Constantinople, Patriarchate of

JOHN A. MCGUCKIN

The patriarch of Constantinople is today rooted in the ancient former capital city of the Roman Empire (not Rome, but after the 4th-century Christian ascent to power, “New Rome” or Constantine’s City, Konstantinopolis). The city retained the ancient name of Constantinople until the early decades of the 20th century when Ataturk, signaling new beginnings after the fall of the Ottoman sultans whose capital it had also been, changed the name to Istanbul (originally another Greek Christian short­hand for “To the City” – eis tin polin) and at the same time moved the capital of Turkey to Ankara. After the rise of Turkish nation­alism, and the disastrous Greco-Turkish War of the early decades of the 20th century (reflected, for example, in Kazantzakis’ novel Christ Recrucified), Constantinople, which had always been a major hub of world affairs, and a massively cosmopolitan city, changed into becoming a monochro­matic backwater. The many religious com­munities that had remained there even after its fall to Islam in the 15th century dwindled, until today, demographically, Orthodox church life in that once great metropolis is a sad shadow of what it once was.

From the foundation of the city as a Christian hub of the Eastern Empire by Constantine in the early 4th century, the city was the center of a great and burgeoning Christian empire: the Christian style and culture of Byzantium made its presence felt all over the world, from the Saxons of England, to the Slavs of the cold North, to the southern plateaux of Ethiopia. The Great Imperial Church (once the cathe­dral church of the patriarchate, too) was Hagia Sophia. After the conquest of the city by Islamic forces in 1453, the last emperor was killed and Byzantine dynastic rule was ended, and the patriarchate took over (under the sultans) political and reli­gious supervision of all the Christians of the large Ottoman dominion. Under Mehmet II and his successors, many churches in Constantinople were seized as mosques. It had lost the Great Church of Hagia Sophia at the time of the conquest, but was also later ousted from the large headquarters of St. Mary Pammakaristos. After many vicis­situdes and sufferings, the patriarchate came in 1603 to be established in its present location in the very modest Church of St. George at the Phanar in Istanbul.

Today, the patriarch of Constantinople has a primacy of honor within Eastern Orthodoxy. There is enduring historical controversy among the scholars (as was the case in ancient church history, too) over the precise meaning of the 28th canon of the Council of Chalcedon (451) which gave the (relatively recent) see of Constantinople a primacy of jurisdic­tional sway. Did the canon of Chalcedon intend to make New Rome first after Old Rome, that is, “second” in rank and prece­dence among the five patriarchates then existing, which was more or less the import of the third canon of Constantinople 1 (381), or did it mean to make it into the new first see of Christendom, the “next” of that “first rank,” that is, New Rome succeeding to the privileges of the first see (Old Rome) which itself had enjoyed its erstwhile primacy by virtue of being the capital of the empire, but now had to yield that privilege to the current and real capital of the empire? The Chalcedonian canon reads:

Following in all things the decisions of the holy Fathers, and acknowledging the canon, which has been just read, of the One Hundred and Fifty Bishops beloved-of-God (who assembled in the imperial city of Constanti­nople, which is New Rome, in the time of the Emperor Theodosius of happy memory), we also do enact and decree the same things concerning the privileges of the most holy Church of Constantinople, which is New Rome. For the Fathers rightly granted privi­leges to the throne of old Rome, because it was the royal city. And the One Hundred and Fifty most religious Bishops, actuated by the same consideration, gave equal privileges to the most holy throne of New Rome, justly judging that the city which is honoured with the Sovereignty and the Senate, and enjoys equal privileges with the old imperial Rome, should in ecclesiastical matters also be magnified as she is, and rank next after her; so that, in the Pontic, the Asian, and the Thracian dioceses, the metropolitans only and such bishops also of the Dioceses afore­said as are among the barbarians, should be ordained by the aforesaid most holy throne of the most holy Church of Constantinople; every Metropolitan of the aforesaid dioceses, together with the bishops of his province, ordaining his own provincial bishops, as has been declared by the divine canons; but that, as has been above said, the metropolitans of the aforesaid Dioceses should be ordained by the archbishop of Constantinople, after the proper elections have been held according to custom and have been reported to him. (Canon 28, Council of Chalcedon, 45)

The wording and intention of the Chalcedonian canon remain the subject of historical exegesis, as it is not simply the case that Constantinople is made “second in rank after Rome” as most western church writers have presumed. The range of privi­leges granted to it as court of appeal, espe­cially in canon nine of the same Council of Chalcedon, far exceeded those which Old Rome had commanded up to that time. The issue of Canon 28 would be a constant friction in Orthodox-Latin Church rela­tions afterwards, until the Great Schism of the 11th century made it, practically speaking, irrelevant. It continues to have controversial status as to its exact sense of application in contemporary church law: not merely with regard to ecumenical relations between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, but also internally (especially in a lively tension between the patriarchates of Constantinople and Moscow) as to the extent of Canon 28’s applicability in terms of executive “superintendence” in world Orthodoxy.

The patriarch, known as His All-Holiness the Archbishop of Constantinople, the New

Rome, and Oecumenical Patriarch, is still resident in Istanbul. This capital of “New Rome” was founded by Constantine the Great in the early 4th century to be the military and political center of the Roman Empire. From this time onwards (and it remained the case until the 9th cen­tury) the fortunes of the older western cap­ital at Rome went into serious decline. Even late into the 4th century, however, Constantinople’s ecclesiastical significance was very modest, reflecting its origins (as the colonial port of Byzantium) as a subordinate part of the diocese of Thrace (now Bulgaria). Byzantium had been a thoroughly insignificant city before Constantine’s refoundation, and the new capital took some time to establish itself as a powerful magnet of ecclesiastical affairs, just as it did to establish itself as the verita­ble center of all political power in the Roman world. The rise to preeminence was rapid enough when it did happen, of course. And by the late 4th and early 5th centuries the bishops of Constantinople had become in effect archbishops by gath­ering together a whole ecclesiastical terri­tory that looked to them for supervision and guidance. The institution of the home synod was encouraged by the archbishop of Constantinople. Because so many bishops came to the capital so regularly, to pursue political and other business there, they were invited to share in the deliberations of the local church. The home synod still func­tions in a more limited way as the governing body of patriarchal affairs. It is now made up of the ecclesiastical eparchies which are still immediately subject to the patriarch (Derkos, Chalcedon, Prinkipo, and Imbros), along with other titular arch­bishops who, as senior hierarchs, govern the diaspora churches as exarchs on behalf of the patriarch.

This ever-increasing and effective func­tioning as an international clearing house in

the heart of the capital set Constantinople on a path of collision with the more ancient patriarchates, particularly Rome, Alexan­dria, and Antioch. Their grumbling and friction marks the pages of almost every ecclesiastical argument of Antiquity. Rome, by the universal agreement of all until the time of the Council of Chalcedon, was regarded as the primary court of appeal for the Christian world. Even though the city had lost much of its effective political power after the 4th century, it was still afforded the “right” to be considered as last ecclesiastical court of appeal. This right was effectively undercut in practice for the simple reason that travel in Antiq­uity was immensely difficult, so only the most critical of any issues from the Eastern, Greek-speaking churches would ever be heard as an appeal in Rome anyway. To complicate matters, language difficulties also stood in the way, and this too was reflected in the ancient canons of the church. For most practical affairs, then, the see of Alexandria at first held the prece­dence in the Eastern Church, mirroring what Rome did in practical terms for all the Western Churches, where it was the sole patriarchal and apostolic see. The rise to political preeminence of Constantinople changed this system of ecclesiastical gover­nance. Constantinople’s expansion not only “put out” Alexandria, it also began to over­shadow the patriarchate of Antioch and the Syrian hierarchs, whose territory it was very close to. There were moments of tension between Constantinople and Antioch, also reflected in the decisions of the early coun­cils, but many of the most important of the early Constantinopolitan archbishops were drawn from the ambit of the Syrians and Cappadocians who adjoined that region.

The Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 381 and the Council of Chalcedon in 451 (again at Constan­tinople’s eastern suburb – indeed, almost all the great councils after Nicea were held here), gave the precedence of Constan­tinople greater clarity and force. It has always been seen as a matter of “normalcy” among the Orthodox that a city’s ecclesias­tical importance should reflect its role in the structure of the civic governance. This principle was enshrined in the canons of the Council of Nicea I in 325. By the later 5th century the ecclesiastical position of the imperial capital was unarguably central in church affairs just as it was in political affairs, and from this time on the patriarch­ate of Constantinople was established as the real center of precedence among the Eastern Churches. The Roman patriarchate continued to resist the implication that a see’s precedence should be tied to its geo­political importance. Nevertheless, the canonical position of the patriarchate of Constantinople was universally accepted in the East, and Rome itself came to admit it (at least in relation to other Eastern Churches), long before the time of the Great Schism of the Middle Ages. After the rise of Arab power in the 7th century, the once great Christian communities of Anti­och and Alexandria fell into disastrous decline, which further elevated the prestige and importance of Constantinople as a Christian nucleus. At many times in his­tory the patriarchs of those sees were actu­ally resident in Constantinople, and their senior clergy were supplied from out of the Phanariot ranks (those Greeks who lived in the Constantinopolitan patriarch­ate’s administrative zone, the Phanar).

The decree of the sultan set the patriarch of Constantinople as the political superior of the other patriarchs for the first time ever. This immense temptation to follow the path to political domination over the other churches was largely resisted. The potential of the patriarchate under Islamic power to lord it over the other sees was also undermined by a certain degree of corruption of the Phanar which closeness to the seat of the sultanate brought with it; for in the late 15th and throughout the 16th and 17th centuries the patriarchate was massively unsettled by the extent of bribery the sultans encouraged for elevation to that sacred office. After the first cabal of Greek merchants from Trebizond offered to the sultan a bribe of 1,000 florins to depose the incumbent Patriarch Mark II (1466–7) and replace him with a candidate of their own choice, the sultan’s eyes were opened to the possibilities. By 1572 the standard “investiture fee” for the patriarch was the substantial “gift” of 2,000 florins, and an annual payment of 4,000 more, gathered from taxation of the Christian “Rum” peo­ple who were placed under the patriarch’s supreme charge throughout the Ottoman Empire. There were always more than enough Christian factions lining up to pay the highest premium to ensure the election of their candidate after that point. Accord­ingly, the tenure of the patriarchs under Turkish rule was usually very short. Some­times the same candidate acceded to the office, was deposed, and reelected to it five or six times (each time paying the necessary fees). Between the 16th century and the early part of the 20th century, 159 patriarchs held office. Of this number, the Turks drove out of office 105. Several were forced to abdicate and six were judicially assassinated. The cadre ofGreeks who sailed this stormy sea, trying to keep the prestige of the patriarchate intact and effective (sometimes using it for unworthy ambi­tions), tended to live in what was then the wealthy suburb called the Phanar; and were thus known as Phanariots. Many of the higher offices of the church were subse­quently put into their hands when a new patriarch acceded, and this in turn led to the Phanariot Greek clergy becoming a kind of colonial superior race directing churches in distant lands, using the mandate of the sultan and the decree of the patriarch to justify it. They in turn, as local archbishops, levied taxes on their new people. As a result, the Turkish “yoke” cast a long pall over Orthodox relations with the patriarchate. The British historian Kidd acerbically described the situation in the following terms:

Thus the Patriarchate, degraded by simony and made the sport of intrigue by its own people, has come to be regarded by many of the Orthodox as an agent of the Turkish government, and identified with its oppres­sion. But the Patriarchate has also come to be identified by such of the Orthodox as are non-Greek, with the cause of Hellenic nationalism.... A widespread hostility has thus pursued the Phanariot clergy among the non-Greek Orthodox; and the revolts which the Phanar puts down to Phyletism (Inappropriate nationalism) have issued in the enforced recognition of national churches, as a refuge from Phanariot oppres­sion. (Kidd 1927: 305)

His view, not a last word on the subject by any means, for it glosses over the heroic reality of how Constantinople “kept things going” in these dark times, nevertheless explains why some of the newer national Orthodox churches sprang into being after the collapse of the power of the sultanate in the 19th century; although this too does not give the whole picture – how in most instances this “return to independence” was a return to more venerable ecclesiastical sit­uations that had predated the Turkish yoke. Hostile critics of the Orthodox scene have sometimes been too ready to cry “collabora­tion” and “simoniacal conformism” when they have seen Orthodoxy under the foot of either Turkish or Soviet oppressions. But they have generally done so from the comfort and safety of their armchairs and the finan­cial security of their own ecclesiastical estab­lishment. The blood that has been spilled in the Orthodox Church over the last three centuries is incomparably greater than the amount of the blood of the martyrs that was shed in the first three centuries of what we now call the period of the Great Persecu­tions. Today, the main entrance gate to the Phanar buildings is kept closed, in honored memory of the Patriarch Gregory who was the incumbent in the time of the 19th- century Greek Revolution, and who was dragged from the altar of the Church of St. George, still wearing his liturgical vestments, to be hanged from the gate. The patriarchate can boast of its martyrs.

The end of political coherence within the sprawling Ottoman Empire, which was becoming more and more obvious at the end of the 19th century, certainly witnessed the breaking up of the immedi­ate jurisdictional sphere of Constantino­ple. Russia had already detached from its orbit in the 15th century following the controversy concomitant on the Council of Florence. It declared itself a new patri­archate in 1589. Greece (while remaining in the closest of all ties of affection and loyalty to the patriarchate) declared its independence from the Phanar organiza­tionally in 1850, Bulgaria in 1870, Serbia in 1879, and Romania in 1885. Georgia and Ukraine did the same in regard to the Moscow patriarchate, which had for­merly supervised them, in 1919, but these would be brought back under control through the enforced Sovietization of their nations later, and would again seek independence when those powers of polit­ical control were once more loosened from the Russian center. In the 10th century, however, when it was in its glory, Con­stantinople had supervisory rank over no fewer than 624 dioceses. In its heyday its ecclesiastical territory of influence embraced all the Balkans, all Thrace, all of Russia from the White Sea to the Caucasus, and the whole of Asia Minor.

Today, five and a half centuries after the fall of the city to the power of Islam, it is in a state of very sad decline “on the ground,” though it remains a brightly shining beacon and example to Orthodox the world over by virtue of its spiritual fidelity and the endur­ing ecclesiastical role of the patriarch as Primus inter pares, “first among equals.” Many of the patriarchs of Constantinople, throughout its long history, have been Christian leaders of the highest calibre, and the historical record of the Throne is, overall, a vastly prestigious one. It continues this office in straitened circumstances, under difficult political and religious con­straints. Today, there are hardly any resident Greeks left of the thousands of Greeks, Armenians, and other Christian nationals who once made Istanbul a truly universal and cosmopolitan center of world affairs; and to that extent the city’s Christian life enters a state of unreality: a massive concern to preserve the monuments and relics of an important past.

Since the bitter Greco-Turkish War of 1922 the massive exchange of populations that took place meant that Asia Minor was more or less denuded of its Greek inhabitants – then numbering 1.5 million souls – for the first time in recorded history. Turkish law only permits the residence of Greeks in Istanbul itself, but after 1922 the situation became more and more impossi­ble for most Christian families to feel secure, and so the mass exodus began. Cur­rent Turkish law forbids monks or nuns, priests or bishops, to wear clerical dress in public (with the single exception of the patriarch), and there is much popular hos­tility to the idea of a Greek Christian leader living in the heart of this Islamic city. On September 6, 1955 a large anti-Greek riot, sparked by the Cyprus problem, led to the burning or sacking of 60 out of the 80 Orthodox churches remaining in Istanbul, and most of the surviving Christian community lost heart at that point. Damage to Christian property was then estimated at more than £50 million. The Turkish govern­ment subsequently paid £4 million in com­pensation. With deportations and voluntary emigration following, the resident Greek population continued over the remainder of the second half of the 20th century to dwindle to demographic insignificance.

Those entering the Phanar today are swept with electronic search devices to dis­courage hidden weapons or the leaving of bombs in church (incidents which are, alas, not imaginary). The Orthodox theological school of Halki, on one of the adjoining islands of the city, founded in 1844, was once a center of the advancement of the clergy. In the middle of the century it had begun to acquire an international reputa­tion among the Orthodox Churches as a center of learning. In 1971 the Turkish government forcibly suppressed the admis­sion of new students, on the grounds of preventing “propaganda and anti-Turkish sentiment” (a reference to the Cyprus crisis) and despite many efforts since to reopen it, its enforced closure remains a stain on that government’s record of religious toleration. The modern postwar patriarchs Athenagoras, Dimitrios, and Bartholomew have brought great dignity and honor to their office, enduring these difficulties, and by their personal gifts restoring an internationally luminous reputation to their throne, far beyond the formal extent of Orthodox circles. Relations with the Turkish secular powers have tended to improve, and the mooted prospect of Turkey’s entrance into the European Union has also acted as a spur to better relations between the Phanar and its polit­ical overlords. The Treaty of Lausanne (1923) formally governs relations between the Phanar and the Turkish state. It cur­rently requires the patriarch always to be a Turkish citizen. It also restricts his role to “only spiritual” matters, preventing him from being involved in politics. The state’s forced closure of the patriarchate’s semi­nary at Halki is seen widely by the world outside Turkey as an attempt to suffocate the patriarchate by not allowing the training of new clergy, who are Turkish citizens and who could be of the calibre to assume the office in the future.

The present territorial extent of Constantinople’s ecclesiastical jurisdiction comprises Turkey, the ancient parts of Thrace that are not in present-day Bulgaria, Crete, some Greek islands in the Aegean (Rhodes, Leros, Kos, and Karpathos), the monasteries of Mount Athos, all Greeks of the diaspora (large numbers in Europe, America, and Oceania), a jurisdictional over­sight over the church of Finland (since 1923), and some parts of the Russian diaspora communities who have sought the Phanar’s guidance for historical reasons related to the Russian Revolution. The total number of faithful directly belonging to the jurisdiction of the patriarchate is today in the region of 7 million. The vast majority of them are in the diaspora. The category of the diaspora at first initiated as a mission to Greeks who came to the West has now been extended, in some places over many generations, to cover the very large Greek Christian communities of America and Australia, and also the smaller Exarchate of Great Britain and Ireland, which can less and less be considered as missionary territories any longer. Much more than half the lay members of the patriarchate, for example, now reside in North America, and many of the Greek Orthodox there are so thoroughly Americanized that some of them have forgotten their ancestral language. The Phanar continues to exercise jurisdictional oversight over several Slavonic rite dioceses in “exile,” Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, and Albanian, which put themselves under the patriarchal protection in the difficult times following the large flight westwards from communist oppression in the early part of the 20th century. The question of the continuing need for “exile” is a current point of inter­Orthodox tension.

The patriarchate today continues a policy, evident among its leaders from the beginning of the 20th century, of encouraging the senior hierarchs of world Orthodoxy to meet regularly and intercom­municate on wide levels. It has sponsored Orthodoxy’s international dialogues with other non-Orthodox Churches, and despite frequent shrill cries from some of the most traditionalist Orthodox critics of its behav­ior, it has done so with enormous wisdom, charity, and reserve; never rushing into statements or deeds that it would have to regret or later withdraw. Its model in ecumenical communication has been to establish a “dialogue of love.” The present Patriarch Bartholomew I is an internation­ally renowned voice for preservation of the world’s ecosystem, and a strong and respected moral teacher of international stature on issues of compassion and justice.

SEE ALSO: Bulgaria, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of; Cyril Lukaris, Patriarch of Con­stantinople (1572–1638); Ecumenical Coun­cils; Ecumenism, Orthodoxy and; Greece, Orthodox Church of; Iconoclasm; Jeremias II, Patriarch (1572–1595); Ottoman Yoke; Russia, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of; St. John Chrysostom (349–407); Scholarios, George (Gennadios) (ca. 1403–1472); Serbia, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of; Stethatos, Niketas (ca. 1005–1085)

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Imber, C. (1990) The Ottoman Empire 1300–1481. Istanbul: Is Press.

Kidd, B. J. (1927) History of the Church to ad 461. London: Faith Press.

Mainstone, R. J. (1988) Hagia Sophia. London: Thames and Hudson.

Nicol, D. M. (1993) The Last Centuries of Byzantium: 1261–1451. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Runciman, S. (1968) The Great Church in Captivity.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sherrard, P. (1965) Constantinople: Iconography of a Sacred City. Oxford: Oxford University Press.