The reconstruction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1454 allowed Orthodox Christians, who found themselves under Ottoman rule, to once again have a supreme ecclesiastical authority and simultaneously an institutional organization of their society.

To study this phenomenon and investigate the multiple consequences that arose, there is a need for reliable sources, primarily the deeds of the Patriarchate itself. In 2013 (and in a revised edition in 2016), forty-two patriarchal texts that survive from the period 1454-1498 were presented.

In the second volume, which is now being published, one hundred and five texts dating from the period 1498-1565 are presented, of which only three survive in the Archives of the Patriarchate, while the others were located in archives and libraries in Greece and abroad.

With this publication, historical research gains a valuable aid, where the researcher will find gathered in a user-friendly and reliable edition the one hundred and five surviving official texts. A wide range of topics emerges from the texts regarding the internal life of the Church, texts in which the supreme ecclesiastical authority addresses monastic institutions, Orthodox Christians living in the Ottoman Empire, texts concerning the relations of the Orthodox Church with the Orthodox community of Venice, the monastery of Sinai, or the leaders of Russia.

The volume concludes with a detailed index of names, places, and terms, and a table listing the archives and libraries where the originals or their copies were located. The publication was carried out as part of a Research Program funded by the Onassis Foundation.