scholarly journals Conflicting Visions of the Jesuit Missions to the Ottoman Empire, 1609–1628

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adina Ruiu
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Missionary Work ◽  
The Core ◽  
Jesuit Missions ◽  
Temporary Suspension ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Jesuit Mission

Beginning in 1609, as a result of the Capitulations concluded between France and the Ottoman Empire, the French Jesuits launched their missionary work in Istanbul. Protected by the French ambassador, the French Jesuits defined themselves as both French subjects and Catholic missionaries, thus experiencing in a new and complicated geopolitical context the tensions that were at the core of their order’s identity in France, as elsewhere in Europe. The intricate story of the French Jesuit mission to the Ottoman Empire is here considered through two snapshots. One focuses on the foundational period of the mission in Istanbul, roughly from 1609 to 1615. A second one deals with the temporary suspension of the Jesuits’ mission in Istanbul in 1628. These two episodes illustrate multilayered and lasting tensions between the French and the Venetians, between the hierarchy of the Greek Orthodox Church and Western missionaries, and between missionaries belonging to different Catholic orders, between the Roman church’s centralism and state-funded religious initiatives. Based on missionary and diplomatic correspondence, the article is an attempt to reconstitute the way in which multiple allegiances provided expedient tools for individual Jesuit missionaries to navigate conflicts and to assert their own understanding of their missionary vocation.

The ‘Dosografa’ church in the treaty of Küçük Kaynarca

1979 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-52
Author(s):  
Roderic H. Davison
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
Turkish Text ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church

By the treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774, which marked a disastrous defeat of the Ottoman empire by Russia, the Russians were accorded the right to build a church in Istanbul, in the Galata quarter. The treaty further specified that the church was to be under the protection of the Russian minister, who could make representations concerning it to the Sublime Porte. This church, and the Russian right to protect it and to make representations about it, furnished much of the basis on which Russian governments, in later years, built a claim to a broader right to protect the Greek Orthodox Church, even the Greek Orthodox people, in the Sultan's domains. The claims were exaggerated, but since the church in Istanbul was to be ‘of the Greek ritual’, as article 14 of the treaty said, the connexion seemed logical. The Turkish text of the treaty, however, as Cevdet Pasa reproduces it in his history, makes no mention of a church ‘of the Greek ritual’. Instead, his article 14 specifies that this church is to be called the dusugrafa or dosografa church ().

Revealing the invisible: The virus is looking at you

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-87
Author(s):  
Garry Barker
Keyword(s):  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
Human History ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Demonic Possession ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
The Core ◽  
Information Leaflets ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
The Invisible

At the core of the various messages that have been sent out about the Coronavirus is how to deal with an invisible threat. Revealing the invisible is however an ancient issue, one that goes back thousands of years and reoccurs throughout human history. This article is an exploration of the complex interrelationship between several long-standing visual tropes that over historical time have emerged from various cultures in response to a need to communicate invisible forces. Beginning with reflections on the poster for the International Hygiene Exhibition of 1911 held in Dresden, linking in images of an Egyptian sun god, via extramission theory and thoughts about the first drawings done through a handheld, lens-focused microscope by Robert Hooke, a series of links and interconnections are made that explore how the invisible has been represented and how the invisible virus can be read as a type of ‘dark star’ or anti-sun. Christian traditions of the use of unnatural colour to signify both invisible power and demonic possession and the way the Coronavirus has itself been depicted are compared to historical visual tropes such as the aureola and the mandorla as used in the Greek Orthodox Church to depict sacred moments that transcend time and space. From Buddhist and Christian uses of halos via images of sea-mines, a complex series of interconnections are revealed that are now being tapped into by Government-sanctioned information leaflets relating to the Coronavirus outbreak.

The Greek Orthodox Church in America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
The United States ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Language ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
American Institution ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
Language Schools ◽  
Greek Immigrants ◽  
The Church

This sweeping history shows how the Greek Orthodox Church in America has functioned as much more than a religious institution, becoming the focal point in the lives of the country's million-plus Greek immigrants and their descendants. Assuming the responsibility of running Greek-language schools and encouraging local parishes to engage in cultural and social activities, the church became the most important Greek American institution and shaped the identity of Greeks in the United States. The book digs into these traditional activities, highlighting the American church's dependency on the “mother church,” the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the use of Greek language in the Sunday liturgy. Today, as this rich biography of the church shows us, Greek Orthodoxy remains in between the Old World and the New, both Greek and American.

The Challenges for an American Greek Orthodoxy

2020 ◽  
pp. 203-227
Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff
Keyword(s):  
Small Town ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
Orthodox Christian ◽  
Evangelical Protestantism ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
Conference Center ◽  
Western Pennsylvania

This chapter draws attention to Ligonier, a small town in western Pennsylvania with a population of about fifteen hundred that served as an unlikely site for where the future of Greek Orthodoxy in America would be decided. It describes Ligonier as a home to the Antiochian Village and Conference Center, which is administered by the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of America. The chapter discusses the Antiochian Church, which had begun its existence in America under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church and had suffered internal divisions similar to those that Greek Orthodoxy faced in the 1920s. It investigates how the Antiochian Church was unified under the jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch based in Damascus, Syria. It also highlights the Arab Orthodox immigrants that were members of the Antiochian Church and explains how they admitted a number of converts from evangelical Protestantism in the 1980s.

Assimilation and Respectability in the 1950s

2020 ◽  
pp. 95-114
Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Postwar America ◽  
Religious Identification ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines the Greek Orthodox Church against the background of the 1950s. It highlights the rise in religiosity and the upward social mobility of the Greek American second generation. It also explains how the Greek Orthodox church, which was on the margins of conversations about religion in America, found ways to become more relevant and somewhat mainstream. The chapter analyzes the unexpected development and importance of the Eastern Orthodox Churches to the Cold War policies of the United States. It also looks into the combination of powerful causes, such as the Cold War, social dislocation in suburbia, anxieties of the atomic age, and deliberate religious marketing that led to a remarkable spread of religious identification in postwar America.

Church and Patriarchate and the Limits of Americanization

2020 ◽  
pp. 228-246
Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
New Era ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
The Church

This chapter focuses on the state of Greek Orthodoxy in America at the end of the twentieth century. It assesses whether the Church under Archbishop Iakovos overreached in its efforts to Americanize, which alienated the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It analyzes the patriarchate's intervention, which illustrated the administrative limits the Greek Orthodox Church in America faces in its efforts to assimilate. The chapter describes the patriarchate's ability to invoke the transnational character of Orthodoxy in the new era of globalization. It explores the end of the evolution of Greek Orthodoxy into some form of American Orthodoxy through its fusion with the other Eastern Orthodox Churches.

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