Summary
The Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, considered the oldest Christian institution in Palestine, ruled by the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre under a Patriarch with almost absolute power, and the institution whose Greek hierarchy’s domination the Arab Orthodox Movement — and Niqula Khoury within it — contested (‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954), PDF p.50).
Details
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From the Ottoman conquest of Palestine (1517) to the mid-nineteenth century it was closely linked to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which had a major say in appointing its head and mediated for it to the Porte; its monastic structure let it acquire only vakf real estate, monks bequeathed their properties to the Brotherhood, and parish priests were not Brotherhood members and were responsible for education and charity, considered of secondary importance — developments that allowed its gradual hellenization in parallel to Greek nation-building (PDF p.50).
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In the Khourys’ Survey as reported by Papastathis, the Patriarchate’s working language until 1517 was Arabic and its clergy largely indigenous Arabs; Patriarch Germanos (1537–1579) began ordaining Greek bishops in place of Arabs, and rules under Paisios (1645–1660) and Dositheos (1669–1707) blocked non-Greek enrolment and promotion in the Brotherhood; the Fundamental Law of 1875 institutionalised the arrangement and, in the Khourys’ words, “is biased to the detriment of the rights of the nationals” (PDF p.54-55).
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The Introduction notes that, alone among former Ottoman Orthodox churches, the Jerusalem hierarchy did not become autocephalous in the 1800s, Palestine’s status as the Holy Land making Greek relinquishment unlikely, and that the tension remains alive in controversies over Greek hierarchy sales of Jerusalem church land to Israeli settlers (PDF p.20).
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In the Mandate period the British Administration implemented no structural reform of the Patriarchate despite its Commissions’ recommendations, and did not acknowledge Greece as its protectrice, for reasons of British strategy rather than Arab Orthodox protest (PDF p.51).
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Its ecclesiastical justice system lay under the Greek hierarchy’s power, the court’s president being ex officio a Brotherhood member, although Arab Orthodox priests and laymen formed the majority in the Spiritual and Mixed Ecclesiastical Courts of each diocese (PDF p.58).
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The Greek narrative, as Papastathis reconstructs it from the Patriarchate’s Refutation (1937) and Kallistos Miliaras: the Patriarchate’s authority derives from its confraternity organization on the monastic tradition, and from the Greek national character given institutional validity by the legal decrees defining it as ‘Rum’ — ‘Rum’, for the Greek establishment, meant those with Greek national consciousness and cultural belonging, and ‘Rum Millet’ “is restricted to the Greek nation”; Jerusalem’s patriarchal status rests on its sanctuaries, so the Church has not a pastoral character but that of a place of pilgrimage, and the shrines’ owner is the Hellenic race in its totality acting through the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre (PDF p.60-61).
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In that narrative Syria-Palestine’s Orthodox are arabophones of Greek ethnic origin, not Arabs; the idea that they are Arabs was Russian propaganda that lit the fire of phyletism, and Khoury’s Arab patriarchs are a Russian-constructed distortion — the Greek side concedes Arab patriarchs as possible only between 1460–1530, with no historical evidence for their activities, and holds the institution’s Greek character throughout its history undisputable (PDF p.61-62).
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The narrative’s three effects: the indigenous clergy and laity are excluded from governance and finance; local demands for pastoral care, charity and education get secondary importance; and admission of Arab Orthodox to the Confraternity, open in theory to all Orthodox faithful, was barred in practice by the dominance of Helleno-Orthodoxia (PDF p.62).
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Papastathis’s conclusion: the establishment viewed Arab Orthodox claims as a threat, but its counter-strategy was structured, at least officially, not on the national criterion but on the institutional/legal aspect — the monastic character of the institution and the supposed legally binding Greek custodianship rights over the holy places (PDF p.66).
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The Memoirs §§24-27 add Khoury’s first-person episodes: the Patriarch and synod refusing his ordination on salary grounds until community insistence and High Commissioner pressure obliged consent, the Patriarch sending Archbishop Meliton to ordain him and himself going to Jericho (PDF p.116-117); his court clerkship under Archimandrite Theodoritos (PDF p.119); the Brotherhood’s breaking of the priests’ unity after the 1932 conference (PDF p.120); Benjamin I’s blame of the Jerusalem Patriarchate for inattention to the Palestinian cause (PDF p.133); and in Athens the delegation’s deduction that the Patriarchate had written asking Greek ministers not to help them, and Archimandrite Benedictos’s lunch and Acropolis tour in hope they would hold back from the Brotherhood’s scandals (PDF p.150).
Related pages
‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954), Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre, Arab Orthodox Movement, Niqula Khoury, Shehadeh Khoury