Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople

The Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople is today head of one of the smallest Patriarchates of the Oriental Orthodox Church but has exerted a very significant political role and today still exercises a spiritual authority which earns him considerable respect among Orthodox churches. Despite a huge diminution in the number of its faithful, the patriarchate is still the largest Christian community in Turkey.

Like the Greek Patriarchate, the Armenians suffered severely from intervention by the state in their internal affairs. Although there have been 115 pontificates since 1461, there have only been 84 individual Patriarchs. Karapet II served five separate pontificates (1676-1679, 1680-1681, 1681-1684, 1686-1687 and 1688-1689). In 1896 Patriarch Matteos III Izmirlian was deposed and exiled to Jerusalem by Sultan Abdul Hamid II for boldly denouncing the 1896 massacre and was only permitted to return in 1908 when the Sultan himself was deposed. The national Constitution granted to Armenians (Sahmanadrootiun) by Sultan Abdul-Aziz in 1861, which had been abrogated for nearly twenty years, was also restored.