tolerance that is characteristic of the East, were showing their friendliness by a very respectful attendance.[1]
10. The Greek Church (1850).
The established Church of the modern kingdom of Greece is the only body that ever describes itself, or can in any way correctly be described, as the "Greek Church." It is the oldest of the national Churches that in quite modern times have been cut away from the Byzantine Patriarchate, and it was born in the throes of one of the greatest of the many domestic quarrels of the Orthodox. As soon as there was any beginning of a Greek Government during the War of Independence the Greeks declared their Church free from the Patriarch of Constantinople.[2] The Phanar had so long identified its policy with that of the Porte that the men who were fighting the Sultan would acknowledge no sort of dependence on the Patriarch. The first Greek National Assemblies in 1822 and 1827 declared that the Orthodox faith is the religion of Greece, and pointedly said nothing about the Œcumenical Patriarch.[3] In July, 1833, the Greek Parliament at Nauplion formally declared the National Church autocephalous, and set up a Holy Directing Synod to govern it, in exact imitation of Russia. The Head of the Church of Greece is Christ, its governor in external affairs the king. The same Parliament then proceeded to suppress most of the monasteries.[4] In 1844
- ↑ The speech in E. d'Or. viii. p. 181, seq. His Beatitude described these French friars (in their presence) as "locusts that the Western Powers expel like noxious insects." But (as often happens to modern Greeks) the flood of Attic eloquence carried him away, and he got so mixed up with his classical Greek periods that he talked about casting one's nets to fish on all sides for—sheep who have no shepherd! Since then Lord Porphyrios has been fishing for sheep at Cairo. For the Church of Mount Sinai, see Kyriakos, iii. pp. 76–77; Silbernagl, pp. 26, 27; and the E. d'Or. viii. p. 309.
- ↑ It will be remembered that Greece, which is part of Illyricum, originally belonged to the Roman Patriarchate. It was Leo the Isaurian who pretended to add these lands to Constantinople.
- ↑ Kyriakos, iii. p. 155.
- ↑ All those which had less than six monks. There was some excuse for this, as a number of monasteries lingered on with practically no inmates, often with one, who elected himself abbot. But the civil Government had, of course, no authority to do so.
