Orthodoxy Under Ottoman Rule

The four centuries and more in which the Orthodox of the Balkans, Asia Minor and the Middle East lived under the Ottoman Sultans, from the fall of Constantinople until the Balkan nations won their freedom one by one, through the nineteenth century and the Balkan wars of 1912. The Sultan made the Ecumenical Patriarch head of all the Orthodox of the empire, the Rum millet, answerable for them in civil matters as well as spiritual, which gave the Church both a protected place and a political burden: patriarchs were deposed at will, and Gregory V was hanged in 1821. Christians paid heavier taxes, could not bear arms, and in the Balkans gave up boys to the child levy. Those who were killed for refusing Islam, or for returning to Christ after denying Him, are the Neomartyrs. The Church kept the faith, the language and the schools, and at its end the Kollyvades, St Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and St Makarios of Corinth among them, gave it the Philokalia.