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When and Where “The Melkite Renaissance” Started?... 475
between uwakim and Greeks, and the Bethlehem metropolitan did not
acknowledge his defeat.
even after this main disaster of his life, uwakim still was full of energy
and was able for ambitious projects and unusual steps. he effectively
administered his bishopric, which faced serious problems at that period.
late chronicles of palestinian Greeks recorded in 1580s an intensification
of a competition between orthodox and latins for the control on the
holy sites including Bethlehem. 13 Such a struggle was very expensive for
Christians because they had to bribe ottoman judges. Sources mentioned
also that the basilica of the nativity in Bethlehem had been in a half-ruined
condition and close to falling down. 14 the metropolitan of Bethlehem had
no money to struggle with Catholics or to restore the basilica.
In such a situation uwakim made almost unprecedented decision
to travel to Moscow tsar in search of alms. there was indeed a long
tradition among Middle eastern Christians to apply for a financial support
to russia. however only simple monks, not metropolitans, undertook
such distant and risky traveling. During the eight decades of the 16 th
century only one metropolitan from eastern Mediterranean region came
to russia (it was Ioasaph of evgrippa, who in 1560s brought a message
of the Constantinopolitan Synod on a recognition of the title of Ivan the
terrible as “tsar”). 15 So, uwakim of Bethlehem was the second levantine
metropolitan and the first Christian Arab who visited eastern europe in the
ottoman period.
According to the information given by uwakim later in Posolskiy
Prikaz (the russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), he left palestine in June
1582. the metropolitan got messages from the patriarchs of Jerusalem and
Alexandria. Sophronius in his encyclical appeal to all orthodox Christians
13 Maxim SIMSKIy, op. cit., p. 44; prokopiy nazianzin Arabogly. Popiraemiy
Ierusalim (Oppressed Jerusalem), p. 142 / Materiali dlia istorii Ierusalimskoy patriarhii
XVI–XIX vv. (Materials on a History of the Jerusalem Patriarchate in the 16 th and 19 th
Centuries). Т. 2. st.-Petersburg. 1904. p. 131-350; Neophit Kiprskiy. Rasskaz Neofita
Kiprskogo o nahodiaschihsa v Ierusalime hristianskih ispovedaniyah I ssorah ih medjdu
soboy po povodu mest pokloneniya (A Record of Neophit of Cypros about Christian
Denominations of Jerusalem and Their Struggle for the Holy Sites), p. 14/Materiali dlia
istorii Ierusalimskoy patriarhii XVI–XIX vv. (Materials on a History of the Jerusalem
Patriarchate in the 16 th and 19 th Centuries). Т. 1. st.-Petersburg. 1901. P. 2-119.
14 Kapterev n.F., op. cit., p. 210.
15 MurAVIeV A.n., Snosheniya Rossii s Vostokom po delam tserkovnim (Russian-
Oriental Contacts on Ecclesiastical Matters). p. 71-73, 104; Rossiya i Grecheskiy mir v
XVI v. (Russia and Greeks in the 16 th Century). ed. Kashtanov S.М.). Moscow. 2004, p.
206-210, 261-281.