On the condition of the clergy in Smyrna during the second half of the eighteenth century

This article presents and studies systematically for the first time a criticaltext on the Orthodox clergy of Smyrna during the second half of the eighteenthcentury. This text precedes chronologically all similar texts voicing criticism onthe condition and behaviour of the clergy, that were inspired by the principlesof Enlightenment.The author of the text Gregory, archdeacon to the Metropolitan of Smyrna,and later Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory V, was not motivated by secularprinciples in his criticism but by the patristic traditions of the OrthodoxChurch. The text in question is of great interest not only because it providesinvaluable information about the life of the Orthodox clergy in the area, butalso because it represents a critical attitude emanating from religious princi- pies, free from the acerbity and divisiveness that marks the corresponding textsof the Enlightenment.The text in question constitutes the preface to an edition of St. John Chrysostom’sHomilies on Priesthood, published in Venice in 1783