page_title: Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople
section_title: Fall of Constantinople in 1453 and Ottoman period
hierarchical_section_title: Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople / History / Fall of Constantinople in 1453 and Ottoman period
caption_attribution_description: English: Gennadios Scholarios with Mehmet II
context_page_description: The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople is one of the fourteen to sixteen autocephalous churches that together compose the Eastern Orthodox Church. It is headed by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, currently Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople.
  Because of its historical location as the capital of the former Eastern Roman Empire and its role as the mother church of most modern Orthodox churches, Constantinople holds a special place of honor within Orthodoxy and serves as the seat for the Ecumenical Patriarch, who enjoys the status of primus inter pares among the world's Eastern Orthodox prelates and is regarded as the representative and spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians.
  The Ecumenical Patriarchate promotes the expansion of the Christian faith and Orthodox doctrine, and the Ecumenical Patriarchs are involved in ecumenism and interfaith dialogue, charitable work, and the defense of Orthodox Christian traditions.
context_section_description: After Constantinople was overrun by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Patriarchate came to care more directly for all the Orthodox living in the Ottoman Empire. Mehmed II appointed Gennadios II Scholarios as the Patriarch in 1454 and designated him as the spiritual leader as well as the ethnarch or, in Turkish, milletbashi of all the Orthodox Christians in the Empire, regardless of ethnic origin; not only Greeks, but also Bulgarians, Serbs, Albanians, Wallachians, Moldavians, Croatis, Syrians, orthodox Arabs, Georgians and Lazs came under the spiritual, administrative, fiscal, cultural and legal jurisdiction of the Patriarchate. Some of the other patriarchs came at various points to live permanently in Constantinople and function as part of the local church government. This situation, according to some of the Orientalists and historians, shows the Pax Ottomana (or Pax Ottomanica, literally "the Ottoman Peace").
  The Russian Orthodox Church, which for centuries had been a diocese of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, declared its independence in 1448 shortly before Constantinople fell owing to its protest over the Council of Florence, in which representatives of the patriarchate had signed onto union with Rome, trading doctrinal concessions for military aid against the encroaching Ottomans. The military aid never came and those concessions were subsequently repudiated by the patriarchate but, from 1448, the Russian church came to function independently. Within decades after the Fall of Constantinople to Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire on 29 May 1453, some were nominating Moscow as the "Third Rome", or the "New Rome". In 1589, 141 years later, Constantinople came to recognize Russia's independence and led the Orthodox Church in declaring Russia also to be a patriarchate, numbering Moscow's bishop as fifth in rank behind the ancient patriarchates. The Russian Orthodox Church became the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world.
  As Ottoman rule weakened, various parts of the Orthodox Church that had been under the direct influence of the Ecumenical Patriarchate came to be independent. These churches at first usually declared their independence without universal approval, which came after Constantinople gave its blessing. The rate at which these new autocephalous ("self-headed") churches came into being increased in the 19th century, particularly with the independence of Greece.
  In 1833, the Church of Greece declared its autocephaly, which was subsequently recognized by the patriarchate in 1850. In 1865, the Romanian Orthodox Church, against the protests of Constantinople, declared its independence, which was acknowledged in 1885. A year before Greece's autocephaly was self-proclaimed, the Serbian Orthodox Church was named autocephalous by the local secular government but Constantinople refused recognition until 1879. In 1860 the Bulgarians de facto seceded from the Great Church; in 1870 the Bulgarian church was politically recognized as autonomous under the name Bulgarian Exarchate by the Sultan's firman, but it was not until 1945 that it was recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In 1922, the Albanian Orthodox Church declared its autocephaly, being granted recognition of it in 1937.
  In addition to these churches, whose territory had been agreed upon by all as within Constantinople's jurisdiction, several other disputed areas' Orthodox churches have had recognition by the Ecumenical Patriarchate as either autocephalous or autonomous, including the Finnish Orthodox Church and Estonian Orthodox Church in 1923, the Polish Orthodox Church in 1924, and the Czech and Slovak Orthodox Church in 1998. The majority of these disputes are a result of the expansion of the Russian Empire, which often included a subjugation of the Orthodox churches in conquered lands to the Moscow Patriarchate. Due to this, the Moscow Patriarchate often disputes the Ecumenical Patriarch's role as prime representative and spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, citing that it represents the numerically largest Orthodox community.
caption: Patriarch Gennadios with Mehmet II
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