Your Beatitude, Rev. Fathers, Esteemed Matushki,
Beloved Seminarians, Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ: Glory to JESUS CHRIST!
Welcome! Thank you for coming!
May
I state right from the start that I am far from being an expert on Islam, or
even specifically on the interaction of Islam and Orthodox Christianity through
the centuries. I approach this
topic with great trepidation, keenly aware of my lack of thorough
knowledge.
I also approach it with a certain sense of
wonderment, for the topic itself seems to demand an answer to a very difficult
question, “Why did our Lord allow
Islam to arise, and to spread so far, and to cause so much suffering and
destruction for so much of the Christian world for so many centuries, even to
the present day?” Has the Lord
used the spread of Islam mainly to chastise His people for their sins? Or in His mysterious Providence, has He
also used Islam to help protect His Holy Church in a number of very significant
ways?
Some
more questions for us to consider:
Has the interaction between Islam and Orthodoxy always been
characterized by military, political, and religious conflict, with mutual
despising, hostility, rancor, and hatred prevailing? Or have there been significant times of mutual respect and
cooperation? How have Orthodox
Christians managed to find a way to coexist with Muslims without hatred and
resentment poisoning their souls?
In
particular, I have been wrestling with one further question concerning Orthodox
Christians who have lived in direct contact with Muslims: To what extent have
they put into practice Jesus’ commands to love our enemies, to bless those who
curse us, to do good to those who hate us, and to pray for those who spitefully
use us and persecute us? (Matt. 5:44).
So,
it is with such questions as these in mind that I would like to devote our time
together here tonight. And rather
than trying to give a comprehensive summary of the history of the relations
between Islam and Orthodox Christianity through the centuries, I think it will
be more helpful, as we look for possible answers to these question, to turn to
the Lives of some of the Saints of our Church who had direct contact with
Islam. As we know, the Saints are
our constant examples and guides for living the Christian life. As St. John of Kronstadt (a great
Russian priest who died in 1908) urges us,
We ought to have the most lively spiritual union with the
[Saints] . . . It is
urgently
necessary for every Christian to be in union with them if he desires to
make Christian progress; for the
saints are our friends, our guides to salvation,
who pray and intercede for us.[1]
By observing how some of our Saints dealt with the
various challenges presented by the religion of Mohammed, hopefully we will
gain insights into how we ourselves should respond to Islam - which has become,
since September 11, 2001, a much greater reality in our lives than probably we
ever could have imagined before.
Hopefully we will learn from their experience and their example how we
might better guard our hearts from rancor, hatred, and fear concerning what
happened in our own land on Sept. 11, 2001, and what might happen again on our
soil at the hands of Islamic terrorists.
Let us turn first to St. John of
Damascus, who probably lived from about 652 to 749 - during the first century
or so of Islamic expansion and conquest.
He was born into a very devout, Orthodox Christian Arab family living in
Damascus, Syria - a very important city in the Middle East which the Islamic
Arabs had occupied in 636, only four years after Mohammed’s death. The Muslims did not bring destruction
and death to the Christians of Damascus, partly because the city surrendered
without much resistance, since its inhabitants generally regarded the Muslims
more as liberators than as conquerors.
This was because, for various reasons, there was widespread, deep
resentment of the Greek Byzantines on the part of the Semitic Arabs and Syrians
living in Damascus and the surrounding region.[2] And also, the conquering Muslim general
Khalid had promised very favorable terms for the residents of the city if they
capitulated peaceably:
In the name of Allah, the
Compassionate, the Merciful. This
is what Khalid
would grant to the inhabitants of
Damascus, if he enters therein: he promises to give them security for their
lives, property and churches.
Their city shall not be demolished; neither shall any Moslem be
quartered in their houses.
Thereunto we give them the pact of Allah and the protection of His
Prophet, the caliphs and the ‘Believers.’
So long as they pay the poll tax, nothing but good shall befall them.[3]
While the Muslims forbade the
construction of new churches, they pretty much allowed the Christians to carry
on with their religious observances, and they retained much of the existing
administrative system of the city, even including the use of the Greek
language! An Orthodox historian,
Daniel Sahas, states,
The Christians found entrance to
the court [or service] of the Caliph in a variety of ways: as administrative
advisors, as ‘admirals’ in the newly built Muslim fleet, as poets, instructors
of the princes, and artists. They
did not need to conceal their background, and freely showed their Christian
insignia.[4]
In 661, St. John’s grandfather, Mansur bin Sargun, was given
the highest administrative position in the Caliph’s government in Damascus -
something like a prime minister.
He was followed in this position by his son, Ibn Mansur, John’s father,
who was called by the people ‘emir’ (= prince). Incidentally, a Monophysite Christian named Athanasius held
a comparable position in the Islamic government in Alexandria, Egypt, through
which he had become extremely wealthy.
Quoting Sahas again,
Ibn Mansur must have been one of
those officials for whom the Caliph had deep respect, and in whose abilities
and loyalty he had the greatest confidence. The Mansur family was respected by both the Muslims and the
Christians. Theophanes [a
Christian historian writing around the year 800] called Ibn-Mansur an
‘extremely devout Christian.’ The Vita [of St. John of Damascus] exalts
the Mansurs for their piety and attachment to the [Chalcedonian] Orthodox
faith, which they preserved, even ‘in the midst of thorns . . . without giving
up anything of the right faith after the descendants of Hagar occupied the
city.’ The same Vita exalts the compassion of Mansur for
the poor and the captives.[5]
In the year 664, when John was about 12 years old, a
group of Muslims raided the island of Sicily, and many Sicilians were brought
as captives to the slave market in Damascus, including a highly educated monk
named Cosmas. Somehow he came to
the attention of John’s father, who desired to have him become the tutor for
his son John and his adopted son, also named Cosmas (who would become an
accomplished hymnwriter, a bishop, and a Saint in our Church - St. Cosmas of
Maiuma). Ibn Mansur persuaded the
Caliph to grant Cosmas the Monk his freedom, and to indeed become a part of the
Mansur household as a tutor.
Young John was delighted, for as
his Life records, now he could learn
“not only the books of the Saracens, but those of the Greeks as well.”[6] This would indicate that until this
time he had mostly been instructed in Arabic, most likely memorizing and
reciting at least parts of the Koran and other Arabic literature and poetry. Cosmas’s arrival was greatly
providential for the bright, young student and his adopted brother Cosmas, for
the Italian monk taught them “rhetoric, physics, arithmetic, geometry, music,
astronomy, and theology.”[7] As Sahas notes, “It is not difficult at
all to detect the competence of John of Damascus in these fields of knowledge
through his writings - especially in [his master work], the Fount of Knowledge.”[8]
Upon the death of his father in
about the year 693, John became personal secretary to the Caliph - a position
comparable to that held by his father and grandfather, and perhaps even a
little higher in rank. He
apparently held this position for something like 30 years, until the Byzantine
Emperor Leo III’s edict against the icons in 726 led to a great change in his
life. Writing brilliantly in
defense of the icons, quoting very extensively the writings of the Church
Fathers, John greatly angered the emperor.
But Leo could not attack St. John
directly, since Syria was no longer part of the Empire. So, hoping to get him punished through
the Caliph of Damascus, he slandered him to the Caliph. Believing the slander, the Caliph had
John’s right hand cut off. But
that night, in ardent prayer before an icon of the Theotokos, John held his
severed hand to his wrist, begging Our Lady for mercy, and promising to devote
his writing talents for the rest of his life to the building up of Christ’s
Church. Finally, he fell
asleep. The next morning he awoke
to find his hand reattached to his wrist, fully restored!
Keeping his promise, he retired
from public service and went to the Holy Land, where he entered the illustrious
monastery of St. Sabbas, in the wilderness near Jerusalem. Here he would pour forth some of the
greatest hymnography and theological writing in the history of our Church -
including a very perceptive and insightful critique of Islam, in Chapter 101 -
the longest chapter by far - in his work called On Heresies. In this
chapter on Islam he writes forcefully, calling Islam “the deceptive
superstition of the Ishmaelites” and “forerunner of the Antichrist,” and he
calls Mohammed “a false prophet.”[9] But he does not misrepresent the
message of the Koran, which he summarizes with precise accuracy; we recall how
he learned the Koran in his childhood.
And there is no tone of rancor or bitterness in his analysis of
Islam. Sahas concludes,
He presents the facts about Islam
in an orderly and systematic way, although not at all in a complimentary way;
he demonstrates an accurate knowledge of the religion, perhaps higher than the
one that an average Muslim could possess; he is aware of the cardinal doctrines
and concepts in Islam, especially those which are of an immediate interest to a
Christian; he knows well his sources and he is at home with the Muslim
mentality. Chapter 101 is not
inflammatory with hatred, neither grandiloquent nor full of self-triumph.[10]
Not
all the Orthodox were as tactful as St. John of Damascus in their dealings with
Islam. In 743 Bp. Peter of Maiuma
was executed by the Arabs for publicly condemning Islam, calling “Muhammad a
‘false prophet’ and ‘the forerunner of the Antichrist.’”[11] And around the year 860, Nicetas of
Byzantium, known as the Philosopher, wrote a book called Refutation of the Book Forged by Muhammad the Arab, in which he
called the Koran “‘a rustic booklet’ and ‘forged mythology,’ and Islam ‘a
barbaric religion.’”[12]
Beginning around the year 750 and
lasting into the 900s, a magnificent and flourishing Arab civilization arose to
the east under the Abbasid caliphs, who built a new city to be their capital -
Baghdad. Their empire stretched
from western Persia to Libya, and included all of the Arabian Peninsula, and
all the way north to include Armenia.
The Byzantines during much of this time struggled mightily to push the Arabs
out of the eastern regions of Asia Minor, but generally without much
success.
In spite of this nearly continuous
military and religious conflict, there was a certain acknowledgment by the
Byzantines that the Abbasid Arab Empire was a highly accomplished civilization,
worthy of respect. We find such an
attitude expressed by a Saint in our Church - the Patriarch of Constantinople,
St. Nicholas Mystikos - in a letter he wrote to the Caliph of Baghdad in the
early tenth century. In this
letter he especially emphasizes the need for mutual amicable contact despite
all the differences in their respective cultures:
There is no authority among men,
nor any potentate who succeeds to his power on earth by his native ability,
unless the Author and Ruler and only Potentate in the Highest shall approve his
succession. Therefore it is right,
if possible, that all of us who have obtained power among men, even though
there should be nothing else to promote our mutual contact and converse through
words, yet for this very reason - that we have obtained the gift of our
authorities from a common Head - it is right that we should not omit day by day
to make contact with one another, both by letters and by the emissaries who
serve us in our affairs. . . . there are two lordships, that of the Saracens
and that of the Romans, which stand above all lordship on earth and shine out
like the two mighty beacons in the firmament. They ought, for this very reason alone, to be in contact and
brotherhood and not, because we differ in our lives and habits and religion,
remain alien in all ways to each other.[13]
St. Nicholas Mystikos was a
spiritual son of an especially important Saint in our Church - St. Photios the
Great, Patriarch of Constantinople, known as one of the Three Pillars of
Orthodoxy. The Orthodox historian
A. A. Vasiliev says of St. Photios,
In his striking universality of
knowledge and in his insistence upon the study of the ancient writers, Photius
was representative of that intellectual movement in the Byzantine Empire which
became very apparent, especially in the capital, from the middle of the ninth
century. . . . In his lifetime and as a result of his influence, a closer and
more friendly relationship developed between secular science and theological
teaching. So broad-minded was
Photius in his relations with other people that even a Muhammedan ruler (Emir)
of Crete could be his friend [the Arabs first invaded this island in 824]. One of his pupils, Nicolaus Mysticus,
the Patriarch of Constantinople in the tenth century, wrote in his letter to
the Emir’s son and successor that Photius ‘knew well that, although difference
in religion is a barrier, wisdom, kindness, and the other qualities which adorn
and dignify human nature attract the affection of those who love fair things;
and therefore, notwithstanding the difference of [religious] creeds, he loved
your father, who was endowed with these qualities.’[14]
Now
let us skip over about four centuries and come to the time of another of the
Three Great Pillars of Orthodoxy, St. Gregory Palamas (1296-1359). He lived during the first century of
the dramatic and startling rise of the Ottoman Turks, another Islamic people,
who from their small homeland in northwestern Asia Minor would gradually
besiege, invade, and permanently occupy all the lands of the Byzantine Empire. The greatest prize of all, the Queen of
all Cities, the magnificent and legendary Constantinople, the center of the
Eastern Christian world, miraculously protected by Christ and His Holy Mother
the Theotokos for over eleven hundred years, is besieged and captured by the
Turks in the Spring of the year 1453.
St.
Gregory Palamas had contact off and on with the Turks during his lifetime. In 1325, after about eight years of
monastic life on Mt. Athos, a Turkish threat to the Holy Mountain forced him to
flee to Thessalonica, where at the insistence of friends, he accepted to be
ordained to the holy priesthood.
Meanwhile, at some point he had met a man named John Cantakuzenos, who
would become something like prime minister for the Byzanitne Emperor Andronikos
III (r. 1328-1341). During the
six-year civil war that ensued after this emperor’s death between Cantakuzenos
and the regency for John V Paleologos, Andronikos III’s young son, Cantakuzenos
appealed to the Turks for military assistance, and gave the prince of the
Ottomans, Orhan I, one of his daughters, named Theodora, in marriage.
It was this Cantakuzenos who gave
St. Gregory important support in his theological controversy with Barlaam the
Calabrian. Indeed, the third and
final Palamite Council, held in 1351, was called and presided over by the now
Co-Emperor John VI Cantakuzenos; through this council the Church affirmed the
truth of St. Gregory’s theology once and for all, including the crucial
distinction between the Essence and Energies of God. Cantakuzenos also had supported Palamas’s election as
Archbishop of Thessalonica in 1347.
In
March of 1354, as St. Gregory sailed from Thessalonica towards Constantinople
in order to help bring about reconciliation between the two co-emperors, John V
Paleologos and John VI Cantakuzenos, who again were at war, contrary winds
forced his ship to put it at Gallipoli, which had been taken by the Ottoman
Turks just a few days before, with the help of an earthquake which had toppled
the city’s walls. The Turks
proceeded to capture Gregory and his entire retinue. The “Life of St. Gregory” in the volume entitled The Lives of the Pillars of Orthodoxy
states at this point, “The God of the universe, however, was pleased to have
His servant mingle among the Ishmaelites, that he might reveal Orthodoxy to
them.[15]
For a whole year St. Gregory does
indeed mingle with the Ottoman Turks as he is taken under light guard from
place to place in western Asia Minor, areas captured by the Turks 20 to 30
years previously. At one point he
has a lengthy theological conversation with Emir Orhan’s grandson, named
Ishmael. When Ishmael could say no
more against St. Gregory’s clear exposition of the Christian Faith, it is
recorded that “Ishmael was neither offended nor ill-disposed, though many who
knew him remarked that he was first in cruelty and fanaticism against the
Christians.”[16]
On
another occasion, St. Gregory observed a Muslim tasimanes [holy man] crying out loudly at the bier during a funeral
procession. In talking with this
man afterwards through a translator, Gregory said,
’I know that you cried out before
God something good there on behalf of the deceased. I desire to learn what you said to God.’ By the same translator, the tasimanes answered, ‘We sought from
Allah forgiveness of sins for the soul of the deceased.’ Again, taking the initiative, the Saint
said, ‘Good, but He Who has the power to forgive is the Judge; and He Who is to
come and judge all men is Christ.
Consequently, it is to Him that we should direct our prayers and cries .
. .’[17]
Here we have a wonderful example of typical Orthodox
evangelistic strategy: seeing something good in Islam, St. Gregory builds upon
that common ground, taking the Muslim from there towards a right belief in
Christ.
During his year of captivity St.
Gregory also was allowed to meet often with the Christians living in the areas
he was passing through. One Life
says that “he persuaded the Orthodox to bear the cross of suffering without
murmuring and to hope for heavenly crowns and rewards.”[18]
In the Spring of the next year,
1355, a very large amount of money is raised by the Byzantines and paid to the
Turks as ransom for St. Gregory, who is then allowed to return to his see in
Thessalonica.
Fr. John Meyendorff, in his classic
study of St. Gregory, observes concerning Gregory’s letters written during his
time of captivity,
The most
immediately striking feature thereof is the comparatively favorable picture he
gives of the life of the Christians under the Turkish yoke, and the positive
attitude he adopts towards the Turks themselves. This attitude is in contrast to that of many of his
contemporaries; [Bp.] Matthew of Ephesus [now under the Turks], in his prayer
at his enthronement, merely bewailed the ‘barbarian’ occupation, and longed for
the return of the Empire of the Romans.
And Nicephoras Gregoras [who, along with Bp. Matthew, was another of
Gregory’s theological opponents], describing Palamas’s captivity, manifestly exaggerates
the insults to which he was subjected [Palamas certainly had suffered some
painful indignities at the hands of some of the Turks], and interprets them as
divine punishment for his support of the pro-Turkish policy of
Cantakuzenos. Palamas too considered
the occupying forces as ‘the most barbarous of the Barbarians,’ but he regarded
his captivity as providential in giving him a chance to reveal the Gospel to
them.
Philotheus’s two
accounts of [Gregory’s] captivity also record his missionary
preoccupations. Palamas nowhere
refers to the possibility of a Byzantine reconquest of Asia Minor; quite the
contrary, he considers the victory of Islam as something normal: ‘This impious
people boasts of its victory over the Romans, attributing it to their love of
God. For they do not know that
this world below dwells in sin, and that evil men possess the greater part of
it . . . that is why, down to the time of Constantine . . . the idolaters have
almost always held power over the world.’
In contrast to the humanists who were often ready to sacrifice
everything, even the Orthodox Faith, for the salvation [i.e., temporal
security] of the Empire, the Archbishop of Thessalonica, though he obviously
did not desire the victory of the barbarians, did not in the least consider
that it put a final end to the history of Christianity. He describes the life of the Christians
under the Turkish yoke, and reveals their new responsibilities, favoured by the
great tolerance of the occupying power [this tolerance will lessen through the
ensuing centuries of the Turkish yoke].
Such an attitude
was not peculiar to Palamas, but seems to have been very widespread among
fourteenth hesychasts and among the poor classes in general. Philotheus records that St. Sabbas of
Vatopedi, when he journeyed in Syria and Palestine, enjoyed the respect of the
Moslems and had friendly interviews with their leaders. The tolerance of Islam towards the
Orthodox Christians was, in Philotheus’s eyes, in sharp contrast to the
persecutions to which they were subjected by the Latins [i.e., Roman Catholics]
in Cyprus.[19]
Let
us take our story now to the land of Russia, in the year 1380, to hear about an
enormous and fearsomely bloody clash between an Orthodox Christian army and a
huge military force of Muslims.
Here we do find an effort at negotiation, but when this fails, we see
Jesus Christ, the Lord of History, providing His people with victory in warfare
through the extraordinary leadership of Saints, both on earth and in
Heaven. Like an Old Testament
prophet encouraging an Old Testament judge or king to attack an invading
heathen tribe, the great St. Sergius of Radonezh (1314-1392), one of the two
most important and beloved Russian Saints of all time, and founder of the most
important monastery in Russia, the Holy Trinity-Saint Sergius Monastery,
advises the godly Grand Prince of Moscow, St. Dimitry Donskoi (1351-1389), to
bravely go and meet the enemy, for “the LORD will be with thee!”
By 1380 Russia had been groaning
under the yoke of the overlordship of the Mongolian Tartars for over 140
years. In 1367 and 1368, St.
Dimitry Donskoi, Grand Prince of Moscow and leader of the various Russian
city-states, had dared to build stone walls around Moscow, and he had stopped
paying the annual tribute money to the Tatars. Now the infuriated Tatars had amassed an army of 400,000
men, who were beginning to move northwestwardly towards Moscow. And the military threat was especially
dangerous now, since the Tatars had converted to Islam in the beginning of the
14th century, and their basically benevolent attitude toward the
Orthodox Church had changed to a hostile one. As Nicolas Zernov points out, “Russia’s defeat would
therefore mean the massacre of the population, the profanation of the churches,
the suppression of Christianity.
On the other hand, submission would mean, probably, the destruction of
the leaders and the moral collapse of the people.[20]
St. Dimitry had rallied the various
Russian princes - all but one - raising a great combined army to try and stop
the vengeful attack of the Tatars.
The Russian army has begun the march to the south. At this moment, St. Dimitry goes to the
Holy Trinity Monastery to personally consult with St. Sergius of Radonezh, who,
since the death of St. Alexis, Metropolitan of Moscow, two years before, is the
universally recognized spiritual leader of the Russian lands.
Please allow me now to let Orthodox
scholar Nicolas Zernov tell the story:
READ pp. 39t - 40t in The
Russians and Their Church (SVS Press, 1978).
And for more on St. Sergius’s involvement, and the support
of St. Nicholas of Myra, please let me read from Pierre Kovalevsky’s book, Saint Sergius and Russian Spirituality[21] READ pp. 110b - 111m and
112b -113m
St. Sergius’s critical role in the
Battle of Kulikovo Pole is remembered in one of the hymns for his Feastday:
O holy Father
Sergius, . . . adorned with the gift of prophecy, thou hast spoken of future
things as though they were happening in the present. For by prayer hast thou armed the prince so that he
conquered the barbarians who boasted that they would destroy his fatherland.[22]
Indicative of the tremendous spiritual stature of this
Saint, another hymn for him declares dramatically, “Thou hast risen in the
divine likeness as far as man is able.”[23]
This great victory at the Battle of
Kulikovo Pole does not immediately end the Tatar yoke over the Russians, but it
does mark the beginning of the process that will lead to Russia’s complete
freedom from the Tatars one hundred years later. Perhaps it is because the LORD knows that Serbia will fall
to the Ottoman Turks in 1389, and that Bulgaria will fall in 1393, and Greece
in 1396, and Constantinople in 1453, that HE moves sovereignly to end the
Tartar yoke over Russia, so that she can emerge as the only politically free
Orthodox nation during the roughly 400- to 500-year period of the Ottoman
captivity of virtually all the other traditionally Orthodox lands in the world.
I
would like to say just a little bit more about the Serbian defeat at the Battle
of Kosovo. In 1389 the gallant and
godly St. Prince Lazar rallied the various Serbian princes to face the
onslaught of the Ottoman Turks.
Rather than surrendering to the far more numerous Turks, St. Lazar and
his men chose to die in defense of their beloved Church and homeland - in the
hope of gaining entrance into the Heavenly Kingdom, which is all of mankind’s
true, eternal homeland. So it is
that the Serbs to this day consider their defeat at the Battle of Kosovo, on
June 15, 1389, as a Day of National Martyrdom.[24]
Now
we turn our attention to how the Greek Orthodox Christians related to their
Muslim overlords and neighbors during the centuries of captivity at the hands
of the Ottoman Turks - a captivity that has still not ended, as we see the
Patriarchate of Constantinople still politically subservient to the Turks in
Istanbul. We will begin this part
of the story with St. Gennadios, the first patriarch of Constantinople under
the Turks. Then we’ll consider the
many martyrdoms suffered by Orthodox Christians under the Turks, with particular
emphasis on two more very important Saints about whom most of us non-Greeks
probably know very little - St. Kosmas the Aitolian and St. Gregory V.
Hopefully, if our time allows, I
would then like to share a truly remarkable and highly informative story from
the life of St. Arsenios of Cappadocia, who lived in a Christian village
surrounded by Turks in southeastern Asia Minor in the ninteteenth century. And finally, I hope to speak a bit
about a modern-day Apostle for the Faith, Fr. Daniel Byantoro, a former Muslim
of Indonesia, to whom our LORD JESUS CHRIST appeared and gradually brought into
our Holy Orthodox Faith.
In
the year 1444, the third of the Three great Pillars of Orthodoxy, St. Mark of
Ephesus, died. We Orthodox
remember him gratefully as the only bishop who refused to sign the forced Union
agreement accepting submission to the Papacy at the infamous Council of
Florence in 1439. Before his
passing from this life, St. Mark bestowed the mantle of his authority as leader
of the ongoing resistance to the Union agreement upon George Scholarios, who
had taken the name Gennadios in monasticism.
St. Gennadios fiercely opposed
those in Byzantium who favored the forced union with the Roman Church. He was of one mind with the Grand Duke
Lukas Notaras, the Emperor’s chief minister, who declared, as the Turkish
assault upon the City approached, “It [would be] better to see the turban of
the Turks reigning in the middle of the City than the Latin tiara [the papal
crown].”[25]
The
conqueror of the City, Mehmed II [his name is a variation of the name
Mohammed], after the initial violence involved in the capture of the City,
proves to be quite an enlightened ruler.
He respects the grand civilization that he has become the master of, and
he sees his dynasty as preserving and continuing the brilliant legacy of the
Roman Empire. He actually has some
Greek blood in his veins, as there had been considerable intermarriage between
the Byzantines and the Ottomans in previous years.
So he wants to cooperate with his
Greek subjects; for one thing, he realizes that he needs their help in building
up his empire. As the great
historian Sir Steven Runciman states,
The Turks would provide him with
his governors and his soldiers; but they were not adept at commerce or
industry; few of them were good seamen; and even in the countryside they tended
to prefer a pastoral [i.e., shepherding] to an agricultural life. For the economy of the Empire the
cooperation of the Greeks was essential.
The Sultan saw no reason why they should not live within his dominions
in amity with the Turks, so long as their own rights were assured and so long
as they realized that he was their overlord.[26]
Mehmed
II understands how greatly important to the Greeks their Church is, and he has
some personal respect for and interest in the Greek Church. He deeply respected his father’s second
wife, Lady Mara, a Serbian princess who was allowed to practice her Christian
Faith openly; Runciman states that “any wish that she expressed was promptly
fulfilled by her stepson.”[27] And with at least some intellectual
curiosity, he would later have theological discussions with St. Gennadios in
the side chapel of the Church of the Pammacaristos [= “All Blessed,” referring
to the Theotokos]. And he even would
ask Gennadios to write a brief, objective statement of the Orthodox Faith for
translation into the Turkish language![28]
So
Mehmed decides to help the Greek Church to adjust to the new conditions. Learning that the Patriarch of the
Christians had fled to Italy back in 1451, he acted to provide them with a new
one. The logical choice was George
Gennadios Scholarios, since for one thing, he could be relied upon not to
intrigue with the West to try to undermine the Turkish regime.
But Scholarios was no longer in the
City! Upon further investigation,
it was discovered that he had been captured at the time of the conquest of the
City, and had fallen into the hands of a wealthy Turk living in Adrianople,
about 130 miles away, who had bought him as a slave. He was redeemer from his owner, and brought back to
Constantinople, where together he and the Sultan worked out the details of the
arrangement by which the Christians would live under the Ottoman Turks. Essentially, he as Patriarch would be
the ethnarch, the administrative and
religious leader of all the Christians in the realm, as a nation within a
nation.
On
January 6, 1454, the Day of Holy Theophany, St. Gennadios was formally
installed as Patriarch. Runciman
describes the scene:
Gennadius was received in audience
by the Sultan, who handed him the insignia of his office - the robes, the
pastoral staff, and the pectoral cross.
The original cross was lost.
Whether Gregory Mammas [the former patriarch] had taken it with him when
he fled to Rome or whether it disappeared during the sack of the City is
unknown. So Mehmet himself
presented a new cross, made of silver-gilt. As he invested the Patriarch he uttered the formula: ‘Be
Patriarch, with good fortune, and be assured of our friendship, keeping all the
privileges that the Patriarchs before you enjoyed.’
As Saint Sophia
had already been turned into a mosque, Gennadius was led to the Church of the
Holy Apostles. There the
Metropolitan of Heraclea, whose traditional duty it was to consecrate, performed
the rite of consecration and enthronization. The Patriarch then emerged and, mounted on a magnificent
horse which the Sultan had presented to him [he would be the only Christian
allowed by the Turks to ride a horse], rode in procession round the city before
returning to take up his residence in the precincts of the Church of the Holy
Apostles. He had also received
from the Sultan a handsome gift of gold. . . .
[Also] Mehmet
handed to Gennadius a firman
[official imperial decree] which he had signed, giving to the Patriarch
personal inviolability, exemption from taxes, freedom of movement, security
from deposition [unless by proper action of the Holy Synod of bishops], and the
right to transmit these privileges to his successors.[29]
In return for these privileges, Patriarch Gennadios pledged
personal loyalty to the Sultan’s government, and promised to make sure that the
Christians will pay their taxes and not revolt.
The
Greeks undoubtedly were relieved and grateful for this quite auspicious
beginning to their new life under the Turks. But they most probably realized that things could get much
worse for them at any moment, since all their privileges depended on the good
will of the Sultan - and who could tell how favorably disposed to the
Christians any succeeding Sultan might be? Patriarch Gennadios himself sensed the potential danger of
having the Patriarchal headquarters in a church which was in a heavily Turkish
part of the City. So he gained
approval to move his headquarters from the Church of the Holy Apostles to the
Church of the Pammacaristos, located in the leading Christian district of the
City; this area was and still is known as the Phanar.
Particularly
distressing, indeed heartbreaking, to the Christians was the Turks’ practice of
seizing Christian boys as young as ten years old for service in the elite
Janissary regiment. The boys were
forced to renounce their Christian faith, and to remain celibate. In response to this practice, Gennadios
allowed boys that young to get married, even though this was in violation of
the canonical stipulation that boys could not marry until the age of 14 [for
girls, the minimum age was 12].
Gennadios encountered some opposition from rigorists among his flock who
objected to this breaking of the canons.[30]
Perhaps such rigorist opposition was one of the reasons he retired
from the patriarchate in 1457, moving to Mt. Athos, and then to a Serbian
monastery under the patronage of Lady Mara, Mehmet II’s step-mother. Twice he was recalled to the Patriarchal
throne, and after retiring for a third time, he died in obscurity. He is venerated in our Church as St.
Gennadios II Scholasticos; his feastday is August 31.
Life does indeed get more difficult for the Christians under the
Ottoman yoke as the years go by.
The Christians are definitely treated as second-class citizens, who can
make no public display of their Christian Faith, and yet they must wear
distinctive clothing marking them as Christians. There is the constant temptation to just give in to the
various pressures and become a Muslim, to become one of the privileged members
of the society, which would mean “more personal security, less taxation, better
land to cultivate, and the acceptance of one’s testimony in court.”[31] Interestingly, very often when
Christians were brought before Muslim judges on various charges - often through
various forms of trickery - the judge would try to tempt the Christian to
accept Islam with promises of
riches, a high position, and worldly glory - instead of trying to win him over
to Islam by extolling the virtues and truthfulness of the religion of
Mohammed. For whatever reasons or
combination of reasons, through the years, as the centuries of Islamic
oppression dragged on, there were more and more Christians apostasizing to
Islam, which must have been greatly discouraging to their Christian family
members and friends.
Certainly through the years most of the Christian Greeks and
Islamic Turks found ways to live together in relative peace, with everyone’s
attention mostly devoted to the daily responsibilities of life in this world -
caring for and providing for oneself and one’s families. But friction between Christians and
Muslims gradually does increase, and as corruption within the Sultan’s domain
also increases, making local justice more and more arbitrary against the
Christians, we find through the years an increasing number of martyrdoms.
In his book entitled Witnesses
for Christ: Orthodox Christian Neomartyrs of the Ottoman Period, 1437-1860,[32]
Fr. Nomikos Michael Vaporis relates the stories of about 200 such
martyrdoms. Of these, 12 occurred
in the 15th century, 25 in the 16th century, 41 in the 17th
century, 57 in the 18th century, and 66 in the 19th
century.[33] It would be wonderful if we had time to
honor every one of these martyrs - people with names such as Michael the
Breadseller, Nicholas the Peddler, John the Cabinetmaker, Angelis the
Goldsmith, Nicholas the Baker’s Assistant, Markos the Student, John the
Apprentice Tailor, Chrestos the Boatman, Nicholas the Grocer, Apostolos the
Bartender, Argyre the Faithful Wife, Kristo the Gardener, George the Consulate
Employee, Anthony the Laborer, Hatzigeorge the Sandalmaker, Theodore the
Artist, Helen Bekiaris the Teenager, Constantine the Servant, Lazaros the Bulgarian
Shepherd, John the Farmer, Angeles the Physician, George Laskaris the Teacher,
Nektarios the Camel Attendant, Joan, Stamato, and Nikolla the Albanian
Merchants, and Anastasios and Demetrios the Basketweavers.
We are
immediately struck by the common professions of these presumably “average”
Orthodox Christians, some of whom may not have been particularly devout, but
who loved their Faith and their Church so much that at the moment of supreme
challenge, they were willing to be tortured, sometimes with excruciating agony,
and to die for their “sweetest Jesus,” who faithfully stood with them in their
martyric struggles.
This book includes the Lives
of five Muslims who converted to Orthodox Christianity in these years; few
Muslims converted, since apostasy from Islam meant the death sentence. However, as we will see in the Life of St. Arsenios of Cappadocia, a
number of Muslims believed secretly in Christ as their God and Savior - perhaps
quite a large number. Fr.
Vaporis’s book records the Lives of
quite a few more than five who converted to Islam - sometimes through force -
and then returned to their Faith in Christ.
In the introduction to his book, Fr. Vaporis summarizes the views
the martyrs had of Mohammed, Islam, and their Muslim neighbors. These views are typified in the
response made to the Turkish judge by the Monk Ignatios, from the famous Rila
Monastery in Bulgaria, who was martyred in Constantinople in 1814. Under duress, he had once promised some
Muslims that he would deny Christ, and now years later he has come to the
capital city and has declared to the judge his faith in Christ. The judge replies,
‘Man, stop this insanity and come to your senses. Think, if you persist in this, you will
suffer terrible torments, and in the end death. But you could receive from us many gifts, so you would have
plenty the rest of your life, and receive a high position. In this way we can all be proud of
you.’[34]
St. Ignatios
responds with these words:
Your gifts and position are short lived and I give them to
you. Your threats of torture and
death are not anything new, for I knew of them before I came here. In fact it is because of these that I
came - to die for my Christ who is the only eternal and immortal God, whose
gifts are also eternal and whose kingdom is heavenly, ineffable, and
immovable. Your false Prophet
Muhammad is a teacher of perdition, a friend of the devil, and an apostate of
God. His teaching is satanic, and
you unprofitable servants believed in him and are destined for hell unless you
believe in Christ the true God.[35]
St.
Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain (1748-1809), the great scholar who compiled the
Philokalia with St. Macarios of Corinth, was the first to collect, compile, and
edit the Lives of the New Martyrs
under the Turkish yoke. In his
martyrologion he addresses the inescapable question: “Why is God allowing us to
suffer so terribly under the Turks, even to the point of direct persecution and
martyrdom?” Fr. Vaporis summarizes
the five answers that St. Nikodemos gives to this question:
1), for the renewal of the whole of the Orthodox faith; 2) so that
those without faith might not have any defense on the day of Judgment; 3) so
that [the Neomartyrs] might be the glory and pride of the Eastern Church and
the censure and shame of the heterodox; 4) so that they [the Neomartyrs] might
serve as examples of patience for all of the Orthodox Christians who were being
tyrannized under the heavy yoke of enslavement; and 5) so that they [the
Neomartyrs] might stand as personifications of the sort of courage deserving of
imitation in the deeds of all Christians who may be forced by similar
circumstances to suffer martyrdom, but especially and particularly for those
who have previously denied the Orthodox faith.[36]
Here we see a clear example of how Christians, in times of
persecution in all ages, instinctively reaffirm that Christ is still the LORD
of History, and that He is allowing these things for the spiritual benefit of
His people - of the martyrs themselves, as they gain the highest honor
Christians can ever attain; and of the Church as a whole, through the
strengthening and edification that the heroic witness of the martyrs, and their
abiding presence in their relics, bring to their fellow Christians. Fr. Vaporis comments:
The eagerness and enthusiasm of Orthodox
Christians to acquire and even purchase from the Ottomans the relics of the
Neomartyrs is one indication of the high regard they had for those who
willingly suffered death rather than surrender their faith. The Muslims executed the Neomartyrs in
public to serve as an example for those who might be thinking of becoming
Orthodox Christians or reverting back to Orthodoxy, as the case might be. However, the public executions, I
believe, proved to have the opposite effect, as illustrated by the martyrdom of
Gennadios (+1722) in Berat, Albania.
His example of steadfast faith in Jesus Christ prevented the
Islamization of three Albanian community leaders who were ready to commit
themselves and their fellow villagers to Islam. In fact, the inhabitants of the three villages have remained
Orthodox Christians to the present day.[37]
Let
us look now at the extraordinary life of St. Kosmas the Aitolian (1714-1779),
who worked so tirelessly to help insure the survival of the Greek people and
their Orthodox Faith during the later years of the Turkokratia that he is known
as “Apostle of the Poor,” “Teacher of the Greek Nation,” and “Equal to the
Apostles.” Constantine Cavarnos,
an Orthodox scholar, says of him:
St. Cosmas Aitolos
is undoubtedly the greatest missionary of modern Greece, and may with good
reason be called the Father of the modern Greek nation. He played a role of supreme importance
in the moral and religious awakening and enlightenment of the Greeks during the
second half of the eighteenth century, and thus more than anyone else
inaugurated the modern Greek era.[38]
Born
in 1714 in northwestern Greece, St. Kosmas came from a humble family of
weavers, and received little formal education until the age of 20, when he
sought out a proper education for himself from different schools. From 1743 to 1760 he lived as a monk on
Mt. Athos, where he was ordained a priest. But during this time a bold idea kept stirring in his heart,
born of his burning love for his fellow Orthodox Christians languishing in
ignorance and stagnation under the oppressive yoke of the Ottoman Turks.
In 1760 he felt it was finally the time to leave Mt. Athos and go
out into the world, to teach and encourage and exhort the poor people of Greece
as an itinerant preacher. With the
blessing and encouragement of Patriarch Seraphim, and after him Patriarch
Sophronios II, both of Constantinople, he ended up spending most of the
remaining nineteen years of his life making three apostolic journeys throughout
northern Greece - to Constantinople, and up into Epiros (in northwestern
Greece) and Albania - and to quite a number of the Greek islands. He traveled mostly by foot, sometimes
followed by hundreds and even thousands of villagers.
The
situation among the Orthodox indeed seemed to be growing desperate. According to Fr. Vaporis, in his
valuable book on St. Kosmas, “In the eighteenth century the Orthodox Church was
faced with a growing number of defections among the poor and illiterate
Orthodox to Islam, especially in the areas of Albania and western Greece. There the Orthodox were under
especially severe social, economic, and religious pressures by the dominant
Moslems.”[39] At one point St. Kosmas exclaims,
“’there are thousands of villages where they have never the word of God, and
they are waiting for me.’”[40]
A
man of extreme humility, Fr. Kosmas once said to the people, "Not only am
I not worthy to teach you, but I am not even worthy to kiss your feet, for each
of you is worth more than the entire world."[41] He realized the personal spiritual
danger he faced by venturing out of the monastery for a life on the road, and
probably he was often asked why he, a monk, travels in the world. He once explained,
‘A monk can't be saved in any other way
except to escape far from the world . . . 'But,' you may say, 'you too are a
monk - why are you involved in the world?' I too, my brethren, do wrong. But because our race has fallen into ignorance, I said to
myself, 'let Christ lose me, one sheep, and let Him win the others.' Perhaps God's compassion and your
prayers will save me, too.’[42]
Even
more than the beneficial effect of his preaching and teaching among the people,
St. Kosmas was convinced that the most helpful thing to improve the condition
of his fellow Greeks was the establishment of church-schools, in which his
people could learn to read and write in Greek, to learn about their Greek
heritage, and to learn the basics of their Orthodox Faith. Even many of the priests had very
little education and were not properly educating the faithful.
As
he journeyed from village to village, he would explain the need for schools
quite graphically:
‘And just as Moses became educated, so should we become educated
so we’ll know God’s law. And if
you parents haven’t received an education, your children should. Can’t you see how savage our race has
become from ignorance? We’ve
become like animals. This is why I
counsel you to build schools so that you may understand the Holy Gospel and the
other books.’[43]
And again,
‘My beloved children in Christ, bravely and fearlessly preserve
our holy faith and the language of our Fathers, because both of these
characterize our most beloved homeland, and without them, our nation is
destroyed.’[44]
And again,
‘You too should study, my brethren; learn as much as you can. And if your fathers haven’t, educate
your children to learn Greek because our Church uses Greek. And if you don’t learn Greek, my
brethren, you can’t understand what our Church confesses. It is better, my brother, for you to
have a Greek school in your village rather than fountains and rivers, for when
your child is educated, then he is a human being. The school opens churches; the school opens monasteries.’[45]
And again,
‘Today, however, because of the dreadful state in which we find
ourselves due to our sins, such wise and virtuous men, who can preserve
unaffected our Orthodox brethren, are absent or at least extremely rare. For how can our nation be preserved
without harm in its religion and freedom when the sacred clergy is disastrously
ignorant of the meaning of the holy Scriptures . . . How can that flock be
preserved for very long? So, my
children of Parga, to safeguard your Faith and the freedom of your homeland,
take care to establish without fail a Greek school in which your children will
learn all that you are ignorant of.’[46]
We see in these quotations the very strong connection St. Kosmas
makes between the Orthodox Faith of the Greeks, and their ethnic identity
intimately associated with their Greek language and homeland. To him, it seems, the Faith and the
Nation are virtually one; they desperately need each other; the survival of
each depends on the other; they rise or fall together. Realizing this critical need of the
Greek Christians to cling to their Greek ethnicity for their very survival
under the Turks can very much help us, I think, to understand why so many of
our Greek Orthodox brethren here in America still have such a deep attachment
to their Greek heritage and language.
The Greeks were deeply moved by St. Kosmas’s message. Over 200 schools were established
directly through his efforts, and the renewed sense of pride in their nation
and their Faith that stirred in the next two generations very much helped lead
to the outbreak of the Greek Revolution on March 25, 1821, when Metropolitan
Germanos of Patras in the Peloponnesian Peninsula raised the standard of revolt
in open defiance of the Turks.
Before we leave St. Kosmas, let us attempt to ascertain how he
felt personally towards the Turks. Did he have love in his heart for them? Did he emphasize in his preaching the
need to love one’s enemies?
He preaches quite strongly and repeatedly about the need to love
God and one’s brother:
‘If we wish to live well here also, and to
go to paradise, and to call our God Love and Father, we should have two loves:
love for our God and for our brethren.
It is natural for us to have these two loves and unnatural not to have
them. . . . It is natural for us to love our brethren because we are of one nature,
we have one baptism, one faith, we receive the same holy sacraments, and we
hope to enjoy the same paradise. . . . Even if we perform thousands upon
thousands of good works, my brethren - fasts, prayers, almsgiving; and even if
we shed our blood for our Christ and we don’t have these two loves, but on the
contrary hatred and malice toward our brethren, all the good we have done is of
the devil and we go to hell.’[47]
But
it’s not clear at all from these quotations if this “love of one’s brother”
extends to the Turk living in the next town, or maybe even next door. In one of his teachings, as given in
Fr. Vaporis’s book, St. Kosmas does speak of the need to love and forgive one’s
enemies:
‘we who are pious Christians should love our enemies and should
forgive them. We should feed
them. We should give them
drink. We should pray to God for
their souls and then say to God, “My God, I beg You to forgive me as I forgive
my enemies.” But if we don’t
forgive our enemies, even if we shed our blood for the love of Christ, we’ll go
to hell. . . . if you wish God to forgive you of all your sins and to put you
in paradise, let your nobility say three times for your enemies: “May God
forgive and have mercy upon them.’[48]
And then a
bit later he adds,
‘So, my brethren, whoever has wronged any Christian, Jew or Turk,
return what you have taken unjustly because it is cursed and you’ll never get
ahead. What you have gained
unjustly you use to feed yourself, but it will cause your death and God will
put you in hell.’[49]
While St. Kosmas does not speak often about the Turks
specifically, he does seem to have been on quite good terms with them for the
most part. Less than five months
before his martyrdom, he declared in a letter to his brother Chrysanthos, “Ten
thousand Christians love me and one hates me; a thousand Turks love me and one
doesn’t; thousands of Jews want my death and one doesn’t.”[50] The reference to the Jews is most
likely because of St. Kosmas’s adamant preaching against the practice of
holding public markets and bazaars on Sundays, which apparently angered many
Jewish merchants.
Also in the last year of his life, he writes in a letter to a
Turkish judge:
‘Most glorious, most wise (may you live
many years) Lord Judge, I greet you and beseech the Holy God for your spiritual
and physical health and happiness.
I, my Lord, as a Christian and an unworthy
servant of the holy God and a slave of my emperor, Sultan Hamid [the reigning
Ottoman sultan], have been commanded by my patriarchs and bishops to travel about
and teach the Chrsitians to keep God’s commandments and to obey the divine
imperial commands.
Approaching your domain, it seemed proper
for me to greet you with this present humble letter and to seek your permission
to travel about your domain. I
await your command.
Stay well in the Lord. Your unworthy servant, Hieromonk
Kosmas.’[51]
Another
local Turkish ruler, Kurt Pasha,
hearing of his [Kosmas’s] good reputation, ordered him to appear
before him, and liked what he said so much that he made for him that throne
[really a collapsible footstool] which we mentioned earlier, and covered it
with silk, in order that he might go upon it and teach the people from an
elevated place.[52]
Dr. Cavarnos
states in general, “Not only Christians, but Mohammedans also regarded him as a
Saint [even during his lifetime], because of his inspiring sermons, his
impeccable character, and the miraculous events which occurred at many places
that he visited.”[53]
Ironically,
St. Kosmas was martyred - on August 24, 1779, near Berat, Albania - at the
order of the same Kurt Pasha who had made the silk-covered footstool for
him. Kurt Pasha had believed the
slander of some Jews against the Saint; afterwards he greatly regretted what he
had done.
As
another indication of the great respect many of the Turks had for St. Kosmas,
the first church and monastery built in his memory was constructed at the order
of the Turkish governor of Albania, Ali Pasha, in the year 1814. Ali Pasha personally contributed to the
project; he also had the Saint’s skull covered with silver.
And also before we leave St. Kosmas, can we discern in his
teachings his answer to the question of why the Good Lord had allowed the
Turkish conquest of the Greek nation?
We did hear him say above that it was “due to our sins.”[54] He also asserted on at
least one
occasion:
‘Three hundred years after the
Resurrection of our Christ, God sent St. Constantine who established a
Christian kingdom. The Christians
held it for one thousand, one hundred and fifty years. Then God took it away from the
Christians and brought the Turks and gave it to them for our own good. They’ve held it for three hundred and
twenty years. Why did God bring the
Turks and not another race? For
our own good, because the other nations would have harmed our faith, while the
Turk will do anything you want if you give him money.[55]
For a more detailed response to the
question, Why did God allow the Turks to conquer the Byzantine Empire and rule
over the Greeks for centuries?, let us turn now to the Life of St. Gregory V, the Patriarch of Constantinople
who had to face the wrath of the Turks at the time of the outbreak of the Greek
Revolution. He had long viewed
with deep misgivings the rise of the revolutionary movement, fueled as it was
in great degree by Enlightenment ideas, the French Revolution of 1789, and the
Napoleonic Wars which brought the French right to the border of the Ottoman
realm in the northwest Balkans.
Handbills, secret societies, and guns poured across the border.
None of these things could be easily accommodated with Orthodoxy,
and as much as Patriarch Gregory V, like all the Greeks, yearned in his heart
for the end of the Turkish overlordship, as a responsible pastor and protector
of his flock he simply could not openly encourage such revolutionary
fervor. Besides, he had promised,
as had all the Patriarchs since St. Gennadios II, his personal loyalty to the
Ottoman government, and had acknowledged his responsibility to keep his people
loyal as well. Several revolts had
broken out in previous years; each one had been ruthlessly crushed. How could he encourage another such
revolt which most probably would also end in ghastly reprisals from the Turks? And the shockingly anti-clerical tenor
of the French Revolution was particularly disconcerting.
So I think it is quite understandable that as Patriarch of
Constantinople in 1798, St. Gregory V promulgates among all his flock a
pastoral letter called The Paternal
Exhortation. Sir Steven
Runciman summarizes this remarkable document:
The
Paternal Exhortation
opens by thanking God for the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, at a time
when Byzantium had begun to slip into heresy [we recall the Union Agreement at
the Council of Florence, in 1439].
The victory of the Turks and the tolerance that they showed to their
Christian subjects were the means for preserving Orthodoxy. Good Christians should therefore be
content to remain under Turkish rule.
Even the Ottoman restriction on the building of churches, which the
author realized might be hard to explain as beneficial, is excused by the
remark that Christians should not indulge in the vainglorious pastime of
erecting fine buildings; for the true Church is not made by hands, and there
will be splendour enough in Heaven.
After denouncing the illusory attractions of political freedom, ‘an
enticement of the Devil and a murderous poison destined to push the people into
disorder and destruction,’ the author ends with a poem bidding the faithful to
pay respect to the Sultan, whom God had set in authority over them.[56]
Col. 3:1-3 - “If then you were raised with Christ, seek
those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of
God. Set your mind [or affections]
on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died [or are dead], and you life is hidden with
Christ is God.”
Phil. 3:20 - “For our citizenship is in heaven.”
When
Alexander Ypsilantis initiated a revolt in Romania on March 6, 1821, this
action was condemned in the harshest terms by Patriarch Gregory V and the Holy
Synod of Bishops. David Brewer,
author of an important new book entitled The
Greek War of Independence, summarizes the official Church’s response:
The Orthodox Church’s anathema
against Ipsilantis’ revolt [was] signed by the Patriarch and twenty-two other
bishops. The anathema specifically
named Ipsilantis and Michael Soutos, and was in savage terms. The powers that be were ordained by
God, it declared, and whoever objected to this empire, which was vouchsafed to
them by God, rebelled against God’s command. Ipsilantis and Soutos were therefore guilty of ‘a foul,
impious and foolish work,’ which had provoked ‘the exasperation of our
benevolent powerful Empire against our compatriots and fellow subjects,
hastening to bring common and general ruin on the whole nation.’ All church and secular leaders were to
shun the rebels and do all they could to undermine the rebellion. As for the rebels themselves, ‘may they
be excommunicated and be cursed and be not forgiven and be anathematized after
death and suffer for all eternity.’[57]
But
a few weeks later, when the news reached Constantinople that Germanos, a
metropolitan of the Church, had raised the standard of revolt at a monastery in
southern Greece, St. Gregory and the Synod of Bishops could not find it in
their hearts to condemn what he had done.
Perhaps they realized it was too late anyway. Prominent Greeks in the government and business community
were already being executed in retribution.
Within
about a week it was Holy Pascha.
St. Gregory was allowed to celebrate the Feast of Feasts, and then on
that Sunday morning, he was hanged from the clasp fastening the central doors
of the Patriarchal residence.
Runciman reports:
Two metropolitans and twelve
bishops followed him to the gallows.
Then it was the turn of the laymen. First the Grand Dragoman, Mouroussi, and his brother, then
all the leading Phanariots. By the
summer of 1821 the great houses of the Phanar were empty.[58]
As
we know, the Greek Revolution did bring freedom to central and southern Greece
by 1829. Northern Greece would not
be freed until the early 20th century, with the Balkan Wars and
World War I. But to this day,
Turkey controls the ancient province of Thrace in Europe, and of course,
Constantinople - called by the Turks Istanbul.
For
a closer glimpse at interactions between Greeks and Turks living together under
the dominion of the Ottomans, the life of St. Arsenios of Cappadocia (c.
1840-1924) is very illuminating.
He was a monk-priest who, something like St. Kosmas the Aitolian, chose
to live in the world to help his fellow Greeks - and as it happened - to help
his Muslim neighbors as well. He
lived in a humble dwelling in the town of Farosa in southeastern Asia Minor, a
Christian enclave surrounded by Turks.
There was no doctor in the area, so when people got sick, they would
come to the holy elder for healing.
No matter whether they were Christians or Muslims, he would hold the
holy Gospel Book over the head of the afflicted one, read a portion from it,
and more often than not the person departed healed.
I would like to read one portion of
this book that tells the story of a Turkish secret Christian, of which there
may well have been many in the years of the Turkokratia, and there may be many
among the Muslims of the world in our own day. READ pp. 142-145.
To conclude my presentation, I
would like to briefly mention a modern-day Apostle, the founder of the Orthodox
Church in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation in the world. Fr. Daniel Byantoro was raised as a
strict Muslim, taught never to associate with Christians, since all the
Christians were doomed to hell.
And yet, through all the seemingly impenetrable barriers, Christ broke
through to the heart and mind and soul of this young man, who was about 15
years old at the time.
He had had a teacher in elementary
school who had since become a Christian.
This man invited Daniel to come into his home for a visit. Not knowing the man had become a
Christian, he went. In the course
of their evening together, Mr. Katamsi gently and clearly explained the basic
beliefs of Christianity. Daniel
rejected what he heard, and even seemed to get the better of things during the
theological discussion that ensued.
Basically the same thing happened again when Mr. Katamsi came to visit
at Daniel’s home a about a week later - out of respect for his elder, he felt
he had to let him in. Daniel would
write later, “I became more convinced of the truth of Islam, and the
waywardness of Christianity.” But
deep inside his mind and soul, seeds of Gospel Truth had been planted.
After about three months, as he
would write later,
READ p. 10m-b, from his unpublished
autobiography entitled, Christ Has Caught
Me: From Muhammad to Christ.
Daniel Byantoro first worshipped
Christ in the Presbyterian church where Mr. Katamsi attended; then he became
part of the dramatic charismatic revival sweeping parts of Indonesia. But that also left him unfulfilled and
dissatisfied, and finally the LORD brought him into the Holy Orthodox
Church. He came to America,
attended Holy Cross Seminary, was ordained as an Orthodox priest, and in 1988
returned to Indonesia to establish the first Orthodox Church there in history.