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Orthodox Church of Constantinople, honorary primacy of the Eastern Orthodox autocephalous (ecclesiastically independent) churches; it is also known as the “ecumenical patriarchate” or “Roman” patriarchate (Turkish Rum patriarkhanesi).
According to a legend of the late 4th century, the bishopric of Byzantium was founded by St. Andrew, and his disciple Stachys was traditionally the first bishop (38—54). Soon after Constantine the Great transferred the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Byzantium (330), renamed Constantinople and New Rome, its bishopric was elevated to an arch- bishopric, The metropolitan of Heraclea, to whom Byzantium had formerly been subject, now came under the jurisdiction of Constantinople. In 381 the first Council of Constantinople recognized that the bishop of Constantinople, “being now the New Rome,” had rights equal to those of the bishop of Rome, This position was then ratified by the Council of Chalcedon (451), which assigned to his jurisdiction a large area in both eastern Europe and Asia Minor. In the 6th century the official title of the bishop became “archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, and ecumenical patriarch.” The successful territorial conquests of the Muslims begun in the 7th century helped augment the spiritual power of the ecumenical patriarchate; the Eastern patriarchs of the conquered sees were often forced into exile and became residents of the capital, where their successors over a long period were selected by the ecumenical patriarch.
The exaltation of Constantinople was not agreeable to Rome, yet the ecumenical patriarch never claimed to be a nval of the bishop of Rome. In the 9th century the two great sees were divided by a schism over the patriarch Photius. Although this was temporarily healed, theological and political differences continued until, in 1054, the final break was made under the patriarch Michael Cerularius. After the capture of Constantinople by the Latins in the Fourth Crusade (1204), the ecumenical patriarchate was transferred to Nicaea (1206), but Emperor Michael VIII Paleologus restored it to Constantinople when he retook the city in 1261. The city fell to the Turks in 1453, becoming the capital of the Muslim Ottoman Empire. The Sublime Porte (Ottoman government), however, recognized the ecumenical patriarch Gennadius II as the ethnarch of the conquered Orthodox peoples and with increased authority over the territories of the Eastern patriarchates and over the Balkan countries, as well as farther afield.
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This power began to decline when Jerernias II declared the patriarchate of Moscow autocephalous (1593) and continued to do so in the 19th and 20th centuries, when national churches in Greece (1833), Romania (1865), Serbia (1879), Bulgaria (1870), and Albania (1937) became in their turn autocephalous. The number of dioceses subject to Constantinople was further reduced in 1922, when about 1,500,000 Greek inhabitants of Asia Minor and Thrace were transferred to Greece, whose church had been autocephalous since 1833. This left few Christians in Asia Minor. The territory directly subject to the patriarch and his synod in Turkey is confined to the archdiocese of Constantinople itself, with four suburban dioceses of Chalcedon, Terkos, BUyUkada, and the islands of Imroz and Bozcaada. In Greece the patriarch still has jurisdiction over the monastic state of Mt. Athos, the monastery of St. John the Divine on Patmos, four bishoprics in the Dodecanese, and the autonomous church of Crete. The archbishoprics and metropolitanates of Europe, North and South America, Australia and New Zealand, and India are also dependent on the patriarch of Constantinople.
Since 1586 the patriarchate has been located in the Phanar, the northern section of Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), having lost both its cathedral of Hagia Sophia and its historic quarter to the Muslims. The small church of St. George serves as the cathedral for the patriarch, who must be a Turkish citizen, born in Turkey, and elected by the synod of metropolitans. The Turkish government considers the patriarchate as serving the religious needs of Greeks in Istanbul only, thereby limiting the international activities of the patriarchate. A historic step in church reunion movements, however, was taken in January 1964, when the ecumenical patriarch, Athenagoras I, who died July 7, 1972, and Pope Paul VI met and embraced in Jerusalem. Tension between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus, along with Athenagoras’ interfaith interests, which to the Turks appeared political in intent, have combined to make the position of the ecumenical patriarchate in Turkey uneasy.
