The Hagia Sophia

@philokalia said
Would it be absurd to hope for increased democratization in Turkey, and that the secular government would eventually allow the reconsecration of the Cathedral to correct past wrongs?

Maybe they will do that. So?

@fmf said
I am not "pivoting". I am standing in my crease and carving your deflections over cow corner, over and over again. It's not "pivoting" at all.

You miss your most obvious pivot:

taking a comment about the Hagia Sophia and using the word choice to play armchair psychologist.

@fmf said
Maybe they will do that. So?

In what world do you live in where the Christians, regaining rights to the Hagia Sophia, would tear it down to build a different Cathedral?

The idea is completely absurd.

Do you think... that the Hagia Sophia standing there today is simply built on the site that a Cathedral once was? What's your logic here?

@philokalia said
Thus, it reverting to a mosque is upsetting, and when Orthodox Christianity is your religion, it is upsetting in a personal way.

I don't see anything wrong with being upset about it reverting to being a mosque and/or it not being a museum anymore and/or it not, once again, being what it was 560 years ago; "upset", I get. But "personally insulted"? Gosh.

@divegeester said
Did you alert this post Philokalia?

Oh dear...

@philokalia said
Do you think... that the Hagia Sophia standing there today is simply built on the site that a Cathedral once was? What's your logic here?

My logic is that it became a mosque 560 years ago that that claiming to be "personally insulted" by that in 2020 is tawdry posturing. And from a recent convert, it sounds a bit ludicrous. Upset. Caring. Appalled. Disapproving. Impatient. Hopeful. Disappointing. Fine. But "personally insulted"?

@philokalia said
In what world do you live in where the Christians, regaining rights to the Hagia Sophia, would tear it down to build a different Cathedral?

You'll have to tell me what you are on about. You've posed this as a question, but it means nothing to me. What thing is it in your head you want me to address?

@philokalia said
You miss your most obvious pivot:

taking a comment about the Hagia Sophia and using the word choice to play armchair psychologist.

You claimed to be "personally insulted". That strikes me as being an odd affect of having converted to a new religion. It's more interesting than talking about architecture. If I had attempted to shift to architecture, now that might have been "pivoting". As for 'psychology", alas it is an integral element in the formation of belief and what belief makes us say and do. It's not off-topic in the slightest.

@philokalia said
Jim Chapman made a podcast back in 2010 entitled

Being a Christian is Very Personal

And Fred Scuttle wrote "Being a Christian is not personal"

1 - 1

@philokalia said
If I remember right, it was planned after a great fire had destroyed and depopulated much of Constantinople.

Hesychius of Miletus wrote that Constantine built Hagia Sophia with a wooden roof, and removed 427 (mostly pagan) statues from the site.

I'm personally insulted that those statues were removed!

From your source
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia

@wolfgang59 said
Hesychius of Miletus wrote that Constantine built Hagia Sophia with a wooden roof, and removed 427 (mostly pagan) statues from the site.

I'm personally insulted that those statues were removed!

From your source
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia

The actual Hagia Sophia that we see today is the third Basilica built in that place -- it was built after the great fire during the Nika revolt:

On 23 February 532, only a few weeks after the destruction of the second basilica, Emperor Justinian I decided to build a third and entirely different basilica, larger and more majestic than its predecessors. It was designed by Anthemius of Tralles, and Isidore of Miletus.

It is not the same building as the one before. The Hagia Sophia as it stands today was never a pagan temple.

@philokalia said
The actual Hagia Sophia that we see today is the third Basilica built in that place -- it was built after the great fire during the Nika revolt:

[quote]On 23 February 532, only a few weeks after the destruction of the second basilica, Emperor Justinian I decided to build a third and entirely different basilica, larger and more majestic than its predecessors. It was desi ...[text shortened]... t the same building as the one before. The Hagia Sophia as it stands today was never a pagan temple.

But it's on the site of one.
That site was sacred until desecrated by those damn Christians.

I'm personally upset.
Just can't seem to get over it.

@philokalia said
The actual Hagia Sophia that we see today is the third Basilica built in that place --

But as you have explained it is not the building that is important.
It is the spiritual/religious importance of the site.

@wolfgang59 said
But it's on the site of one.
That site was sacred until desecrated by those damn Christians.

I'm personally upset.
Just can't seem to get over it.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate continues to exist in that exact same city, and the building originally built to be the greatest Cathedral in the world (a task which it fulfilled and can arguably still fulfill to this day) still exists right in that city.

Roman paganism was on its last legs prior to the temple even being cleared of those statues a hundred years before the construction of the Hagia Sophia.

Moreover, the removal of pagan statues is according to only one author. It is also said to be 'mostly pagan statues,' and whether there ever functioned as a pagan temple on that site is perhaps up for debate.

Pagans today would not even know how to worship in the manner of pagans of that era.

But sure, if you are a pagan, or just someone who is anti-Christian, yuo can feel personally upset by it. I do not mind. ^^

@wolfgang59 said
But as you have explained it is not the building that is important.
It is the spiritual/religious importance of the site.

When did I say that the building is not important?