July 13, 2020

My Kingdom for a Church


My Kingdom for a Church
Fun fact: the Hagia Sophia was the world's largest building for nearly a thousand years. Dennis Jarvis, Wikimedia Commons

Here's a historical debate for the ages: the Russian Orthodox Church's Metropolitan Hilarion  recently decried the Turkish government's plan to turn the Hagia Sophia back into a mosque. The Metropolitan called the plan "unacceptable": "we can't go back to the Middle Ages now." And with the handing down of a Turkish court decision Friday, which would allow for the chuch's conversion, religious Russians may become even more rankled.

You may be wondering why the Russian Orthodox Church cares. The answer is complicated.

Hagia Sophia was built as a cathedral in the sixth century, when Instanbul (then Constantinople) was the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Russia's brand of Orthodoxy reached Kievan Rus' in the tenth century from Constantinople, and religious, political, and trade ties between the two were myriad. In fact, many of the pieces of graffiti in the Hagia Sophia (including these) may have been left by people from medieval Russia.

When Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453, the Turks turned the church into a mosque by removing the cross on top of the dome, adding four minarets, and plastering over the Christian mosaics inside.

In the early twentieth century, when the Ottoman Empire secularized itself into the Republic of Turkey, the Hagia Sophia was secularized into a museum, and is now a major attraction and site of veneration. It became a protected UNESCO site in 1985. The modern Turkish government, however, argues sovereignty.

For now, Russia might have to make do with its own eleventh-century Sophia cathedral.

You Might Also Like

Sophia Paleologue
  • March 01, 2013

Sophia Paleologue

History offered Zoe Paleologue little hope. Her homeland overrun, her royal pedigree in tatters... And then the Tsar of all the Russias needed a new wife...
Orthodox-Catholic Summit
  • February 14, 2016

Orthodox-Catholic Summit

This week, Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill met in Havana. Why was this such a big deal?
Saints Cyril and Methodius
  • May 24, 2017

Saints Cyril and Methodius

A few words about two brothers who rejected their family's wealth and became known as the Apostles of the Slavs. They never visited Russia, but they translated the Gospel into Slavonic.
Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

Chekhov Bilingual

Chekhov Bilingual

Some of Chekhov's most beloved stories, with English and accented Russian on facing pages throughout. 
At the Circus (bilingual)

At the Circus (bilingual)

This wonderful novella by Alexander Kuprin tells the story of the wrestler Arbuzov and his battle against a renowned American wrestler. Rich in detail and characterization, At the Circus brims with excitement and life. You can smell the sawdust in the big top, see the vivid and colorful characters, sense the tension build as Arbuzov readies to face off against the American.
The Little Golden Calf

The Little Golden Calf

Our edition of The Little Golden Calf, one of the greatest Russian satires ever, is the first new translation of this classic novel in nearly fifty years. It is also the first unabridged, uncensored English translation ever, and is 100% true to the original 1931 serial publication in the Russian journal 30 Dnei. Anne O. Fisher’s translation is copiously annotated, and includes an introduction by Alexandra Ilf, the daughter of one of the book’s two co-authors.
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar is a hilarious and insightful memoir by a diplomat who was “present at the creation” of US-Soviet relations. Charles Thayer headed off to Russia in 1933, calculating that if he could just learn Russian and be on the spot when the US and USSR established relations, he could make himself indispensable and start a career in the foreign service. Remarkably, he pulled it of.
The Samovar Murders

The Samovar Murders

The murder of a poet is always more than a murder. When a famous writer is brutally stabbed on the campus of Moscow’s Lumumba University, the son of a recently deposed African president confesses, and the case assumes political implications that no one wants any part of.
White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

This is the work that made Chekhov, launching his career as a writer and playwright of national and international renown. Retranslated and updated, this new bilingual edition is a super way to improve your Russian.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955