by Katherine Kelaidis | ქართული | Ελληνικά | Русский | Српски The Brothers Karamazov is unarguably one of the greatest pieces of prose fiction ever written. It is also a distinctly Orthodox novel, that is to say a novel infused with the theology, customs, and culture of the Orthodox Church. Much of the work of…
Continue readingFolklife and the Authenticity Politics of Orthodox Culture Creation
by Nic Hartmann | български | ქართული | Ελληνικά | Română | Русский | Српски Orthodox culture is alive and well. It is in the loaves of bread that are lovingly made by a Lebanese grandmother for her son’s birthday. It is in our Pascha baskets, our children’s hilarious mispronunciations of “Christ is Risen” in…
Continue readingThe Virtual and Spiritual Networks of Hagia Sophia
by Robert Nelson | ქართულ | Ελληνικά | Română | Русский | Српски Like all Byzantine art historians, I am concerned about the conversion this year of Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Not being able to travel because of the pandemic, I only know about the current state of the building from images on the…
Continue reading">Getting Along in Hard Times
The "Sad" Microcosm of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
by V. Rev. Dr. Stelyios Muksuris | български | ქართული | Ελληνικά | Русский | Српски One afternoon last week, a wave of profound sadness came over me, prompted by a video I had viewed. A fairly new documentary on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also known as the Church of the Resurrection (or…
Continue readingThe Meaning of Hagia Sophia: A Traveler’s Perspective
The church of Hagia Sophia was the preeminent monument of Christian architecture and an active church for almost a millennium until the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, when the clergy and people were slaughtered as they celebrated their last Liturgy. Hagia Sophia was used as a mosque for Muslim prayers until 1934, when the new…
Continue readingGeorge Seferis and the Freedom of Tradition
by Christopher Howell | ελληνικά “I belong to a small country,” said the great Greek poet George Seferis in his Nobel Prize winning speech in 1963. “It is small, but its tradition is immense.” As wrangling over the word “tradition” has become an idle pastime, particularly on that domain of debauchery known as social media,…
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