Case

Published by The National Herald, June 17, 2005

Balkan Atrocities: The Case of Patriarch Gregory V

Occasionally, the odd journalist, travel writer and, at times, professional historian reach the alarming realization that not all has been well in the Balkans. In the 19th Century, European and some American writers often commented in books and journals on the brutality meted out by the Muslims against the Christians in Ottoman Empire’s Balkan provinces.

In the early 20th Century, similar accounts were published about the atrocities committed by the Balkan peoples against the Muslims and even each other. During the 1990’s, it became fashionable - for journalists, in particular - to wax eloquently on the virtues of the Muslim communities in the Balkans, and to condemn the brutality of the Eastern Christians.

Effectively, these writers, regardless of the century they lived in, simply took sides - a common Balkan attribute. Some supported the Greeks; others found comfort associating with the Serbs, Bulgarians, Turks and Albanians, but oddly very few with the Romanians. Lamentably, they failed to understand the region, except in the most superficial terms, and committed a disservice to their audience by not helping them understand the cause and effect of the violence which have plagued the Balkans, and which can help in comprehending why killing and atrocities continue to mar every century.

Part and parcel of the Ottoman interpretation of ministerial
responsibility was the notion of collective guilt...

Although every Balkan society has its own litany of horrors, for the Greeks, the spectacle of mass humiliation, torture and the extermination of entire communities were triggered by the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence. Act I, scene i of this tragedy - and ultimate triumph - began on the eve of Easter Sunday 1821 in Constantinople, just after the outbreak of the Greek rebellion in the Peloponnese. On that most sacred of Greek rituals, Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory V was conducting the solemn Easter ceremony. He was adorned with the spectacular robes befitting his station, and held the religious instruments of his office.

Rightly or wrongly, Gregory V had believed that, by condemning the leaders of the uprising, he could keep the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire out of harm’s way; their excommunication severed the rebel leaders from the Church and Greek Orthodox community. On that eventful Easter, once again, he had the excommunication document read out before the packed assembly of Christians to further reassure the sultan of the Church’s loyalty to the Empire. The congregation was soothed by the words of the Patriarch and remained unaware of the momentous and horrific events which would soon overtake their lives.

Just as the service ended and people began to disperse to their homes, Ottoman guards burst into the church and pushed their way to the alter. They rudely seized the Patriarch and his priests by the collar and dragged them to the hall of the Holy & Sacred Synod. The Patriarch’s sole Janissary bodyguard attempted to protect his charge, but was stabbed to death in the ensuing scuffle.

The imperial dragoman, Stavrakis Aristarchos, produced a firman from that sultan and declared that "Gregorios, having acted an unworthy, an ungrateful and a treacherous part, was degraded from his office."

This humiliation occurred in the chamber, before the senior clergy, leading Phanariots and heads of Greek associations. The soldiers then seized Gregory, along with a number of bishops and priests. The clerics were bound with ropes over their hands and necks and dragged to the gate of the Patriarchate in the Phanar district.

By the next morning, Easter Sunday, a crowd had gathered quickly outside the main gate of the Phanar, the entrance to the Greek Orthodox district in Constantinople. The spectators jostled for better positions for those in the back could not get a clear view of the unusual execution. Word spread throughout the capital, and the curious arrived in record number so as not to miss the main event.

The Muslims were excited by the pending spectacle; the Christians were frozen with fear; and foreigners were both attracted and repelled by the imminent display of horror. The executioners had explicit orders to humiliate, as well as kill. Under the circumstances, a proper scaffold was not necessary. They simply threw a rope over the staple that fastened the folding doors of the Phanar gate, placed the noose around the neck of the Patriarch and pulled the body up - slowly. The Patriarch, resigned to his fate, maintained his dignity throughout the ordeal.

Gregory slowly choked to death. The Patriarch struggled with his robes and kicked his legs against the air in a vain attempt to gain a foothold. The witnesses nearest the tormented cleric could hear him wheezing as he gasped for air. Gregory was an elderly man of slight weight, which meant that it took him hours to die. The end was inevitable; each breath got shorter and shorter, until there was no more; by nightfall, he finally expired. For a short while, his body continued twitching until its nervous system shut down.

The other clerics who were brought along watched and wondered about their own fate. Shortly afterwards, two of these priests were dragged to the other gates of the Patriarchate and hanged in a similar fashion. Sultan Mahmud II did not deprive the rest of the population from further spectacles, and later had three bishops hauled through the streets with ropes around their necks and hanged in different locations throughout the city.

After the execution, the sultan’s grand vizier, Bendierli Ali, walked to the Patriarchate accompanied by only a single attendant. Upon reaching the gate, he sat on a stool and calmly looked at the hanging body; after a few minutes, he left without saying a word. The Grand Vizier was contemplating the tenets of Ottoman justice, which held that senior officials were responsible for the welfare of the sultan’s dominions, and would be quickly sacrificed as atonement for the crimes of their charges.

Part and parcel of the Ottoman interpretation of ministerial responsibility was the notion of collective guilt and collective punishment. The concept was equally enforced with respect to the members of a village, town or minority. A particular community, whether Muslim or Christian, was held liable for the actions of its individual members, both near and far. This fraternity of crime and punishment had permeated the culture of Balkan societies, which often adopted guilt by historical association as a form of "judicial" retribution. The innocent and the guilty, rather the active and inactive, were held accountable and chastised for past and present ethnic altercations.

As a mark of the sultan’s rage, the Patriarch’s corpse remained at the gate of the Phanar for three days, and the pungent odor reminded passersby of the sultan’s fury. Gregory’s hastily elected successor, Eugenios II, on his way to the palace to receive the sultan’s confirmation as the new Patriarch, could only cross the gate after his Ottoman escort pushed the body aside to make way through the door. The Ottoman official used the ghoulish exercise to remind the new Patriarch of the fate of his predecessor.

Concurrent with the philosophy of collective responsibility was the discipline of terror. The sultan was resolved that, even in death, Gregory would be deprived both of dignity and adoration as a martyr. A group of Jewish criminals were ordered to cut down the body of the Patriarch and drag it by the neck through a particularly dirty section of the market to the shoreline. The helpless Jews sweated in the noonday heat as they pulled the corpse from one end of the market to the other, while their Ottoman overseers directed them to pass the body over specific areas stained with human and animal waste. Afterwards, they were ordered to weigh down the corpse with stones and dump it into the harbor.
This was not to be the legacy of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, however.

Gregory V ultimately eluded the oblivion of a watery grave and secured the martyrdom which the sultan had tried to deny him. The body of the Greek Orthodox cleric did not decompose in the filthy waters of the harbor, but was carried by the undercurrent of the Bosphorus to the Sea of Marmara. A few days later, a miracle was reported.

Gregory body rose to the surface conveniently near a Christian ship bound for Russia. Just before sundown a fugitive from the Easter slaughter, spotted the body floating on the water and from the vestments identified the Patriarch.

The ship’s captain had the corpse recovered and covertly brought Gregory to Odessa. The account of the Patriarch appearing above the water, during the week of Easter, offered proof of Divine intervention. Gregory V was given a state funeral in Odessa and finally achieved martyrdom instead of remaining obscure in the depths of the Golden Horn, as was the sultan’s wish for him to do.

Dr. Gerolymatos is chair of Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia and the author of "Red Acropolis, Black Terror: The Greek Civil War and the Origins of Soviet-American Rivalry."



Volume 7 Number 25 - Tuesday, June 21st, 2005	A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY