[Magdalen] Divine Wisdom.

[Cantor03 at aol.com]

I was browsing the various Ottoman style mosques of Istanbul  yesterday.
They all have the Church/Mosque/Museum of Hagia Sophia as their  ultimate
inspiration, and they are my favorite Islamic architecture.
 
Istanbul has wisely kept highrise towers away from the old section of  the
City where all these mosques are located.  They date from the fifth  century
(Hagia Sophia) through the 17th century.  There was a remarkable  frenzy
of building these mosques in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
 
In any case, I discovered that the Hagia Sophia = Divine Wisdom  refers
to the SECOND person of the Holy Trinity, and NOT the third person,  as
I've always thought.  I also was reminded that Hagia Sophia did not  have
an iconostasis (which was a later development in the East), but rather  a
see-through screen with superimposed statues (the disappearance of
3-dimensional images was a later thing, too), much like the present
Cathedral/Basilica of Saint Mark in Venice.
 
In my travels I missed Istanbul.  C'est dommage!
 
 
David Strang.