The Translation of the Scriptures and the Ecumenical Patriarchate: The Translation Efforts of Hilarion of Tirnovo

Abstract

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, Constantinople continued to be the intellectual and religious centre of the Greeks despite rival flourishing educational and economic centres in such cities as Smyrna, Kydonies (Aivali), and Chios. Moreover, it was the ‘national’ centre of the Greek people. It was natural, therefore, that the subject of a new translation of the Scriptures, a project affecting all Greeks, should have arisen once more in the Ottoman capital.