/File:Arsenale_(Venice)_-_First_Ancient_Greek_lion.jpg
_-_First_Ancient_Greek_lion.jpg){kind=link}
The best-known artifact to have been removed from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade is, of course, the Horses of St. Mark. The four horses atop Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe du Caroussel, in Paris, is a copy of this. The original horses were removed from outside the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice, due to automotive air pollution, and placed inside the basilica. The four horses now on the outside of the basilica are another copy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_of_Saint_Mark#/media/File:Horses_of_Basilica_San_Marco_bright.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Veneza38.jpg
I think that it is safe to say that we can consider St. Mark's Basilica in Venice to be a western tribute to the great Hagia Sophia and it's long-destroyed sibling church, the Church of the Holy Apostles.
B) FATIH MOSQUE
When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453, they re-purposed the Hagia Sophia, which had been the largest church in the world for a thousand years, into a mosque, and built the four minarets around it. Then, to show that they too were capable of such architecture, they built the Blue Mosque along an axis with the Hagia Sophia.
The Hagia Sophia had the sibling church, known as the Church of the Holy Apostles, which we saw above. But that church, which had been the burial site of Byzantine royalty as well as the bones of three apostles, had fallen into disrepair. The Ottomans razed the church, and built what is now the Fatih Mosque in it's place. But I think that we can easily see that the Fatih Mosque was designed to look like the Church of the Holy Apostles, and it's sibling church, the Hagia Sophia.
Following are the illustration of the Church of the Holy Apostles, and then scenes beginning inside the Fatih Mosque. Near the Fatih Mosque is an ancient acqueduct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Apostles#/media/File:Kokkinobaphos_Holy_Apostles.jpg
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.019631,28.950022,3a,75y,99.99h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPAQL3CCkJWnyCK2wZyv8_ErAmFiip6C5GRLSVS!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPAQL3CCkJWnyCK2wZyv8_ErAmFiip6C5GRLSVS%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya229.147-ro0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352
C) ST. SOPHIA CATHEDRAL
The St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev is not designed as a replica of the Hagia Sophia, although there is a definite resemblance. But it is named for the Hagia Sophia. Remember that Vladimir, whose religious center was Kiev, chose the Byzantine rites of the then-Catholic Church as the religion of his land because the emissaries that he sent were so impressed with the Hagia Sophia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Sophia%27s_Cathedral,_Kiev#/media/File:Kij%C3%B3w_-_Sob%C3%B3r_M%C4%85dro%C5%9Bci_Bo%C5%BCej_02.jpg
D) TEKKIYE MOSQUE
The Tekkiye Mosque in Damascus, not far from the much-older Umayyad Mosque, is a sign of the Ottoman occupation of the city. The broad dome, modeled on the Hagia Sophia, is like announcing "The Ottomans Were Here".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekkiye_Mosque#/media/File:Takiyya_as-S%C3%BCleimaniyya_Mosque_01.jpg
E) CAIRO CITADEL
The most famous sight in Cairo, other than the Pyramids of Giza, is the Citadel. Atop the Citadel, the most prominent structure is the Mosque of Muhammad Ali. This was the founder of the Pasha Dynasty, which ruled Egypt after originating with the Ottomans. Pasha Egypt operated as a kind of an autonomous region of the Ottoman Empire, before eventually breaking away entirely. But the Ottoman connection explains why this copy of the Hagia Sophia is so prominent in Cairo.
https://www.google.com/maps/@30.0288255,31.2598311,3a,75y,139.66h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipOEblXWKf_rZbXetSYQ8m-LXb-HZ7qrRosVr68!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOEblXWKf_rZbXetSYQ8m-LXb-HZ7qrRosVr68%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi1.5280809-ya8.671044-ro0.07035197-fo100!7i5376!8i2688
F) WESTMINSTER CATHEDRAL AS A TRIBUTE TO THE HAGIA SOPHIA
Britain went to the Protestant side during the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, but did retain a significant proportion of Catholics. The center of British Catholicism today is Westminster Cathedral. This is not the same thing as the nearby, far older, and much better-known, Westminster Abbey.
Westminster Cathedral does not look like a typical northern European cathedral at all. It is actually designed to be a copy of Byzantine architecture. Remember that Byzantium was where the Hagia Sophia was built in Constantinople, which was the original center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and was where the split with Catholicism took place. Upon the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by the Ottomans, and it's re-naming as Istanbul, the center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity ended up in Moscow.
Why would the central cathedral of Catholicism in Britain, a country far to the west, be designed to look like the old churches in Byzantium? It is not a perfect copy of the Hagia Sophia, and is not extremely old, being opened in 1903. Was this cathedral meant as a symbol of reunion between eastern and western Christians?
Little more than a decade after the opening of this cathedral came the somewhat over-reaching British military landing at Gallipoli, in the First World War. With this cathedral in the public consciousness, as a semi-copy of the Hagia Sophia, was the landing, at least in part, an effort to liberate the Hagia Sophia? Remember the historic influence that Britain had been a prominent participant in the Crusades, and the Fourth Crusade in 1204 had temporarily restored Constantinople to western Christian, Catholic, control.
Later, just before the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople and the Hagia Sophia, Savoy had launched a counterattack, in landing at Gallipoli and temporarily recapturing it from the Ottomans. Did the presence of this then-new cathedral prompt Britain to land at Gallipoli and "finish the job"?
From the outside, Westminster Cathedral does not look at all like a British or northern European cathedral.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Westminster_Cathedral_at_Dusk,_London,_UK_-_Diliff.jpg
The interior of Westminster Cathedral invokes that of the Hagia Sophia. There are also many interior photos of the Hagia Sophia in the Wikipedia article about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_Cathedral#/media/File:Westminster_Cathedral_Nave,_London,_UK_-_Diliff.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_Cathedral#/media/File:Westminster_Cathedral,_London_-_02.jpg
Here, for comparison, is the interior of the Hagia Sophia itself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Istanbul_036_(6498284165).jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Apse_mosaic_Hagia_Sophia_Virgin_and_Child.jpg
There are far-ranging views of central London from the tower of the cathedral, which could be considered as congruent to the minarets around the Hagia Sophia. Three photos on the travel photos of Europe blog were taken from there.
This is looking north. The British Telecom Tower is in the center of the photo. Nearby Buckingham Palace, with the golden Victoria monument in front, is also seen from the side of the palace:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3879/3734/1600/dc_250887.jpg
This is looking south, toward the old Battersea Power Station. Many cities, including nearby Tonawanda, have such massive old coal-burning power plants that they do not really want to tear down, but are trying to figure out what to do with:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3879/3734/1600/dc_250888.jpg
This is looking east, toward the Parliament Buildings and Westminster Abbey. The Victoria Tower of the Parliament Buildings is to the right in the photo. The top of Big Ben can be seen behind the twin towers of Westminster Abbey, in the center of the photo. The distant dome of St. Paul's Cathedral can be seen at the upper right corner of the black building to the left of the photo:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3879/3734/1600/dc_250889.jpg
G) KRONSTADT
The magnificent Russian Navy Cathedral on Kronstadt Island, west of the city of St. Petersburg, is a very obvious, and maybe the best, tribute to the Hagia Sophia. Although it looks much more like the Hagia Sophia from the inside than from the outside.
https://www.google.com/maps/@59.9916778,29.777839,3a,75y,120.73h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipNxyNRqKs5lGo4f8K--2mHG1tKloj2VCHaZJ250!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipNxyNRqKs5lGo4f8K--2mHG1tKloj2VCHaZJ250%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya141.92317-ro0-fo100!7i5632!8i2816
H) CAIRO OPERA HOUSE
The opera house in Cairo was built long after the time of the Ottomans and the Pashas. I do not have a view of the inside, but the outside with the broad dome is a definite imitation of the Hagia Sophia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Opera_House#/media/File:Cairo_opera_house.jpg
I) THE "HEART OF CHECHNYA"
This is a mosque that was built in the style of the Blue Mosque, which was the matching mosque that the Ottomans built facing the Hagia Sophia, after their conquest of what is now Istanbul, to show that they were capable of such architecture too.
8) THE THEORY OF ST. GEORGE
How did this pervasive legend of St. George slaying the dragon come to be?
George is not a biblical name. There was a real St. George, he was a Roman legionnaire who was martyred for his Christian faith when being a Christian was still illegal.
There is a story in the Bible, in the Book of Revelation, about Satan, referred to as the Dragon, being thrown out of Heaven after he had rebelled against God. Satan was once the lead angel, named Lucifer, until he decided that he should be at least equal to God in power and authority. But it was the archangel Michael that ejected Satan, not anyone named George.
The following paragraph is the Bible quotation, copied and pasted from the Wikipedia article, "War in Heaven". It is quoting Revelation 12: 7-10
7 Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
So how did St. George get associated with doing battle with the Dragon, rather that Michael? I think I know the answer.
St. George had been a saint, due to his martyrdom, since Roman times. But he actually wasn't credited with battling the Dragon until the 11th Century. What does that tell us?
There was, of course, a major event in Christendom that took place in the 11th Century. That was the split between the Catholic Church and what would become the Eastern Orthodox Church, in 1054. A delegation was sent from Rome to meet with the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, in an attempt to reconcile with the increasingly independent-minded eastern part of the church.
They meeting, which took place at the Hagia Sophia, didn't go well. The delegation from Rome decided to excommunicate Michael Cerularius, who responded with his own excommunication against them. That began the split which has continued to the present day.
The split did not take place suddenly. Relations between the Catholic Church and it's eastern domains had been deteriorating for several centuries. The reason for the creation of the Holy Roman Empire, Charlemagne was crowned as it's first emperor in 800, was to unite in an effort to rein in the easterners.
Before the time of Michael Cerularius the best-known historical name from the eastern part of the church, known as Byzantium, had been the empress Theodora. It was her, with her husband Justinian, who had built the third structure on the site of the Hagia Sophia, the one which stands today.
There was also a Catholic saint, named St. Theodore, who was associated with battling a dragon. He was the patron saint of Venice. But he was abandoned and St. Mark was made the patron saint of Venice. His bones were procured from Egypt and brought to St. Mark's Basilica, where they remain today.
The reason for the replacement of St. Theodore by St. Mark is that St. Theodore was heavily associated with the east, with Byzantium, and Venice wanted to distance itself from Constantinople. 28 years after the Holy Roman Empire had been founded to rein in the eastern Christians, the bones of St. Mark were brought to Venice to replace St. Theodore, and the predecessor of St. Mark's Basilica was built to house them.
Why would it be that the story of St. George had been around since his martyrdom in Roman times but he was not credited with battling the dragon until the 11th Century, seven hundred years after his death?
The answer that I arrived at has to do with a name, the name of Michael. The Book of Revelation is clear that it was the archangel Michael that threw Satan, the Dragon, out of Heaven after he rebelled against God. But Michael was also the name of the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius.
The dispute he had with the representatives from Rome, which resulted in the splitting away of the Eastern Orthodox Church, was so acrimonious that the story ended up being transferred onto someone with a name other than Michael. St. George, like St. Theodore, was a military saint. Both had been Roman legionnaires that were martyred for their faith in the eastern domains of the Roman Empire.
But the western Christians, the Catholic Church based in Rome, did not associate St. George with the rebellious east as much as St. Theodore. So, the story of the battle with the Dragon was transferred to St. George.
It seems that many eastern Christians did not want the split, and efforts would be made to reconcile particularly during the time of the Crusades and when Byzantium was slowly being conquered by the Ottomans. The split would not really become permanent until the center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity moved northward, to Kiev and then to Moscow.
Not only was St. George, with the story of the Dragon, popular also in the east, but the country of Georgia was indirectly named for him and the country's regalia shows him battling the Dragon..
No comments:
Post a Comment