Posted on 08/13/2020 8:05:43 AM PDT by Cronos
Frescoes Of The Last Judgment And Below The Patriarchs And Bishops, Church Of The Holy Saviour In Chora; Istanbul, Turkey.
Peter Langer/Design Pics via ZUMA Wire
Now that Turkey has turned Hagia Sophia in Istanbul back into a mosque, concern is rising that the same fate awaits another Orthodox church there with some of the most beautiful mosaics and frescos in the Christian world.
The interior of Holy Saviour in Chora, a medieval Byzantine church in western Istanbul that is now a museum, is covered with Bible scenes and portraits of Jesus and the saints dating back to the fourteenth century.
The Ottoman Turks turned Chora into a mosque half a century after their conquest of Constantinople in 1453, hiding its rich artwork under a layer of plaster because Islam bans iconic images.
After the Second World War, then-secular Turkey changed it into the Kariye Museum and allowed American experts to restore it to its old glory. The unique mosaics and frescos have been on display since 1958.
...Before converting Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia, French historian Fabrice Monnier noted, Turkey had already turned two church-museums back into mosques in recent years, the artistically less notable Hagia Sophia buildings in Iznik, formerly Nicaea, and Trabzon.
Holy Saviour in Chora is different, he told Le Figaro. "Its beautiful mosaics and frescos cover almost all the church's walls and domes," he said. "It would be hard to imagine it being returned into a mosque without totally covering them over."
...Erdogan’s AK party lost the Istanbul mayoral election to a secularist politician last year, a defeat analysts say prompted the Turkish leader to appeal to pious Muslim voters by reconverting church-museums into mosques.
(Excerpt) Read more at thetablet.co.uk ...
That's the "Harrowing of Hell" on Holy Saturday, not the Last Judgement. The people being helped out of their sarcophagi by Jesus are Adam and Eve.
ping
I’ve been there.
The fresco’s are beautiful.
It’s close to the Land Walls of Constantinople.
you are correct Campion
I’m now reading, A Sword on the Nile. It gives the history of the 1,400 years of Muslim persecution against Egyptian Christians. Erdogan is doing what they have done for many centuries.
Constantinople
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