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Monastery of the Holy Trinity

The Theological School of Halki (Heybeliada) is located at the top of the island’s “Hill of Hope” (ÜmitTepesi), on the grounds of the Byzantine-era monastery of the Holy Trinity, founded by Ecumenical Patriarch Saint Photios the Great. The idea of establishing a School that would meet the educational needs of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and the Orthodox world in general, was not a new one, but it required the superior administrative and organizational skills of Ecumenical Patriarch Germanos the 4th in order to be materialized. Patriarch Germanos first visited the Monastery in 1842, and in just two years, he succeeded in gaining approval from the Ottoman authorities and organizing the reconstitution of the Monastery and the construction of the necessary facilities for the operation of the Theological School.

The Theological School of Halki.

On October 1, 1844, the School was inaugurated, and the Monastery of the Holy Trinity resumed its thousand-year-old spiritual journey. According to the School’s rules and regulations, the School has an inter-Orthodox, inter-Christian (the first non-Orthodox student, an Anglican seminarian, was accepted as early as 1907), and inter-religious character. It operates as a monastic brotherhood and the student dress is the mandatory short black cassock. The curriculum was very similar to those of the orthodox theological schools around the world, with special emphasis given to the liturgical life and individual prayer, chanting and preaching, and, first and foremost, the deep knowledge of the orthodox tradition and theology, which distinguished the School’s graduates. During the 1894 earthquake, the complex was severely damaged -except the church-, and the School’s operation was interrupted. The present structure of the monastery and Theological School is the result of generous funding by the great benefactor PavlosSkilitsisStefanovik, who commissioned architect Pericles Fotiadis with the design of the new facilities, which took the form of the Greek letter Π. The inauguration took place on October 6, 1896. The School was closed in 1971, when a ruling by the Constitutional Court of Turkey resulted in the shutting down of many institutions of private higher education. It has remained closed ever since, despite repeated appeals by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, several countries, and important international organizations and personalities.