Orthodox metropolitan, and installed a Latin Archbishop in his stead. The Patriarchate of Constantinople continued to appoint metropolitans in exile, but after 1369 the see of Rhodes was awarded to the metropolitan of Side on the coast of Asia Minor. The Orthodox community on the island was administered by a council comprising local priests and secular potentates. In the early 15th century, the rising power of the Ottomans forced the Knights to adopt a more conciliatory stance, and the Orthodox metropolitans were allowed back on the island. The Union of the Churches in the Council of Florence (1447) met with ardent opposition by the Orthodox populace of the island, forcing the Knights to violently suppress their reactions. Rhodes finally fell to the Ottomans in 1522, allowing for the full restoration of the Orthodox Church on the island. Ottoman rule was characterized by relative calm, despite occasional disputes. Having lost all its suffragan sees by the early 14th century, by the early 17th century, the metropolis had risen back to 38th place among the metropolises under Constantinople, with a single suffragan, the see of Lerni, until it was raised to a separate metropolis in 1888. During the Greek War of Independence (1821–29), the Orthodox Church on the island suffered persecution, and its privileges were suspended until 1835, when a new firman restored them. In 1912, during the Italo-Turkish War, Rhodes along with the rest of the Dodecanese was occupied by Italy. Although at first welcomed as liberators, and promising autonomy for the islands or even a union with Greece, the Italians soon began to implement a policy of Italianization in their new colony. As the main native institution on the islands, the Orthodox Church was a major target of this campaign, such as the gradual revocation of its Ottoman-era privileges, attempts to split it from the Patriarchate and make the Dodecanese Church autocephalous, and persecution of the leading clergy. The period of Italian rule came finally to an end with the German occupation of the islands in 1943, leading after the war to the union of the Dodecanese with Greece (1947). The metropolitan of Rhodes, Apostolos Tryphonos, played a leading role in maintaining the islands' Greek identity throughout the period. In April 2004, the islands of Symi, Chalki, Tilos and Kastellorizo were split off to form the new Metropolis of Symi, while the island of Nisyros came under the Metropolis of