Page 211 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

T H E P R O B L E M O F E T N O P H Y L E T I S M
mations on the Balkan historical scene and their consequenc-
es for the life—even the very existence— of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate. After a period of freedom granted by the Otto-
man state to religious minorities during the second half of the
nineteenth century, which enabled the Ecumenical Patriarch-
ate to go through an impressive flowering in its spiritual and
religious life, nationalism finally crept into the Ottoman Em-
pire itself and broke it apart. Amidst national conflicts which
overturned the empire and shook the broader region, emerged
the modern Turkish nation, which evinced intense hostility to
anything Greek or Hellenic.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate faced under these changed
circumstances—especially after the Asia Minor catastrophe of
1922—the most awful threat against its very survival, with the
largest part of its flock uprooted from its territories and its
cathedral seat under danger of expulsion from the place it had
occupied for long centuries. Finally, with the Treaty of Laus-
anne (1923), the seat of the Patriarchate remained in Constan-
tinople, along with its neighbouring dioceses, and carried on
the struggle to fulfil its supranational mission in Orthodoxy—
within an environment that, from the outset, viewed this in-
stitution with suspicion and nationalist mistrust.
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