Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor)WHILE promoting itself as a key multicultural city in its bid to become Europe’s 2016 Capital of Culture, Cordoba has scored an own goal.
It comes after the Bishop of Cordoba launched a bid of his own: To rename the city’s mosque, or ‘Mezquita’ as a cathedral.
Demetrio Fernandez insists that the existing name ‘Mezquita-Catedral’ is confusing.
He argues that it was first built as a cathedral in 600AD before the Moorish conquest and that it is the Catholic Church that pays for its upkeep.
It was later during the Moorish conquest in 784AD that it was converted to a mosque.
It has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1984.
Surely the bishop of Cordoba would not say something so unhistorical; the church that preceded the Mezquita was demolished to build the Mezquita just as the Pagan Temple that was originally on the site was demolished to build the church. The present building was built by the Moors on the site of the previous cathedral, the site is said to have been bought from the Church though one wonders if that was a completely voluntary sale. The only part of the Mezquita that was built as a church is the 16th Centaury implant in the centre of the main body of the Moorish building.
It would be better to remove the 16th Century church implant and reconstruct it elsewhere as Cordoba’s cathedral; restore the Mezquita to its original state and then either make it secular museum or come to an arrangement with Turkey whereby the Mezquita becomes a mosque/museum and St Sophia in Istanbul, the historic cathedral church of the Patriarch of Constantinople, becomes an Orthodox church/museum. This would promote better relations between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church and between Christianity and Islam.