The received wisdom about the nature of the Greek Orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire is that Sultan Mehmed II re-established the Patriarchate of Constantinople as both a political and a religious authority to govern the post-Byzantine Greek community. However, relations between the Church hierarchy and Turkish masters extend further back in history, and closer scrutiny of these relations reveals that the Church hierarchy in Anatolia had long experience dealing with Turkish emirs. Decried as scandalous, these arrangements became the modus vivendi bishops in the Turkish emirates. Primarily co ... More

The received wisdom about the nature of the Greek Orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire is that Sultan Mehmed II re-established the Patriarchate of Constantinople as both a political and a religious authority to govern the post-Byzantine Greek community. However, relations between the Church hierarchy and Turkish masters extend further back in history, and closer scrutiny of these relations reveals that the Church hierarchy in Anatolia had long experience dealing with Turkish emirs. Decried as scandalous, these arrangements became the modus vivendi bishops in the Turkish emirates. Primarily concerned with the economic arrangements between the Ottoman state and the institution of the Greek Orthodox Church from the mid-fifteenth to the sixteenth century, this book argues that the Ottoman state considered the Greek Orthodox ecclesiastical hierarchy essentially as tax farmers (mültezim) for cash income derived from the Church’s widespread holdings. The Ottoman state granted individuals the right to take their positions as hierarchs in return for yearly payments to the state. Relying on members of the Greek economic elite (archons) to purchase the ecclesiastical tax farm (iltizam), hierarchical positions became subject to the same forces of competition that other Ottoman administrative offices faced. This book allows us to consider internal Greek Orthodox communal concerns, but from within the larger Ottoman social and economic context. It challenges the long-established concept of the “millet system,” the historical model in which religious leader served both a civil as well as a religious authority.