The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence

This is Sir Steven Runcimans established and widely admired classic account of the Patriarchate of Constantinople first published in 1968. The Great Church as the Greeks called the Orthodox Patriarchate was the spiritual centre of the Byzantine world. The Churchs survival during the four centuries of Turkish rule which followed the fall of Constantinople bore witness to its strenght and to the unquenchable vitality of Hellenism. Sir Steven Runcimans history of the Great Church in this period is written with scholarship sympathy and style.