Balkan.Myth.final

MYTHS OF THE OTHER IN THE BALKANS
Representations, Social practices, Performances

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ISBN: 978-960-8096-05-9
e-book production: Paris Aslanidis

Thessaloniki 2013

MYTHS OF THE OTHER IN THE BALKANS
Representations, Social practices, Performances

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 6
Fotini Tsibiridou & Nikitas Palantzas

1. Opening Talk Conference “Myth About the Other” 17
Marietta van Attekum

2. The Social Production of Difference in the Global Hierarchy of Value: 19
Stereotypes and Transnational Experience in Greece and the Balkans
Michael Herzfeld

3. The Other Town: How the Greeks and the Turks perceive mythical 31
neighbours
Hercules Millas

4. The Fanariote myth in Bulgarian historiography 40
Raymond Detrez

5. The Hellenicity of the linguistic Other in Greece 56
Peter Mackridge

6. Aspects of Greek “Myths” related to the Albanians during the Age of 66
Nationalism
Lambros Baltsiotis & Elias G. Skoulidas

7. Fear and Desire: Foreign women in Bulgarian National Mythology 75
Nikolay Aretov

8. Macedon: Communicating the Reality or Myth? An Interrogation by the 83
Provisions of Franklin Rudolf Ankersmit’s Theory on Aesthetic Political
Representation
Gjiorgji Kallinski

9. The Representation of the National Self and the Balkan People in 92
Turkey’s New Textbooks
Kenan Çayir

10. Pupils’ perceptions of the Balkan ‘‘other’’ 105
Chrysa Tamisoglou

11. The Question of the Other in the reminiscences of former pupils of the 115
Bulgarian secondary schools in Thessaloniki and Edirne
Lyubomir Georgiev

12. “If on a cold winter night a foreigner...”: Researching the perceptions 123
of student kindergarten teachers about the ethnic Balkan “Other”
Kostas Magos

13. Baba Noel and Yeni yil ağaç - Symbols of the myth of Christmas in 138
schools of the Muslim minority
Aristidis Sgatzos

14. Challenging the Bektashi tradition in the Greek Thrace: 144
Anthropological and historical encounters
Fotini Tsibiridou & Giorgos Mavrommatis

15. “Nahni wa xfendik” (We and the Others): Negotiation of multiple 161
identities in the Maronite Community of Cyprus
Maria Koumarianou

16. On Muslims, Turks and migrants: perceptions of Islam in Greece and 177
the challenge of migration
Venetia Evergeti & Panos Hatziprokopiou

17. A Muslim Saint or a Conqueror: Myths and the Religious Other 189
Evgenia Troeva

18. Being Albanian in Greece or elsewhere: negotiation of the (national) 197
self in a migratory context
Ifigenia Kokkali

19. Markers of self-identity and the image of the Other in the context of 210
labour mobility in Western Macedonia
Petko Hristov

20. The immigrant self-perception, social status and the myths influence. A 221
comparison study of the Albanian immigrant in Greece and Italy
Zenelaga Brunilda, Kërpaçi Kalie & Sotirofski Kseanela

21. Paradoxes of ‘‘Otherness’’ in Greek Asylum Practice 234
Eftihia Voutira

22. “Brothers” becoming “Others”. The Greeks of Albania in Greece after 245
1990
Vassilis Nitsiakos

23. Balkan cinema in Thessaloniki International Film Festival 251
Dimitris Kerkinos

24. When the Dreams Come True (Bollywood Music and Dance in 256
Bulgaria)
Ivanka Vlaeva

25. ‘‘The Making of Balkan Wars’’ Virtually Articulating a Critique of 266
Balkan Mythologies
Anna Apostolidou

26. “İlk ve en önemli çevreci”: Environmentalism and Secularism in 278

contemporary Istanbul
Aimilia Voulvouli

27. Singing or crying: dealing with the fear of ethnic, national, and 285
engendered otherness in Macedonia, Greece
Marica Rombou-Levidi

28. Non-European ‘‘Others’’? A study on the stereotypical representations 296
of Eastern Turks by citizens of Istanbul
Nikitas Palantzas

29. The “national body”: Language and sexuality in the Balkan national 305
narrative
Costas Canakis

30. The Balkan case of “otherness” in the political discourse 321
Ana Chupeska

Annex 325
The Program of the Conference

MYTHS OF THE OTHER IN THE BALKANS · 6

Introduction

Fotini Tsibiridou
University of Macedonia

[email protected]
Nikitas Palantzas
Hellenic American Educational Foundation, Athens
[email protected]

1. The Balkans Narrate: The Myths, Histories and Texts
The lyrics of the Greek song writer Savvopoulos say, ‘‘These are the Balkans and
that’s no joking matter’’, condensing in one sentence of cultural intimacy (Herzfeld
1997), substances, i.e. stereotypes, contradictive notions and intangible threats for
those who attempt to approach historically and socio-culturally the region without
having any personal experience from it. Geopolitical complexity, polyvalent human
landscape, nationalist conflicts and a sense of incompleteness related to the European
Acquis, compose the puzzle of the basic difficulties found in any of the
aforementioned approaches. In an attempt to avoid the traps of Balkanisms1, which
are entailed in such top-down analyses and derive from ‘‘innocent researchers’’2, we
shift our attention toward the everyday life of people. The latter cannot be
admeasured by positivist calculations and rationalist explanations, nor can it be
perceived through the distorting lenses of orientalistic representations. However, this
everyday life continues to attract field researchers and wayfarers due to reputation,
exoticism and exclusion of the territory from the European Acquis. This everyday life
that remains not so much unexplored but unpublicized demands the enlisting of field
disciplines, which focus on the significance of experience, as this is constituted
corporeally and interactively by the multiple agents of the spectacle that is the both
the ordinary people and the political elites.

Field researchers in the Balkan area acquire a leading role, mainly because
they become the diligent observers of everyday habits, customs, behaviours, but also
of the predominant incongruity that ‘‘everything around is changing, yet all remain
the same’’ (lyrics from another Greek song-writer Manolis Rasoulis). It is another
‘‘truth’’ of cultural intimacy that is being expressed through the use of social poetics.
In order to record the idioms of cultural intimacy that are valid within the Balkan
space, direct prescriptive discourse and sociological categories seem to be inadequate
conceptual tools. Perhaps it is time to bring forward those ambiguous discourses of
cultural intimacy, those internal stories, which like myths reveal the conflicting and
conciliatory reasoning that entangle experiences and affections with effective options.
It is about histories that, as in the case of the aforementioned lyrics of the songwriters,
consolidate complexities by translating and converging the contradictions and
conflicts, as does any myth that pays respect to its genre.3

1 Developing on Edward Said’s work on Orientalism (1978), Maria Todorova introduces the term
Balkanism (1997) in order to illustrate, how the Balkans have been invented by Western imagination
and discourses as an essentialized cultural, historical and political category.
2 Cf. Barley, N. 1983, The innocent Anthropologist.
3 Cf. Campbell, J.,1988, The Power of Myth; Levi-Strauss, C., 1969, Mythologiques Vol. 1, 1973,
Mythologiques Vol. 2, 1978, Mythologiques Vol. 3, 1981, Mythologiques Vol. 4.

MYTHS OF THE OTHER IN THE BALKANS · 7

In such histories we will find not just conflicts, incidents of hatred and
separation, but also experiences of positive conceptualization of the symbiosis with
the different Other. The Ottoman heritage did not just bequeath linguistically and
religiously diverse populations, who got involved in violent conflicts prompted by the
needs to be incorporated in nation-states at the beginning and the end of the 20th
century.4 The Ottoman administration coiled them at the level of collaborative relative
groups and bestowed them with a stock of surviving resistance, but also of
patron/clientalist exchange, as options of subsistence within the polyvalent
environment of the empire.5 Since then, even though the circumstances change, the
particularistic logic of family, kinship or other local community that shifts between
‘‘interest and emotion’’6, is being employed any time as a utilitarian rational choice of
subsistence on the ground, when a rearrangement of power at the level of central
governance occurs. This partial logic which manifests itself as ‘‘us and the others’’ in
any given circumstance, not only reproduces itself as long as the bonds with the
central arrangement of power remain elusive and inadequate, but it is also enriched
with evaluations and classifications that create orientalistic expectations of
Balkanism, which derive from the West, either from outside or from above. This
condition of the double bond that these logics of ‘‘interest and emotion’’ seem to
follow, generates meaning only if one takes the trouble to listen to the subjects, who
nourish them discursively and empirically on a daily basis. For these subjects, this
logic generates meanings, which must be taken under serious consideration in order
not to serve culturalism and difference, but in order to search for the significance of
stereotypes in the lives of local people, who reproduce them selectively, even though
they try to disrupt them (cf. Herzfeld in this book). It is about time then to ensue and
listen to those ‘‘unreasonable’’ and ‘‘paradox’’ histories that remind us of fairytales
and seem not to make sense. As our guest of honour points out it is time to start taking
stereotypes seriously (see Herzfeld later in this book).

This can happen first, if we start looking at stereotypes themselves in a
deconstructive way, as well as approaching critically the way these are being
proliferated both externally and internally. As it was at least the intention of this
conference, our main concern was to overcome the traps of culturalism, but at the
same time to highlight the educational value of nationalism for the lives of people;
our purpose was to take into account the relationship of Balkan’s subordination to the
West, but also to avoid the dogmatism and persistence in the causality of dependence
theories.7

The present endeavour, that attempts to give the floor to academics from the
region or those who are engaged with it from inside, selected to play with the myths,
the histories and discourses and not with the theories, models and norms of a
unilateral truth. This is the reason we invoke the modality of myths, which translate,
interpret and denote in polyvalent contexts, away from the rigidity and ontology of
the single truth.

4 For the instigation of nationalism during the Balkan Wars and the rise of nationalism in the 1990’s
after the breakup of Yugoslavia see the rich literature produced by historians, social anthropologists
and political scientists, for example, Todorova 1994, 1997, Hann 1994, Danforth 1995, Karakasidou
1997, Kazer 1998, Cowan et. Al. 2000, Duizings 2000, Friedman 2000, Kaser 2004, Boscovic 2005,
Bojcic & Dzelilovic 2006, Αρμακόλας 2010, Kolozova 2010.
5 Cf. Kayser, 1997, ‘‘Family and Kinship in the Balkans. A declining culture?’’
6 See Medick & Sabean et. Al. 1984, Παπαταξιάρχης (επιμ.) 2006.
7 For an interesting discussion between the two approaches, which are not mutually excluded, see
Theodossopoulos 2013.





































































MYTHS OF THE OTHER IN THE BALKANS · 42

3. The Fanariotes in Bulgarian historiography
Until recently, national historiographies in the Balkans as a rule treated the Fanariotes
disapprovingly.23 In Bulgaria, the Fanariotes have been blamed for what was regarded
as a policy of Graecization, carried out by representatives of the Patriarchate of
Constantinople at the Fanariotes’ instigation with the aim of creating a great Greek
state which would also include Bulgaria. They were considered, especially during the
four decades between proclamation of the hatt-i şerif of Gülhane in 1839 and the
establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1872, as the chief opponents of the
Bulgarian movement for ecclesiastical autonomy. In nineteenth-century Bulgarian
literature the word “Fanariote” had become a term of abuse.

Probably the first Bulgarian to create an elaborate negative image of the
Fanariotes was Georgi Rakovski (1821-1867). “Strange is the attitude of the
Bulgarians towards the Greeks,” he writes at one occasion:

‘‘It is double. One is their attitude towards the Greeks of the Kingdom of Greece and
different [their attitude] towards the Fanariotes in Constantinople. The former are
righteous, honest and polite to everyone, they respect every nation, including the
Bulgarian; the latter distinguish themselves through their malevolence, their exclusive
pursuit of wealth, their immorality, their tremendous stupidity, their infamous
pretending to know everything’’ (Danova [1994]: 86).

To be sure, Rakovski soon ascribed the negative features of the Fanariotes to
the Greeks in general. The image he created, as so many views ventilated by
Bulgarian nineteenth-century journalism, has profoundly influenced Bulgarian
“popular” or “romantic” historiography ever since. In virtually all Bulgarian studies
on the Bulgarian-Greek conflict that appeared from the end of the nineteenth to the
beginning of the 21st century, the authors tend to use the term “Fanariotes” to denote
without discrimination all Greek opponents of the Bulgarian national movement, be
they genuine Fanariotes, patriarchal clerics or those members of the Greek speaking
urban elite that supported the patriarchate against the Bulgarian movement for
ecclesiastical autonomy.

While the image of the Greeks in Bulgarian historiography has gradually
improved from the 1970s onwards, due to the friendly relations Bulgaria had with
Greece, the negative image of the Fanariotes has remained almost unchanged.
Academic historiography has not insisted so much on the negative moral
characteristics attributed to the Fanariotes, but has continued to focus on their alleged
attempts to systematically Graecize the Bulgarians. The Kratăk istoričeski spravočnik
– Bălgarija (Concise historical handbook ― Bulgaria) for instance, which appeared
in 1984, explains “Fanariotes” as “representatives of the high Greek clergy in the
Ottoman Empire” who

23 One of the few historians to write positively about the Fanariotes was the Romanian Nicolae Iorga
(1936), who considered the Romanian principalities as the heir of the Byzantine Empire and the
Fanariotes as the link between both. Recently, an increasing number of historians in Greece and
Romania seem to be inclined to reassess the Fanariotes’ role in Balkan history in a more balanced way.
(Kitromilides 2007; Papachristou 1992; Symposium 1974)

MYTHS OF THE OTHER IN THE BALKANS · 43

‘[a]s fervent adherents of the megali idea (“great idea”) attempted with all possible
means to achieve the Graecization of the other Christian peoples under Ottoman
dominance and in particular the Bulgarians. Fanariotes were called also the rich and
high-born Greeks who occupied higher state positions in the empire and were
proponents of the megali idea as well’’. (Nikolova & Kumanov 1983: 403)

The expression “with all possible means” (črez vsički sredstva) is a distant
echo of what Rakovski calls “malevolence” and “immorality”. Current (post-
totalitarian) Bulgarian historiography, which frequently deals with the past even more
nationalistically and tendentiously than was habitual under communist rule,
fortunately also has some representatives who favour a more balanced treatment and
prefer a politically more correct terminology. Thus, in the introduction to her
monumental study on the Bulgarian “church struggle”, Vera Bončeva, who explicitly
declares her work to be “Bulgarocentric” (“bălgarocentričen”, Boneva 2010: 36-7),
reflecting on the use of the words fanariot(in) (Fanariote), fanariotsko (“Fanariotic”),
fanariotština (“Fanariotehood”), explains that ‘‘in the lexicon of pre-independent
communication these are words, bearing very negative connotations and sometimes
even an insulting meaning. Due to the compact embeddedness of literature of the
national revival in the cultural context of the Bulgarian nineteenth century, the
vocabulary in question continues to bear disapproval and denunciation in current
communications’’.
And Boneva decides not to use these terms in her book, hoping that

‘‘public consciousness will go on freeing itself from characterizing everything
Patriarchal and Hellenic/Greek with names, referring to destructive societal practices
and unflattering moral characteristics, which is typical of our traditional culture and
our national revival writings’’. (Boneva 2010: 43)

However laudable as Boneva’s intention may be, a far more important issue is
whether the category of people whom she decided not to brand as Fanariotes any
more did indeed play the hideous part in Bulgarian history which continues to be
attributed to them by mainstream Bulgarian historians.

4. Some aspects of the image of the Fanariotes in Bulgarian historiography
4. 1. The Patriarchate of Constantinople as a “Greek” Church
The Fanariotes are held responsible for having turned the ecumenical patriarchate of
Constantinople into a “Greek” church, whose administration was felt by the
Bulgarians as a “foreign yoke”.

Since the emergence of nationalism and the construction of national identities,
the difference between a Greek and a Bulgarian has become obvious. Prior to the
nineteenth century, however, the distinction seems to be rather vague. As religion and
not ethnic affiliation was essential to collective self-identification, both Greeks and
Bulgarians felt themselves Orthodox Christians in the first place. The existence,
within the framework of the Ottoman Empire, of common religious practices,
common rites and holidays, common places of worship and pilgrimage, and of a
common ecclesiastical organization, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, resulted in the
emergence of a sense of Orthodox Christian commonality and solidarity, which
reached its apogee in the second half of the eighteenth and the first decades of the
nineteenth century. (See Kitromilides 2007 for a collection of pioneering studies on
the Balkan cultural community and Detrez 2010 for an attempt to define this

MYTHS OF THE OTHER IN THE BALKANS · 44

community in terms of a supra-ethnic proto-nation.) To be sure, the shared self-
identification as Orthodox Christians did not imply that people were unaware of
ethnic distinctions; however, these did not affect their deep-rooted feeling of
belonging to one single community.

Before the mid-nineteenth century, the Patriarchate of Constantinople did not
present itself as an (ethnically or nationally) Greek church, nor did it conduct as such.
As the Ottoman government, the patriarchal clergy was rather indifferent regarding
ethnic issues and did not pursue a policy of ethnic assimilation. Divine services in
Church Slavonic were still predominant in the Bulgarian lands. As Olga Todorova
(2003: 121) points out, “the foreign metropolitans and bishops (Greeks, Hellenized
Albanians, Serbs and others) did not obstruct the Slavonic services in the Bulgarian
churches, neither did they prohibit the veneration of the traditional Bulgarian saints.”

At variance with what is generally believed, not all members of the higher
clergy of the Patriarchate were ethnic Greeks. From 1453 to 1872 (when the
Bulgarian Exarchate was founded) thirteen out of the 97 ecumenical patriarchs are
reported to have been of Bulgarian origin. (Kolarov 1985: 179-87) Todorova (2003:
151) has some doubts, particularly regarding Raphail I (1475-1476), who might have
been a Serb; anyhow, he was not a Greek. Together, these Bulgarian patriarchs ruled
over the Patriarchate during approximately half a century (out of four). One of them is
supposed to have been even unable to speak Greek. Apparently, on the lower echelons
of the church administration as well the number of Bulgarian metropolitans and
bishops must have been considerably greater than usually assumed. (Maslev 1968:
355, 356, 358, 363, 366)

In these circumstances, it can be doubted whether the Bulgarians, prior to the
19th century, really perceived the Patriarchate of Constantinople as a “foreign”,
“Greek” institution. Quite the opposite, the Bulgarians to a large extent seem to have
accepted the Patriarchate of Constantinople as their own church. Paisij of Hilendar
grudgingly mentions that the Bulgarians ‘reverently’ (blagogovejno) accepted the
Greek clerics and respected them as archpriests. (Paisij 1972: 177-8) Hristo Gandev
points out that “until the 1820s, one cannot discern any forces that would alienate the
Bulgarians from the Greek church and the Greek language.” (Gandev 1976: 79)

4. 2. The Fanariotes as exploiters of the Bulgarian people
The ecclesiastical taxes were heavy indeed. They were collected by representatives of
the Patriarchate, often appointed with the support of the Fanariotes. They served not
only to compensate for the expenses of the church, but also to pay the notorious
peşkeş 24 to the sultan and to pay off the debts to the Fanariote bankers.
Understandably, given the Fanariote involvement in the financial operations of the
Patriarchate, Fanariotes were held responsible for what was regarded as the
exploitation of the flock. However, the idea that the Bulgarians in particular were
burdened with ecclesiastical taxes is false. The common parishioners’ feeling of being
oppressed and exploited by the clergy prevailed not only in Bulgaria, but also in
regions with a Greek population. Quoting William Gell’s Narrative of a Journey in
the Morea (London 1823), Richard Clogg points out that the Greeks thought that “the
country labours under three curses, the priests, the cogia bashis, and the Turks;
always placing the plagues in this order”. (Clogg 1996a: VIII, 349)

By the end of the eighteenth century, a fierce anticlerical mood existed not
only among the enlightened intellectuals, who were anticlerical for philosophical

24 A compulsory “gift” in return for an imperial edict confirming a patriarch in office.

MYTHS OF THE OTHER IN THE BALKANS · 45

reasons, but also among the common people, who complained about the immoral
behaviour of certain bishops and demanded their replacement. The Patriarchal clergy
was accused of corruption and greed, illicit sexual relations and alcohol abuse, briefly
of “unworthy (nedostoen, anaxios) conduct”. This was the case in the Bulgarian, but
also in the Greek lands. Among the Greeks these protests did not involve any ethnic
antagonism. However, prior to the 1830s, this was neither the case among the
Bulgarians.

The perception of the Fanariotes as exploiters is an indication of the social
antagonism between the patriarchal higher clergy and the common parishioner of
whatever ethnic origin. The interpretation of this antagonism as an expression of
ethnic resentment or nationalistic strife is in fact anachronistic.

4. 3. The Fanariotes turned the Patriarchate of Constantinople into a tool of
political aspirations
According to Bulgarian historians, the Fanariotes had an overwhelming influence on
the affairs of the Patriarchate and succeeded in turning it into a tool of their pan-
Hellenic aspirations. They often refer to the abolition of the Autocephalous
Archbishopric of Ohrid in 1767 as an example of Fanariote “imperialism”. According
to Ivan Snegarov, during the eighteenth century a Fanariotic and an autochthonous
current came into being among the leading clerics in the archbishopric. “The
adherents of the first [current]”, he writes,

“were people obsessed by Graecomania, who collaborated with money and intrigues
with certain Fanariote clerics to take power of the archiepiscopal seat. They did so out
of personal greed, because under the arbitrary rule of the Fanariote archbishops, they
would have the opportunity to rob the ecclesiastical revenues and belongings. The
adherents of the second current were moved by a diocesan patriotism and were
committed opponents to the Fanariote influence.” (Snegarov 1932: 126)

However, the Fanariotes’ share in the abolition of the Archbishopric of Ohrid
was rather limited. The events took place under patriarch Samuel I Handžeri
(Handzeris), who did not belong to an established Fanariote family, but actually used
his position to introduce his nephews into the Fanariote caste. According to
contemporary sources, the Archbishopric of Ohrid itself requested to be incorporated
into the Patriarchate of Constantinople because it was unable to pay its debts. For that
very reason, the patriarchate was reluctant to accept the offer. (Papadopoullos [1952]
1990: 89-90; Kitromilides 2007: I, 182) Runciman (1968: 380) suggests that the
Greek higher clergy asked for the abolition of the archbishopric because they “needed
support against growing Balkan nationalism”. This is not very convincing. Whatever
part was played by Fanariotes, it is very improbable that in the 1760s they ― or
others participants in the event ― were moved by nationalistic considerations.

The Fanariote influence on the Patriarchate had been increasing from the very
sixteenth century onwards and reached its peak in the first half of the eighteenth
century. To be sure, this influence was not always negative. For instance, thanks to
the interventions of the Fanariotes, the duration of the mandates of the patriarchs,
limited to a couple of years or even less before, doubled in the eighteenth century,
which allowed for a better governance.

In the years 1741-1755, Patriarch Kyrillos V (1748-1757), resenting the
pressure of the Fanariotes, curtailed their power by a reform which reduced the
influence of (mainly Fanariote) laymen in the church and increased the autonomy of

MYTHS OF THE OTHER IN THE BALKANS · 46

the Holy Synod in the election of the patriarch. From then onwards the patriarch was
to be elected by five specified metropolitans, constituting the “System of the Elders”.
Kyrillos also created the “System of the Public”, consisting of representatives of the
Greek, more exactly the Orthodox Christian guilds in Istanbul, who were entrusted
with the material affairs of the church. They constituted a counterbalance for the
Fanariote influence. Finally, he ordered that bishops and metropolitans reside in their
seats and not in Istanbul, where they were constantly exposed to Fanariote
manipulation. After a number of attempts made by the Fanariotes to restore the
former order, the innovations were finally sanctioned by a hatt-ı hümayun in 1759.
(Papadopoullos [1952] 1990: 48-56) They remained valid until the reformation of the
millets in the 1860s by the introduction of the National Statutes. Papadopoullos
concludes that

‘‘the policy of the Metropolitans, tending to subordinate the election of the Patriarch
to the exclusive influence of the clergy, constituted an effort to reestablish the
impaired authority of the Church; but what they achieved was only the preservation of
a residue of authority, the civil authority of the Church having been irremediably
impaired by the ascendancy of the Phanariots in the Turkish administration; it was,
however, a substantial residue, since it regarded the election of the Patriarch.”
(Papadopoullos [1952] 1990: 57)

The ensuing power shift from the patriarch to the synod also “benefited the
Church, because it helped to safeguard a relative effective authority for it despite the
persistence of the Phanariot influence.” (Papadopoullos [1952] 1990: 59)

There were many instances when the Patriarchate and the Fanariotes
disagreed, which is also an indication of the autonomy of the church. The older
generation of Fanariotes expected that their growing weight on the state affairs would
eventually result in a “takeover” of the Ottoman Empire, which implied the
preservation of the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire ― or, as they perceived
it, the Byzantine Empire ― and the existing social structures. To them, the church
was useful in supporting the Ottoman state. (Runciman 1968 : 394-397) Younger
Fanariotes were rather liberal nationalists; they favoured radical measures and were
involved in the revolutionary conspiracies preparing a Greek uprising and the
establishment of a Greek state. They were indifferent or even hostile to the church.

In the academies and schools the Fanariotes had opened in Istanbul, Bucharest,
Iaşi and elsewhere an education in the spirit of Western rationalism and
Enlightenment was offered, which the patriarchal authorities in the capital tolerated
only reluctantly and those in the province openly disapproved of. (Runciman 1968:
387) By the end of the eighteenth century, the Patriarchate repeatedly appealed to its
flock ― for instance in the notorious Paternal Teaching (Dhidhaskalia patriki) ― not
to fall under the spell of Enlightenment philosophy, liberalism and nationalism.
(Clogg 1996b: V, 87-101) While the older conservatives among the Fanariotes
supported this notorious pamphlet, the young revolutionaries indignantly condemned
it.

We may conclude that the Fanariotes had a tremendous power over the
Patriarchate, which nevertheless ― due to the resistance of the Patriarchate and to
divisiveness among the Fanariotes themselves ― was not unlimited. The church
retained the tools to pursue a policy of its own, steering a middle course between its
traditional loyalty to the Ottoman government, its ecumenical mission and material
interests. The church and the Greek nationalists distrusted each other, as is illustrated