Sheikh ül-islam Feyzullah Efendi and the Armenian Patriarch Awetikʿ: a Case of Entangled Confessional Disciplining?

Among the Sheyk ül-islams, the chief religious authority of the Ottoman Empire, Feyzullah Efendi is one of the best known and most studied. This is certainly due to the incredible amount of power and wealth he was able to obtain during his tenure, as well as to his sudden and tragic end during the Rebellion of 1703. What is less known is that he played a central role in the religious and social turmoil which affected the Eastern Christian communities of the Empire at the turn of the eighteenth century, interfering directly in the ecclesiastical organization of the Syriac and especially Armenian Church. Already in 1692, when he was still a qadi in Erzurum, he meddled in the disputes between Catholic missionaries and Armenian Apostolic prelates, supporting the latter against the former and provoking the intervention of the French Ambassador, who obtained the exile of the local Armenian bishop. Few years later, once reached the summit of power, he resumed his fight against Catholic propaganda by appointing as Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople (and later of Jerusalem too) the very same bishop he had sided with in Erzurum, Awetik' Ewdokac’i. The condition behind these appointments was that Awetik‘ would have directed his efforts to stop the work of Catholic missionaries among the Armenians, punishing those who had been converted to the «Frank» religion. But why a high-ranking Ottoman officer should have been concerned by the doctrinal quarrels going on within the Eastern Christian communities? By cross-checking Ottoman, Western and Armenian sources, my chapter addresses this question, highlighting the political and entangled dimension of the Ottoman Confessionalization.