Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The Fall of Constantinople in 1453 was the most traumatic event in the history of Eastern Christendom; and yet it created possibilities for the Church that had never existed before. The political power given to the patriarch by the Ottoman sultan was instrumental in establishing the operational agenda for the Church for centuries to come. The fall had in itself an element of irrevocability: Christian Constantinople would eventually be transformed into Muslim Istanbul; and the first patriarch set up the practices and the attitudes that were to remain dominant within the Orthodox world until today. Scholarios (1405–72) was both the man for the times and a man of another time. His initial agreements with Mehmed the Conqueror secured the functional character of the Church as an institution within the empire, relieved priests from taxation and protected the faithful from forced conversions. Yet the very same person who showed adaptability and prudence burned Pletho's book On the Laws (1454) for reasons that cannot be clearly understood (except of course his personal vendetta against him) or theologically justified. The strategy of both adaptability and exclusion has been interpreted as a necessity under the circumstances. However, with the exception of a very brief period in the early sixteenth century, the Christian community lived in prosperity and protection under the Ottoman authority. ... log in or subscribe to read full text