ABSTRACT
As a rule, the account of the history of the Greek Orthodox Church in Anatolia in the fourteenth century follows the narrative of oppression and expulsion by the Muslim Turkish conquerors and a resultant decline that led ultimately to Christians constituting a minute minority in Anatolia by the late fifteenth century. This narrative was shaped particularly by Speros Vryonis’s seminal work, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamisation from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century published in 1971.1 One of the main reasons for this decline, according to Vryonis, was the destruction of the Orthodox Church ‘as an effective social, economic and religious institution.’2 Vryonis’s work was criticised on various occasions. Claude Cahen already called into question the emphasis of the Byzantine perspective,3 and more recently Anthony Kaldellis has recently pointed out Vryonis’s Greek-nationalistic picture of Byzantium.4
