GREEK
767
GREEK
ecclesiastical dependence on Constantinople and set up
the Servian Patriarchate of Ipek, which, after many
changes of fortune, was suppressed in 1766 and in-
corporated in the Byzantine Church. The Russian
Church continued to depend on Constantinople
through its metropolitans at Kiev and at Moscow
until 23 January, 15S9, when the Byzantine patriarch,
Jeremias 11, publicly recognized its autonomy, and
consecrated Job the first patriarch of Moscow. From
that datethe Russian Church ]xissesout of the purview
of this article. It was not till the fourteenth centurj-
that the Church of Constantinople succeeded in impos-
ing upon the Rumanian people, who occupied the
north bank of the Danube, a Greek ecclesiastical
hierarchy subject to itself. This was done through
the inetropolitan .sees of Alania and Bitzinia, or Soter-
opolis, with the later sees of Hungaro-Wallachia,
Mauro-Wallachia (.Moldavia), and 'Wallachia.
During that troubled period which saw the estab- lishment of the Franks in the East, the Greek patri- archates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem suflfered especially. As long as the Latins remained undisputed masters of these regions, their Latin patri- archs stubbornly opposed the coexistence of Greek patriarchs, so that the Latter had no choice loft but to take refuge in Constantinople at the Byzantine Court and to govern their Churches from there as best they could. This method soon became customary, and even after 1453 the patriarchs continued to reside at the Phanar. The Patriarch of Antioch alone returned soon afterwards to his own territory. In the seven- teenth centurj- the Patriarch of Jerusalem ventured into Palestine, but it was not till the nineteenth cen- tury that the Patriarch of .\lexandria left the shores of the Bosphorus. It must also be remembered that Cyprus and Crete (the latter being directly under Constantinople) were unable to have Greek bishops during the long centuries that those islands remained in the hands of the Latins. It would be impossible within the limits at our disposal to give an exact description of the hierarchy of the patriarchate of Constantinople from the tenth to the fifteenth cen- tury. A "Notitia Episcopatuum" drawn up soon after 14.53 reckons 72 metropolitan sees, 8 autocephal- ous archbishoprics, and 78 suft'ragan .sees divided among 21 ecclesiastical provinces or a grand total of 1.58 dioceses. This relatively small number of dio- ceses is explained by the fact that .\sia Minor was then but an immense ruin, and that in Europe, in the ma- jority of the Venetian or FrankLsh possessions, the presence of Greek bishops was not tolerated.
Space forbids us saving more than a few words on the domestic history of the Greek Church. The elec- tion of the patriarch belonged by right to the Hoh' Synod ; de facto, as we have seen, it was the Basileus or emperor, who elected him. Limited as was the authority of the Holy S}.Tiod, it could not always exercise what authority it had, and, on the death of a patriarch, the Basileus often appointed his successor without any previous consultation with the Synod. Nicephorus Phocas attempted to nidlify any ecclesias- tical nomination not approved by him, an abuse of power which lasted during his lifetime only. The metropolitans were elected b)- the Holy Synod, the bishops by the metropolitan and his suffragans, if they were sufficiently numerous, or, if not, with the assist- ance of bishops from another province. The clerg)- had undergone no change since the earlier jieriod, ex- cept that after the twelfth century we hear of no more deaconesses, thovigh some religious women bear that title without any right to it. Moreover, with the exception of Thebes and Boeotia, religious women no longer wore a lay habit or dress. "Commendation" and charisticariats" were as common as in the West, with their train of simony and vices still more hideovis. The mensa episcopalis often foimd its way to the offi- cials of the treasurj' or some other court functionary',
and servility towards the State was the order of the
day in all the ranks of the clerg}\ The patriarchs
were obedient tools of the enii)erors. Yet there were
not wanting patriarchs formed in the monastic schools
who had the courage to defend their rights and the
rights of the Church against the encroachment of the
civil power.
Monasticism was more and more popular throughout the Greek world. In Constantinople there were hun- dreds of monasteries, and every provincial town tried to rival the capital, so that the Byzantine empire be- came one vast Thebaid. Outside of Byzantium the monasteries formed into groups which surpassed the fame of the ancient solitudes of Egypt and of Pales- tine. AVithout speaking of Southern Italy, rich in Greek convents, we must not omit to mention the famous monasteries of Mount Ossa, of the Meteora, of Phocis, and of the Peloponnesus. On Mount Olym- pus in Bithynia ( the neighbourhood of Broussa, Nicsea, and Ghemlek) many religious centres sprang up. On a little corner of land, with a maximum length of 63 miles and a width of from 12 to 20 miles, a veritable oasis of monasticism came into existence, comprising at that time more than a lunidred convents. These convents, usually very well filled, sheltered a number of saints and ecclesiastical celebrities. Beginning from the tenth century, the peninsula of Athos saw the rise of monasteries properly so called, and saw the cenobitic usage (community life) supplant the hap- hazard methods of earlier days. Then it was that vocations abounded, and the holy mountain was transformed into an earthly paradise of monks. The convents known to have existed at Mount Athos be- tween the tenth century and the thirteenth numbered more than a himdred. It was at this period, too, that the holy mountain played a preponderating part in the religious history of Constantinople, and in the fourteenth centurj- the Hesychastic controversy, stirred up by its religious, became the dominating preoccupation of the time. There were many other active, though not so well-known, monastic centres — e. g. Mount Latrus near Miletus, Mount Ganus, and Mount (ialesius, Mount .St. Auxentius near Chalcedon, the islands of the .\rchipelago and of the Ciulf of Nico- media, the region of Trebizond, and especially the winity of Ciesarea in Cappadocia, with its picturesque kiurir clinging to the slopes of the hills.
The constant controversies with the Latins did not prevent the rise of other controversies that sometimes divided the Byzantine Empire into opposing camps just as in the heart of the Arian and Monophysite con- flicts. We shall mention but a few. In 1082 a coun- cil condemned the philosopher Italos, a subtile logician who.se errors had been refuted by the Emperor .\lexius I. Comnenus. Four years later, Leo, metropolitan of Chalcedon. was accused of giving to images the cultus of latn'a. due only to the Deity. In reality he had merely defended the property of his Church and pre- vented the emperor from caiTving off the ornaments of beaten gold and silver from the statues and images. .4fter Leo came Nilos, a monk who had expressed some heterodox views concerning the mystery of the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ. In a council of 20 August, 1143, the Bogomiles were condemned, together with many bishops who favoured them. In 1156 and 1157 two councils anathematized Sotericus Pantengenius, Patriarch-elect of .\ntioch, who maintained that the Sacrifice of the Mass was not offered up to the Word, but only to the Father and to the Holy Spirit. Two other councils, held in 1166 and in 1170, explained the text. "The Father is greater than I", apropos of which many bishops were again falling into the errors of .\rius. The monk Irenicus. suspected of various dog- matic errors, was condemned in 1 170. The thirteenth century is filled with the quarrel of the Arsenitesor partisans of the Patriarch Arsenius, who had been deposed for condemning the assa-ssination of young
