Summary
Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem (1897–1931), whose tenure frames the Arab-Greek struggle in ‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954): a group of monks with Athens’ backing attempted to depose him between 1908 and 1920, the Arab community backed him, and his relations with Niqula Khoury ran from shelter and money in 1910 to blocking Khoury’s ordination in 1928 (‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954), PDF p.59, p.63-64, p.102).
Details
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Papastathis corrects Khoury’s narration of the crisis at the beginning of the Mandate, when between 1908 and 1920 a group of monks with Athens’ backing attempted to depose Damianos: Khoury treated it as a dispute between Greece and the Patriarchate refusing foreign subordination, but Damianos was neither anti-Greek nor against Athens’ support despite Arab backing; the real issue was gaining patriarchal power as such, and the outcome depended on the British policy of avoiding foreign interference in the prospective colony (PDF p.59).
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Khoury’s relations with Damianos were volatile. In 1910 Damianos looked after him in Jerusalem when Khoury took shelter after being forced to leave Karak, supporting him financially with a hundred and twenty gold francs; at that time Damianos was in internal strife with the Greek nationalist block within the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre, which accused him of being pro-Arab and pro-Russian, and he had the backing of the Russian consul and the Arab congregation, so helping Khoury may have been a strategy of identifying his rule with the locals rather than pure charity (PDF p.63).
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In the Memoirs’ own account of the flight from Karak, Damianos asked to meet Khoury in Jerusalem to gain insight into the revolt’s circumstances, was moved to see him in only the nightclothes in which he had fled, helped the family with money and paid their delayed salaries — Khoury came back with an amount equivalent to 120 gold French francs — and exempted them from service that year on paid salary in compensation for their distress in Karak (PDF p.102-103).
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Damianos did not allow Khoury to enrol in the theological seminary at the Monastery of the Cross, on the pretext that new teachers had to serve in the communal schools — an exclusion Khoury implies was a tactic to prevent natives entering the Brotherhood (PDF p.63-64).
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Damianos tried to block Khoury’s ordination despite his election by the community; the British High Commissioner pressured him to agree, and he did not ordain Khoury himself but sent Bishop Meliton in his place to show his dislike, in 1928, when he faced internal challenges that would force him to ask the Arab Orthodox for help (PDF p.64).
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The Memoirs §26 dates Damianos’s death to ‘the spring of the year 1932’ and the Synod’s election of Keladion as locum tenens to its aftermath (‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954), PDF p.119) — held against this page’s 1897-1931 dating from the same volume (PDF p.50, editors’ note at PDF p.102); see the source page’s Open questions.
Related pages
‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954), Niqula Khoury, Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre, Karak Revolt (1910)