Book Review
The Orthodox Church and Independent Greece 1821-1852 by Charles Frazee
Cambridge University Press. 1969
This book is an excellent companion piece to Steven Runciman’s “The Great Church in Captivity” (reviewed here https://thedoubleheadedeagle.blog/?p=1360) which was published one year earlier. Observers of present day ecclesiastical affairs in Constantinople, Greece, and Ukraine may be reminded of events that are presently playing out in our own day. From the inception of Greek independence the great powers began interfering in the internal affairs of Greece.
From the very beginning the western power of the day (in this case Great Britain) meddled unceasingly in Greek Church affairs. Frazee’s book recounts the problems that arose when the Church of Greece was declared “autocephalous” from the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1833. It is easy to forget that the Patriarchate has had legitimate grievances. Indeed, the autocephaly of the Church of Greece from Constantinople was uncanonical in 1833 much like the “autocephaly” that Patriarch Bartholomew attempted to bestow to Ukrainian schismatics in 2018 was uncanonical.
There are many ironies regarding the position that Constantinople finds itself in today and the position it found itself in during the period of 1833 to 1850. Constantinople today is the aggressor against the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church whereas in 1833 the Ecumenical Patriarchate was the victim of the western powers. There is also one identical cause both for the schism that took place between the Greeks in 1833-1850 and for the schism that has taken place in the Orthodox Church today and that is Russophobia.
It has been forgotten by everybody that the Ecumenical Patriarchate was allied with and was supported by the Russians during the nineteenth century. It is for this reason that the British and the German advisors to the Bavarian (Roman Catholic) King that was imposed on Greece demanded the autocephaly of the Church of Greece. One of those German advisors at the court of the young King Otho was Georg Von Maurer. Frazee writes,
“A second danger was seen by Maurer in the threat of Russia to Greece. It was obvious to all, according to him, that Russia was interested in expansion at the expense of the Ottomans and that the Orthodox populations in the Balkans could be used by that country as a means to reach her goal. Many of the Greek clergy were devoted to Russia and would support Russian ambitions in this area. The Tsar could easily use the patriarchal appointments as a means to control the Greek church, Maurer contended, so that the only way for the new state of Greece to withstand this pressure would be to have a synod independent of Constantinople”.
This assertion of the German Georg Von Maurer has been echoed in our own day by American officials such as “Ambassador” to Greece Geoffrey Pyatt who likewise accuses the Russians of attempting to control the Orthodox Church. The hypocrisy of western officials is identical. Von Maurer and his colleagues in Greece proceeded to do to the Church of Greece exactly what they were accusing the Russians of doing! Outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo along with “Ambassador” Pyatt instigated the schism in Orthodoxy by interfering in internal ecclesiastical matters for political purposes and did exactly what they were accusing the Russians of doing!
One crucial difference between the Church crisis then and the Church crisis now has to do with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The Church of Constantinople then was the victim of an injustice and Patriarch Anthimos IV who presided over the Church of Constantinople was a pious and holy man who would be known as a defender of Orthodoxy and whose signature appeared on the famous encyclical of 1848 that refuted Papal claims. Patriarch Bartholomew today claims Papal like authority and has colluded in the dismemberment of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Following the declaration of “autocephaly” for the Church of Greece in 1833, an anti ecclesiastical campaign was undertaken by the German King and his advisors. Over four hundred Greek Monasteries were closed. The septuagaint version of the Old Testament was prohibited, Byzantine style iconography was banned and replaced by western religious “art”, and Churches were built in a Protestant style without the Byzantine domes.
An Orthodox reader of this book is sure to be outraged as I was when I first read it back in the early 1990’s. It is perplexing to see how it is that today’s hierarchs in Constantinople and Greece seem to have either forgotten the unpleasant history of 1833 to 1850, or are simply ignoring it. The similarities between what transpired then in Greece, and what is now happening in Ukraine are unmistakable.
In the name of anti Russian hysteria, the Orthodox Church is being exploited and used as a political prop by the godless western elites just as the Church was used in the nineteenth century to undermine the Russians. In the nineteenth century, there was Greek opposition to what was happening, just as there have been signs of opposition in Greece to the recognition of the Ukrainian schismatics by the Greek synod at the behest of the American Department of State.
In the nineteenth century, a great monk by the name of Christophoros Papoulakos openly preached against the Roman Catholic King and his advisors. In recent months, Greek faithful in the city of Patras defended their beloved Cathedral of Saint Andrew which contains the relics of the holy apostle by preventing visiting “bishops” from the schismatic entity in Ukraine from concelebrating the liturgy.
The Frazee book is an excellent book that deserves to be reexamined by all Orthodox Christians (especially Greeks) in light of the present crimes being perpetrated against the Orthodox Church by the great western power of the day.