Ecumenical Patriarchate Ottomans Turks and Islam

In 1453 the Ottoman Sultan conquered Constantinople, and transformed the Byzantine capital into the Ottoman city of Istanbul. He ended 1200 years of Christian hegemony, and symbolically appropriated Hagia Sophia for Islam. But what happened to the second most important church of the Byzantine city, the church of the Holy Apostles, which was not only an architectural masterpiece – the model for San Marco in Venice – but the pantheon of the Byzantine Emperors? It has long been a controversy, but recent research has revealed how Mehmed’s response was more complex and intriguing than imagined. It was a response not only to a building, but to Byzantium’s imperial past.

With the conquest of Constantinople by Mohammed II in 1453 a new era starts with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, that lost its freedom under Ottoman rule. The dialogue of the Popes with the Patriarchs became more difficult and slowly worsened till the point of rebaptism. It was the Ecumenical Patriarch Joachim III in 1902 to open the Greek Church to the Ecumenical movement, but the Roman Church did not accept dialogue till the Pope Pius XII who died in 1958.

Αντικείμενο του βιβλίου είναι το ζήτημα των μεταρρυθμίσεων στο χώρο του Οικουμενικού Πατριαρχείου και πιο συγκεκριμένα το πρόβλημα της ερμηνείας των Γενικών Κανονισμών , οι οποίοι επηρέασαν τη διαδικασία ανασυγκρότησης του ορθόδοξου μιλλέτ . Η μελέτη δεν περιορίζεται στην ανάλυση του κειμένου των Κανονισμών, αλλά διερευνά το πολιτικό πεδίο που συγκρότησε ο καταρτισμός τους. Οδηγεί έτσι, όχι μόνο σε πλούσιο πρωτογενές υλικό, αλλά και σε συμπεράσματα που φωτίζουν σημαντικές πλευρές της ζωής της ελληνορθόδοξης κοινότητας στην Κωνσταντινούπολη. Πιο συγκεκριμένα, οι στόχοι της εργασίας είναι:
- Να αναλύσει τι πολιτικές και κοινωνικές προϋποθέσεις της ανασυγκρότησης του ορθόδοξου μιλλέτ, ξεκινώντας από τα δίκτυα ισχύος και τις ομάδες συμφερόντων που συγκροτήθηκαν ήδη από τη δεκαετία του 1830.
- Να εξετάσει διεξοδικά το σχηματισμό των δύο πτερύγων , της κληρικαλικής και της μεταρρυθμιστικής και την αντιπαράθεσή τους κατά τις εργασίες του Εθνικού Προσωρινού Συμβουλίου.
- Να περιγράψει και να ερμηνεύσει το πεδίο πολιτικών ανταγωνισμών, όπως διαμορφώθηκε στο Πατριαρχείο, μετά τη ψήφιση των Γενικών Κανονισμών.
Σύμφωνα με την ερμηνεία που επιχειρείται εδώ, η ενδεχόμενη «λαϊκοποίηση» της Εκκλησίας δεν σημαίνει απαραίτητα και μια ώθηση στη διαδικασία εκκοσμίκευσης, δηλαδή, στη θεμελιακή διάκριση της θρησκευτικής από την πολιτική σφαίρα . Κι αυτό δεν οφείλεται τόσο στην αδυναμία του λαϊκού στοιχείου να επιβάλει την παρουσία του στον εκκλησιαστικό κόσμο, όσο στην ικανότητα του κλήρου να εγκολπώνεται τα «κοσμικά» ιδεολογικά σχήματα, συμμετέχοντας στη διαμόρφωση της δημόσιας σφαίρας που υπό κανονικές συνθήκες θα έπρεπε να τον περιθωριοποιήσει.

«De l’intronisation du métropolite Théoctiste Ier au sacre d’Étienne III le Grand», in: Ştefan cel Mare şi Sfânt, Atlet al credinţei creştine, Putna, 2004, p. 337-374.

Continuing our 1999 study on the unionist and anti-unionist currents born in Moldova after the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-1439), we renew the analysis of the bitter conflict between these two directions in Moldavia after 1448. The Metropolitan Theoctist I (1453-1478) -- who was, according to the tradition recorded by Demetrius Cantemir, consecrated deacon by Markos Eugenikos himself -- emerges in this context as embodying the anti-unionist current. This churchman's politics is essential in understanding the coming to the throne of the most important prince of Moldavia, Stephen III (1457-1504). In standing for the first time against the historiographical myth of a fictitious "autocephaly" (independence) of the Church of Moldavia,  we highlight - on the basis of a patriarchal manual attesting the correspondence between Prince Stephen III and the Great Church and the sultanal berats granted to the Ecumenical Patriarchs in 1483 and 1525 - that Metropolitan Theoctist I actually maintained jurisdictional relations with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Almost two decades after the publication of this study, it can be seen that Romanian historiography, caught between deontological gaps and obstinate production of fictions, is yet unable to assimilate its conclusions.

N.B. The study "Teoctist I şi ungerea domnească a lui Ştefan cel Mare",  in : Românii în Europa medievală (între Orientul bizantin şi Occidentul latin). Studii in onoarea Profesorului Victor Spinei, éd. D. Ţeicu, I. Cândea, Brăila: Istros, 2008, p. 303-416 deepens and clarifies our study published in 2004.

Rome hérétique ? Sur les décisions des conciles de Moscou et de Constantinople (1589, 1590 et 1593), in: A. Girard et B. Schmitz (éd.), De l’Église aux Églises : réflexions sur le schisme aux Temps modernes, [= Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, 126-2 (2014)], p. 275-288.

The article reexamines the question of the foundation of the patriarchate of Moscow (1589), endorsed by the councils of Constantinople in 1590 and 1593. This problem has been treated as a purely Russian matter, and as a natural extension of imperial claims after consecration of Ivan IV as tsar in 1547. Historiography has focused on the claims of the Russian Church to occupy third place in the pentarchy and the refusal of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to give it any other place than the fifth. But this also implied that the first place of the pentarchy was now occupied by Constantinople, excluding completely and definitively the Church of Rome, considered to be fallen in the Apollinariste heresy. The article analyzes the circumstances that forced the Patriarchate of Constantinople, in the second half of the 16th century, to take the irremediable nature of the schism with the papacy into account and to exclude the Church of Rome out of the pentarchy.

The relation between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Neomartyrs remains an issue of special interest for the modern research. Through the study of edited and unedited neomartyrological and historical texts we come to the conclusion that some of the Ecumenical Patriarchs and the patriarchal officials during the long period of Ottoman occupation played an important role for the promotion of the neomartyrs as true saints of the Orthodox Church and real models for resistance to the often violent efforts of the muslim Ottoman authorities for the islamization of the christian populations. We first present the relevant information for three patriarchal officials (Manuel Corinthios, Meletios Syrigos and John Karyofyllis) who wrote a number of hagiographic and hymnographic works for neomartyrs of their own times. Moreover we know that four Patriarchs, Niphon II, Gabriel III Bardalis, Sophronios II and Gregorios V, are testified to be closely connected with eleven neomartyrs, especially during their residence at Mount Athos (the three of them) or to be involved with the writing of their passions and offices for the establishment of their feasts in the orthodox calendar. We also focuse our research on some of still unedited or little known neomartyrological texts which add new information about the exact places where the neomartyrs were executed in Constantinople and help us to construct a more clear picture of the “topography of the martyrdom” of the city and its hinterland. As a contribution to the issue “Ecumenical Patriarchate and Neomartyrs”, we edit two unedited texts: i) A letter of the athonite elder Dionysios to the patriarchal grand Logothete John Karyofyllis at 1685, which relates to the presence of Karyofyllis’ valuable neomartyrological collection in the Library of the athonite Skete of Saint Anna. ii) A metrical Passio of the ex-muslim neomartyr Mechmed (or Achmed) efendi at the last years of the seventeenth century and a related narration for a turkish man who was initiated by the Patriarch himself, written by the prominent scholar and monk of the eigthteenth century Kaisarios Dapontes, who inserted this narration to his unedited works Φανάρι Γυναικῶν and Βίβλος Βασιλειῶν.

What are the main motives that inspire the Turkish Republic's treatment of the Ecumenical Patriarchate? Two main Leitmotivs can be found. The paper also includes a general overview on the history of the Ecumenical Patriarchate; from its creation in the Roman Empire, until the creation of the Turkish Republic. The Paper then continues discussing the policies of the Turkish Republic against the Patriarchate and the Rum minority in Istanbul.

The Tanzimat Reforms had a decisive influence on the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s internal structure by institutionalizing lay participation in its administration and thus also in the judicial mechanisms involved mainly with the control of the private life of the Orthodox Christian flock. This article examines the issue of wills since, unlike marriage or divorce, these were under the exclusive domain of the Mixed Council, the new body established under the patriarchate after 1860. The different approaches to the content of the wills in the passage from the 19th to the 20th century do not merely reflect the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s clash with the Sublime Porte over the Privileges Question and the conflict between interest groups within the Patriarchate. These divergences are directly related to two emerging institutional forms which the empire was being forced to confront for the first time: personal property as an organizing principle of the private space and the legal entity as the organizing principle of the public space.

The role of the Lausanne Peace Conference in the history of the Patriarchate of Constantinople as reflected in the 20th-century Greek historiography: stereotypes and realities. The authors analyze the attitudes of Greek scholars towards the role of the Lausanne Peace Conference held in 1922–1923 in determining the fate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Dealing with ecclesiastical as well as secular historiography, the authors single out a manifest tendency on the part of Greek historians towards subjectively viewing the historical data reconstructed by the authors of the present article on the basis of extant sources. The authors demonstrate that Greek scholarly literature abounds in assertions that the future fates of the Patriarchate were on the agenda of the Lausanne Conference from its very beginning, and that in the course of this Conference the terms upon which the Patriarchate could stay within Turkey and its new legal status were agreed upon; according to Greek scholars, the very fact of the Patriarchate issue emerging and being discussed during an international political conference claimed that this religious institution enjoyed a kind of international legal entity. The authors make it clear that the source of such attitudes is to be sought in the Greek government and in the stance of the leading hierarchs of the Greek Church who deemed it important to preserve at any cost the Greek ecclesiastical presence on the Turkish territory. It is precisely this goal that explains the attempt at raising the political weight of the Patriarchate of Constantinople using the authority of a major international event. In conclusion of their article, the authors cast doubts on the view that the Lausanne Peace Conference should be considered a chronological milestone in the history of the Church of Constantinople. Instead, they propose to postulate as such a milestone the emergence of the Turkish Republic and the concomitant transformation of political and religious institutions.

De la place du "Syntagma" de Matthieu Blastarès dans le "Méga Nomimon" du Patriarcat de Constantinople, in : Le Patriarcat de Constantinople aux XIVe-XVIe siècles : rupture et continuité, Paris 2007 (Dossiers byzantins, VII), p. 429-469.

Analyse du code de droit canonique le plus important élaboré au XIVe siècle dans l’Église byzantine, démontrant qu’il devint au fur et à mesure un document ecclésiologique à caractère officiel du Patriarcat œcuménique, pour finir intégré dans le Méga Nomimon (Grand livre juridique) que celui-ci se donna au Concile de Constantinople de 1484. Sont ainsi mis en perspective les mécanismes de la continuité idéologique de la Grande Église de Constantinople à l’époque ottomane jusqu’au XVIIe siècle, tant que ce document fut utilisé dans la pratique.

Revisiter la Grande Église. M. Gédéon, N. Iorga et St. Runciman sur le rôle du Patriarcat œcuménique à l’époque ottomane, in : Héritages de Byzance en Europe du Sud-Est à l’époque moderne et contemporaine,  éd. O. Delouis, Anne Couderc, P. Guran, EFA : Athènes 2013, p. 45-61.

This article attempts to understand the turning point that led to the historiographical reassessment of the Ottoman period in the history of the Ecumenical Patriarchate through the work of Manuel Gideon (1851-1943), Nicolae Iorga (1871-1940) and Sir Steven Runciman (1903-2000). The former was the last representative of an illustrious Greek-speaking Ottoman historiography that placed the patriarchate at the centre of its interests. The other two were historians of Byzantium and the Crusades, as well as excellent connoisseurs of the Ottoman Empire. All of them unveiled a time when coexistence between the Ottoman Empire and its Christian subjects had been possible. They stressed both the role of the Patriarchate as the keystone of the political-ecclesiastical establishment after 1453 and the truly supranational, ecumenical character of the Great Church. Therefore, their works constitute the most appropriate theoretical framework for a scientific approach to the "Great Church in Captivity" as the backbone of "Byzantium after Byzantium".

The collaboration between political and religious authorities, directed at imposing religious uniformity and at establishing denominational boundaries in the course of Early Modern times, has traditionally been investigated within the interpretative framework of ‘Confessionalization’ - a concept originally developped and applied only to the European (and especially German) case. Nonetheless, recent historiography has begun to investigate the conditions that shaped the construction of a Sunni Islamic orthodoxy between the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, by considering the possibility of applying the historiographical paradigm of Confessionalization also to the Ottoman Empire.
In following and broadening this approach, the aim of this workshop is to carry on in a comparative way a reflection upon the progressive construction of confessional identities within the communities of the Ottoman Empire. Such a process was almost always determined by the confrontation or clash with a rival religious group (Sunni vs. Shiite Muslims, Orthodox vs. Catholic Christians, Sephardic vs. charismatic and mystic Jewish movements) or with the members of the other communities. A special attention will be placed on the two-folded nature of this process (top-down and bottom-up) as well on the possible comparisons and on the interweaving relationship between the European and the Ottoman ‘Confessionalization’.

La collaborazione in età moderna tra autorità politiche e gerarchie ecclesiastiche nell’imposizione di un’uniformità religiosa e nella creazione di marcatori identitari esclusivi è stata tradizionalmente studiata all’interno del quadro interpretativo della “confessionalizzazione” – un concetto nato per il caso tedesco e finora applicato solamente ai territori europei. Recentemente, però, alcuni studiosi hanno cominciato ad esaminare il processo di costruzione di un’ortodossia islamica sunnita tra la fine del Medioevo e la prima età moderna, nel tentativo di applicare il paradigma storiografico della confessionalizzazione anche all’Impero ottomano. Inserendosi in tale dibattito ma ampliando il campo d’indagine, questa giornata di studi si propone di riflettere in maniera comparativa sulla progressiva costruzione delle identità confessionali tra le comunità dell’Impero ottomano: si tratta di un processo quasi sempre determinato dal confronto con un gruppo religioso rivale (islam sunnita e sciita, cristianesimo ortodosso e cattolico, ebraismo rabbinico e movimenti mistici o carismatici) o con i membri di un’altra comunità. Un’attenzione speciale sarà rivolta alla duplice natura di tale processo (dall’alto e dal basso) così come alle possibili somiglianze, differenze e intrecci tra la “confessionalizzazione” europea e ottomana.

From ancient times the Patriarchate of Constantinople has played a significant role as one of the most important sees of the Orthodox world. However, by the beginning of the 1920s its existence was under threat of total elimination due to the loss of almost all its flock after the Greco-Turkish war. The ensuing political reforms in Turkey called into question the continued residence of the Patriarchate in Istanbul. A possible way out of this situation for the Patriarchate was to prove its special role in the Orthodox world, a role that demanded its preservation in its historical place. Fortunately, this idea coincided with the interests of the great powers. The Phanar’s claims at Pan-Orthodox leadership came as a reaction to the discussions about the possible expulsion of the Patriarch from Turkey, which were conducted within the framework of the peace conference at Lausanne. It was these discussions that created a favorable background for the conception of the Patriarchate of Constantinople as the center of the Orthodox world. The authors deal in the article with the interpretation of the role of the Patriarch by the participant countries in the Lausanne conference against the
background of their struggle for their own political interests. The research is based on official diplomatic documents and periodical press.

Hosted by the Las Casas Institute, Blackfriars Hall, Oxford in association with the Centre for Eastern Christianity, Heythrop College.

Saturday 1st November, 9.30am - 6.00pm. Mathematical Institute, Andrew Wiles Building, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford, OX2 6GG

See attached flyer for registration details etc.