CLASSES

The Ecumenical Patriarchate: History and Theology

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2026

This course treats the Ecumenical Patriarchate as a long, intricate conversation between faith, power, and culture, traced from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the present. Students follow an institution that has learned to inhabit successive worlds—Ottoman, post-imperial, and global—while carrying a memory older than the empires that housed it. The enquiry situates the Patriarchate within the Orthodox tradition and within the shifting constellations of political authority, national awakenings, and inter-Christian encounter.

Church and International Relations

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2026

What we call a civilisation is less a machine than a living ecology: numerous elements, asymmetrically assembled, engaged in constant mutual adjustment. Stability is often the surface effect of quiet, ceaseless rebalancing—until a juncture arrives when pressure accumulates, a fuse is lit, and the system enters its decisive hour, whether through a single spark or a chain of them.

Religion and Identities in the Ottoman Empire

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2025

Ottoman society organised difference through the institution of the millet. In official usage, the term, though it meant “nation”, denoted a religious community endowed with corporate standing. By the Sultan’s grant, monotheist bodies—Christians, Jews and others—received a defined legal status. Protection came by charter, the ahdname (ahtiname), which set out the conditions of life in common. Within their own spheres, millets maintained courts and disciplines grounded in religious law, managed their internal revenues, and lived under the overarching authority of the throne.

Christianity in the Slavic World

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2025

The course provides a comprehensive overview of the Church's history in the Slavic countries, offering essential geographical, historical, and historiographical elements to situate the processes of religious, social, economic, and political development inherent in Eurasia within a transcultural and transnational perspective, spanning from the medieval to the modern age.