page_title: Timeline of Orthodoxy in Greece (1453–1821)
section_title: Ottoman rule (1453–1821)
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of Orthodoxy in Greece (1453–1821) / Ottoman rule (1453–1821)
caption_attribution_description: Holy Liturgy
context_page_description: This is a timeline of the presence of Orthodoxy in Greece. The history of Greece traditionally encompasses the study of the Greek people, the areas they ruled historically, as well as the territory now composing the modern state of Greece.
  Christianity was first brought to the geographical area corresponding to modern Greece by the Apostle Paul, although the church's apostolicity also rests upon St. Andrew who preached the gospel in Greece and suffered martyrdom in Patras, Titus, Paul's companion who preached the gospel in Crete where he became bishop, Philip who, according to the tradition, visited and preached in Athens, Luke the Evangelist who was martyred in Thebes, Lazarus of Bethany, Bishop of Kition in Cyprus, and John the Theologian who was exiled on the island of Patmos where he received the Revelation recorded in the last book of the New Testament. In addition, the Theotokos is regarded as having visited the Holy Mountain in 49 AD according to tradition. Thus Greece became the first European area to accept the gospel of Christ. Towards the end of the 2nd century the early apostolic bishoprics had developed into metropolitan sees in the most important cities.
context_section_description: "The fifteenth-century Ottoman Empire reunited the Roman Orthodox as subjects of their patriarch in Constantinople. Yet it was not the Byzantine Empire in disguise. Even though Mehmed the Conqueror resettled Constantinople as the centre of the Roman Orthodox world, he was even more effective in making it the capital of an Islamic empire." The privileges given to the Greek Church by Mehmed, in 1453, were able to save only a part of Byzantine Christendom from Islamization and Turkification, and most of those who remained Christians (and Greeks) accepted the unenviable fate of the rayas. Pressure to convert and the insecurity of Christian life produced widespread Crypto-Christianity in various regions, and there were also forced conversions and neo-martyrs. In practice, Greeks were forbidden to build or furnish churches, to carry arms or to dress like Moslems. However following the example of Byzantine emperors, the Sultans hastened to ratify the ownership of land by the Church and by monasteries and renewed their privileges. British historian Sir Steven Runciman has written also that although it was Orthodoxy that preserved Hellenism throughout the dark centuries, without the moral force of Hellenism Orthodoxy itself might have withered.
  1454 Accession of Gennadius Scholarius as Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople (1454–56 and 1464–65), confirmed by Mehmed the Conqueror, who invested him with the signs of his office – the crosier (dikanikion) and mantle, and confirmed the Patriarch's ancient privileges; in following the Islamic doctrine which enjoined tolerance towards Christians and Jews as "People of the Book," the religious Head of the Greek Church became also Ethnarch (Greek: ἐθνάρχης), thus establishing the Rūm millet (millet-i Rûm), or "Roman nation," the name of the Orthodox Christian community  within the Ottoman Empire; the Great School of the Nation is established in Constantinople under the direction of Greek Renaissance scholar Mathaeos Kamariotis, as a continuation of the University of Constantinople after the Fall of Constantinople.
  1456–1458 Fall of Athens to the Ottoman Turks under Turahanoğlu Ömer Bey.
  1456–1587 Byzantine Church of Theotokos Pammakaristos became the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
  1460 Parthenon Cathedral dedicated to the Mother of God, is turned into a mosque on the sultan's order.
  1461 In July, the Byzantine general Graitzas Palaiologos honourably surrendered Salmeniko Castle, the last garrison of the Despotate of the Morea, to the invading forces of the Ottoman Empire after a year-long siege; on 15 August, the Empire of Trebizond, the last major Romano-Greek outpost, fell to the Ottoman Empire under Mehmed II, after a 21-day siege, bringing to a final end the Byzantine–Ottoman Wars.
  1462 Death of Matrona of Chios.
  1463 Demolition of the Byzantine Church of the Holy Apostles (which had served as a site of Byzantine imperial ceremony), then under Venetian rule, to make way for construction of the Fatih Mosque; Greek scholar and pro-unionist Basilios Bessarion, formerly an Orthodox Metropolitan, later becoming a Roman Catholic Cardinal, is given the purely ceremonial title of Latin Patriarch of Constantinople by Pope Pius II.
  1472 Decrees of the Council of Ferrara-Florence are repudiated by a Council of Contantinople; marriage of Ivan III of Russia to Princess Zoe-Sophia Palaiologina, a niece of Constantine XI, the last Byzantine emperor, leading to the doctrine of Moscow as the Third Rome.
  1480 Patriarch Maximus III wrote to the Doge of Venice asking for an end to the persecution of Orthodox clergy and for permission to collect a special levy for the patriarch.
  1489–1571 Church of Cyprus is subordinated to the Venetian rule, which ends with the siege and capture of Nicosia and Famagusta by the Ottomans.
  1494 The Aldine Press is set up in Venice by the Italian humanist, printer and publisher Aldo Manuzio, becoming the greatest international force in spreading the Venetian study of Greek, including the great masterpieces of Antiquity, as well as the works of later Greek writers, the
caption: The Divine Liturgy. Michael Damaskinos, 16th century.
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