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→What is a Greek saint?: new section
#St. Panteleimon the New Martyr of Asia Minor
#St. John the New Martyr of Peleponnesos
== What is a Greek saint? ==
The definition this article gives is they "who were born or died in Greece and/or whose relics have survived in Greece". Well, I'm not sure if this is true. What would a saint born and died in Asia Minor, i.e. present-day Turkey, be? A Turk saint? I think that this is false. Possibly the only Turkish saints would be those new martyrs born Ottomans, converted to Christianity and martyred, namely Ahmed the Calligrapher and a few others. However, the Rum millet during the Ottoman empire was multi-ethnic and the Ottoman millet was Muslim exclusively. So, in a way, even these saints would not qualify as Turks.
The Roman empire, terminally defeated in 1453, had been a Greek-speaking empire since at least the 6th century and the "Romian ethnos", come into being after Charlemagne was crowned a Roman empire, gradually led to a neo-Hellenic ethnogenesis. Between 11th and 15th centuries, the Romian self-conscience was Greek. So, I propose that the Romians/Byzantines after the Schism and until the Fall of Constantinople would be categorized as Greeks.
As far as the Rum millet is concerned, I know that it was a multi-ethnic community for centuries. But in 1922, when a population exchange took part between Greece and Turkey, all Christians from Asia Minor came to Greece, no matter what their language was. There were people that could not speak a Greek word. Similarly, all Muslims left Greece for Turkey, even if their mother tongue was Greek. So, I propose that the saints of this period from/in Asia Minor and proper Greece be classified as Greeks, except if otherwise proven. [[User:Rhodion|Rhodion]] 01:40, November 23, 2012 (HST)
