In the work of history that he dedicated to Mehmet the Conqueror, Michael Kritovoulos – an official of the Byzantine Empire who had changed sides – dwelled at some length on the investiture of Gennadios Scholarios in 1454 as the first patriarch under Ottoman rule. According to Kritovoulos's account, the sultan not only made Scholarios ‘High Priest of the Christians’ but also ‘gave him among many other rights and privileges the rule of the Church and all its power and authority, no less than that enjoyed previously under the emperors’ (pp. 21–2). Highlighting this episode but rejecting the continuity that it seems to imply, Papademetriou sets out to chart the profound transformation of Church-State relations that occurred in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The first Ottoman rulers, he argues, were less interested in the patriarch as the spiritual and political leader of a large, subjugated community of different faith than in his potential as an effective ‘tax farmer’ who could exploit land and labour for the state's ‘financial gain’ (pp. 10, 117–18). This attitude towards the Church developed out of the policy of accommodation that Turkoman emirs had initially employed in Asia Minor towards local bishops, assigning to them the status of major landlords and permitting them to collect revenues. Under the increasingly centralised early modern Ottoman state, patriarchs were expected to purchase their appointments and remain in tenure not for life but only for as long (on average 2–3 years) as they were able to administer the provincial Church in such a way as to provide the fisc with predetermined annual revenues in cash. Substantial sums were involved: for example, during 1578, the patriarchal agent Theodosios Zygomylas reported that he collected 2,661,250 akçe from 106,450 households in Rumeli and the Aegean alone. It was understood that a cut would never reach the sultan's treasury, but instead be kept by administrators. Such opportunities for enrichment made intervention in the affairs of the patriarchate attractive to lay Christians, who in their competition with one another to dominate the ecclesiastical hierarchy often resorted to bribery or coercion. While Papademetriou uses official ledgers, correspondence and other primary sources to good effect throughout, the material does not allow him to reconstruct the exact workings of the fiscal system directed by the patriarchs. He does, however, offer some consequential insights, contending that tax officials included metropolitans, bishops and monks, but also lay Christians and even Muslims (pp. 166–8); that the taxes imposed were ‘over and above the other taxes collected by the state’ and took the form of ‘a tax on land production’ but also ‘a variety of other taxes’ (pp. 157–65); and that collection from the Orthodox was attempted both within and without Ottoman territories – although in the latter case contributors may have understood themselves to be participating not in obligatory levies but rather in voluntary almsgiving (pp. 171–2). While this book does not replace Steven Runciman's The great Church in captivity (Cambridge 1968), it may usefully be read in conjunction with that classic work, to which it aims to provide an update and corrective.