The Apostolic Significance of the
Church of Constantinople
The Apostles were sent by Christ to proclaim the Gospel of salvation to all nations. Remarkably, they succeeded in spreading Christianity throughout the whole world, despite persecution and unfavorable external conditions, through the power of the Holy Spirit, in a very short period of time.
The Apostle Andrew, the First-called of the Apostles, according to reliable historical sources and the tradition of the Church, carried out his ministry in Asia Minor, the regions around the Black Sea, Thrace, and Achaia, where he also suffered martyrdom. The actions of the Apostle Andrew in these regions led to the Churches there, particularly the Church of Constantinople, honoring him as their founder and patron saint. The Church of Constantinople has established the day of his commemoration (November 30) as a major festive celebration. This celebration, interrupted during the early years of Turkish rule, was restored during the Patriarchy of Seraphim II of Philippoupolis (1760) and has been celebrated continuously ever since. In Constantinople, where the relics of the Apostle were transferred in 356 AD and placed in the Church of the Holy Apostles, he was especially venerated, as evidenced by the dedication of many churches to him.
The apostolic nature of the Throne of Constantinople is also evident from the documented ministry of the Apostle and Evangelist John in Asia Minor. He addressed the book of Revelation to the “seven churches in Asia,” referring to the churches of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, which have been under the jurisdiction of the Church of Constantinople since the 4th century. Patriarch Ignatius invoked the double apostolic authority of the Ecumenical Throne during the Second Council (869-870) in response to representatives of the Pope, who claimed the apostolic authority of the See of Rome. Saint Ignatius said, as preserved in the canonical collection of Cardinal Deusdedit (11th century), in a translation from Latin: “I also hold the Throne of the Apostle John and the First-called Apostle Andrew.”
However, the apostolic legacy of the Church of Constantinople is rooted not only in its apostolic work, which it achieved in an extraordinary manner, but also in the establishment of the first and only Christian state in the world, the Byzantine Empire. It is rooted in the spread of the Gospel, in an apostolic manner and with apostolic zeal, to numerous peoples brought together in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, which stood as an equal apostle after the first Christian Emperor, the founder of the new capital, Constantinople, which became its eternal seat.
Before the Great Constantine, the small city of Byzantium, this ancient colony of the Megarians, was a bishopric under its Christian section, subject to the Metropolitan of Heraclius in Thrace and sharing the harsh conditions of life brought about by the persecutions against Christians by the Roman emperors. its first bishop appointed by the Apostle Andrew was the Apostle Stachys, followed by an uninterrupted series of twenty-four other bishops, with the last being the Holy Metrophanes, through whom the first uneventful period of the bishopric of Byzantium came to an end and the glorious period of the thousand-year Byzantine Empire began, during which the Church of Constantinople evolved into an archbishopric, patriarchate, ecumenical throne, and Great Church. It was not merely a result of historical and political changes but a substantial contributor to the grandeur and splendor of the Greco-Roman Christian Empire.
Period of heyday and radiation
(324-1453)
As is well known, early Christianity spread initially to regions where Greek culture prevailed and the Greek language was spoken, under the administrative coverage of the vast Roman Empire, which extended its boundaries to the area of the East previously expanded by Alexander the Great and his successors. The Christian world of Emperor Constantine was established on the Greek world of Alexander the Great. Christianity had a Greek voice from the beginning, apart from the great Hellenistic Apostle Paul, who introduced Christianity to the Greek-speaking world, and other Apostles who spread Christianity to Greek or Greek-speaking regions, including Apostle Andrew, the founder of the Church of Byzantium, which was destined to become a shining ecclesiastical center, dominating the spiritual life of all humanity for centuries. The Greek world of the Mediterranean coasts and the Black Sea served as the ground for the missionary work of many apostles. Therefore, the organization of the first Christian Church was established in the major Greek cities, where there were thriving Christian communities.
The apostolic duty of Apostle Paul, to spread Christianity to the Greeks and non-Greeks (Rom. 1:14), was accomplished by himself, primarily through the spread of Christianity to the Greek world. The apostolic obligation of Paul was exemplarily fulfilled by the Church of Constantinople, which was endowed with all favorable conditions created by the transfer of the capital from Old Rome, which, having been associated with paganism and idolatry, appeared weak and inadequate as the capital of the new Christian world. The New Rome, Constantinople, was built and designed to assume the leadership of the Christian world.
Historians unreservedly accepted the observation that, by the end of the 20th century, while Christianity had sporadically spread only to isolated communities in the western part of the Roman Empire, coinciding with today’s Europe, it had firmly established itself into a dense network of communities in the East, especially in the provinces of Asia Minor and Pontus, which, along with Thrace, would become the territory of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Church of Constantinople from the fourth century onwards. Already during the reign of Emperor Domitian (81-96), the seven Churches of Revelation existed in Asia Minor, which we have already mentioned. This fact is the basis for the institution of the Pentarchy of the patriarchs, which, since the 5th century, has constituted a stable form of organization of the Church into autonomous local Churches, with the existence of only one ecclesiastical center in the West, Rome, while the other four, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, are located in the East.
The political and cultural splendor, through which Constantinople was adorned as the new capital of the Christian Empire, caused significant upheavals in the organization of the Church in the 4th century. The formation of the high ecclesiastical position of Constantinople as the spiritual center of the Christian world happened rapidly. During the First Ecumenical Council in 325, when the transfer of the capital was already decided in 324, there is no mention of the Throne of Constantinople. The official inauguration of Constantinople as the new capital took place in the year 330, but it definitely needed a reasonable amount of time to acquire the appropriate authority and impose itself, rivaling Ancient Rome with its long historical grandeur and the splendor of the eternal city. Similar efforts made during the same period, by attempting to establish the emperor in other cities (Nicomedia, Milan), had failed. The well-known canonist Theodore Balsamon, explaining the silence concerning Constantinople’s Throne at the First Ecumenical Council, writes the following significant events: first, the splendor and authority of the Ecumenical Throne, then the divine plan’s transfer of the capital and its transformation from “wild olive” (Old Rome) to “cultivated olive” (New Rome). He also mentions the established institution of the pentarchy of the Patriarchs, which Rome always tried to overturn, refusing to accept local autonomous churches, but rather aiming to maintain the papal monarchy and his overall jurisdiction over the entire Church. Balsamon writes: “The great Throne of Constantinople, this famous thing located in Peirinthiis (Peirinthus is western Heraclea), was served by a bishop, and it was not yet called “Constantinople,” but rather a small city and Byzantium. After transferring the scepters of the kingdom from old Rome to it with divine and secret providence as if from “wild olive” to “cultivated olive,” the then archiereus (Melitius of Antioch) was renamed Archbishop Nectarius of Constantinople. For this reason, the first Holy Ecumenical Council commemorates the four Patriarchs, namely those of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, but it does not mention that of Constantinople” (Ralli-Potli, 4,542).
During the period between the First and Second Ecumenical Councils (325-381), within approximately fifty years, Constantinople is transformed into the leading Church, as evidenced by the leading role of its bishops during the Trinitarian controversies, resulting in their presiding over the work of the Second Ecumenical Council, following the death of Meletius of Antioch, with two Archbishops of Constantinople, Saints Gregory the Theologian and, after his resignation, his successor, Saint Nectarius of Constantinople. This Council regulated the established capital position of the Church of Constantinople, defining in its 3rd canon that “the Bishop of Constantinople shall hold the primacy of honor after the Bishop of Rome, because it is the New Rome.” According to the successful formulation of Maximus of Sardis in his work “On the Work of the Ecumenical Patriarchate,” “The 3rd canon was not the result of arbitrariness but the outcome of 50 years’ development and the mature fruit of the historical consciousness of the churches of the East and the new conditions of the Empire” (p. 109).
The ecclesiastical elevation of Constantinople above the Patriarchates of the East, and immediately after Rome, contributed to the exercise of jurisdiction over the neighboring dioceses of Pontus, Thrace, and Asia. Although the Council did not touch their status of independence formally, their definitive subjection to the jurisdiction of Constantinople occurred at the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon, which affirmed the established practice of the jurisdiction of Constantinople over these dioceses and extended it to the “barbarian nations,” referring to the Christian communities found outside the empire and beyond the boundaries of the autocephalous Churches in the diaspora. The Fourth Ecumenical Council thus completed the ecclesiastical elevation of Constantinople, fulfilling the provisions of the Second Ecumenical Council. Its Bishop is no longer after Rome but after Rome “equally conferred privileges upon the Patriarchate of New Rome” (Canon 28). Through Canons 9 and 17, it also granted Constantinople the right to hear appeals and judge cases involving clergy from other Patriarchates. In these two cases of appellate jurisdiction, both over the diaspora and over the highest judicial authority in the institution of the appeal, the primacy of the Throne of Constantinople is clearly evident. The canons do not allow any other Throne to exercise appellate jurisdiction.
This privileged position of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, based on explicit canonical provisions, has become a natural characteristic in the history of the Orthodox Church, beyond its legal foundation. Orthodox culture cannot be understood if one withdraws Constantinople, which has been the great Center of Orthodoxy throughout its dynamic history. During this period of power and peak influence, the Ecumenical Patriarchate played a leading role in formulating and shaping dogmas, convening Ecumenical Councils, developing Monasticism, and imbuing the entirety of life within the empire with the Christian spirit in harmonious cooperation with political authority, so that Byzantium truly became a unique example of genuine Christian living in world history. It also carried out very successful missionary work, starting from the era of St. John Chrysostom and reaching its height in the 9th and 10th centuries with the missionary push towards the Slavic world. It transmitted to the Slavic peoples the accumulated wealth of long historical experience, the Orthodox spirit, and thus imbued the depths of Slavic civilization, which is impossible to understand without reference to its spiritual fathers. Through this missionary work, it became the Mother Church for all peoples who approached it for guidance in their Christian faith. As the renowned canonist Nikodemos the Hagiorite observes, “We hold the position of a mother towards you and all Christians who desire to be, and call themselves, Orthodox, as you know well. For from us, the teachings of the divine Fathers and the holy decrees of the Synods, the God-inspired legislation, like water from a wellspring, have flowed into the fullness of the Church” (Ekklisiastiki Diorthosi, pp. 156-157).
The Great Church continues its work
After the loss of its external glory and power due to contemporary influences, the Ecumenical Patriarchate took on the role of a caring mother in protecting and nurturing the oppressed Orthodox nations. With great wisdom and understanding, it adapted to the new challenges of the times, successfully preserving the Orthodox faith and the self-awareness of the Orthodox. The appearance of a multitude of New Martyrs during this period brought glory and honor to the Orthodox Church, connecting it with the ancient Church of the early centuries, with its persecutions and martyrdoms. The danger of Islamicization was not the only threat to the Orthodox flock. Equally significant was the danger posed by the proselytism of the heterodox, who, finding the Orthodox people in poverty and weakness, infiltrated into the sheepfold not through the door like the shepherds, but from elsewhere, like thieves and robbers, aiming to sacrifice and destroy (John 10:1-8).
There is abundant historical evidence of the firm stance of the Ecumenical Patriarchate against foreign propaganda, which unfortunately resorted to illicit means to achieve its goals. It organized a campaign of defamation and slander against the Ecumenical Patriarchate, using both historical and supposedly scientific studies. Its main objective was to incite the national sensitivities of the Orthodox peoples in order to weaken the influence of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and make it vulnerable to the schemes of foreign “missionaries.”
The Ecumenical Patriarchate, along with the Orthodox faith, has preserved the national consciousness of the Balkan peoples. Orthodoxy does not suppress healthy nationalism; rather, it harmoniously integrates it among the other characteristics that make up the human aspect of the theanthropic body of the Church. Under the protection and guidance of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Orthodox peoples cultivated their national languages, developed their own ecclesiastical literature, and heard the Gospel “in their own languages” (Acts 2:8) on the day of Pentecost. The phenomenon of rigid and uncompromising Latinization of Theology and worship, which until the Second Vatican Council suppressed and eradicated the national elements of the Roman Catholic peoples, has never found a place in Orthodoxy. This is especially evident in the case of the Slavic peoples, whose written language was created by Constantinople. In the Orthodox Church, the peoples of the Balkans have preserved their national and ethnic characteristics intact, which enabled them to fight for their national independence and autonomy in the 19th century. Only when nationalism took a dominant position, when it was placed at the head of the characteristics that constitute the Church and when the spiritual supranational character of the Church was thus threatened, did the Ecumenical Patriarchate condemn this tendency of “ethno-phyletism” as a dangerous innovation.
New Period.
Dialogue in Love and Truth with the Heterodox
The creation of independent nation-states in the Balkan region had as an immediate consequence the establishment of autonomous local Churches. Despite witnessing the gradual decline of its vast jurisdiction, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, through normal means, granted autonomy to the Churches of the new Balkan countries, only reacting in cases of violation of the canonical order and excessive emphasis on ethnic and racial criteria. This widespread decentralization of national Churches was indeed a new phenomenon in the life of the Orthodox Church. The granting of autocephaly to the Church of Russia in the previous centuries (1589) had not caused any problems in the relations between Orthodox Churches due to the obedience of the daughter to the Mother Church and the absence of a strong ethnic authority, which became the basis for the existence of the new states and their interconnected national aspirations. However, it contributed to the cooling of relations among the autocephalous Churches, especially during long periods of armed conflicts.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate, with pain in its heart, has made dedicated efforts since the early 20th century to restore and strengthen Orthodox relations, fostering unity in love and restoring harmony between them, which, by the grace of God, has been successful. The numerous Orthodox encounters, the ongoing and fruitful preparation for the Holy and Great Council, and our present tangible unity in facing new historical challenges, as manifested in the historic meeting of the heads of the autocephalous Orthodox Churches (March 1992) at the Holy Center of Orthodoxy, have left behind the era of alienation as a simple historical memory. The historical initiatives of the Church of Constantinople and the eager response from the other autocephalous Churches have created favorable conditions for the continuation, along the same path, of the journey of the Orthodox Church.
The achievement of Orthodox unity has facilitated the work of dialogue with the heterodox, leading to the final success of the union of all. Truly, the united Orthodox Church bears witness to the Orthodox faith, engaging in dialogue with the heterodox with love and truth. Never before have so many theological dialogues taken place as they are today. The outcome of these dialogues and the broader participation of the Orthodox in the so-called Ecumenical Movement, as long as this participation is grounded in the principles of Orthodox faith and life, relies on the grace of God who is the truth in love and loves in truth.
The Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate
The Church of Constantinople, being the primus inter pares among the autocephalous Orthodox Churches and having the historical and theological right and responsibility for the initiation and coordination of Orthodox activities, does not cease to be a local Church whose jurisdiction is limited to a specific geographical area, as is the case for all Churches, including Rome. However, it has the privilege of exercising extraterritorial jurisdiction in the Diaspora Churches, exclusively granted to Constantinople, as well as the institution of the exarchate. As mentioned before, the administrations of Pontus, Thrace, and Asia Minor were the first territories of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Throne. From the 8th century, the regions falling within the Eastern Illyricum, from the Adriatic to the Nestos, and from the Danube and Rhodope to Crete, were added to them. Although politically associated with the Eastern Roman Empire since the end of the 4th century, they continued to be under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Constantinople until 733, when they became the exarchate or vicariate of Thessaloniki, subject to the jurisdiction of the Church of Rome. The Slavic peoples who embraced Christianity through the missionary efforts of Constantinople also fell under the jurisdiction of the Church of Constantinople. The Church of Russia was one of the metropolises under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Throne for five centuries until the 15th century. Autonomous archbishoprics of Tirnovo, Ohrid, and Pec were formed in the Balkan region, but during the period of Ottoman rule, they came back under the direct jurisdiction of Constantinople, to which the metropolises of Hungary and Moldavia, established in the 14th century, also belonged.
This broad jurisdiction of Constantinople gradually diminished through the granting of autocephaly to local Churches. The Church of Russia (1589), the Church of Greece (1850), the Church of Serbia (1879), the Church of Romania (1885), the Church of Albania (1937), and the Church of Bulgaria (1945) all received autocephaly. The greatest reduction of the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, however, occurred as a result of the migration of Orthodox populations from their historic centers in Pontus, Thrace, and Asia Minor, following the Asia Minor campaign of 1922. This migration resulted in the existence today of the Archdiocese of Constantinople and four metropolises in Turkey: Chalcedon, Derkon, Prinkiponnesos, and Imvros and Tenedos.
New archbishoprics and metropolises were established in Europe, America, and Australia by the inhabitants who settled there, bringing with them great dynamism among the other advanced nations. The Eastern Orthodox Church eagerly anticipates the benefits that will arise from this coexistence.
Outside the borders of the Turkish state, the metropolises of the Dodecanese, the semi-autonomous Church of Crete, the monastic state of Mount Athos, and other Patriarchal institutions and establishments throughout the Ecumenical Patriarchate remain under its direct jurisdiction. The metropolises of the so-called “New Lands,” whose administration was temporarily entrusted to the Church of Greece in 1928, also fall under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
