not the Chora church, with the finest surviving Byzantine mosaics and frescoes in Constantinople!

oh my heart. https://ahvalnews.com/chora/turkey-re-converts-istanbuls-chora-church-museum-mosque

this is even more upsetting for me, as the Chora church was part of a monastery complex founded by Theodore Metochites. i was desk editor for the first modern edition of his Introduction to Astronomy, with the Greek text, translation and commentary. https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/10378

here’s a mosaic depicting Metochites offering the church to Christ. the mosaic is above the main door to the nave of the church. look at that fabulous turban, in a style taken from Turco-Mongol fashion, which was much in vogue in the last dynasty of the empire.

i was 15 when i saw that mosaic. that trip to Constantinople started a lifelong love affair w Byzantium. i wasn’t in Rome till i was 16, and Athens till i was 24.

the 15yo gazing at Teddy’s turban could not have imagined himself editing T’s work one day. life is funny that way.

as grand logothete (prime minister) gazing at the mosaic of himself, T probably never imagined he would spend his last years there in disgrace as a monk, nor that his book, which includes a refutation of the flat earth idea (!) would be published in Singapore, 700 years on.