What is fascinating is the willingness of the Byzantine, Ottoman and Turkish Empires allowing or even encouraging the harmony of mixed religious populations despite the obvious clash between them. What is the reason behind this phenomena? It provides a contrast to the other invaders which attack and destroy (rob, kill and destroy). In this Gem I have laid out the profile for Thessalonica for you. I think I understand the reason, after being a student of history and geography for so long. Can you see the clues? I will deal with the solution as I summarise it in the next Gem. This is a work in progress for me. I wrote in the last Gem that I would only add my findings related to Thessalonica if I gained 10 requests. You fell a few short but I have realised this profile for Thessalonica solved the issue I was grappling with, so I have added it. See if you can work out the reason for yourself.
Thessalonica – The City
In English, the city can be called Thessaloniki, Thessalonica, Thessalonika, Thessalonike, or Thessalonice; Salonica, Salonika or Saloniki,. In printed texts, the most common name and spelling until the early 20th century was Thessalonica, matching the Latin name; through most of rest of the 20th century, it was Salonika.
- The city was founded in 315 BC by Cassander of Macedon who named it after his wife Thessalonike, daughter of Philip II of Macedon and sister of Alexander the Great.
- It was built 40 km southeast of Pella, the capital of the Kingdom of Macedonia.
- Thessalonica rapidly became populous and wealthy.
- After the battle of Pydna (168 BC), the Romans divided the conquered territory into four districts, after the organization of the single Roman province of Macedonia in 146 BC, it was the seat of the governor and thus practically the capital of the whole province.
- After the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, (49-48 BC). Thessalonica became a free city of the Roman Republic under Mark Antony in 41 BC.
- Strabo, writing in the reign of Augustus, speaks of it as the most populous town in Macedonia and the metropolis of the province.
- In 379 AD, when the Roman Prefecture of Illyricum was divided between the East and West Roman Empires, Thessaloniki became the capital of the new Prefecture of Illyricum.
- By the time of the Fall of Rome in 476 AD, from the first years of the Byzantine Empire, Thessaloniki was considered the second city in the Empire after Constantinople, both in terms of wealth and size.
- It was an important trade hub located on the Via Egnatia, the road connecting the Dardanelles which facilitated trade between Thessaloniki and great centres of Rome and Byzantium. The city also lies at the southern end of the main north–south route through the Balkans along the valleys of the Morava and Axios river valleys, thereby linking the Balkans with the rest of Greece.
- From the 6th to the 9th century it was engaged in repeated struggles against Avars, Slavonians and Bulgarians, whose attacks it repelled.
- Finally, in 904 AD it was captured by the Saracens, who, after slaughtering a great number of the inhabitants and burning a considerable portion of the city, sailed away carrying with them 22,000 captives.
- Thessalonica passed out of Byzantine hands in 1204, when Constantinople was captured by the forces of the Fourth Crusade and incorporated the city and its surrounding territories in the Kingdom of Thessalonica.
- In 1224, the Kingdom of Thessalonica was overrun by the Despotate of Epirus, a remnant of the former Byzantine Empire, under Theodore Komnenos Doukas who crowned himself Emperor, and the city became the capital of the short-lived Empire of Thessalonica.
- Following his defeat in 1230, the Empire of Thessalonica became a vassal state of the Second Bulgarian Empire until it was recovered again in 1246, this time by the Nicaean Empire.
- In 1342, the city saw the rise of the Commune of the Zealots, an anti-aristocratic party formed of sailors and the poor. The city was practically independent of the rest of the Empire, as it had its own government, a form of republic. The zealot movement was overthrown in 1350 and the city was reunited with the rest of the Empire.
- The capture of Gallipoli by the Ottomans in 1354 kicked off a rapid Turkish expansion in the southern Balkans, conducted both by the Ottomans themselves and by semi-independent Turkish ghazi warrior-bands.
- Thessalonica too submitted again to Ottoman rule at this time, possibly after resistance (1383-1387) but was treated more leniently. (see the link below under the Church)
- Thessalonica remained in Ottoman hands until 1403, when Emperor Manuel II sided with Bayezid’s eldest son Süleyman in the Ottoman succession struggle that broke out following the crushing defeat and capture of Bayezid at the Battle of Ankara against Tamerlane in 1402.
- In the 14th century, the city’s population exceeded 100,000 to 150,000, making it larger than London at the time.
- In exchange for his support, in the Treaty of Gallipoli the Byzantine emperor secured the return of Thessalonica, part of its hinterland, the Chalcidice peninsula, and the coastal region between the rivers Strymon and Pineios.
- Thessalonica enjoyed a period of relative peace and prosperity after 1403, as the Turks were preoccupied with their own civil war, but was attacked by the rival Ottoman pretenders in 1412 (by Musa Çelebi) and 1416 (during the uprising of Mustafa Çelebi against Mehmed I).
- Sultan Murad II captured Thessaloniki and sacked it on 29 March 1430 and an estimated one-fifth of the city’s population was enslaved. The Venetians held Thessaloniki until it was captured by the Ottoman Sultan Murad II
- However, the change of sovereignty from the Byzantine Empire to the Ottoman one did not affect the city’s prestige as a major imperial city and trading hub. Thessaloniki and Smyrna, although smaller in size than Constantinople, were the Ottoman Empire’s most important trading hubs. Most of the city’s tradespeople were Jewish.
- According to the 1478 Turkish census, Thessaloniki had 6,094 Christian Orthodox households, 4,320 Muslim households, and some Catholic. Soon after the turn of the 15th to 16th century, nearly 20,000 Sephardic Jews immigrated to Greece from the Iberian Peninsula following their expulsion from Spain by the 1492 Alhambra Decree. By 1500, the number of households had grown to 7,986 Christian , 8,5households75 Muslim households, and 3,770 Jewish.
- By 1519, Sephardic Jewish households numbered 15,715, 54% of the city’s population. Some historians consider the Ottoman regime’s invitation to Jewish settlement was a strategy to prevent the Christian population from dominating the city. Thessaloniki became both the largest Jewish city in the world and the only Jewish majority city in the world in the 16th century. As a result, it attracted persecuted Jews from all over the world.
The Demographics of Thessaloniki between 1500 and 1950
- With the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in the spring of 1821, the governor Yusuf Bey imprisoned in his headquarters more than 400 hostages. On 18 May, when Yusuf learned of the insurrection to the villages of Chalkidiki, he ordered half of his hostages to be slaughtered before his eyes. It would take until the end of the century for the city’s Greek community to recover.
- Thessaloniki was also a stronghold where novice military were trained. In June 1826, regular Ottoman soldiers attacked and destroyed the training base in Thessaloniki while also killing over 10,000 men.
- The last few decades of Ottoman control ushered in an era of revival when a number of new public buildings were built in the European eclectic style in both Thessaloniki and the Ottoman Empire. The city walls were torn down between 1869 and 1889, the first tram service started in 1888 and the city streets were illuminated with electric lamps in 1908.
- In 1888, the Oriental Railway connected Thessaloniki to Central Europe via rail through Belgrade and to Monastir in 1893, while the Thessaloniki–Istanbul Junction Railway connected it to Constantinople in 1896.
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the modern republic of Turkey, was born in Thessaloniki in 1881. His birthplace on İslahhane Caddesi (24 Apostolou Street) is now the Atatürk Museum and forms part of the Turkish consulate complex.
- During this period Thessaloniki’s Jewish element was the most dominant; it was the only city in Europe where the Jews were a majority of the total population.
- The city was ethnically diverse and cosmopolitan. By 1913, the ethnic composition of the city had changed so that the population stood at 157,889, with Jews at 39%, followed again by Turks (29%), Greeks (25%), Bulgarians (4%), Roma (2%), and others at 1%.
- As the First Balkan War (October 1912 to May 1913) broke out, Greece declared war on the Ottoman Empire and expanded its borders.
- When Thessaloniki was recaptured by the Greeks in the Balkan war of 1912 its population included 32,000 Turks, 47,000 Jews (mostly the descendants of refugees from Spain) and 16,000 Greeks along with other Europeans. There were a large number of mosques, 12 churches and 25 synagogues.
- Thessaloniki was revived as the city’s official name in 1912, when it joined the Kingdom of Greece during the Balkan Wars.
- In 1915, during World War I, a large Allied expeditionary force established a base at Thessaloniki for operations against pro-German Bulgaria. The State of Thessaloniki was disestablished with the unification of the two opposing Greek governments under Venizelos, following the abdication of King Constantine in 1917.
- Most of the old centre of the city was destroyed by the Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917, which was started accidentally by an unattended kitchen fire on 18 August 1917. The fire swept through the centre of the city.
- Many businesses were destroyed, 70% of the population were unemployed. Two churches and many synagogues and mosques were lost. More than one quarter of the total population of approximately 271,157 became homeless, the majority were Jewish. The Jewish population was reduced to a minority for the first time since the 16th Century.
- Following the fire the government prohibited quick rebuilding, so it could implement the new redesign of the city according to the European-style urban plan.
- During the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, a population exchange took place between Greece and Turkey. Over 160,000 ethnic Greeks deported from the former Ottoman Empire – particularly Greeks from Asia Minor and East Thrace were resettled in the city, changing its demographics. Additionally many of the city’s Muslims, including Ottoman Greek Muslims, were deported to Turkey, about 20,000 people in total. This made the Greek element dominant.
- During World War II Thessaloniki was heavily bombarded by Fascist Italy (with 232 people dead, 871 wounded and over 800 buildings damaged or destroyed in November 1940 alone). The city fell to Nazi Germany on 8 April 1941 and went under German occupation. The Nazis soon forced the Jewish residents into a ghetto near the railroads and on 15 March 1943 began the deportation of the city’s Jews to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Of the 45,000 Jews deported to Auschwitz, only 4% survived.
- On 30 October 1944, after battles with the retreating German army, and the forces of ELAS entered Thessaloniki as liberators headed by Markos Vafiadis (who did not obey orders from ELAS leadership in Athens to not enter the city. In the 1946 monarchy referendum, the majority of the locals voted in favour of a republic, contrary to the rest of Greece.
- After the war, Thessaloniki was rebuilt with large-scale development of new infrastructure and industry. Many of its architectural treasures still remain, preserving the value to the city as a tourist destination. Several early Christian and Byzantine monuments of Thessaloniki were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1988. In 1997, Thessaloniki was celebrated as the European Capital of Culture. In 2004, the city hosted a number of the football events as part of the 2004 Summer Olympics.
- Today, Thessaloniki has become one of the most important trade and business hubs in South-Eastern Europe, with its port, the Port of Thessaloniki being one of the largest in the Aegean and facilitating trade throughout the Balkan hinterland. On 26 October 2012 the city celebrated its centennial since its incorporation into Greece.
- The city also forms one of the largest student centres in Southeastern Europe, is host to the largest student population in Greece and was the European Youth Capital in 2014.
The Roman Empire (100’s AD) and The Expansion of Christianity (300’s AD)
Thessalonica – The Church
- Paul together with Silas and Timothy, visited Thessalonica on his 2nd missionary journey. He found at Thessalonica a synagogue of the Jews, in which for three successive Sabbaths he preached the gospel. Some of the Jews became converts and a considerable number of proselytes and Greeks, together with many women of high social standing.
- Among these converts were Aristarchus and Secundus, in all probability natives of Thessalonica, who accompanied Paul to Asia at the close of his 3rd missionary journey. Aristarchus was one of Paul’s most constant companions; we find him with Paul at Ephesus (Act 19:29) and on his journey to Rome (Act 27:2), while in two of his Epistles, written during his captivity, Paul refers to Aristarchus as still with him, his fellow-prisoner (Col 4:10; Phm 1:24).
- Gaius, too, who is mentioned in conjunction with Aristarchus, may have been a Thessalonian (Act 19:29).
- How long Paul remained at Thessalonica on his 1st visit we cannot precisely determine; certainly we are not to regard his stay there as confined to three weeks, and Ramsay suggests that it probably extended from December, 50 AD, to May, 51 AD.
- But his success roused the jealousy of the Jews, who raised a commotion among the dregs of the city populace (Act 17:5). The converts sent Paul and Silas by night to Berea (referred to by Cicero as an out-of-the-way town). The Berean Jews were more receptive to the gospel than those of Thessalonica, and the work of the apostle was more fruitful there, both among Jews and among Greeks. But the news of this success reached the Thessalonian Jews and inflamed their hostility afresh. They followed Paul and Silas to Berea, where they incited opposition there also and made it necessary for Paul to leave.
- The Thessalonian church was a strong and flourishing one, initially composed of mainly Gentiles rather than Jews. The epistle to the Thessalonians is by common consent the earliest of Paul’s Epistles.
- Paul was eager to revisit Thessalonica very soon after his enforced departure; the desire to return was strong in him, but “Satan hindered” him (1Th 2:18). A reference possibly to the danger and loss such a step would involve for Jason and the other leading converts. But though Paul himself was prevented from continuing his work at Thessalonica, he sent Timothy from Athens to visit the church and confirm the faith of the Christians amid their hardships and persecutions (1Th 3:2-10). The favourable report brought back by Timothy was a great comfort to Paul, and at the same time intensified his longing to see his converts again (1Th 3:10, 1Th 3:11). This desire was to be fulfilled more than once.
- Almost certainly Paul returned there on his 3rd missionary journey, both on his way to Greece (Act 20:1) and again while he was going thence to Jerusalem (Act 20:3). It is on this latter occasion that we hear of Aristarchus and Secundus accompanying him (Act 20:4). Probably Paul was again in Thessalonica after his first imprisonment.
- From the Epistle to the Philippians (Act 1:26; Act 2:24), written during his captivity, we learn that his intention was to revisit Philippi if possible, and 1Ti 1:3 records a subsequent journey to Macedonia, in the course of which the apostle may well have made a longer or shorter stay at Thessalonica.
- The only other mention of the town in the New Testament occurs in 2Tim 4:10, where Paul writes that Demas has forsaken him and has gone there. Whether Demas was a Thessalonian, as some have supposed, cannot be determined.
- For centuries the city remained one of the chief strongholds of Christianity, and it won for itself the title of “the Orthodox City,” not only by the tenacity and vigour of its resistance to the successive attacks of various barbarous races, but also by being largely responsible for their conversion to Christianity.
- In 306 AD, Thessaloniki acquired a patron saint, St. Demetrius, a Christian whom Galerius is said to have put to death.
- A basilica church dedicated to St. Demetrius, Hagios Demetrios, was first built in the fifth century AD and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- On the 27th of February 380 AD the Edict of Thessalonica by Theodosius I, made Nicene Christianity the state church of the Roman Empire. It condemned other Christian creeds such as Arianism as heresies.
- In the ninth century, the Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methodius, both natives of the city, created the first literary language of the Slavs, the Old Church Slavonic, most likely based on the Slavic dialect used in the hinterland of their hometown.
- Thessalonica passed out of Byzantine hands in 1204, when Constantinople was captured by the forces of the Fourth Crusade and incorporated the city and its surrounding territories in the Kingdom of Thessalonica.
- When Thessalonica willingly submitted again to Ottoman rule and was treated leniently, the Christian population and the Church retained most of their possessions, and the city retained its institutions. I am sure the business community recognised the wisdom of promoting the appeal of ancient Christian churches for the tourist trade.
I feel I should add a comment related to the Crusades. Just as Constantine only clouded the issue and didn’t do true Christianity any favours; so too the Crusaders. I think the solution is found in understanding the nature of the crusaders across Four Crusades. Sitting in the 21st Century we might be forgiven for thinking that the Crusades won back Christianity for Christendom. But just like Constantine, I think they did ‘The Way of Christ’ a disservice. I don’t believe resorting to the sword was Jesus intention for us at all. Have a read of Bible Gem 1210 and you will see what I mean. I will add to my conclusion in the next Gem and as well as explaining my thoughts on why Thyatira was highlighted among the Seven Churches.
The argument that led to the notion of it being acceptable to usher in Christianity by the use of the sword came from a misinterpretation of Luke 22:38.
Ian
Was Jesus meaning with [ἱκανόν ἐστιν] “two swords are enough” or “enough of that talk”? I think it is the latter.
Ian
There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Whatever possession we gain by our sword cannot be sure or lasting, but the love gained by kindness and moderation is certain and durable.
Alexander the Great