Religion and politics in the Orthodox World : The Ecumenical Patriarchate in the modern age 9780815394648, 0815394640, 9781351185431, 1351185438

Table of contents :
Foreword by the Metropolitan of Pergamum, p.vii --
Preface, p.xi --
Acknowledgements, p.xiii --
Introduction, p.1 --
1. The Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment: testimonies from the correspondence of Ignatius ofUngrowallachia with G. P. Vieusseux, p.12 --
2. The Orthodox Church in modem state formation in Southeastem Europe, p.25 --
3. The Ecumenical Patriarchate and the challenge of nationalism in the nineteenth century: an age of ideological encounters, p.43 --
4. The end of empire, Greece's Asia Minor catastrophe and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, p.60 --
5. The Ecumenical Patriarchate during the Cold War (1946-1991), p.72 --
6. A religious international in Southeastem Europe?, p.92 --
7. Orthodoxy, nationalism and ethnic conflict, p.107 --
Ecumenical Patriarchs since 1800, p.113 --
Bibliography, p.115 --
Index, p.123.

Citation preview

Religion and Politics in the Orthodox World

This book explores how the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the leading centre of spiritual authority in the Orthodox Church, based in Istanbul, coped with political developments from Ottoman times until the present. The book outlines how under the Ottomans, despite difficult circumstances, the Patriarchate managed to draw on its huge symbolic and moral power and organization to uphold the unity and catholicity of the Orthodox Church, how it struggled to do this during the subsequent age of nationalism when churches within new nation-­states unilaterally claimed their autonomy reflecting local national demands, and how the church coped in the twentieth century with the rise of nationalist Turkey, the decline of Orthodoxy in Asia Minor and with the Cold War. The book concludes by assessing the position and prospects of the Patriarchate in the region and the world. Paschalis M. Kitromilides is Professor of Political Science at the University of Athens, Greece.

Routledge Religion, Society and Government in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet States

Series Editor Lucian Leustean is Reader in Politics and International Relations at Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom

This Series seeks to publish high quality monographs and edited volumes on religion, society and government in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet States by focusing primarily on three main themes: the history of churches and religions (including, but not exclusively, Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism) in relation to governing structures, social groupings and political power; the impact of intellectual ideas on religious structures and values; and the role of religions and faith-­based communities in fostering national identities from the nineteenth century until today. The Series aims to advance the latest research on these themes by exploring the multi-­facets of religious mobilization at local, national and supranational levels. It particularly welcomes studies which offer an interdisciplinary approach by drawing on the fields of history, politics, international relations, religious studies, theology, law, sociology and anthropology. 1 The Russian Orthodox Church and Human Rights Kristina Stoeckl 2 The Russian Orthodox Church, 1917–1948 From Decline to Resurrection Daniela Kalandjieva 3 Monasticism in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Republics Edited by Ines A. Murzaku 4 The Catholic Church and Soviet Russia, 1917–39 Dennis J. Dunn 5 The Making of the New Martyrs of Russia Soviet Repression in Orthodox Memory Karin Hyldal Christensen 6 Religion and Politics in the Orthodox World The Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Challenges of Modernity Paschalis M. Kitromilides

Religion and Politics in the Orthodox World The Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Challenges of Modernity Paschalis M. Kitromilides

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Paschalis M. Kitromilides The right of Paschalis M. Kitromilides to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-­in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-8153-9464-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-18543-1 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Contents



Foreword by the Metropolitan of Pergamum Preface Acknowledgements



Introduction

vii xi xiii 1

1 The Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment: testimonies from the correspondence of Ignatius of Ungrowallachia with G. P. Vieusseux

12

2 The Orthodox Church in modern state formation in Southeastern Europe

25

3 The Ecumenical Patriarchate and the challenge of nationalism in the nineteenth century: an age of ideological encounters

43

4 The end of empire, Greece’s Asia Minor catastrophe and the Ecumenical Patriarchate

60

5 The Ecumenical Patriarchate during the Cold War (1946–1991)

72

6 A religious international in Southeastern Europe?

92

7 Orthodoxy, nationalism and ethnic conflict

Ecumenical Patriarchs since 1800 Bibliography Index

107 113 115 123

Figure 0.1 The building complex of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul with the patriarchal Cathedral of Saint George in the background. Source: photo N. Manginas, 2018.

Foreword by the Metropolitan of Pergamum

A fundamental problem in ecclesiology concerns the relation of the Church to the world and to history. The Church, in particular in Orthodox faith and theology, lives “in the world”, but it is not “of the world” (John, 15,18 and 17,6). A permanent and recurring problem in the life of the Church has been its adaptation to the occasional historical circumstances without losing its authentic identity either as a result of its absorption in current – and transient – social developments (secularization) or as a consequence of its alienation from the existential needs and preoccupations of people in a specific age (social isolation). This problem has been particularly acute for the Orthodox Church at the period of the Enlightenment and during the subsequent period of the growth of the ideas and movements of nationalism, which emerged from the Enlightenment during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The author of this book, a well-­established authority in the historiography of the Enlightenment, focuses his attention on the changes endured by the Orthodox Church in the transition from Ottoman imperial rule to the age of nationalism. Under the Ottomans the Church, despite difficult historical circumstances but drawing on its huge symbolic and moral power and organization around the Ecumenical Patriarchate, managed to safeguard its unity and catholicity, cultivating a shared Orthodox identity and mentality among the populations of Southeastern Europe. During the subsequent age of nationalism, the Church found itself involved in an acute conflict between Christian ecumenicity and nationalism in the broader geographical region of its jurisdiction. During this latter period new nation-­states in the region, giving pride of place to the idea of the nation over the unity and catholicity of the Orthodox Church, claimed unilaterally their autonomy from the Ecumenical Patriarchate transferring the old Byzantine idea of “autocephaly”, which had been totally unrelated to nationalism, to the demand of independent local/ national Churches. The great and serious ecclesiological stakes involved in the nationalization of the Orthodox Churches in the Balkan states became particularly clear in the case of the Bulgarian Church, which in its effort to establish an Exarchate for Bulgarian Orthodox in Constantinople itself provoked the condemnation of ethnophyletism by a major Synod convoked in Constantinople in 1872 and created a

viii   Foreword schism that lasted until 1945. The characterization of ethnophyletism as a heresy by that Synod made it obvious that, unfortunately, the Orthodox Church, even though temporarily, had given in to the temptation of History to subsume the catholicity, that pertains to its nature, to national expediencies, which led even to fratricidal conflicts between Orthodox peoples. The author is very acute in his observation that the idea of a national Church involves a serious antinomy because the Christian tradition comprises an ecumenical teaching, while nationalism is by definition a force of division on the basis of collective particularities. With these observations as his point of departure, Professor Kitromilides proceeds to the examination of the role of the leader of the Orthodox Church, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, in facing up to the challenge of the major ideological and social force of modernity, nationalism. The Enlightenment, according to the author, did not leave unaffected the spiritual, ideological and administrative mechanism of the Church. Many of the Enlightenment’s ideas penetrated into theological thought, education, preaching and so on, while learned Greek was perfected and employed in all sectors of the life of the Church as an assertion of the leading position of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the cultural tradition of Orthodox Christianity. The author nevertheless believes, correctly in my opinion, that the Ecumenical Patriarchate kept its distances from the values of nationalism. It is true, of course, that the ideological principles of Greek nationalism were adopted by important personalities in the hierarchy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, but, as it is made plain by the example of Patriarch Gregory V and his general attitude towards the Greek Revolution of 1821, the rise of revolutionary nationalist ideas, as it had been the case with those of secular Enlightenment more generally, were viewed with great reserve by the leadership of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Moving forward to the examination of historical change during the twentieth century the author very perceptively notes the drastic transformations on the Balkan historical scene and their consequences for the life – even the very existence – of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. After a period of freedom granted by the Ottoman state to religious minorities during the second half of the nineteenth century, which enabled the Ecumenical Patriarchate to go through an impressive flowering in its spiritual and religious life, nationalism finally crept into the Ottoman Empire itself and broke it apart. Amidst national conflicts which overturned the empire and shook the broader region, emerged the modern Turkish nation, which evinced intense hostility to anything Greek or Hellenic. The Ecumenical Patriarchate faced under these changed circumstances – especially after the Asia Minor catastrophe of 1922 – the most awful threat against its very survival, with the largest part of its flock uprooted from its territories and its cathedral seat under danger of expulsion from the place it had occupied for long centuries. Finally with the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) the seat of the Patriarchate remained in Constantinople along with its neighbouring dioceses and carried on the struggle to fulfil its supranational mission in Orthodoxy within an environment that from the outset viewed this institution with suspicion and nationalist mistrust.

Foreword   ix The twentieth century has been indeed the age that brought forward the supranational character of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Patriarch Meletios IV (1921–1923) at the most critical moment for the survival of the institution, made its jurisdiction truly ecumenical by incorporating the world-­wide Greek diaspora into its diocesan web. At the same time he took daring initiatives aiming at cementing the unity of Orthodoxy by convoking pan-­Orthodox conferences and by turning the Orthodox Church into a leading factor in international efforts on behalf of the unity of the Christian world. The same line was followed by his successors on the patriarchal throne. Patriarch Athenagoras (1948–1972), incorporated the entire Orthodox Church in the Ecumenical Movement and inaugurated the process for the eventual convocation of the Holy and Great Synod of the Orthodox Church, which was finally realized by the present Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (1992–) in June 2016 in Crete. Under the leadership of the present Patriarch the international role of the Patriarchate was developed further with initiatives in the areas of ecology and environmental protection, interfaith dialogues and efforts on behalf of peace and reconciliation among nations and peoples. These developments lead the author to talk of an emerging “Orthodox International”, somewhat overoptimistically in view of many contemporary constraints. The present work, beyond its indisputable value for the study of the history of the Orthodox Church and its leader (the Ecumenical Patriarchate) in Southeastern Europe in the modern period, raises fundamental issues of principles and values for Orthodox ecclesiology in the contemporary world, which is still dominated by the ideas of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment begot nationalism, in its contemporary shape of the nation-­state, but at the same time it cultivated and propagated the fundamental humanist values of equality and human rights, which are akin to ecumenicity and therefore point to a transcendence of narrow particularistic nationalism. Orthodox ecclesiology, therefore, has no reason to oppose the Enlightenment. The Church by its nature constitutes a synthesis of catholicity and localism, of unity and otherness, it is the mystery “of the one and the many”, as this is embodied in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, of which the Church is the image. Orthodoxy’s message to contemporary Western civilization calls upon the nation to reject selfish inwardness and to cease to identify itself in terms of its opposition to the other, to difference, to those of other race or religion, but on the contrary in terms of communion with them. The great significance of Professor Kitromilides’s work consists in raising to prominence the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s contribution, especially in the modern and contemporary period, as a supranational mission, which clearly distanced ecclesiastical practice from nationalist motives, offering a strong witness of the ecumenicity of Christianity. It is a book that can guide the study and understanding of history and will prove of great significance for the present and future of the Orthodox Church and its first See. † Ioannis Zizioulas Member of the Academy of Athens

Preface

The present collection brings together seven previously published studies focusing on the broad question of the relation of Orthodox Christianity with the secular ideologies of modernity, Enlightenment and nationalism. The subject is broad and complex but in the following pages it is considered not in theoretical generalities but through a succession of case studies drawn from the history of the senior see of the Orthodox communion, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, in the nineteenth and in the twentieth century. The objective of the studies and of their integration into the present collection has been to consider the question of the interplay of religion and politics in the Orthodox world by trying to recover and bring forward religion’s own understanding of itself and of its place in the world and appraise its inescapable political involvements in these terms. After thinking about these issues for most of my academic life, I have come to the conclusion that if we approach the politics and religion nexus without taking religion as a normative system and as a complete life experience seriously, we are simply reducing the treatment of pertinent issues and questions to a form of historical gossip with very little interest or relevance to anything. What is interesting and important is to try to detect, analyse and understand the dilemmas and crises of conscience all this involved under the conditions created by modernity for the religious mind. I have come to the study of religion and politics from the road of intellectual history, after devoting my major work to the study of the Enlightenment in the world of Orthodoxy. Considering the reception of the Enlightenment in that context, one is inevitably led to an appreciation of the significance of religion and the Church as the main interlocutor with the ideas of modernity making inroads into the bosom of the Orthodox societies of its flock over the last three centuries. This appreciation motivated my studies of this encounter in order to clarify to myself as a secular scholar and understand the opposite side with which the Enlightenment had to come to terms. The following studies were published over a ten-­year period, between 2004 and 2014. They were motivated by occasions and were addressed to diverse audiences and readerships. Overlap between them is thus inevitable since certain basic background facts had to be repeated in order to contextualize what was being said on the various occasions of the original writing. All that has remained

xii   Preface unchanged in this reprint and I ask for the reader’s understanding. Each study, however, has a different story to say, either chronologically or thematically. The common denominator to all of them is the engagement of organized religion in the Orthodox communion with the politics of the world and its response to challenges emanating from secular systems of values, which in conventional historical understanding appeared inimical or even hostile to religion. By reconsidering conventional views I have reached a revisionist understanding of the relation of the Orthodox Church as represented by the ecclesiastical practice of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and its response to the ideologies of secular modernity. Where earlier conventional views saw irreconcilable oppositions and incompatibilities, a serious reading of the evidence can reveal interpenetration and osmosis. Where identifications and solidarities seamed to be the rule, a reappraisal can detect the deeper antinomies and the distortions of values brought about by the subjection of religion to the exigencies of secular politics. The following studies attempt to record these revisionist views and reconsiderations in the hope of pointing to the significance of the religious history of the Orthodox world for the understanding of the issues involved in the complex, often opaque and elusive interplay of secular power struggles with humanity’s deeper spiritual needs and hopes.

Acknowledgements

In compiling this collection I incurred many debts, which is a pleasure to record and acknowledge here. My greatest debt is to His Eminence, the Metropolitan of Pergamum Ioannis, the foremost theological thinker in the Orthodox world today. Amidst his many obligations and engagements, His Eminence has graciously devoted his time to read the papers which make up this collection and to encourage me to proceed with their integration in a book in order to reach a wider audience. He also had the kindness to bless this publication with a Foreword, which I acknowledge as a very great honour. I am also deeply grateful to my friend and colleague Lucian Leustean for his sustained encouragement and interest in my work over the years and for his initiative to include this collection in the series under his direction. A number of other friends and colleagues have been generous with their help. I wish to express my gratitude to Ioannis Konidaris, Raymond Detrez, Vassilis Marangos, Andrei Pippidi, Slobodan Marković and Ionut-­Florin Biliuta for always responding very kindly to my requests. My friend and great master of the art of photography Nicos Manginas has supplied from his rich photographic archive most of the illustrations that adorn this book. My work has been supported in more ways than I can acknowledge by the Centre for Asia Minor Studies. I am grateful to the Board and my collaborators for their unfailing help and kindness. The Centre’s photographic archive has provided additional illustrations for the book. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the generosity of the editors and publishers of the collections in which the studies in this book had originally appeared, for their kind permission to reprint them here. Finally I should like to thank my editor at Routledge, Peter Sowden, for his interest, support and excellent advice. I consider myself particularly fortunate to have had an editor like him. P. M. K. 1 March 2018

xiv   Acknowledgements

Original publications 1 “The Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment. Testimonies from the Correspondence of Ignatius of Ungrowallachia with G. P. Vieusseux”, Εγνατία 15 (2011), pp. 81–88. 2 “The Orthodox Church in Modern State Formation in South-­East Europe”, Ottomans into Europeans. State and Institution-­building in South East Europe, ed. by Wim van Meurs – Alina Mungiu-­Pippidi, London: Hurst and Company, 2010, pp. 31–50. 3 “The Ecumenical Patriarchate”, Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Nineteenth-­ Century Southeastern Europe, ed. by Lucian N. Leustan, New York: Fordham University Press, 2014, pp. 14–33. 4 “The End of Empire, Greece’s Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ecumenical Patriarchate”, Δελτίο Κέντρου Μικρασιατικών Σπουδών 17 (2011), pp. 29–42. [Italian translation: “La fine dell’ Impero, la catastrophe greca nell’ Asia Minore e il Patriarcato Ecumenico”, Da Constantinopoli al Caucaso. Imperi e popoli tra Cristianesimo e Islam, ed. by L. Vaccaro, Città del Vaticano: Editrice Vaticana, 2014, pp. 335–348]. 5 “The Ecumenical Patriarchate”, Eastern Christianity and the Cold War, 1945–91, ed. by Lucian N. Leustean, London: Routledge, 2010, pp. 221–239. 6 “A Religious International in Southeastern Europe?”, Religious Internationals in the Modern World. Globalization and Faith Communities, ed. by Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 252–268. 7 “Orthodoxy, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict”, The Orthodox Churches in a Pluralistic World. An Ecumenical Conversation, ed. by Emmanuel Clapsis, WCC Publications, Geneva – Holy Cross Orthodox Press, Brookline, Mass, 2004, pp. 183–188.

Introduction

The “return of religion” in the human sciences during the closing decades of the twentieth century has caused a serious rethinking of the unilinear understanding associated with ideas of modernization and secularization in social theory and has led to a considerable revamping of research agendas within many disciplines, including intellectual history and political science. One field of research that has emerged significantly enriched with the appreciation of new problems and quests for understanding has been the subject of religion and politics. The connection between religion and politics of course is not a new subject. It has formed a central axis of reflection in the history of civilization not only in the Western tradition but on a global scale. At the origins of the Western tradition bringing religion under the control of the institutions of the polis had been a critical focus of political practice and theoretical reflection in archaic and classical Greece. Turning the “irrational” from a force threatening political order and the quest for justice into one of the psychological factors sustaining the fragile achievement of the polis emerges as a central concern in the greatest artistic creation of the classical polis, Greek tragic poetry, as E. R. Dodds and many others have repeatedly reminded us. The political project put forward by classical Greek philosophy from Socrates to Aristotle was inspired by exactly the wish to keep religion under control by politicizing it as a component of civic order. It was precisely the reversal of the emancipation of politics from religion that was eventually brought about in Late Antiquity by the triumph of Christianity, that marked the end of ancient civilization. In the new moral and political order introduced in the Greco-­Roman world and in the Roman Empire by Christianity, religion became the foundation of politics. Saint Augustine became the greatest exponent of the new view of the political order that was to prevail in the Medieval world until the advent of modernity. In the Augustinian perspective, shaped by the perception of the workings of evil in the world and by the sense of urgency to contain it, religion became the necessary foundation of politics. True faith, free from heresy, provided the foundation and outer boundary of the Christian commonwealth, the terrestrial city that prepared fallen humanity for the City of God. This was a normative framework that shaped for almost one and a half millennium the civilization of Christian Europe, East and West. It was precisely this

2   Introduction framework that was challenged by the culture of modernity and the gradual and tortuous growth of the new ideas and values entailed by secularization. The power of the Augustinian heritage in European civilization was dramatically illustrated by its invocation in one of modernity’s earliest and most decisive manifestations, the Lutheran Reformation, which challenged the dominance of Medieval Christianity by appealing to Augustine’s understanding of faith and salvation. The emancipation of politics from religion became modernity’s major project and emerged as the foremost claim in the definition of the autonomous individual as the main subject of political life. The many problems and conflicts associated with this claim provided the force with which the ideal of toleration presented itself as the solution that might bring social peace in a changing world, torn apart by religious conflict. It is thus obvious that the religion and politics nexus has remained central in the European tradition. Changing times and preconditions recast the relation in multiple ways and in modern times, more violent ways. Inevitably the interaction of politics and faith and especially the political uses of religion attracted the attention of social and political theory as it had happened millennia earlier in classical antiquity. From Luther and Montaigne to David Hume, European political thought has tried to come to grips with the challenges posed by religion to the human mind. The centrality of religion as a focus of reflection is made plain in the greatest work of modern political philosophy, the Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. Although the secular-­minded political theorists of subsequent centuries for the most part tended to ignore the third and fourth books of the treatise on account of their theological content, in fact these parts of the work are extensive critical treatments of the role of religion in political life. In view of the enduring intertwining of religion and political life, it is no surprise that the subject has elicited extensive and constantly renewed attention in modern scholarship. From Christopher Hill and Michael Walzer to more recent attempts generated by the “return of religion” in the human sciences, the political uses of religion and its influence on politics has been the focus of important studies of religiously inspired political movements since the Reformation. The multiple expressions of apocalypticism, the lethal role of conflicting doctrines of faith in so called “wars of religion”, the radical uses of religion in revolutionary causes have all received ample attention of the highest quality. In view of all this, one is led to raise the inescapable question as to what has been the contribution of the “return of religion” to a more substantial understanding of the interplay of politics and religion? The answer is not easy, but we could first of all discern quite clearly a vastly broadened perspective on the pertinent substantive questions. A truly global perspective, a sense of pluralism and a focus on other religions, especially Islam, have recast many of the questions in new ways that made them sound much more relevant to humanity’s deeper concerns. The political imagination, which for long had been stimulated by other concerns, has found important new sources of inspiration in reflection on religion.1

Introduction   3 What has been left out to a considerable extent from this globalized perspective on politics and religion is a significant part of the Christian world, Orthodox Christianity. Several qualifications should be immediately added to this statement. It is not to be thought that the entanglement of Orthodoxy with politics and national conflicts has received no attention from serious scholarship.2 A number of scholars with a sustained interest in the subject have produced a significant literature. Pertinent discussions, however, have been obscured by the ignorance and superficiality marking the writing of several other commentators, especially journalists, who have written on the subject circumstantially, without a serious knowledge of the historical background or understanding of the cultural issues involved. The result has been extensive misunderstanding and the reproduction of misconceptions of the Orthodox world for a long time, at least since the Enlightenment, as Larry Wolff has so elegantly shown in his books. Pertinent problems of perception, misperception, misunderstanding and prejudice have been compounded on account of the passions ignited by the wars in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, a general inability to understand the place of religion in Orthodox societies by Western observers and secular scholars of diverse backgrounds and the unfortunate debate on the “clash of civilizations”. The consequence of all this has been a general inability to appreciate the historical nature of the relationship of religion with politics and society in Orthodox Europe and to understand the multiple layers of meaning involved in the connection. In particular the complexities involved in the uses of religion and the Church by modern states and in the historicity of the consequences of these uses are often missed in otherwise serious scholarly work. What often appears rather surprising if one views pertinent issues with a sense of their historicity in mind is the tendency of even specialist scholars to view the results of a whole process of transformation of the Church under the pressure of the forces of secular modernity as intrinsic to its character. This is the logic of arguments pointing to a special affinity of the Orthodox Church with nationalism and suggesting that Orthodox Churches are “particularly prone” to nationalism. This argument of course is possible if one disregards completely the universalist principles that are germane to Christianity’s self-­understanding and self-­definition, as stated in its scriptural foundational texts. The almost exclusive focus of political criticism on the entanglement of Orthodoxy with nationalism has deprived the discussion of politics and religion in the Orthodox world of the benefit of reflection on some truly substantive issues such as the questions of pluralism, democracy and human rights. These issues have been extensively discussed in connection with the place of Christianity in non-­Orthodox Western societies with enlightening results. The discussion of the relationship of religion and politics in the Orthodox world could be deepened and enhanced intellectually through a consideration first and foremost of the question of Church and state in democratic societies and how it could be approached through the elaboration of a neutrality principle that might ensure both liberty and political equality of all citizens.3 Separation of Church and state

4   Introduction is a thorny issue as it is made plain by the roles and also uses of religion and of organized Churches in states where separation is officially in place. Both the United States, where the role and uses of evangelical fundamentalism are well known, and Russia, where the Orthodox Church is extensively used in state policies, provide telling warnings concerning the intricacies of separation. An interesting debate on Church-­state relations has unfolded in Greece in recent years, voicing broader concerns of respect for freedom of conscience and human rights.4 These are issues which are germane to the aspiration to strengthen the liberal democratic character of the state, which is further expected to enable a stronger civil society to emerge in which religion would fulfil its moral and spiritual mission free of political entanglements. This is probably the most important issue in the religion and politics debate with special applicability to the Orthodox world: how Orthodoxy, liberated from multiple forms of bondage that have marked its modern history, might offer a different witness, consonant with its Christian traditions and substantive ecumenical values, as a moral force sustaining social cohesion and individual conscience and capable of responding to the global challenges facing humanity.5 This is the real challenge for Orthodoxy today and it seems that the Ecumenical Patriarchate has grasped its significance more effectively than most other Churches in the Orthodox communion, which remain implicated, formally or informally, in various forms of political engagements, with nationalist commitments foremost among them. In the following pages an attempt is made to illustrate a dissenting view pointing to the incompatibility of Orthodoxy and nationalism, using as a case study the history of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the senior Church in the communion of Orthodox Churches. The Ecumenical Patriarchate throughout its history of almost two millennia had been a factor in inter-­state and international politics. In many critical instances it played the primary role in the imperial policy of the Eastern Roman Empire towards its neighbours. In a long tradition of transacting political tasks on behalf of the empire, the Patriarchate of Constantinople fulfilled the mission expected of the Church of the universal empire and spoke in universalist terms derived from the Holy Scriptures as constitutive texts defining ecclesiastical order. Two examples could illustrate the role of the Patriarchate of Constantinople as the Church of the universal empire. In the years 866–867 of the ninth century, Patriarch Photius the Great (858–867, 877–886) addressed a treatise of counsel to the newly baptized Prince Boris of Bulgaria, renamed Michael in honour of the reigning emperor Michael III, instructing him in the duties of virtuous kingship. The treatise was a characteristic specimen of speculum principatibus literature but it did serve a real political purpose. By admonishing the princes neighbouring on the Roman Empire to be good Christians and virtuous rulers, the great Patriarch, who was also a great statesman, hoped that he would also secure their loyalty to the Christian Empire of New Rome. The second example comes from the years of the Empire’s decline. In 1393 Patriarch Anthony IV addressed a pastoral letter to Grand Prince Vassili I of Muscovy who had shown disrespect to the emperor. The Ecumenical Patriarch

Introduction   5 reprimanded the Russian prince for claiming “we have a Church but not an Emperor” by reminding him that “it is not possible to have a Church without an emperor”. He told the prince in fact that the emperor of the Roman Empire, who was anointed by the Church, was the emperor of all Christians. Despite the decline of the empire the Church saw the universalist ideal as intrinsic to its mission and witness. After 1453, with the disappearance of the Christian empire things changed drastically. The Ecumenical Patriarchate had to coexist with a non-­Christian empire and secure its own and its flock’s survival under conditions of subjection that were hostile to the Christian faith. The Patriarch and its episcopate were tolerated in the Ottoman state as “supervisors of the erroneous religious customs” of the infidels, but their position remained precarious, as reflected in the frequent changes on the patriarchal throne. In this environment maintaining relations with foreign Christian powers was dangerous as it provoked suspicions of disloyalty, suspicions which were often used by the enemies of reigning patriarchs in order to unseat them. The Great Church of Christ, as it called itself, had from time to time to resort to international politics in order to find support for its own survival and for the transaction of its pastoral mission, always treading a very delicate path in order not to provoke the reactions of its non-­Christian masters. In transacting this mission the Orthodox Church, despite the adversities of captivity, never strayed from its ecumenical ideals. Two characteristic examples again could illustrate the predicament of the Great Church of Christ “in captivity”, in Sir Steven Runciman’s formulation. The first example concerns the elevation of the Russian Church to Patriarchate by Patriarch Jeremiah II in 1589. In this case Patriarch Jeremiah, during an alms­collecting pastoral visit to Russia, took the initiative to elevate the Russian Church to patriarchal status, thus underwriting the imperial designs and ambitions of the Russian Czars, Ivan IV “the Terrible” and his successor Theodore I, who wanted to assert their country’s status in international politics. In doing this for the Russian Church and empire the Patriarch was putting to practice the ecumenical self-­conception of his Church as upholder and guardian of canonical order. The second example is that of the truly frenetic activity of Patriarch Cyril I Loukaris, during his six patriarchates in the first part of the seventeenth century (1620–1638), to revive and renew the Ecumenical Patriarchate by engaging in a complex web of entanglements in European power politics at the time of the Thirty-­Years War. Cyril I, a truly great and charismatic ecclesiastical leader with a deep, indeed a tormenting, one might say, sense of his patriarchal responsibilities, developed a broad network of contacts with Protestant powers in Europe, including Britain, Holland and Geneva in order to find support for his strategy to bring the Patriarchate into the modern age but also to revive religious life and the Christian traditions of the Orthodox Church. His policy of renewal included remarkable measures, such as the reform and upgrading of the Patriarchal Academy and the establishment for the first time of a Greek printing press in Constantinople. Beyond such modernizing initiatives Cyril showed great zeal in

6   Introduction reviving the traditions of Orthodoxy by supporting monasticism, canonizing saints, producing new editions of liturgical books. All this was meant as defence of Orthodoxy against the militancy of Roman Catholic orders in the East. The defensive strategy led to Cyril’s Protestant alliances, which involved their own costs. The heaviest cost came in the form of a Confession of faith, of a clearly Calvinist inspiration, issued in 1629 under the name of the Patriarch, who in turn never publicly either condoned it or rejected it. The appearance of the Confession caused a major scandal both in the Orthodox world but also in the Roman Church. The Jesuits, in collusion with Cyril’s enemies at home, initiated an active campaign against him, which eventually led to his downfall and execution by the Ottoman authorities as a foreign agent. The so called “Loucarean” confession was subsequently condemned in repeated synods of the Orthodox Church in 1638, 1642, 1672 and 1691. Patriarch Cyril I was not condemned as a heretic in the conscience of the Church but was on the contrary recognized and revered as a martyr and early in the twenty-­first century was canonized by the Patriarchate of Alexandria, which he had served as patriarch before his elevation to the Ecumenical Throne. The Cyril Loukaris story was the most dramatic episode in the post-­Byzantine history of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and can be easily cited as just an instance of the entanglement of religion in power politics. This interpretation, however, which would appear reasonable and sound from the point of view of secular historical logic, would fail to capture the deeper religious logic that dictated Cyril’s policies and made his actions meaningful to himself as an ecclesiastical leader concerned primarily with the mission of his Church as a religious institution and motivated by the normative order of scriptural values. It is this aspect of the relation of religion and politics that should not be lost sight of in interpreting and appraising the actions of the Orthodox Church if historical analysis is to avoid reductionism and anachronism. The next major involvement of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in international politics came in the age of nationalism, which presented a major challenge to Orthodoxy and its spiritual traditions. The Patriarchate of Constantinople faced up to the trials and dilemmas that ensued by mobilizing the spiritual resources of its canonical principles and universalist values. The new challenges and trials involved basically the encounter of the oldest institution in Southeastern Europe with modernity and its ideologies and systems of values. The story of the encounter and of the ways whereby the Ecumenical Patriarchate handled the challenges is related in the following pages. The studies that make up this collection attempt to bring forth the Church’s own understanding of the problems raised by the advent of modernity in the societies of its flock. This attempt is put forward here as a corrective to the approaches of secular historians who very often forget in their treatment of the subject the religious dimension of the story and the weight of the Christian system of universalist values under which the Church had to come to terms with modernity. Before closing this brief introductory survey, a word about pertinent historiography may be in order. The Patriarchate of Constantinople, the senior see in

Introduction   7 the Orthodox Church, known as the Great Church of Christ in its internal history and awarded the official title of Ecumenical Patriarchate by the 587 Council in Constantinople, has been the object of an extensive historiography over the almost two millennia of its existence. The historical record has been marked by great diversity and by all the characteristics of writing about the trajectory in time of an institution marked by considerable complexity and deep reversals in its historical fortunes. Hence surviving sources that record this history are not uniform in their perception and judgement of the facts and are often marked by contradictions. My ambition in this brief survey is not to face up to the difficult task of coming to terms with this complex history. My aspirations are considerably more modest than that. What I propose to do is twofold. First, I would like to devote a few words to a broad outline of the historiographical record concerning the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and second, I propose to equally briefly introduce the two misconceptions that I perceive pervading this historiography and which I hope to be able to address in the studies that make up the present collection. Let me add one more clarification. The Christian Church in Byzantium-­ Constantinople has a history that extends over almost two millennia. I cannot possibly do justice to such a broad subject in the space of this short discussion. I will focus on the more recent period, which bears the conventional denomination “post-­Byzantine”, meaning the period after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. It was during this period that the Patriarchate of Constantinople, after its reestablishment by Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror in 1454, became an institution of the new Ottoman order and tried to secure its existence under drastically changed political circumstances by adjusting its ideology and practices, often in dramatic ways, so as to secure the survival of its Christian flock in the non-­Christian empire. This story has been recorded in several historiographical traditions. One has been the tradition of history-­writing connected with the Patriarchate itself and therefore expressing its own historical thought and understanding of the dramatic events that had marked its fortunes in the post-­Byzantine period. This literature begins with the two accounts of the political and patriarchal history of Constantinople respectively sent to Martin Crucius and published by him in Turcograecia in 1584. These two sixteenth-­century sources formed the fountainhead of post-­Byzantine historical thought which later on in the seventeenth century was also expressed by the school of historical writing associated with the Patriarchate of Jerusalem and comprising truly significant works by Patriarchs Nektarios, Dositheos and Chrysanthos.6 In the eighteenth century the tradition was carried on primarily by Athanasios Komninos-­Ypsilantis, Meletios, archbishop of Athens, and Sergios Makraios, it continued through the nineteenth century with the writing, among others, of Constantios I, Patriarch of Constantinople and Skarlatos Vyzantios and lived on in the inestimable and inexhaustible contribution of Manuel Gedeon. The same tradition lingers on in the twentieth century in the work of Gennadios Arabatzoglou, metropolitan of Heliopoulis and Theira, the great Philaretos Vapheidis, metropolitan of Didymoticho and then Herakleia,

8   Introduction Maximos metropolitan of Sardis and Professor Vasilios Stavridis. This is the last generation of learning associated with the historical tradition of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and expressing authentically its historical thought. A second historiographical tradition in which the post-­Byzantine history of the Patriarchate of Constantinople features prominently is that of Balkan national historiographies, the schools of historical writing associated and expressing the aspirations and ambitions of the new nation-­states that emerged in Southeastern Europe in the course of the nineteenth century. This is a vast subject by now and has received considerable attention in contemporary scholarship, not always with felicitous results. As far as the treatment of the Patriarchate of Constantinople is concerned, by far the best products of this tradition can be seen in the writing of the greatest Balkan historian, Nicolae Iorga, and in the work of Greece’s national historian Constantinos Paparrigopoulos. Iorga’s truly seminal work, Byzance après Byzance, is a work of penetrating perceptiveness that remains pertinent to this day in understanding the condition and role of the Church in Southeastern Europe under Ottoman rule. Balkan national historiography, with all its erudition and modern methods of historical criticism, remained attached to the political agendas of the new national states and thus inevitably its treatment of the Patriarchate of Constan­ tinople, a premodern supranational institution, was coloured by the values of nationalism. This is obvious in the criticism of the Patriarchate voiced by Paparrigopoulos but it especially transpires in a rather polemical way in the writing of Serbian and Bulgarian scholars as well as in the writing of pre-­Iorga scholars in Romania like A. D. Xenopol. All these Orthodox Balkan historians criticize, occasionally vociferously, the Patriarchate of Constantinople for undermining the national integrity of their respective peoples and for trying to “Hellenize” them under the Ottomans. Paparrigopoulos on the other hand had criticized the Patriarchate for failing to do just that. This criticism by Balkan national historiography points precisely to one of the two misconceptions I want to challenge in the few thoughts I will outline in what follows. There is a third historiographical school or tradition focusing on the Patriarchate of Constantinople which emanates from twentieth-­century international academic scholarship. This tradition comprises seminal works by Sir Steven Runciman and Gunnar Hering7 most prominently but by other scholars as well in Europe and America. Their works have the great merit of turning the history of the Patriarchate into an academic subject, approaching it with the standards of scholarly discourse and criticism. As it should be expected, these works have “secularized” the history of the Patriarchate and treat it as an institution in an imperial order, involved in power and ecclesiastical politics in early modern Europe. The kind of internal self-­understanding of the Patriarchate as a religious institution that is recorded in the first of the historiographical traditions we surveyed above is generally lost in this perspective. Both Hering and Runciman, of course, are aware of the significance of this aspect of the subject and attempt to come to terms with it, showing impressive respect for it, but it remains secondary in their conceptualization of the subject.

Introduction   9 One prominent feature of Runciman’s account, which is also evident in the writing of another British scholar who wrote perceptively about the Orthodox Church, Philip Sherrard,8 transpires in arguments that stress the incompatibility between the Orthodox tradition and Western learning and therefore see the Church as totally closed and even hostile to the Enlightenment. This is the second misconception I would like to attempt to rectify in the following pages. To the historiographical survey we have sketched so far in very broad outline, a fourth, rather more recent school of historical writing should be added. This is the scholarly output of historians with access to Ottoman source material, which has been explored by them in order to elucidate the operation of the Patriarchate as a component of the Ottoman political order. Contributions in this more recent historiographical tradition, mostly by Greek Ottomanists, have treated the Patriarchate and other ecclesiastical institutions of the Orthodox Church as secular structures involved in fiscal and administrative activities, primarily the management of the taxes of the Christian subjects of the Sultan. Ottomanist writing on the Church has greatly enriched our information on the fiscal and other economic activities of the Church and has also elucidated its status as an institution in the Ottoman state. It has overlooked, however, that it has been referring to a religious institution primarily concerned with the survival of its flock as a Christian community. In some cases, this approach, viewing the Church just as a “power-­ wielding institution”, has not only introduced a rather simplistic reductionism in the treatment of a complex subject but it has vulgarized it by stripping it of the broader meanings of the connections and implications of its secular involvements. The vulgarization of the subject is very striking in some recent works dealing with the autocephalous Church of Cyprus for instance. After this broad and necessarily very condensed, even cursory, survey of historical writing on the Great Church of Christ, let me turn briefly to the two misconceptions that often arise from the consideration of the attitude of the Orthodox Church, as exemplified by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, towards the secular ideologies of modernity. The two misconceptions concern the attitude of the Patriarchate of Constantinople first towards the Enlightenment and next towards nationalism. It has often been suggested by both enemies and critics, but also devotees and faithful of the Church, that Orthodox Christianity and the secular values of the Enlightenment are incompatible and mutually exclusive. Hence it is assumed that the relation between Orthodoxy and Enlightenment was and remains one of hostility and opposition. This is an anachronistic and historically uniformed judgement. Its proponents ignore or tend to overlook a whole history of interaction and engagement between the Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment in the pre-­revolutionary eighteenth century and even after the mutual estrangement and open conflict provoked by the political alignments associated with reactions to the French Revolution. This important issue is analysed and illustrated in detail in the case study discussed in the first chapter of the present collection. The anachronism that marked the conventional argument concerning the incompatibility between Orthodoxy and Enlightenment has been even more

10   Introduction pronounced in the consideration of the interplay between Orthodoxy and nationalism. In this case both critics and supporters of the Church have been arguing the conventional view of the identification of the Orthodox Church with nationalism. I have written repeatedly on the subject in earlier writings and in order to avoid superfluous repetition, I will try to briefly summarize the relevant argument. It is true that the Orthodox Church, after the disappearance of the medieval Christian states following the Ottoman conquest in Southeastern Europe, fulfilled functions in the life of the Christian communities of the region well beyond its spiritual and ecclesiastical role as understood on the basis of canon law. It played primarily a critical role in cementing social cohesion and organizing cultural life, undertaking a leading role in the education of the faithful, preserving the heritage of Christian letters and cultivating the sacred language of worship. All this was intended as part of a broader mission shouldered by the Church in order to secure the survival of the Orthodox community, its own flock, in the infidel empire. This mission, however, was not understood in ethnic, let alone national terms. It was transacted as part of religious life and was meant to serve pastoral ends and obligations. There may appear in the historical record regional variations pointing to differentiations in the understanding of the mission of the Orthodox Church, as in the case of the Church in the Western Slavic lands. If we delve seriously into the character of pertinent activities even in these cases the overall religious motivation of the mission of the Church cannot be missed. Such had been the understanding of its mission first and foremost by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The history of the Church of Constantinople in the Ottoman centuries and into the twentieth century will be better understood if viewed in these terms. Things changed in the regional Churches with the emergence of nationalist movements and the advent of nation-­states. It was this development and the power of the modern state that broke up and transformed the Orthodox Church in the new nation-­states into local national churches. The regional national Orthodoxies have been a product of the age of nationalism, a nineteenth-­century creation. In the struggle between Orthodox tradition and national modernity, the latter carried the day and won. The power of modern statehood proved greater than the power of the Church, at least on a formal institutional level. This is what brought about the identification of Orthodoxy and nationalism. It is a nineteenth-­ century development and it was the product of the imposition of the ideology of the secular state upon the Church. This is the main subject of Chapters 2 and 3 of the present collection. The one Church that resisted this development was the Church of Constantinople, that remained and continued to view itself as a supranational institution in an imperial order. Even this venerable religious institution, however, as will be pointed out later in Chapter 4, in the early part of the twentieth century transiently gave in to the temptations of nationalism under the pressures of rival Balkan nationalisms and the upheavals of the First World War. It did pay a very heavy price eventually but, as illustrated in Chapters 5 and 6 later, it came out of

Introduction   11 that period of temptation and martyrdom and entered the twentieth century in the new Turkish Republic as a model of a non-­national Church, a truly ecumenical religious institution. For this reason the erosion of the flock of the Church of Constantinople in Turkey since the 1960s and 1970s, which has undermined the population basis of this model of a non-­national Orthodox Church, could be considered a real tragedy for the Orthodox tradition as a whole. Christianity, however, is a religion of hope, not of despair or resignation. We cannot know what surprises the future may hold for Orthodoxy and for the Church of Constantinople.

Notes 1 See for instance the suggestive collection, Religion and the Political Imagination, ed. by Ira Katznelson and Gareth Stedman Jones, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 2 See for example the studies collected in the encyclopedic panorama, Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twenty-­First Century, ed. by L. N. Leustean, New York and London: Routledge, 2014. 3 See Robert Audi, Democratic Authority and the Separation of Church and State, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 152–155. 4 See characteristically, M. Stathopoulos, Μελέτες – Ι: Γενικὴ θεωρία τοῦ Δικαίου – Ἀνθρώπινα δικαιώματα – Δικαστικὴ ἐξουσία καὶ Σύνταγμα [Studies – I: General theory of Law – Human Rights – The Judiciary and the Constitution], Athens-­ Komotini, 2007, pp. 275–438. 5 This has been described as the foremost task facing Orthodox theology in the twenty-­ first century in a seminal address by Metropolitan Ioannis Zizioulas. See “Ἡ Ὀρθόδοξη θεολογία καὶ οἱ προκλήσεις τοῦ 21ου αἱώνα” [“Orthodox theology and the challenges of the twenty-­first century”], Πρόσωπο, Ευχαριστία καὶ Βασιλεία τοῦ Θεοῦ σὲ ὀρθόδοξη καὶ οἰκουμενικὴ προοπτική, ed. by P. Kalaitzidis and N. Asproulis, Volos: Ekdotiki Dimitriados, 2016, pp. 327–347. 6 I have tried to summarize this literature in “The Byzantine Legacy in Early Modern Political Thought”, in The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium, ed. by A. Kaldellis and N. Siniosoglou, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, pp. 653–668, esp. pp. 654–660. 7 Steven Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968 and Gunnar Hering, Ökumenisches Patrichat und europäische Politik 1620–1638, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1968. 8 Philip Sherrard, The Greek East and the Latin West. A Study in the Christian Tradition, London: Oxford University Press, 1959, esp. pp. 165–195.

1 The Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment Testimonies from the correspondence of Ignatius of Ungrowallachia with G. P. Vieusseux1

The relationship between the Orthodox Church and the movement of intellectual change and cultural secularization denoted by the Enlightenment has been a complex one, extending over a rather long period of several decades from the mid-­eighteenth century to the 1820s and exemplifying multiple manifestations. The progress of a revisionist approach to the subject has hopefully laid to rest earlier historiographical stereotypes concerning the historical content of this relationship, which until comparatively recently was seen almost exclusively in terms of irreconcilable conflict and opposition, arguing, on both sides of the ideological divide, about the fundamental incompatibility between the Orthodox spiritual outlook and the secular values and critical temper of the Enlightenment. The ideological divide in question has been that between, on the one hand, historians of a leftist persuasion, whose “progressive” outlook saw in the Church an unconditional and monolithic enemy of “progress” and reason and, on the other, theologians or scholars of a religious inspiration who saw in the Enlightenment not only an enemy of religious conscience but also a dangerous threat to Orthodox beliefs and a conduit of adulteration of the “authenticity” of the traditions and values of Orthodox societies through the adoption and aping of Western ways. This Manichean perspective, which met with the concurrence of so different intellectual approaches to historical interpretation, has been put to serious questioning by a quantitatively rather meagre but qualitatively significant strand of historical writing belonging to the orbit of Orthodox thought but not succumbing unquestioningly to the ideological presuppositions of its mainstream or official intellectual exponents. This minority strand of historical writing, which could be considered to represent a form of dissent within ecclesiastical learning, was enunciated by Manuel Gedeon in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century and had among its latest and certainly one of its most distinguished exponents, Christos G. Patrinelis. Thanks to the historical thinking associated with this dissenting approach, the binary oppositions perceived and ideologically enshrined by other schools of historical thought between the Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment can now be seriously revised. Basing his researches on an almost inexhaustible array of primary source material drawn from ecclesiastical records,

The Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment   13 especially from archival and documentary collections of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, Gedeon has suggested that serious qualifications should be introduced to prevailing views concerning the attitude of the Church to secular learning in the period of the Enlightenment.2 Patrinelis has carried on this argument with subtlety and discriminating judgement.3 According to their reading of the evidence the Church was not unconditionally hostile to secular learning, modern philosophy and science at the time of the Enlightenment. On the contrary, the attitude of several among its important representatives in the period in question is shown by the sources to be quite nuanced. They appeared prepared to draw on the human resources made available by intellectual changes associated with the Enlightenment movement in the Orthodox world, in order to meet the challenges facing the Church’s own pastoral work in the field of education and in sustaining the faith and cohesion of its flock at a time of serious threats emanating from proselytizing activities of other Christian confessions and large-­scale conversions to Islam in some parts of the Ottoman Empire.4 So the story of the interaction between the Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment appears to be more complex and in need to be approached by new narratives that might capture this greater complexity. It appears quite legitimate and “operational” from a research perspective to talk of an “ecclesiastical Enlightenment” in the Orthodox world.5 Among the exponents of the “ecclesiastical Enlightenment” were of course several clergymen who belonged to the mainstream of the movement of cultural change since its earlier stages and became protagonists in the growth of modern learning and secular thought in Greek culture and increasingly in the cultural traditions of other Orthodox nationalities in Southeastern Europe.6 Besides these pioneers, however, there were others, high-­ranking ecclesiastical leaders of the first order, patriarchs and senior members of the hierarchy, who saw in the Enlightenment possibilities for making the education of the subjugated Orthodox people more effective and therefore more resistant to hostile pressures and threats. Perhaps the earliest such perception of the possibilities of the Enlightenment for the work of the Church could be associated with Patriarch Cyril V (1748–1751, 1752–1757), who in the 1750s opened the newly founded school of Mount Athos, the monastic beacon of Orthodoxy, to the reformist educational policies of Evgenios Voulgaris, the foremost exponent of the Enlightenment in the Orthodox world at the time.7 Other patriarchs among Cyril’s successors followed in his footsteps, including Serafeim II (1757–1761), Gabriel IV (1780–1784) and especially Cyril VI (1813–1818) in the early nineteenth century. A number of senior prelates also followed suit, opening or reforming schools, protecting scholars, supporting the publication of books. They included Archbishop Kyprianos, head of the autocephalous Church of Cyprus,8 and senior metropolitans of the Ecumenical Patriarchate such as Meletios and Dionysios of Ephesus and Dorotheos [Proios] of Adrianople. Many others could be added. Adamantios Korais, the greatest exponent of the Greek Enlightenment in the early part of the nineteenth century, who was known for his severe criticism of the Church on many occasions, was quick to acknowledge and praise the

14   The Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment contribution of these prelates to the development of Greek education and cultural life, obviously in the hope of encouraging others to imitate them.9 Among Orthodox prelates who appeared actively supportive of the Enlightenment in the early nineteenth century, pride of place belongs to Ignatius of Ungrowallachia. A controversial figure throughout his life and a historical personality of great complexity, defying easy categorization and certainly impossible to subject to conventional characterizations, Ignatius, born in Mytilene circa 1765, had a precocious career in the Church, rising to senior ecclesiastical positions extremely young and playing an active role in Greek politics in a period when the shadow of the Napoleonic empire was falling upon the European continent.10 In 1810 he was appointed by the Synod of the Church of Russia metropolitan of Ungrowallachia, following the annexation of the Danubian principalities by Russia in 1808.11 During the relatively brief time of residence at his archiepiscopal see in Bucharest, Ignatius played a leading role in local cultural life, establishing a Lyceum, that is a higher educational institution, and a “Greco-­Dacian” learned society, whose aim was to promote education for both local Greek and for Wallachian youth.12 An eventual peace treaty between the Russians and the Ottomans led to the evacuation of the principalities by the Russian forces in 1812. Ignatius who had been totally identified with the Russian regime in the principalities had to withdraw with them. For the next three years he wandered in Central Europe and was present in Vienna during the Congress of 1814–1815, attempting through contacts with the Russian and Austrian imperial entourages to influence the negotiations of the powerful in favour of the eventual redemption of the Greeks from Ottoman rule.13 From then on this became his overriding objective. In Vienna he worked in concert with Ioannis Capodistrias, the Czar’s Corfiote foreign minister, and they remained in close contact for the rest of their lives. Obviously they saw eye to eye on the issues agitating international affairs and on the politics of Greek liberation. Eventually in 1815 Ignatius settled in Pisa, in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany to the end of his days in 1828.14 From Pisa he developed an enormous correspondence network extending all over Europe, trying to promote the cause of Greek liberation. Like his contemporary Enlightenment thinker Adamantios Korais, with whom he maintained distant relations of mutual esteem, Ignatius believed that liberation could not be achieved and certainly could not be maintained without an educated leadership and more broadly without an educated society capable to govern itself. He was also quite clear as well about the character of the education desired. That had to be the education of the Enlightenment, modern liberal learning. At a time when Korais’s teaching and arguments for radical reform in Greek education were provoking serious ideological debates in Greek cultural life and violent reactions on the part of many conservative scholars and from ecclesiastical circles, Ignatius appeared convinced that the culture of lights held the key to the revival of Greece. His attitude was known and this put some distance between him in his Italian exile and ecclesiastical authorities in Constantinople and elsewhere.15

The Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment   15 Nowhere did Ignatius express his views more openly and affirmatively than in his correspondence with G. P. Vieusseux, the Italian-­born scholar of Genevan origin, who through his cultural activities in Florence became a leading intellectual figure in the early stages of the Italian Risorgimento.16 From his Pisan exile Ignatius had developed ties with intellectual circles in Florence and it seems that he enjoyed considerable respect on their part. Shortly after his permanent establishment in Pisa, Ignatius visited Florence and among other places he went to admire the precious Greek manuscript codices on display in Michael Angelo’s vestibule at the Laurenziana Library. His signature appears in the Visitor Book of the library on 19 August 1816.17 Subsequently, after Vieusseux’s own settlement in Florence in 1819 and the establishment of his reading club and his literary journal, Antologia, Ignatius developed ties of friendship with him. The familiarity between them transpires in the correspondence published below. Ignatius’s letters of December 1827 and March 1828 to Vieusseux belong to the very last period of his life and express with clarity and precision his political thought. The occasion for the correspondence was provided by a communication Ignatius had received from another great friend of Greece, the Genevan-­based banker Jean-­Gabriel Eynard,18 who wrote to him, on 24 December 1827, in order to announce the initiative of Swiss Philhellenes to contribute to the development of liberated Greece by bringing over to Switzerland a group of Greek youths in order to educate them.19 In his letter Eynard notes: In Switzerland we continue not only to send our support but we are in particular occupied with the education of young Greeks and I could not really praise enough those benevolent souls who are dedicated to this beautiful task. He notes that the initiative and main thrust in this philhellenic effort came from the Canton of Basel and adds: I have recently sent to Count Capodistrias a very interesting and very detailed note on what is being taught to the children […] I have the satisfaction to inform you that the entire instruction has been most satisfying and that the Young Greeks responded perfectly to the care we took of them. Eynard goes on to inform Ignatius of the names of the children. They included: – Demetrius Botzari 12 and a half years old from Souli in Epiros. – four children from Chios, survivors whose parents had perished in the massacre of 1822, aged 7, 8, 10 and 10½ years old; they demonstrated, Eynard remarks, “great ease like all Greeks”. – Alexandre Rizos from Constantinople 18 years old he comes from the highest social class, according to Eynard and was making great strides in his studies. – Finally Andreas Muzzou, 8 years old from Psara.

16   The Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment Among the names of Greek youths recorded by Eynard we can recognize prominent future personalities of free Greece, including General Dimitrios Noti Botsaris and the distinguished military commander Alexander Rizos.20 Eynard concludes his letter to Ignatius thus: It is of the highest importance for the destiny of Greece for Count John Capodistrias to arrive there the soonest possible; I hope that the boat which will transfer him will finally arrive. Please accept, Your Eminence, the assurance of the highest esteem and sincere friendship of Your devoted. JG. As an afterthought the Genevan correspondent adds a postscript to his letter: I would see with pleasure the copy of my letter to M. Vieusseux in Florence in order to publish a few words in the Anthology. It is interesting that Eynard approaches Vieusseux through Ignatius, indicating that the three of them belonged to a broader network of committed liberals spread throughout Europe. Ignatius took Eynard’s suggestion seriously and immediately got to work. On the 4th of January 1828, he wrote to Vieusseux, passing on to him Eynard’s request to publicize the Swiss initiative for the education of young Greeks.21 Ignatius wrote:

  Sir,

Pisa, 23 December 1827/ 4 January 1828

  I have the honour to transmit to you the copy of a letter which I have just received from Geneva, which merits to be inserted in your interesting journal. Monsieur Eynard in concert with his noble compatriots having espoused the cause of the Greeks with an interest and zeal without precedent, were the first to give the good example to the other peoples of civilized Europe, who by their sacrifices, by their assistance and by their counsels support the imperiled Greece until the cabinets of the Great Powers might reach an understanding between them and take effective measures to bring peace to the East, as demanded by religion, humanity and the honour of Christianity since the very beginning of the Greek Revolution. Now that the cause of the Greeks is in the sacred hands of the Greatest Monarchs of Europe, these Philhellenes have taken the charge that suits them; they are occupied with the task of procuring bread to those starving in Greece and of providing in their hospitable country a good education to Greek youth, the only means that might reunite the Greek people with the great European family and which at the same time would make them capable to enjoy the blessing of liberty, of which they have been deprived for so many centuries. The travellers to Greece, with the exception of

The Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment   17 Monsieur Pouqueville, have been mistaken in regard to the Greeks; what they considered cowardice and indifference are nothing but awareness of their weakness and prudence at the present moment when the Greeks have wrongly chosen the time of their revolution; but it was not a premeditated affair; it was just an unexpected accident; compromised by the untimely initiatives of some of their compatriots they had no middle way left to them; they had either to abandon themselves to be decimated by the Turks and fall under a much heavier and more insufferable yoke or defend their existence and their liberty by taking arms though with unequal power; they chose the second course and they did well; but although the moment of their revolution was wrongly chosen, at least the century was not, and it is to this century of lights, which honours Europe, that the Greeks owe everything. Please accept the most distinguished consideration with which I have the honour to be Truly yours The Metropolitan Ignatius. What is remarkable in this letter, besides Ignatius’s political judgement and shrewdness in describing the place of the Greek cause in European politics at the time, is the concluding admission that the Greeks, in their struggle, owed everything to the “century of lights” which honoured Europe. Vieusseux replied immediately, on 8 January 1828, pointing to the obstacles brought into the work of Antologia by censorship and saying that because of this the publication of Eynard’s report was not possible.22 But he does not miss the opportunity to reaffirm his support for the Greek cause, recalling the latest diplomatic development in the question of Greek independence, the departure of the ambassadors of the allied powers from Constantinople in December 1827, following the battle at Navarino.23 G. P. Vieusseux to his Eminence Monseigneur Metropolitan Ignatius, Pisa. 8 January 1828 I respond to the letter which you did me the honour to write to me on the date of 4 October in order to transmit the copy of the letter addressed to you by Mr. Eynard on the subject of young Greeks raised in Germany. I thank you for the urgency with which you have sent to me this interesting communication, which Mr. Enyard had sent me and which will find its place in my Journal as soon as our censorship allows me the liberty to treat the issue as it deserves; but this is not the case at the moment: the censorship has rejected a composition in the most moderate verses, an ode by the translator of Pindar, my friend Barghi, on the victory at Navarino! And it is probable that it will not permit me to occupy myself anew with the affairs of Greece until it will find itself no longer embarrassed by the consideration it must show to a certain cabinet.

18   The Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment While waiting for the journal articles to be cut off from every kind of reflection, I will try to publish Mr. Eynard’s letter in our journal in Florence at least in part. The matter will not depend on me. I wish I could arrange for publication in the journal of the wise and eloquent reflections that inspires to you the love of your homeland and which I have read with the greatest interest; and I wish I could make all the arbitrators of Europe read them. Fortunately, as you say, the century leads us toward the good, the lights triumph and I see the cause of the Greeks secure, despite the arbitrators and all their censorships. We are expecting with a quite natural impatience the details of what will happen in Constantinople after the departure of the ambassadors. God may protect the poor Christians! The correspondence on the publicity of Eynard’s letter did not have a follow up but on the first of April Vieusseux wrote again to Ignatius asking for more information about a rumour circulating in Italy at the time that in March 1828 there had been a second naval incident at Navarino Bay between a squadron of the Egyptian fleet and three allied vessels. Ignatius replied immediately on 2 April 182824 offering clarifications:   Sir,

Pisa 21 March/2 April 1828

  I rush to inform you of the reception of your letter of yesterday. The letters from Corfu, which I have just received via Otranto and Ancona, say nothing of their affair of Navarino, about which you are asking me to inform you; but I have reason to believe that this news is not groundless, and I report to you as I have received it, some days ago, from Ancona and from Venice. An Egyptian squadron attempted to enter into the port of Navarino; two frigates of the allies, one French and one English and an English brik, tried to defend the passage way, but the Turks, taking advice only from their superior forces did not respond but with a strong bombardment, in such a way that the brik was sunk and the two frigates were forced to take flight considerably damaged. Is it possible that the commanders of the allied squadrons are acting as Turks? Who knows? It depends on instructions which they have received after the first affair of Navarino. The new Governor of Greece is behaving admirably. Piracy no longer exists, because all pirate ships have been captured or sunk; order has been established in the interior; measures have been taken so that the forces on land or sea act on a fixed purpose. All that is missing is money; but he has just established a National Bank, with mortgages on real estate with annual interest rate of eight per cent and I hope that the Greeks who have the means as well as foreign friends of humanity and of the cause of the Greeks, will procure him the necessary funds to enable him to continue his noble tasks. I have the honour to be with the most distinguished consideration All yours The Metropolitan Ignatius.

The Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment   19 It is noteworthy that Ignatius adds to the clarifications requested by Vieusseux the latest political news from Greece, outlining the first measures introduced by Governor Ioannis Capodostrias for the organization of the new state. He expressed his support and great hopes in the project of state-­building in Greece under Capodistrias’s leadership. This was the appropriate conclusion of Ignatius’s political thought. Throughout the revolutionary decade of the 1820s, which coincided with the last decade of his life, Ignatius had worked incessantly from his Pisan exile and through his European-­wide network of political connections for the achievement of Greek independence.25 He took upon himself, as it has been aptly remarked in a recent reappraisal of his life, the role of the “informal” diplomat of the Greek Revolution.26 This role comprised involvement in the high politics of Restoration Europe and contacts with opinion-­makers like Vieusseux, in the cause of Greek freedom. The eventual selection of Capodistrias as the first head of state of liberated Greece had been partly due to Ignatius’s discreet campaign on his behalf.27 The two men shared the same intellectual outlook within the broader spectrum of Greek Enlightenment thought, an outlook that brought together the Orthodox tradition with a firm commitment to modern statehood and the rule of law. Both had abandoned their unconditional attachment to Russian policy, following Russia’s failure to support the cause of Greek liberation at the Congress of Verona in 1822. Since then Ignatius had judged that Greece’s best chances led her towards the orbit of the maritime power of Britain.28 Capodistrias eventually saw the advantage of Greece being attached to the three powers that might contain Ottoman strength in the Eastern Mediterranean, Great Britain, France and Russia, certainly not to Russia alone. Thus Ignatius’s judgement of Greece’s most advantageous position in the international system of power politics ipso facto involved unconditional support of Capodistrias’s policies. This view he did his best to share with Greece’s international friends, including Eynard, who of course needed no convincing on this issue, and Vieusseux, whom Ignatius considered a very influential opinion maker in Italy and in Europe. The correspondence published above is a testimony to Ignatius’s political judgement concerning the prospects of the Greek problem in the final months of his life. Ignatius’s end came unexpectedly after a short and undiagnosed illness, on 31 August 1828, five months after his second letter to Vieusseux published above.29 His passing spared him the tragedy of witnessing Capodistrias’s murder in 1831 by Greek oligarchic elements resisting his effort to build a modern state in Greece and the loss of all those hopes the exiled archbishop had invested on this titanic effort to place Greek freedom on safe institutional foundations. *  *  * It would probably be relevant, in concluding this examination of the communication between Ignatius of Ungrowallachia and G. P. Vieusseux, to resume briefly the consideration of the interplay between Orthodoxy and Enlightenment with which this study has begun. What can be gleaned from Ignatius’s letters to

20   The Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment Vieusseux as concrete illustration of the character of this broader relationship? Ignatius writes in his first letter to Vieusseux that Greek liberation and the prospects of the Greek nation more generally depend on the “age of lights”. This positive historical judgement, which reflects an unequivocal enlistment under the values of the Enlightenment, could be read as a sincere expression of Ignatius’s general moral and political outlook: his initiatives for the foundation of schools and literary societies and his active support and encouragement of the education of young Greeks in European universities constitute a clear record which translates this ideological outlook into practice. The conviction he expresses that “education is the only means to reunite the Greeks to the great European family” where they belong is an even clearer statement of his pro-­Enlightenment attitude. Yet Ignatius also writes to Vieusseux that he feels reassured that the “cause of the Greeks was in the sacred hands of the Great Monarchs of Europe” and hopes that “religion, humanity and the honour of Christianity” will eventually work in favour of the liberation struggle of his compatriots. Should these two aspects of his political attitude be considered incongruous or irreconcilable with each other as it would be quite reasonable to think on the face of the evidence? Perhaps things are more complex than that. Ignatius’s attitude, which could be considered to reflect the outer limit Orthodox ecclesiastical Enlightenment could reach, placed faith in the principles of the culture of lights, modernization, liberal government and secular learning, within a broader framework defined by Christian doctrine. His Enlightenment was nuanced and daring but not radical in a religious, political or philosophical sense. This character made it tenable as a stance for a senior Orthodox clergyman, who never for a moment felt that his religious identity should take a secondary position by comparison to the realistic recognition of the prospects offered by modern secular culture to his nation. He and others who thought likewise in connecting the prospects of the general cultural improvement and the political liberation of the Greek nation with the adoption of the principles of a moderate Enlightenment believed sincerely in an ultimate congruence between Orthodox religious thinking and these principles. Since at least the time of Evgenios Voulgaris this had been a position adopted by many Christian proponents of the Enlightenment in the Orthodox world. It is true that the evidence of Ignatius’s letters discussed in the preceding paper may appear too thin to establish the broad connection between two seemingly incompatible world-­views. It may appear more reasonable to read the documents as evidence of his awareness of the political “realities” of his day and of the need to appeal to the major powers and to enlightened public opinion to promote his cause. It might well be that it was this realism, or even, to be truer to the Tuscan context of his political thought at that late stage, a kind of “Machiavellism” that led him to use seemingly contradictory expressions to appeal to multiple audiences. It may even appear that Ignatius was drawing on Enlightenment rhetoric in order to secure a better hearing from his powerful or influential interlocutors. I think that this is a rather limited interpretation, informed by a purely secular perspective on the evidence, a secular perspective that is not totally free from a certain dose of cynicism. On the evidence of a broader

The Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment   21 historical record that is made up not only of the entire spectrum of Ignatius’s ideas and actions but also of those of many other like-­minded persons, we can in fact attempt a different judgement, which in the very contradictions of the evidence would perceive the intellectual and moral struggle of thinking minds still within a framework of traditional values, who nevertheless saw clearly that their community’s best interests could be served by openness to the Enlightenment and its principles and strove to find ways to turn the dilemma into a strategy in the service of the common good.30 It is this striving that makes the story of this group of thinkers so interesting, although also occasionally tragic in its inner antinomies and the personal costs it incurred for many of them. It certainly makes them worthy of our respect.

Notes   1 Research for this study was carried out during the period I held a Fernand Braudel senior fellowship at the European University Institute, Florence in the spring 2010. I am very grateful to Professor Antony Molho for all his help and encouragement and for his comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. I wish to acknowledge the valuable information I received in preparing this chapter from Dr Maurizio Bossi and Dottoressa Caterina Delvivo at the Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence. Daniele Lovito tried to facilitate my work with great kindness. I am also grateful to Dr Roxane Argyropoulou, Director of Research Emerita at the Institute for Neohellenic Research, Professor Vasilis Gounaris of the University of Thessaloniki and Dr Vassilis Panayiotopoulos, Director of Research Emeritus, INR, for their comments. All documentary evidence published in this study from the Ignatius-­Vieusseux correspondence has been translated into English from the French original.   2 Manuel I. Gedeon, Ἱστορία τῶν τοῦ Χριστοῦ πενήτων 1453–1913 [History of Christian paupers 1453–1913], ed. by Ph. Iliou, Athens, 2010, Vol. I, pp.  178–224 offers a broad and balanced survey. He addresses the question of attitudes towards modern learning more specifically in Ἡ πνευματικὴ κίνησις τοῦ γένους κατὰ τὸν ΙΗ΄ και ΙΘ΄ αἰῶνα [Intellectual movements of the nation during the eighteenth and nineteenth century], ed. by A. Angelou-­Ph. Iliou, Athens, 1976, especially, pp. 97–124. The full range of Gedeon’s learning has been codified thanks to C. G. Patrinelis’s meticulous and painstaking bibliographical recording in Δημοσιεύματα Μανουὴλ Γεδεών. Ἀναλυτικὴ ἀναγραφή [Publications by Manuel I. Gedeon], revised ed., Athens, 1997.   3 See C. Patrinelis’s reevaluation of the cultural policies of the Church in his Συμβιβασμοί και προσδοκίες [Compromises and expectations], Thessaloniki, 1988, pp.  4–22. On the earlier history of the Church’s contribution to learning see also William K. Medlin and Christos G. Patrinelis, Renaissance Influences and Religious Reforms in Russia, Geneva, Droz: 1971, pp. 42–69.   4 On this subject may I refer to P. M. Kitromilides, “Initiatives of the Great Church in the Mid-­eighteenth Century: Hypotheses on the Factors of Orthodox Ecclesiastical Strategy”, in P. M. Kitromilides, An Orthodox Commonwealth. Symbolic Legacies and Cultural Encounters in Southeastern Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate/Variorum 2007, Study No. V.   5 This could be understood as an Orthodox equivalent of the forms of religious thinking discussed by David Sorkin in The Religious Enlightenment. Protestants, Jews and Catholics from London to Vienna, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.   6 For a survey see P. M. Kitromilides, “Orthodoxy and the West: Reformation to Enlightenment”, The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. V: Eastern Christianity, ed. by M. Angold, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 202–209. For a detailed survey of pertinent

22   The Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment phenomena and their limits see Vasilios Makrides, “The Enlightenment in the Greek Orthodox East: Appropriations, Dilemmas, Ambiguities”, Enlightenment and Religion in the Orthodox World, ed. by P. M. Kitromilides, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2016, pp.  17–47. The study by Alexander K. Papaderos, Μετακένωσις. Ἑλλάδα – Ὀρθοδοξία – Διαφωτισμὸς κατὰ τὸν Κοραὴ καὶ τὸν Οικονόμο [Metakenosis. Greece – Orthodoxy – Enlightenment according to Korais and Oikonomos], revised ed. transl. by Emm. Georgoudakis, Athens: Akritas, 2010 since its original publication in German in 1970 has been a pioneering contribution to the consideration of pertinent issues focusing on the relation of the Orthodox tradition with the Enlightenment.   7 For an appraisal see P. M. Kitromilides, “Athos and the Enlightenment”, An Orthodox Commonwealth, Study No. VII.   8 Benedict Englezakis, Studies on the History of the Church of Cyprus, 4th–20th Centuries, Aldershot: Ashgate/Valorium, 1995, pp. 257–278, 285–301.   9 Adamantios Korais, Προλεγόμενα στοὺς ἀρχαίους ἕλληνες συγγραφεῖς [Prolegomena to ancient Greek authors], Vol. I, Athens, 1984, pp. 555–556. See ibid., pp. 502 and 561–562 for his praise of Ignatius of Ungrowallachia and his contribution to the development of Greek letters. 10 On Ignatius’s life and career the basic work still remains E. G. Protopsaltis, Ἰγνάτιος Μητροπολίτης Οὐγγροβλαχίας (1766–1828) [Ignatios Metropolitan of Ungrowallachia 1766–1828], Vols. I–II, Athens, 1959–1961. A recent perceptive reappraisal is due to Vassilis Panayiotopoulos, “Ιγνάτιος Ουγγροβλαχίας” [“Ignatios of Ungrowallachia”], in P. Michaelaris-­V. Panayiotopoulos, Κληρικοί στον αγώνα [Clergymen in the liberation struggle], Athens, 2010, pp. 45–80. 11 Protopsaltis, Vol. I, pp. 73–82. 12 Ibid., pp. 82–104. 13 Ibid., pp. 120–129. 14 Ibid., pp.  150–164. His role in the Greek revival is noted by C. W. Crawley, “The Near East and the Ottoman Empire, 1798–1830”, The New Cambridge Modern History, Vol. IX: 1793–1830, ed. by C. W. Crawley, Cambridge: University Press, 1965, pp. 536 and 546. On the broader significance of Ignatius’s presence at Piza see V. Panayiotopoulos, “Qualcosa accadde a Pisa nel 1821”, Risorgimento greco e filellinismo italiano, Rome, 1986, pp. 94–98. Ignatius’s political involvements during his residence at Pisa are also noted by Caterina Del Vivo, La moglie creola di Giuseppe Montanelli. Storia di Lauretta Cipriani Parra, Pisa, 1999, pp. 60–61, 65, 82. 15 On Ignatius’s relations with Korais see Protopsaltis, op. cit. I, pp.  116–120. Korais had called him “the pride of our nation”. See A. Korais, Ἀλληλογραφία [Correspondence], ed. C. Th. Dimaras et al., IV, Athens, 1982, p. 241 (14 June 1820). Ignatius’s views on the place of the Church in Greek education and culture were voiced in his objections to the arguments of Neophytos Doukas, who, on a number of occasions had criticized the Church for failing to adequately support culture and education. Doukas brought together his views in Ἐπιστολὴ πρὸς τὸν Παναγιώτατον Οἰκουμενικὸν Πατριάρχην κύριον Κύριλλον περὶ ἐκκλησιαστικῆς εὐταξίας [Epistole to His All-­ Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Cyril on ecclesiastical order], Vienna, 1815 to which Ignatius orchestrated a response with the tract Ἀπολογία ἱστορικὴ καὶ κριτικὴ περὶ τοῦ ἱεροῦ κλήρου τῆς Ἀνατολικῆς Ἐκκλησίας κατὰ τῶν συκοφαντιῶν τοῦ Νεοφύτου Δούκα [A historical and critical apology concerning the clergy of the Eastern Church against the calumnies of Neophytos Doukas], Vienna, 1815. Regardless of the question of authorship of this tract, which on the basis of some indirect evidence could be attributed to Ignatius’s collaborator Cyril Liverios (hence the pen name K. under which the tract was published), the text reflects faithfully Ignatius’s ideas, which inspired the whole project. On the broader significance of the Doukas-­Ignatius debate see P. M. Kitromilides, “ ‘Imagined Communities’ and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans”, European History Quarterly 19 (1989), pp.  156–159 and Basil K. Gounaris, Τα Βαλκάνια των Ελλήνων [The Balkans of the Greeks], Thessaloniki,

The Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment   23 2007, pp. 42–43. Ignatius did not fail in the response to Doukas to have mentioned by name the major exponents of what has been described in this paper “ecclesiastical Enlightenment” as evidence that the Orthodox Church had been a leading and decisive factor in the renewal of Greek culture. See Ἀπολογία ἱστορικὴ καὶ κριτική, pp. 73–76. Furthermore, in developing his arguments Ignatius openly sided with Doukas’s other major opponent, Adamantios Korais, whom he calls the “nation’s new Socrates”. See ibid., l pp.  113–114. See also Gedeon’s judgement in Πατριαρχικαί ἐφημερίδες [Patriarchal journals], Athens, 1938, pp. 381–385. 16 Vieusseux’s activity attracted the attention of an extensive literature, already among his contemporaries. See e.g. characteristically N. Tommaseo, Di Gianpietro Vieusseux e dell’ andamento della civiltà italiana in un quatro di secolo, Florence, 1864. For biographical information see Giuseppe Rondoni, Gian Pietro Vieusseux: cenni biografici, Florence, 1913. On his major publishing venture see A. De Rubertis, L’Antologia di GP Vieusseux, Foligno, 1922. More recently the whole subject has been authoritatively treated by Rafaele Ciampini, Gian Pietro Vieusseux. I suoi viaggi, i suoi giornali, i suoi amici, Torino, 1953. See esp. pp.  163–181 on Vieusseux’s contribution to the Phillellenic movement and to the cause of Greek freedom and his extensive contacts with Greeks. On the same subject Cosimo Ceccuti, “Il filellinismo dell’ Antologia (1821–1832)”, Risorgimento greco e filellinismo italiano, pp. 92–93. 17 Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Album dei Visitatori, Vol. II (1807–1864), f. [11v]. 18 On earlier contacts between Ignatius and Eynard see Protopsaltis, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 228–231 and Μνήμη Ιωάννη-Γαβριήλ Εϋνάρδου 1775–1863 [In memoriam Jean­Gabriel Eynard 1775–1863], Athens, 1977, pp. 75–76. A more detailed examination of the correspondence and shared political concerns of the two men is offered by C. A. Vakalopoulos, Σχέσεις Ελλήνων και Ελβετών Φιλελλήλων κατά την Ελληνικήν Επανάστασιν του 1821. Συμβολή στην ιστορία του ελβετικού Φιλελληνισμού [Relations between Greeks and Swiss Philhellenes during the Greek Revolution of 1821. A contribution to the history of Swiss Philhellenism], Thessaloniki, 1975, pp.  63–82. On the immediate background of these contacts and the context of Eynard’s letter to Ignatius see Michèle Bouvier-­Bron, J. G. Eynard et le Philhellénisme genevois, Geneva, 1963 and more recently, with many additional archival findings, Denys Barau, “La mobilisation des philhellènes en faveur de la Grèce 1821–1829”, Populations réfugiées. De l’exil au retour, ed. by Luc Cambrézy and Veronique Lassailly-­Jacob, Paris, 2001, pp. 37–75. See ibid., pp. 62–63 on the relations between Eynard and Ignatius. 19 A copy of J. G. Eynard’s letter to Ignatius, dated 24 December 1827, is attached to Ignatius’s letter to Vieusseux dated 4 January 1828. See Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale [= BNC], Florence, Mss Vieusseux 45, No. 161. 20 He could be quite safely identified with the son of Theodore Rizos-­Neroulos, a high lay official of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and Rallou Hurmuzaki. The father had been executed by the Turks in 1821, so the son was brought over to Geneva as one of many victims of the Greek struggle. Later in life he became a colonel in the Greek army and died in 1879. 21 Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale [= BNC] Florence, Collezione Autografi Vieusseux 45, No. 161. 22 Gabinetto Vieusseux, Archivio Storico/XIX/1 A3: Copialettere 3, 15 April 1826–11 April 1829, p. 398. 23 See Douglas Dakin, The Greek Struggle for Independence 1821–1833, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973, pp. 235–236. 24 BNC, Florence, Collezione Autografi/Vieusseux 45, No. 162. 25 Protopsaltis, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 177–180. 26 V. Panayiotopoulos, in Κληρικοί στον αγώνα, p. 76. 27 Protopsaltis, op. cit., I, pp. 272–279.

24   The Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment 28 Panayiotopoulos, in Κληρικοί στον αγώνα, pp. 78–79 and for more details, Protopsaltis, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 202–213. 29 Protopsaltis, op. cit., I, pp. 282–284. 30 A number of case studies from the several Orthodox cultural communities of Eastern and Southeastern Europe are collected in Enlightenment and Religion in the Orthodox World, ed. by P. M. Kitromilides, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2016.

2 The Orthodox Church in modern state formation in Southeastern Europe

The question of the role of the Church, and more specifically the Orthodox Church, in modern state formation in Southeastern Europe is an important one for two reasons: first, it points to an epoch-­making ideological transformation, which signals the advent of modern politics in the region; second, it touches on the critical issue of the depth, strength and tenacity of national sentiment in the several Orthodox societies in the Balkans, suggesting that nationalism has absorbed religious feeling in imposing itself through the state as the primary framework of collective identity. The place of the Church in state formation as well brings up a critical historical issue in a longue durée perspective: the Church has been an institution whose presence in the history of Southeastern Europe is marked by a truly impressive continuity, spanning 2,000 years in the southern regions of the Balkan Peninsula and over a millennium in the rest of the area. As an institution the Church, in other words, has been marked by much greater longevity than the great empires that have ruled the area, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine and the other medieval Balkan empires and finally the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, this longevity makes the Church a much more ancient and venerable institution than the modern states, which very often appear as circumstantial, even accidental creations of modern power politics. The question that arises, therefore, from this long-­term perspective on the history of the Church in Southeastern Europe is how, given its much greater longevity and tenacity as an institution in the history of the region, this Christian, otherworldly institution came, by the end of the nineteenth century, to be totally subjected to the modern secular states that had appeared just a few decades earlier, in a period from the 1820s to the 1880s? From the point of view of the Church and more precisely from the vantage point of Orthodox religious values and principles, a further substantive question suggests itself, although this particular question may be irrelevant for the secular analyst of state formation: what were the consequences for the Church as a religious institution of its subjection to the secular state, a subjection signalled by the break-­up of the universal Church and the transformation of the splinter regional Christian communions into national churches in the course of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries? We may leave this question aside for the moment, but we should not underestimate its significance for an understanding

26   Orthodoxy and modern state formation of cultural change in Southeastern Europe and also for a critical perspective on the behaviour and role of the Church in the area since the 1990s. The investigation of the more historically specific question of the Church and state formation must guard against anachronistic judgements and retrospective readings of the evidence. To meet this fundamental methodological requirement one important cognitive step must be taken: the pertinent analysis must see the Church as a changing institution, which was quite different at the beginning of the process of state- and nation-­building in the Balkans from what it became after the process was completed. We have consequently to refer to the Church at particular periods and in specific historical contexts in tracing its transition from an institution of the Orthodox Christian community under Ottoman rule to its status as national church in the late twentieth century.

The Orthodox Church and Christian society in the Balkans under Ottoman rule Under Ottoman rule, that is under the rule of a non-­Christian empire, very often employing multiple forms of violence against the members of the non-­Islamic religions in its domains, the Churches had been the organizational structure around which the Christian communities in the empire cohered and in terms of whose ideology they understood themselves. Under these conditions the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire developed a strong sense of identification with their Church, which subsequently became the basis of the integration of the Church into the projects of nation-­building in South-­eastern Europe. The original identification, however, was religious and cultural in character, it remained devoid of ethnic and national connotations in the age preceding the advent of modern political nations in the region. The Ottoman conquest, by removing the Christian emperor from the political order, destroyed what has been brilliantly described by Gilbert Dagron as the “consistency” of the idea of the empire,1 that is of the earthly kingdom, in the thought of the Christian subjects. The ideological project that the Church took upon itself under the non-­Christian empire, therefore, was to recover, to the extent possible, the lost coherence so as to save its flock from sliding into forms of collective confusion. To achieve this admittedly difficult objective the Church had to devise policies on two levels: one set of policies was pastoral and was directed at the Christians who had been reduced to captivity; another set of policies was political and was directed at the conquering empire, towards which the Church had to prove both its loyalty and its usefulness. These policies were developed gradually after the shock of the conquest in 1453 and of course they are discernible only in a long-­term perspective. In conceiving them as a strategy of survival, the Church was helped, prima facie rather surprisingly, by the attitude of the conquering empire itself. It is true that the conquering empire had deprived the Church from its status as an imperial institution by wresting from it the great places of worship upon which Christian piety had focused for a thousand years, such as the Great Church of Holy Wisdom, the imperial metropolis

Orthodoxy and modern state formation   27 of Constantinople and all other of the great monumental religious buildings in the capital of the empire, which were transformed into places of worship of the conquering faith. The Christian Church was reduced to much humbler places of worship, and by the end of the sixteenth century, when its last great cathedral, Pammakaristos, was taken away and turned into a mosque, Fetihie camii, the Great Church of Christ, was reduced to being literally the “Church of Christ’s paupers”.2 Yet the conquering empire did not want the Church to disappear. This became clear through the initiative of the young and dynamic conquering Sultan Mehmet II, the Fatih, to fill the see of the Ecumenical Patriarch that had remained vacant since 1450. Thus, the patriarchate was in a political sense re-­ established as an institution of the Ottoman state. The Fatih selected as patriarch a very prominent religious figure and scholar, George Scholarios, who had been the spokesman of the party opposing the union of the Orthodox Church with the Church of Rome. Obviously the Sultan’s selection of the new patriarch was motivated by his broader strategy to seal off the Christian community of his empire from the West. His decision to allow the patriarchate to survive, however, suggests that his strategic thinking extended beyond this specific issue. The patriarchate as the ecclesiastical structure controlling through its wide-­ranging network of dioceses the entire Christian population of the empire, could be entrusted with functions that would secure the loyalty of the conquered non-­Muslim subjects. That was the motivation behind the granting of institutional status to the Church in the Ottoman state, reflected in the so called “privileges” recognized by the Sultan upon the elevation of Gennadios II to the patriarchal throne in January 1454.3 The historiographical debate on the question of the privileges of the Church in the Ottoman state will not concern us here. From the point of view of the institutional history of the Church the “privileges”, or more realistically the administrative functions granted to it by the state, meant that the organization of the Christian faith assumed an officially sanctioned role in the power structure of the Islamic empire. This status was reflected in the official edicts [berats] issued by the Sublime Porte upon the election of patriarchs and bishops to enable them to assume their function and in a more symbolic way in the gifts and insignia given on behalf of the Sultan to each new patriarch. The expectation of the state in granting this status and privileges to the representatives of the Church was twofold: on the level of ideology the clergymen, who were supplied with imperial edicts to enable them to transact their functions among the Christian subjects of the empire, were expected to supervise “the erroneous religious beliefs of the infidels”, that is to keep them in check as followers of a tolerated “religion of the book”; on the level of practice the ecclesiastical officials were charged with the collection of taxes from their flock in order to secure the economic needs of the Church – which under the Eastern Roman Empire were met by the state – and also to meet the financial obligations of the Church and its high officials towards the Ottoman state.4 The institutional status of the Church in the Ottoman power structure naturally evolved considerably over time. From the mid-­fifteenth to the nineteenth

28   Orthodoxy and modern state formation century there were considerable changes both in the position of the Church, or more precisely its representatives, in the Ottoman institutional context and also in the organization and rules of power relations within the Christian community. This latter part of the institutional history of the Orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire is quite important for understanding the centrality of the Church in the life of the Orthodox community. The pattern of this evolution involved a gradual transition to power-­sharing from the monocratic authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople down to the early eighteenth century to oligarchic power-­sharing between the Patriarch and the group of senior prelates resident in the vicinity of Constantinople from 1741, down to the middle of the nineteenth century to institutionalized power-­sharing between the hierarchy and lay representatives of the community in the age of reforms, from 1861–1862 to the end of the empire.5 This institutional context, both on the level of relations with the Ottoman state and on the level of the organization of power relations in the administration of the Church, allowed the Orthodox Church, through its ecclesiastical institutional expressions, the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the other patriarchates and local autocephalous churches to survive under the rule of the Islamic empire and to continue to exercise its pastoral functions among the Christian faithful. Within this inner context, that is in the domain of the pastoral activity of the Church and its involvement in the spiritual, social and cultural life of its flock, the presence of the Church in the Christian society of Southeastern Europe, Asia Minor and the Near East was marked by uninterrupted continuity and witness and it was in this inner context that Orthodoxy achieved to reconstitute the consistency of outlook and vision lost in 1453 on account of the destruction of the Christian empire. This in turn can explain the great symbolic and moral power of the Church which enabled it, despite many challenges on the part of the laity, from the late seventeenth century onward, to remain the uncontested leader of the subject Christian community in the Ottoman Empire. It was the position of leadership that allowed the development of such a close identification of Christian Church and people in the cultural sphere, which in turn explains the preservation of a shared Orthodox collective identity and mentality in the bosom of the subject Christian populations of Southeastern Europe.6 This historical ontology was the product of concrete collective experience under the conditions imposed by Ottoman rule in the region. Nevertheless, in subsequent historical thinking it was understood and explained in ahistorical terms, which derived from the nationalist logic which coloured the cultural traditions of the individual nation-­states of the region from the first half of the nineteenth century onward. These anachronistic historical judgements introduced also a new interpretation of the role of the Orthodox Church, whose social and cultural involvement in the life of Christian society was reinterpreted as a precocious nationalist project, whose primary motivation and eventual achievement were taken to be the preservation of the ethnic heritage and the safeguard of the national identity of individual “peoples” in the Balkans under Ottoman rule. The role of the Church as the spearhead of nationalism

Orthodoxy and modern state formation   29 represents a retrospective projection upon a pre-­national age of the new character of the Orthodox Church as an institution of the nation-­state, a role to the construction of which we must now turn.

The Orthodox Church and the national liberation movements in the Balkans In order to understand the transformation of the Orthodox Church from an institution of the Ottoman imperial order into the national churches attached to particular nation-­states in the Balkans we must attempt a comparative analysis of the attitude of the Church towards national liberation movements in Serbia, Greece, the Romanian principalities and Bulgaria. Historically this was a protracted process and it comprised two main phases: (a) an early phase which involved the Church’s attitude and reactions to the reception of the ideologies of modernity into Balkan culture; and (b) a later phase of the Church’s involvement and reactions to the national revolutions in the Balkans. To narrate this story in all its complexity would carry us too far afield. For the purposes of the present analysis the pertinent evidence could be epigrammatically summarized as follows. Contrary to conventional impressions, which tend to point to a total opposition of the Orthodox Church to the Enlightenment as the paradigmatic conceptual expression of modernity, up to 1789 the Patriarchate of Constantinople showed remarkable receptivity to exponents of new ideas in education and philosophy, so long as they remained strictly within the framework of Orthodox doctrine in questions of religion. The example of the reform of the Athonite Academy under Evgenios Voulgaris in the 1750s7 is a case in point and other cases can be cited as well. Modernizing intellectuals like Voulgaris himself, Nikiphoros Theotokis and Iosipos Moisiodax, to mention just the best known, ran into trouble with representatives of traditional learning and conventional educational views – people who obviously felt threatened by their modernizing ideas – but they were never officially disowned by the Church as an institution.8 The official Church attitude was significantly modified after 1789 and especially after 1793. The regicide in France made plain to the eyes of conservatives and all those in positions of power the political implications of new ideas. The warnings of the opponents of modern learning seemed vindicated. Thus the 1790s became a period of ideological polarization and open attacks against the Enlightenment and its political implications. The major milestone came in 1798 with Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt. The alarm this caused in Ottoman ruling circles soon found its echoes in an official campaign led by the Patriarchate under Patriarch Gregory V against the Enlightenment and against modern liberal ideas. From the 1790s to the 1820s the Orthodox Church campaigned against the Enlightenment and this set the broader scene for the growing opposition between Orthodoxy and the liberal values of nationalism. This conflict reached its climaxes in the three patriarchates of Gregory V (1797–1798, 1806–1808, 1818–1821) and set a broader pattern of opposition that was to linger throughout the nineteenth century.9

30   Orthodoxy and modern state formation At this early stage ecclesiastical opposition focused on the threats to social order and political legitimacy posed by the revolutionary claims of liberal nationalism on behalf of the self-­determination of peoples. But as nationalist values crystallized and focused on the aspiration to create independent nation-­ states for all peoples and in this quest the ideals of the nation and its greatness rose supreme above all others, a deeper conflict over substantive beliefs and values became obvious: the Orthodox Church and the canonical order it upheld found itself defending the ecumenical values of Christian universalism against the parochial values of nationalism. The clearer expression of the incompatibility between Orthodoxy and nationalism came in the opposition of the Church to Greek nationalism. This took specific forms on many occasions. One such occasion was the official denouncement of the stirrings of republican feeling in the Ionian Islands upon the landing of French revolutionary troops in 1797. The official position of the Church was stated in an encyclical of Patriarch Gregory V to the islanders in 1797 warning of the plots of the devil which often masqueraded behind the glamouring for liberty and equality.10 The following year, 1798, the same patriarch issued a condemnation of the radical republican movement led by Rhigas Velestinlis, who had planned the overthrow of Ottoman despotism and the establishment of a Jacobin republic in Southeastern Europe and Asia Minor and called upon all former subjects, regardless of race, religion or ethnic origin, to participate in it as equal citizens.11 The most revealing manifestation of the opposition of the Church to nationalism came in the third patriarchate of Gregory V, which coincided with the climax of the pre-­revolutionary crisis in Greek society and the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821. Since his return to the patriarchal throne in 1818 Gregory V, a very devout man and a great ecclesiastical leader with a strong sense of duty, had been trying to stem the rising revolutionary tide in Greek culture. Among many other measures, including the institution of an official censor at the patriarchal press to control the publications of the scholars of the Orthodox community, the patriarch’s most characteristic ideological statement came in 1819 in an encyclical on education, in which the faithful were admonished among many other things, to avoid a recently adopted novelty of naming their children at baptism with ancient Greek pagan names instead of giving them the sanctified names of Christian saints and martyrs. There could hardly be a clearer statement of the antithesis of Orthodoxy to the most fundamental intellectual tenet of Greek nationalism, the reappropriation of antiquity as a cardinal component of identity. When the Greek Revolution broke out in early 1821 the Patriarch and the Synod formally disowned it, condemned its leaders and called upon the faithful to remain loyal to their legitimate ruler, the reigning Sultan of the House of Osman. Yet the expressions of devotion to the traditions of the Church and of loyalty to the Ottoman state did not save the patriarch. As the revolution began spreading from Moldavia and Wallachia to the Peloponnese and the Aegean islands the patriarch was held responsible by the Sublime Porte for the

Orthodoxy and modern state formation   31 disobedience and disloyalty of his flock. On Easter Sunday 1821 (10 April of that year), he was declared guilty of high treason and hanged at the central gate of the patriarchate – the gate that has remained closed ever since. In fact, the Patriarch and the senior metropolitans executed with him, on the authoritative testimony of the chronographer of the Great Church, Manuel Gedeon, had been completely uninformed of the seditious plans of the secret revolutionary society, Philiki Etaireia, and totally uninvolved in the outbreak of the Revolution.12 This tragic dénouement of one of the most distinguished patriarchates of the Ottoman period is nevertheless significant in underlining the institutional status of the holder of the patriarchal throne as an official of the Ottoman state. Gregory V was executed because he was judged to have failed in his duty as an official in the Ottoman power structure to keep his people loyal and respectful of the powers that be. Greek national historiography has disputed endlessly the genuineness of the attitude of the patriarch, whose death turned him into an “ethnomartyr”, who, at the centennial of his martyrdom, was canonized by the Church of Greece, a canonization only tacitly adopted by the Patriarchate of Constantinople.13 It has been claimed that the Patriarch was faking his loyalty to the Ottoman Empire and in fact he was secretly involved in the planning of the revolution. No evidence of any such involvement has been produced and all surviving texts fail to document any form of motivation supporting this view. On the contrary it has been much more persuasively argued that the overall attitude and conduct of Gregory V was a “clear expression of ecclesiastical policy under Ottoman rule”.14 Things unfolded quite differently in the theatre of revolutionary action. In the regions of southern Greece, where the revolution had taken root in the early 1820s, the Church was effectively cut off from Constantinople. Under Gregory V’s immediate successor, Evgenios II (1821–1822), the bishops in those regions ceased commemorating the Ecumenical Patriarch, “out of prudence” according to the chronographer of the Great Church.15 Was is it out of prudence or was this gesture an expression of their enlistment under the banner of nationalism? Their symbolically critical ecclesiastical act was indicative of the initiation of a process that over a few years was to transform the Orthodox Church in the Balkans. Finding themselves in the crucible of revolution, Orthodox clergymen in Greece were shedding their traditional ecclesiastical identity and adopting a new national identity, inspired by the collective aspiration of the people who had risen in revolt to set up their own sovereign national state. Through their participation in the drama of revolution Orthodox clergymen were in fact effectuating in their own life-­histories the passage of their Church to a new age. A brief look at these life cycles will reveal the “mechanics” of transition. Upon the outbreak of the revolution, the Ottoman governor of the Morea, the Peloponnesian peninsula, imprisoned in his capital Tripolis, Tripolitza at the time, eight bishops of the region. By the time of the liberation of the city five of them had died, adding their names to the holy legion of martyrs of the

32   Orthodoxy and modern state formation faith. They were Chrysanthos of Monemvasia, Gregorios of Nafplion, Germanos of Christianoupolis, Philotheos of Dimitsana and Philaretos of Oleni. These newest of martyrs were now ethnomartyrs, martys of faith and nation. The three bishops who survived the ordeal were released upon the liberation of Tripolitza by the Greeks under General Theodore Kolokotronis on 23 September 1821. From then on the three bishops, Daniel of Tripolitza, Cyril of Corinth and Joseph of Androusa, became active protagonists in the construction of the new state, serving in its national assemblies and undertaking high-­ ranking offices in the administration of the fledging new state. They had become national politicians rather than Orthodox bishops, although they of course retained their episcopal roles.16 The pattern was not unique to revolutionary Greece. It had already been enacted in Serbia during the successive revolutionary outbreaks between 1804 and 1830 and although the relevant examples of bishops are rarer in the Serbian case, given that the occupants of the major sees were Greeks elected by the Synod of Constantinople, still the pattern of transition to a national church is discernible in the conduct and evolving attitude of lower clergy. A case in point is that of Prota Matija Nenadović, who has left invaluable testimony of the transition in his memoirs.17 A similar and quite precocious case in the Church in the Bulgarian regions is supplied by Sofroni, bishop of Vratsa, also a canonical appointee of Constantinople. Sofroni did not go through a revolution but had shared so deeply in the tribulations of his flock at a time of crisis,18 war and lawlessness that he eventually abandoned pastoral work and in 1810 joined a Bulgarian committee in exile across the Danube in Wallachia in order to promote claims to the liberation of Bulgaria. In this case too we can discern the distant progenitor of the future Bulgarian national church.19 The earliest articulation of the idea of a regional national church, independent of Constantinople, came in the Romanian principalities and it can be attributed to a great prelate with a distinguished pastoral record, Veniamin Costache, metropolitan of Moldavia (1803–1808, 1821–1823). But for him this remained a future possibility to be reached through canonical steps. When his successor Gabriel, who was appointed by the Russians during the occupation of the principalities by Russian troops in 1808–1812, seized the opportunity to style himself as exarch of the churches of Wallachia, Moldavia and Bessarabia united in one ecclesiastical jurisdiction independent of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, Veniamin resisted the move towards autonomy as uncanonical. The arrangement collapsed following the retreat of Russian troops and the return of Ottoman rule in the principalities and with it ecclesiastical control from Constantinople, but the pattern for the future had been set.20 Despite the particular characteristics of each individual case the overall pattern of transition from a pre-­national to a national understanding of the role and purpose of the Church appears to shape up in the Balkans in the first half of the nineteenth century as a historical regularity.

Orthodoxy and modern state formation   33

The Orthodox Church as a state institution in the new national states in the Balkans By 1830 the colouring of the map of Southeastern Europe had changed: whereas in 1800 the whole region south of the Danube was monochrome indicating the extent of Ottoman power in the area, by 1830 the monochromy had been broken at two distant points on the periphery of the empire: at the southern-­most tip of the Balkan peninsula a different colour indicated the emergence of independent Greece and diametrically opposite on the northern border of the empire another differently coloured enclave represented the autonomous principality of Serbia. This novel polychromy in politics was also the point of departure of important changes in the ecclesiastical organization of the “Orthodox commonwealth” of Southeastern Europe. In fact, as the political polychromy became more diversified in the course of the nineteenth century, the ecclesiastical picture as well became more complicated and colourful – to the point that by the early twentieth century it was even stained by the colour of fratricidal blood. How this unholy outcome came about can be understood by looking at the history of the entanglement of the Church in state- and nation-­building in the Balkans in the period in question. The challenge before the new states in the Balkans in the early nineteenth century essentially involved finding the means to impose discipline upon the unruly traditional societies they inherited by breaking the multiple forms of resistance to the introduction of modern state institutions. One such source and indeed focus of resistance should normally be the Church, with the enormous moral, psychological, but also material power it commanded. The new states anticipated this eventuality with remarkable perspicacity. In this respect they showed that they had internalized the lessons of the Enlightenment quite successfully. In coping with the problems that the Church might pose to their authority the new states one after another took a drastic step: they effectively broke the power of the Church in their territories by cutting it off from the Great Church in Constantinople, which meant that the local Orthodox Churches would of necessity attach themselves to the new states in order to survive in the new political environments. The new development found support in two entirely opposite bodies of normative thinking: nationalism and canon law. It may sound ironic or even perverse, but the cunning of history saw to it that this confluence of normative claims did take place: nationalism asserted that political independence and sovereignty could not be complete so long as ecclesiastical institutions had their reference to and depended upon a patriarchate still resident in the capital of former despots. This was an argument put forward by the foremost exponent of liberal Enlightenment, Adamantios Korais, already in 1821. On the other hand the canon law of the Orthodox Church since medieval times had provided for autocephaly to be granted to the Churches within independent political jurisdictions.21 The new Balkan states in their diverse ways would appeal to both arguments in order to meet the fundamental requirement of modernizing statecraft which called for the necessity of bringing the Church under the control of

34   Orthodoxy and modern state formation the state on the Protestant model of European modernity – “gallicanism” being just a variation of the same political logic. The paradigmatic example of all this was provided by the Greek experience. The critical moment in the transformation of the Church from a communal institution in a multi-­ethnic empire into a branch of the administrative structure of the new nation-­states in the Balkans is illustrated by the story of autocephaly in the Church of Greece. The blueprint for this had been set, as already stated, by Adamantios Korais, in his eight articles on the status of the Church in free Greece, a text he included in his prolegomena to his edition of Aristotle’s Politics in 1821.22 This text is so important for the new conception of the role of the Church in the nation-­state that it deserves to be summarized here. A The clergy in the liberated part of Greece does not owe allegiance to the Patriarch of Constantinople, for as long as the Patriarch remains captive and is elected by the former tyrant of Greece. The Church in free Greece ought to be governed by a synod freely elected by clergy and laity. The examples of the ancient Church and of the synodal system in Russia are mentioned as precedents. B All those wishing to enter the priesthood should be elected by the clergy and laity of the city in which they wish to serve. C No one ought to be elected unless they possess a sound knowledge of Greek, the language in which the Gospels had been written. To the knowledge of the language, training in ecclesiastical history and moral philosophy should be added. Bishops should know in addition Latin and Hebrew. D No money should be collected by the priests from the faithful but they should be paid from public funds in the cities where they serve. E Clergymen ought to be of mature age in order to truly fulfil their mission as presbyters of the community. F The priests serving in cities among the laity ought to have families of their own. Unmarried priests, like monks, should be confined in their monasteries. G Priests fulfil a public mission but they should keep strictly out of politics in order to perform adequately the greatest service expected of them by the state, the moral teaching of the citizens. H The numbers of the clergy and the numbers of churches should not exceed what is absolutely necessary to serve the needs of the people. The multitude and magnificence of church buildings are not conducive to the desirable respect that religion should enjoy among the people. This was a genuine Enlightenment blueprint for the place of the Church in a modern liberal state. It would have been rather excessive to expect that it might be adopted in its entirety in the statecraft that went into the making of the new states. When the plenipotentiaries of the Greek people voted the first constitution of free Greece at Epidaurus on 1 January 1822 they stipulated in article 1 that Eastern Orthodox Christianity was to be the “predominant” religion in the new state and added that all other religions were to be tolerated and their rites could be freely

Orthodoxy and modern state formation   35 performed. This greatly displeased Korais, who in his Commentary on the Constitution of Greece of the Year 1822 criticized extensively the idea of “predominant” religion and argued for an unconditional religious liberalism in the new state.23 Things did not develop in practice exactly according to these ideas. Of the ideas voiced by Korais on the position of the Church the one that was adopted unconditionally and put to practice not only in Greece but in all Balkan Orthodox countries was the idea of autocephaly. This of course was not due to the decisive impact of Korais’s liberalism – far from it – but to the irresistible force of nationalism which was transforming local politics and wiping away older traditions of Christian ecumenicity. Although neither the national assemblies of revolutionary Greece nor Governor Ioannis Capodistria, who tried to regulate ecclesiastical affairs in the Greek state, attempted to pursue the autocephaly project,24 this was put in practice unilaterally by the Bavarian regency in 1833 under King Otho. Setting up the autocephalous Church of Greece under a caesaropapist regime became one of the four major elements of statecraft in the kingdom of Greece immediately after independence – the other three being the creation of a regular army, administrative centralization and the establishment of a fiscal and taxation system.25 It is obvious that the new regime imposed on the Church by the state was an integral part of the project of administrative and institutional modernization upon which state-­building was based. The philosophy of this enterprise involved the introduction of the rules and procedures of modern statecraft into the operation of the main institutions of public life so as to bring them more effectively under the control of the state and to gear their workings towards the modernization of society. The Church became a component of the public sector, its structure was integrated into the state administration and the clergy became public functionaries. The modernizing purpose of the new arrangements came across at its most characteristic in the drastic measures taken in connection with the most traditional and resistant component of the ecclesiastical structure, monasticism. Most monasteries were dissolved – all those with fewer than six monks – and their lands were confiscated by the state. Thus from 524 monasteries in the kingdom only 146 survived.26 Monastic lands were added to the lands left behind by former Muslim inhabitants of Greece to form the “national lands” which were meant for distribution to landless peasants. The unilateral declaration of autocephaly which was the major precondition of the institutional modernization of the Church caused a protracted crisis between Greece and Constantinople. The Ecumenical Patriarchate objected to unilateralism as a serious violation of the procedures stipulated by Orthodox canon law and refused to recognize the new ecclesiastical arrangements in Greece. This caused serious opposition to autocephaly in Greece itself led by a distinguished clergyman and theologian, Constantinos Oikonomos. The Church of Greece remained in a condition of schism, unrecognized by the Orthodox Churches until 1850 when the Ecumenical Patriarchate, following a formal application by the Greek government and the Synod of the Church of Greece issued a patriarchal tome canonically granting autocephaly and readmitting Greece into the communion of Orthodox Churches.27

36   Orthodoxy and modern state formation This pattern of institutionalization of the Orthodox Church as part of the new state structures was re-­enacted, with variations, everywhere in the new Balkans. In contrast to Greek unilateralism, nevertheless, the autonomous principality of Serbia followed faithfully the formalities of canon law and obtained smoothly from Constantinople the status of autonomy of her Church in 1831, following an application by Prince Milos Obrenovich. Autocephaly came equally smoothly in 1879, as a normal canonical consequence of the recognition of Serbian independence by the Congress of Berlin the previous year. Upon the accession to independence the Serbian government and hierarchy applied to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and received the tome of autocephaly from Patriarch Joachim III.28 What is particularly interesting from a political point of view is the way in which in the fifty years following autocephaly a process of ecclesiastical integration was employed in the service of political and national integration as the kingdom of Serbia expanded in the Western Balkans. The ecclesiastical history and political adversities of previous centuries had left a heritage of extreme fragmentation of ecclesiastical jurisdictions ministering to the religious needs of Orthodox Serbs. Between 1879 and 1920 the Orthodox Serbian community was governed by at least six ecclesiastical jurisdictions (Carlowitz, Montenegro, Dalmatia and Cattaro, Belgrade, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Southern Serbia, the latter two dependent on Constantinople). Following the Serbian victories in the Balkan Wars and Serbia’s participation in the First World War on the side of the victors, which prepared the ground for the advent of the Yugoslav Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the need of ecclesiastical integration led to still another appeal in 1919 to Constantinople whereby consent was requested for the integration of the six jurisdictions into one united patriarchate of all Serbs. On 12 September 1920, the feast day of all Serbian saints, the unification of all jurisdictions into one Serbian Patriarchate was solemnly celebrated. On 2 April 1922 an official mission from Constantinople headed by Metropolitan Germanos of Amasya delivered the patriarchal tome, issued by Patriarch Meletios IV, to the Patriarch of all Serbs Demetrie. Thus ecclesiastical integration came to cement the unity of the new kingdom and patriarchal status came as its crowning glory, evoking as well the unity of the Serbian religious community in time through the revival of its patriarchal dignity, originally enjoyed by the ancient patriarchate Peć, which had been proclaimed twice in the past, in 1346 and 1557. By contrast to Serbia’s canonical conscience and respect of procedural formalities, Romania imitated Greek unilateralism in institutionalizing its Church as part of its own state- and nation-­building. Following the union of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia under Prince Alexander Cuza in 1861, measures were initiated for the unilateral independence of the Orthodox Church in the Romanian lands. Already in 1859 upon his election to the princely thrones of both principalities, Cuza had introduced drastic secular policies in regulating ecclesiastical affairs. The most radical measure was the confiscation of monastic lands following the Greek precedent in this respect. This strained relations with the Orthodox patriarchates and monastic foundations in Athos, Sinai and Jerusalem, which possessed extensive estates in the principalities.29 In 1865 the

Orthodoxy and modern state formation   37 Orthodox Church in the united principalities was proclaimed independent of every foreign authority, was placed under a synod of Romanian prelates presided over by the “primate of Romania” and all elections and appointments were made subject to state approval. Constantinople refused to recognize these developments and thus after the Greek schism a second schism emerged in Balkan Orthodoxy involving Romania this time. The problem was not settled until 1885 when, following the recognition of Romanian independence at Berlin in 1878, the Metropolitan Calinik of Wallachia applied to Constantinople for autocephaly and received a patriarchal tome from Patriarch Joachim IV.30 Despite autocephaly and the stipulations of the 1885 tome for self-­government, royal involvement in ecclesiastical affairs remained endemic and the Church was repeatedly used for the promotion of the aspirations of Romanian nationalism, both internally and externally. A new serious problem with Constantinople arose in the early twentieth century on account of attempts to bring Vlach communities in Macedonia and Epirus under Romanian ecclesiastical jurisdiction.31 As had happened in the case of Serbia, the autocephalous Church of Romania served paradigmatically on the levels of symbolism and psychology the project of the national integration of the kingdom of Greater Romania that emerged from the First World War. Enormous territorial gains in the war brought new jurisdictions in Transylvania, Bucovina, the Banat, Bessarabia and Dobrudga into the Romanian Church, which undertook an active role to cement not only the Orthodox conscience but also the Romanian identity of the populations in these regions.32 To celebrate its new status as the Church of a great kingdom, the Church of Romania assumed the patriarchal dignity in 1925. This final act in the national institutionalization of the Romanian Church was the only one that was transacted according to the formalities of canon law, with prior consultation and agreement with Constantinople. The role of the Orthodox Church in national assertion in the Balkans is most clearly and dramatically illustrated in the case of the Bulgarian Exarchate. From a Christian point of view this is a sad story. If the Greek and Romanian examples of national assertion through the Church led to breaches of canon law and to violations of ecclesiastical formalities and procedures, the Bulgarian drama involved not only such canonical failures but violence on a large scale, the exertion of physical force upon innocent Christian faithful in Macedonia and Thrace and on many occasions the turning of Christian churches from places of worship and eucharistic communion into battlefields of armed groups using fire and axe in the name of Christian order.33 The paradox in the Bulgarian case is that the claims of ecclesiastical emancipation preceded the emergence of an independent state and ecclesiastical conflict became a substitute for fighting a national liberation struggle. What emerges from the historical record, therefore, is illuminating not so much for an understanding of the institutionalization of the Church as part of modern state formation but of its uses as an instrument for the promotion of the aspirations of Bulgarian nationalism with the objective of attaining state independence. In this case we have national church formation as the major stage of nation-­building preceding the construction

38   Orthodoxy and modern state formation of the state. In other words, the historical sequence observable in the other Balkan cases of the modern state taking over the Church and transforming it to meet its own requirements of modernization, institutionalization and integration was reversed in the Bulgarian case. The reversal in fact adds to the significance of the Bulgarian case for understanding Balkan ecclesiastical politics and for following the process of state- and nation-­building in the region.34 It is not easy to summarize the complex story of the Bulgarian Exarchate. In the outline that follows I will only focus on the reconstruction of the Orthodox Church in the Bulgarian lands as an institution of national assertion. The growth of nationalism in Bulgarian intellectual circles in the first half of the nineteenth century and the spread of education in the Bulgarian heartlands north of the Balkan Mountains in the same period had a differentiating impact upon Bulgarian clergy and hierarchy who gradually came to conceive their mission as ministering not only to the spiritual needs of an Orthodox people but also as serving the interests of a Bulgarian national community. After the Crimean War this change in outlook and mentality led members of the hierarchy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Bulgarian origin to voice claims to ecclesiastical autonomy and also to demand a more active Bulgarian role in the administration of the Patriarchate. A number of patriarchs, including Joachim II, Sophronios III and Gregory VI, showed remarkable understanding towards Bulgarian claims and appeared prepared to go a significant way to meet those Bulgarian demands which they judged canonically acceptable and reasonable, such as the appointment of Bulgarian bishops in Bulgarian regions and greater Bulgarian representation in the organs of the Patriarchate. Gregory VI even discussed the prospect of setting up a Bulgarian Exarchate, that is an autonomous ecclesiastical institution charged with the religious administration of Bulgarian communities in the empire.35 These measures cost the patriarchs involved considerable criticism from the direction of Greek nationalism. The Bulgarians, nevertheless, did not appear satisfied and repeatedly brought the Church before unilateral and uncanonical steps, which in 1861 caused the condemnation and defrocking of three Bulgarian bishops.36 The incompatibility between the motivations of the two sides was absolute and insurmountable: the Bulgarians had political motives and would not accept anything that did not meet their requirements of national assertion and control of their community through the Church in the absence of a state. On the other hand, the Patriarchate of Constantinople felt constrained to uphold canonical requirements and procedures and as time went by, successive patriarchs came under considerable pressure from Greek nationalism and from a younger generation of nationalist bishops within the Church to resist Bulgarian claims. With Russian support the Bulgarians obtained in 1870 a firman from the Sublime Porte setting up their Exarchate with its seat in Istanbul itself.37 This was intolerable to the Patriarchate, which refused to give its consent to this development and convoked a Synod of Orthodox patriarchs to deal with the problem. The Synod met in August and September 1872 and condemned the doctrine of “ethnophyletism” as heretical and incompatible with Christian teaching and accused those following the Bulgarian Exarchate for

Orthodoxy and modern state formation   39 succumbing to it. The Exarchate was proclaimed schismatic and was put outside the communion of Orthodox Churches.38 This is how the “Bulgarian schism” came about. It lasted for three quarters of a century until 1945 just because the political motives and the power struggle behind it did not allow the simple procedural steps required for its revocation to take place. Once the pertinent ecclesiastical motivations prevailed, the bitter conflict was settled in less than a month in January 1945, under Exarch Stephen and Patriarch Benjamin.39 As noted above the schism, which was primarily a political conflict masquerading as an ecclesiastical problem, caused enormous suffering to the Christian flock in the Balkans and contributed more than any other factor to the escalation of national and political conflicts in the region. The project of a national Bulgarian Church, nevertheless, contributed to the articulation of a Bulgarian national community which could and did sustain a Bulgarian state, as an autonomous principality in 1878 and as a sovereign kingdom in 1908.

In lieu of conclusion: the idea of a “national church” and its antinomies By the early twentieth century, when Bulgaria attained its independence in 1908, there was no longer one Orthodox Church in the Balkans but many autocephalous national churches, closely associated with the nationalist projects of their particular states. This was the consequence of the subjection of the churches by individual states, as part of their own domestic integration and homogenization. The Church whose leadership had passed into the hands of a hierarchy effectively socialized into the new national cultures, readily collaborated with this project, enjoying the support of state mechanisms that cemented its own authority. This is how the idea of a “national church” came about. This development, however, involved serious contradictions between the particularist and exclusivist ideals of nationalism which the hierarchy of the Church had readily espoused and the ecumenical teachings and values of the Christian tradition. Whether this moral antinomy was realized by those involved is an open question and it remains so for as long as the idea of national churches lives on as a dominant ideology in the Balkan Orthodox Churches.

Notes   1 Gilbert Dagron, Empereur et prêtre. Étude sur le “césaropapisme” byzantin, Paris: Gallimard, 1996, p. 21.   2 I borrow the expression from Manuel I. Gedeon, Ἱστορία τῶν τοῦ Χριστοῦ πενήτων, 1453–1913 [History of Christian paupers], Athens, 1939, a work focusing on the conditions prevailing in the life of the Church following the conquest.   3 See V. Laurent, “Les premiers patriaches de Constantinople sous domination turque”, Revue des Études Byzantines 26 (1968), pp. 229–263 and more specifically C. J. G. Turner, “The Career of George-­Gennadius Scholarius”, Byzantion 39 (1969), pp. 420–455.

40   Orthodoxy and modern state formation   4 See Elizabeth Zachariadou, “The Great Church in Captivity 1453–1586”, The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. V: Eastern Christianity, ed. by Michael Angold, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp.  169–186 and P. Konortas, Οθωμανικές θεωρήσεις για το Οικουμενικό Πατριαρχείο [Ottoman perspectives on the Ecumenical Patriarchate], Athens: Alexandria, 1998.   5 See further in Chapter 3 below and the literature cited there.   6 For consideration of these issues from various angles see the studies collected in P. M. Kitromilides, An Orthodox Commonwealth. Symbolic Legacies and Cultural Encounters in Southeastern Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate/Variorum, 2007. See also for additional evidence and complementary perspectives L. Hadrovics, Le peuple serbe et son église sous la domination turque, Paris: PUF, 1947; Stevan K. Pavlowitch, Serbia. The History Behind the Name, London: C. R. Hirst, 2002, pp. 12–13, 19–25; Andrei Pippidi, Byzantins, Ottomans, Roumains, Paris: Champion, 2006, pp. 55–80 and more recently, from a sociological perspective, Victor Roudometof, Globalization and Orthodox Christianity. The Transformations of a Religious Tradition, New York and London: Routledge, 2014, pp. 68–73.   7 See P. M. Kitromilides, “Athos and the Enlightenment”, Mount Athos and Byzantine Monasticism, ed. by A. A. M. Bryer and Mary Cunningham, Aldershot: Variorum, 1996, pp.  257–272. Reprinted in P. M. Kitromilides, An Orthodox Commonwealth. Symbolic Legacies and Cultural Encounters in Southeastern Europe, Study No. VII.   8 For a general survey see P. M. Kitromilides, “Orthodoxy and the West: Reformation to Enlightenment”, The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. V, pp. 202–209.   9 Ibid., pp. 205–209. 10 See Richard Clogg, “The ‘Dhidhaskalia Patriki’ (1798): An Orthodox Reaction to French Revolutionary Propaganda”, Middle Eastern Studies 5 (1969), 87–115. Reprinted in idem, Anatolica Studies on the Greek East in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Aldershot: Ashgate/Variorum, 1996, Study No. V. 11 See further P. M. Kitromilides, “An Enlightenment Perspective on Balkan Cultural Pluralism. The Republican Vision of Rhigas Velestinlis”, History of Political Thought XXIV (2003), pp. 465–479. 12 M. I. Gedeon, Πατριαρχικοὶ πίνακες [Patriarchal lists], 2nd ed., ed. by N. L. Phoropoulos, Athens, 1996, p. 693. 13 It is interesting to note the scepticism on the canonization of Patriarch Gregory V expressed in a letter dated 29 April 1921 to the locum tenens of the Ecumenical Patriarchate by the Metropolitan Chrysostom of Smyrna, who as a martyr of the 1922 catastrophe himself was also in the future to be canonized by the Church of Greece. See Τὸ Ἀρχεῖον τοῦ ἐθνομάρτυρος Σμύρνης Χρυσοστόμου [The archive of ethnomartyr Chrysostom of Smyrna], ed. by Alexis Alexandris, Athens: MIET, 2000, Vol. III, p. 138. 14 See N. Zacharopoulos, Σαφὴς ἔκφρασις τῆς ἐκκλησιαστικῆς πολιτικῆς ἐπὶ Τουρκοκρατίας [Gregory V. A clear expression of ecclesiastical policy during the Ottoman period], Thessaloniki, 1974. 15 M. I. Gedeon, Πατριαρχικοὶ πίνακες, p. 603. 16 See P. M. Kitromilides, “The Legacy of the French Revolution. Orthodoxy and Nationalism”, The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. V, pp. 229–233. 17 See The Memoirs of Prota Matija Nenadovics, transl. and edited by L. F. Edwards, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. 18 His pertinent testimony appears in his autobiographical account, Vie et tribulations du pécheur Sofroni, transl. by Jack Feuillet, Sofia: Sofia-­Presse, 1981. 19 Roumen Daskalov, The Making of a Nation in the Balkans. Historiography of the Bulgarian revival, Budapest and New York: CEU Press, 2004, pp. 32–39 for the relevant background.

Orthodoxy and modern state formation   41 20 See Keith Hitchins, The Romanians 1774–1866, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, pp.  36–43 and M. Pacurariu, Istoria Bisericii Ortodoxe Romane, Bucharest, 1994, Vol. III, pp. 7–24. 21 For a survey of Orthodox canon law on the subject see Spyridon Troianos, Παραδόσεις ἐκκλησιαστικοῦ δικαίου [Lectures on ecclesiastical law], 2nd ed., Athens: A. N. Sakkoulas, 1984, pp. 128–137 and idem, “Einige Bemerkungen zu den materiellen und formellen Voraussetzungen der Autokephalie in der Orthodoxen Kirche”, Kanon V (1981), pp. 157–164 with full documentation. See also in particular by reference to the question of “national” Churches, Archimandrite Gregorios Papathomas, “La dialectique entre ‘nation étatique’ et ‘autocéphalie ecclésiale’ ”, L’Année canonique 43 (2001), pp.  75–92 and idem, “La place et le rôle des principes du système canonique de l’Autocéphalie du sein de l’ Eglise orthodoxe”, The Place of Canonical Principles in the Organisation and Working of Autocephalous Orthodox Churches, ed. by Const. Rus, Arad: Aurel Vlaicu, 2008, pp. 54–90. 22 Adamantios Korais, ed., Ἀριστοτέλους Πολιτικῶν τὰ σωζόμενα [Aristotle’s politics], Paris, 1821, pp. cxx–cxxiv. 23 Adamantios Korais, Σημειώσεις εἰς τὸ Προσωρινὸν Πολίτευμα τῆς Ἑλλάδος τοῦ 1822 ἔτους [Notes on the Provisional Constitution of Greece of the year 1822], ed. by Th. P. Volidis, Athens, 1933, pp. 3–8. See also pp. 8–20 on religious toleration. 24 Kitromilides, “The Legacy of the French Revolution”, pp. 233–234. 25 John A. Petropulos, Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece 1833–1843, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 180–192. 26 Ibid., p. 182. 27 For a survey see Charles A. Frazee, The Orthodox Church and Independent Greece 1821–1852, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969, esp. pp. 171–195. On the question of Greek autocephaly see also the important study based on extensive documentary evidence by G. D. Metallinos, Ἑλλαδικοῦ αὐτοκεφάλου παραλειπόμενα [Omissions concerning Greek autocephaly], Athens: Domos, 1989 and more recently D. Stamatopoulos, “The Orthodox Church of Greece”, Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Nineteenth-­Century Southeastern Europe, ed. by Lucian Ν. Leustean, New York: Fordham University Press, 2014, pp. 34–64. 28 See Jean Mousset, La Serbie et son Église (1830–1904), Paris 1938 [Collection historique de l’Institut d’Études Slaves à l’Université de Paris, No. 8], pp.  54–66, 311–313 and Bojan Alexsov, “The Serbian Orthodox Church”, in Leustean, ed., op. cit., pp. 65–100. 29 Keith Hitchins, The Romanians 1774–1866, pp. 312–313. 30 M. Pacurariu, Istoria Bisericii Orthodoxe Romana, vol. III, pp.  126–142. See also Lucian N. Leustean, “The Romanian Orthodox Church”, in Leustean, ed., op. cit., pp. 101–163. 31 See Philaretos Vapheidis, Ἐκκλησιαστικὴ Ἱστορία [Ecclesiastical History], Vol. III (1453–1908), Alexandria: Patriarchal Press, 1928, pp. 194–205. 32 See Constantin Iordarchi, Citizenship, Nation and State Building: The Integration of Northern Dobrogea into Romania 1878–1913, Pittsburgh: The Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 2002, pp. 39–43, 65–68. 33 On the broader issues raised by the engagement of the national churches in the military confrontations between Balkan states cf. Svetlozar Eldărov, “Les églises orthodoxes balkaniques et les guerres dans les Balkans, 1912–1918”, Revue des Études Sud-­Est Européennes 42 (2004), pp. 201–214. 34 It is interesting to note that “the formative role of the Church in building up the Bulgarian nation” has produced even the historiographical neologism “church nation”. 35 Philaretos Vapheidis, op. cit., pp. 166–167. 36 Kitromilides, “The Legacy of the French Revolution”, pp. 240–244.

42   Orthodoxy and modern state formation 37 See T. E. Meininger, Ignatiev and the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate (1864–1872), Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1970, pp.  92–134. See also Daniela Kalkandjieva, “The Bulgarian Orthodox Church”, in Leustean, ed., op. cit., pp. 164–201. 38 Metropolitan of Sardis Maximos Christopoulos, The Ecumenical Patriarchate in the Orthodox Church, Thessaloniki: Patriarchal Institute of Patristic Studies, 1976, pp. 303–309. 39 See Kallistos Ware and G. Ivanov, “An Historic Reconciliation: The Role of Exarch Stefan”, Sobornost I (1979), pp.  70–76. On the broader political motivations that determined the attitude of the Bulgarian Church and contributed to the settlement see Gerasimos Konidaris, Ἡ ἄρσις τοῦ Βουλγαρικοῦ σχίσματος [The revocation of the Bulgarian schism], 4th ed., Athens: Grigoris Publications, 2012.

3 The Ecumenical Patriarchate and the challenge of nationalism in the nineteenth century An age of ideological encounters

The impact of the major force shaping European modernity in the nineteenth century, nationalism, upon the foremost institution around which Orthodox society traditionally cohered in Southeastern Europe, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, forms a complex story which can be seen to unfold on many levels. The response of the Patriarchate, the Great Church of Christ, to the secular challenge of nationalism was equally complicated and it could be traced in many contexts. To avoid confusion, anachronism and unfairness in attempting to recover, at least partly, this story, one precondition must emphatically be borne in mind: understanding of the encounter of the Patriarchate with nationalism should not be reduced to a power struggle over simply the control and direction of the Orthodox community, but it should be seen and interpreted as the response of a religious institution to the challenge posed to its core values and self-­ definition deriving from a centuries-­old tradition by a secular threat to this heritage – a threat from which the Church saw as its nonnegotiable duty to safeguard the Orthodox community. This is the core of the historic encounter to be sketched in outline in what follows. Losing sight of the deeper spiritual and ideological incompatibilities of the two world-­views locked up in the encounter would reduce the story to a confusing record of personal conflicts, antagonisms over power and violent disagreements concerning the prospects of the Christian community in the Ottoman Empire. The approach to be followed here will involve an attempt to gauge and appraise the response of the Ecumenical Patriarchate as the foremost repository and self-­conscious guardian of the Orthodox religious tradition to nationalism. The initial encounter of the Orthodox Church and its institutional exponent, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, with the challenges of modern secular thought had of course taken place before the age of nationalism. The earliest such encounters had been well under way in the eighteenth century in the interplay of the Orthodox tradition with the Enlightenment. As I have attempted to suggest in the preceding chapters in the present collection, that earlier encounter too was more complex and nuanced than it has often been assumed by conventional historiographical approaches. As a rule the Orthodox Church, especially before the period of the French Revolution, manifested a noteworthy openness to the exponents of modern secular learning and so long as questions of doctrine

44   The challenge of nationalism remained untouched, it proved quite prepared to enlist them in its projects for the education of the faithful.1 Even after 1789 and despite the intensification of ideological confrontations between proponents and opponents of modern ideas in the Orthodox community both within and without the Ottoman Empire, the Church’s openness to the Enlightenment made possible the emergence of a remarkable phenomenon that could be described as “ecclesiastical Enlightenment”. This was represented by a number of senior prelates, who occupied leading positions in the hierarchy during the first two decades of the nineteenth century and in their pastoral work appeared sincerely devoted to the modernization and improvement of education, attracting the admiration and approval of important and outspoken leaders of secular thought such as Adamantios Korais.2 One particular manifestation of the impact of the Enlightenment and its expectations of cultural refinement upon the inner life of the Church was registered in the style and diction of the official documents issued by the secretariat of the Patriarchate or by the Holy Synod. A conscious turn to a more learned style, reflecting a deeper command of ancient Greek is noticeable already in the mid-­seventeenth century and it becomes a generalized tendency from the mid-­eighteenth century onwards. The new atticizing style was obvious in the dating of patriarchal documents where the ancient Greek names of months were preferred to those of the Roman calendar; it was also reflected in the tendency to hellenize episcopal titles by making placenames conform to Greek grammar and “by hunting names with an air of hellenism”.3 The most eloquent and literal record of the “prevalence of hellenic spirit” in the praxis of the Church was the special concern for the use of language. The chrono­ grapher of the Great Church Manuel Gedeon makes a quite strong point of this:4 The most splendid and powerful means of strengthening and preserving hellenism inviolate in its integrity, was for the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the other patriarchates the pure Greek language, free from the cacophony of foreign accretions and this was the language in official patriarchal documents drafted by the chief secretaries, who as a rule were also the head teachers of the patriarchal academy. Such had been the intellectual substratum of the work of the Church. In the period of the Enlightenment concern for the proper use of language became a distinctive feature of patriarchal practice in Constantinople according to Gedeon, setting a precedent and a standard for the nineteenth century. I have dwelled on this aspect of ecclesiastical practice not only on account of the intrinsic interest of the subject but also in order to illustrate a broader interpretative problem. The concern for language and the special care for the proper usage of Greek could be easily interpreted as an intellectual expression of the spirit of nationalism, thus confirming a conventional historiographical view of long standing that saw the Orthodox Church as a primary agent of Greek nationalism. The cultural

The challenge of nationalism   45 initiatives connected with the proper use of language could thus be seen as a precocious manifestation of such a secular spirit in the bosom of the Church. In fact such a reading of the evidence, plausible as it appears at first sight, would only betray a characteristic inability to grasp the historicity of pertinent phenomena and a total misunderstanding of the character of ecclesiastical practice. Concern for the proper use of Greek did not possess for the Church ethnic significance, let alone nationalist meaning. It rather confirmed its status within the cultural tradition of Orthodoxy that went back to the great Greek fathers of the fourth century. It should thus be seen as a reclaiming and an affirmation of an ancient religious identity with a distinctly ecumenical content, rather than as a sign of a form of ethnic awareness. The question of language and the easy ways in which it can be misunderstood and misinterpreted illustrates the broader cognitive and methodological problems facing any attempt to understand and interpret, or even simply to narrate the story of the attitude of the Church towards modern secular systems of values and most particularly towards the complexities and conflicts involved in the advent of nationalism within the ethnic communities over whose spiritual life the Orthodox Church had presided for millennia. In the particular case of the Ecumenical Patriarchate the question of nationalism could be seen to present serious challenges to the Church on many levels, spiritual and pastoral, political and administrative. Nationalism was a force of change transforming European societies in the direction of modernity and modernity meant fundamentally secularization. Ipso facto therefore the nexus of modernity–secularization–nationalism involved a confrontation with the Church. In a context of great ethnic heterogeneity and national pluralism such as that of Orthodox Christianity in the age of nationalism the confrontation between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the forces of secularization and national modernity could be traced – primarily for reasons of analytical efficacy – on three levels: first on the level of relations with the new national states of the Balkans, which as an integral part of their nation-­building projects claimed the independence of their local churches from Constantinople; second on the level of governance of the Orthodox community within the Ottoman Empire, a community which since the Fall of 1453 had been defined in terms of religion and had been placed under the jurisdiction of its ecclesiastical leadership; third on the level of relations with the Ottoman state, once the empire itself was set, rather belatedly, into the orbit of nationalist transformation.

The Orthodox Church and the advent of national states in the Balkans On the level of the relations of the Ecumenical Patriarchate with the new Orthodox national states of the Balkans one can discern quite clearly the inner logic of ecclesiastical attitudes towards the array of secular changes represented by nationalism. Between the 1830s and the 1880s a process of drastic changes transformed the political map of Southeastern Europe as one after another the

46   The challenge of nationalism Orthodox nationalities of the region acceded to independent statehood: Greece, Serbia and Romania became sovereign kingdoms, Greece in 1830 after a ten-­ year war of independence, Serbia in 1878 after a protracted period of autonomy under Ottoman suzerainty since 1831, and Romania in 1881 after the union of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in 1859 and the election of a European prince as head of the new autonomous state in 1865. The new nation-­states demonstrated a particular sense of urgency to integrate the Orthodox Church in their nation-­building projects by detaching its local branches within their new state borders from Constantinople and proclaiming them autocephalous.5 Inevitably this created problems with Constantinople. The Ecumenical Patriarchate did not in principle object to autocephaly. There were serious precedents to the recognition of authocephaly in medieval Orthodoxy, as in the cases of the medieval patriarchates of the Bulgarian and Serbian empires that had remained in complete canonical communion with Constantinople until their abolition by the Ottomans following the disappearance of the states to which they had been attached. Furthermore, Constantinople had proceeded at the close of the sixteenth century to the granting of autocephaly and patriarchal status to the Orthodox Church within the Russian empire, thus creating a fifth Orthodox Patriarchate in 1589.6 The objections Constantinople voiced to the new autocephalies of the age of nationalism were directed primarily to the unilateralism whereby the new secular states attempted to impose their will on the Church. This can explain the different forms the question of autocephaly took in the Serbian case on the one side and in the Greek and Romanian cases on the other. Serbian political and ecclesiastical authorities in the autonomous principality of Serbia in 1831 and the sovereign kingdom of Serbia in 1879 took the formal steps required by canon law by applying to the Synod of Constantinople for ecclesiastical autonomy first and autocephaly subsequently, receiving both smoothly with the blessing of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. By contrast Greece and Romania proclaimed unilaterally their Churches independent of Constantinople, putting the claims of nationalist sensibility before the formalities of canon law. This secular modus operandi created serious problems in the Orthodox communion. Constantinople totally rejected the unilateral actions creating Greek autocephaly with the consequence of a schism between the autocephalous Church of Greece and the Orthodox communion lasting from 1833 to 1850. Another schism appeared in the making on account of Romanian state policies in the ecclesiastical domain without prior consultation with Constantinople in the 1860s, the 1870s and the 1880s. In both the Greek and Romanian cases the conflicts were healed and full communion restored once the formalities required by canon law were finally followed, the national governments and their local Churches applying for autocephaly on the grounds of their accession to political independence and receiving their new status by means of an official document, patriarchal tomos, issued by the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.7 The way Constantinople, under a number of different patriarchs and at points in time at some distance from each other,8 handled the question of the

The challenge of nationalism   47 autocephaly of national churches illustrates characteristically the fundamentally different logic of Orthodox ecclesiology from the secular values of nationalism.9 This became even more obvious in the protracted and sad story of the Bulgarian ecclesiastical question. As we saw in detail in Chapter 2, in the case of the Bulgarian Orthodox community the aspiration to ecclesiastical emancipation preceded the claim of independent statehood as a preparatory stage of national assertion, paving the way to state sovereignty. The Bulgarians were latecomers to nationalism by comparison to the other Balkan Orthodox communities but once they did, their commitment and enthusiasm was second to none. They expressed their aspirations by clamouring for an independent Bulgarian Church, as a herald obviously of an independent Bulgarian state. It would be reasonable to suppose in view of the extreme inter-­mixture of nationalities and ethnic communities in the region that the aspiration to set up an independent Bulgarian ecclesiastical entity was also a means to attempt an initial delineation of the territorial basis of a future Bulgarian state. The first Bulgarian claims to ecclesiastical autonomy were voiced after the Crimean War (1854–1856). In order to accommodate the demands of their Bulgarian flock two Ecumenical Patriarchs, Joachim II in 1861 and Gregory VI in 1867, proposed arrangements for ecclesiastical autonomy in ethnically predominantly Bulgarian areas under the spiritual jurisdiction of Constantinople. Since there was no Bulgarian state the Ecumenical Patriarchate judged that there was no canonical basis for anything else. This proved unsatisfactory to the Bulgarians who were actively encouraged in their aspirations by Russian foreign policy and by the broader Panslavist movement. In 1870 with the support of the Russian ambassador to the Sublime Porte in Istanbul, Count Ignatiev, the Bulgarians managed to obtain an edict from the Sublime Porte setting up an autonomous Bulgarian Exarchate in thirteen dioceses which belonged to the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The Synod of the Patriarchate rejected this proposed arrangement as uncanonical and proceeded to the convocation of a major synod of the Orthodox patriarchates to consider the issue. Russia abstained but the other Orthodox patriarchates and the autocephalous Church of Cyprus agreed to take part. The Synod met in Istanbul in late August 1872 and by 17 September it concluded that the Bulgarian claims were uncanonical and the demand for a separate church along ethnic lines represented the heresy of ethnophyletism. The Exarchate was proclaimed schismatic and was condemned and its ecclesiastical leaders were defrocked and excommunicated. That is how the Bulgarian schism came about. It introduced intense conflicts into the Orthodox community and caused tremendous suffering to large numbers of people in Macedonia, Thrace and Eastern Rumelia, who paid the heavy costs for the secular values that had crept into the Church and brought about this confrontation over essentially secular issues of power and politics. The Patriarchate of Constantinople, nevertheless, was consistent in its attitude in facing up to this challenge of secular nationalism: the absence of an independent state in the Bulgarian case could not warrant the canonical steps that had led to autocephaly in the cases of Greece, Serbia and Romania. The schism lingered on until 1945 when

48   The challenge of nationalism it was settled in less than a month once certain formalities were transacted by the Bulgarian Church under Exarch Stephen.10

The Ecumenical Patriarchate and the governance of the Orthodox community in the Ottoman Empire The Bulgarian Orthodox were not the only group which questioned the authority of the Great Church after the Crimean War. The broader changes that marked the government of the Ottoman Empire during the age of reforms ushered in by the Hatt-­i-Humayun of 1856 raised the expectations of the Greek Orthodox flock of the Ecumenical Patriarchate as well for a different, more active role in the administration of the Church and in the management of the affairs of their own community. Up until then the Church and the affairs of the community were managed through an oligarchic system of power-­sharing between the incumbent patriarch and a group of about eight senior metropolitans who occupied the thrones of sees in the vicinity of Constantinople. This was the system of gerontismos, government by the elders, instituted around the middle of the eighteenth century as a way of breaking the patriarch’s monopoly of power.11 Lay influence was extensively exercised to be sure, especially by Orthodox officials and dignitaries of the Porte like the grand dragomans and the princes of Wallachia and Moldavia, as a rule members of the great Phanariot families. Increasingly, as the nineteenth century progressed, lay influence in the affairs of the Church was wielded by persons of great wealth, who had risen to prominence through success in commerce and banking and had amassed enormous fortunes. All these forms of influence, however, remained informal and non-­institutionalized and very often involved unwarranted intervention of laymen in purely ecclesiastical issues beyond their competence, which inevitably bred corruption. The new claims voiced after 1856 precisely involved a demand for formal institutionalized representation of the lay element in the administration of the Church and this could be only connected with the rise of secularization marking the age, of which nationalism was a particular expression in the Christian communities of the Ottoman Empire. The picture of course was neither uniform nor predictable as to who stood where or as to the consistency of the positions adopted. All this was determined by circumstances, short-­term alliances and calculations of interests. As a result of the movement of lay assertion in the affairs of the Church, nevertheless, major institutional changes came into place whereby the old oligarchic system of government by the elder metropolitans was abolished and was replaced by a new system by which the governance of the Church was entrusted to a Holy Synod of twelve prelates, drawn from the entire body of the hierarchy, renewable every two years12 while affairs of the Orthodox community were managed by a “permanent mixed council” composed by eight elected lay members and four metropolitans. Both bodies were presided over by the patriarch and the two together formed an electoral college, broadened with the addition of lay dignitaries and other representatives from the parishes of Constantinople and the provinces, which elected the patriarch.13

The challenge of nationalism   49 These institutional changes were provided for by the “General Regulations”, enacted officially on 27 January 1862 as part of the broader structure of Ottoman reforms which sought to modernize and make government more accountable in the empire. The “General Regulations” were the product of protracted negotiations in the Orthodox community which took years to transact, following the original edict of the Sublime Porte concerning the introduction of reforms. An initial “national assembly” composed of representatives and dignitaries of the Orthodox community was convoked between 1858 and 1860 with the charge to draft the regulations that would implement the reforms among the Orthodox subjects of the Sultan. The assembly produced the draft that eventually, after further revisions, was enacted as the General Regulations in 1862. The text and its various specific provisions, however, remained an object of contention and it was repeatedly subjected to revisions by other assemblies in 1870 and 1872 and by successive appeals of the two bodies to the Porte.14 The institutionalized presence of the lay element provided outlets for the introduction of nationalist sensibilities and conflicts into the affairs of the Church and it also fostered the emergence of many-­sided conflicts between the lay element and the leadership of the Church, which attempted in most instances to maintain a non-­national approach to ecclesiastical and community affairs on the basis of the traditions of Christian ecumenicity, as noted above for instance in the attempts to accommodate Bulgarian claims before the schism. The wider story of the politics of the Orthodox community in the Ottoman Empire in the age of reforms is certainly beyond the scope of the present essay, which attempts to bring some order to the consideration of the equally complex question of the encounter the Ecumenical Patriarchate with the protean challenge of secular nationalism. On this level of analysis the relevance of the story of the new institutional arrangements brought about by the application of the Ottoman reforms in the system of governance of the Orthodox community consists in the recognition of the outlets it provided whereby nationalism and national passions influenced the policy options and decisions of the Church. The formal presence of the laity, with its own divisions, factions, conflicting views and interests in the process of ecclesiastical governance and especially direct lay participation in patriarchal elections influenced in significant ways, through various forms of dependence and patronage, the policies of the Patriarchate.15 On the evidence of the historical record it was largely the pressure coming from lay elements in the Orthodox community, who had been converted to the values of Greek nationalism that in the 1860s and 1870s led to the escalation of the conflict with the Bulgarian Orthodox which culminated in the schism. It was such elements, influenced largely by the nationalist politics of Epaminondas Deligiorgis, prime minister of Greece in the mid-­1860s and in the early 1870s, that, against the more moderate counsel of senior leaders of the Orthodox community in Constantinople, pushed for a sharp showdown with the Bulgarians, motivated to a considerable degree by anti-­Russian attitudes. It was characteristic of the climate of the time that at the Synod of 1872, the Patriarch Cyril of Jerusalem, who wished for moderation towards Bulgarian aspirations, was subjected to threats and forced to remain away.16

50   The challenge of nationalism The Bulgarian question remained the crucible of the Church’s encounter with nationalism. As Bulgarian activities on behalf of the Exarchate escalated in Macedonia and Thrace and the Greek state became more actively involved to protect Greek interests in the regions, the pan-­Orthodox policies preferred by Patriarchs Joachim II and Joachim III went unheeded by a younger generation of prelates, who had to face the consequences of the schism on the ground. Thus these younger prelates were forced, very often by pastoral necessity, to align themselves with Greek nationalism and to espouse its values. This group of senior clergymen included some of the most dynamic and gifted bishops of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, charismatic men like Chrysostom of Drama and then of Smyrna and Germanos of Kastoria and then of Amasya. Their conversion to nationalism through their involvement in irredentist politics in Macedonia signalled in a way what the wave of the future would bring in the relationship of the Great Church to nationalism.17

Figure 3.1  Patriarch Joachim III during his first patriarchate (1878–1884). Source: © N. Manginas Photographic Archive.

The challenge of nationalism   51 Concurrently in another domain of the Church’s traditional concerns, that of education and cultural life, the wave of ethnonationalism was also actively transforming the mentality and values of the younger generations of its flock through the active promotion of Greek cultural policies in the Orthodox communities of the Ottoman Empire, both in the Balkans and Asia Minor. These cultural policies through the foundation of schools and nurseries, the training of teachers and the active encouragement of the foundation of local cultural associations aimed at and to a considerable extent did achieve the cultivation of Greek national consciousness among the Orthodox populations of the empire, even in distant and isolated regions in the far interior of Asia Minor.18 The Church, which in fulfilling its pastoral duties had been traditionally the leading agent in the education of the faithful, could not of course oppose educational initiatives which did not threaten Orthodox doctrine (as similar initiatives of Western missionary groups did) and therefore the process of the nationalization of its flock through the expansion of the network of Greek schools proceeded apace in the new environment of freedom, toleration and equality made possible by the institutional context of Ottoman reforms. The process of the internal and initially inadvertent nationalization of the Orthodox Church in the course of the nineteenth century could be more clearly illustrated if we turned our attention for a moment to the insular microcosm of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus. Although Cyprus is an autocephalous Church and does not belong to the jurisdiction of Constantinople, under Ottoman rule the two Churches became closely identified and ties in the nineteenth century were particularly close to the point that developments in the ecclesiastical life of Cyprus followed closely the broader patterns unfolding on a much vaster scale in the extensive territorial jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Asia Minor and the Balkans. Cyprus had gained ecclesiastical autocephaly at the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus in 431. It thus ranked sixth after Rome and the four Eastern patriarchates in ecclesiastical seniority. Under the medieval Frankish kingdom and the subsequent period of Venetian rule, the autocephaly of the Church of Cyprus was suppressed by Rome (1260–1571) but it was restored by a synod of Orthodox patriarchs held in Constantinople in 1572, following the Ottoman conquest of the island the previous year. Under archbishops Chrysanthos (1767–1810) and Kyprianos (1810–1821) the Church of Cyprus went through a period of revival and reconstruction, taking many initiatives in the cultural domain. Archbishop Kyprianos was a genuine representative of the ecclesiastical Enlightenment noted above and took important measures in the field of education,19 establishing a higher “Hellenic school” in Nicosia in 1812 and supporting in 1819 the initiation of a “Philological Gymnasium” in Limassol, modelled after the Philological Gymnasium of Smyrna, one of the foremost hearths of the culture of the Enlightenment in the Greek world.20 All this creative energy shown by the Cypriot exponent of the ecclesiastical Enlightenment came to a tragic end in the year 1821 when the archbishop, the three metropolitans, Chrysanthos of Paphos, Meletios of Kition

52   The challenge of nationalism and Lavrentios of Kyrenia and hundreds of other senior ecclesiastical dignitaries and lay notables fell victims to the savagery and rapacity of a local Ottoman governor, who staged a major massacre on 9 July 1821 and in subsequent weeks. Thus the Church of Cyprus shared in the martyrdom brought upon the Orthodox hierarchy throughout the Ottoman Empire in reprisal for the Greek Revolution in 1821. Later on this legacy of martyrdom supplied a powerful symbolic impetus to the growth of Greek nationalism in Cyprus, endowing it with its “ethnomartyr” founding fathers. The history of the Church of Cyprus for the remainder of Ottoman rule, down to the British occupation of 1878, was in fact a protracted endeavour to recover from the heavy blow dealt to it by the tragedy of 1821. The 1820s was a decade of instability in the Church with three prelates alternating on the archiepiscopal throne, but during the relatively longer reign of archbishop Panaretos (1827–1840) a systematic effort at reconstruction was undertaken with the convocation of two assemblies of senior clergy and lay notables in 1830 and 1839, which provided especially for the organization of the island’s Orthodox community and the establishment of schools. An important initiative took place in 1828 shortly after Panaretos’s accession, whereby the archbishop, the bishops and lay notables of Cyprus signed an appeal to the first head of state of liberated Greece, Governor Ioannis Capodistrias, to take measures for the inclusion of Cyprus within the borders of the fledging new state. This appeal set a pattern that was going to be repeated on many occasions for the rest of the nineteenth and during the twentieth century, with the Church of Cyprus leading the movement for the incorporation of the island in the kingdom of Greece. Although archbishop Panaretos was expelled from his throne with an imperial command in 1840, in the age of reforms that marked the last phase of Ottoman rule in Cyprus the Orthodox Church in the island enjoyed relative tranquillity and respect. Three archbishops at the close of the Ottoman period received high Ottoman decorations, marking the new age in the relations of the Orthodox Church with the Ottoman state. The new climate allowed the Church to concentrate on its internal reconstruction and the promotion of Greek education. In its educational projects the Church of Cyprus was repeatedly assisted by Constantinople, especially by the Syllogos, the Greek Literary Association of Constantinople. Ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate remained close throughout this period and Constantinople was constantly the main point of reference for the Church of Cyprus. Clergy from the island began being trained at the new Theological School established by Constantinople in 1844 on the island of Halki in the Sea of Marmara. These cultural initiatives and expanding ties with the new Greek state and major centres of Greek diaspora and ecclesiastical life around the Eastern Mediterranean, especially with Alexandria and Jerusalem, contributed decisively to strengthening the sense of Greek identity in Cyprus and laid the foundations for the future growth of a dynamic nationalist movement in the island. Meanwhile at the centre of the empire and the Orthodox Church, the return of Patriarch Joachim III to the throne in 1901 with the support of the neo-­Phanariot group in the lay leadership of the Orthodox community, who saw in the

The challenge of nationalism   53 preservation of the Ottoman Empire the safest guarantee for the survival and prosperity of the Church and its flock, acted as a brake which postponed the wholesale conversion of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to nationalism. Amidst all other Orthodox Churches which had been transformed into national churches and led by the Church of Russia were pursuing active nationalist strategies, the Great Church of Christ under Patriarch Joachim still held out, professing the values of Christian universalism and ecumenicity.21 The great patriarch passed away on 13 November 1912, literally on the morrow of the outbreak of the first Balkan War. The Greek army had just taken Thessaloniki on 26 October, the day of the city’s patron saint, St Dimitrios. In the age of Balkan Wars and of the Great War that followed, the resistance of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to nationalism finally withered away. Ten years later, in the wake of Greece’s Asia Minor disaster the Patriarchate paid the heaviest of costs for this transient flirtation with nationalism, with the martyrdom and eventual expulsion of its flock from its historic hearths in the land of the seven churches of the Apocalypse.22

The Church and the Ottoman state Since its reestablishment by Mehmet the Conqueror in 1454 the Patriarchate of Constantinople had functioned as an institution of the Ottoman imperial order. Upon their accession the patriarchs, in their personal capacity as leaders of their religious community, were issued imperial edicts (berats), recognizing their status and detailing their duties, especially their foremost obligation to secure the loyalty and submission of their Christian flock to their Ottoman master.23 Despite the official recognition of their status as religious leaders of a significant part of the population of the empire, the patriarchs as a rule suffered the consequences of the arbitrariness of despotic power. This was reflected in the frequency of changes on the patriarchal throne, some patriarchs serving only a few months or even weeks, many of them returning to the throne for second, third or even more terms and several falling victims to martyrdom, including some of the most prominent ones such as Cyril I, Gregory V and Cyril VI. Of the many cases of patriarchal martyrdom under Ottoman rule, the story of Patriarch Gregory V is particularly revealing in connection with the multiple facets of the Church’s relation to secular thought in general and to nationalism in particular. Gregory came to the Ecumenical Throne in 1798 from the metropolis of Smyrna. His background linked him with the movements of revival of Orthodox spirituality emanating from Mt Athos earlier in the eighteenth century. When he ascended the throne of Constantinople in 1798 the Ottoman Empire was in dire straits, besieged by the pressures of the age of revolution on all sides: French revolutionary troops had just occupied the Ionian Islands on the empire’s Western front, Napoleon had landed in Egypt, putting the empire’s territorial integrity in serious jeopardy, separatist movements by local toparchs were threatening the empire from within, and revolutionary initiatives inspired by jacob­ inism like the one led by Rhigas Velestinlis were rising among the Christian subjects of the empire. The Sublime Porte in a state of alarm obviously pressed

54   The challenge of nationalism the Patriarch to do something to keep his flock in line and to secure their loyalty to the empire. The Patriarch did not need to be convinced. Deeply committed to Christian culture and to the cultivation of the faith of his flock through the improvement of education and intent on fulfilling his pastoral responsibilities by establishing on safe foundations the canonical order in the Church, the Patriarch did not think that any form of disloyalty to the Ottoman state could be conducive to anything edifying for the Orthodox community. For him, as for most of his predecessors, the legitimacy of the Ottoman state was a fundamental premise of the condition of the earthly existence and conduct of the Church. Hence the patriarch’s active campaign against the revolutionary ideas of liberty and equality that were infiltrating the conscience of a segment of his flock came as a natural consequence of the Church’s overall attitude. This campaign was particularly notable in the year 1798 – the critical year of Napoleon’s landing in Egypt – and included the Patriarch’s famous encyclical to the inhabitants of the Ionian Islands, warning about the pernicious spiritual consequences of French revolutionary principles, the condemnation of the revolutionary initiative of Rhigas Velestinlis and the publication of the track Paternal instruction, which attempted to systematically reinterpret the terms liberty and equality to make them conform to the idea of submission to the Ottoman state.24 All these expressions of official ecclesiastical policy reflected the distance the Orthodox Church wished to maintain from modern secular ideas in order to keep the faithful within its fold and expressed with sincerity an ancient tradition of which the Patriarchate of Constantinople felt itself to be the guardian. The patriarch’s attitude remained consistent in his following two patriarchates (1806–1808, 1819–1821). His third patriarchate coincided with the escalation of the ideological preparation of the Greek struggle for freedom and the outbreak of the war of independence. The patriarch remained consistently opposed to all these movements, fearing – rightly as it turned out – that they would lead to violent reprisals by the Ottomans that might put the very physical survival of the Christian people in jeopardy. Gregory’s last patriarchate turned into an active campaign to contain the radical effects of secular ideas among his flock and to strengthen the bases of traditional Orthodox culture. Among other initiatives the Patriarch set up a patriarchal press, appointed a patriarchal censor and invited Orthodox scholars to submit their works for publication. Counter-­Enlightenment initiatives among the learned laity both within the Ottoman Empire and in the diaspora were encouraged, including the publication in Vienna of the journal Kalliope in 1819, as a forum of conservative opinion against the liberal Ermis o Logios also published in Vienna and the radical journal Melissa, published in Paris. The most important initiative of the period was the attempt to bring Greek education in line by affirming the control of the Church over the main higher schools of the Greek world and closing down through the initiative of local metropolitans the major institutions following a predominantly secular curriculum like the Philological Gymnasium in Smyrna and the High School of Chios. Just as the Greek war of independence was breaking out in March 1821, the patriarch convoked a synod in Constantinople which issued a condemnation of

The challenge of nationalism   55 “philosophical lessons”, meaning exactly the curricula of the Enlightenment introduced into Greek high schools.25 The best-­known measure of ideological control came at the very end of Gregory’s third patriarchate and involved the encyclicals disowning the revolt against Ottoman rule led by Alexander Ypsilantis in Moldavia. The month of March 1821 was marked by many parallel initiatives, including an encyclical of 11 March 1821 confirming that the condemnation of the outbreak of the revolt “had been signed amidst a torrent of tears on the holy altar”.26 All this however, “an authentic expression of ecclesiastical policy under Ottoman rule” as it has been rightly characterized by Gregory’s most objective modern biographer,27 did not assuage the Ottomans’ panic at the revolutionary outbreak, neither did it convince them of the loyalty of the Orthodox Church. On Easter Sunday 1821, 10 of April, the Patriarch Gregory V and four senior prelates resident in Istanbul, Dionysios of Ephesus, Athanasios of Nicomedia, Gregory of Derkoi and Evgenios of Anchialos, were executed for high treason in reprisal. The patriarch, who had celebrated Easter liturgy at midnight, was hung from the central gate of the patriarchate at Phanar in Istanbul and his body was given over to a mob and eventually thrown into the Bosporus. The gate of the patriarchate where the patriarch had been hung remains closed ever since. The patriarch’s martyrdom at the outbreak of the Greek Revolution, despite his active opposition to secular values and to any form of liberation initiatives throughout his tenure of the patriarchal throne, transformed him immediately into an icon of Greek nationalism. Throughout the period of the liberation struggle in the 1820s his name became a slogan for the fighters of Greek freedom and later in the independent Greek state he was ceremoniously incorporated among the protagonists of the liberation of Greece. Somewhat ironically in the 1870s his statue was erected outside the University of Athens next to that of Rhigas Velestinlis, whose political ideas he had condemned as “full of rottenness”. On the centennial of his martyrdom, in 1921 Patriarch Gregory V was canonized by the Synod of the autocephalous Church of Greece, an initiative faced with scepticism by Constantinople at the time28 although subsequently the patriarch as a “hieromartyr” was included in the Great Church’s calendar of saints. It is interesting to note that whereas for the Church of Greece Gregory V is an “ethnomartyr”, the Church of Constantinople prefers to refer to him as an “hieromartyr”, recalling and connecting him to the tradition of the early Church and associating him with such great and popular early saintly bishops like Charalambos and Eleftherios martyred by the Romans. The story of Patriarch Gregory V is extremely important and also revealing for understanding the whole nexus between Orthodoxy and nationalism. As it should be clear from the brief survey of the patriarch’s pastoral activity and ecclesiastical policies above, he remained throughout, with impressive consistency, dedicated to the spiritual, canonical and pastoral traditions of Orthodoxy which ipso facto turned him into an opponent of the multiple expressions of secularism, including its foremost political manifestation, nationalism. This in fact

56   The challenge of nationalism was an authentic expression of the Orthodox position which Gregory incarnated with a deep sense of responsibility with his life and death. His martyrdom, nevertheless, delivered him to the ideology of Greek nationalism and to the historiography that embodied this ideology, for which Gregory’s anti-­nationalist policies and his scepticism about plans for the liberation of Greece remained a source of profound embarrassment. Throughout the nineteenth and repeatedly during the twentieth century there have been historiographical attempts to “exonerate” the patriarch from the charge of “collaborationism” with the “foreign and infidel tyrants” of the Greek nation, levelled against him by equally ideologically motivated arguments of historians and other commentators with a leftist or “progressive” orientation. Of course both positions are simply symptomatic of anachronistic thinking, ideological prejudice and an inability to recover and judge on its own terms, taking into account its religious premises, the ways the Orthodox Church with the Ecumenical Patriarchate at its head strove against enormous odds to discharge its pastoral duties and to preserve the Orthodox faith within the institutional framework set by the Ottoman state. It was precisely this institutional framework that seemed to be changing in the age of reforms. For about a quarter of a century from the 1850s to the 1870s the official Ottoman recognition of the equality of all subjects of the empire and the project of a common Ottoman identity regardless of religion or ethnic origin involved ipso facto a new attitude towards Orthodoxy and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The frequent changes of the holders of the patriarchal office continued throughout the nineteenth century, but the incumbent patriarchs were treated with respect and accorded state honours and top decorations that symbolized the new status of equality and toleration to which the empire aspired. A small, little known social event late in the year 1851 reflected the new climate and the hopes it nurtured. On 15 December of that year the reigning Sultan Abdul Mecid I (1839–1861) in a gesture suggesting great favour and good will graced with his presence the wedding of the daughter of one of the most prominent Orthodox dignitaries at the time, Stephanos Vogorides, who had saved the Porte in various capacities including that of Prince of Samos. According to a detailed eyewitness account the Sultan arrived at the church where the wedding was blessed and remained standing with his hands crossed throughout the ceremony, saying that he had taken an oath never to sit down on occasions at which the name of the Lord was mentioned.29 The Hatt-­i Humayun of 18 February 1856 provided the formal context for the new condition of the Church in the Ottoman Empire by affirming the rights and privileges that would secure its free and unfettered functioning: It recognized the spiritual privileges and exemptions of Christian communities, secured the complete religious freedom of all religious confessions, granted permission to build and repair places of worship, schools and philanthropic establishments, forbade forced religious conversions, proclaimed the complete equality of all subjects of the empire, forbade discrimination in favour of any religious community, granted to all the right to assume and exercise public offices and dignities and visit state schools, it ordered the establishment of mixed courts, gave the option of buying

The challenge of nationalism   57 exemption from military service, granted the right of property ownership to foreign subjects and guaranteed complete religious toleration.30 The new position of the Church in the Ottoman Empire was best reflected in ecclesiastical architecture. Whereas for centuries Orthodox churches were built behind high walls and under tiled roofs, which made them as inconspicuous as possible, as can still be seen today in the old walled city of Istanbul, in the second half of the nineteenth century, during the age of reforms and subsequently, new imposing church buildings were erected with impressive domes and belfries. Some of the best-­known examples of this new ecclesiastical architecture include the Holy Trinity church in Pera which still dominates Taxim square in Istanbul, Holy Trinity in Kadiköy, St Kyriaki and Panagia Elpida in Kumkapi in Istanbul. Most of all the best sign of the self-­confidence and optimism that the Orthodox community in the Ottoman Empire enjoyed in this period is provided by the domed building of the Patriarchal Great School, built in 1882, which still dominates with its red-­brick structure the northern shore of the Golden Horn. The official Ottoman attitudes, which made possible the public affirmation of Orthodox religious identity in the Ottoman Empire in the age of reforms and its aftermath, were not to last for very long. New needs and priorities in the government of the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876–1909) changed the climate of recognition and acceptance of the pluralism of Ottoman society which had given prominence to the Orthodox Church. The rise of nationalism among the Christian communities of the empire eventually forced upon the Sublime Porte the recognition of the necessity of a new form of legitimization of state power and a new source of loyalty to imperial authority. This new source of legitimacy and loyalty was provided by nationalism. Sultan Abdulhamid, as Caliph of Islam, turned first to Islamic nationalism but this became increasingly Turkified in order to attract the loyalty of the main population group in the empire.31 In this context the old struggle between Christianity and Islam was revived and recast in modern, that is nationalist terms. It was a kind of ideological “Cold War”, as it has been aptly suggested,32 in which the survival of the one meant the destruction of the other. The ideological militancy that replaced the spirit of toleration of the age of reforms destroyed the social theory of Young Ottomanism, which had sustained the introduction of the first Ottoman constitution in 1876 and had visualized a basically multicultural transformation of the empire.33 With the reversal of the prospects of pluralism in the Ottoman Empire the differentiated official attitude towards Orthodoxy also disappeared. The Hamidian government attempted to break the power and freedom of action of the Church by curtailing its traditional privileges that had been confirmed and strengthened by the Hatt-­i Humayun. The first attempt was made in 1883 through an attempt to reformulate the text of the berats issued for two newly elected metropolitans. This provoked serious protests on the part of the Church, leading eventually to the resignation of Patriarch Joachim III in 1884.34 All this led to a protracted conflict between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Sublime Porte over the so called “privileges” of the Church. The confrontation lasted for

58   The challenge of nationalism decades and was never resolved but it did provoke an extensive literature on the traditional privileges of the Orthodox community. After the turn of the century and the advent of the Young Turk movement the Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate would experience the suspicion, exclusiveness and hostility of Turkish nationalism, which would seal its history in the twentieth century.

Notes   1 See P. M. Kitromilides, “Orthodoxy and the West: Reformation to Enlightenment”, The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. V: Eastern Christianity, ed. by M. Angold, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 202–209.   2 These prelates included the Patriarch of Constantinople Cyril VI, metropolitans of Ephesus Meletios and Dionysios, metropolitan Ignatius of Ungrowallachia, metropolitan of Adrianople Dorotheos and the Archbishop Kyprianos of Cyprus. On Korais’s appraisal see Προλεγόμενα στοὺς ἀρχαίους Ἕλληνες συγγραφεῖς [Prolegomena to ancient Greek authors], Vol. I, Athens: MIET, 1984, pp. 502, 555–556, 561–562. See also the evidence discussed in Chapter 1 in the present collection.   3 Manuel I. Gedeon, Ἱστορία τῶν τοῦ Χριστοῦ πενήτων [History of Christian paupers], ed. by Ph. Iliou, Athens: MIET, 2010, Vol. I, p. 289.   4 Ibid., p. 290.   5 See Chapter 2 above and V. Roudometof, Globalization and Orthodox Christianity, New York and London: Routledge, 2014, pp. 79–101 bringing the story to the present.   6 See Robert O. Crummey, “Eastern Orthodoxy in Russia and Ukraine in the Age of the Counter-­Reformation”, Eastern Christianity, pp.  305–306. See also Borys A. Gudziak, Crisis and Reform. The Kyievan Metropolitanate, the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Genesis of the Union of Brest, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, pp. 168–187.   7 For details see P. M. Kitromilides, “The Legacy of the French Revolution: Orthodoxy and Nationalism”, Eastern Christianity, pp. 233–240.   8 Constantios I in 1833, Anthimos IV in 1852, Sophronios III in 1866, Joachim III in 1879 and 1882.   9 Maximos of Sardis, The Ecumenical Patriarchate in the Orthodox Church, Thessaloniki: Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies, 1976, pp. 303–309. See also P. M. Kitromilides, “The Ecumenical Patriarchate and the ‘National Centre’ ”, An Orthodox Commonwealth, Aldershot: Ashgate/Variorum, 2007, Study No. XIII. 10 Kitromilides, “The Legacy of the French Revolution: Orthodoxy and Nationalism”, Eastern Christianity, pp. 240–244. Orthodox attitudes on the Bulgarian question, involving a sharp critique of both Bulgarian but especially Greek nationalism and their impact in the Church as incompatible with the catholicity of Orthodoxy, are recorded in a work published anonymously by Manuel I. Gedeon at the time under the title, Μία σελὶς ἐκ τῆς ἱστορίας τῆς συγχρόνου ἐκκλησίας. Σκέψεις ἑνὸς Ὀρδοδόξου [A page from the history of the contemporary Church. Reflections of an Orthodox], Athens, 1874. 11 M. I. Gedeon, Ἱστορία τῶν τοῦ Χριστοῦ πενήτων, I, pp. 228–230. 12 On the method of composing the Synod see ibid., pp. 230–231. 13 Philaretos Vapheidis, Ἐκκλησιαστική Ἱστορία [Ecclesiastical history], Vol. III (1453–1908), Alexandria: Patriarchal Press, 1928, pp. 230–231. 14 Ibid., pp. 226–240 and Gedeon, op. cit., pp. 101–120. The complete text of the “General Regulations”, Οἱ κανονισμοὶ τῶν Ὀρθόδοξων ἑλληνικῶν κοινοτήτων τοῦ ὀθωμανικοῦ κράτους καὶ τῆς διασπορᾶς [The charters of Orthodox Greek communities of the Ottoman state and the diaspora], ed. by Ch. K. Papastathis, Thessaloniki: Kyriakidis, 1984, pp. 78–110. The complex story of the application of the reforms in the governance

The challenge of nationalism   59 of the Orthodox community is told in great detail by D. Stamatopoulos, Μεταρρύθμιση και εκκοσμίκευση [Reform and secularization], Athens: Alexandria, 2003. 15 For extensive discussion see Stamatopoulos, op. cit., passim. 16 Gedeon, Ἱστορία τῶν τοῦ Χριστοῦ πενήτων, II, pp. 232–236. On the interplay of the politics of the Greek Orthodox community with the Bulgarian question see Stamatopoulos, op. cit., pp. 113–116, 310–316, 339–344. 17 See P. M. Kitromilides, “ ‘Imagined Communities’ and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans”, European History Quarterly 19 (1989), pp. 183–185. 18 For details P. M. Kitromilides, “Greek Irredentism in Asia Minor and in Cyprus”, Middle Eastern Studies 26 (1990), pp. 3–17 and idem, “Byzantine Twilight or Belated Enlightenment in Asia Minor?”, Byzantine Asia Minor, Athens, 1998, pp.  433–446. Both studies reprinted in the author’s collection, An Orthodox Commonwealth, Aldershot 2007. On the significance of the association movement George Vassiadis, The Syllogos Movement of Constantinople and Ottoman Greek Education 1861–1923, Athens: Centre for Asia Minor Studies, 2007. 19 See Benedict Englezakis, Studies on the History of the Church of Cyprus, 4th–20th Centuries, Aldershot: Variorum, 1995, pp. 257–278. 20 See P. M. Kitromilides, Enlightenment and Revolution. The Making of Modern Greece, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013, pp. 303–304. 21 This was noted by contemporary observers who greatly admired the Patriarch’s ecumenical outlook. See the comments by the Anglican clergyman Adrian Fortescue in C. D. Cobham, The Patriarchs of Constantinople, Cambridge, 1911, pp. 39–40. See also F. Cayré, “Joachim III, patriarche grec de Constantinople, 1834–1912”, Echos d’Orient XVI (1913), pp. 61–67, 163–172, 322–330, 431–443. 22 See further in Chapter 4 in the present collection. 23 On the status of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Ottoman system see for the early period Elizabeth Zachariadou, “The Great Church in Captivity 1453–1586”, Eastern Christianity, pp. 169–186 and more recently Tom Papademetriou, Render unto the Sultan. Power, Authority and the Greek Orthodox Church in the Early Ottoman Centuries, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015 and on the subsequent three centuries P. Konortas, Οθωμανικές θεωρήσεις για το Οικουμενικό Πατριαρχείο [Ottoman perspectives on the Ecumenical Patriarchate], Athens: Alexandria, 1998, esp. pp. 298–361. 24 See Kitromilides, “Orthodoxy and the West”, pp. 206–209 and idem, Enlightenment and Revolution, pp. 192–196. 25 See M. I. Gedeon, Πατριαρχικοὶ πίνακες [Patriarchal lists], ed. by N. L. Phoropoulos, Athens: Syllogos Ophelimon Vivlion, 1996, p. 602. 26 Ibid., p. 600. 27 N. Gr. Zacharopoulos, Γρηγόριος Ε΄. Σαφὴς ἔκφρασις τῆς ἐκκλησιαστικῆς πολιτικῆς ἐπὶ Τουρκοκρατίας [Gregory V. A clear expression of ecclesiastical policy under Ottoman rule], Thessaloniki, 1974. 28 See above Chapter 2, note 13. 29 See letter by G. Krestidis, dated 1 January 1852, Gennadeion Library, Athens, Mousouros Archive, IX, 1. 30 Synopsis of the provisions of the Hatt-­i Humayun, Vapheidis, Ἐκκλησιαστικὴ ἱστορία, Vol. III, pp. 19–20. The complete text in C. K. Papastathis, ed., op. cit., pp. 21–26. 31 Selim Deringil, The Well-­protected Domains. Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876–1909, London: Hurst, 1998, pp. 44–50. 32 Ibid., p. 133. 33 Sherif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1962. 34 M. I. Gedeon, Πατριαρχικοὶ πίνακες, pp. 626–628.

4 The end of empire, Greece’s Asia Minor catastrophe and the Ecumenical Patriarchate

In the history of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Great Church of Christ in Constantinople, the first quarter of the twentieth century, the period from 1900 and 1925, could be considered in a broader interpretative perspective to illustrate in the life of the Church militant Aristotle’s definition of tragedy. More precisely this story could be viewed as a reenactment in real historical life of Aristotle’s remark on the radical reversal of human fortunes which he includes in the definition of tragedy using the concept of περιπέτεια: a reversal, a change of the situation into the opposite (ἡ εἰς τὸ ἐναντίον τῶν πραττομένων μεταβολή).1 Indeed, if we were to compare the condition of the Church of Constantinople in the year 1900 or 1901, when Patriarch Joachim III returned to the throne for his second patriarchate (1901–1912), with what was left of the Great Church of Christ just a quarter of a century later, we will be able to see exactly how the fortunes of Orthodox Christianity in Turkey in the period in question reenact the tragic essence of Aristotle’s concept of περιπέτεια. These momentous developments in the life of the Church of Constantinople constituted an integral component of the epoch-­making transformation marking the history of Europe and the Near East during the first quarter of the twentieth century: the transformation followed the convulsions brought about by world war and revolution, the end of the great multi-­ethnic and multinational empires and the advent of the modern state system in that part of the world. The Ottoman Empire, whose presence had been receding in Europe since the early nineteenth century, reached its definitive end with defeat in the Great War and the overthrow of the imperial institution by the Turkish revolution that gave birth to the Turkish Republic. These revolutionary changes affected deeply the fate of the several Christian minorities in Turkey, their churches and ecclesiastical institutions. The most dramatic consequences were reserved for the principal Christian communion in Turkey, which in fact had been represented by the oldest institution with continuous existence of almost two millennia in the country, the Church of Constantinople.

An age of flowering Let us look at the historical record. In the first decade of the twentieth century the Church of Constantinople comprised eighty-­four dioceses in Asia Minor and

The end of empire   61 the Balkans. Of these eighty-­four dioceses, the newest five in Asia Minor and Thrace had only been created after the turn of the century (Kallioupoleos, Krinis, Rhodopoleos, Saranta Ekklesion, Tyrolois). In 1908 a new metropolis was created for the important, almost entirely Greek-­populated city of Kydonies (Ayvalik) on the Western coast of Asia Minor. There followed in 1913 the metropolis of Dardanelia and Lampsakos based at Cannakkale, in 1914 that of Metron and Athyron in Eastern Thrace, in 1917 that of Myriophyton and Peristasis also in Eastern Thrace. As late as March 1922 three new dioceses were set up in Asia Minor: Vryoullon, in the outskirts of Smyrna, Pergamou and Moschonision. Some of them, like Pergamum, revived ancient jurisdictions that had been extinct for centuries or represented the elevation of insignificant provincial suffragan bishoprics to the status of metropolis on account of rising population numbers. The proliferation of the number of dioceses in Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace was a clear indication of the rising Orthodox population in these regions which, after the detachment of major parts of the Balkans from the jurisdiction of the Church of Constantinople with the advent of the new autocephalous churches in the course of the nineteenth century, formed the primary territorial basis of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. A major census taken by the Church in the years 1910–1912, just on the eve of the Balkan Wars, which ushered in a period of persecutions and displacements of the Orthodox population, provides the closest approximation available on the quantitative magnitudes involved. On the basis of the most conservative estimates, the number of Orthodox Christians, subject to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, rose in 1912 to about 1,547,000 in Asia Minor and to 256,000 in Eastern Thrace.3 The upward demographic trend and increasing population, both urban and rural, provided the sociological basis of another important development in the life of the Orthodox Church in Asia Minor, the reemergence of monasticism. In that land which had been the cradle of coenobitic monasticism, the end of Byzantine rule had also brought the extinction of monasticism. By the fifteenth century, the decline of Medieval hellenism in the peninsula and the Islamization of the greatest number of the population had led to the disappearance of the great monastic centres on the “Holy Mountains” of Olympus in Bithynia and Latros in Caria and of the monastic communities in the rock-­cut monasteries of Cappadocia. The only region in which monasticism had survived, carrying into the modern age the Medieval Byzantine religious traditions of the area, was the Pontos in Northeastern Asia Minor. In the Pontic Alps four great monastic foundations had been in continuous existence since the time of the medieval empire of Trebizond and were experiencing a revival in numbers in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries: these were the monasteries of the Dormition of the Virgin at Sumela in the highlands of Trebizond, of St John the Baptist at Vazelon, of St George Peristereota and of St George Choutoura further inland. Other smaller monasteries and convents were reappearing elsewhere in the Pontic regions by the early twentieth century. Their ruins have been identified by the extensive surveys of the Christian topography of the Pontos carried 2

62   The end of empire out by Anthony Bryer and his collaborators from the 1960s to the 1980s.4 The survival of monasticism in Pontos has been convincingly explained by the great historian of Byzantine Asia Minor, Speros Vryonis Jr, as the result of the survival of extensive rural populations in the region, protected in the isolation of the Pontic Alps.5 It was these populations that supplied the human and material resources necessary for the continued functioning of the Pontic highland shrines, which furthermore attracted as well the respect of the Muslim populations in their regions.6 By the early twentieth century monasticism was reappearing beyond Pontos in other regions of Asia Minor with substantial rural populations. The most important such region was Bithynia on the Asiatic side of the Sea of Marmara (Propontis), which formed the immediate hinterland of Constantinople in Asia Minor. This region had preserved significant Orthodox rural populations, scattered in villages along the coast of the Sea of Marmara and inland into the highlands. The area was divided among the dioceses of Chalcedon, Nicomedia, Nicaea, Cyzicus and Proussa (Bursa), which were among the most senior sees of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The numbers of rural population in Bithynia had been rising since the end of the eighteenth century on account of internal migrations in the Ottoman Empire, with people coming from continental Greece, especially Epirus, and also from Eastern Thrace in search of work in the more agriculturally fertile areas of Northwestern Asia Minor. By the late nineteenth and certainly in the early twentieth century monastic establishments were reappearing in Bithynia and in the islands off the peninsula of Cyzicus in the Sea of Marmara. A significant pilgrimage centre had emerged in Nicomedia itself (Izmit) with the establishment of the monastery of St Panteleimon, at the site of his martyrdom. In the interior of Asia Minor, beyond the Salt desert and the river Halys (Sakarya), the denser Orthodox Christian settlement was in Cappadocia, St Basil’s country with its impressive Byzantine painted rock-­cut monasteries. In this area an important monastic foundation had been setup in the outskirts of Caesarea (Kayseri) at Zincidere, in the name of St John the Baptist. It also provided the site for the establishment in 1882 of a seminary for the training of clergy for the diocese of Caesarea, which was the senior metropolis of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, its bishop ranking first in precedence of honour after the Ecumenical Patriarch. The most visible sign of the revival of the Orthodox Church and of the self-­ confidence, with which it was imbued at the time of the rapid Westernization of the Ottoman Empire during the closing decades of the nineteenth century, was provided by ecclesiastical architecture and the massive construction of new churches. It was in this period that imposing domed churches in the cities of the empire were built, suggesting that the Orthodox population was no longer afraid to display publicly its identity in the empire. This was the period of the construction of the imposing domed churches of the Holy Trinity at Pera overlooking Taksim Square in Istanbul and in Kadıköy on the Asiatic side. These newer structures suggested a considerable contrast to the earlier undomed church buildings in old Constantinople, half-­hidden behind high surrounding walls.

The end of empire   63 What appears even more striking is the evidence of ecclesiastical architecture in the far interior of Asia Minor, in the Orthodox villages and townships of Cappadocia which were, in their majority, Turkish-­speaking communities. During the closing decades of the nineteenth century, in small and isolated communities in the region, imposing churches were erected, adorning the horizon with the symbols of Christianity on bell towers and high-­rising domes. These structures were funded by the local communities and by emigrant villagers working in the great cities of the empire, primarily Istanbul and Smyrna. The church buildings in many places survive to this date, either transformed into mosques (Aksaray, Fertek, Malakopi-­Derinkuyu) or deserted and in ruins (Androniki-­Endurluk, Taxiarches-­Darsiyak, Tavlusun) and elsewhere. Such was the condition of the Great Church of Christ when Patriarch Joachim III returned to the throne for his second patriarchate in 1901. It appeared for a

Figure 4.1 Joachim III laying the foundation stone of the Eye hospital S. Skouloudis (31 August 1911). Source: © Centre for Asia Minor Studies Photographic Archive.

64   The end of empire moment after the long, sad centuries of Ottoman rule that the Ecumenical Patriarchate was no longer the “Church of Christian paupers”, as its foremost chronographer was to describe it,7 but thanks to the devotion and prosperity of its flock it was capable of assuming a more active pastoral role among the faithful and asserting its position of leadership in the Orthodox world. Despite heightened nationalist tensions in the Balkans, which in the ecclesiastical domain were dramatized by the Bulgarian schism, and armed conflicts between Greeks and Bulgarians in Macedonia, the Patriarch refused to submit to Greek nationalist dictates both within the Church and from the Greek state and followed a policy of openness to the other Orthodox nations, especially Russia and Serbia, in order to bring the forces of Orthodoxy together and lead the Church into the new century.8 This involved important inter-­Orthodox and ecumenical initiatives, reflected in especially good relations with the Anglican Church.9 The Ecumenical Patriarchate despite many difficulties was entering a new age of optimism and revival of ecclesiastical life.10

Tragedy and crisis By contrast to the situation in the early years of the twentieth century thus far described, consider the condition of the Great Church of Christ a quarter of a century later, in the years 1923–1925. After a decade of large-­scale war (1912–1922), persecution, displacement and repeated massacres of its flock in Asia Minor, the Ecumenical Patriarchate had been reduced to a shadow of its former self.11 The Greek defeat in Asia Minor in August 1922, which is conventionally known in Greek historiography as the Asia Minor catastrophe, was an unmitigated disaster for the Orthodox Church and its flock in the peninsula. The defeat of the Greek army, which had landed in Asia Minor in 1919 under a mandate of the Allied Western powers at the end of the First World War, left the Christian population of Asia Minor prey to a Turkish nationalist counter offensive. The Turkish troops and Turkish irregulars unleashed a total war against the Christians in the peninsula. At the most conservative estimates about 850,000 Orthodox Christians perished in Asia Minor between 1914 and 1922.12 On 9 September 1922 the Turkish troops entered the city of Smyrna, the metropolis of Asia Minor, and set it ablaze while tens of thousands of destitute Greeks in desperation thronged on the water front of the city hoping against hope to be salvaged by foreign vessels in the Ionian port.13 This is how Orthodox Christianity came to a tragic and violent end in one of its most ancient cradles. The light of the seven churches of Asia Minor to which St John the Evangelist addressed the Apocalypse was extinguished. The Turkish nationalists, inflamed by the rage of war, reserved their greatest hatred for the Orthodox hierarchy. The metropolitan of Smyrna Chrysostomos, one of the most distinguished prelates of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, who had refused to leave his flock in view of the imminent disaster, was massacred in the streets of his city. The metropolitans of Kydonies Gregorios and of Moschonisia Amvrosios had a similar fate. Many other bishops and innumerable priests in the interior of Asia Minor also met martyrdom.

The end of empire   65 By the late autumn 1922 the Greek Orthodox of Eastern Thrace were also evacuated. The Greek army, before withdrawing West of the river Evros, covered the evacuation of the East Thracian population, which for weeks was crossing the river in their oxen-­drawn carts, leaving behind their ancestral hearths. This “silent ghastly procession” was immortalized by Ernest Hemingway in his reports in the Toronto Star.14 At least thanks to the presence of the Greek army under General G. Katechakis, the Thracian Greeks were spared large-­scale massacres. At the peace conference that convened at Lausanne in the late autumn 1922 the Turkish plenipotentiary Inonu pasha insisted that the Christian population that had remained in the interior of Asia Minor, in Cappadocia and Pontos, had also to be evacuated. The Turkish nationalist government was adamant in its determination to build an ethnically homogeneous national homeland in the territories of modern Turkey. This led to the Lausanne Convention of 30 January 1923 whereby Greece and Turkey agreed upon an obligatory exchange of their respective religious minorities. Thus the remaining Orthodox in Asia Minor were exchanged with the Muslims in Greece, mostly from Epirus, Western Macedonia, Crete and the Eastern Aegean islands. Religion rather than language was used as the criterion of exchangeability. This involved the paradox that most of the Muslims from Greece, especially from Western Macedonia, Ioannina and Crete, were Greek-­speaking and the great majority of the Cappadocian Orthodox were Turkish-­speaking. These groups, which paid dearly for the conflict of nationalisms in the Eastern Mediterranean, had for the most part been totally uninvolved in the confrontation and very often until the moment they were told they had to go had been unaware of what had happened. One further paradox of the exchange was that Turkey subjected the Turkish-­speaking Orthodox to it, but allowed the Arabic-­speaking Orthodox of Southeastern Asia Minor to remain because they belonged to the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Antioch rather than to that of Constantinople. Two population groups were excluded from the exchange: the Greek Orthodox population of the prefecture of Istanbul, which included communities not only in old Constantinople and Pera across the Golden Horn, but also communities along the Bosporus and also communities on the Asiatic side of the Bosporus and in the urban areas of Scutari and Kadıköy and in the four Princes’ Islands in the Sea of Marmara. The Greek population of the islands of Imvros and Tenedos that had to be returned to Turkey were also excluded from the exchange and were allowed to remain under a special regime of local autonomy. The other population group excluded from the exchange of Greek-­Turkish populations were the Muslims of Western Thrace, who were allowed to remain in Greece.15 At the Lausanne conference the Turkish plenipotentiary Ismet pasha originally insisted that the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which in his judgement had proved a disloyal institution, had to be removed from Istanbul. After considerable pressure from the Western allies and protests from Orthodox countries like Romania and Serbia, on 23 January 1923 the Turkish delegate agreed to the

66   The end of empire continuing presence of the Patriarchate in Istanbul, but only as a spiritual institution whose mission was to minister to the religious needs of the Greek Orthodox minority in Istanbul. The Patriarch and clergy of the Patriarchate were excluded from the population exchange. When the Treaty of Lausanne between Greece and Turkey was signed, however, in July 1923, the patriarchate and its status were not mentioned in the text and this left its legal position ambiguous and the institution itself and its operation subject to the whims of Turkish policy.16 Thus at the end of 1923 as a consequence of the Asia Minor catastrophe and the subsequent exchange of populations the condition of the Great Church of Christ stood in stark contrast to what it had been at the dawn of the twentieth century. Its flock in Turkey from close to two million was reduced to just about 120,000 in Istanbul and the islands of Imvros and Tenedos. Of its extensive and expanding network of dioceses in Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace remained only a truncated metropolis of Chalcedon in the Asiatic part of the prefecture of Istanbul and an equally truncated metropolis of Derkoi in the distant suburbs of Istanbul. The metropolis of Imvros and Tenedos remained in its entirety but a bitter future turned out to be in store for the islanders and their church later in the twentieth century.17 A new diocese was set up in the Princes’ Islands in December 1923, detaching the islands from the jurisdiction of Chalcedon and setting them up as a separate metropolis. Thus the Ecumenical Patriarchate was left with the archdiocese of Constantinople in the old City, Pera and along the European coast of the Bosporus and with four dioceses in Turkey. Another significant ecclesiastical consequence of the Asia Minor disaster was the disappearance of Orthodox monasticism, to whose revival in the early twentieth century reference has been made above, from one of its original abodes. Only some Syriac Jacobite monasteries remained in the deep hinterland of Eastern Turkey along the Syrian border. The only Orthodox monasteries that survived within Turkey were several monastic houses on the four Princes’ islands, including the monastery of the Holy Trinity on Halki (Heybeliada) which also housed the Patriarchal Theological School, and the Patriarchal monastery at Balukli, just outside the Byzantine walls of Istanbul. These monastic foundations, however, suffered seriously as a consequence of the depletion of the Christian population of Turkey and saw their numbers gradually dwindle to the point of virtual extinction of their human resources. A further visible consequence was the definitive termination of ecclesiastical building in the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. No new church building has been constructed in Turkey after 1923 and existing churches were left to decay on account of the refusal of Turkish authorities to grant permissions for restoration and conservation. Not until the last two decades of the twentieth century, during the patriarchates of Dimitrios I and Bartholomew I, was it possible to undertake reparation and restoration work on churches in the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate. The Lausanne settlement allowed the survival of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in its historic see, but it soon became clear that the Turkish state had no intention

The end of empire   67 to make life easy for an institution, which to the Turkish mind represented a living recollection of Istanbul’s Christian and Byzantine past. From the outset the Turkish authorities refused to recognize the ecumenical character of the Patriarchate and treated it as a religious institution of the Greek Orthodox (Rum) minority of Istanbul and called its head the “chief priest” (Başpapaz) of that community. The election of the patriarch was limited to clergymen of Turkish citizenship both in terms of electors and candidates. In September 1923, soon after the Lausanne settlement, a serious problem arose in the life of the Church with the movement of the so called “Turkish Orthodox Church”, led by a married Turcophone priest, Eftym Karachissaridis, who sought to create an independent Turkish-­speaking Orthodox church with himself as patriarch. With the abeyance of Turkish authorities he attempted to invade and set himself up in the patriarchal house at the Phanar but the reaction of foreign embassies in Turkey forced the Turkish authorities to remove him. In February 1924 he occupied violently the church of the Virgin of Kaffa at Galata and set his headquarters there. The Ecumenical Patriarchate under Patriarch Gregorios VII excommunicated Papaeftym as “an apostate and traitor of Orthodox faith”. But he took the Patriarchate to court for defamation and the Patriarch was fined. The “Turkish Orthodox Church”, however, remained totally isolated and ignored by the Orthodox in Turkey and by the Orthodox world in its entirety and lingered on just as a family business of Papaeftym and his descendants, who have usurped the income of real estate belonging to the three churches in Galata under their control.18 The official attitude towards the Patriarchate remained hostile. When Gregorios VII was succeeded in January 1925 by Constantinos VI, the new Patriarch was arrested and expelled to Greece on 30 January 1925 as a «non-­établi», a person who under the provisions of the Convention for the population exchange had no right to be in Turkey. This action caused consternation in Greece and the Orthodox world at large and it made plain to everyone that Turkey’s motivation was not just to enforce the provisions of the Lausanne Treaty and Convention but to take measures that would gradually lead to the extinction of the Patriarchate. Greece appealed to the League of Nations but Turkey refused to discuss the issue, arguing that the whole affair was a purely domestic matter. The Council of the League referred the issue to the International Court of Justice, at the same time attaching a copy of the proceedings of the Lausanne Conference of 23 January 1923 whereby Turkey, yielding to concerted pressure by all powers taking part in the conference, had accepted the presence of the Patriarchate and its international spiritual character. Eventually the problem was resolved through a compromise between Greece and Turkey. Greece withdrew its appeal to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and Turkey undertook to exclude all prelates resident in Istanbul at the time from the provisions of the Lausanne Convention. Patriarch Constantinos, however, had to resign and remain in Greece.19 The Ecumenical Patriarchate emerged greatly weakened from this affair, appearing vulnerable to the designs of Turkish policies at its expense and deprived of effective international support.

68   The end of empire The prevailing feeling in the Patriarchate as a consequence of all these sad, indeed tragic developments was a sense of martyrdom and an understanding of the condition of the Church of Constantinople as a crucified Church.

Perseverance and mission Yet the feeling of crucifixion that marked the life of the Church of Constanti­ nople in the wake of the Asia Minor catastrophe did not lead to resignation and fatalism. It is obvious in the sources and in the actions of the Church that Christian faith had not abandoned the hierarchy, clergy and laity of the Great Church of Christ. A remarkable, if silent, effort of reconstruction got underway as a katharsis of the tragedy. Katharsis did not come about merely through pity and fear (δι’ ἐλέου καὶ φόβου) as provided by Aristotle’s definition. Although these sentiments were certainly intensely felt and lived through, katharsis came mainly through a clear redefinition of the mission of the Great Church of Christ in the Orthodox communion and of its witness to the world at large as the Church not simply of the Orthodox community that surrounded it at its see but as a church shouldering a spiritual responsibility for world Orthodoxy. Although this subject

Figure 4.2 Patriarch Meletios IV (Metaxakis) (1921–1923) visiting the United States in 1921 just prior to his election to the Ecumenical Throne, with Orthodox religious leaders [from the left Bishop Alexander of Rodostoton, Metropolitan Platon, primate of the Russian Church in America, Archbishop Alexander (Platon’s predecessor), Bishop Afthimios (Russo-Syrian diocese), Archdeacon Usevelod Andronoft of the Russian Cathedral in New York]. Source: © N. Manginas Photographic Archive.

The end of empire   69 is slightly beyond the scope of the present chapter it would be appropriate to conclude by a brief reference to it. The Church of Constantinople emerged from the trials and tribulations of the Asia Minor disaster as a Church totally distanced from the temptations of nationalism that were gripping all other Orthodox churches through their close association with their respective nation-­states. The Church of Constantinople had experienced the temptations of nationalism during the patriarchate of Meletios IV in 1921–1923 and had paid dearly for it. From 1923 onward it embarked upon a new spiritual course. It shed all ties to nationalism and cultivated consistently a Christian conscience based on the canons of the Church. On this basis it developed an active sense of being the guardian of the canonical conscience of the Church and it has acted unwaveringly in this capacity ever since.20 In this spirit the Ecumenical Patriarchate has handled the administrative questions brought about by developments after 1923: it handed over in 1928 to the Church of Greece the administration but it retained the spiritual supervision of its dioceses in Northern Greece and the Aegean islands; it retained under its direct jurisdiction the monastic republic of Mount Athos with its twenty sovereign monasteries, the semi-­autonomous Church of Crete and the four dioceses of the Dodecanese islands, at the time under Italian occupation; responding to appeals by the governments and Orthodox faithful it established autonomous churches in Finland, Czechoslovakia, Esthonia and Latvia; finally it brought under its jurisdiction the Orthodox diaspora in Western Europe, the Americas and Oceania. In retrospect it appears that despite the crucifixion immanent in the consequences of the Asia Minor catastrophe, in its humility and poverty, the Church of Constantinople became truly ecumenical as a result of this tragedy. Faithful to the requirements of canonicity the Ecumenical Patriarchate established an autocephalous Orthodox Church in the newly independent state of Albania in 1937, it contributed to the solution of canonical problems in the Church of Cyprus in the mid-­1940s and finally in 1945 brought to an end the Bulgarian schism restoring unity to the Orthodox communion. From the point of view of the substantive history of the Christian Church the most significant development in the life of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the period following the Asia Minor catastrophe and the expulsion of the largest number of its Orthodox flock from Turkey was the development of a model of a non-­national Church in its jurisdiction: the communities dependent on it in Turkey and the diaspora were held together by a common faith and by the shared consciousness of belonging to Orthodox tradition, not by national loyalties as it has been as a rule the case in the national Orthodox Churches, whose attitudes and behaviour have contributed to the unfortunate and spiritually indefensible identification of Orthodoxy with nationalism.21 It has been the tragedy of the Church of Constantinople that the erosion of its flock in Turkey on account of new pressures by the Turkish state in the early 1940s with the capital tax, the infamous Varlık Vergisi,22 in 1955 with the violent and extremely destructive pogrom in Istanbul,23 in 1964–1965 and since 1974 through repeated pressures and threats against the Orthodox community, has had as a consequence the destruction of a very important prototype of a non-­national Orthodox Church,

70   The end of empire held together by its faith and cultural heritage, which could have been a precedent and model for the rest of the Orthodox world as a reminder of Christian authenticity.24

Notes   1 Aristotle, Poetics XI, 1.   2 See R. Janin, “Constantinople. Le Patriarcat grec”, Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, vol. XIII, Paris 1956, col. 715. A truly invaluable record of the Episcopal lists and the ecclesiastical geography of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the other Orthodox patriarchates is provided by Georgio Fedalto, Hierarchia Ecclesiastica Orientalis, Vols. I–II, Padova: Messagero, 1988, followed by a Vol. III with supplementary material in 2006.   3 See Paschalis Kitromilides and Alexis Alexandris, “Ethic Survival, Nationalism and Forced Migration. The Historical Demography of the Greek Community of Asia Minor at the Close of the Ottoman Era”, Deltio Kentrou Mikrasiatikon Spoudon V (1985), pp. 9–44, esp. pp. 32–34.   4 See Anthony A. M. Bryer and David Winfield, The Byzantine Monuments and Topography of the Pontos, Dambarton Oaks Studies No. 20, Washington DC, 1985.   5 Speros Vryonis, Jr, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism and the Process of Islamization in Asia Minor from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Centuries, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971, pp. 41–42, 155–157, 195–197. For details on the history of Pontic monastic foundations see Metropolitan of Trebizond Chrysanthos Philippides, Ἡ Ἐκκλησία Τραπεζοῦντος [The Church of Trebizond] [= Ἀρχεῖον Πόντου, Vols. IV–V], Athens, 1933, pp. 463–503.   6 See Vryonis, op. cit., p.  486 and Anthony Bryer et al., The Post-­Byzantine Monuments of the Pontos, Aldershot: Variorum, 2002, Part 3, p. 277. Extensive evidence on the broader phenomenon of religious syncretism in Asia Minor had been recorded by F. W. Hasluck, Christianity and Islam under the Sultans, ed. by Margaret Hasluck, Oxford, 1929, Vols. I–II.   7 Manuel I. Gedeon, Ἱστορία τῶν τοῦ Χριστοῦ πενήτων [History of Christian paupers], Athens, 1939.   8 See P. M. Kitromilides, An Orthodox Commonwealth. Symbolic Legacies and Cultural Encounters in Southeastern Europe, Aldersot: Variorum, 2007, Study VI, pp. 15–18.   9 See J. A. Douglas, The Relations of the Anglican Churches with the Eastern Orthodox, London: Faith Press, 1921, pp.  89–111 on the spirit of “rapprochement” between Orthodox and Anglicans. It is particularly noted that Patriarch Joachim III was in favour of cultivating the spirit of “rapprochement” in the hope that it could eventually lead closer to intercommunion. See ibid., pp. 15 and 50. See also George Florofsky, Aspects of Church History, Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1975, pp. 261–272. 10 A noteworthy contemporary appraisal by a well-­informed Anglican clergyman, Adrian Fortescue, is worth quoting: of the reigning patriarch, Joakim III, there is nothing to say but what is very good. He began his second reign by sending an encyclical to the other Orthodox Churches in which he proposed certain very excellent reforms (for instance that of their Calendar), wished to arrange a better understanding between the sixteen independent bodies that make up their communion and expressed his pious hope for the reunion of Christendom. See C. D. Cobham, The Patriarchs of Constantinople, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911, pp. 39–40.

The end of empire   71 11 For the marginalization of the Ecumenical Patriarchate from the Balkan Wars until the end of the First World War see Dimitris Kamouzis, “Out of Harm’s Way? Structural Violence and the Greek Orthodox Community of Istanbul during World War I”, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 4(1) (2017), pp. 192–198. 12 See Kitromilides and Alexandris, op. cit., p. 34. 13 “Refugees from Thrace”, By-­Line: Ernest Hemingway. Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades, ed. by William White, London: Collins, 1968, pp. 77–81. 14 Ernest Hemingway, “On the Quai at Smyrna”, In Our Time, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1923, pp. 11–12. 15 See Paschalis M. Kitromilides, “The Greek-­Turkish Population Exchange”, Turkey in the Twentieth Century [Philologiae et Historiae Turcicae Fundamenta, Vol. II], ed. by Erik J. Zürcher, Berlin 2008, pp.  255–270. The exchange as human experience is evocatively recreated by Bruce Clark, Twice a Stranger. How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Turkey, London: Granta, 2006. 16 Alexis Alexandris, The Greek Minority of Istanbul and Greek-­Turkish Relations 1918–1974, Athens: Centre for Asia Minor Studies, 1992, pp. 87–95. 17 Alexis Alexandris, “Imbros and Tenedos: A Study in Turkish Attitudes toward Two Ethnic Greek Island Communities since 1923”, Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, vol. 7 (1980), pp. 5–31. 18 For details see Alexandris, The Greek Minority of Istanbul, pp. 151–154, 168–170. 19 Ibid., pp.  159–167. See also Alexis Alexandris, “The Expulsion of Constantine VI: The Ecumenical Patriarchate and Greek-­Turkish Relations, 1924–25”, Balkan Studies 22(2) (1981), pp. 333–363; Dimitris Kamouzis, “Incorporating the Ecumenical Patriarchate into Modern Turkey: The Legacy of the 1924 Patriarchal Election”, When Greeks and Turks Meet: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Relationship Since 1923, ed. by Vally Lytra, London: Publications of the Centre for Hellenic Studies, King’s College London: Ashgate, 2014, pp. 227–249. 20 The most representative statement of this is Metropolitan of Sardis Maximos, The Ecumenical Patriarchate in the Orthodox Church, Thessaloniki, 1976. 21 On how this came about may I refer to P. M. Kitromilides, Enlightenment, Nationalism, Orthodoxy, Aldershot: Variorum, 1994, Study No. XI, pp. 177–185 and on the incompatibility between Orthodoxy and nationalism idem, “Orthodoxy, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict”, Chapter 7 in this collection. 22 See Alexandris, The Greek Minority of Istanbul, pp. 211–225. See also the important testimony by one of the officials charged with the application of the tax, Faik Ökte, The Tragedy of the Turkish Capital Tax, transl. by Geoffrey Cox, London: Croom Helm, 1987. 23 On this tragic incident and its broader political background see Speros Vryonis, Jr, The Mechanism of Catastrophe. The Turkish Pogrom of September 6–7, 1955 and the Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul, New York, 2005. 24 Cf. Kitromilides, An Orthodox Commonwealth, Study No. XIII.

5 The Ecumenical Patriarchate during the Cold War (1946–1991)

Introduction: the legacy of interwar problems In the history of the Ecumenical Patriarchate the age of the Cold War coincides exactly with the reigns of three patriarchs, Maximos V (1946–1948), Athenagoras (1948–1972) and Dimitrios (1972–1991). Before turning to the history of this critical period a few words are necessary on the condition of the Patriarchate in the interwar period and during the Second World War in order to place subsequent developments in context. The interwar period in the history of the Ecumenical Patriarchate opens in 1923 with the conclusion of the Treaty of Lausanne, which brought to an end the long period of military confrontation between Greece and Turkey and settled the various outstanding issues in bilateral relations, including the status of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. On 10 January 1923 after concerted pressure by all delegations in the peace conference in Lausanne the Turkish plenipotentiary Ismet Inonu agreed to withdraw a persistent Turkish demand for the removal of the Patriarchate from Istanbul.1 This saved the Patriarchate in the historic see it had occupied for close to two millennia, but it stripped it of all the traditional privileges it enjoyed under the Ottoman order and confined it to an exclusively spiritual role as the religious authority of the Greek Orthodox minority that was allowed to remain in Istanbul.2 The changed circumstances of its continued existence in its traditional seat and considerable difficulties in its relations with the authorities of the militantly secular and nationalist republican Turkey created an environment for a redefinition of the role of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The 1920s and 1930s became a period of inwardness and reconstruction, which essentially involved the shedding of all traces of the intense flirtation with Greek nationalism marking the attitude of the Patriarchate especially under Patriarch Meletios IV during the Greek campaign in Asia Minor in 1919–1922.3 The patriarchate resumed the supranational attitude that had marked its position on major ecclesiastical questions for a considerable part of the nineteenth century and assumed an unwavering devotion to the canons and the canonical order in the Church as its new mission in the twentieth century.4 That has remained the attitude of the Ecumenical Patriarchate ever since. During the Second World War serious difficulties were in store for the Patriarchate and for the Greek minority of Istanbul. The most serious problems

The Cold War (1946–1991)   73 arose in connection with the imposition of the property tax (Varlık vergisi) on the members of the Greek minority. To respond to the exigencies of the tax many minority members had to sell considerable parts of their properties, while those unable to pay were removed by the state to forced labour camps in Eastern Anatolia, in the region of Askale.5 This development put serious strain on the Patriarchate’s flock and the Church suffered accordingly. The Patriarchate itself sustained serious property losses when important buildings under its control used for various philanthropic purposes were forcibly snatched away. Thus in 1942 the girls’ orphanage on the island of Halki (Heybeliada) was sequestrated and attached to the neighbouring Turkish naval college. In the same year the important site of philanthropic and medical establishments at Balukli, outside the walls of Istanbul, was illegally occupied by agents of Papa Efthim, the self-­ styled head of an uncanonical Turkish Orthodox Church that had caused many problems to the Patriarchate in the 1920s.6 The Balukli site was not returned to its lawful owner, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, until 1946, during the patriarchate of Maximos V. The most serious blow suffered by the Patriarchate during the War was the destruction of its main building by a fire on 21 September 1941. This left the Patriarchate essentially homeless throughout most of the period surveyed here.

The impact of world and regional power politics The history of the Church of Constantinople, the Great Church of Christ in the venerable Byzantine nomenclature, in the years 1945–1991 could be considered on two levels. The first level is what could be called external history, on which we could trace the immediate impact of the international environment of Cold War politics on the life of the Church. The second level is that of internal history, the inner life of the Church and ecclesiastical activity, on which the perceptive observer might follow not only the tenacity of the Church in carrying on its traditions and safeguarding the canonical order, but also its purposeful project, against all odds, to maintain its spiritual leadership in the Orthodox world through important initiatives, inspired by the will to show the relevance and vitality of the spirit of Christianity in the conditions of the postwar world. On the level of “external history” the most dramatic manifestation of the impact of Cold War politics in the life of the Church came quite early on, suggesting that the general paranoia nurtured by the confrontation between East and West in the wake of the world war could find perverse ways to affect even a minority religious institution in a country at the time still in the sidelines of the conflict. On 14 February 1946, the Ecumenical Patriarch Benjamin I died. On 20 February the senior prelate of the Synod of Constantinople, Maximos of Chalcedon, was elected to the Ecumenical Throne as Maximos V. He was a remarkable prelate, with a distinguished career in the Church, having served in critical positions under prominent members of the hierarchy, building accordingly a remarkable experience in ecclesiastical administration and politics. During the ten-­year patriarchate of the aged and ailing Benjamin I, Maximos of

74   The Cold War (1946–1991) Chalcedon had been the governing mind of the Great Church of Christ. His election in February 1946 was unanimous and came as no surprise. On the contrary his elevation to the throne of John Chrysostom inspired both in the hierarchy and in the Greek Orthodox minority of Istanbul great hopes for a revival in the life and activity of the Church. The hopes seemed soon to be vindicated as the Patriarchate under Maximos’s leadership regained control of the hospitals and other philanthropic establishments on the Balukli site and of the Church of Christ Saviour in Galata.7 The patriarch established a press office of the Patriarchate and sent four young graduates of the Theological School of the Patriarchate at Halki, two deacons and two laymen, for advanced training in the West. In inter-­Orthodox relations Maximos V contributed through a patriarchal exarchy composed of the metropolitans Maximos of Sardis and Adamantios of Pergamum to the settlement of the ecclesiastical problem of Cyprus in 1946. In the Ecumenical Movement finally he led the way for Orthodox participation in the newly founded World Council of Churches in 1948.8 It seems, nevertheless, that the new patriarch did not enjoy the confidence of the Greek government. The reasons have remained unclear to this day but some observers have suggested that although originally he had opposed the revocation of the Bulgarian schism under Benjamin I, his eventual presiding over the settlement in January–February 1945 had provoked the suspicions of Greek diplomacy as to his loyalties to the “Free world”.9 Following his election Maximos V maintained good relations with Soviet diplomats in Turkey in an effort to be kept abreast of developments in the Church of Russia, which after the election of Patriarch Alexei in 1945 was actively seeking to assume the leadership of Orthodoxy. This attitude intensified the reserve of Greek diplomats in Turkey towards him. During an official visit to Athens in May 1947, great honours were bestowed upon the Patriarch by the Greek government and the Church of Greece. King Paul called upon the Patriarch at his residence and three days later the Patriarch returned the visit to the royal palace.10 Upon his arrival on Greek territory the Patriarch issued a pastoral proclamation to the Orthodox people of Greece, appealing against the “fratricidal laceration” and urging everyone to work for Christian charity and love against the hatreds incited by the civil war raging at the time. The fact that the Patriarch did not engage in anticommunist invective but appealed instead for reconciliation and peace does not seem to have been reassuring to the Greek government. The visit to Greece did not finally restore confidence in the Patriarch.11 A bout of depression that marked the Patriarch’s health in early 1947 supplied the pretext sought by secular powers in order to find ways to replace him with a man completely docile to the governments aligning against the Soviet block in the Cold War. The candidacy of Chrysanthos of Trebizond, who had served in 1938–1941 as archbishop of Athens, was initially promoted by the Greek government, who supported him as a strong anticommunist.12 Then a more suitable candidate was discovered in the person of Archbishop Athenagoras of America, whose relations were already strained with his superiors at the Phanar on account

The Cold War (1946–1991)   75 of his failure or unwillingness to fulfil his archdiocese’s financial obligations to Constantinople.13 The election of Athenagoras, who was initially favoured by Turkey in order to please the US,14 became also the objective of Greek diplomacy. Thus the consent of the Turkish government to the election of a non-­ Turkish citizen to the throne of Constantinople was secured. It is quite possible that both American diplomacy and Turkey’s own solicitation for acceptance in the Western alliance contributed to the promotion of the new candidacy.15 The extraction of Maximos’s resignation proved more difficult but in the summer and early autumn of 1948 the pressure of Greek diplomats in Turkey on him became so suffocating that his illness seriously deteriorated and eventually on 18 October 1948 he tendered his resignation to the presiding prelate in the Synod, the metropolitan Thomas of Chalcedon. The Orthodox flock and the hierarchy of the Patriarchate in Istanbul greatly regretted this development and in the ranks of the Synod a group was formed favouring the election of the metropolitan of Derkoi Joachim. Eventually, however, political expediencies and pressures prevailed. On 1 November 1948 Athenagoras of America was elected to the Ecumenical Throne, receiving eleven votes out of seventeen, the group of six favouring the election of Joachim of Derkoi casting while ballots.16 Thus a new patriarchal reign began in Istanbul in the heyday of the Cold War. Athenagoras was enthroned on 27 January 1949 but he was never whole-­ heartedly accepted by the Phanariot environment, where he was perceived as an outsider and an intruder. He did, however, gain the respect of friends and enemies thanks to his devotion to his duties, his indefatigable industriousness and pastoral work and his broader vision for Christian unity.17 From a political point of view Athenagoras’s reign was initiated under the best possible conditions. In this case the Cold War worked greatly in favour of a new climate surrounding the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The new patriarch arrived in Istanbul in January 1949 in an aeroplane made available to him by President Harry Truman. Upon his arrival he was granted Turkish citizenship by the Turkish government and he also enjoyed the unconditional support of Greece. As Greece and Turkey were preparing to join the Western alliance in 1952 and they also joined with Yugoslavia to form the Balkan Pact in yet another Cold War diplomatic move, Patriarch Athenagoras and the Ecumenical Patriarchate were enjoying a honeymoon period of acceptance, recognition and revival. The Orthodox minority in Turkey was going through a period of optimism and improvement. Examined once again on the level of “external” history the patriarchate of Athenagoras during its first six years (1949–1955) could be considered a spectacular success story. Favoured by the climate of Greek-­Turkish rapprochement and alliance and adopting an entirely novel, by Phanariot standards, communication strategy, obviously inspired by his American experience, the Patriarch created a new political climate for the Ecumenical Patriarchate. A month after his enthronement he became the first Ecumenical Patriarch to visit Ankara and call upon the President of the Turkish Republic, Ismet Inonu, to whom he delivered a personal message from President Truman.18 He was also received by

76   The Cold War (1946–1991) Prime Minister Günaltay and the minister of the interior. Following the change of government with the election of the Democrat Party in 1950 he met with President Celal Bayar and Prime Minister Adnan Menderes in Istanbul in June 1950 and in 1952 in Ankara. On 10 November 1953 he was invited to participate in the procession that followed the transfer of Atatürk’s remains to the grand mausoleum built just outside Ankara. In 1952 the Patriarch received Prime Minister Menderes at the Phanar, the first such visit in history. The high point in the Patriarchate’s newly found boom was marked by the visit of the royal couple of Greece to the Phanar on 13 June 1952, during a state visit to Turkey.19 The improved political environment allowed the Ecumenical Patriarchate to carry out its ecclesiastical mission in a more effective way. Pastoral work within Turkey was greatly enhanced. In 1951 the patriarchal press was reopened and a weekly religious magazine, Apostolos Andreas, was initiated next to the official monthly organ of the Patriarchate Orthodoxia, published since 1926. The patriarch became an active presence in his flock’s religious life through frequent visits to the parishes of his archdiocese. The social involvement and philanthropy of the Patriarchate were greatly expanded. The Patriarchate’s greatest achievement in this period and subsequently under Patriarch Athenagoras had been its enhanced involvement in inter-­Orthodox and inter-­Christian contacts, whereby it could assert its primacy against Russian attempts to replace it as the leader of the Orthodox world. Pertinent initiatives were greatly facilitated by the freedom of movement accorded to the prelates of the Patriarchate by the Turkish government in the spirit of improved Greek-­Turkish relations.20 All this creative activity and the honeymoon in Greek-­Turkish relations that made it possible came to a standstill with the emergence of a new dynamic phase in the Cyprus Question in 1955. The liberation struggle through guerilla tactics initiated by the Greek Cypriots in April 1955 led Britain, the colonial power in possession of the island, to encourage Turkey’s involvement in the dispute in order to create a counter weight to the claim of Greece and the Greek Cypriots to the union of the island of Cyprus (82 per cent Greek in its population) with the kingdom of Greece. As it turned out, the major victims of this development in the broader movement of decolonization were the Greek minority in Turkey and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. With a view to discuss the prospects of a settlement of the Cyprus Question Britain invited Greece and Turkey to a tri-­partite conference in London on 6 September 1955. That was judged the appropriate occasion by Turkey to press forcefully its claims on Cyprus by inciting large-­scale violent demonstrations in Istanbul, which over 48 hours on 6–7 September 1955 escalated into a veritable pogrom against the Orthodox minority, destroying commercial establishments owned by minority members along Istiklal Caddesi, the main shopping street in Pera, the famous Grande Rue de Pera of old, burning churches and other institutions belonging to the minority not only in Pera and in the old city across the Golden Horn but in remote suburbs along the Bosporus and elsewhere, with many cases of murder and rape along the way.21 The ostensible pretext that triggered off the riots were reports in the Turkish press about a bomb that had been

The Cold War (1946–1991)   77 planted in Atatürk’s house at the Turkish consulate in Thessaloniki. As it turned out the bomb had been planted by Turkish secret services. The complicity of the Turkish state in inciting the events became plain at the trials of incumbent at the time Turkish leaders following the 1961 overthrow of the Democrat Party government.22 The blow to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and especially to the Greek minority in Istanbul was, nevertheless, lethal. The picture of Patriarch Athenagoras standing in the ruins of the church of Saints Constantine and Helena at Samatya in Istanbul could be seen as the most eloquent testimony as to the character of the new political environment within which the Great Church of Christ had to carry out its mission.23 With admirable patience, persistence and industriousness the Patriarchate and the minority in a relatively very short time repaired the material damage and attempted to resume a normal pattern of life. The seventy-­three churches, twenty-­six schools and two cemeteries which had suffered various degrees of damage were restored and put back in use by the community. A World Council of Churches mission, which visited Istanbul in November 1955, estimated the damage to Greek Orthodox churches alone at 150,000,000 dollars. Compensations by the Turkish government covered only a fraction of the damage.24 The new climate of hostility felt by the minority however acted as a major factor driving away its members. From 1955 onward a silent but continuous exodus got under way that greatly eroded the numbers of the minority, with serious

Figure 5.1 Patriarch Athenagoras praying in the ruined church of Saints Constantine and Helen, Samatya, Istanbul, following the riots of 5–6 September 1955. Source: © N. Manginas Photographic Archive.

78   The Cold War (1946–1991)

Figure 5.2 Patriarch Athenagoras praying in the ruined church of Saints Constantine and Helen, Samatya, Istanbul, following the riots of 5–6 September 1955. Source: © N. Manginas Photographic Archive.

consequences for the normal operation of the Patriarchate, which was thus losing its flock and the main source of its manpower. Patriarch Athenagoras was quoted to have remarked that “Constantinople had not really fallen in 1453 but in 1955”. From 1955 onward, therefore, the Ecumenical Patriarchate had to sustain the consequences of a second cold war within the global East-­West confrontation, a cold war between the two NATO allies Greece and Turkey. The intra-­alliance regional cold war fluctuated in intensity according to the ebb and flow of crises in the Cyprus Question and concomitantly in Greek-­Turkish relations over the next quarter of a century. The settlement of the Cyprus Question in 1959–1960 with the establishment of an independent Republic in Cyprus based on a partnership between Greek and Turkish Cypriots brought a relaxation of pressures upon the Patriarchate and the minority. This development, however, turned out to be only a temporary respite. New flare-­ups of the conflict in Cyprus in 1963–1964 and in 1974 caused new tensions and pressures on the minority and serious blows upon the Patriarchate. In 1964 a policy of expulsions of minority members holding Greek citizenship further eroded the numbers of the community. The 1974 invasion of Cyprus by Turkish troops which for a moment threatened to turn the cold into a hot war between Greece and Turkey caused a further panic that resulted in a final wave of departures of Greeks from Istanbul.

The Cold War (1946–1991)   79 In the remaining years of Athenagoras’s long reign (1955–1972) and throughout the patriarchate of Dimitrios I (1972–1991) the Ecumenical Patriarchate had to live with the consequences of these developments. On the one hand the patriarchs had to sustain the sorrows of the injustices inflicted upon their flock and the consequent depletion in their numbers and to witness the many beautiful and historic churches of Istanbul to gradually become emptier and emptier of faithful. On the other hand the Ecumenical Patriarchate had to face and adjust its operation to many restrictions imposed upon it by the Turkish government. First, serious restrictions of movement were placed upon its hierarchy with the consequence that senior prelates resident in Turkey could only with difficulty undertake the missions abroad entrusted to them by the Church. Second, Greek and other foreign citizens among the clergy of the Patriarchate were not permitted to serve in Turkey. This measure caused serious staffing difficulties for the Patriarchate as the human resources of the minority were depleted with the departure of its younger members. In 1964 two senior metropolitans, Iakovos of Philadelphia and Aimilianos of Selefkia, were deprived of their Turkish citizenship and expelled from Istanbul.25 The hostile climate towards the Patriarchate transpired also in the toleration by the Turkish government of the forceful occupation and usurpation in 1965 of two churches in Galata, St Nicholas and St John of the Chiots, by the sons of Papa Efthim, who had headed the uncanonical “Turkish Orthodox Church”. The most serious blow upon the Patriarchate was dealt in the last year of Athen­ agoras’ reign, when the supreme constitutional court of Turkey, basing its ruling on the prohibition of private universities in the country, closed down the theological college of the Patriarchate that had operated on the island of Halki since 1844. This measure had long-­term consequences of the most serious import for the Ecumenical Patriarchate and for the Orthodox world more generally. The closure of the Halki Theological School not only deprived the Patriarchate of the possibility to train its own clergy but it also deprived it of one of the major channels whereby it had exercised its spiritual leadership in the Orthodox world and beyond it in the world of Eastern Churches more generally through the training and induction in the Constantinopolitan theological and ecclesiastical tradition of future leaders for all these Churches. The Constantinopolitan tradition, as represented by the School at Halki, was not narrowly limited in the sphere of ecclesiastical and theological training. Going back to the period before 1453, and through subsequent centuries, it had proved that it possessed considerable intellectual dynamism that was expressed in the fields of scholarship, letters and music as these fields related to the life of the Orthodox Church. A distinct component of the tradition consisted in the cultivation of a special form of learned Phanariot Greek as the official language of the Church of Constantinople and of its theological and historical scholarship. The mechanism of the cultivation and reproduction of this heritage has been the School at Halki and its continuing closure puts the very survival of a tradition, uniquely valuable for understanding European culture in its integrity, in serious jeopardy. In almost five decades since the closure in 1971 repeated appeals and unstinting efforts to reopen the

80   The Cold War (1946–1991) School under Patriarchs Dimitrios and Bartholomew have remained fruitless. This is a measure of the intensity of the continuing regional “cold war” within which the Patriarchate has to operate.26

In the service of Christian unity The closing remarks of the previous section could be considered to transpose the focus of our narrative from the level of the external history of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the age of the Cold War to that of its internal history, the history of the inner life of the Church as a religious and spiritual institution rather than as a pawn in the antagonisms between secular systems of power. What emerges from a consideration of this aspect of the subject is a truly impressive, indeed admirable image of the dedication of the Church of Constantinople to the fulfillment of its mission as the exponent of the canonical conscience of Orthodoxy and as a guardian and transmitter of its authentic Christian tradition. What is even more impressive is the record of achievement in this domain despite the tragedies, difficulties and obstacles the Patriarchate had to face in transacting its tasks. Already during the brief patriarchate of Maximos V the intention to carry out this mission became obvious in the initiatives both for the internal reconstruction of the Church of Constantinople, including the upgrading of its theological school, and for intra-­Orthodox and ecumenical unity and order. It was during Athenagoras’s long reign, however, that the full extent of the Patriarchate’s vision for the Christian Church became an actual way of life for the Church of Constantinople. It is also significant that most of this work was accomplished after 1955, in a period of severe difficulties and constrains in the operation of the Patriarchate. As institutional aids to the task of the Church, three new academic centres were set up, fulfilling important missions in the fields of training, scholarship and dialogue: the Orthodox Centre at Chambésy in Switzerland (1966); the Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies in Thessaloniki (1968); and the Orthodox Academy of Crete (1968). In the domain of intra-­Orthodox unity, four pan-­Orthodox conferences were convoked in Rhodes (1961, 1963, 1964) and in Chambésy (1968). The Patriarch undertook a pilgrimage tour of the three other senior patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem in 1959 and he later visited the modern patriarchates of Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria in 1967. In 1963 he presided over the celebrations marking the millennium of Mt Athos and visited also on that occasion the Church of Greece. In the domain of inter-­Christian relations the Ecumenical Patriarchate under Athenagoras initiated theological dialogues with the ancient Oriental Churches, with the Anglicans and the Old Catholics. As far as Christian unity was concerned the most important developments marked Orthodox relations with the Roman Catholic Church. Long and intensive theological preparations throughout the 1950s and early 1960s culminated in the historic meeting of Pope Paul VI with Patriarch Athenagoras in Jerusalem in January 1964 and the revocation of the anathemas of 1054 that had sealed the schism between the two Churches.27

The Cold War (1946–1991)   81

Figure 5.3 “The Peace-Makers”: Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Paul VI in Jerusalem (December 1964). Source: © N. Manginas Photographic Archive.

The new climate in the relations of the Churches was reflected in the visits exchanged between their heads: Pope Paul visiting the Phanar on 25 July 1967 and Patriarch Athenagoras visiting Rome on 26–28 October 1967. The Patriarch’s initiatives of rapprochement with the Roman Catholic Church provoked strong reactions on the part of conservative Orthodox circles in Greece and elsewhere and some monasteries on Mt Athos stopped on this account the commemoration of the Ecumenical Patriarch on whose authority they canonically depended. Despite these reactions, relations with Rome continued to improve throughout the Cold War. Patriarch Dimitrios visited Rome on 3–7 December 1987, returning a visit by Pope John Paul II to the Phanar in November 1979. The participation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate also remained active throughout this period in the World Council of Churches.28 Through these initiatives which were based on systematic preparatory work and despite occasional setbacks the Ecumenical Patriarchate became a protagonist in the cultivation of a new spirit of unity and reconciliation in the Christian world, thus contributing to a revival of the principles of evangelical Christianity. In carrying out these tasks Patriarchs Athenagoras and Dimitrios were quite fortunate in their collaborators. Their patriarchates were blessed with

82   The Cold War (1946–1991)

Figure 5.4  Pope Paul VI with Patriarch Athenagoras at the Phanar (25 July 1967). Source: © N. Manginas Photographic Archive.

the service of a succession of remarkable senior prelates, who combined great diplomatic abilities with profound theological scholarship and they could accordingly chart in a responsible and effective way the itinerary of the Church of Constantinople. Among them special mention ought to be made of Meliton of Imvros and then of Ilioupolis and Theira and finally of Chalcedon (1950–1989), Maximos of Sardis (1946–1986), Ieronymos of Rodopolis (1954–2005), Chrysostomos of Myra and then of Ephesus (1961–2006), Ioannis of Pergamum (1986–) and, of course, Bartholomew of Philadelphia and then of Chalcedon (1984–1991), the future Ecumenical Patriarch.

Constantinople and Moscow These efforts in rebuilding Christian unity in a world that appeared to feel a profound need for the spiritual message of Christianity but at the same time was nurturing forces inimical and even hostile to it, became a primary contribution of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the period 1945–1991. Christian unity and ecumenism were not pursued at the expense of Orthodox solidarity and canonicity. This was the other main activity of the Patriarchate in this period as it has been suggested above. Work in this domain, however, had to unfold very often within the context of another minor “Cold War” that the Patriarchate had to face up to, in this case with the secular motivations activating many of the moves of the Church of Russian in the post-­Second World War period. Relations between Constantinople and Russia in the period under review opened in a most cordial way on the occasion of the election of new Patriarch

The Cold War (1946–1991)   83 of Moscow and all Russia in February 1945, following Patriarch Sergei’s death. The Ecumenical Patriarchate, responding to an official invitation, was represented at the election of the new Patriarch Alexei I. In his letter announcing the convocation of the electoral synod the locum tenens of the Russian throne metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod Alexei stressed the devotion of the Church of Russia to the ancient traditions and to the unity of Orthodoxy, to be cultivated by close communication between the local Churches.29 Upon his election the new Russian Patriarch wrote to Patriarch Benjamin to thank him for his wishes, sending at the same time as a gift a precious icon of the Virgin composed of pearls.30 Two years later the Patriarch of Moscow and the Synod of the Church of Russia took an initiative which resulted in a new climate in inter-­Orthodox relations. On 4 April 1947 a letter was addressed to the Ecumenical Patriarch Maximos V and to the other heads of Orthodox Churches announcing the decision to convoke a council of Orthodox Patriarchs and heads of autocephalous Churches in Moscow to consider the following major issues in inter-­ ecclesiastical relations: a b c d e

Relations of the Vatican to Orthodoxy in the previous thirty years. The Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Movement. The possibility of recognizing Anglican ordinations by the Orthodox Church. The Armenian-­Gregorian Church, Syro-­Jacobite Church, Abissynian Church, Syro-­Chaldean Church and their relations to the Orthodox Church. Canonical problems of the Russian Church: on Schism, Calendar, reception of former clerics etc.31

The letter of the Patriarch of Moscow was received at the Phanar on 15 May 1947. On 30 June the Ecumenical Patriarchate sent its response signed in Patriarch Maximos V’s absence by his commissioner, the metropolitan of Prigkiponissa Dorotheos. The response was polite but firm. It agreed that a meeting of the heads of Orthodox Churches was desirable and it also concurred that many problems needed to be seriously considered by the Church. It also acknowledged that the Russian Church had been through serious tribulations and was in need of the support and solidarity of sister Churches in reconstructing itself. In taking the initiative to convoke the council itself, however, it had overstepped the bounds set by tradition and canonical order: such initiative belonged alone to the Ecumenical Throne, whose right and duty it was to undertake the initial action whenever issues arose affecting the Church as a whole beyond the regional jurisdictions of individual Churches. The letter went on to point out that on the basis of this centuries-­old canonical order in the previous fifty years the Ecumenical Throne had undertaken pertinent initiatives (in 1902, in 1920, in 1923, in 1930). The intervening world war and other anomalous situations had prevented the convocation of the Pre-­Synod planned by Patriarch Photius II as a preparatory meeting of an Ecumenical Synod of Orthodoxy. Its eventual convocation however was the exclusive prerogative of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.32

84   The Cold War (1946–1991) The patriarchal letter left no margins for equivocation and misunderstanding. The Russian Patriarch realized that he had no choice but to back down unless he wanted to provoke a major conflict within the Church. In a letter to the Synod of Constantinople he announced his decision to postpone the meeting for a more propitious time.33 The 1947 initiative of the Church of Russia set a pattern in intra-­Orthodox relations for the remainder of the Cold War. Moscow’s intention appeared to be to assume the first role in the Orthodox world through unilateral initiatives and activism in inter-­church relations. The Ecumenical Patriarchate was not obviously prepared to accept and it invariably contained Russian initiatives by appealing to strict adherence to and respect of canonical order and tradition. The Ecumenical Patriarchate’s firmness obviously contained the unstated but evident intention of Russia to assert its position as by far the largest of the Orthodox Churches and on the basis of the power of numbers to claim the leading role in Orthodoxy. In visualizing this role the Church of Russia obviously enjoyed the support of the Soviet state. The valiant participation of the Church in the “great patriotic war” of resistance to the Nazi invasion had earned the Church its recognition by the state and the termination of the persecution that had marked the early Soviet period. After the war, however, the Soviet state by allowing the Church to reorganize, elect a new patriarch, operate with some degree of freedom and especially develop its external relations, apparently was planning to use it for its own foreign policy purposes. This transpired already in the 1945 Synod which on the occasion of the election of a new patriarch had brought to Moscow the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch and the head of the Church of Georgia and representatives of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Serbia, and Romania. The state representative at the meeting, Georgii Karpov, chairman of the Council for Russian Orthodox Church Affairs, expressed the Soviet state’s changed attitude towards the Church and its intention to enhance its support for the Church’s activities.34 It was this new political relation between Church and state in Russia, which turned the restored Orthodox Church into a “docile” agent of Soviet foreign policy,35 that caused alarm in the US and in Greece and set in motion the policy moves that resulted eventually in the election of Athenagoras in Constantinople, obviously with the writ to contain the Russians in the ecclesiastical domain. The alarm was quite gratuitous because Constantinople itself, on the basis simply of observance of the canons, had taken the necessary steps on its own initiative already in 1947, before Athenagoras’s election. The Russians found an ingenious way to sidestep Constaninople’s canonical arguments, at the same time asserting their position of predominance in the Church. They began organizing magnificent religious festivities on every possible occasion, inviting to Moscow the other Orthodox Churches and suggesting in this way that Moscow was in fact, if not in name, at the centre of the collective life of the Orthodox Church. Thus in 1948 a year after the postponement – in fact cancellation – of the proposed pan-­Orthodox council, on the fifth centennial of the elevation of Russia to autocephaly, the Orthodox Patriarchs were once more invited to Moscow.36 In February 1955 the tenth anniversary of the

The Cold War (1946–1991)   85 election of Patriarch Alexei was celebrated and later in the same year (July 1955) there followed celebrations on a grand scale to commemorate Saint Sergius, founder of the Lavra of Zagorsk in the fourteenth century.38 On that occasion Patriarch Christophoros of Alexandria was back in Moscow, along with the heads of the Orthodox Churches in the new Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe (Romania, Poland and Georgia) as well as representatives of Antioch, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. The assembly gave Patriarch Alexei the occasion in an official address to call upon the patriarchs to work for mutual understanding and collaboration in the Orthodox Church, thus raising a claim once more to a coordinating role for his Church in the Orthodox world. Furthermore, on the occasion of their meeting in Moscow the heads of the Orthodox Church addressed a message to the Big Four meeting at the moment in Geneva urging them to work for the achievement of permanent peace in the world.39 Special publicity was also given to the precious gifts lavished on the occasion of the celebrations by the Patriarch of Moscow upon the other Patriarchs present, especially on the senior among them, Christophoros of Alexandria.40 Constantinople, though invited, sent its wishes but abstained from the festivities. Another occasion for a pan-­Orthodox ceremonial gathering in Moscow to mark a major anniversary in the life of the Russian Church was presented in May 1958 to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the reestablishment of the Patriarchate of Moscow. On this occasion the Ecumenical Patriarchate sent an official delegation, but again the main role was played by Christophoros of Alexandria, who was received with great honours by ecclesiastical and political authorities in Russia. Once again the heads of the Churches of Antioch and Georgia were present, as well as delegations from all other Orthodox Churches.41 The Soviet mass media accorded considerable publicity to the celebrations and the pertinent film was promoted beyond Russia, projecting an image of the Russian Patriarch at the epicentre of magnificent Orthodox ceremonies of worship and thanksgiving, surrounded by the other two Eastern Patriarchs who in terms of seniority preceded him considerably in the ranking of Orthodox Churches. The pattern of a political strategy is clearly visible in these ostensibly religious activities. The Church of Russia through these initiatives appeared to assume de facto the first role in the Orthodox Church, favoured by the fact that all other Orthodox patriarchates and autocephalous Churches in Eastern Europe had to go along following the compliance of the regimes in their countries with Soviet policies. The three ancient patriarchates in the Near East, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, especially the first two, also fell in line. This was the result of a systematic policy of influence building by the reorganized Russian Church in the region, through missions, official visits, scholarships and – perhaps most critically – various forms of material support, especially cash handouts. It was characteristic that shortly after his election Patriarch Alexei visited the Patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria in May 1945 to rally their support to the plans of Moscow for the future course of the Orthodox Church.42 The political objective of the ecclesiastical primacy sought by Moscow was also transparent: support to Soviet foreign policy through declarations in favour of 37

86   The Cold War (1946–1991) world peace and condemnation of the alleged plans of imperialism at the expense of the peoples of the world. This policy was clearly articulated already in the Synod of 1945 that elected Patriarch Alexei and in 1950 was announced as an official position of the Russian Church in a letter by Patriarch Alexei to the other heads of Orthodox Churches, stressing the importance of Christian peace and asking for their consent to and collaboration with the efforts of his Church on behalf of world peace.43 As we saw, the same policy was reiterated on the occasion of the celebrations in memory of St Sergius in 1955. Through these initiatives the Soviet policy of propaganda on behalf of world peace appeared to be adopted as a general attitude of the Orthodox Churches. This left essentially the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Churches of Cyprus and Greece, and a wavering Patriarchate of Jerusalem, as the only Orthodox entities that did not fall in line with the strategy of the Moscow Patriarchate. Repeatedly their representatives stated their reservations on politically motivated declarations of ecclesiastical meetings and clearly separated their position from open anti-­Western statements as had happened at the 1945 Synod in Moscow or again in 1948 on the occasion of the fifth centennial of Russian autocephaly. Despite the distance and occasional coldness between them, the Churches of Constantinople and Russia observed with great tact and precision all the formalities stipulated by canonical order. In November 1960 Patriarch Alexei of Moscow wrote to the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras to announce his wish to visit the mother Great Church of Christ at the conclusion of a forthcoming tour of the Middle Eastern patriarchates. The news was received with deep satisfaction at the Phanar and Patriarch Athenagoras set up a special committee of senior prelates to organize the Russian Patriarch’s visit down to its minutest details. The visit indeed took place on 23–26 December 1960. Some details of the visit were characteristic. Upon his arrival in Istanbul on 23 December the Patriarch of Moscow was welcomed at the airport by the patriarchal committee in charge of his visit and was taken to the Phanar, where before meeting Patriarch Athenagoras, he officiated at a TeDeum in the patriarchal cathedral of St George. Invited to ascend to the patriarchal throne in the church, the Russian Patriarch declined and preferred to stand at the royal gate of the sanctuary, in a gesture of respect to the primacy of the Patriarch of Constantinople. The two patriarchs met immediately after the TeDeum in a very cordial atmosphere and proceeded to an informal luncheon. The next day, Christmas Eve, the Ecumenical Patriarch officially visited the Russian Patriarch at his hotel. During the visit the Russian Patriarch expressed himself profusely in terms of respect and devotion to the mother Church of Constantinople and its head. On Christmas day 1960 the two patriarchs co-­celebrated the festal liturgy and at the diptychs of Orthodoxy the Patriarch of Moscow as a sign of honour and respect commemorated only the name of the Ecumenical Patriarch and not the whole list of Orthodox Patriarchs and heads of autocephalous churches as it was his canonical right to do. At the liturgy were present all the general consuls representing Orthodox countries in Istanbul – Russia, Greece, Lebanon, Romania and Bulgaria.44 At the local level the Russian patriarchal visit to Istanbul signalled a respite in the Cold War and

The Cold War (1946–1991)   87

Figure 5.5 Patriarch of Moscow Alexei co-celebrating liturgy on Christmas day 1960 with Patriarch Athenagoras and Metropolitan of Chalcedon Thomas during his visit to the Phanar. Source: © N. Manginas Photographic Archive.

the ecclesiastical leaderships of the two leading Churches in Orthodoxy proved that they were quite capable of rising to the height of the occasion. The return visit did not come until 1987 when the Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios visited Moscow to a very warm reception by Patriarch Pimen and the Russian faithful. Addressing the Ecumenical Patriarch, the Patriarch of Moscow voiced the joy felt by the “daughter Church of Russia” on the occasion of the first visit by a Patriarch of Constantinople since the end of the sixteenth century, when Patriarch Jeremiah II had come to Moscow in 1589 to grant the patriarchal dignity to the Church of Russia. When the crowning moment of glory for Russian Orthodoxy came in 1988, however, with the completion of the millennium of the baptism of Vladimir of Kiev and the reception of the Russian people into the Orthodox communion, new difficulties presented themselves. During the Ecumenical Patriarch’s visit the previous year it had been agreed that he would return a year later to preside over the ceremonies and acts of worship commemorating the millennium of Christianity in Russia. In planning for the events, however, questions of canonicity soon arose on account of the Russian desire to include in the co-­celebrant heads of churches the leader of the Russian Church in America, the “Metropolia”, which had been unilaterally and without the consent of Constantinople elevated to autocephaly by Moscow. This was not acceptable

88   The Cold War (1946–1991) to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which considered the Metropolia schismatic. The Russians would not accede to the requirement of Constantinople to exclude the Metropolia from the celebrations with the consequence that Patriarch Dimitrios had to cancel his participation. This time Alexandria under Patriarch Parthenios sided with Constantinople and the Church of Greece followed suit. Of the Greek­speaking Churches only the Archbishop Chrysostomos of Cyprus went to Moscow, at the urging of the government of Cyprus counting on Soviet support in the Cyprus Question. The celebrations of course went ahead as planned in the summer of 1988 with the Patriarch Ignatius of Antioch presiding in the main festal liturgy, Arabic instead of Greek being heard on short waves around the world as one of the main languages of Orthodoxy. Thus as the Cold War was drawing to a close, with momentous changes already under way in the Soviet Union, relations between Constantinople and Moscow appeared once more to be entering a new period of coolness. When Patriarch Dimitrios died in October 1991, the Patriarch of Moscow Alexei II made a stopover in Istanbul on his return from a visit to Damascus to pay his respects but did not stay for the funeral the next day – with the exception of the two elderly and ailing patriarchs of Jerusalem and Georgia, the only one of the Orthodox Patriarchs to be absent.45

Conclusion The preceding narrative of the vicissitudes besieging the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the period of the Cold War may create a misleading impression as to the character of the period in the life of the Church. On the face of it it may appear as a period of power struggles and conflicts over temporal predominance, with the Church just resigned to the role of a passive recipient of the consequences of the protracted epochal confrontation between East and West. The struggle over the election of Athenagoras, the repeated disputes between Constantinople and Moscow, the harshness of the treatment of the Ecumenical Patriarchate by the Turkish state once Turkey felt its position secure because of its strategic value to the West – all these tell us very little about the history and life of the Church as a religious institution. By contrast we appear to be in sight of just another story of disputes over power and attempts at its legitimization. Yet the story is certainly more complex and more nuanced. As ecclesiastical history, our narrative essentially unfolds as the story of the struggle of the Orthodox Church to survive by meeting challenges emanating from the constellations of power in the modern world, without abandoning its Christian mission and witness. On this score the achievement of the Ecumenical Patriarchate is truly remarkable, considering especially the hostility of the Turkish state towards its presence and mission. What makes the experience of the Ecumenical Patriarchate truly unique is the fact that the Church of Constantinople is not attached to any particular state.46 Even under communism the Orthodox Churches in the countries of Eastern Europe functioned as national churches and despite repeated waves of persecution and terror, they retained multiple forms of entanglement with their respective states. The same was true of the Church of Greece, which along with

The Cold War (1946–1991)   89 the Church of Cyprus throughout the Cold War were the only Orthodox Churches in the free world. The Church of Greece, however, remained closely attached to the Greek state and served as faithfully the Greek state’s anticommunism as its sister Churches behind the Iron Curtain served the world peace propaganda projects of their respective communist regimes. The Ecumenical Patriarchate by contrast remained free of state entanglements and this allowed it to cultivate unconditionally its canonical conscience and to make this the basis of its primacy in the Orthodox world. “Primacy” of course is a misleading usage in the present context: the Ecumenical Patriarchate does not claim any kind of papal authority in the Orthodox world but as the senior see in Orthodoxy it shoulders the responsibility of safeguarding canonicity and tradition through coordination and initiative in the common concerns of Orthodox churches.47 In the period under review here, these tasks have been transacted by the Church of Constantinople with great exactitude and patience, but also with firmness whenever necessary. From a secular point of view what could be considered particularly valuable in the evidence supplied by this historical record is the dexterity with which Constantinople managed its tasks as the senior Orthodox Church on a supranational level, freeing ecclesiastical praxis of nationalist motivations and objectives, therefore bearing witness to the authentic ecumenicity of Christian values. This I think has been the most valuable contribution of the Constantinopolitan ecclesiastical tradition in the twentieth century – and beyond.

Notes   1 Alexis Alexandris, The Greek Minority of Istanbul and Greek-­Turkish Relations 1918–1974, Athens: Centre for Asia Minor Studies, 1992, p. 92.   2 Ibid., pp. 87–95, 144–173, 194–206.   3 For a detailed account of this period see Michael Llewellyn-­Smith, Ionian Vision. Greece in Asia Minor, 1919–1922, London: C Hurst & Co., 1998.   4 On the “canonical conscience” of the Church a classic of clarity and precision is Maximos of Sardis, The Ecumenical Patriarchate in the Orthodox Church, Thessaloniki: Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies, 1976, pp. 253–266.   5 Alexandris, op. cit., pp. 211–233. For a critical appraisal of the motivations of the tax see Faik Ökte, The Tragedy of the Turkish Capital Tax, transl. by G. Cox, London: Croom Helm, 1987.   6 On this very unfortunate phenomenon see Alexandris, op. cit., pp. 149–154.   7 Alexandris, p.  28. Unfortunately this church was eventually demolished in 1958 by Turkish authorities in order to open up a road in Galata. Ibid., p. 272.   8 See V. Stavridis, Οἱ Οἰκουμενικοὶ Πατριάρχαι 1860 – Σήμερον [The Ecumenical Patriarchs 1860–today], Thessaloniki: Kyriakidis, 2004, pp. 605–606.   9 Philaretos Vitalis, Μάξιμος Ε΄ [Maximos V], Athens 1992, p. 127. 10 Orthodoxia XXII (1947), pp. 141–155. 11 B. Anagnostopoulos, “Το αρχείον του Οικουμενικού Πατριάρχου Μαξίμου Ε΄ και η συγγραφή της βιογραφίας του” [“The archive of Ecumenical Patriarch Maximos V and the composition of his biography”], Epistimoniki Parousia Estias Theologon Halkis VI (2006), p. 50, no. 7. The text of the patriarchal message to the Greek people in Orthodoxia XXII (1947), pp. 148–149. 12 D. Mavropoulos, Πατριαρχικαὶ σελίδες. Τὸ Οἰκουμενικὸν Πατριαρχεῖον 1878–1949 [Patriarchal Pages. The Ecumenical Patriarchate 1878–1949], Athens, 1968, p. 251.

90   The Cold War (1946–1991) 13 Vitalis, op. cit., p. 314. 14 Mavropoulos, op. cit., pp. 263–264. 15 On the pertinent political and diplomatic background see George S. Harris, Troubled Alliance. Turkish-­American Problems in Historical Perspective, 1945–1971, Stanford, CA: AEI – Hoover Institution, 1972, pp. 17–30, 31–38. 16 On the circumstances of Maximos’s resignation and Athenagoras’s election see Mavropoulos, op. cit., pp. 251–264 and Alexandris, op. cit., pp. 244–247. The patriarchal change of 1948 in Istanbul, exactly sixty years later, still remains a touchy subject, shrouded in embarrassment and reticence on the part of surviving witnesses with first-­hand knowledge to be explicit and unequivocal about it. This was my discovery in trying to clarify the issues involved. The subject is important and deserves a more detailed examination in itself, as a special case study in Cold War diplomatic and ecclesiastical history, to be attempted on the evidence of surviving documentation, from Greek, Constantinopolitan but also from Russian and Vatican sources. 17 Stavridis, op. cit., p. 646. 18 Orthodoxia XXIV (1949), pp. 58–64. 19 Alexandris, op. cit., p. 249. 20 Ibid., pp. 248–251. 21 Ibid., pp.  256–266. The latest contribution to the subject is the exhaustive study by Speros Vryonis, Jr, The Mechanism of Catastrophe. The Turkish Pogrom of September 6–7, 1955 and the Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul, New York: Greekworks.com, 2005. Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul. Memories of a City, transl. by Maureen Freeley, London: Faber and Faber, 2005, pp. 155–159 discusses the events as a major blow that contributed to the decline of Istanbul by destroying the multicultural basis of its society. 22 Alexandris, op. cit., p. 266 and Vryonis, op. cit., pp. 519–539. 23 Vryonis, op. cit., pp. 389–517. 24 Alexandris, pp. 259–260. 25 Ibid., p. 299. 26 For a brief overview of developments on citizenship restrictions regarding the election of the members of the Holy Synod and the Patriarch as well as the Theological School of Halki up to the present day see Kamouzis, “Incorporating the Ecumenical Patriarchate into Modern Turkey”, pp. 239–245. 27 See for a survey with official texts, Ar. Panotis, Les pacificateurs. Jean XXIII– Athénagoras. Paul VI–Dimitrios, Athens: Dragan European Foundation, 1974. 28 For a survey of the period in question see V. T. Istavridis, “The Orthodox Churches in the Ecumenical Movement, 1948–1968”, A History of the Ecumenical Movement 1948–1968, ed. by H. E. Fey, London: Committee on Ecumenical History, 1970, Vol. II, pp. 287–309. 29 Orthodoxia ΧΧ (1945), pp. 34–46, The official correspondence on pp. 115–117. 30 Ibid., p. 41. 31 Orthodoxia ΧΧII (1947), pp. 160–161. 32 Ibid., pp.  161–165. The Constantinopolitan view of the canonical basis of relations with Russia is outlined by Maximos of Sardis, op. cit., pp. 287–293. 33 Orthodoxia ΧΧII (1947), p. 250. 34 A summary of Karpov’s speech in Orthodoxia ΧΧ (1945), pp. 36–38. 35 In the authoritative judgement of Adam Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence. The History of Soviet Foreign Policy 1917–1948, New York: Praeger, 1968, p. 468. For a detailed study see Matthew Spinka, The Church in Soviet Russia, New York: Oxford University Press, 1956. An important new source recounts the story on the basis of the records of the Council for Russian Orthodox Church Affairs and confirms in detail the impressions of Western observers concerning the involvement of the Church of Russia in the plans of Soviet foreign policy. See Tatiana A. Chumachenko, Church and State in Soviet Russia. Russian Orthodoxy from World War II to the Khruschev

The Cold War (1946–1991)   91 Years, transl. by Edward E. Roslof, Armonk, NY and London: M. E. Sharpe, 2002, esp. pp. 39–41. Concerning the 1945 Synod the following judgements by the author are quite pertinent: The National Council was supposed to show representatives of foreign Orthodox churches the growing power of the Russian Orthodox Church in the USSR. They were to see both political and financial power flowing from government support, which in turn was to become a decisive factor when the financially needy Eastern Orthodox patriarchs set their own political priorities. In addition the National Church Council was to demonstrate the unity of Orthodox Churches to the international community as well as the reality of claims by the Moscow patriarchate to “leadership” of the Orthodox world. This was especially important for officials already planning a political confrontation between the USSR and the Vatican. […] The grandeur and splendor of arrangements, as well as the level of service provided to members and guests attending the National Church Council were intended to make a positive impression and to be conducive in no small degree for successful resolution of the tasks set by the government. These goals were achieved, as testified by the fact that Karpov received the state’s highest award for excellence, the Order of Lenin, in February 1945. (pp. 40–41) 36 Orthodoxia ΧΧIII (1948), pp. 249–250. See also Chumachenko, op. cit., p. 54. 37 Orthodoxia ΧΧX (1955), pp. 242–243. 38 Ibid., pp. 397–398. 39 Ibid., pp. 397. 40 Ibid., pp. 398. 41 Orthodoxia ΧΧXIII (1958), pp. 350–356. 42 See Chumachenko, op. cit., p. 42. For a detailed and well-­informed survey see Harry J. Psomiades, “Soviet Russia and the Orthodox Church in the Middle East”, The Middle East Journal 11(4) (Autumn 1957), pp. 371–381. 43 Orthodoxia ΧΧV (1950), p. 140. 44 Orthodoxia ΧΧXV (1960), pp. 469–483. 45 Stavridis, Οἰκουμενικοὶ Πατριάρχαι, pp. 747–748. 46 On the attitude of the Ecumenical Patriarchate towards nationalism cf. P. M. Kitromilides, An Orthodox Commonwealth. Symbolic Legacies and Cultural Encounters in Southeastern Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate/Variorum, 2007, Study No. XIII. 47 See further Metropolitan of Pergamum Ioannis [Zizioulas], “The Ecumenical Patriarchate and its Relations with the other Orthodox Churches”, The Orthodox Church in a Changing World, ed. by P. M. Kitromilides and Thanos Veremis, Athens: ELIAMEP-­ Centre for Asia Minor Studies, 1998, pp. 155–164.

6 A religious international in Southeastern Europe?

To talk of an Orthodox “religious international”1 emanating from Southeastern Europe before the end of the Cold War would require excessive imagination. The overall historical trend shaping the religious scene in this part of Europe since the early nineteenth century has been the phenomenal growth of “national Orthodoxies”, which attached religion to the nation-­states of the Balkans and served faithfully their nationalist projects. This of course was a nineteenth-­ century development and it should not obscure an earlier history extending throughout the early modern period, from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the advent of the age of nationalism, during which the Orthodox Church did function as a transnational and transcultural religious institution. In that earlier period in its history the Orthodox Church united under its pastoral care the multilingual Orthodox population of the Balkans and Asia Minor within the Ottoman Empire and also the dense network of Orthodox diaspora communities in Italy, Central and Western Europe and Russia. All these populations came under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople which exercised its pastoral care through a broad network of dioceses within and outside the Ottoman Empire.2 The Arab-­speaking Orthodox of the Near East in Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia came under the jurisdiction of two other ancient Orthodox patriarchates, those of Antioch (based in Damascus) and Jerusalem. The Orthodox in Africa came under the Patriarchate of Alexandria, which, however, was a minority church in Egypt whose Christian population in its majority belonged to the Coptic Church. The Patriarchate of Alexandria rose in influence and power only in the nineteenth century with the growth of Greek immigration which created a powerful Orthodox diaspora in Egypt and the rest of Africa. Russia as an independent empire claimed and received from Constantinople its ecclesiastical independence or autocephaly and its elevation to patriarchal status in 1589. This development, which created a fifth Orthodox Patriarchate at the end of the sixteenth century, was entirely within Orthodox canon law, which provided that local churches within independent states were entitled to autocephaly.3 Such was the structure of the Orthodox world in the early modern period. Within this world a discerning eye could perhaps distinguish informal “internationals” of merchants, clergymen and scholars, all of them sharing an Orthodox identity and moving from communities within the Ottoman Empire to

A religious international?   93 communities in the diaspora. These of course were not necessarily religious “internationals” although their human resources were distinguishable primarily in terms of a religious identity. The “international” network or movement could not be seen as a “religious international” because a religious motivation was not necessarily present among the motives of its participants. But it was such networks of merchants and intellectuals, the latter very often carrying clerical orders, that supplied the infrastructure for the transfer of the Enlightenment into the Orthodox world. Indeed, the most clearly distinguishable “international” in this Orthodox diaspora world which covered the whole of Europe from Nizna in Southern Russia to Paris, Amsterdam and London was an “international” on behalf of education and the revival of the classics. But that is a different story. In the domain of religion and ecclesiastical life the premodern unity of Orthodox affinities and shared identities was disrupted with the emergence of nationalism and the advent of national states, which in consolidating their project of stateand nation-­building subjected local Orthodox churches to their own secular agendas. The new secular agenda demanded independent churches which were expected to mobilize the age-­old power of religion in the service of the programme of the nation-­state. Thus the new national states claimed and achieved the emancipation of their churches from Constantinople, creating new autocephalies and eventually patriarchates, only to subject these modern ecclesiastical institutions politically and ideologically to the secular state with the consequence of enmeshing them into fratricidal intra-­Orthodox conflicts in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth century. This is how national Orthodoxies were put in place.4 Most national Orthodoxies were taken over by the communist states in the post-­Second World War period and functioned, in concert with the Church of Russia, as important ideological agents in the Cold War. In contrast to Russian Orthodoxy, which in the diaspora after the Russian Revolution did produce forms of religious action that could be seen as a version of a primitive “religious international”, Balkan Orthodoxy remained paralysed by its split by the Iron Curtain. The national divisions separating individual Orthodox churches from each other were supplemented and compounded by the confrontation of communist and noncommunist regimes in the Cold War.5 Constantinople, Greece and Cyprus were on the Western side, Romania and Bulgaria were firmly behind the Iron Curtain, while Serbia followed the neutralist tendencies of Yugoslavia. In Albania, through a systematic policy of terror and destruction, the communist regime managed to obliterate any form of open expression of religious life. This situation precluded the formation of an Orthodox International before the end of the Cold War.

Premodern forms of religious “interculturalism” in the Orthodox world The assertion of national Orthodoxies in the modern age should not obscure an earlier history of “internationalism” in the Orthodox world. “Internationalism”

94   A religious international? of course is a rather problematic term if employed to describe phenomena in premodern periods. Nationalism and the consequent phenomena of national definition are historically meaningful only in conjunction with the complex articulation of modernity and especially in connection with the construction of modern statehood. To extend the use of the relevant terminology beyond these contexts is to render it meaningless by elevating it to a transhistorical status. With these caveats in mind I might be allowed to use the term “internationalism” as a shorthand convention to describe phenomena of coexistence within religiously motivated movements of people with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. In the interest of analytical clarity and precision the term “interculturalism” could perhaps replace the term “internationalism” when referring to premodern historical contexts. In the premodern Orthodox world, two intercultural movements or phenomena stand out, pilgrimage and monasticism. In both of these instances, which represent historical practices bridging the divide between the premodern and the modern age, we can observe many continuities in religious life that make the epochal contrasts on the surface of historical existence appear of rather secondary significance. Pilgrimage, that is movements in space motivated by the desire to pay homage to holy places of the faith, had been a practice inherited by Christianity from Judaism. It became a widespread practice in the early Church motivated by the need many Christians felt to worship in the places sanctified by the earthly presence of their Saviour. Quite early on, nevertheless, pilgrimages became also associated with unbecoming forms of behaviour, something that attracted the censure of St Gregory of Nyssa in his letter “About Those Absent in Jerusalem”.6 We see here that the Canterbury Tales did not report on anything that was new to Christians. Despite all this, pilgrimage to the Holy Land and to other sacred places like Mt Sinai remained popular in medieval Europe, both in East and West, being interrupted by the Muslim conquest of Palestine. Thus the spiritual needs of pilgrims, as is well known from relevant historical sources, supplied one of the pretexts of the Crusades making these disorderly medieval campaigns of the West against the East a form of “armed pilgrimage”.7 In the early modern period the Ottoman conquest of Palestine in the sixteenth century in a way reopened the itineraries of pilgrimage to the Orthodox by politically unifying the whole of the Orthodox East. Pilgrimage to the Holy Land and to the great monastic foundations throughout the Orthodox East became the only form of mobility for significant numbers of Orthodox faithful, whose geographical horizon beyond the local community was punctuated only by the holy places of the faith. These holy itineraries were occasions of encounters among Orthodox from diverse cultural backgrounds. Languages were not serious obstacles: they were overridden by the shared body language of faith. Thus an informal “international” of pilgrims to the Holy Land became a feature of Orthodox religious life in the early modern period. The best-­known representative of this religious “international” of pilgrims was the Kievan monk Vassily Barsky who toured the Orthodox East between 1723 and 1747. Barsky left the most sympathetic and

A religious international?   95 reliable record of his visits to the holy places of Orthodox pilgrimage, which he illustrated with his own drawings, thus making it an invaluable visual testimony.8 The most important aspect of Barsky’s testimony was in fact the evidence he supplied about the way the shared Orthodox identity and the intimacy of common belief transcended ethnic and linguistic otherness and sustained the sense of an “Orthodox commonwealth”.9 The Orthodox commonwealth was disrupted by the growth of nationalism in the nineteenth century. The new conditions brought about by reason of state, however, did not discourage the tradition of pilgrimage. On the contrary, pilgrimage of Russian faithful to the Holy Land and elsewhere in the Orthodox East, especially Mt Athos, grew to considerable proportions in the nineteenth century.10 Imposing hostels for these pilgrims were constructed at many points in the Orthodox East, including a multistorey one in Constantinople with a chapel of St Andrew on its top floor. The lavish gifts and cash donations brought by Russian pilgrims and the vigorous construction activity designed to cater to their needs on Athos and in Jerusalem were part and parcel of Russian imperial strategy in the Middle East.11 The consequence was serious conflicts among the Orthodox in these areas, including a systematic incitement of nationalism among the Arab Orthodox Christians.12 The Orthodox commonwealth and the premodern form of the Orthodox “international” of pilgrimage were put to rest. When Russian pilgrimage to the Holy Land resurfaced under communism it was usually politically motivated. In the interwar and postwar periods, Orthodox pilgrimage to the Holy Land became primarily a Greek and Cypriot phenomenon, increasingly attracting also the faithful from the Orthodox diaspora, especially from North America. In the post-­Cold War period Orthodox pilgrimage to the Holy Land grew to remarkable proportions. We can talk of a true revival of the “international of pilgrims”, now in a literal sense as the several Orthodox nations which acceded to statehood and independence after the disappearance of the Soviet Empire attempted to reclaim and reconstitute their Orthodox heritage. As had been the case during the nineteenth century, since the end of the Cold War pilgrimage to the Holy Land, especially the growth of the Russian pilgrimage movement, has not been free of behind-­the-scenes state direction. Behind the pilgrims and their outward expressions of intense piety in the distinctive Slavic style come calculations and expediencies of Russian state interests and designs in the Middle East. The second premodern intercultural movement in the Orthodox world was monasticism. Like pilgrimage, monasticism was an expression of religious life already in the early history of the Church. In this case though, anachoresis, departure from the world into the desert originally in Egypt and Palestine and later throughout Christendom, was a form of protest against the world, an expression of a radical craving of living in a more existentially authentic way the Christian spiritual values.13 This radical profession of faith through anachoresis subsequently took on more organized forms with the growth of coenobitic monasticism in Asia Minor under the inspiration and spiritual guidance of St Basil the Great (330–379). From its original hearth in Cappadocia, coenobitic

96   A religious international? monasticism spread to the rest of Asia Minor and the Greek peninsula and thus several “holy mountains” populated by groups of monks made their appearance: Mt Olympus in Bithynia, Mt Latros in Caria, Mt Ganos and Mt Papikion in Thrace attracted monastic populations who either lived in coenobitic monasteries or continued the old tradition of desert monasticism and anachoresis, living alone in the wilderness and coming together only on Sunday to attend mass and take communion. The most famous of “holy mountains” was Mt Athos, the easternmost peninsula of Chalkidiki in Macedonia. In its over one millennium history, Athos, the Holy Mountain par excellence, although always predominantly Greek in its demographic make-­up, was never characterized by a unique and exclusive ethnic identity. Already in its earliest history it hosted houses of Amalfitan monks while two of the four senior monasteries still surviving to this day, Irivon and Chilandar, were founded and endowed by Georgian and Serbian princes respectively. Another monastery, Zographou, came under the control of Bulgarian monks in the thirteenth century. Monks from Russia appeared on Athos already in the eleventh century and by the following century they had their monastery at St Panteleimon. From the fourteenth century onward, St Panteleimon became a Greek monastery and returned to Russian control with the massive influx of Russian monks in the second half of the nineteenth century. Monastic populations remained mixed throughout the centuries and following the Ottoman conquest of Athos in 1430 various monasteries at different times were dominated by diverse ethnic groups of monks, changing ethnic composition as circumstances changed. When the number of official monasteries was stabilized to twenty in the mid-­ sixteenth century, there was no clear indication of the ethnic identity of individual monasteries, but Chilandar and Zographou seem to have remained regularly in Serbian and Bulgarian hands, while the rest had by then become primarily Greek. When Athos was incorporated into the Greek kingdom in 1912, seventeen monasteries were Greek, one Serbian, one Bulgarian and one Russian. Athos had been rife with nationalist tensions during the second half of the nineteenth century, causing considerable consternation to many observers, among them the historian of the Ecumenical Patriarchate Manuel Gedeon (1851–1943), who in 1885 after an extended stay on Athos commented as follows: Only one hearsay was never wrong, that concerning racial conflicts among monks belonging to different nations, which foreign policies or an evil doctrine emanating from the West, that of the emancipation of nationalities, led into discord, disfiguring the mission and character of an Orthodox monk.14 Such had been the climate of interethnic relations on Mt Athos on the eve of its liberation from Ottoman rule. It was symptomatic of the situation that when the abbots and official representatives of the twenty ruling monasteries convened on 3 October 1913 to vote for the incorporation of Mt Athos into Greece and the transfer of sovereignty from the Ottoman Empire to the kingdom of Greece, following its liberation by the Greek navy during the First Balkan War on 2

A religious international?   97 November 1912, the representative of the Russian monastery of St Panteleimon was absent and his signature was not put to the document. At the same time it was characteristic of the Athonite traditions of interethnic coexistence and of Orthodox supranational principles of Christian ecumenicity that the representatives of Chilandar and Zographou signed the document. It so happened that Chilandar was exercising the function of the protepistasia of Mt Athos during the year 1913 and therefore it fell upon a Serbian Athonite monk, Prior Clement of Chilandar, to hand over the Athonite resolution of union with Greece to the Greek king, Constantine. The Russian Revolution put a halt on the massive Russian influx on Athos and eventually caused a drastic reduction in the numbers and resources of the Russian monastery. The division of Europe and the imposition of communist dictatorships on all Orthodox countries except Greece led non-­Greek monastic communities on Mt Athos to decline for most of the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1980s the decline especially of Zographou monastery acted as a stimulus to a veritable temptation in the biblical sense to appear on Mt Athos. Some Greek monastic circles on the Mountain began considering the idea to move a Greek brotherhood into the Bulgarian monastery to save it from imminent dissolution. It was on that occasion that the genuine Orthodox tradition of ecumenicity asserted itself and the most authoritative elders on Athos moved against such designs. Abbot Aimilianos of Simonopetra, one of the most respected spiritual elders on Athos at the time, played an important role in warding off the temptation of nationalism on the Holy Mountain, asserting that the presence of foreign-­speaking monasteries was an integral component of Athonite tradition. Thus Athos has carried on from medieval times into the contemporary world an authentic Orthodox heritage of universalism and internationalism. This ecumenical heritage was celebrated in the most solemn and evocative way to mark the millennium of the establishment of the senior monastery on Athos, the Great Lavra. An imperial foundation owing its origin to the piety of East Roman emperors Nicephorus II Phokas and Ioannis I Tzimiskis, the Great Lavra, founded by St Athanasios the Athonite in 963, completed its millennium in the year 1963. Upon that occasion the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I (1948–1972; b.1886), upon whose spiritual authority Mt Athos depended, issued an invitation to the other Orthodox Churches and to the Greek authorities to join the Church of Constantinople in celebrating the millennial anniversary. The splendid ceremonies and acts of worship in June 1963 in the presence of King Paul of Greece (1901–1964) turned into a celebration of pan-­Orthodox unity and of the supranational character of Mt Athos.15 The Ecumenical Patriarch was joined on Athos by the Patriarchs of Jerusalem, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria, the Archbishop of Athens and representatives of the Churches of Alexandria, Russia, Cyprus, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Finland. This show of pan-­Orthodox unity amidst the tensions of the Cold War represented a confirmation of the survival of a millennial tradition of Christian ecumenicity and intercultural religious life on Athos as a living witness of Christian faith in the modern world.

98   A religious international?

Initiatives towards an Orthodox International after the Cold War Following the end of the division of Europe, from the 1990s onward, incipient forms of an Orthodox “International” can be discerned in some of the initiatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In what follows I would like to discuss these initiatives. Two questions will be primarily probed: (1) to what extent and in what sense could the initiatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate be considered to represent, even in an incipient form, an “Orthodox International”?; and (2) what are the possible consequences of such initiatives and openings to the lures of postmodernity for the character of the Orthodox tradition? As already noted in earlier chapters, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has not fared well under the Turkish Republic. Since the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the Patriarchate has operated as a purely religious institution catering to the spiritual needs of the Orthodox minority in Turkey.16 Turkish state authorities have consistently refused to recognize the international religious character of the Patriarchate and its role as the senior see in the Orthodox Church. Every possible form of restriction, disguised as the application of the provisions of prevailing law, has been placed on the operation of the Patriarchate, including, until quite recently, serious restrictions on the movement of its religious personnel. The most serious blow which is critically affecting the long-­term prospects of the Patriarchate’s survival in Turkey has been the closure in 1971 of the Theological School at Halki (Heybeliada). Since its establishment in 1844 this college of theological education had functioned as the training ground for the Patriarchate’s senior clergy, but also for clergy from other Orthodox Churches, thus providing a channel for the transaction of the Patriarchate’s pan-­Orthodox role. In the period immediately following the Treaty of Lausanne, the unfortunate episode of the expulsion of Patriarch Constantinos VI (1859–1930; patriarch 1924–1925) from Turkey as a non-­établi – that is, as a citizen who had no right to be in Turkey under the provisions of the 1923 convention for the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey – served as a warning concerning patriarchal movements abroad. In the interwar period no patriarch travelled abroad. Only after the Second World War during the brief patriarchate of Maximos V (1946–1948; b.1897) did the Patriarch undertake an official visit to Greece. During Athenagoras’s long patriarchate (1948–1972) the patriarch undertook only four visits to other Orthodox churches and to Rome. Athenagoras’s successor Dimitrios I (1972–1991; b.1914), the last Cold War patriarch, also undertook carefully planned visits to other churches on a limited scale. All this suggests that the Patriarchate’s international involvements remained limited and this also meant that activism of the kind implied by the idea of an “Orthodox International” remained a rather remote prospect. Participation in the World Council of Churches and inter-­Orthodox engagement through regular communication and meetings remained formal ecclesiastical activities, very often encountering serious stumbling blocks having to do with Cold War politics.

A religious international?   99 Things changed radically after the Cold War during the patriarchate of the incumbent Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I (b.1940) since 1991. No patriarch in history has travelled so much or has been more widely known, not just among Orthodox communities but in the world at large. From the very first, Patriarch Bartholomew’s strategy has been to work for the reversal of the decline of the Church of Constantinople on account of the virtual disappearance of its flock within Turkey by strengthening its position vis-­à-vis the Turkish state through an active international involvement. A broad strategy has been employed in order to achieve this objective. The strategy involved an active pursuit of a higher profile for the Ecumenical Patriarchate and its head in international fora, in relations with foreign governments and in inter-­Christian and even interfaith relations. This objective has been admirably achieved showing the Patriarch to be not only a charismatic ecclesiastical leader but also a great diplomat. Two other components of the same overall strategy of survival through activism could be seen to contain the dynamic of an “Orthodox International”. In 1995, quite early on in his reign, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew inaugurated his campaign on behalf of the environment. The Ecumenical Patriarchate’s concern for the environment and ecological issues had already been voiced in 1988 under Patriarch Dimitrios who established the opening of the ecclesiastical year on 1 September as a day of prayer for the environment. The celebration during the year 1995 of the 1900th anniversary of the writing of the Book of Revelation by St John the Theologian provided Patriarch Bartholomew with the appropriate occasion on which to broaden the Patriarchate’s ecological campaign. Besides the religious ceremonies and a conference of biblical studies, it was thought that reflection on the Revelation could also provide the occasion for the articulation of an Orthodox perspective on the major ecological and environmental issues facing the planet. Thus, the Ecumenical Patriarchate inaugurated its floating ecological symposia with a voyage from Istanbul to Ephesus and thence to Patmos.17 The good reception of that initiative provided the stimulus to convoke a succession of floating symposia, each one focusing on the environmental problems faced by specific regions: the Black Sea,18 the Adriatic,19 the Danube,20 the Baltic Sea, the Amazon and most recently the melting Arctic and Greenland. The symposia attracted considerable publicity and earned Patriarch Bartholomew the reputation of the “Green Patriarch”. Thanks to the presence of Metropolitan Ioannis of Pergamum (b.1931), one of the foremost Orthodox theologians of our time, the early symposia appeared also to deliver their original promise of producing an Orthodox theology on the environment.21 This aspect of the project is having a clear if indirect influence on theological reflection in the Orthodox world in as far as it has led to a greater emphasis on the importance of social, political and economic actions on the ground, while downplaying the exclusive precedence accorded to otherworldly elements in Christian thinking that have at times led to criticism of Orthodoxy for quietism. This may be seen, to cite but two representative examples, in the writings of a range of Orthodox thinkers on issues as different as bioethics and consumerism,22 but also, not least, in Patriarch Bartholomew’s own recent publications,

100   A religious international?

Figure 6.1 Saving God’s creation. Patriarch Bartholomew in Greenland (September 2007). Source: © N. Manginas Photographic Archive.

which are uncharacteristic of much Orthodox thought in the emphasis they give to social and economic aspects of contemporary life.23 The symposia did seem to mobilize a group of Orthodox and philo-­Orthodox Christians in an incipient form of an “Orthodox International” concerned with environmental questions and attached to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. What will come of all this will depend primarily on the quality, the qualifications and the commitment of the people involved. A lot will also depend on the discernment the Patriarch and the Patriarchate will exercise in the selection of their collaborators who will lead the project. The human factor will be the critical variable for the sustainability and eventual success of the movement as an international, producing a credible Orthodox perspective on ecological issues and in saying something meaningful on the future of the planet.24 Occasionally the press coverage

A religious international?   101 of the events leaves the rather worrisome impression that there is little substance beyond public relations in these costly cruises. But judgement should be suspended until the long-­term results of the initiative become visible with the emergence of versions of religious and social thought bearing a distinctive Orthodox imprint and sustained by Orthodox groups of diverse national backgrounds, united by their shared commitment to environmental protection and respect of nature as God’s creation. The other component of the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s strategy under Patriarch Bartholomew has been a more active pursuit of canonical leadership in the affairs of the Orthodox Churches. This did not of course mean a policy of intervention in the internal affairs of other Churches, but a readiness and a responsiveness whenever needs and problems arose to activate in facing up to them the “canonical conscience of the Church”,25 whose guardianship Constantinople considers its primary mission. Many such problems surfaced, for instance, in the Orthodox churches formerly behind the Iron Curtain following the dissolution of the communist regimes. Everywhere the Ecumenical Patriarchate contributed with its involvement to the restoration of canonical order and the revival of Orthodox religious life: in Romania with the resignation and reinstatement of Patriarch Theoktist (1986–2007; b.1915) following the overthrow of the Ceausescu regime; in Bulgaria with the schism attempting to overthrow Patriarch Maxim (1971–; b.1914); in Albania with the revival from nothing of the Orthodox Church thanks to the election by the Patriarchate of the charismatic Archbishop Anastasios (1992–; b.1929); in Esthonia with the restoration of the local autonomous Church; in Czechoslovakia where the unity of the local Orthodox Church survived the splitting of the state into two splinter republics; most recently in Ukraine where, despite the serious misgivings and objections of the Russian Patriarch against his involvement, Patriarch Bartholomew managed to sustain the canonical order against various schismatic tendencies. With all these canonical actions the Ecumenical Patriarchate under Patriarch Bartholomew went a long way in restoring the ecumenical character of Orthodoxy against its identification with nationalism that had marred its image for so long.26 In regions which had remained outside the sphere of communist dictatorships, the contribution of the Ecumenical Patriarchate also proved positive in the resolution of ecclesiastical crises: in Cyprus where an explosive contest over archiepiscopal succession was set on the way to a canonical resolution following a synod convoked by the Ecumenical Patriarchate at Chambésy in Switzerland (17 May 2006); in Jerusalem where a similarly explosive contest threatening to throw the Orthodox Patriarchate into the minefield of Middle Eastern politics was also resolved after a synod in Constantinople (24 May 2005). The result of all these engagements of the Ecumenical Patriarchate has been the establishment of trust on the part of local Churches towards the sacred centre of Orthodoxy and the cultivation of feelings of gratitude and attachment to the person at its head. Thus another “Orthodox International” seems to be taking shape, focusing on a will to unity and mutual engagement along with respect and strict observance of autocephaly and pluralism. The question that arises in this

102   A religious international? connection has to do with the extent to which trust and solidarity at the top filter downward into the communities of the faithful, thus providing motivations for initiatives that may give rise to versions of “Orthodox Internationals”, going beyond the national and political divisions of the past. These reflections lead us to a consideration of what could be described as the “structural”, as it were, impediments to the emergence of Orthodox versions of “religious internationals”. These have to do primarily with the weaknesses of civil society in the countries of Eastern and Southeastern Europe for reasons which have to do with the overall pattern of development that has marked their social and political history. Excessive state domination over society, which included the subjection of the churches to political expediencies and the imposition of various forms of cultural authoritarianism, be it communist or anticommunist, could be seen as the cause of the weakness of both civil society and liberalism. This in turn has generally hindered the autonomous development of movements of voluntary association at the grass roots, free from partisanship or guidance from above. This could be considered the explanation of the absence of religious internationals in the Orthodox world. Besides the structural impediments there are of course other obstacles as well, such as the subjective inhibitions which largely derive from the character of pastoral work in the Orthodox Churches. For all these reasons it would be extremely interesting to witness the eventual turn to be taken by the dynamic of Orthodox Internationals that appears to have emerged from the initiatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate since the 1990s. In appraising these prospects one inevitably returns to the critical human factor. Scarcity of human and material resources is the major problem facing any form of autonomous religious action in the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Of the two variables, human and material resources, the most critical and difficult to mobilize is the human. Material resources can be found relatively easily from public and private sources. But human power remains scarce. One of the explanations has to do with the destruction of the Orthodox minority in Turkey on account of the pressures, restrictions and pogroms instigated over the decades by the Turkish state at their expense. The result has been a true tragedy for the Christian Church. This community had been the flock that sustained the presence and survival of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in its historic seat. It supplied the human resources and the field of pastoral work for the Church of Constantinople. But it was much more than that. After 1923 the Church of Constantinople, which means the clergy and the laity of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in broader Istanbul and the islands of Imvros and Tenedos, provided the only model of a non-­ national Church in the Orthodox world, that is, an Orthodox church not attached to a national state. The mentality connected with this condition of collective existence was shaped primarily by Christian rather than national values and this would qualify this population group to be quite amenable to the experiences that would make a religious international possible. This population, however, became virtually extinct as a consequence of the policies of Turkey at its expense, and this has seriously affected as well the viability of Orthodox ecclesiastical life at

A religious international?   103 the seat of the Patriarchate of Constantinople: what has been left is the magnificence of patriarchal ceremonial in all its humility and dignity and almost one hundred beautifully restored and functioning churches in the broader Istanbul region in Europe, on the Asiatic side of the Bosporus and the Princes’ Islands in the Sea of Marmara but without the active presence of the faithful who make the Church a living communion. This fact of life is the major source of doubt as to the possibilities of viable Orthodox Internationals emerging as by-­products of the broader strategy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. This may resemble a form of Aristotelian speculation about potentialities and actualities. Regardless of philosophical preferences, however, few will disagree, I would suspect, that without autonomous lay leadership a religious international could not be a viable proposition. And this autonomous Orthodox lay leadership possessing the appropriate intellectual and moral calibre does not appear to be available. For precisely this reason the prospect of a religious international in the world of Balkan Orthodoxy seems at present to be a rather remote possibility. Before closing, a word about the Orthodox tradition is in order. This aspect of the subject is essential in preserving in the focus of analysis the religious motivation that defines the character of the transnational phenomena that concern us. If we lose sight of the religious motivation we could be discussing religious internationalism as indistinguishable from any other form of transnational movement and this would render our task meaningless. Let me just remind ourselves that international relations specialists were talking of transnational phenomena as an integral part of international life already in the 1970s.27 As far as the study of religious internationalism is concerned, the substantive question appears to be first how the religious factor renders pertinent phenomena distinguishable – that is, in what sense does it imprint upon them a distinctive character – and second, what are the consequences of transnationalism for religious motivations and values? It would be presumptuous to attempt to answer these questions in general and all-­encompassing terms. But an attempt to approach them inductively by looking at the Orthodox tradition may prove workable, perhaps even illuminating. First of all religious internationalism, by emancipating action and belief from the motivations of national particularism, and by bringing together human groups of diverse backgrounds that share a common spiritual motivation, could very well release the salutary energy associated with the ecumenical values of Christianity. It may infuse the deformed national Orthodoxies of modernity with the spirit of a revived radical Christianity that could be that religion’s only way of survival and salvation as a religious experience rather than as an ideology in the twenty-­ first century. This pointer to the ecumenicity of Christian values and to the need of the Orthodox tradition to reclaim them as its authentic, non-­national, nonethnic heritage is the simple and rather obvious answer to the question posed above. There is a more complex answer, however, that might point to the secular dynamic of transnational movements led for the most part by cosmopolitan individuals and the risks this would involve for the spiritual character of religiously motivated initiatives. This is a visible risk in the budding religious international

104   A religious international? associated with the ecological initiatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The impression is inescapable if one observes the social make-­up of the groups involved, being for the most part wealthy sponsors, international socialites and media figures, all of them united by the desire to taste some of the “Greek patriarch’s” glamour. Such groups of course are not capable of doing much more than underwrite publicity and worldliness rather than spiritual substance as the dominant characteristic of the initiatives. Yet the ecological dimension itself could be a guarantee of substance and of an authentic spiritual concern as the defining feature of the movement. Respect and affection for nature as God’s creation is a pronounced and recurring feature of Orthodox worship. The exaltation of God’s creation of the natural order and of its spiritual, aesthetic, but also material enjoyment by humanity as outlined with unique poetic power in David’s Psalm (Ps. 103) is heard in Orthodox vespers invariably every evening throughout the year. The greatness of Creation is also evoked every morning at matins with the recitation of Psalm 102. These are genuine lessons in honouring God by respecting and admiring his Creation for the Orthodox. And this the Orthodox share with other religious traditions reared on the Psalms, such as Judaism. It is this ethos I believe that could turn the initiatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate into a genuine spiritually motivated religious international attuned to the urgent task of saving the planet. Whether this is a viable proposition in view of the constraints outlined above and whether we are in fact in sight of the transcendence of Orthodoxy’s ethnic and national fragmentation through the emergence of religious internationals should remain for the moment an open question.

Notes   1 In the sense suggested by Abigail Greene and Vincent Viaene in the introduction to the collection, Religious Internationals in the Modern World. Globalization and Faith Communities since 1750, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 1–5.   2 For a concise but authoritative survey, see Timothy Ware (Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia), The Orthodox Church, rev. ed., London: Penguin, 1993, pp. 87–101, and more extensively, Theodore Papadopoulos, Studies mid Documents Relating to the History of the Greek Church and People under Turkish Domination, 2nd ed., Aldershot: Variorum, 1990, pp.  1–158. For more details on the institutional background, Elizabeth Zachariadou, “The Great Church in Captivity 1453–1589”, The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 5, Eastern Christianity, ed. by M. Angold, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 169–186.   3 Maximos (Christopoulos), Metropolitan of Sardis, The Ecumenical Patriarchate in the Orthodox Church, Thessaloniki: Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies, 1976, pp. 287–293. On the historical background, Robert Crummey, “Eastern Orthodoxy in Russia and Ukraine in the Age of the Counter-­Reformation”, in Angold, ed., Eastern Christianity, pp. 302–324.   4 Paschalis M. Kitromilides, “The Legacy of the French Revolution. Orthodoxy and Nationalism”, in Angold, ed., Eastern Christianity, pp. 229–249.   5 M. Bourdeaux and Al Popescu, “The Orthodox Church and Communism”, in Angold, ed., Eastern Christianity, pp. 558–579. For two revealing case studies, see Tatiana A. Chumachenko, Church and State in Soviet Russia. Russian Orthodoxy from World

A religious international?   105 War II to the Khrschev Years, trans. Edward E. Roslof, Armonk and London: M. E. Sharpe, 2002; and Lucian N. Leustan, Orthodoxy and the Cold War. Religion and Political Power in Romania, 1947–65, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.   6 Patrologia Graeca, vol. 46, cols 1009–1016.   7 Geoffrey Hindley, The Crusades: A History of Armed Pilgrimage and Holy War, New York: Carrol & Graf, 2003.   8 Alexander Grishin, “Barskyj and the Orthodox Community”, in Angold, ed., Eastern Christianity, pp. 210–228.   9 For the concept, see Paschalis M. Kitromilides, An Orthodox Commonwealth. Symbolic Legacies and Cultural Encounters in Southeastern Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate/ Variorum, 2007, pp. ix–xi. 10 Manuel I. Gedeon, Ὁ Ἄθως [Mount Athos], Constantinople: Patriarchal Press, 1885; repr. Athens: Ermis, 1990, p. 11. 11 Theophanis G. Stavrou, Russian Interests in Palestine 1882–1914, Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1963 and Derek Hopwood, The Russian Presence in Syria and Palestine 1843–1914. Church and Politics in the Near East, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969. 12 Elie Kedourie, “Religion and Politics”, The Chatham House Version and Other Middle-­Eastern Studies, Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1984, pp. 317–342. 13 Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978, pp. 81–101. 14 Gedeon, Ἄθως, pp. 60–61. 15 See Nea Estia (Christmas 1963), pp. 267–283. 16 Alexis Alexandris, The Greek Minority of Istanbul, pp. 87–95, 144–173, 194–206. 17 See Sarah Hobson and Jane Lubchenco, eds, Revelation and the Environment ad 95–1995, Singapore: World Scientific, 1997. 18 See Sarah Hobson and Laurence David Mee, eds, The Black Sea in Crisis, Singapore: World Scientific, 1998. 19 Neal Acherson and Andrew Marshall, eds, The Adriatic Sea. A Sea at Risk, a Unity of Purpose, Athens: Religion, Science and the Environment, 2003. 20 Neal Acherson and Sarah Hobson, eds, Danube: “A River of Life”. Down the Danube to the Black Sea, Athens: Religion, Science and the Environment, 2002. 21 On his views on religion and ecology, see John D. Zizioulas, “Preserving God’s Creation”, King’s Theological Review 12(2) (Autumn 1989), pp.  41–45, and 13(1) (Spring 1990), pp. 1–5, and idem, “Man the Priest of Creation”, Living Orthodoxy in the Modern World, ed. by Andrew Walker and Costa Carras, London: SPCK, 1996, pp. 178–188. 22 See, e.g. the contribution by Kallistos of Diokleia and Tristram Engelhardt, Jr, in Walker and Carras, eds, Living Orthodoxy, pp. 64–84, 108–130 respectively. 23 Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Encountering the Mystery. Understanding Orthodox Christianity Today, New York: Doubleday, 2008. 24 The inspiration for this is readily available in the writings of Patriarch Bartholomew himself. See Encountering the Mystery, pp.  89–119, and more extensively, Cosmic Grace and Humble Prayer. The Ecological Vision of the Green Patriarch Bartholomew I, ed. by John Chrysavgis, foreword by John Zizioulas, Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2003, bringing together his addresses and statements on ecology in the decade 1991–2002. The Patriarch’s intellectual and moral courage is reflected in his openness to dialogue with other faiths over issues of shared concern such as environmental protection. See for instance the common statement by His All-­ Holiness Bartholomew, Professor Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg and Fazlum Khalid, “Religion and Nature. The Abrahamic Faiths’ Concepts of Creation”, ed. by M. Palmer, Spirit of the Environment. Religion, Value and Environmental Concern, ed. by David E. Cooper and Joy A. Palmer, London and New York: Routledge, 1998, pp. 30–41.

106   A religious international? 25 Maximos of Sardis, The Ecumenical Patriarchate in the Orthodox Church, pp. 253–266. 26 On this subject, see the contributions making up the section “Ethnicity and Nationalism”, The Orthodox Churches in a Pluralistic World. An Ecumenical Conversation, ed. by Emmanuel Clapsis, Geneva: WCC Publications, 2004, pp.  139–191. For a concise statement of the view of the incompatibility between Orthodoxy and nationalism, see Paschalis M. Kitromilides, “Orthodoxy, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict”, that closes the present collection. 27 See, e.g. Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, eds, Transnational Relations and World Politics, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970. Note in particular the chapter on the Roman Catholic Church as a transnational actor by Ivan Vallier, ibid., pp. 129–152.

7 Orthodoxy, nationalism and ethnic conflict

Developments in Eastern and Southeastern Europe during the last decade of the twentieth century, following the collapse of the communist regimes in 1989–1991, appeared to confirm a long tradition of prejudicial thinking about the eastern half of the European continent, and especially about the Orthodox Balkans as a region of extremes, recurring confrontations and endemic violence. This impression has prevailed for a long time in Western perceptions. Important works of Western scholarship, instead of moderating it or correcting it, have often contributed decisively to it. A characteristic expression of this attitude in epigrammatic concision came in the observation of a pioneer early twentieth-­ century British anthropologist of the Balkans, Mary Edith Duhram, who characterized Balkan history and politics as “an opera buffa written in blood”.1 Although a long history has unfolded in the region since Miss Duhram’s peregrinations in the highlands of Montenegro and Albania, little has happened to mitigate or change mental habits in thinking and defining the character of the politics and culture of the region. Recent events, especially the civil wars that tore apart the Yugoslav federation in the 1990s, have confirmed and sharpened negative perceptions and stereotypes.2 Among the protagonists in the “opera buffa” and one of the main contributors to multi-­faceted conflict and disorder in the Balkans has been considered to be the Orthodox Church, which represents the majority religious confession in the area. It would have been pointless to even attempt to sample the pertinent writing, mostly works by journalists and partisan observers who extrapolate from current practices, forms of behaviour and ideological statements to general and all-­encompassing theories and interpretations concerning the bellicosity of Orthodoxy and the propensity of the Orthodox Church towards authoritarianism, intolerance, fanaticism and chauvinism. Furthermore, such criticism attributes these tendencies and characteristics not to human failure and to the workings of evil in the world or to the historical circumstances that often determine the praxis and the discourse of the Church, but to the fundamental doctrines, principles and traditions of Orthodoxy and of the local churches that compose it. I would like to challenge this view, not from a religious perspective, but from the perspective of cultural history and from the vantage point of the historical study of the Orthodox regions of Europe. I do not think that it would be

108   Orthodoxy, nationalism and ethnic conflict profitable or edifying to attempt to refute such views and arguments by trying to show how hollow, misinformed and often not entirely disinterested they may be. It would be more constructive, in my judgement, to reflect on the historical condition of Orthodoxy and on its involvement in the world. To this end I would like to put forward three propositions as objects of reflection and points of departure for a critical dialogue.

Orthodoxy on a social and political level equals ecumenicity in the authentic and original spirit of evangelical Christianity and of the Christian tradition Any serious consideration of the doctrinal basis and of the moral teaching of the Orthodox Church will recognize that, despite the vicissitudes experienced by the Church in medieval and modern times and despite the temptations of history, the Orthodox Church in the East has retained in its theology and social philosophy the genuine Christian outlook, as codified in the New Testament and patristic thought. It is, therefore, rather paradoxical and certainly occasionally amusing to witness attempts by contemporary social scientists,3 who try to work out the “theoretical” connection between what they understand as Orthodox teaching and attitudes and the militantly secular political philosophy of nationalism, which is mostly a product of nineteenth-­century intellectual and political quests. I am referring here to the Orthodox view and understanding of social and political questions, which has remained firmly anchored in New Testament and Greek patristic theology and has added little to this body of universalist teaching since the seventh ecumenical council.4 What emerges from this heritage in connection with social and political questions, especially questions of human community and the relations between individuals and groups, is the ecumenical teaching of St Paul against all earthly distinctions of race, class and gender, of freedom and slavery, of wisdom and ignorance in the communion of the faithful. There is very little beyond this that can be found in Orthodox religious teaching. Statements and pronouncements by individual Orthodox clergy, or even by ecclesiastical bodies in particular localities and under particular circumstances, can be seen to diverge from this overall ecumenical teaching, but these do not express the canonical attitude of the Orthodox Church as a whole and can represent either expressions of its decentralized structure and of the dynamics of local communities or obvious human submission of its members to the temptations of history.

The identification of Orthodoxy with nationalism is a product of anachronistic judgement and misunderstanding of the historical record The multifold forms of submission to the temptations of history to which I referred above essentially make up the content of the ecclesiastical history of Eastern and Southeastern Europe in the early modern and contemporary periods. It is this

Orthodoxy, nationalism and ethnic conflict   109 historical context that explains the identification of the Orthodox Church with nationalism. This is apparent in the writings not only of casual or superficial observers, but also of serious historians who have written authoritatively on the history of Eastern and Southeastern Europe. The identification is drawn both for the Middle Ages and for the modern period. In the case of the Middle Ages, the religious behaviour of the Orthodox patriarchates of the Bulgarian and Serbian empires has been treated as an early expression of national or proto-­national sentiment in these medieval states.5 The same logic has guided the narrative and interpretation of the modern history of Orthodox societies in Eastern and Southeastern Europe: the Orthodox Church has been invariably treated as a repository of national identity and national culture, either in connection with phenomena marking the behaviour of imperial states such as Russia or in the case of subjugated societies such as the Christian communities of the Balkans. The standard argument in conventional historiography has been that the Orthodox Church has preserved national identity in captivity or under the onslaught of Westernizing reform from above and saved the authentic character of the national culture and identity of Orthodox peoples in the eastern half of Europe.6 This, I think, is a classic case of anachronistic historical logic. It represents a projection backwards of frameworks of thought elaborated in order to sustain the ideology of national churches in the nineteenth century. If the necessary distinctions and abstractions are made and the historical record is read in the light of the historicity of sources and of the forms of behaviour they reflect, what will emerge is the rather simple fact that whenever we can locate phenomena akin to nationalism, ethnic affirmation and ethnic conflict, the critical factor is the presence not of the Church, but of the state, either in the form of medieval empires or of modern nation-­states – projected or actual – trying to establish and aggrandize themselves. Indeed part of the process of empire- or nation-­building has been the creation of independent churches connected with regional state projects. It was this tendency that produced the national Orthodox churches in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as an integral part of the articulation and affirmation of the national identity of the newly independent states that sought to consolidate their social cohesion and to affirm their presence against the multi-­ethnic empires from which they had seceded. And it was the powerful and captivating rhetoric of national historiography that was cultivated as part of the affirmation of the national culture of these new states that coloured the whole earlier historical record and recast the interpretation of the past in order to fit the new ideology of nationalism. Again it must be pointed out, especially to those who see a propensity towards nationalism as germane to Orthodoxy, that the involvement of Christian churches in projects of national affirmation cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered an idiosyncrasy of the Orthodox world in view of the role of Roman Catholicism in Ireland and in Poland, of Protestantism in Germany and Scandinavia, to say nothing of the role of Anglicanism as a state religion and of imperial Roman Catholicism in Spain and Portugal and in their overseas empires. It is true that the churches, both in Russia and Ukraine and especially in the Balkans under Ottoman rule, did provide protection and solace to the Christian

110   Orthodoxy, nationalism and ethnic conflict people and a refuge to local cultural traditions, but this was a pastoral, not a political, project of the Church in order to preserve the faith.7 Nationality and ethnic claims were not on the Church’s cultural agenda before the nineteenth century.8

The local national Orthodox churches on account of their discourse and action in the world are not free of responsibility for mis-­judgements and anachronisms concerning their involvement with nationalism and ethnic conflict Everything that I have said so far appears to be in glaring contradiction to recent forms of behaviour and to earlier, especially nineteenth-­century, phenomena in the Orthodox world. Among recent forms of behaviour, the involvement of members of Orthodox clergy and laity invoking their Orthodox identity in ethnic and civil conflicts in Yugoslavia, the fiery rhetoric in the Church of Greece over a range of political issues, the involvement of the Church of Cyprus in nationalist struggles in the island, represent but a few examples. Among nineteenth-­ century historical phenomena, the role of the Greek Orthodox Church in the promotion of Greek irredentist projects and especially the involvement of Greek and Bulgarian clergy in the violent struggles in Macedonia constitute perhaps the weightiest evidence for the identification of Orthodoxy with nationalism and might be cited as cases of the contribution of the Orthodox Church to the inception and escalation of ethnic conflict. Examples could be multiplied. The role of the Orthodox Church in articulating national identity among the Romanian-­ speaking population in nineteenth-­century Transylvania is a case in point.9 Perhaps the epic role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the great patriotic war against the Nazis during the Second World War represents the most prominent and heroic expression of the supposed propensity of Orthodoxy towards nationalism – an expression which Western critics of Orthodoxy do not like to mention when castigating the Orthodox Church for this propensity. My argument would be that all these cases and examples, all this mass of supposed evidence, essentially points to one thing: the way modern state logic has manipulated and has been internalized by ecclesiastical institutions – to the point that one could legitimately suggest that the national churches have undergone a considerable degree of de-­Christianization in their values.10 This whole syndrome, nevertheless, does not tell us anything about Orthodoxy, about the character and essentials of Orthodox faith, about Orthodox social values, about Orthodoxy’s attitudes in the world and especially about the Orthodox conception of human persons and of the community in which they ought to live. Christian humility at the dawn of the new millennium invites the Churches, their hierarchies and their lay faithful to serious introspection and soul searching over precisely this aspect of the Orthodox predicament: the gradual, unconscious and unreflective substitution in the scale of values of the official churches of faith in the nation in place of faith in Christ. This should be a source of self-­criticism, of a serious appraisal of the historical trajectories of the Church and of a reawakening of a Christian perspective on the Church’s involvement in the world.

Orthodoxy, nationalism and ethnic conflict   111

Notes   1 Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 15.   2 For effective historical criticism of the stereotype of the Balkan propensity to violence see Mark Mazower, The Balkans: A Short History, New York: Modern Library, 2000, pp. 145–156.   3 A good example of the confusion which derives from basic ignorance of the fundamentals of the historical record is reflected characteristically in Julia Kristeva, “Le poids mystérieux de l’orthodoxie”, in Le Monde, 18–19 April 1999. Similar confusions can easily arise from Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996, which is open to many misreadings. Huntington’s original 1993 thesis elicited an interesting response by François Georges Thual, Géopolitiques de l’orthodoxie, Paris: Dunod, 1994, a work, nevertheless, not entirely free of anachronistic thinking.   4 For a learned and lucid synopsis of Orthodox teaching see Demetrios J. Constantelos, “Ethnic Particularities and the Universality of Orthodox Christianity Today”, Journal of Modern Hellenism 1 (1990), pp. 89–105.   5 E.g. D. Obolensky, “Nationalism in Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages”, The Byzantine Inheritance of Eastern Europe, London: Variorum, 1982, Study No. XV.   6 For a classic statement of this view see George G. Arnakis, “The Role of Religion in the Development of Balkan Nationalism”, The Balkans in Transition, ed. by Charles and Barbara Jelavich, Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1963, pp.  115–144. Also Charles Jelavich, “Some Aspects of Serbian Religious Development in the Eighteenth Century”, Church History 23 (1954), pp. 144–152.   7 For further elaboration on the character of pre-­modem Orthodox society and on the content of the life of the faithful in it before the age of nationalism may I refer to P. M. Kitromilides, “Balkan Mentality: History, Legend. Imagination”, Nations and Nationalism 2 (1996), esp. pp. 176–179 (= An Orthodox Commonwealth, Study No. I).   8 On this transformation see P. M. Kitromilides, “ ‘Imagined Communities’ and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans”, European History Quarterly 19 (1989), pp.  149–192, esp. pp.  177–185 (= John Hutchinson and A. D. Smith, eds, Ethnicity, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 202–208).   9 This episode in the history of nation-­building in Central Europe has formed the object of a classic study by Keith Hitchins, Orthodoxy and Nationality, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977. 10 Cf. Stevan K. Pavlowitch. “À propos de l’Église serbe. Considérations d’un historien orthodoxe sur le malheur d’être une agence, un monument ou un revêtement”, Deltio Kentrou Mikrasiatikon Spoudon 13 (1999–2000), pp.  353–362. This is a very important text that puts the whole question of the interplay of Orthodoxy with politics in its appropriate perspective. On the specific problem of the role of religion in the Yugoslav conflicts of the 1990s, see the testimonies by religious leaders in Paul Mojzes ed., Religion and the War in Bosnia, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, an important work whose significance is come out in the commentary by Stevan Pavlowitch in The Slavonic and East European Review 77 (1999), pp. 576–579. The same historian’s pertinent remarks in Serbia: The History Behind the Name, London: Hurst, 2002, are fundamental for understanding the relevant issues.

Ecumenical Patriarchs since 1800

Gregory V Kallinikos IV Jeremiah IV Cyril VI Evgenios II Anthimos III Chrysanthos Agathangelos Constantios I Constantios II Gregory VI Anthimos IV Anthimos V Germanos IV Meletios III Anthimos VI Cyril VII Joachim II Joachim III Joachim IV Dionysios V Neophytos VIII Anthimos VII Constantinos V Germanos V Meletios IV Gregory VII Constantinos VI Basil III Photios II Benjamin Maximos V Athenagoras Dimitrios Bartholomew

1797–1798, 1806–1808, 1818–1821 1801–1806, 1808–1809 1809–1813 1813–1818 1821–1822 1822–1824 1824–1826 1826–1830 1830–1834 1834–1835 1835–1840, 1867–1871 1840–1841 1841–1842 1842–1845, 1852–1853 1845 1845–1848, 1853–1855, 1871–1873 1855–1860 1860–1863, 1873–1878 1878–1884, 1901–1912 1884–1887 1887–1891 1891–1894 1895–1897 1897–1901 1913–1918 1921–1923 1923–1924 1924–1925 1925–1929 1929–1935 1936–1946 1946–1948 1948–1972 1972–1991 22 October 1991–

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Index

Abdul Mecid I, Sultan 56 Abdulhamid II, Sultan 57; Caliph of Islam 57 Abyssinia, Church of 83 Adamantios [Kasapidis], metropolitan of Pergamum 74 Adriatic Sea 99 Aegean Islands 30, 65, 69 Africa 92; Orthodox diaspora in 92 Afthimios, Bishop (Russo-Syrian diocese in America) 68 Aimilianos [Vapheidis] Abbot of Simonopetra 97 Aimilianos [Zacharopoulos], metropolitan of Selefkia 79 Aksaray 63 Albania 93, 101, 107; Autocephalous Church of 69, 101 Alexander, Archbishop, primate of the Russian Church in America 68 Alexandria 52; Patriarchate of 6, 80, 84, 92, 97 Alexei II, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia 88 Alexei, metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod 83; later Alexei I, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia 74, 83, 85–87 Amalfitan monks 96 Amazon river 99 America 8, 87; see also United States of America Amsterdam 93 Amvrosios [Pleianthidis], metropolitan of Moschonisia 64 anachoresis 95, 96 Anastasios [Giannoulatos], Archbishop of Albania 101 Anatolia, Eastern 73 Ancona 18

Androniki-Endurluk 63 Anglican Church 64, 80; Anglicanism 109 Ankara 75, 76 Antioch, Patriarchate of 65, 80, 84, 85, 88, 92 Antologia (G.P. Vieusseux) 15–17 Antony IV, Ecumenical Patriarch 4 Apocalypse 64; see also Revelation Apostolos Andreas 76 Arab Orthodox Christians 95; Arabicspeaking Orthodox 65, 92 Arctic Ocean 99 Argyropoulou, Roxane 21n1 Aristotle 1, 34, 60, 68, 103; katharsis 68; peripeteia 60; Politics 34; tragedy 60 Armenian-Gregorian Church 83 Asia Minor 28, 30, 51, 53, 60–69, 92, 95, 96; Byzantine 62; Catastrophe viii, 53, 64, 66, 68, 69; Greek campaign in 72; Northeastern 61; Northwestern 62; Southeastern 65; Western 61 Askale 73 Atatürk 76, 77 Athanasios [Karydis], metropolitan of Nicomedia 55 Athenagoras [Spyrou], Archbishop of America 74; later Athenagoras I, Ecumenical Patriarch ix, 72, 74–77, 79–82, 84, 86–88, 97, 98 Athens 74; Church of 7, 74, 97; University of 55 Athonite Academy 29 Athos, Mount 36, 53, 69, 80–81, 95–97; Great Lavra 97; Saint Panteleimon monastery 62, 96, 97; Zographou monastery 96, 97 autocephaly vii, 33–37, 41n27, 46, 47, 51, 76, 78, 84–88, 92, 101 Ayvalik (Kydonies) 61

124   Index Balkan Wars 36, 53, 61, 96 Balkans vii, 25, 28, 29, 31–33, 36, 38, 39, 45, 51, 61, 64, 92, 109; nationalism in 8, 10; Orthodoxy 93, 103, 107; Pact 75; see also Europe Southeastern Baltic Sea 99 Balukli, Patriarchal monastery of 66, 73, 74 Banat 37 Barghi 17 Barsky, Vassily 94, 95 Bartholomew [Archontonis], metropolitan of Philadelphia 82; metropolitan of Chalcedon 82; later Bartholomew I, Ecumenical Patriarch ix, 66, 80, 99–101 Basel, Canton of 15 Bavarian regency 35 Bayar, Celal 76 Belgrade 36 Benjamin [Psomas] I, Ecumenical Patriarch 39, 73, 74 berats (official edicts) 27 Berlin, Congress of 36, 37 Bessarabia 37; Church of 32 Bithynia 61, 62; Holy Mountain of Olympus 61 Black Sea 99 Boris, Prince of Bulgaria (Michael of Bulgaria) 4 Bosnia 36 Bosporus 65, 66, 76, 103 Bossi, Maurizio 21n1 Botsaris (Botzari, D.), Dimitrios Noti 15, 16 Bryer, Anthony A.M. 62 Bucharest 14 Bucovina 37 Bulgaria 29, 32, 86, 93; Bulgarians 64; Church of vii, 32, 39, 47, 48; Exarchate vii, 37–39, 47; Patriarchate of 80, 85, 97; schism viii, 39, 47, 49, 50, 64, 69, 74, 101; state 39, 47 Bursa 62; see also Proussa, metropolis of Byzantine Empire 25; see also Eastern Roman Empire Byzantium 7, 27 Caesarea (Kayseri) 62 caesaropapism 35 Calinik, Metropolitan of Wallachia 37 Calvinism 6 Cannakkale 61; see also Dardanellia & Lampsakos, metropolis of Canterbury Tales 94 Capodistrias, Ioannis 14–16, 18–19, 35, 52

Cappadocia 61, 62, 65, 95; Rock-cut monasteries in 61, 62; Turkish-speaking Orthodox communities 63 Caria 61; Holy Mountain of Latros 61 Carlowitz, Treaty of 36 Cattaro 36 Chalcedon, metropolis of 62, 66 Chalkidiki, peninsula 96 Chambésy 80, 101; Orthodox Centre 80; pan-Orthodox conference 80 Chilandar monastery 96, 97 Chios 15, 54; High School of 54 Choutoura, monastery of Saint George 61 Christ Saviour, church (Galata) 74 Christ’s paupers, Church of 27, 64; see also Constantinople, Church of Christophoros [Daniilidis], Patriarch of Alexandria 85 Chrysanthos [Notaras], Patriarch of Jerusalem 7 Chrysanthos [Paghonis], bishop of Monemvasia 32 Chrysanthos [Philippidis], metropolitan of Trebizond 74; later Archbishop of Athens 74; and Greek government 74 Chrysanthos, Archbishop of Cyprus 51 Chrysanthos, metropolitan of Paphos 51 Chrysostom [Kalafatis], metropolitan of Drama 50; later metropolitan of Smyrna 50, 64 Chrysostomos [Aristodimou], Archbishop of Cyprus 88 Chrysostomos [Constantinidis], metropolitan of Myra 82; later metropolitan of Ephesus 82 Clement of Chilandar 97 Cold War 72–75, 80–82, 84, 86, 88, 89, 92, 93, 95, 97–99 Constantine, King of the Hellenes 97 Constantinople vii, viii, 14–15, 17–18, 27–28, 32, 36, 37, 45–49, 52, 54–55, 60, 62, 75, 82, 84, 93, 95, 101; Church of 55, 61, 69, 80, 97, 99; Conquest of 5, 7, 26, 45, 78, 92; Patriarchate of 13, 28, 29, 31, 32, 38, 43–45, 47, 51, 65, 92; see also Ecumenical Patriarchate Constantinos [Araboglou] VI, Ecumenical Patriarch 67, 98 Constantios I, Ecumenical Patriarch 7 Coptic Church 92 Corfu 18 Councils, Ecumenical: Third (Ephesus) 51; Seventh (Nicaea) 108 Crete ix, 65; Church of 69

Index   125 Crimean War 38, 47, 48 Croats 36 Crusades 94 Crucius, Martin 7; Turcograecia 7 Cuza, Alexander, Prince of Romania 36 Cypriots 78 Cyprus 52, 74, 78, 88, 93, 101; autocephaly 76, 78, 88; Autocephalous Church of 9, 13, 47, 51, 52, 69, 86, 89, 97, 110 Cyril, bishop of Corinth 32 Cyril [Loukaris] I, Ecumenical Patriarch 5, 6, 53; Confession 6 Cyril V, Ecumenical Patriarch 13 Cyril [Serpentzoglou] VI, Ecumenical Patriarch 13, 53 Cyril II, Patriarch of Jerusalem 49 Cyzicus, peninsula 62; metropolis of 62 Czechoslovakia, Church of 69, 85, 97, 101 Dagron, Gilbert 26 Dalmatia 36 Damascus 88, 92 Daniel, bishop of Tripolitza 32 Danube, the 32–33, 99 Danubian principalities 14 Dardanellia & Lampsakos, metropolis of 61 David’s Psalms 104 Deligiorgis, Epaminondas 49 Delvivo, Caterina 21n1 Demetrie, Patriarch of all Serbs 36 Democrat Party (Turkey) 76, 77 Derkoi, metropolis of 66 diaspora ix, 52, 54, 69, 92–95; Africa 92; Egypt 92; Orthodox 69, 92, 93, 95 Dimitrios [Papadopoulos] I, Ecumenical Patriarch 66, 72, 79–81, 87, 88, 98, 99 Dionysios [Kalliarchis], metropolitan of Ephesus 13, 55 Dobrudga 37 Dodds, E.R. 1 Dodecanese Islands 69 Dorotheos [Georgiadis], metropolitan of Prigkiponissa 83 Dorotheos [Proios], metropolitan of Adrianople 13 Dositheos [Notaras], Patriarch of Jerusalem 7 Doukas, Neophytos 22n15 Duhram, Mary Edith 107 East 108; Orthodox 95 Eastern Roman Empire 4, 27; see also Byzantine Empire, Byzantium

ecclesiology vii, ix; Orthodox 47 Ecumenical Movement ix, 74, 83; see also ecumenism ecology, ecological initiatives 104, 105n21, 24; see also environment Ecumenical Patriarchate vii–ix, 4–8, 27, 35, 38, 45–50, 52, 53, 56–58, 60, 62, 64–69, 72, 73, 75–86, 88, 89, 96, 98, 99–104; Great Synod (2016) ix; Synod of 32, 44–48, 73; Synod of 1872, vii– viii, 38, 49, 83, 84; see also Church of Constantinople ecumenicity ix, 4, 5, 11, 30, 35, 39, 45, 49, 53, 64, 67, 69, 82, 89, 97, 101, 103, 108; Christian 53, 97 Egypt 29, 53, 54, 92; Orthodox diaspora in 92 Enlightenment vii–ix, 3, 9, 12–14, 19, 20, 29, 33, 34, 43, 44, 51, 54, 55, 93; ecclesiastical 13, 44 environment viii–ix, 99–101, 105n24; see also ecology Ephesus 51, 99; metropolis of 13, 55, 58n2, 82 Epidaurus, Constitution of (1822) 34 Epirus 37, 62, 65; Souli 15 Ermis o Logios 54 Esthonia, Autonomous Church of 69, 101 ethnomartyrs 31, 32, 52, 55 ethnophyletism vii, viii, 38, 47 Europe 5, 8, 14, 16, 18, 20, 60, 93, 97–98, 103; Central 14, 92; civilization of 2; Eastern 1, 102, 107–109; Medieval 94; Orthodoxy in 3; Southeastern vii, ix, 6, 8, 10, 13, 25–26, 28, 30, 33, 43, 45, 102, 107, 108, 109; Western 1, 69, 92 European University Institute 21n1 Evgenios [Karavias], metropolitan of Anchialos 55 Evgenios II, Ecumenical Patriarch 31 Evros river 65 Exchange of populations 65, 66, 98 Eynard, Jean-Gabriel 15, 17–18 Fernand Braudel 21n1 Fertek 63 Fetihie camii (Pammakaristos) 27 Finland, Autonomous Church of 69, 97 Florence 15, 16, 18, 21n1 Fortescue, Adrian 70n10 France 19, 29 French Revolution 9, 29, 30, 43–44 fundamentalism 4

126   Index Gabriel IV, Ecumenical Patriarch 13 Gabriel, metropolitan of Moldavia 32 Galata 67, 74, 79; Christ Saviour, church 74; Saint John of the Chiots, church 79; Saint Nicholas, church 79; Virgin of Kaffa, church 67 Ganos, Mount (Thrace) 96 Gedeon, Manuel 7, 12–13, 31, 44, 96 General Regulations 49 Geneva 5, 16 Gennadios [Arabatzoglou], metropolitan of Heliopoulis and Theira 7 Gennadios II, Scholarios, Ecumenical Patriarch 27 Georgia, Church of 84, 85 Germanos [Karavangelis], metropolitan of Kastoria 50; metropolitan of Amasya 36, 50 Germanos [Zafeiropoulos], bishop of Christianoupolis 32 Germany 17, 109 gerontismos 48 Golden Horn 65, 76 Gounaris, Vasilis 21n1 Great Britain 5, 19, 76 Great Church of Christ 5, 27, 31, 33, 43, 50, 53, 55, 60, 63, 66, 68, 73, 74, 77; see also Church of Constantinople; Ecumenical Patriarchate Great Lavra 97; see also Saint Athanasios the Athonite Great Powers 16 Greco-Roman World 1 Greece 1, 4, 14–17, 19, 29, 32–35, 46, 47, 49, 52, 53, 55, 56, 62, 64–67, 72, 75, 78, 84, 86, 93, 96–98; caesaropapism in 35; campaign in Asia Minor 72; Autocephalous Church of 34, 35, 69, 74, 80, 86, 88, 89, 97, 110; diaspora 52; diplomacy 75; Enlightenment 13, 19; Independence of 17, 19; irredentism 110; Kingdom of 96; liberation of 14; nationalism in 30, 38, 44, 49, 50, 52, 55, 56, 64, 72; Northern 69; Revolution viii, 16, 19, 31, 52, 55; schism 35, 37, 46; state 35, 52, 64 Greek language viii, 34, 44, 45, 79 Greek Literary Association of Constantinople (Syllogos) 52 Greek Orthodox (Rum) minority of Istanbul 67, 74, 77, 78, 98 Greek War of Independence (Greek Revolution) 30, 54

Green Patriarch see Bartholomew [Archontonis] I, Ecumenical Patriarch 99 Greenland 99, 100 Gregory [Angelopoulos] V, Ecumenical Patriarch viii, 29, 30, 31, 40n13, 14, 53–56, 59n27, 113; Paternal instruction 54 Gregory [Antoniadis-Orologas], metropolitan of Kydonies 64 Gregory [Fourtouniadis] VI, Ecumenical Patriarch 38, 47, 113 Gregory [Kalamaras], bishop of Nafplion 32 Gregory [Zervoudakis] VII, Ecumenical Patriarch 67, 113 Gregory, metropolitan of Derkoi 55 Günaltay, Semsettin 76 Halki/Heybeliada 66, 73; Holy Trinity monastery 66; Patriarchal Theological School 66 Halys (Sakarya) river 62 Hatt-i-Humayun of 1856 48, 56, 57 Hemingway, Ernest 65 Hering, Gunnar 8 Herzegovina 36 hieromartyrs 55 Hill, Christopher 2 Hobbes, Thomas 2; Leviathan 2 Holland 5 Holy Land 94, 95 Holy Mountains; Athos 13, 36, 53, 69, 80, 81, 95–97; Ganos (Thrace) 96; Latros (Caria) 61; Olympus (Bithynia) 61; Papikion (Thrace) 96; Sinai 94 Holy Trinity church (Kadiköy) 57 Holy Trinity church (Pera) 57, 62 Holy Trinity monastery (Halki/ Heybeliada) 66 Hume, David 2 Iakovos [Tzanavaris], metropolitan of Philadelphia 79 Ieronymos [Konstantinidis], metropolitan of Rodopolis 82 Ignatiev, Count 47 Ignatius [Chazeem] IV, Patriarch of Antioch 88 Ignatius, metropolitan of Ungrowallachia 12, 14–15, 17, 19, 20 Imvros and Tenedos, metropolis of 66 Imvros, island of 65–66, 102 Institute for Neohellenic Research 21n1 International Court of Justice 67

Index   127 internationalism 93, 94 Ioannina 65 Ioannis [Zizioulas], metropolitan of Pergamum 82, 99 Ioannis I Tzimiskis, East Roman emperor 97 Ionian Islands 30, 53, 54 Iorga, Nicolae 8; Byzance après Byzance 8 Ireland 109 irredentism 50, 110 Islam 2, 13, 26–28, 61; caliphate 57; and nationalism 57 Ismet Inonu (pasha) 65, 72 Istanbul 47, 57, 62, 63, 65–67, 69, 72, 73, 76, 77, 79, 86, 88, 99, 102, 103; Taxim square 57 Italy 18, 92 Ivan IV (The Terrible), Czar 5 Iviron monastery 96 Izmit (Nicomedia) 62 Jacobins 30 Jeremiah II, Ecumenical Patriarch 5, 87 Jerusalem 36, 52, 80, 81, 94, 95, 101; Patriarchate of 7, 49, 80, 84–86, 88, 92, 97 Jesuits 6 Joachim [Devetzis] III, Ecumenical Patriarch 36, 50, 52, 53, 57, 60, 63, 70n10 Joachim [Kokkodis] II, Ecumenical Patriarch 38, 47, 50 Joachim [Krousouloudis] IV, Ecumenical Patriarch 37 Joachim [Pelekanos], metropolitan of Derkoi 75 John Paul II, Pope of Rome 81 Joseph, bishop of Androusa 32 Judaism 94, 104 Kadiköy 57, 62, 65; Holy Trinity church 57 Kalliope 54 Kallioupoleos, metropolis of 61 Karachissaridis, Eftym (Papaeftym) 67 Karpov, Georgii 84 Katechakis, General G. 65 Kayseri (Caesarea) 62 Kitromilides, Paschalis M. viii; ix Kolokotronis, Theodore 32 Komninos-Ypsilantis, Athanasios 7 Korais, Adamantios 13, 14, 23n15, 33–35, 44; Commentary on the Constitution of Greece of the Year 1822 35; liberalism of 34–35; proposal of autocephaly 34

Krinis, metropolis of 61 Kumkapi 57; Panagia Elpida church 57; Saint Kyriaki church 57 Kydonies (Ayvalik) 61; metropolis of 61 Kyprianos [Macheriotis], Archbishop of Cyprus 13, 51 Lampsakos 61 Late Antiquity 1 Latros, Mount 96 Latvia, Church of 69 Laurenziana Library (Florence) 15 Lausanne Conference 65–67; Convention 65–67; Treaty of viii, 66, 67, 72, 98 Lavrentios, metropolitan of Kyrenia 52 League of Nations 67 Lebanon 86 liberalism 35, 102 Limassol 51; Philological Gymnasium 51 Liverios, Cyril 22n15 London 93 Lovito, Daniele 21n1 Luther, Martin 2; Lutheran Reformation 2 Macedonia 37, 47, 50, 64, 65, 96, 110; irredentism in 50; Western 65 machiavellism 20 Makraios, Sergios 7 Malakopi-Derinkuyu 63 martyrs 32; see also ethnomartyrs; hieromartyrs Maxim, Patriarch of Bulgaria 101 Maximos [Hristopoulos], metropolitan of Sardis 8, 74, 82 Maximos [Vaportzis], metropolitan of Chalcedon 73; later Maximos V, Ecumenical Patriarch 72–75, 80, 83, 98 Medieval Hellenism 61 Medieval World 1, 2 Mediterranean, Eastern 19, 52, 65 Mehmet II, the Fatih (Mehmet the Conqueror) 7, 27, 53 Meletios [Metaxakis] IV, Ecumenical Patriarch ix, 36, 68, 69, 72 Meletios [Mitrou], Archbishop of Athens 7 Meletios [Petrokokkinos], metropolitan of Ephesus 13 Meletios, metropolitan of Kition 51 Melissa 54 Meliton [Hatzis], metropolitan of Imvros & Tenedos 82; metropolitan of Ilioupolis and Theira 82; metropolitan of Chalcedon 82 Menderes, Adnan 76

128   Index Mesopotamia 92 Metron and Athyron, metropolis of 61 Michael Angelo 15 Michael of Bulgaria see Boris of Bulgaria Middle Ages 109 Middle East 95, 101 modernity viii, 1–3, 6, 9, 10, 29, 34, 35, 43, 45, 94, 98, 103; European 43 Moisiodax, Iosipos 29 Moldavia 30, 48, 55; Church of 32; Principality 36, 46 Molho, Antony 21n1 monasteries: Balukli 66, 73, 74; Chilandar (Athos) 96, 97; Dormition of the Virgin Sumela 61; Great Lavra (Athos) 97; Holy Trinity Halki/Heybeliada 66; Iviron (Athos) 96; Saint John the Baptist Vazelon 61; Saint John the Baptist Zincidere 62; Saint George Choutoura 61; Saint George Peristereota 61; Saint Panteleimon (Athos) 62, 96, 97; Zographou (Athos) 96, 97 monasticism 6, 35, 61, 62, 66, 94–96 Montaigne, Michel De 2 Montenegro 36, 107 Morea (Peloponnese) 31 Moschonision, metropolis of 61 Moscow 82, 84–85, 87–88 Muzzou, Andreas 15 Myriophyton & Peristasis, metropolis of 61 Mytilene 14 Napoleon Bonaparte 29, 53–54 nationalism vii–ix, 3–10, 25, 28–45, 49–55, 59, 65, 69, 72, 91n46, 92–97, 101–110; Greek 30, 38, 44–56, 64, 72; Islamic 57; secular 45–47 nation-states 10 NATO 78 Navarino, naval battle of 17–18 Nazis 110 Near East 28, 60, 92; see also Middle East Nektarios [Pelopidis], Patriarch of Jerusalem 7 Nenadović, Prota Matija 32 Neo-Phanariots 52 New Testament 108 Nicaea, metropolis of 62 Nicephorus II Phokas, East Roman emperor 97 Nicomedia (Izmit) 62; metropolis of 62 Nicosia 51; Hellenic school of 51 Nizna 93

non-établi 98 North America 69, 95 Obrenovich, Prince Milos 36 Oceania 69 Oikonomos, Constantinos 35 Old Catholics 80, 81 Olympus, Mount (Bithynia) 96 Orthodox Academy of Crete 80 Orthodox Centre (Chambésy) 80 Orthodox commonwealth 33, 95 Orthodox international ix, 95, 98–102 Orthodoxia 76 Otho, King of Greece 35 Otranto 18 Ottoman Empire vii, viii, 13, 25, 26, 28, 31, 43–45, 48, 51–53, 57, 60, 62, 63, 92, 96; rule 28; state 5, 6, 10, 27, 30, 31, 45, 54, 56 Ottomanists 9 Palestine 92; Conquest of 94 Pammakaristos (Fetihie camii) 27 Panagia Elpida, church (Kumkapi) 57 Panaretos, Archbishop of Cyprus 52 Panayiotopoulos, Vassilis 21n1 Pan-Orthodox conference; Chambésy 80; Rhodes 80 Panslavist movement 47 Papa Efthim 67, 73, 79; see also Karachissaridis, Eftym Paparrigopoulos, Constantinos 8 Papikion, Mount (Thrace) 96 Paris 54, 93 Parthenios [Koinidis], Patriarch of Alexandria 88 Patmos 99 Patriarchal Academy (Constantinople) 5, 44; see also Patriarchal Great School Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies (Thessaloniki) 80 Patrinelis, Christos G. 12, 13 Patristic theology 108 Paul VI, Pope of Rome 80–82 Paul, King of the Hellenes 74, 97 Peć, Patriarchate of 36 Peloponnese (Morea) 30, 31 Pera 57, 62, 65–66, 76; Church of Holy Trinity 57, 62 Pergamum, metropolis of 61 Peristereota, monastery of Saint George 61 Permanent Mixed Council (Ecumenical Patriarchate) 48 Phanar 67, 74, 81, 83; Phanariot families 48

Index   129 Philaretos [Vapheidis], metropolitan of Didymoticho, later metropolitan of Herakleia 7 Philaretos, bishop of Oleni 32 Philhellenes 15, 16; Swiss 15 Philiki Etaireia 31 Philological Gymnasium 51, 54; Limassol 51; Smyrna 51, 54 philosophy 1; political philosophy 2 Philotheos [Xatzis], bishop of Dimitsana 32 Photius [Maniatis] II, Ecumenical Patriarch 83 Photius the Great, Ecumenical Patriarch 4 Pimen, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia 87 Pindar 17 Pisa 14–18 Platon, primate of the Russian Church in America 68 pogrom of 6–7 September 1955 76 Poland 109; Autocephalous Church of 85, 97 Pontos 61–62, 65; Pontic Alps 61–62 Portugal 109 Pouqueville, François Charles 17 Princes’ Islands 65–66, 103; metropolis of 66 Propontis (Sea of Marmara) 62 Protestantism 34, 109; Protestants 5; see also Luther, Lutheranism Proussa (Bursa), metropolis of 62 Psara Island 15 Reformation 2; see also Luther, Lutheranism Religious international 92, 93 Revelation 99; see also Apocalypse Rhigas Velestinlis 30, 53–55 Rhodes 80; pan-Orthodox conference 80 Rhodopoleos, metropolis of 61 Risorgimento 15 Rizos, Alexander 15, 16 Roman Catholic Church 80; Roman Catholicism 109 Roman Empire 1, 4, 5, 25 Romania 8, 36, 37, 46–47, 65, 86, 93; autocephaly 37; Church of 36, 37; nationalism 37; Patriarchate of 80, 84, 85, 97; Principalities 29, 32; schism 37 Rome 51, 81, 98; Church of 27 Rumelia, Eastern 47 Runciman, Sir Steven 5, 8–9 Russia 4–5, 14, 19, 34, 64, 82, 86, 92, 96,

109; Church of 5, 14, 53, 74, 82–87, 93, 97, 109; empire 46; Orthodoxy in 93; Revolution 93, 97, 95; Russians 14; Southern 93 Saint Athanasios the Athonite, founder of Great Lavra 97 Saint Augustine 1, 2 Saint Basil the Great 62, 95 Saint Dimitrios 53 Saint Gregory of Nyssa 94; About Those Absent in Jerusalem 94 Saint John Chrysostom 74 Saint John the Evangelist or Theologian vii, 64, 99 Saint Paul 108 Saint Sergius of Zagorsk 85, 86 Sakarya (Halys) river 62 Salt desert 62 Samatya 77; church of Saints Constantine and Helena 77 Saranta Ekklesion, metropolis of 61 Scandinavia 109 schism viii, 80, 83, 88; Church of Bulgaria 39, 47, 49, 50, 64, 69, 74, 101; Church of Greece 35, 37, 46; Church of Romania 37 Scutari 65 Serafeim II, Ecumenical Patriarch 13 Serbia 29, 33, 36, 46, 47, 64, 65, 93; Church of 36; Patriarchate of 80, 84, 97; Southern 36; Serbs 36 Sergei, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia 83 Sherrard, Philip 9 Sinai Mount 36, 94 Slovenes 36 Smyrna 51, 61, 63–64; metropolis of 53; Philological Gymnasium 51 Socrates 1 Sofroni, Bishop of Vratsa 32 Sophronios [Meidantzoglou] III, Ecumenical Patriarch 38 Souli (Epirus) 15 South America 69 Soviet state 84 Spain 109 Stavridis, Vasilios 8 Stephen, Exarch of Bulgarian Church 39, 48 Sublime Porte 30, 47, 49, 53, 56, 57 Sumela, monastery of the Dormition of the Virgin 61 Switzerland 15, 80; Philhellenes 15

130   Index Syllogos see Greek Literary Association of Constantinople Synod of 1872, vii–viii, 38, 49, 83, 84 Syria 92 Syro-Chaldean Church 83 Syro-Jacobite Church 83; monasteries 66 Tavlusun 63 Taxiarches-Darsiyak 63 Taxim square (Istanbul, Pera) 57, 62 Tenedos (Bozcaada), Island of 65, 66, 102 Theodore I, Czar of Russia 5 Theoktist, Patriarch of Romania 101 Theological School of Halki 52, 74, 79, 98; see also Halki Theotokis, Nikiphoros 29 Thessaloniki 53, 77, 80; Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies 80; University of 21n1 Thirty Years War 5 Thomas [Savvopoulos], metropolitan of Chalcedon 75, 87 Thrace 37, 47, 50, 61, 96; Eastern 61, 62, 65, 66; Mount Ganos 96; Mount Papikion 96; Western 65 Toronto Star 65 Transylvania 37, 10 Trebizond, Empire of 61; metropolis of 74 Tripolis 31; Tripolitza 31, 32 Truman, Harry 75 Turcograecia (Martin Crusius) 7 Turkey 60, 65–67, 72, 74, 76, 78, 79, 98, 99; Eastern 66 Turkish Cypriots 78 Turkish government 75, 79 Turkish nationalism 58, 64–65 “Turkish Orthodox Church” 67, 73, 79 Turkish Republic 11, 60, 75, 98; state 69, 88, 99, 102 Turkish-speaking communities (Cappadocia) 63; Turkish-speaking Orthodox 65 Tuscany, Grand Duchy of 14 Tyrolois, metropolis of 61 Ukraine, Church of 101, 109 United States of America 4, 68, 75, 84

universalism, Christian 30, 53, 97 Usevelod Andronoft, Archdeacon of the Russian Cathedral in New York 68 Varlık Vergisi 69, 73 Vassili I, Grand Prince of Muscovy 4, 5 Vatican 83 Vazelon, Saint John the Baptist monastery 61 Veniamin Costache, metropolitan of Moldavia 32 Venice 18 Verona, Congress of 19 Vienna 54; Congress of 14 Vieusseux, G.P. 12, 15–20; Gabinetto 21n1, 23n16, 19, 22; Antologia 15, 16 Virgin of Kaffa, church (Galata) 67 Vlach communities 37 Vladimir of Kiev 87 Vogorides, Stephanos, Prince of Samos 56 Voulgaris, Evgenios 13, 20, 29 Vryonis, Speros Jr. 62 Vryoullon, metropolis of 61 Vyzantios, Skarlatos 7 Wallachia 30, 32, 48; Church of 32; Principality 36, 46 Walzer, Michael 2 Western Alliance 75 Western tradition 1 Wolff, Larry 3 World Council of Churches 74, 77, 81, 98 World War, First 10, 36–37, 64; Second 72, 82, 93, 98, 110 Xenopol, A.D. 8 Young Ottomanism 57 Young Turk movement 58 Ypsilantis, Alexander 55 Yugoslav Kingdom 36; Yugoslavia 3, 75, 93, 107, 110 Zincidere 62; Saint John the Baptist, monastery at 62 Zographou monastery (Athos) 96, 97