Thoughts on the Hagia Sophia

The reactions from the Orthodox world on the recent move by Turkey’s President Erdoğan to turn the greatest Orthodox cathedral in the world, the Hagia Sophia, from a museum back into a mosque, are worthy of some comment. The first and most palpable reaction was one of naked outrage, which is not surprising. Indeed, I was outraged myself. The Minister of Culture in Greece, Lina Mendoni, had this to say in a written statement:

Today’s decision, which came as a result of the political will of President (Tayyip) Erdogan, is an open provocation to the civilised world which recognises the unique value and œcumenical nature of the monument.

UNESCO, the UN-affiliated international organisation dedicated to the preservation of culturally-significant monuments and the material culture of humanity, also reacted to Erdoğan’s decision with profound regret and censure. The Hagia Sophia is part of the Historic Areas of Istanbul which are part of UNESCO’s World Heritage List. UNESCO decried the unilateral and precipitous nature of the cathedral’s conversion into exclusive use as a mosque, which it calls a breach of the 1972 convention on the preservation of such sites of outstanding universal value and historical importance, and called upon the Turkish government to reconsider its decision and open a dialogue.

Hagia Sophia is an architectural masterpiece and a unique testimony to interactions between Europe and Asia over the centuries. Its status as a museum reflects the universal nature of its heritage, and makes it a powerful symbol for dialogue… It is important to avoid any implementing measure, without prior discussion with UNESCO, that would affect physical access to the site, the structure of the buildings, the site’s moveable property, or the site’s management.

Metropolitan Ilarion (Alfeev) of Volokolamsk, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Department of External Church Relations, said this on behalf of the Moscow Patriarchate:

We regret, with great pain, that this decision was made today. This is a blow to the whole world of Orthodoxy, because for all Orthodox Christians around the world, the Hagia Sophia is a symbol with the same [value] as the Roman Catholic Basilica of St Peter in Rome. It has been repeatedly stated that the status of the Hagia Sophia is Turkey’s internal affair; Turkey decides what to do with this temple. Therefore, it is now obvious that Turkey did not want to compromise, and Turkey did not want to hear the voices of those Christian leaders and those of those political leaders who urged this decision not to be taken.

The Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in America also released a statement on the Hagia Sophia:

We protest the decision of the civil courts in Turkey, as well as the clear direction of their government, to re-convert Hagia Sophia into a mosque. As citizens of the United States of America, we implore our government to intervene for the reversal of this decision. Furthermore, we urge the Turkish government to return to the status quo whereby Hagia Sophia remains a museum, respecting both its origins and history.

By contrast, this unilateral action denies the universal vocation of this holy and sacred place. Hagia Sophia belongs to the whole of humanity as a World Heritage Site. Built in 537 AD during the reign of Emperor Justinian, it has been, for more than a millennium, a place of rich cultural and spiritual inspiration for all.

We are particularly concerned about the negative effects such a change will have on religious pluralism in Turkey, as well as on the relations among nations and between faith-based organizations. We call on the international community to invite the Turkish authorities to revise their decision, affording all people the opportunity to continue enjoying the full and rich history and beauty of this outstanding landmark. This unique Christian monument should remain open to all as a sign of co-existence and peace among all peoples of good will.

Suffice it to say, the Orthodox Christians of the world are not happy about this, and they have good reasons not to be. The Hagia Sophia is a powerful symbol of the great and sublime architectural beauty which the Eastern Roman state was capable of creating, and which the Orthodox Church still is capable of creating. But more than this, the conversion of one of the great holy sites of Orthodox Christianity into a Muslim mosque was a deliberate and præmeditated insult by the Turkish government against the religious and ethnic minorities within its borders. The Orthodox bishops may be constrained to express their dismay at this in diplomatic terms; I am under no such restriction. Therefore I will say it out loud:

If there was ever any doubt that Erdoğan is a petty, vindictive, opportunistic, five-and-dime tin-pot tyrant whose regional ambitions far outreach his modicum of political skill, and that his Ikhwân-flavoured intégrisme is nothing more than politics of ressentiment writ large - which there never should have been – let this story put them to rest at last.

This should not be the last word on the subject, however. I have also seen some rather unconscionable venting against Turks qua Turks over this, which is not going to be useful going forward if we Orthodox Christians are ever to get serious about carrying forward the message of Christ to the world which inspired the heights of creative endeavour represented by the Hagia Sophia in the first place. The beauty which the church offers is not for Greeks alone, any more than it is for Slavs or Arabs alone. If even a descendant of Gothic barbarians like yours truly can be drawn to the light, why should it be any less the case for a man or woman of Turkish descent?

The Orthodox Church’s hagiographical tradition is replete with Turkic and Tatar people who became, not only Orthodox, but Orthodox saints, who were glorified and deified, bathed in the uncreated light and everlastingly regenerated in the energies of Christ God. Many of these converted from Islâm and paid the ultimate price for their conversion. These include: the martyr Abraham of Bolgar (1229), the righteous prince Peter of the Golden Horde (1290), the holy abbot Pafnutii of Borovsk (1475), the martyrs Peter and Stephen of Kazan (1553), the holy abbot Serapion of Kozheozersk (1611), the hieromartyr Misail of Ryazan (1654), the martyr ’Ahmad the Calligrapher (1682) and the martyr Constantine of Smyrna (1819). Entire Turkic nations have converted en masse from Sunnî Islâm to Orthodox Christianity, including the Chuvash people of the Volga Basin after 1552, and the Gagauz people of Moldova at some point before 1812.

This is Orthodox history. These are the Lives of the Saints whom we venerate. This history judges and convicts the contemporary Orthodox obsessions with ethnic purism and nationalist mythmaking. These are themselves the result of the importation of nationalist ideology during the struggles for independence by the various peoples of the Balkans in the late nineteenth century. As Orthodox Christians we must actively make ourselves aware, at the level of practical politics and at the level of our face-to-face interactions, that these nationalist obsessions are fundamentally at odds with the deep convictions of the Church that nation and state are fundamentally separate.

None of this, of course, condones or excuses the unconscionably petty behaviour of Turkey’s president toward an important piece of the Byzantine cultural heritage. But: I speak this as a barbarian. Personally, my entry into the Orthodox Church was blessed by priests, like the late Fr Isaac Crow and Fr Elie Estephan of the Antiochian Church, and like Fr Valery Shurkin and Fr Sergiy Voronin of the Moscow Patriarchate, whose first and only words to me were those of love and welcome – not of condemnation or judgement. What comment they made upon the state of my mental health, the fallenness and brokenness which I brought with me into the Church, or the tyro enthusiasm which I occasionally demonstrated in my convert zeal – was all done in a spirit of gentle correction and reconciliation; they understood that repentance cannot be forced. Any missiology among the peoples who have been ‘our’ enemies in ages past must be undertaken in a similar spirit.

Famously, the beauty of the Hagia Sophia, when it was related back to Prince Vladimir of the Kievan Rus’ by heralds who ‘knew not whether [they] were in heaven or on earth’, was the deciding factor in the baptism of the Rus’. The loss of a thing of beauty is absolutely something to be lamented. But is this beauty something which may be bound inside a building? Is this beauty something which may never be repeated? Is this beauty something which can be destroyed or disfigured permanently by those enemies which can destroy the body? I would answer that, emphatically, no. That beauty consists in Christ, Who could not be defeated even by Death, but Who by His death trampled down Death. We may justly lament this abuse of the Hagia Sophia; we may not forget that Love which inspired the Hagia Sophia’s construction in the first place. We may justly consider the ideology which prompted this abuse to be at enmity with God; but we may not allow ourselves to believe that this ideology is solely the property of ‘those wicked people over there’ – as though I, a sinner, am any better! We may justly condemn, and resist, and even fight the decision of the Turkish president to turn it into a mosque; we must not allow ourselves to believe – even passively – that the Turks are somehow beyond the reach of Christ.