From the Mouth of Angels: Folkloric Hagia Sophia

Benjamin Anderson · 2024

Accounts of the prominence of Hagia Sophia in Greek folklore have (under the influence of Michael Herzfeld’s study <italicOurs Once More</italic) emphasized irredentism: the desire, especially among intellectuals in the Kingdom of Greece, that the building be converted back into a church.

Type:
Book Chapter
Author:
Benjamin Anderson
Published:
2024
Publisher:
Edinburgh University Press

Accounts of the prominence of Hagia Sophia in Greek folklore have (under the influence of Michael Herzfeld’s study <italic>Ours Once More</italic>) emphasized irredentism: the desire, especially among intellectuals in the Kingdom of Greece, that the building be converted back into a church. This chapter reveals a different discourse, characteristic of the Greek communities of Constantinople, according to which a secret mass continued to be celebrated in the building despite its overt conversion to Muslim use. Hagia Sophia, in short, had never stopped being a church. Focusing on four authors (Patriarch Konstantios I, Skarlatos Byzantios, Jean Nicolaïdès and Eugène Michael Antoniades), this article explores how the emerging discourse of “folklore” provided a distinctive means for loyal Ottoman subjects to articulate the continuing Christian identity of Hagia Sophia.

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What is "From the Mouth of Angels: Folkloric Hagia Sophia" about?
Accounts of the prominence of Hagia Sophia in Greek folklore have (under the influence of Michael Herzfeld’s study <italicOurs Once More</italic) emphasized irredentism: the desire, especially among intellectuals in the Kingdom of Greece, that the building be converted back into a church.
Who wrote "From the Mouth of Angels: Folkloric Hagia Sophia"?
Benjamin Anderson