1453
Better a turban than a tiara
Gennadius II becomes the first ecumenical patriarch of the Orthodox Church to serve under a Muslim ruler when Mohammed II invests him with staff and mantle.
As the Byzantine empire shrank under the attacks of various Turkish tribes, it consistently called to western European Christians for aid. Time and again, the Orthodox Byzantines were told that the price of military help was conversion to Catholic theology and submission to the pope. A number of emperors decided to pay that price and converted, at least in name, but they could never convince their population that they should abandon Orthodoxy. The people always replied that they would prefer rule by Muslims who would allow them to keep their traditional religion than to take western aid and abandon their faith. “Better a turban than a tiara” was the cry in the streets.
In the 1450s as the situation in Constantinople grew increasingly dire, the emperor Michael XI Paleologus decided that he had no choice but to give in to the pope’s demands. In return for some western troops Michael announced that he had converted to Catholicism. His chief opponent in this was the monk and scholar Georgios Kourtesios Scholarios (1400-73), known as Gennadius. Gennadius had earlier in his career been a supporter of the ecclesiastical union of Eastern and Western Christianity but in 1453 told those who came to him for counsel: ”O unhappy Romans [the name always used by Byzantines to refer to themselves], why have you forsaken the truth? Why do you not trust in God, instead of in the Italians? In losing your faith you will lose your city. Have mercy on me, O Lord! I protest in thy presence that I am innocent of the crime.”
When the city fell on May 29, Gennadius was taken prisoner by the Turks but he was set free by the new conqueror Mehmet II. It was Mehmet’s plan that Constantinople be resettled and rebuilt with Orthodox Christian help. To that end he granted them limited religious self-government under their Patriarch. Mehmet named Gennadius to this post, knowing him to be one who would not be seeking assistance from the West. Though he was uneasy as Patriarch, Gennadius initiated the subservience of his office to the Turkish state, a condition which exists to this day. In 1953 the Turkish republic issued a stamp celebrating the 500th anniversary of Mehmet investing the Patriarch with his staff of office.