Where Greek Constantinople still survives: the Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul
March 3, 2001
One of Istanbul’s hidden treasures is the Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate, where the very few Greeks still left in the former Byzantine capital tenaciously cling to their culture, preserving the ancient rituals and restoring Byzantine art treasures with the help of modern science.
During a one-week whirlwind tour of Istanbul in the spring, my Greek friend Panos suggested we visit the Patriarchate. For those who don’t know, Istanbul and Turkey in general were once a large and powerful empire ruled by the Byzantine Greeks, whose religion is still followed to the letter in Greece and the Slavic countries. The “patriarch’ is the Orthodox version of the pope. For a Greek to visit Istanbul without calling in on St. Sophia (the largest cathedral of the Byzantine era) and the Patriarchate would be like a devout Catholic going to Rome and skipping the Vatican. How we ended up kissing the patriarch’s ring, and being invited in for lunch- well, that’s the story.
The actual grounds of the Patriarchate lie in the neighborhood of Fener, a decrepit, taciturn neighborhood on the outskirts of the old part of the city, where traditionally wealthy Greek sea-captains lived under the Ottoman empire, and where the fewer than 500 elderly Greeks still left in Istanbul live today.
The Patriarchate itself is, as you may expect, well-maintained and overflowing with objects of art, rare manuscripts, and the relics of long-dead saints. We were greeted at the gate by an old Greek security guard whose face lit up as soon as he heard us address him in his own language, and not in Turkish. He proceeded to show us all around the magnificent Church of St. George, filled with the smoke of incense and huge painted religious icons covering the walls, wrapped in gold altar screens, with one immense golden chandelier in the center of the church. Our host also proudly showed off the bones of three of the less well-known saints who had come to reside there. As he concluded his leisurely tour, his ears suddenly pricked up, he turned and rushed us for the door.
“The Patriarch is coming,” he whispered, “go, go!”
And so we went out just in time to see the Patriarch in full procession, surrounded by minders and lesser priests. My Greek friend, instinctively knowing just what to do, rushed up to the bearded elder, shouting, “Panagiotate! Panagiotate!” (“O Most holy! Most holy!”) The Patriarch stopped to accept our humble bows, granted us his blessing (I’m gonna whip that one out for St. Peter if worse comes to worse)- and invited us in for lunch.
No, we didn’t get to sit at the big guy’s table- but we did get to sit with several other interesting fellows, mostly visiting Greek monks and priests. One of them, Father Pavlos, brought us back after the meal to his icon-restoration laboratory, a little over behind the church. Here he and his staff (mostly history of art and art restoration students from Greece and Italy) worked with strange vials of chemicals, rubbing and scraping, to restore painted icons up to 700 years old back to their original state. It was an amazing thing to see an icon that was practically blackened by soot and age regain its mottled red and yellow hues, just by working with a little bottle of magic liquid. We saw one 17th century icon that they had been working on for a couple of months, touching up here and there, steadily improving- til the one day when they realized that it had been painted on the reverse of another, altogether rarer and more beautiful, 15th century piece.
This exciting discovery just goes to show the value that the icon-restorers of the Patriarchate have in preserving the Greek past in Istanbul. It is getting harder these days for them to continue their work, however, which is why I advise going to see it now. The distrustful Turkish government has legislated that every Patriarch must be a Turkish citizen, and educated in Turkish schools.
Yet there are very few young Greeks still left in Istanbul, and the absence of proper schooling for future religious leaders is a real problem. Whether the Patriarchate of the Orthodox church, which has ruled from the same city for the past 1,600 years, will continue its traditions is becoming more uncertain with the passage of time. Check it out while you can.