Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The cathedral (since 1991) of San Giorgio dei Greci, completed in 1573, an important architectural work and a treasurehouse of icons and wall paintings, became the focus for a Greek community with a vigorous religious and intellectual life. From 1577 onwards the Venetian authorities permitted the church of St George the unique privilege of being directly under the authority of the Ecumenical Throne, rather than of rome , its rector being also a titular metropolitan. The Venetian Greek publishing houses printed many liturgical and religious books for the eastern orthodox church. From 1662 to 1905 the Flaginean College educated clergy and teachers for a church languishing under ottoman rule. Its buildings now house the Hellenic Institute of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Studies. In 1991 the Ecumenical Patriarch erected the Greek Orthodox archdiocese of Italy and exarchate of Southern Europe with San Giorgio dei Greci as cathedral. As early as 1512 Jacob ‘the Sinner’ published an Armenian calendar in Venice. In 1717 San Lazzaro island, a former leper colony, was granted to the Armenian Catholic Mechitarists, many in flight from the Turkish attack on their monastery in the Morea (1715). Their communities in Trieste and Vienna are daughter houses of Venice. All three houses have sustained a remarkable level of cultural and scholarly life, supporting both Orthodox and Catholic ... log in or subscribe to read full text