An imperial and modern church in times of geopolitical realignments
Wednesday, October 12th, 2022
| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Wednesday, October 12, 2022 | 12:00PM - 2:00PM | Seminar Room 108N, 1 Devonshire Place, Toronto, ON, M5S 3K7 |
Description
Speaker: Tassos Anastassiadis, Associate Professor of History & Phrixos B. Papachristidis Chair in Modern Greek Studies, McGill
University
Tassos Anastassiadis (Phd Sciences-Po Paris, agrégation of history) is an Associate Professor of History and the Phrixos Papachristidis Chair in Modern Greek Studies at McGill University since 2011. He teaches and researches Modern European and Greek history, with a focus on inter-confessional relations and the emergence of differentiated modernities in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 18th-20th c.as well as the role of antiquity in the European imaginary. His most recent book, La réforme orthodoxe: Église, État et société en Grèce à l’époque de la confessionnalisation post-ottomane (1833-1940) (Peeters-EFA, 2020) , won the FRQSC’s Prix Louise-Dandurand in 2022.
Facing the increasing penetration of western catholic and protestant missionaries in the Ottoman world after the Crimean war, but also challenged by a growing Russian presence in their plurisecular role of leader of the Rum, i.e. the Eastern christian orthodox, within the Ottoman empire, certain Greek-Orthodox clergymen decided to react during the last quarter of the 19th c. Their projet was three-fold. Envision a new, imperial, but post-ottoman, configuration for the Eastern Orthodox churches that would preserve the primacy of the Greek-orthodox despite the emergence of national churches and growing Russian influence; adapt their project to the new geopolitical developments of the Age of Empires; guarantee the survival of these churches by adopting « modern » ways of practising religion that would help them maintain the allegiance of their flock tempted by the voices of outside sirens. The network of these reformers rotating around an Athens-Constantinople (Istanbul) axis and active from Alexandria to Tbilissi, and from Jerusalem to Bitola, but also in the USA, will have a narrow window of opportunity on the aftermath of the Russian revolution and the end of WWI. Though it was finally not fully realized, it has left its indelible mark on the way religion is practised and politicized in Europe’s orthodox borderlands.
Sponsors: CERES, the HHF Chair in Modern Greek History at York University, and Hellenic Canadian Academic Association of Ontario.
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