Ottoman Documents from “Piskopos Kalemi” about the Relations between the Central and the Local Ottoman Authorities, and the Orthodox Church

Authors:

Pages: 86-95

Abstract:

The Orthodox Church was one of the few institutions, inherited from the Byzantine- Balkan medieval world, that received relatively early official recognition by the Ottoman authorities and whose activities were substantiated by documents in the palace chancellery. Among the preserved Ottoman archive material, of especially great importance for research work on the different aspects of the functioning of the Orthodox Church structures during the Ottoman rule, are the documents from the almost unpublished “Piskopos kalemi” fund (literary “The Chancellery of Episcopal Acts”) and the so called “Kilise defterleri” fund (literary “The Church Registers”), that are kept in the Ottoman archives in Istanbul. In the present paper the author’s attention is focused particularly upon some personal petitions (arzuhal) from the Orthodox Patriarch in Istanbul and Sultan’s orders (hjukm) (the earliest document is from 1686, and the latest one – from 1755) revealing the specific dimensions of the status of the Orthodox church in context of the relations between central – local Ottoman authority, mostly upon the example of the Bishopric of Tarnovo and the episcopates within its jurisdiction. Even though these documents are principally an official and legal expression of financial relations – basically obligations towards the central Ottoman authority and the Patriarchate of Constantinople, there are fixed in all of them the positions and the type of relations between the three sides mutually bound together: the Ottoman authority – central and local, the high Orthodox and the parish clergy and the Orthodox flock. Furthermore, the detailed statements and the circumstantial resolutions of the respective departments give an adequate opportunity for a comparative research on the rights of the Orthodox metropolitans and bishops in religious, matrimonial and property deeds, specified in the issued berats and fermans from the 17th and 18th cc. Cases of illegal interference on the side of the local Ottoman authorities in the collecting of church taxes, fees and fines by the church prelates, in contracting and dissolving of marriages, and in solving hereditary problems, etc. are specified and presented in expressive way in almost all of the documents studied in the paper. In spite of the due reaction of the central authority, the presented incidents indicate that during the 17th–18th cc., together with the growing manifestation of decentralization, anarchy and corruption on every level, the local control became less and less effective, still 87 more that all the representatives of the local administration together with the local “notables” were involved in those incidents.

Keywords:

Orthodox Church, Ottoman Empire, central and local Ottoman authorities, Piskopos kalemi, Kilise defteri

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