Changes

d. The Church hierarchy was given the right to civil administration over their Christian population. The bishops, under the Patriarch judged Christians according to Greek laws, rather than Islamic ones. All sentences were imposed by the Turkish authorities. They were allowed their own schools and basically became a state within a state.

a. Political decline shortly settle in to the Ottoman Empire. Corruption became the rule. The sultans fleeced their pashas, who in turn fleeced their faithful. These were desperaten time and there was no one to listen to the complaints of the Christian, no one within the territories and no one without.

b. Even the rights of the patriarch as milet pasha were reduced to nothing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was left the “right” of being held responsible for the Christians. Persecutions and martyrdom were becoming prevalent. All of Europe feared the Ottomans and Russia alone came to their aid, but this only worsened their position and infuriated their occupiers.