A Portrait of Mary You’ve Never Seen

The first time I saw this portrait of Mary at Chora church in Istanbul, I had no idea what to make of it. Questions flooded my mind: What did it mean? Was there any significance in it’s placement over the door exiting the church? And most confounding: Why was Jesus holding a baby swaddled in white? Who was the infant in the Savior’s arms?

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Veneration is not Humiliation: A Theological Interpretation of the Mosaic over the Imperial Door of the Hagia Sophia

“If one called this day the beginning and day of Orthodoxy (lest I say something excessive), one would not be far wrong. For though the time is short since the pride of the iconoclastic heresy has been reduced to ashes, and true religion has spread its light to the ends of the world, fired like…

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