Under the Ottomans: the Rum millet
Under Ottoman rule the Patriarch of Constantinople becomes the civil as well as religious head of the empire's Orthodox Christians, who survive for centuries as a protected but subordinate community.
- The Great Church in Captivity — Steven Runciman, Cambridge University Press (1968)
- A Concise History of Greece — Richard Clogg, Cambridge University Press (1992)
- The Orthodox Church — Timothy Ware, Penguin (1993)
- The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–1600 — Halil İnalcık, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1973)
After the conquest of 1453, Mehmed II installed the scholar-monk Gennadios Scholarios as patriarch in 1454 and gave him authority over the Orthodox of the empire, the Rum (“Roman”) community. The patriarch became a kind of ethnarch: head of the church, but also judge in family law, collector of taxes and answerable to the sultan for his people’s loyalty.
- The Great Church in Captivity — Steven Runciman, Cambridge University Press (1968)
- The Orthodox Church — Timothy Ware, Penguin (1993)
Orthodox Christians could worship, but as dhimmi, protected non-Muslims, they paid a poll tax, could not build new churches freely and lived under legal restrictions. The patriarchate itself became entangled in money and politics, with patriarchs often deposed. Yet the church kept Greek and Slavonic learning, the liturgy and a sense of identity alive through centuries without a Christian state.
- The Great Church in Captivity — Steven Runciman, Cambridge University Press (1968)
- A Concise History of Greece — Richard Clogg, Cambridge University Press (1992)
When the Greek revolution broke out in 1821, the Ottomans hanged Patriarch Gregory V at the gate of the patriarchate on Easter Sunday. The gate has been kept closed ever since. Nationalism then broke the old unity, as each new Balkan state founded its own church.
- A Concise History of Greece — Richard Clogg, Cambridge University Press (1992)
- The Great Church in Captivity — Steven Runciman, Cambridge University Press (1968)
Four centuries of "Turkish yoke", when the church kept the nation alive: the secret schools, the neomartyrs executed for their faith, children taken in the devshirme levy, and Patriarch Gregory V hanged at the patriarchate's gate on Easter Sunday 1821.
- The Great Church in Captivity — Steven Runciman, Cambridge University Press (1968)
- A Concise History of Greece — Richard Clogg, Cambridge University Press (1992)
The Ottomans protected Orthodox Christians, guaranteed their worship and gave their patriarch wide authority, a tolerance unusual in its day compared with the religious wars of Christian Europe.
- The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–1600 — Halil İnalcık, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1973)
Christians were a protected but unequal community, paying extra taxes and facing legal limits, and the "millet system" was less formal and uniform than later accounts suggest. Some stories, like the "secret schools", are now regarded by many historians as largely legend.
- The Great Church in Captivity — Steven Runciman, Cambridge University Press (1968)
- A Concise History of Greece — Richard Clogg, Cambridge University Press (1992)
Why it matters today
The Ecumenical Patriarchate still sits in Istanbul's Fener district, with a tiny Greek flock and limits on training its clergy, while honoured as "first among equals" by Orthodox worldwide. For Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians and Romanians, the church's role in keeping language and identity alive under the Ottomans is why faith and nation are so entwined.