A Patriarch’s Progress: The Great Church under Grigórios VI

Abstract

On 13 July 1837, as part of his journeys through the Near East in search of rare Greek manuscripts, the English scholar and adventurer Robert Curzon obtained an audience from the patriarch of Constantinople. His particular object was to obtain permission to tour the monasteries of Mt Athos, but Curzon was also keen to meet a prelate who was simultaneously the highest- ranking figure in the Orthodox Church and the most important non- Muslim official in the Ottoman Empire. As leader of the ‘Nation of the Romans’ (in Turkish, Rum Millet- i; in Greek, Éthnos ton Romaíon), Patriarch Grigórios VI Fourtouniádis exercised broad temporal authority over almost one- third of the sultan’s subjects, while as a ‘pasha of three horse- tails’ he enjoyed a rank among Ottoman servitors almost on par with the grand vizier himself.² Curzon did not wish to meet such an eminent personage without credentials, so he brought along several friends from the British embassy and a letter of recommendation from the archbishop of Canterbury.

For our heart is sorely afflicted and sawn asunder, after the many efforts that we have not failed to expend since the day of our elevation to this most holy Ecumenical height by the grace of God, to see the insane wickedness of the arch- villain Satan as embold- ened as ever. Misbelieving heretics have belligerently fomented an undeclared war against the Orthodox ecumene in recent years, assailing it like a torrent …¹

— Encyclical to the Bishops of the Ionian Islands, 1838