By Alexander Billinis

That their numbers were bolstered by waves of Greeks and Arvanites fleeing Turkish rule is certain, but their communities are indigenous to the area. Further north, in Venice, we have the first recognizable Greek Diaspora of the modern era. This community set the stage for the development of the Greek Diaspora for the next five hundred years, to the present day.

Venice and Byzantium-Greece have a relationship of fifteen centuries’ duration. For the first five centuries, Byzantium protected this waterlogged Western outpost but eventually the Venetians exploited their rich and powerful benefactor, and with the help of other Crusaders, carved permanent enclaves out of Byzantium. In parts of Greece, such as Crete and the Ionian Islands, their legacy remains in architecture and culture to this day.

Venice was as much a successful commercial enterprise as an empire, and as such, it became a magnet for immigration. As the embers of Byzantium were dying out, many Byzantines began to hedge their bets and to take out Venetian citizenship. Even the last Byzantine Chancellor, Grand Duke Notaras, who famously declared that he would prefer the “Turkish Turban in Constantinople to the Cardinal’s Mitre,” held Venetian citizenship, and had sent his three daughters to Venice prior to Constantinople’s fall. His daughter, the Duchess Notarina, was one of the first major figures and benefactors to the Greek Venetian community.

Initially, the Greeks suffered discrimination in Venice, most particularly in the practice of their religion. As Roman Catholics, the Venetians viewed the Byzantine Orthodox Catholic as schismatic who must unite with the Church of Rome, and initially any religious services had to conform with the union of the Churches. The first church used by the community was a side chapel of the Church of San Biagio, in 1470. The Notaras family also maintained a chapel in their small palace.

After nearly a century of lobbying, the Church of San Giorgio dei Greci was built, the first Greek Church of the Diaspora. Completed in 1573, it initially had to conform to the Uniate doctrine, but the Venetians were not particularly dogmatic Roman Catholic and their Senate gave way in 1577, allowing the Church to be placed under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople, setting a precedent that remains for Diaspora Greek Churches to this day.

The Church itself, from an exterior point of view, assimilates the sacred architecture of its era and area, outwardly no different from contemporary Roman Catholic Churches. I am reminded of the Orthodox Churches in my wife’s home province of Vojvodina in Serbia, which was under Austrian rule for several hundred years. There the Orthodox Churches are generally in a baroque style nearly identical to Roman Catholic Churches. This would occur time and again in the Diaspora, where the outward style of the Churches conformed to local norms. The Greek Orthodox Church of Prophet Elias in my hometown, Salt Lake City, Utah, from the outside looks quite similar to a Mormon Church,

Inside of course, the difference was fundamental. Here the full force of Byzantium burst forth, though it too had been subtly changed by contact with the West. The Cretan masters such as the famous iconographer Damaskinos, who painted the icons and frescoes of San Giorgio, like those Orthodox Churches in Vojvodina, blended their timeless Byzantine styles with their contemporary times, producing a Diaspora iconography incorporating both their origins and their new experiences. In a sense, their church becomes a metaphor for the transformative experience of the Diaspora, where the Greeks and other Byzantines evolved, assimilated, yet sought to remain true to their traditions.

San Giorgio dei Greci became the reference and rallying point for the Greek community in Venice and all of its cultural, educational, political, and social activities. The Greek community, at times numbering in the tens of thousands, set up residence and shop in the vicinity, and the canal facing the church became known as the Rio dei Greci. Educational institutions dedicated to the Greek community flanked the Church, these, and the Institute for Byzantine Studies, remain to this day.

The Greeks prospered as merchants and seafarers, as well as artisans and soldiers. As Venice controlled parts of Greece, there were few restrictions on Greeks coming to Venice, and any Greek who arrived would go to the Church, as much for practical as spiritual guidance. Similarly, the Greeks of Venice actively involved themselves in the education of their fellow countrymen in Greece, both in the Ottoman - and Venetian - controlled areas. This set an additional precedent of the Diaspora, spearheaded by the Church, taking an active interest in the conditions of the motherland.

Other Greek communities sprang up in the West, most notably in Vienna, Budapest, Trieste, and London. I have had the privilege of visiting all of these communities. In Vienna, Budapest, and Trieste the churches’ exteriors resemble the sacred architecture of their times, but the interiors all conform to the strictures of Orthodoxy. All of these Churches, subject to the Patriarch in Constantinople, played a key role in the liberation of Greece and the cultural and economic development of the nascent kingdom. Today, while the London Church, declaratively Byzantine in its architecture, remains full of Greeks and Cypriots of various generations, the other locations basically minister to fully assimilated communities, conscious of the Greek (or often Serbo-Greek) origins but no longer considering themselves part of the Diaspora. As the priest at the Budapest cathedral told me, “this was a Greek Church, now it is Hungarian.”

As Greeks immigrated across the oceans, to North and South America and Australia, the “San Giorgio Model” of Church and Community remained the norm. Immigrants arrived, pooled their resources, built churches, and sent for priests. Even though those who came from Greece and were subject to the Archbishop of Athens, once they were in the Diaspora, the Patriarchate took over jurisdiction of the Church, operating on the “San Giorgio precedent.” Far from their homelands, the Church offered a secular and sacred refuge to the harshness of exile, and an active reference and networking point for all social, matrimonial, educational, and civic activities. As in the Venetian community, so now we in the American and Australian communities meet, worship, study, debate, marry, network, opine on the politics of the old country, and assimilate based on a pattern established half a millennium ago, on a waterlogged canal in a Renaissance Church. When we want to discover where we come from, we usually go back to Greece. On the way there, it might make sense to stop in Venice, to discover where we are going as Diaspora Greeks.