From the "refledging" to the "illumination of the nation": aspects of political ideology in the Greek Church under Ottoman domination
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Abstract
Three major historical questions are briefly discussed in this study:
a) How far may the anti-Westernism of the Greek Orthodox Church conduce
to the cultural isolationism of the Orthodox world (at least the Greek sector); b) how far did the initiatives of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, as also of
its individual functionaries, be described as ecumenical, or at least panBalkan, at a political level; and c) how far, geographically and ethnologically
speaking, did the Great Church influence the processes of ethnogenesis in the
Orthodox communities under its jurisdiction. The author arrives to the
following conclusions: a) Although chronic aversion to the Occident was a
fundamental aspect of the Church’s ideology, it did not engender thoroughgoing cultural isolationism in a considerable part of the Orthodox population,
even in the early years of Ottoman rule, b) Politically the Oecumenical Patriarchate was the head of the Greeks (“ κεφαλή του Γένους των Ρωμαίων”).
Yet its general religious and ecclesiastical policy remained firmly supranational and pan-Orthodox, at least until the end of the eighteenth century. c) The Great Church made no deliberate attempt either to accelerate or slow down the processes of ethnogenesis as regards the “Romaic” and even more the “non-Romaic” peoples under its jurisdiction. Hellénisation is traceable, but numerically and geographically was not widespread; and in any case was due to historical factors, in which the Church did not play an active, or at least
decisive, role.
a) How far may the anti-Westernism of the Greek Orthodox Church conduce
to the cultural isolationism of the Orthodox world (at least the Greek sector); b) how far did the initiatives of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, as also of
its individual functionaries, be described as ecumenical, or at least panBalkan, at a political level; and c) how far, geographically and ethnologically
speaking, did the Great Church influence the processes of ethnogenesis in the
Orthodox communities under its jurisdiction. The author arrives to the
following conclusions: a) Although chronic aversion to the Occident was a
fundamental aspect of the Church’s ideology, it did not engender thoroughgoing cultural isolationism in a considerable part of the Orthodox population,
even in the early years of Ottoman rule, b) Politically the Oecumenical Patriarchate was the head of the Greeks (“ κεφαλή του Γένους των Ρωμαίων”).
Yet its general religious and ecclesiastical policy remained firmly supranational and pan-Orthodox, at least until the end of the eighteenth century. c) The Great Church made no deliberate attempt either to accelerate or slow down the processes of ethnogenesis as regards the “Romaic” and even more the “non-Romaic” peoples under its jurisdiction. Hellénisation is traceable, but numerically and geographically was not widespread; and in any case was due to historical factors, in which the Church did not play an active, or at least
decisive, role.
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