The Orthodox Eastern Church/Chapter 10

by Adrian Henry Timothy Knottesford Fortescue

 

PART IV

THE ORTHODOX CHURCH AT THE PRESENT DAY

 

 

This last part is to contain some account of what is a tangled subject, the present state of the Orthodox Church. In the first place we must distinguish three great groups of Eastern Christians: (1) the Orthodox Churches in communion with the Patriarch of Constantinople, (2) the other schismatical Churches, that is, the four Monophysite bodies, Armenians, Jacobites, Copts, and Abyssinians, and the one Nestorian body, all of whom are out of communion with either Pope or Œcumenical Patriarch, (3) the people who in order of honour should come first, the Uniates, Christians of Eastern rites, who are in communion with the Holy See, and who, of course, are just as much Catholics as we are. It is important to remember the difference between groups 1 and 2 above. Group 1 (the Orthodox) consists of sixteen Churches, all independent, but all in union with one another (except for one schism now going on). Group 2 (the non-Orthodox) has nothing whatever to do with those sixteen Churches. Thus we speak of the Church of Russia, of Greece, of Armenia; but we must remember that the Churches of Russia and Greece are in full communion with one another, whereas the Armenians are to them as much heretics and schismatics as Latins or Protestants. We have here to consider only the Orthodox communion, which is enormously the largest and most important of the Eastern Churches. It will be convenient to discuss it in this order: first, a sketch of the political situation in general will clear the ground, then a list of the Churches of which it consists, with a word about their rise, development, and numbers. Descriptions of the Orthodox Hierarchy, Faith, Calendar, Rites, and Liturgy will then complete our account. And, last of all, there will be something to say about the question of reunion between Catholics and Orthodox.

 

 

 

CHAPTER X

 

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH

 

The Orthodox Church consists of sixteen separate independent bodies, who all profess the same faith, use the same liturgy (though in different languages), and are all (with one exception) in communion with one another and with the Patriarch of Constantinople; though he has no authority over them. The list of these sixteen Churches is: 1. The Great Church (Patriarchate of Constantinople). The Churches of: 2. Alexandria. 3. Antioch. 4. Jerusalem. 5. Cyprus. 6. Russia. 7. Carlowitz. 8. Montenegro. 9. Sinai. 10. Greece. 11. Hermannstadt. 12. Bulgaria (in schism). 13. Czernowitz. 14. Serbia. 15. Roumania. 16. Bosnia and Hercegovina.^[1] It is curious to note how in this complex system the most unequal bodies, the colossal Russian Church and the one monastery of Mount Sinai, for instance, are ranged side by side as equal branches and sister-Churches.

 

1. The Political Situation and the Great Church.

It is with no malicious pleasure that one has to record the fact that, in spite of their inter-communion, the dominant note of these sixteen bodies in our time is their extreme quarrelsomeness. The thing is too patent to be ignored. It is the cause of nearly all their activity. One has only to look at any modern Greek newspaper^[2] to see the way they speak of each other; and since the Bulgarian schism (p. 316) especially, the Orthodox Church lifts up her voice and wails in the market-places; both sides, or rather all sides, for there are many, besiege any one who will hear them, even the Ambassadors of the Great Powers, with complaints of one another. The enemies of a man are of his own household, and now, although one still fairly often reads a violent digression against the perfidious Papic Church,^[3] the burden of their tale is one long recrimination against each other. No one will wish meanly to rejoice because of this: it is quite naturally explained by various unfortunate political circumstances, and it certainly does not prevent hundreds of their bishops and thousands of their priests from living the most zealous and Godfearing lives, and from generously devoting themselves to the cause of Christ among their people. But one cannot give even the shortest account of the Orthodox Church without noticing the quarrels that absorb her political activity.

An outline of the situation will help to explain what follows. First, the Greeks think that they ought to be the leading Christian race in the Balkans. They remember the old Empire, that was Roman in name but practically a Greek State: they are also full of vague memories of their past greatness. Marathon and Salamis, Homer, Plato, even Herakles and Apollo—every Greek schoolboy knows all about these. On the other hand, in the northern Balkans—now that the southern part has become a Greek kingdom—they are only a small minority. There are other nations who have no less strong a national feeling. These "barbarians" are Slavs of three races, Bulgars, Serbs, and Roumans.^[4] The first element of Balkan discontent is the mutual hatred of Greek and Slav. It is now far more active than their old enmity against the Turk. Indeed, both sides are always appealing to the Turk against each other.^[5] A further complication is that Bulgars, Serbs, and Roumans hate each other only less than they all hate Greeks. It would be a fundamental mistake to confuse these races with the States set up during the last century. When they rose against the Turks, the Great Powers felt they must give them some result for their fighting: on the other hand, if they had all been made free there would have been no Turkey left. So bits were cut off where these populations were supposed to be thickest and made into the kingdoms of Greece, Servia, Roumania, and the princedom of Bulgaria. The people of Montenegro, who have always been free, are Serbs. But these four races went on as before, scattered all over the Balkans and overflowing into Hungary. A Serb of Turkey, for instance, is just as much a Serb as his brother in the kingdom of Servia. So in Turkey, in Macedonia especially, these four nations all live together in great confusion, while the Turkish regiments march up and down, keeping order by plundering and murdering all impartially.

All their bad feelings are reflected in the affairs of their Church.^[6] They are all Orthodox; and for centuries the Greeks have thought that the government of the Orthodox Church is their business. Its head is, or was, the Œcumenical Patriarch, always a Greek, and its ruling caste is the Phanar. Until the wars of independence began the Patriarch got to be as near a Pope as any one ever has. And the Phanariote Greeks kept all the perquisites of the Church for themselves; the poor village priests might be Serbs or Bulgars or Roumans, they were married, and so in any case they could never rise to any higher place, but all the metropolitans were Greeks, sent out from Constantinople. And whatever the people might speak, the Holy Liturgy was sung in Greek. So for centuries there was sullen discontent among the nonGreek people and lower clergy against these Phanariote bishops. This was not only the case among the Slavs; the Arabic-speaking Orthodox in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine had just the same complaint.

Another feature that is rather astonishing is that the Rayahs began more and more to confuse the Phanar with the hated Turkish rule. We have seen that the Patriarch was the acknowledged civil Head of all the Orthodox before the Porte. It is also true that these rich Phanariote Greeks were always very ready to be the instruments of Turkish oppression over their fellow-Christians. The Vaivodes of Roumania, horrible tyrants sent by the Sultan to misrule the Roumans, were all Phanariote Greeks.^[7] So the other Rayahs saw in the Phanar simply the shadow of the Turk and hated the Greeks even more than their real masters, since they were traitors to the cause. When Alexander Hypsilanti in 1821 made his fatuous attempt to raise the Greek flag in Moldavia and issued proclamations about the sacred cause of Hellas to those Roumans, he was surprised that none of them would help him. Naturally they would not fight for another Vaivode.^[8] The result of this feeling is that as soon as ever a Balkan State gets independent of the Sultan it makes its Church independent of the Patriarch; they will not let their metropolitans any longer obey the authority at Constantinople, which seems to them to be all too closely allied to their enemy the Porte. So it has become a regular principle that wherever there is a free State, there shall there be a free and independent national Church. It is again the old Byzantine idea of making the Church follow the vagaries of civil politics, that we saw to be the root of the claims of the See of Constantinople, and indeed the original root of the great schism. Only the idea is turned against the very see that had grown and flourished on it. And that see finds the national and political idea much less sympathetic now that she stands to lose by it. The principle of the independent Church in the independent State finds no favour in the Phanar. The Patriarchs worked so hard and grovelled so low in the old days for the sake of getting a big Patriarchate, naturally they do not like losing it piece by piece, as they have done throughout the 19th century. The process is nearly always the same. As soon as the first National Assembly, or House of Deputies, or whatever it may be, of the new State meets, it passes a law that the national Orthodox Church of the land acknowledges no Head but Christ; it then forms a Holy Synod on the Russian model, giving all possible authority over the Church to the civil government ("no Head but Christ" always means this), and lastly sends a note to the Patriarch to inform him that he has ceased to reign in the land in question. Of course the Patriarch is furious, generally begins by excommunicating the new schismatics in a mass, but eventually has to accept things (Russia makes him do so as a rule), and, swallowing his pride, he receives the Holy Synod as his "Sister in Christ." Only in the quite specially bitter case of the Bulgarian Church has he hitherto refused, and the Bulgars are still excommunicate. But here, too, he will have to give in at last.

Naturally the Phanar hates the national idea; in 1872 it held a synod to declare that Philetism^[9] (the love of one's race in ecclesiastical matters) is the latest and most poisonous heresy. But it is a most astonishing case of poetic justice. It was on the strength of this very national idea that centuries ago the Patriarch waxed strong and rebelled against his over-lord, the Pope. Now he sees his own children, having learned it from him, also wax strong on it and rebel against him. And so he finds Philetism to be a deadly heresy. Poor Patriarch! in his glory he was only a very feeble imitation of the Pope, and now he is fixed between two theories, and either way he loses. Shall he denounce Philetism, stand out for the old rights of the hierarchy and of the chief sees, preach unity and ancient councils? Alas! his see is not even an Apostolic one; he would have to go down below Alexandria and Antioch. Every one knows which is the first see in Christendom, and every one knows that unity means returning to the obedience of that see. Or shall he, taking up a cry that seems to come more naturally from Constantinople, talk of equality and national Churches, national rights and no aggression, no Head, in short, but Christ? But, then, what shall he say to the Bulgars? Of course what he wants is just enough national idea to disobey the Pope and not enough for the Bulgars to disobey him. And so the irony of development has landed him in that most hopeless of positions, a via media between two consistent and mutually exclusive systems.

But we have not yet exhausted the list of his troubles. Servia and Roumania have national Churches, covering just these two new kingdoms. But throughout the poor remnant of the Patriarchate there are Serbs and Roumans too. And the Phanar, which never repents and never learns, goes on sending Greek metropolitans to rule over these people. So they, too, are violently discontent, clamour for bishops of their own race, and for the liturgy in their own language, and openly ask to join the independent Churches of their free brothers. So even after he has lost so much of his "broad lands" the Patriarch has no peace with what is left.

His most dangerous enemy of all, however, is the Russian Holy Synod. What the Russian Government wants is quite simple—unity within, expansion without. And in this matter, as in all, the Holy Synod that rules the Church of Russia is the willing tool of the Government. So in Church matters Russian policy works out as being uniformity within, and the Orthodox Church in its Russian branch, with the Russian Liturgy and the rule of the Russian Holy Synod, without. We shall come back to the way in which uniformity in Russia is procured, the abominable persecution of the Ruthenian Church, the crushing out of the Georgian Church, the harrying of the Armenians. As for the preaching of the Orthodox faith in other lands, one has only to look for the places where the Russian Government wants a sphere of influence, there is the Orthodox Russian faith preached. Russia, for instance, has great interests in Persia. A port on the Persian Gulf would suit her admirably; she would like to, and if the other Powers let her, probably will, some day swallow Persia whole. Meanwhile, Persia is getting more and more under her sphere of influence; she has the railway, and the Persian Christians (Nestorians) are being persuaded to join the Russian Church. She has interests in Syria and Palestine. A belt of Russian territory stretching from the Caucasus by Tiflis to the Mediterranean by Jaffa would be the very thing. It would cut the Mohammedan world in two, greatly hasten the day on which the Russian eagle is to fly over Constantinople, and it would secure Jerusalem, the Holy City of all Christendom, for the Czar. So the Russian Church is infinitely active in Syria and the Holy Land. She has two objects—to convert all Christians there to the Orthodox faith, and to make that faith synonymous with the Russian national Church. It is by this second object that she falls foul of the Œcumenical Patriarch. The halcyon days when the two Patriarchates (Antioch and Jerusalem) and the metropolitan sees, abbacies, and good places generally were perquisites kept for Phanariote Greeks, are over. Here, as everywhere, Russia takes up the cause of the native population against the Phanar, and the Phanar, which ignored the complaints of the wretched Syrians, cannot ignore Russia. So Russia has an anti-Greek candidate for all these places now, and her candidate gets them.

That is not all. Orthodox Syria and Palestine are already almost Russian colonies. There is a Russian Imperial Palestine Society under the Czar's special protection, that commands enormous resources and that spends them to cover the land with Russian institutions. There are sixty-four Russian schools scattered all over Syria and Palestine where native children are taught the Orthodox faith and the fear of God and the Czar.^[10] The Russian Palestine Society is founding preparatory schools for priests, who are then to be sent to finish their studies at Russian universities. It has built great establishments where a hospital, home for pilgrims, Russian Consulate, &c., cluster around a church in which the Russian services are held. At Jerusalem the enormous Russian buildings on the road to Jaffa dominate the city, besides the great Russian Gethsemani Church and five other establishments belonging to the same society; at Ain-Kerim, Hebron, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Ramleh, Jericho, &c., the high towers of the Russian buildings stand up above every other building as if they were already the houses of Russian colonial governors.^[11] Then come the Balkan States, Here, too, Russia prepares the day when she can swallow them by teaching them to look to the Czar as their natural protector. She always takes up the cause of the Slavs against the Phanar, she made the Sultan constitute the Bulgarian Church, and, in spite of the schism, the Russian Church remains in communion with it. And Mount Athos, the holy mountain and centre of Orthodox monastic life, is getting swamped with Russians. In fact, Russians say quite openly now that their Holy Synod had better take over the government of the whole Orthodox communion; nine-tenths of that communion are Russians, the Œcumenical Patriarch may doubtless keep a shadowy primacy of rank, but practically Orthodoxy is, and should be, Russian.^[12] Of course, all this is gall and wormwood to the Phanar; the Patriarch always makes quite hopeless attempts to persuade the Porte not to accept pro-Russian candidates for the other sees, and quite recently he ventured on a protest against the doings of the Russian Palestine Society, addressed to the Holy Synod at Petersburg. He was told in answer that that society had as patron no less a person than His Imperial Majesty the Czar; had His Holiness the Patriarch realized this fact when he made his complaint? His Holiness would do well to look after his own diocese.^[13]

Another point to be mentioned is one that affects Catholics. It is the influence of Austria-Hungary. The Emperor of Austria is throughout the Balkans looked upon as the protector of the Catholics, and the Catholic cause is identified with that of Austria—or rather of Hungary, for it is as King of Hungary that Francis Joseph II is chiefly concerned. This fact is a disastrous one for us. For a long time two great lords overshadowed these lands, the Czar as protector of the Orthodox, and the Emperor-King as chief of the Catholics. The issue is no longer quite so simple. Formerly all Slavs looked to Russia. They all dream of a great Slav Empire, for in no man's breast does the sacred fire of national feeling burn with so clear a flame as in that of a Slav. They used to look to incorporation with Russia as the realization of that dream. But the myth of the Czar-liberator is pretty well exploded now. It flourished luxuriantly till he began to liberate; now he is such a perfect terror to those he has set free (the Georgians and Armenians, for instance) that they look back to the gentle Turk with tears of affectionate regret. And the Catholic Slavs (Czechs, Croats, &c.) always have the wholesome example of Poland before their eyes. The hope of all of them is now rather a union of independent Slav States in the closest alliance. But the great obstacle to all such dreams of Panslavism is the Dual Monarchy; and so the Balkan Slavs hate and dread this great neighbour. Not far off across the Save are the Croats who sit under the crown of St. Stephen; absolutely the only difference between a Croat and a Serb is, that the Croat is Catholic and uses the Latin alphabet, the Serb is Orthodox and writes exactly the same language in Cyrillic letters. And no two races ever yet hated each other as the Serbs and Croats do. So to ask a Serb to become a Catholic is like asking him to turn Croat, look to Austria-Hungary for protection, and give up the Panslavist hope. That is why these ridiculous little Balkan States are so angry with Catholic missionaries, why they sometimes become active persecutors, and why one hears such absurd statements as that the question of the Catholic schools is one of "life or death for Bulgaria." The life or death of these Balkan States depends, not on the Catholic nuns who teach in these schools, but on Russia. Really, of course, the comparison between Russia and Austria that these people make (Orthodox = Russia, Catholic = Austria) is quite absurd. On the one hand, the cause of Russia is that of Orthodoxy now. Every Russian is, or should be, Orthodox.^[14] All the Orthodox will apparently soon be Russian, the Orthodox missionaries are all Russians paid and sent by the Holy Synod, that is practically a department of the government of Petersburg. There is nothing like this in the case of Austria. The Catholic Church is no more committed to the Dual Monarchy than to any other State, and Austria is not in the least committed to the Catholic cause. It is a tolerant and civilized State in which people of any religion, Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox or Mohammedans, live in entire freedom and content. Doubtless Austria-Hungary has interests in the Balkans,^[15] but it does not make a ray of difference to the statesmen at Vienna whether the Balkan peoples are Catholic or Orthodox or Mohammedan. So the Catholic missions have nothing to do with Austria and do not receive any help from Vienna. The missionaries are chiefly Frenchmen or Italians sent out by the Roman Propaganda. From every point of view a comparison between Russia and Austria is absurd. Russia means a barbarous and intolerant tyranny, and no sane man would be at the mercy of its Government if he could possibly help it. Austria is a constitutional country of which the citizens enjoy as much liberty as those of any land anywhere. The story of the Poles and of the Ruthenian Church shows how Russia treats Catholics. In Austria, on the other hand, the Orthodox enjoy every advantage they could possibly wish for; the Government pays their bishops, subsidizes their schools, and has made a Concordat with the Œcumenical Patriarch for their advantage. However, the inveterate habit the Balkan Slavs have of confusing Catholicism with Austria-Hungary is the great hindrance to Catholic missions there.

One of the most interesting questions concerning a religious body is that of its size. Statistics in this case are specially difficult, because the Turk has no idea of such things, and the Russian persecution of dissenters makes it impossible to know how the figures would show if the people were free to profess what faith they like. I find the total number of Orthodox Christians reckoned at from ninety-five to one hundred millions,^[16] of which between four-fifths and nine-tenths belong to the Russian Church. Something must now be said about each of the sixteen branches.

Ἡ μεγάλη ἐκκλησία (the Great Church) is the official name for the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which still takes precedence of all the others. What is now left of this patriarchate after all the national Churches have been cut off from it, covers as much of the present Turkish Empire as is not occupied by the other patriarchates or Cyprus, that is to say, Turkey in Europe and Asia Minor; although even in this greatly reduced territory wherever there are Bulgars the Patriarch's jurisdiction is disputed by their Exarch. As we shall see, in the Great Church the title "Metropolitan" has become the common one for bishops, even when they have no suffragans. The Œcumenical Patriarch rules over seventy-four metropolitans and twenty other bishops.^[17] Canonically he has no jurisdiction outside of his own patriarchate. On the other hand, he is still the official civil head of the whole Roman nation in the Turkish Empire, and the other Orthodox Patriarchs (of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem), as well as the bishops of Cyprus, belong to that nation. So the Œcumenical Patriarch has a sort of civil authority over them; for instance, they can only approach the Porte through him. The Phanar has constantly tried to change that vague civil authority into real ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and for a long time it succeeded. From the Turkish conquest till the beginning of the 19th century the other patriarchs were very poor and helpless, and during that time the Patriarch of Constantinople reached the height of his ambition, and became something very like a Pope. He especially claimed the right of confirming the election of the others, and no one was strong enough to resist his claim. Now, however, that Russia is taking up every one's cause against the Phanar, these other patriarchs are able to assert their complete independence of every one save Christ and the seven general councils. The last attempt to judge of an election was made by Germanos IV of Constantinople (1842–1845 and 1852–1853), in the case of Jerusalem in 1843. But the bishops of Jerusalem indignantly denied his right to interfere, and as Russia was on their side Germanos had to give in, after the quarrel had lasted two years.^[18] No such claim has been advanced since,^[19] although the Phanar still tries to assert a kind of shadowy jurisdiction by keeping a permanent legate at the other Patriarchs' Courts. For the present it has succeeded at Antioch and Jerusalem, but has failed at Alexandria, where a very energetic and strongly anti-Phanariote Patriarch under the English rule can afford to defy it (p. 286 n. 3). A similar case is that of the trouble about Sinai in 1866 (p. 310).

The only remnant of jurisdiction beyond his patriarchate still left to the honorary chief of the Orthodox Church is the much-disputed right of consecrating the holy chrism. Undoubtedly, in the East originally, as in the West always, the holy chrism was consecrated by the bishop who would use it. Then, apparently only because the chrism in the East is a very difficult and expensive thing to prepare, the custom grew up of making and consecrating large quantities at Constantinople, and sending portions to all the other bishops. Since about the 13th or 14th century the Patriarchs of Constantinople have claimed this as an absolute right. They alone can lawfully consecrate chrism. All other Churches, whether otherwise independent or not, must receive it from them. However, lately especially, this claim, too, has been hotly disputed. Russia consecrates her own chrism since the 17th century; Roumania has begun to do so, too, after a fierce quarrel. I beheve that all the other Orthodox Churches still receive theirs from Constantinople, though not always very willingly.^[20] We shall come back to the Œcumenical Patriarch and his Court in the next chapter (p. 338).

 

2. The Patriarchate of Alexandria.

The next Church in rank is that of Egypt. As the great majority of Egyptian Christians are Copts, and so out of communion with the Orthodox Church, the Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria has only a small flock, about thirty-seven thousand souls. In the first part of this book it is said that the Orthodox of Egypt and Syria were called Melkites (p. 14). It should now be noted that that name is at present generally used for the Uniates in communion with Rome. So it is better in modern times to speak only of the "Orthodox" of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. The Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria claims, of course, to be St. Mark's successor, just as does his Coptic rival. In the 17th and 18th centuries he lived at Cairo; now he has returned to Alexandria. Since 1672 the sees of this patriarchate have been reduced to four; their bishops are all called metropolitans, although they have no suffragans, and they do not reside in their titular dioceses (Ethiopia, Cairo, Damietta, and Reshid), but form the Patriarch's Curia.^[21]

Quite lately there has been trouble in this Church, as in the other patriarchates. Photios was one of the most determined opponents of Russia in Syria. After having been Patriarch of Jerusalem for a short time, he was elected to Alexandria when the late Patriarch Sophronios died in 1899. It is said that the Russians sent him there to get rid of him.^[22] He took possession of his see in September, 1900. But the Phanar would not have him there, and persuaded the Sultan not to give him the Berat, without which he could not reign. At last, in September, 1900, he got his Berat and took possession of his see. At once he was met by the complaints of the Orthodox Arabs, who would like a Patriarch of their own race. For a time the Œcumenical Patriarch, Constantine V, still refused to acknowledge him.^[23] But since then Constantine has been deposed, and Joachim III restored at Constantinople. I believe that Joachim recognizes him, and that things have now quieted down. It is said that His Beatitude speaks Arabic quite well, and is conciliating his discontented subjects.^[24]

 

3. The Patriarchate of Antioch.

The Orthodox Church of Antioch is now only a shadow of what the great "third see" was in the days before Ephesus. The Nestorian and Jacobite Churches are formed at her expense; she has lost Palestine and Cyprus; the Byzantine Patriarchate has filched all Asia Minor from her, and there are a large number of Uniates in these parts.^[25] So the Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, like his brother at Alexandria, lives rather on memories of his past splendour than on any practical importance. He rules over twelve metropolitans^[26]—all that are left of the hundred and fifty sees that once obeyed his predecessors—and about two hundred and fifty thousand Orthodox subjects,^[27] nearly all Syrian Arabs, who know no Greek. He also has two or three titular metropolitans to form his court. He now lives at Damascus. There has been trouble at Antioch, too, lately.^[28] Since 1724 all the Orthodox Patriarchs have been Phanariote Greeks, who could not, as a rule, even speak Arabic. However, at last the Arab-speaking people, who were always discontented with that arrangement, got their chance. In 1899, the see being vacant, they elected Meletios, Metropolitan of Laodicea, to be Patriarch, and the Russian Palestine Society warmly took up his cause. Meletios was an Arab, so the Phanar would not have him. Of course, as always, the only question was, what the Sultan would decide. The Phanar, backed by the French Ambassador, implored the Sultan not to give him his Berat; the Russian Ambassador insisted on his having it. For a whole year the Sultan wavered, the see was vacant, and Meletios hoped and doubted. Then, of course, Russia won; the Berat arrived in 1900, and Meletios became Patriarch. But the Phanar, the Greeks of Jerusalem, and the Greek Church still obstinately refused to recognize him. On the other hand, the Russian and Roumanian Churches were on his side. He was pointedly left out in the last Encyclical from Constantinople (p. 345, n. 3), and all the Greek papers spoke of him as a schismatical intruder, and persecutor of the Greek clergy in his patriarchate. On February 8, 1906, Lord Meletios died at his residence at Damascus. In June, Gregory Hadad, Metropolitan of Tripoli, also an Arab, was elected as his successor, and the schism still continues.^[29]

 

4. The Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

The See of St. James, the "brother of God" (τοῦ ἀδελφοθέου), has always been the smallest and the poorest of the patriarchates. Its jurisdiction stretches over Palestine from Ptolemais down to the peninsular of Sinai, of which the extreme point is occupied by the autocephalous monastery. Thirteen metropolitans and about fifteen thousand people obey the Orthodox Patriarch.^[30] He lives by the Orthodox monastery of the Holy Sepulchre (the Anastasis). The modern history of this Church, too, consists chiefly of a series of quarrels and schisms. Since the 16th century all the Patriarchs have been Greeks, whereas the Orthodox people are, of course, Syrian Arabs. When the Synod of Constantinople against the Bulgars was held in 1872 (p. 319), Cyril II of Jerusalem, although he was then in the city, refused to take part in it, or to have any share in the proceedings against the Bulgarian Church. His motive was obvious. The Russians from the beginning had warmly taken up the Bulgarian cause; they were all-powerful in Palestine — indeed, the only protectors of the Orthodox Church there—and Cyril did not dare offend his patrons. But his absence from the synod made all the difference. It prevented the excommunication pronounced against the Bulgars from being the unanimous verdict of all the Orthodox Patriarchs, so the Phanar was very angry with him, and had him deposed, setting up Prokopios in his stead. Cyril was a Greek, but he had taken the anti-Phanariote ("national Church," or Philetist) side, and Russia was his friend. So Russia and the Palestine Syrians were on his side, still considered him Patriarch, and still kept his name in the Holy Liturgy. On the other hand, the Phanar, the other Patriarchs, and nearly all the rest of the Orthodox world, acknowledged Prokopios. At last the Russians forced Prokopios to resign (1875); Cyril died, and Hierotheos was elected Patriarch. But he, to every one's surprise, sided with the Phanar against the Bulgars. The Russian Government then fell foul of him, too, and seized the opportunity to carry out a plan it had long contemplated. The Holy Sepulchre possessed some property in Bessarabia (in Russian territory). The Government now said it would relieve the Patriarch of all anxiety concerning this distant property, and administer it for him. How it did so may be imagined. It promptly proceeded to pay itself one-fifth for its trouble, confiscated two-fifths for what it described as "pious purposes" in Russia, and sent only two-fifths of the income to Jerusalem. All the Greek world is still helplessly furious at this robbery. Hierotheos died in 1882. There were then three candidates for the vacant see—Nikodemos, Gerasimos, and Photios, who is always a determined opponent of Russia, and who, as we have already seen, is now Patriarch of Alexandria. Photios was elected quite canonically, but the Russians made the Sultan refuse him the Berat, and give it to Nikodemos instead. Gerasimos became Patriarch of Antioch in 1885. Photios had to go to be a monk again at Sinai.^[31] But he did not rest there in peace; the Phanar was for him at that time, and by 1890 they had persuaded the Sultan to change his mind and to depose Nikodemos. Photios arrives at Jerusalem with the Sultan's Irade, and Nikodemos is made, as usual, to sign a document declaring that he is too old to reign any longer, and that he wishes to go back to his monastery. He is still there at St. George's Laura at Halki, a very pious and kind old gentleman, though he has been heard to whisper to visitors that the Orthodox Church would get on all right were it not for Lord Photios.^[32] But the Russians said that whatever happened, they would not have Photios at Jerusalem. So the third of the original candidates, Gerasimos, was persuaded to resign the more honoured See of Antioch and to become Patriarch of Jerusalem. Photios became Metropolltan of Nazareth. But that city, too, is a great Russian centre, and he was still a thorn in their side, till, in 1899, the old Patriarch of Alexandria, Sophronios, died. We have seen how the Russians then got rid of Photios by helping his candidature to that see, where they have, as long as the English rule there, no interests, and how he has since become an enemy of the Phanar. In 1897 Lord Gerasimos of Jerusalem died, and again there was a great struggle between the Russian and Greek parties. The leader of the Russian side is Euthymios, Archimandrite of the monastery of the Anastasis, This is the person who was responsible for the outrage against the Latin Franciscans in November, 1901. However, the Greek candidate, Damianos, Metropolitan of Philadelphia, was elected, and he is now Patriarch. Lord Damianos has been staying for a long time at Constantinople in the charitable hope of helping to settle some of the disputes that rend the Orthodox Church, the quarrel against Gregory of Antioch, the trouble in Cyprus, and, above all, the great Bulgarian schism. His Holiness has now returned to his see.^[33] The quarrel about Mount Sinai (p. 310) also concerns the Church of Jerusalem.

 

5. The Church of Cyprus.

We have seen that the Cypriote bishops, on the strength of their succession from St. Barnabas, persuaded the Council of Ephesus to recognize their Church as independent of the See of Antioch (p. 47.) Since then this little Church has had many adventures; it was persecuted by the Crusaders and Venice;^[34] and after the Turkish conquest the Cypriote Christians had to submit to the civil authority of the Œcumenical Patriarch like the rest of the Orthodox. But the Church of Cyprus had been ever since the Council of Ephesus an autocephalous Church, obeying no Patriarch. It is so still, and it ranks immediately after the patriarchates as the fifth Church of the Orthodox Communion. It is true that here, as elsewhere, the Patriarch of Constantinople has constantly tried to usurp some sort of ecclesiastical jurisdiction; but the Cypriotes have always indignantly withstood him, taking their stand on the decree of Ephesus. Except the patriarchates no other branch of their communion has so good an argument for its independence as the decree of a general council, so on the whole Cyprus has always succeeded in its claim.^[35] The head of this Church is the Archbishop of Cyprus, who resides at Nicosia; under him are three suffragan metropolitans,^[36] and about one hundred and forty thousand Orthodox. In 1821 Archbishop Cyprian was strangled by the Turks for helping the Greek insurrection. It is unfortunate that when we come to the present state of these venerable Churches there is nothing to chronicle but the story of violent quarrels. One of the worst of all is now rending the Church of St. Barnabas. Lord Sophronios the Archbishop died in May, 1900. The See of Paphos was then vacant, the only Cypriote bishops left were Cyril of Kyrenia^[37] and Cyril of Kition.^[38] Each became a candidate for the Archbishopric, and their rivalry has torn the Church of Cyprus, indeed, the whole Orthodox world ever since. My Lord of Kition is a politician and strongly Philhellenic in his sympathies. His enemies say that he is a Freemason. My Lord of Kyrenia is a very pious Churchman and godly bishop. His enemies say that he is a poor, weak creature, quite unfit to guide the Cypriote Church. All the Philhellenes are for him of Kition; the English Government would prefer the Kyrenian. But, scrupulously just and respectful of established order as English authorities in the Colonies always are, the High Commissioner for Cyprus told the ecclesiastical authorities to choose an archbishop exactly according to precedent and their Canon Law; the Government would then acknowledge him. But their Canon Law leaves the final appointment to the Holy Cypriote Synod, and that synod has only two members—these very two candidates. To make a long story short, the storm has raged ever since, and is still unabated. The Œcumenical Patriarch has repeatedly tried to interfere, and has been told each time that he has no jurisdiction in Cyprus. The Orthodox, long accustomed to look to an unbelieving Government to have their quarrels settled, have several times appealed to the English Colonial Office, and our Mr. Joseph Chamberlain has told the Œcumenical Patriarch that the Government would allow no interference in the affairs of the Church of Cyprus. The Kyrenian party tried to get a majority by filling the third see, Paphos, with one of their friends.^[39] So they chose the Archimandrite Panaretos Duligeris of Athens, who had already written strongly against Cyril of Kition. But the Phanar informed them (quite correctly) that as long as the Primatial See is vacant they cannot canonically fill any of the others. Again they answered (equally truly) that the See of Constantinople has no rights over their island, and that they would take no notice of its objection. Only Panaretos cannot get ordained. The Church of Greece, once so bitter an enemy of the Phanar, is now making common cause with it against the Slav peril; so Panaretos has been seeking in vain for three Greek bishops who would agree to ordain him, and he remains at Athens, Metropolitan-elect (albeit uncanonically) of Paphos, and he has no vote in the Cypriote Synod.^[40] One need not tell of all the endless ramifications of this quarrel, how the Parliament of Cyprus is divided into Kitiacks and Kyrenians, how Damianos of Jerusalem is vainly trying to make these two Cyrils agree to elect some third person, how Meletios of Antioch put in his oar—of course, against the Phanar—how politicians and canonists, ministers and deputies, are travelling about seeking to strengthen their sides. Meanwhile the See of Cyprus is still vacant, and one of the endless questions that divide the Orthodox all over the East is that of whether they are Kitiacks or Kyrenians.

These five Churches—the four patriarchates and Cyprus—are the old elements of Eastern Christendom, and so, although they are neither in size nor power the most important branches, they take precedence in the above order. We now come to the Churches that have been formed by separation from the Byzantine Patriarchate. They have no established order of dignity among themselves, so the obvious arrangement will be according to the dates of their independence.

 

6. The Church of Russia (autocephalous since 1589).

There is only space here for the merest outline of the story of the Church that is really the infinitely preponderating partner of all this Communion. The Russians date their conversion since the year 988. In the 9th century a Norman dynasty of rulers set up the first monarchy over Russians. Novgorod was their original capital. Soon after they made Kiev "the mother of all Russian cities." One of these Norman kings, Vladimir, the son of Svyatoslav, after having defeated his brothers and made himself the only king (984–1015), became a Christian and forced all his people to be converted too.^[41] He is said to have hesitated between various religions—Judaism, Mohammedanism and Christianity—and to have at last settled on Christianity in its Byzantine form.^[42] The fact has deeply affected all Russian history. The daughter-Church of Constantinople has always looked toward that city as her ideal, has shared the Byzantine schism, and Russia is an Eastern European Power, whereas Poland, who got her faith from Rome, is to be counted among the Western nations. St. Vladimir, the Apostle of Russia, was baptized with great crowds of his subjects in 988. A hierarchy was set up under the Metropolitan of Kiev, and was added to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The first Russian-born metropolitan was Hilarion (1051–1072); but all Russia used the Byzantine Liturgy. That liturgy, still read in Old Russian (Church Slavonic), is the only one used in this Church. After the schism of Cerularius, Russia remained in communion with Rome for about a century;^[43] eventually, however, she took the side of her Patriarch. After the Mongol invasion (1222–1480)^[44] the centre of gravity shifted from Kiev to Moscow, and Moscow had a metropolitan, the rival of him of Kiev. Feodor Ivanovitch the Czar (1581–1598) in 1589 bribed Jeremias II of Constantinople (1572–1579, 1580–1584, 1586–1595) to acknowledge the Metropolitan of Moscow as a Patriarch and the Russian Church as no longer subject to Constantinople. A synod of the other Orthodox Patriarchs in 1591 confirmed this acknowledgement and gave the Patriarch of Moscow the fifth place, after Jerusalem. The classical number of five Patriarchs was now happily restored to the Orthodox, and they said that God had raised up this new throne of Moscow to make up for the fallen one of Rome. However, that state of things did not last long. The third epoch of Russian history is marked by the change of the centre of gravity to Petersburg. Kiev, Moscow, and Petersburg stand for the three periods. Peter the Great (1689–1725), as is well known, set up his capital on the Neva and reformed the whole administration of his Empire. Among other things he reformed the Church so as to bring it under the power of the civil government. For this purpose he abolished the Patriarchate of Moscow and established the Holy Directing Synod to rule the Church of Russia in 1721.^[45] Jeremias III of Constantinople had to make the best of it and to acknowledge the Russian Holy Synod as his "Sister in Christ." The constitution of this Holy Synod remains unchanged since its formation, and under it the Russian Church is the most Erastian Christian body in the world.^[46] No sovereign has ever been more absolutely master of a Church than is the Czar.

In the first place the Holy Synod decides every ecclesiastical question in Russia, the preservation of the faith, religious instruction, censorship of all books that concern religion, all questions of ritual. It is the last court of appeal for all questions of Canon Law, and all metropolitans, bishops, clerks of every rank, monasteries and convents, are under its jurisdiction. And the Holy Synod is the shadow of the Czar. It is composed of the Metropolitans of Kiev, Moscow, and Petersburg and the Exarch of Georgia (p. 305); the Czar then appoints five or six other bishops or archimandrites to sit in it at his pleasure;^[47] the Czar's chaplain and the head chaplain of the forces are also members. And the chief man in the Holy Synod is the Procurator (Ober-Prokuror), a layman, generally a soldier, appointed by the Government to see that its laws are carried out. Russians themselves realize how completely their Church now lies under the heel of the autocracy. When Mr. Palmer was in Russia, the common joke was to point to the Procurator in his officer's uniform and to say, "That is our patriarch,"^[48] and one continually hears of their hope of restoring the old independence of their Church by setting up the Patriarchate of Moscow again.^[49]

Meanwhile the Russian Church is governed by Imperial Ukazes.^[50] It would be quite untrue to say that she recognizes the Czar as her head. Every Russian would indignantly declare that the Head of his Church is our Lord Jesus Christ, which is, of course, just what Catholic children learn in their Catechism too, and what a member of any of the numberless Christian sects would affirm. As far as practical politics are concerned, however, that answer leaves things much as they were. The question only shifts one degree, and one asks through whom our Lord governs his Church. And the Russian must answer: "Through the Holy Synod." Possibly he would first say: "Through the bishops"; but there is no question that the synod rules the bishops, and the synod is its Procurator, and he represents the civil government. The incredible thing is that Russians boast of the freedom of their Church from the yoke of Rome, just as the Orthodox in Turkey do. If the Church is to have any visible government at all, one would imagine that, even apart from any consideration of theology or antiquity, the first Patriarch would be a more natural governor than the Czar or the Sultan. The Czar's Empire contains about 130 million victims of his government. Of these from eighty to eighty-five millions are members of the Orthodox established Church.^[51] So the Church of Russia is enormously the greatest part of the Orthodox Communion; she alone is about eight times as great as all the other Churches together. She is ruled by eighty-six bishops, of whom three (Kiev, Moscow, and Petersburg) are always metropolitans, and fourteen archbishops. In Russia the title of metropolitan, which in most Eastern Churches has come to be the common name for any bishop, is much rarer. Besides the three above mentioned, others have it given to them as a compliment or reward by the Czar. In any case it has quite lost its real meaning, and is only an honorary title. No Russian bishop has any extra-diocesan jurisdiction; the Holy Synod rules all equally. There are also thirty-seven auxiliary bishops, whom they call vicars. There are 481 monasteries for men, and 249 convents of nuns.^[52] The last Saint canonized by the Holy Synod is the monk Seraphim, who was an ascetic like those of the first centuries. He spent a thousand days and nights under the shelter of a rock, doing nothing but repeating: "Lord, have mercy on me a sinner"; then for five years he spoke no word, and he died in the odour of sanctity at the monastery of Sarov in 1833. The Holy Synod examined his cause and proved the miracles he had wrought, and the Czar ratified his canonization in January, 1903.^[53] The Russian Church has missions throughout Siberia, and in Japan, Alaska, and the United States. A Russian bishop with the title of Revel lives at Tokio and governs twenty-five thousand Orthodox converts; the Bishop of Alaska, who resides at San Francisco, has fifty thousand subjects in the States, mostly Uniates from Hungary and Galicia who have left the Catholic Church.^[54]

It is impossible to wish well to the Russian missions anywhere. Undoubtedly one would rejoice to see heathen baptized and taught the faith of Christ, if only it were done by any one except by Russians. But Russian missions, enormously subsidized by the Government, are, always and everywhere, the thin end of the wedge for Russian conquest.

Look at the countries where Russia has political interests or ambitions—Syria, Persia, Manchuria, China, Japan, Alaska—there you will find Russian missionaries; look at places where the Czar has no policy—Egypt, Africa, South America, &c.—there the Church of Russia is unheard of. And Russia, even when it has only a protectorate, means at once intolerance and persecution of every other form of Christianity.^[55] One remembers the long list of crimes wrought by the tyrants at Petersburg and by their servant the Holy Synod, the ghastly story of Poland, the Ruthenian persecution, the dead Georgian Church, the Roumanian Church crushed in Bessarabia, the ruthless harrying of the Armenians, and one realizes that Russia and her ecclesiastical arrangements are the common enemy of the rest of Christendom.^[56] And of all the millions of people who rejoice at the crushing defeat of this barbarous State in the late war no one has more reason for joy than the Catholic missionaries who can now again breathe in peace in Manchuria. It is wonderful that, in spite of the intolerance of the Government, Russia should teem with dissenters. Leaving out of account at present the Latin and Uniate Catholics, the Armenians, Jews, and Moslems, we find twenty-five millions of Russians who live in schism from the established Church. These people are the Raskolniks and the members of the numberless sects that have grown out of that movement. The Raskol schism began in the 17th century when Nikon, Patriarch of Moscow,^[57] reformed the Russian liturgical books. Gradually a number of errors, misspellings, and mistranslations had crept into these books. Nikon carried out his correction of them very conscientiously; he sent an Archimandrite to Constantinople to collect copies of the original Greek books from which the Russian ones had been translated, and his only object was to restore the correct text. The changes that he made were that people should make rather fewer prostrations (μετάνοιαι) during service, should sing Alleluia twice instead of three times in the liturgy, and should make the sign of the Cross with three instead of with two fingers. It is characteristic of the Slav mind that these changes should have produced an uproar all over Russia. The Patriarch was tampering with the holy books, was changing the faith of their fathers, was undermining the Christian religion; he had been bought like Judas by the Jews, the Mohammedans, and the Pope of Rome (this was specially hard, because Nikon could not abide the Pope of Rome). So numbers of people left his communion, calling themselves Starovjerzi (Old Believers); they were and still are commonly known in Russia as Raskolniki (apostates). From the very beginning these absurd people were most cruelly persecuted by the Government, and the persecution produced the usual result of making them wildly fanatical. Peter the Great was tolerant to every sect except to the Raskolniks; he had them hunted down in the forests and massacred, shut up in their churches and burnt, tortured, flogged, and exiled. The whole Raskolnik movement forms the weirdest and most unsavoury story of religious mania in the world; not even the maddest Mohammedan sects have gone to such an extreme of lunacy as these Old Believers. When a Slav peasant gets religious mania he gets it very badly indeed. Their original indictment against Nikon and the State Church was that he had introduced these abominations: to make the sign of the Cross with three fingers instead of with two, to pronounce the Holy Name Iisus instead of Isus, to say in the Creed, "the Holy Ghost, Lord and Lifegiver," instead of "true one and Lifegiver,"^[58] as well as various other changes of the same importance. Because of these innovations and heresies they declared that the established Church had become the kingdom of Antichrist, New Rome (which, of course, stood by Nikon and his reform) had fallen as low as Old Rome, they, the Raskolniks, alone were the true Church of God, and Noah's ark in the universal flood. The Raskolniks then split into two chief factions, the "Priestly" and "Priestless" Old Believers. They had few priests and no bishops at first, so the question soon arose: How were they to go on? Some determined to do the best they could and to manage with the few priests who occasionally joined them, or even, in the case of necessity, to receive Sacraments from the clergy of the established Church. These priestly Raskolniks are the less radical party; they have stayed where they were when the schism began, and still differ from the Orthodox only in the matter of Nikon's changes. In 1846 a deposed Bosnian metropolitan joined them, set up a see at Belokriniza in Bukovina, and ordained other bishops; so they got a hierarchy of their own at last. They also, after centuries of persecution, now receive some measure of toleration in Russia, and about a million of them have joined the State Church as Uniates (the only Uniates in the Orthodox world), that is, they are allowed to go on using their ante-Nikonian books. These Uniates, the Edinoverz ("United Believers"), have about two hundred and forty-four churches. When Russians speak of Raskolniks they usually mean the priestly sect, and they are always anxious to convert them all to the established Church. One of the chief arguments used by Russian bishops against any new proposal, such as, for instance, official recognition of the Church of England, is that it would tend to frighten away the Raskolniks.^[59] It is among the priestless Raskolniks that the wildest beliefs have arisen. They made a virtue of necessity, and declared that now that Antichrist is reigning the ministry of priests and bishops must cease; they baptize their children and hold prayer-meetings led by elders. And they have broken into endless sects on all sorts of points. One great quarrel was about what letters should be put on the crucifix; where we write INRI, some of them, in spite of John xix. 19, &c., insisted on ICXC (Iesus Christ) only. They began all manner of strange abstinences—tobacco, sugar, potatoes, cooked hare were unclean and never to be touched. Some of them, to hasten the Second Coming of our Lord, preached suicide, and then quarrelled as to whether suicide by fire or by hunger were more pleasing to God. They were all the wildest Millennianists, miracle-mongers, and seers. Horrible licence alternated with suicidal mortifications.^[60] In a wild anarchy of mad opinions and mutual cursing they were held together only by their insane fury against the Orthodox. And these sects, sprung out of the old Raskol movement, still exist, are still horribly persecuted,^[61] and, as usual, answer that persecution by a tenfold fanaticism.

There are the Philipovzi, whose Gospel is suicide by fire, the Beguni, who always wander, will eat from no stranger's plate, and practise the abominations of "free love" instead of marriage; there are the Moltshaljniki, who never speak; the Chlysti, who believe that in 1645 God the Father came down in a chariot of fire, and was incarnate in a peasant named Daniel Philippov. Their service consists in dancing and in nameless horrors that follow. There are the Skopzi, whose god is a man named Selivanov, whom they believe to have been a reincarnation of our Lord and of the Czar, Peter III; they practise self-mutilation, and hope that when they have converted 144,000 virgins (Apoc. xiv. 1–4) the end of the world will come.^[62] The Duchoborz believe in successive reincarnations of our Lord, and worship a number of their own prophets who claimed to be the Son of God. In 1898, after a very sharp persecution, they fled to Canada, and gave endless trouble to its Government by going out to meet the Second Coming in a place where they would have all died of cold and hunger. But one need not go on describing the blasphemous madness of these unhappy lunatics. That there are about twenty-five millions of Russians who belong to such sects is the only point that is significant. The Stundists lastly are people of quite different kind, simply Protestants of the Lutheran type, and entirely respectable in every way.^[63]

Returning to the established Church of Russia after these fanatics, one finds in it as a vivid contrast the profoundest peace. We have seen some—and we shall unfortunately see more—of the quarrels that now rend various branches of the Orthodox Communion; it is relief to be able to point out that there are no quarrels in the Church of Russia. The Holy directing Synod and the Imperial Russian police take care of that. But it would not be fair to say nothing about the Russian clergy but the servility of its hierarchy. Throughout that enormous Empire there must be thousands of village priests who stand for the cause of Christ among their people, who baptize the children, celebrate the holy liturgy, and bring the last comfort to the dying; who (when they can resist its temptations themselves) do at any rate something towards putting down the drunkenness that is the curse of the Russian peasant; and who, since they are married and so can never hope to become bishops, know nothing of higher Church politics, but lead simple godly lives in the care of souls. When Mr. Palmer was in Russia he lodged for a time with a parish priest named Fortunatov. M. Fortunatov was a charming example of his kind. His house swarmed with vermin, and the windows could not be opened all the winter.^[64] But he was a person of some culture, speaking Latin and a little German.^[65] He had studied the Bible as well as many other things at the Spiritual Academy, and he always helped himself to food before his wife on the strength of Gen. i.^[66] When his little daughter, looking at a picture-book, pointed to each woodcut and delightedly called them "little god!" he could not understand Mr. Palmer's pious horror. Such "sheer and gross ignorance" he found natural in peasants and women.^[67] He could discourse on philosophy, and had a perfect genius for aphorisms: "Aristotle goes only on experience (!), Plato is imaginative, Socrates religious."^[68] He was no truckler to modern science: "All the modern geologists overturn religion, especially by interpreting the six days of Creation to be six periods."^[69] And he had a most engaging way of putting an end to religious controversy. When Mr. Palmer showed him a controversial letter he had written to the President of Magdalen "Mr. F. criticized it freely and ended by going to his piano and singing the Trisagion, the Cherubicon, the Ter Sanctus, the hymn, Nunc dimittis and Te Deum."^[70] When one learns that so much talent and tact were developed on an income of about £9 a year,^[71] one realizes that the Russian clergy cannot be accused of teaching things which they ought not for filthy lucre's sake.

 

6a. The Church of Georgia.

This Church is not to be counted among the branches of the Orthodox Communion because it has now ceased to exist. We have seen how the Georgians or Iberians were converted by St. Nino, how they became a separate body independent of the Patriarch of Antioch (pp. 17, 18). The Church of Georgia under the Katholikos of Tiflis^[72] had its own rite in the Georgian language. It was almost entirely Orthodox and free from any suspicion of Nestorianism or Monophysism. In the 7th century Georgia was conquered by the Saracens, and a great persecution filled the Calendar of Tiflis with names of martyrs. In the 11th century the country was again free, and the native Georgian kings reigned at Tiflis till the beginning of the 19th century. They were continually attacked and overrun by the Persians; but, on the whole, the land was free, and the valiant Georgian warriors formed one of the bulwarks of Christendom against Islam. Meanwhile the Church of Georgia shared the fate of the kingdom; she was persecuted whenever the Georgians were defeated, and she shared their triumph when they won. Almost inevitably this little distant Church, surrounded by other Orthodox Churches, shared their schism, probably hardly or not at all realizing the fact. But the Russians can scarcely afford to blame her for that, and otherwise no shadow of reproach can be brought against her. The most ancient Church of a heroic people, she deserved to remain one, and one of the most honoured of the Orthodox allies. In 1802, however, the greatest misfortune happened to Georgia that can happen to any nation. It was made a Russian province. And from that time its Church has ceased to exist. The upstart tyrants at Petersburg, of course, cared nothing for the rights of a Church that was by five centuries more ancient and more venerable than their own, nor for the national feeling of the heroic race that for centuries had guarded the frontier of Christendom. They simply applied their usual policy of making every one a Russian who came in their power. So at one stroke the Georgian nation and the Georgian Church were wiped out. What all the barbarians who had attacked the land unceasingly for nine hundred years—Tartars, Kurds, Persians, and Turks—had not succeeded in doing, that the Czar did with one Ukaze. All Georgians were declared members of the Russian Church; the Katholikos of Tiflis disappeared, and his place was taken by an Exarch of the Province of Georgia, who is simply a Russian bishop under the Holy Synod. Throughout the land the Russian Liturgy alone is allowed, just as at Petersburg and Moscow. The Georgian language is forbidden to be taught in schools under the direst penalties. The Georgian Uniates had to flee into more tolerant Turkey, or were forced into the Russian schism. Quite lately, in 1904, when the storm they had brought upon themselves frightened the Russian Government into some unwilling pretence of tolerance, the Georgians hoped that they, too, might at last receive better treatment. So they presented a petition to the Czar in which, with the most piteous protestations of loyalty towards the tyrant who persecutes them, they implored him to allow them again their own Church and their own language.^[73] And equally, of course, no notice has been taken of their petition. Meanwhile the only remnant of the old Georgian Church remains in the few Uniates abroad in Constantinople. It is not the Pope who destroys ancient Churches.^[74]

 

7. The Church of Carlovitz (1765).

Next in order of time come the Orthodox Serbs in Hungary. We have not yet mentioned three mediæval Churches that have long ceased to exist, those of Achrida for the Bulgars, of Ipek for the Serbs, and of Tirnovo for the Roumans. All were recognized as extra-patriarchal, and so held the same position as Cyprus. The Primates of Achrida and Ipek are occasionally called Patriarchs, though they were never considered the equals of the five great Patriarchs. We are now concerned with Ipek.^[75] In this city (now a small village in Northern Albania) St. Sabbas, the national Saint of the Serbs, set up his throne as Metropolitan of Servia in 1218.^[76] At that time the Latins held Constantinople, and the Orthodox Emperor and Patriarch had fled to Nicæa (p. 227). In the midst of their own troubles, the Byzantines did not care much about the affairs of Ipek, so in 1221 they agreed that the Serbs should elect their own metropolitan, and that he should be only confirmed by the Œcumenical Patriarch. During the troubles of the Eastern Empire in the 13th and 14th centuries, the Serbs managed to set up a great independent Power under King Stephen Dushan († 1355), which at one time stretched from the Danube to the Gulf of Corinth, and from the Adriatic to the Ægean Sea.^[77] King Stephen Dushan, who was always at war with the Empire, would not let the Imperial Patriarch rule over his Church, so in a synod of the year 1347 the Serbs declared their Church autocephalous, and gave to the Metropolitan of Ipek the title of Patriarch. Constantinople, as usual, excommunicated them, but eventually, in 1376, had to recognize the Servian Church. In 1389 came the crushing defeat of Kossovo, in which the Turks utterly annihilated Dushan's great kingdom, and nothing more is heard of Servia as an independent Power till the revolt of 1817.^[78] The Servian Church went on for a time after the destruction of the kingdom, but the Phanar persuaded the Porte that any sort of national organization among the Serbs, even a purely ecclesiastical one, was a danger to the Sultan's rule, and that the best safety for the Turkish Government would be in the destruction of the Church of Ipek, and in the submission of the Orthodox Serbs to the Patriarch of Constantinople. So after centuries of bickering and machinations, at last, in 1765, the Sultan put an entire end to the Servian Church. Since then, all the Serbs in Turkey have to obey the Patriarch, although, as we shall see, they do so very unwillingly, and always hope for a great united Servian Church under a Patriarch of Ipek again. But in three cases where the Porte does not rule over Serbs, the Œcumenical Patriarch has no authority either. One of these is that of the new kingdom of Servia (p. 325), the others are those of the Churches of Carlovitz and Czernagora, which still represent the legitimate continuity from Ipek. In 1690, while the Serbs were being much harassed by the Porte and the Phanar, King Leopold I of Hungary (Emperor Leopold I, 1658–1705) invited them to come over to his land and to try the advantages of a civilized country. Thirty-seven thousand Servian families did so, and many more followed in 1737. With the approval of Arsenius III (Zrnojevitch), the shadowy Patriarch of Ipek, they founded the Orthodox Metropolitan See of Carlovitz (Karlocza on the Danube, in Slavonia). Eventually Arsenius came himself. So the See of Carlovitz has the best claim to represent the extinct Patriarchate of Ipek. We have seen how the Orthodox Georgians fared under a Government of their own religion. The happier Orthodox Serbs under a Catholic Government have always enjoyed the most absolute freedom. In 1695 the King of Hungary guaranteed entire liberty to them to do whatever they liked, and no one has ever thought of disturbing them since. As long as any sort of See of Ipek existed,^[79] the Metropolitan of Carlovitz considered himself dependent from it, and at first he described himself as "Exarch of the throne of Ipek." When there was no longer a throne of Ipek to be Exarch of, he became quite independent. There are now six Servian dioceses under Carlovitz scattered through Hungary and Slavonia,^[80] with twenty-seven monasteries, and just over a million of the faithful. A last example will show the invariable tolerance and good-nature of the Government of the Habsburgs. Hitherto, the common official name for all the Orthodox in the Dual Monarchy was Greek-Oriental (griechisch-morgenländisch); so the Church of Carlovitz was officially known as the Servian national Greek-Oriental Church. But they did not like this name. They feel very strongly that they are not Greeks; the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople had destroyed their old national Church of Ipek, and, although they are in communion with him, they cannot abide him and his ways. So they protested. The courteous statesmen at Vienna and Pesth have nothing to do with the everlasting internal quarrels of the Orthodox, but they are always studiously anxious to make every one happy. So they said that, of course, they would be delighted to do anything they could for the Serbs: What would the gentlemen like to be called? They were told; and now the official name is the Servian national Orthodox-Slav (Pravoslav) Oriental Church. This body is, of course, in communion with the Œcumenical Patriarch and with all the other Orthodox Churches, but it has no Head but Christ, and, as they sit in peace under the Habsburg double crown, this does not mean the Procurator of a Holy Directing Synod.^[81]

 

8. The Church of Czernagora (1765).

This Church represents the other fragment of the old Patriarchate of Ipek. The people of Czernagora (Mons Niger, Montenegro) are simply Serbs, in no way different from those of Turkey or in the new kingdom of Servia, and they form a separate principality only because of the accidents of politics. For whereas the Serbs of Turkey groan under the tyranny of the Sultan, and those of the kingdom have lately won their freedom, the valiant men of the Black Mountain have never had to submit to the barbarian. They, alone of all the Balkan Christians, have always kept their freedom; while for five centuries they waged a continual war against the Turk, they have always succeeded in driving him down from the slopes of their Black Mountain. And so the old Servian Church, destroyed in Turkey, set up again by the exiles in Hungary, has always existed independent as the national religion of Czernagora. Till quite lately, the same person was both Prince and Bishop of the Black Mountain. In 1516, Prince George, fearing lest quarrels should weaken his people (it was an elective princedom), made them swear always to elect the bishop as their civil ruler as well. These prince-bishops were called Vladikas, and lasted till about fifty years ago. In the 18th century the Vladika Daniel I (1697–1737) succeeded in securing the succession for his own family. As Orthodox bishops have to be celibate, the line passed (by an election whose conclusion was foregone) from uncle to nephew, or from cousin to cousin. At last, in 1852, Danilo, who succeeded his uncle as Vladika, wanted to marry, so he refused to be ordained bishop and turned the prince-bishopric into an ordinary secular princedom. Since then, another person has been elected Metropolitan of Cetinje, according to the usual Orthodox custom. The Vladikas acknowledged an at least theoretical ecclesiastical over-lordship of the Patriarchs of Ipek as long as that line existed. Since 1765, the Church of the Black Mountain has been autocephalous. Its hierarchy consists of only one bishop, the Metropolitan of Cetinje, and about ninety parish priests. It has thirteen monasteries.^[82]

 

9. The Church of Sinai (1782).

One of the chief shrines to which the Orthodox for many centuries have gone in pilgrimage is Mount Sinai, the "mountain trod by God" (τὸ θεοβατὸν ὄρος). On this mountain stands the great monastery of St. Katharine.^[83] It became very rich, and has metochia (daughter-houses) at Cairo, Constantinople, Kiev, Tiflis, and all over the Orthodox world (fourteen altogether). Since the 10th century the Abbot (Hegoumenos) of Mount Sinai has joined to his office the diocese of Pharan in Egypt, has always been consecrated bishop, and has borne the title of Archbishop of Mount Sinai. He has always been and still is ordained by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and formerly he obeyed that patriarch's jurisdiction. However, chiefly because of the distance of his monastery from the Holy City, he succeeded after a great struggle in being recognized as independent of any superior authority. In 1782 this position was officially acknowledged by the patriarchs; and so the Archbishop of Sinai rules over the smallest of the Orthodox Churches, having himself no superior but Christ and the seven councils. Since, however, he is ordained at Jerusalem, and since the Orthodox are always disposed to consider that the right of ordaining involves some kind of jurisdiction, the Patriarchs of Jerusalem have continually tried to reassert their old authority over him and his monastery.

The last dispute was in 1866. In that year the Archbishop-Abbot, Cyril Byzantios, had a great quarrel with his monks. Unable to manage them alone and unwilling to appeal to Jerusalem, lest that should seem an acknowledgement of dependence from that see, he sent to Constantinople to ask the Œcumenical Patriarch to help him keep his monks in order. Of course the Phanar was delighted to have an excuse for asserting some sort of authority over another Church, so the Patriarch (Sophronios III, 1863–1866) wrote back that he would gladly support his brother of the God-trodden mountain. Then the Patriarch of Jerusalem (also named Cyril) heard of what had happened and summoned a synod in 1867, which declared that the Great Church had no authority to interfere in anything that happened outside its own patriarchate, and that if there was any trouble on Mount Sinai the proper person to put things right was the Patriarch of Jerusalem. "If we acted otherwise," declared this synod, "people would think that we tolerate such anti-canonical interference, and that we acknowledge foreign and unknown authorities in the Church as well as the only lawful and competent high jurisdiction of the Œcumenical Synods."^[84] Cyril of Jerusalem sent the Acts of his council to all the other autocephalous Churches, and once more they all rose up against the usurpation of the Phanar. He also deposed Cyril Byzantios for what he had done and, although Sophronios of Constantinople stood by him, the feeling against them both was so strong throughout the Orthodox world that Byzantios had to submit to his deposition and Sophronios had to resign.^[85] However, Mount Sinai is recognized as an independent Church, and stands with its one bishop and handful of monks on just the same plane as the enormous Russian Church. Its archbishop lives at the Sinaitic metochion at Cairo; he rules over only the monastery and its fourteen metochia, and his authority is very much limited by the council of monks (ἱερὰ σύναξις), who share the government.^[86] The present archbishop is Lord Porphyrios Logothetes, who was formerly the Orthodox priest in Paris. His Beatitude has brought from the land of the Latins a great dislike for their Church, and when he was consecrated at Jerusalem on October 30, 1904, he took the opportunity of speaking very bitterly against Catholics, a proceeding that was the less graceful in that a number of Catholic priests had been invited to the ceremony and, with the easy tolerance that is characteristic of the East, were showing their friendliness by a very respectful attendance.^[87]

 

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.^[88] 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.^[89] 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.^[90] In 1844 the same law was repeated: "The Orthodox Church of Hellas acknowledges our Lord Jesus Christ as its Head. It is inseparably joined in faith with the Church of Constantinople and with every other Christian Church of the same profession, but is autocephalous, exercises its sovereign rights independently of every other Church, and is governed by the members of its Holy Synod."^[91] Copies of these laws were duly sent to Constantinople and to all the other Orthodox Churches. Naturally the Œcumenical Patriarch was indignant that his subjects should so coolly throw off his authority without having even consulted him. So he first refused to acknowledge the Greek Holy Synod at all. Among the Greeks, too, a large party resented the whole uncanonical proceeding.

In 1849 the Greek Government, anxious to get the Patriarch's consent to what it had done, sent him the Order of St. Saviour that it had just founded, and a friendly message from the "Church of Hellas." The Patriarch (Anthimos IV, 1840–1841, 1848–1852) took the Order, and then said he knew nothing about a Church of Hellas. However, Russia and the other Orthodox Churches, always willing to humble the Phanar, acknowledged this new sister and insisted on his doing so too. So in 1850 Anthimos held a synod which published the famous Tomos (decree). The Tomos did recognize the Greek Church as autocephalous, but, still anxious to assert some sort of authority over it, prescribed the way in which it must be constituted. It especially forbade any interference of the State in Church affairs and added an amusing tirade against Erastianism.^[92] It also insisted that the Patriarch should be named in the Holy Liturgy throughout Greece, that the Holy Chrism should be sent from Constantinople, and that the synod should submit all important questions to the Patriarch.^[93] This Tomos excited great indignation among the nationalist Greek party. They had determined to have nothing more to do with the Phanar at all. Theoklitos Pharmakides, their chief leader, wrote an angry refutation: "The Synodical Tomos, or concerning Truth,"^[94] and the only suggestions they would accept from the Tomos were that the Metropolitan of Athens should be ex-officio president of the Holy Synod, and that the chrism should be supplied by the Patriarch. After a great deal more quarrelling, at last the Phanar had to submit and to acknowledge one more sister in Christ, the Greek Holy Synod. Since then there has been no more question about the autonomy of the Church of Hellas, and in face of the common Slav danger, the Free Greeks and the Phanar have now forgotten their differences and have become firm allies. Since its original constitution the Greek Church has received two additions. In 1866 England ceded the Ionian Isles to Greece, and at once the Greek Government separated the dioceses of those islands from the Patriarchate and joined them to its own Church. Again the Phanar protested, and there was a rather angry correspondence between Constantinople and Athens, but by now the principle that political independence and political union must be exactly reflected in the Church was becoming more and more openly recognized by the Orthodox. So this union was made without much trouble. In 1881 Thessaly and part of Epirus were added to Greece, and again the ten dioceses of these lands were joined to the Greek Church. This time the Phanar did not even protest. The Church of Hellas has now thirty-two sees, of which the first is that of Athens. At present in Greece, as in most Orthodox lands, the majority of these bishops bear the quite meaningless title of Metropolitan, but the Holy Synod has decreed that as the present metropolitans die their successors shall be called simply Bishops, and that the only see with the Metropolitan title in future shall be Athens. There are to be no provinces nor graduated jurisdiction, all bishops shall be immediately and equally subject to the Holy Synod. Of that synod my Lord of Athens is president, four other bishops are chosen by rote to be members for one year, the Royal Commissioner must be present at every session, and without his signature no decree is valid. The Greek Holy Synod, then, is an exact copy of the Russian one, and under it the Greek Church is just as Erastian as the Church of Russia, with, however, this exception, that, instead of being at the mercy of an autocrat, it has to submit to the even worse rule of a Balkan Parliament.^[95] In spite of this, however, the little Greek Church is as orderly and well organized as any of the Orthodox Communion. Its bishops and clergy are reasonably well paid by the State, so they have not the disadvantage of grinding poverty, and the University of Athens has a theological faculty quite well equipped for their education. The two most important theologians of this Church have been Theoklitos Pharmakides († 1860), who was the leader of the Liberal school, friendly to Protestants, anxious for practical reforms in the Church, for free discussion and higher Bible criticism, advocating more education and fewer monks,^[96] and his opponent Oikonomos († 1857), who had been educated in Russia and the East and was a rigid Conservative, valuing the Septuagint above new translations from the Hebrew, more diligent in the study of the Fathers of the Church than curious about the Tübingen theories, rather fearful of losing the old Orthodox faith than anxious for new reforms. He was also a famous orator and preached the sermon over the body of the martyr-Patriarch Gregory V at Odessa (p. 341), that is by far the finest piece of modern Greek oratory. But he thought that the Septuagint is inspired, and believed in Pseudo-Dionysius. The Greek Church has vindicated its right as a living Christian body by producing a fair proportion of heretics. Theophilos Kaires (Καῒρης), a priest, left the Orthodox Church and founded a new religion which he called "God-worship" (Θεοσεβαομός), and which is a sort of Deism on the lines of the Encyclopædists, varied by the fact that its prayers are said in Doric Greek. He was excommunicated, of course, and considerably persecuted till he died in prison in 1853. Laskaratos founded a form of Presbyterian Protestantism; Papadramantopoulos a Positivist sect; Plato Drakulis revived the wildest Gnostic theories. At present the enormous influence of Western, and especially French, ideas, which accompanies the feverish anxiety of the Greeks to be a European people, produces, besides most quarrelsome politics and a vast debt, a strong tendency towards freethinking and scorn of their Church among the young men who dress in French clothes and smoke very bad cigarettes in the cafés at Athens.^[97]

 

11. The Church of Hermannstadt (1864).

This is the Church of the Roumans or Vlachs in Hungary. There are a great number of Vlachs in Transylvania, of whom most are Orthodox, Originally, the Metropolitan of Carlovitz was the head of all the Orthodox in the Dual Monarchy. But the inevitable racial hatreds of these peoples led to quarrels in Hungary, as everywhere, and at last the Government, always anxious to do well to all its subjects, granted the petition of these Vlachs to be made into a separate autonomous Church. In 1864 the Metropolitan of Hermannstadt (Nagy-Szeben) in Southern Transylvania, was made the head of the Orthodox Roumanian Church in Hungary, and was given two suffragan sees.^[98] His jurisdiction extends over sixty-two protopresbyteries (unions of parishes like our deaneries) and one monastery, in various parts of Eastern and Southern Hungary.

 

12. The Bulgarian Exarchate (1870).

The question of the Bulgarian Church, still in schism, is by far the greatest of all to the Orthodox. We have seen that the foundation of this Church was one of the chief causes of dispute between Rome and Constantinople at the time of Photius (p. 151). Eventually, Constantinople, helped by the Emperors, succeeded in joining the Bulgars to her own patriarchate, sending them the Holy Chrism, and making them use her liturgy. Since then the Bulgars have always belonged to the Eastern half of Christendom. In spite of the old rights of Rome over Illyricum, no one has thought of making them Latins. But they did not remain obedient children of Constantinople either. From the 9th to the nth centuries the Bulgars also managed to set up a great independent kingdom.^[99] In this kingdom was an independent Church, which both the Pope and the Œcumenical Patriarch recognized.^[100] Its head, the Bulgarian Primate, reigned first at Preslau (Prjeslau, now in Bulgaria, between Tirnovo and Varna), and then, when the Emperor had conquered that city back (c. 970), at Achrida (now Ochrida), in Macedonia. When Basil II had destroyed the Bulgarian kingdom, he allowed the Church of Achrida to go on, but he brought it into some sort of submission to the Patriarch. The election of the Bulgarian Primate had to be confirmed at Constantinople. After the Turkish conquest the Church of Achrida met the same fate as that of Ipek. The Phanar persuaded the Porte that the best way of keeping the Bulgars in submission was to destroy any sort of Bulgarian organization; so, in 1767, the Church of Achrida was entirely suppressed, all Bulgars were made members of the Roman nation under the Œcumenical Patriarch, just like Greeks, Serbs, and Vlachs. From that time began the persecution of which the Bulgars so bitterly complained. Of all the rivalries between the Balkan Christians, that between the Greeks and the Bulgars has always been by far the most bitter. The Greeks hate a Serb, a Vlach, an Albanian—any one who has a nationality to oppose to their dream of a great Hellas covering all the Balkan peninsula, but they hate a Bulgar far the most of all. The Bulgars are the most numerous, active and generally dangerous of their rivals. During the horrors of the insurrection of 1903 any sort of sympathy for the unhappy Bulgarian insurgents on the part of a European State was met by shrieks of indignation at Athens against such Philobulgarism.^[101] Until 1870, the Phanariot Greeks then systematically ignored the Bulgars. They appointed Greek bishops for every diocese, including Ochrida, which had become an ordinary metropolis; they allowed only Greek as a liturgical language; the very name Bulgar was proscribed and almost forgotten.^[102] At last, in 1860, the Bulgars determined to bear the treatment of the Phanar no longer. As with all the Balkan Rayahs, the only real issue was the political one: they wanted to be a people, and the only way to be a people under the Turk was to have a national Church, a millet, in fact. The vital thing was to have nothing more to do with the Phanar. At first they thought of joining the Catholic Church. They applied to the Uniate Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, and were assured by him that the Holy See would allow them to be a Uniate Church, keeping their own Canon Law, and using the Byzantine liturgy in their own tongue. Napoleon III was to be their patron and defender. A large number of them then abjured schism, and a certain Archimandrite Sokolski was consecrated Archbishop of the Bulgars by Pius IX himself in 1861. It was Russia who put a stop to this movement. Catholicism in the Balkans would not suit her plans at all. So the Russian Government tried very hard to persuade the Phanar to allow a national Orthodox Bulgarian Church to be formed. As the Phanar would not hear of such a thing, the Russians then turned to the Porte, and made it set up a new millet—the Orthodox Bulgarian nation. Since the Sultan had agreed, it did not matter in the least what the Patriarch did, so the millet was duly constituted, and the Bulgarian Church was born. To stop the Catholic movement the Russians then kidnapped Sokolski, and shut him up in Kiev till he apostatized and turned Orthodox again.^[103] Religious motives count for nothing in this story,^[104] the only thing the Bulgars wanted was to be a nation, and as soon as they found they could be one without the Pope, they gave up the idea of being Catholic.^[105] What has made this quarrel specially bitter is that the Bulgars are not content with a local autocephalous Church covering a certain area. That is bad enough, but the Phanar has so often had to accept such an arrangement that it would without doubt have done so in this case, too. But the Bulgars have taken more than that. Like the Armenians, they want all their people to belong to their Church wherever they may live; and so they measure the jurisdiction of their hierarchy, not by area, but by nationality and language. As head of their Church they set up a bishop with the title of Exarch in Constantinople, and he and his suffragans, with the consent of the Porte, have jurisdiction over Bulgars all over Turkey. This the Phanar cannot forgive. In 1872, Anthimos VI of Constantinople^[106] held a great synod, in which he excommunicated the Bulgarian Exarch and all his followers, and declared them guilty, not only of schism, but of the new heresy of Philetism, which means national feeling in Church matters. The Acts of this synod were signed by Anthimos, by the four ex- Patriarchs of Constantinople who were then waiting for a chance of re-election, by the other Patriarchs, except Cyril of Jerusalem, who dared not offend the Russians by signing (p. 288), and by twenty-five metropolitans and bishops. It has never been repealed, and so the Bulgars are still in open schism with Constantinople. In 1878 the Berlln Congress established the almost independent Principality of Bulgaria. In the other cases (Servia and Roumania), as we shall see, the Balkan States have at once set up an autocephalous Church to cover their territory. In this case it was not necessary, as the Exarchate already existed. So the Orthodox Church in communion, not with the Greek Patriarch but with the Bulgarian Exarch, was declared the State religion of the new principality; and when, in 1885, Eastern Roumelia was added to Bulgaria, the Exarchate was established there, too. But it is still not shut in by the Bulgarian State. The Exarch lives at Constantinople, and rules, not only over the Church of the principality, but over his communion throughout Macedonia and Thrace as well. The first Exarch was one Anthimos, his successor now is Lord Joseph.^[107] In the principality there is the usual Holy Synod, sitting at Sofia. As the Exarch lives at Constantinople, he appoints one of the bishops (at present Lord Gregory of Rustšuk) to be his vicar and representative. In the principality are eleven sees; in Macedonia and Thrace the Bulgars have set up twenty-one sees, nearly all of which are rivals of Greek dioceses in the same towns. So throughout Turkey the Orthodox are now divided into two rival communions: the Patriarchists, who stand by the Patriarch of Constantinople—that is, all the Greeks, most Roumans and Albanians (as far as they are Orthodox),^[108] and a few Bulgars who have been frightened by the excommunication of 1872; and, on the other hand, the Exarchists—that is, nearly all the Bulgars and some Roumans. These two Churches hold exactly the same faith, and use the same rites, the Patriarchists in Greek and the Exarchists in Bulgarian, but their mutual hatred is the salient feature of Church politics in Turkey. The Bulgars are always trying to spread their Church among their countrymen everywhere,^[109] and the cause of the revolutionary committees in Macedonia is practically identified with that of the Exarchate. The Greeks, who always dream of their "great idea"—that is, of a Hellas that shall cover the Balkans, and have its capital at Constantinople—hate the Bulgarian movement more than anything in the world; they hate the Exarchist schismatic and the revolutionary committees so much that, pending the realization of the great idea, they always side with the Turkish soldiers in hunting down the insurgents.^[110] The schism has caused immense annoyance to the Phanar. Five Patriarchs have already resigned explicitly because of this trouble.^[111] In 1890, when the Sultan gave his firman for the erection of two more Exarchist sees (Ochrida and Skopia), the Phanar declared the Orthodox Church to be in a state of persecution, and proclaimed an interdict from October 4th till December 25th. As the people then foresaw that they would have no liturgy even on Christmas Day, they became so excited that the Phanar was frightened, and removed the interdict; but the two Exarchist sees were founded and still exist. In August, 1903, the Patriarchist bishops wailed aloud, and sent round to the Ambassadors of the Great Powers a memorandum in French against the "aggressions of the schismatical Bulgarian Exarchate."^[112] The most absurd part of the situation is that the great Russian Church, which from the beginning has been the warm friend and protector of the Exarchists, is in communion with both sides. The Phanar dares not excommunicate all Russia, of course, but in the long list of its grievances against that country, one of the chief is the Russian patronage of the Bulgarian schism. It is true that the Synod of 1872 declared schismatic and excommunicated every one who should aid, abet, or acknowledge the Exarchate, but, except a few very ardent Greeks, no one has dared apply that law to the obvious case of Russia. Meanwhile, the Exarchists get their Holy Chrism from Petersburg, and the Russians hold open communion with the excommunicate. Occasionally a very public case raises a storm of angry protest from the Greek papers, but no one takes any notice of it.^[113] To the furious accusations of the Phanar the Bulgars answer in a language that is common to all schismatics: they are not schismatics at all, but a national branch of the Church Catholic, using their sacred right to manage their own affairs in their own way. They have never excommunicated the Patriarchists: on the contrary, they are ready at any moment to restore intercommunion with them (of course, on their own terms). It is not their fault that they are so monstrously persecuted, but they cannot and will not stand the sort of treatment they received before 1870. They wring their hands at these unhappy feuds, but it is some comfort to know that they are not their fault. As far as one can foresee the future, however, it seems certain that eventually the Phanar will have to give in in this case, as it has had to in all the others.^[114]

 

13. The Church of Czernovitz (1873).

This is the communion of the Orthodox Ruthenians and all other Orthodox in Austria. In 1775 Bukovina was added to the Austrian House-lands. The Orthodox Bishop of this country sat at Radautz; in 1781 he moved his throne to Czernovitz, the civil capital, but still kept the title Metropolitan of Radautz. For a time this bishop, like all the Orthodox in the Monarchy, was subject to the See of Carlovitz. But in 1873, as part of the general administrative reforms that more exactly divided Austria and her tributary States (Cisleitanien) from the Hungarian half (Transleitanien), and also because since the separation of Hermannstadt the Church of Carlovitz had become a purely Servian Communion, the Government agreed to join all the Orthodox in Cisleitanien in a separate and independent body. The head of this body (under Christ and the seven councils) is the Metropolitan of Czernovitz in Bukovina, and under him the two Dalmatian Bishops of Zara and Cattaro.^[115] Under this hierarchy stands the Orthodox Church and parish of the Holy Trinity at Vienna, and all the Orthodox in Vienna who are neither Turkish subjects nor Slavs belong to this parish. The one Orthodox parish in Trieste also forms part of this Church. The three bishops form a Congress of which my Lord of Czernovitz is president. They are paid by the Government out of funds amounting to fifteen million florins, and they sit in the House of Lords at Vienna. The Church of Czernovitz counts about five hundred and eighty-four thousand of the faithful, divided into three hundred and thirty-nine parishes which are organized in twenty-one protopresbyteries (deaneries); it has three monasteries in Bukovina, and eleven in Dalmatia.^[116] Its autocephalous character is, of course, recognized and accepted by all the other Orthodox bodies. The original movement for separation from Carlovitz was a Vlach one; but only about half the members of this Church are Vlachs and half Slavs i (chiefly Serbs). There is now a party of the Slavs who accuse the Vlachs of keeping all the emoluments for themselves, of not allowing the Servian language its due place in the liturgy;^[117] in short, of trying to Roumanize the whole body.^[118] On the strength of these complaints they want to divide this little Church further into two independent communions, one for the Vlachs and one for the Slavs. The Government has not as yet shown much sympathy with this plan (which the Vlachs strongly oppose), and, indeed, if one were to grant all their wishes, there would be no end to the disintegrating influence of Orthodox jealousies, till each diocese became an autocephalous Church.^[119]

 

14. The Church of Servia (1879).

We have already seen that there was once a great independent Servian Church, of which the centre was Ipek, and that it was destroyed by the unholy alliance of the Porte and the Phanar (p. 307). In 1810 a part of the lands occupied by Serbs became independent under the famous Black George (Kara Georg). The free Serbs at once broke away from Constantinople (which had carried out its unchanging policy of trying to Hellenize them by sending them Greek bishops and allowing only Greek as the liturgical language), and put themselves under the jurisdiction of Carlovitz. In 1830 Prince Milos Obrenovitch set up an independent metropolitan at Belgrade with three suffragans. At first the Phanar was allowed the right of confirming their election, but in 1879, as a result of the greater territory given to Servia by the Berlin Congress, the Church of the land was declared entirely autocephalous. This time the Phanar, taught by the Bulgarian trouble, then at its height, made no difficulty at all. The hierarchy of the Servian Church consists of the Metropolitan of Belgrade, who is Primate, and four other bishops.^[120] They unite to form a Holy Synod on the Russian model. There are forty-four monasteries in Servia, and one Servian monastery at Moscow is allowed by the Russian Government to send money to Belgrade and to acknowledge some sort of dependence from that metropolitan.^[121] On the whole the relations between the established Church of Servia and the Phanar have been friendly. But there are Serbs in Macedonia who have had just the same complaint against the Patriarch as the Bulgars. North of Uskub (Skopia) by Prizrend and towards Mitrovitza especially, in that part of Macedonia that is called Old Servia, the bulk of the population is Servian. The policy of these Serbs has wavered continually. At one time they sided with the Bulgars against the Greeks, then when the Bulgars became enormously the most powerful of the Christian parties, they veered round and made common cause with the Greeks against them, and quite lately they have again begun to quarrel with the Greeks.^[122] After long intrigues, helped by the Government of Belgrade, the Macedonian Serbs have now succeeded in claiming the two Sees of Uskub (Skopia) and Prizrend (Greek: Raskoprisreni; Serb: Racka-Prizren) for their countrymen. These two sees still belong to the Great Church, but they now have Servian Metropolitans, use Servian for the Holy Liturgy, and there is every probability that they, too, will break away from the Patriarchate and form yet another autocephalous Orthodox Church. The Lord Meletios, Metropolitan of Prizrend, a Greek, died in 1895. At once all the Serbs both of Servia and Macedonia united to compel the Phanar to allow a Servian successor. They succeeded in 1896, and a born Serb, Lord Dionysios, was appointed, in spite of the cries of alarm of the whole press at Athens. He uses the Servian language in his Churches, and makes no secret of his Philo-Serb policy. The case of Uskub was more complicated. The Metropolitan Methodios, a Greek, died in 1896. The Phanar at once hastened to appoint another Greek, Ambrose, Metropolitan of Prespa, to succeed him. But when he arrived to take possession of his cathedral at Uskub he found it shut and barred and all the Servian population in revolt. The Turkish soldiers forced the church open and Lord Ambrose sang the Holy Liturgy in Greek, but in the presence of no one save the Turks who stood in the nave with fixed bayonets to keep the Serbs from a riot. He stayed in his diocese till July, 1897, and then, having found himself completely boycotted there, he went back to Constantinople. The Phanar, since the Bulgarian schism, is at last beginning to be afraid of irritating its subjects too much, so in this case, too, it gave in, although as grudgingly as possible. Ambrose obtained perpetual leave of absence from his diocese, and a born Serb, Firmilian, was made his Protosynkellos (Vicar-General) at Uskub. In October, 1899, after long negotiations between the Government of Belgrade and the Phanar, Ambrose was transferred to Monastir (Pelagonia), and Firmilian was elected Metropolitan of Uskub. Even then the Phanar, although they had agreed to the change, sulkily refused to consecrate him. From October, 1898, till June, 1902, he had to wait, Metropolitan-elect, but not yet bishop. At one time the Serbs even approached the Bulgarian Exarch, asking whether he would undertake to ordain Firmilian. But Russia forced the Porte to force the Patriarch to give in; and so at last the consecration took place. Sulky to the last, the Patriarch would not let it be done in either Constantinople or Uskub. At a distant monastery (Skaloti) three metropolitans met Firmilian in a sort of secret way and unwillingly consecrated him. But the Russian and Servian Consuls and the Turkish Kaimakam came to see that they really did it. He used Slavonic in the liturgy, and all the Serbs were content.^[123] The Greeks of his diocese, on the other hand, were so angry that they went into schism against him and applied to the Greek Metropolitan of Salonike for their priests. And the Phanar, though it had to submit to Firmilian, makes no secret of its sympathy with them. But the Porte now recognizes these two sees, Prizrend and Uskub, as a new millet separate from the "Roman nation" under the civil jurisdiction of the Patriarch. This means that they will soon become an autocephalous Church, and there will be one more fraction of the dismembered Œcumenical Patriarchate to register.^[124]

 

15. The Roumanian Church (1885).

The Vlachs, too, have the memory of an old independent Church afterwards destroyed by the Phanar and the Porte. In the 12th century, long after the Emperor Basil II (976–1025) had destroyed the original Bulgarian kingdom, an alliance of Bulgars and Vlachs rose against the Empire under two brothers, Hassan and Peter, and founded a joint Bulgaro-Roumanian State in 1186. In the 13th century under King John Asan (1218–1241), this kingdom reached its greatest extent, stretching from the Danube to Salonike, and from the Black Sea to Prizrend. It was the rise of Dushan's great Servian kingdom (p. 306) that broke the power of these Bulgaro-Vlachs. The Empire conquered back part of their land, too, and at last the Turk came and swept them all away (after the battle of Kossovo, 1388, p. 306).^[125] While their kingdom lasted, as usual they set up an autocephalous Church independent of Constantinople. At first they were Catholics, and it was Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) who granted them their autonomy. But they went into schism soon after the fourth Crusade (1204). Their State never included Achrida, so they made Tirnovo (Trnovo, now in Bulgaria) the centre of their Church and the seat of their Primate. We have then a Vlach Church (for it was chiefly Vlach) of Tirnovo to match Servian Ipek and Bulgarian Achrida. After the Turkish conquest, this body was also reunited to the patriarchate,^[126] and the only thing that was left of it was the vague memory of the Vlachs that they, too, had once had a Church and been a nation. The Phanar treated the Orthodox Vlachs just as badly as the Bulgars and Serbs, when they had them in their Rum millet. But there was this difference: the Vlachs have always been a feeble folk, afraid to fight against their stronger neighbours, but rather glad to take shelter under some one else's wing. So the Hellenizing policy of the Phanar, that altogether failed with Bulgars and Serbs, seemed to succeed with the Vlachs. When Greeks publish statistics of Macedonia, nearly all the people they brazenly write as "Hellenes" are really these half-Hellenized Vlachs, men who talk Greek abroad, who sometimes even call themselves Greeks, but who around their own firesides always fall back into the beautiful Romance tongue of their fathers.^[127] And lately, since there has been a free Roumania, the Roumans of Turkey, too, have begun to realize that they are a people; they are no longer ashamed of their own language now that it is the recognized tongue of a sovereign State, and they, too, are now moved by very strong anti-Phanariot feeling. In 1829, the Peace of Adrianople gave the two provinces of Moldavia and Vallachia internal autonomy under the protectorate of Russia. In 1864, Alexander John Cusa made himself master of these lands, and in 1881, Charles von Hohenzollern was proclaimed king of what now became an entirely independent State with the name Roumania.^[128] In 1885, as a natural consequence of the national independence, the Church of Roumania became autocephalous. The Patriarch made no difficulty about this; but soon very bitter disputes began between the new Church and the Phanar. The Roumanian Church is governed by a Holy Synod, of which all the bishops are members. The president is the Archbishop and Metropolitan of Vallachia and Primate of Roumania, whose see is Bucharest; after him come the Archbishop and Metropolitan of Moldavia, who sits at Yassi, and six other bishops.^[129] Each has an auxiliary-bishop (Archiereu), who helps in the work of the diocese, and who also has a seat in the synod. There are now twenty-two monasteries and nineteen convents for nuns in Roumania; for the secular clergy two seminaries and a theological faculty at the University of Bucharest. According to the census of 1899, there were about five-and-a-half million Orthodox in the kingdom. The first quarrel with the Patriarch of Constantinople was about the monasteries. In 1864, Cusa secularized and confiscated all the monastic property in Roumania;^[130] part of this property belonged to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, Mount Athos and Mount Sinai, who had metochia in Moldavia and Vallachia. As an indemnity, the Roumanian Government offered twenty-seven million francs to the proprietors. But they refused to accept any compensation, indignantly denying the right of the State to touch their property at all. They appealed to the Porte and to the Great Powers, but in vain, and at last, in 1867, King Charles of Roumania declared the matter settled since the monasteries had refused the money. So now the offer of the twenty-seven millions is withdrawn. What makes the case harder for the Greeks is, that the Roumanian Government is using the money they have taken from these monasteries for their national propaganda in Macedonia, so one can understand the indignation that every Greek feels on the subject of "Cusa's robbery." But this is not the only cause of estrangement. In 1870, the Patriarch (Gregory VI) made a belated attempt to reclaim some jurisdiction over the autocephalous Church. He demanded that all metropolitans and bishops should have their election confirmed by him before their consecration, and that his name should be mentioned in the Holy Liturgy throughout Roumania. But in 1873, after a long dispute, his successor, Anthimos VI, was obliged to withdraw these demands and to acknowledge the complete independence of the Roumanian Church. As in all the Churches that have a Holy Synod, that body is named in the Roumanian service instead of the Patriarch. There was also a great quarrel about the Vlach Skite on Mount Athos, whose monks claimed independence of any laura. Joachim II (1860–1863, 1873–1878) had granted this, and Joachim III (1878–1884) withdrew the concession. The troubles in Macedonia also caused very angry feelings between the Phanar and the Roumanian Synod; and, lastly, reports were circulated that the Church of Roumania was about to introduce certain radical and most unorthodox reforms, namely, the Gregorian Calendar, baptism by infusion, the abolition of the kalemaukion (the universal Orthodox hat for clerks), leave for second marriage of priests, and the burial service for suicides.^[131] However, the Roumanian Holy Synod denied these accusations. On the other hand, in 1882, the Roumans took the very serious step of preparing their own chrism, instead of sending to Constantinople for it. This was an openly unfriendly act towards the Phanar. Theoretically, their Church is just as autocephalous as that of Russia, and has just as much right to make its own chrism as its big sister across the Pruth. But the Phanar has always been very tenacious of this right even in the case of independent Churches, and the fact that it has long had to submit to Russian arrogance in this matter did not make it in any way more willing to receive a similar rebuff from Roumania. The Patriarch Joachim III, on July 10, 1882, sent an angry letter to the Roumanian Holy Synod reproaching it for so dangerous an innovation. The synod answered, claiming the same right as the Church of Russia, and the Patriarch, fearing such another schism as that of the Bulgars, was once more obliged to swallow the affront and pass over in silence what he would not openly approve. Roumania is the only Balkan State that now prepares its own chrism.^[132]

But it is in Macedonia that the enmity between Greeks and Roumans is strongest. In this seething cauldron of races there are five hundred thousand Vlachs who are now awakening to the fact that they are neither Hellenes nor Bulgars nor Serbs, but children of the same stock as the free Roumans. The Government of Bucharest has eagerly taken up a national propaganda among them, and spends large sums of money on building Vlach schools, paying Vlach priests, and—say the Greeks—bribing peasants to learn Roumanian and call themselves Vlachs. The famous Apostol Margariti († 1903) was the leader of this Roumanizing movement; and the Roumanian Minister at Constantinople, M. Alexander Lahovary, jealously watches over its interests. So the Greeks, the Patriarchists, are steadily losing their supporters in Macedonia, and numbers of peasants who used to call themselves Hellenes are now becoming as bitter enemies of the "Great Idea" as the Bulgars and Serbs. Naturally, as soon as these Macedonian Vlachs awoke to the fact that they were a separate race, they too, like every one else, wanted to be a millet and to have the only special organization possible under the Turk—an ecclesiastical one. Many of them were so anxious to break away from the Patriarch and his Rum millet that they joined the Bulgars and turned Exarchist.^[133] But that only caused the Turkish authorities, who are nothing if not consistent to their scheme, to take the names of these Vlachs off the register of the Roman nation and to add them to that of the Bulgarians. Whereas what they want is to be a Vlach nation. So a number of those who remained Patriarchists began to assert their national feeling in the usual, obvious, and, indeed, only way. Their priests said the Holy Liturgy in Roumanian. The Phanar knows that if all the Vlachs go there will be, indeed, nothing but a slender remnant of its Roman nation left to work for the "Great Idea" in Macedonia. So it has set its face desperately against the Roumanian movement, as it does against all national feeling among the Christians that it will pretend to think Greeks. For years there has been a regular persecution of these Vlachs; every priest who spoke Roumanian in church was promptly excommunicated; the Greek papers never ceased heaping abuse on Margaritis and his work, and there has been a long chain of nationalistic squabbles under pretence of ecclesiastical disputes between these two parties as ludicrous to the outsider as they are degrading to the Orthodox Church.^[134] But now it seems that the Vlachs are going to get what they want. On May 23, 1905, Abdurrahman Pasha, Minister of Justice and Religion, sent to the Œcumenical Patriarch a copy of the Teskereh, by which the Sultan has constituted a Roumanian Church in Macedonia. "The Government," says this inimitable person, "treats all the different nations who live under the paternal care of His Imperial Majesty the Sultan on a footing of perfect equality." Therefore it decrees that the Vlachs "are not to be prevented from having their own priests and their own language in the liturgy, they may teach their own language in their schools, choose their own moukhtars (village headmen), and be admitted to the election for local municipal councils." "But," continues this Canonical Lawgiver, "they shall still be dependent from the Œcumenical Patriarch." "This decision has been submitted to H.I.M. your august sovereign, and has received his imperial sanction. Wherefore I have to inform Your Holiness of what is above." Having laid down so much Canon Law, Abdurrahman proceeds to date his decree, 18 Rabi‘ al-awwal, 1323.^[135] The latest news from Constantinople is that the Phanar is indignantly protesting, but no one takes any notice of that. Once more in the history of the Orthodox Church the Yildiz-Kiösk has spoken, the cause is finished. So the Macedonian Vlachs now have a Roumanian Liturgy and Roumanian schools; they, too, are a millet, and without question the next step will be to give them a Roumanian bishop or two, who will become autocephalous as soon as the two Servian bishops in Macedonia do, and there will be two more independent sister-Churches for the Phanar to recognize.^[136]

 

16. The Church of Hercegovina and Bosnia (1880).

The last Church of this list is that of the two provinces occupied by Austria since the Berlin Congress. It is known that the Sultan remains the nominal sovereign of these lands, and that Austria administers them, much as in the parallel case of England and Egypt. The position of the Orthodox Church corresponds to this state of things. According to the general principle that the Œcumenical Patriarch reigns in the Balkans just as far as the Porte, Hercegovina and Bosnia have not been formally declared autocephalous; but just as the rule of the Sultan is merely titular here, so are their Churches really completely independent of the Phanar. On March 28, 1880, a Concordat was drawn up between the Austrian Government and the Patriarch which regulates the position of this Church. The Patriarch is still named in the Holy Liturgy, and the chrism is sent to them from Constantinople. On the other hand the Emperor appoints the bishops without consulting the Phanar (the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador to the Porte then informs the Phanar of the appointment^[137]), they consecrate each other, they do not take their turn to sit in the Holy Synod at Constantinople, as do all bishops of the patriarchate, nor do they pay any taxes to the Phanar. To make up for this the Austrian Government pays the Patriarch 58,000 piastres a year. There are now four sees in these provinces; that of Sarajevo in Bosnia holds the primacy, and the present Metropolitan (Nicholas Mandich) proposes to express that fact by changing his title of Metropolitan to that of Archbishop^[138] or even Exarch. He receives from the Government an income of 8,300 florins; the other three metropolitans have from 4,500 to 6,000 florins.^[139] These bishops meet in a consistory with an archimandrite and one or two other ecclesiastical persons under the presidency of my Lord of Sarajevo to discuss the affairs of their Church; owing to the exceptional position of their country, however, they do not sit in the upper chamber at Vienna, just as the people have no votes. They are all supposed to be still subjects of the Sultan, whose land is only administered by Austria. There are three Orthodox monasteries in Bosnia, and eleven in Hercegovina. In 1895 there were 673,000 Orthodox Christians; there does not seem to have been any complete religious census since.^[140] They are all Serbs, and so have no regrets whatever for their former dependence on the Phanar.

When the inevitable happens and the present form of administration is changed for open annexation the obvious thing would seem to be to join these Orthodox Serbs to the Church of Carlovitz. On the other hand Orthodoxy always breaks up and never unites, so probably Bosnia and Hercegovina will remain what they are now really—one more autocephalous Church.^[141] The unparalleled change in these two provinces since they have enjoyed peace, tolerance, and security under a civilized Government is known to every one and may easily be verified by a visit to Sarajevo. The Austrians have made no attempt to interfere in any religious questions, they impartially protect and support all the sects they found, they pay Catholic, Orthodox, and True Believing religious bodies equally, and you may see there the astonishing sight of Mohammedan Turks, delivered at last from the tyranny of their own Government, going on Friday afternoon to offer most sincere prayers for their protector, Francis Joseph II.^[142]

This ends the long story of the constitution of the sixteen independent Churches that make up the Orthodox Communion. It is unfortunate that it is almost entirely a story of internecine quarrels and mutual race-hatred. These quarrels certainly do not prevent the fact that thousands of simple Orthodox priests lead admirable lives in the service of Christ and work zealously for his cause among their people. The quarrels, as a rule, affect only the higher orders of the hierarchy, and they are the result, not of the Orthodox faith, but almost always of the hopeless confusion of races and violent national feelings among the members of this great body. But one conclusion seems inevitable. Catholics are also citizens of many States, and are still more divided among different nations. We have at least as many mutual race-antagonisms as the Orthodox; there are Polish and Russian Catholics, there are Greeks, Armenians, Croats, Vlachs, Bulgars, and Arabs in our communion, but their national feelings do not produce such an endless catalogue of schisms, mutual excommunications and bitter feeling in ecclesiastical affairs—simply because in these affairs we all acknowledge one central authority that has the right to settle our quarrels. Catholic bishops, too, sometimes disagree, but they have a Court of Appeal to whom they can all turn and whose decision is final. The See of Constantinople is no such Court to the Orthodox. It is itself a litigant, and now always the losing one, besides the fact that, as we still have to see, the Great Church itself is torn by what are almost the worst quarrels of all (p. 342, seq.). So the conclusion that forces itself upon any one who considers the present state of the Orthodox Church is that that body wants many things to restore it to its old glory, but it wants nothing quite so much as the authority of the Pope.

 

Summary.

The Orthodox Communion consists at present of sixteen independent Churches, over which the Patriarch of Constantinople has a primacy of honour, but no jurisdiction except in his own Patriarchate. These Churches are, first, the four Eastern Patriarchates—Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, as well as the old independent Church of Cyprus. Since the schism eleven other Churches have been added to these, which are all formed at the expense of the Byzantine Patriarchate. It has become a recognized principle that each politically independent State should have an ecclesiastically independent Church, so there are the national Churches of Russia, Greece, Servia, Montenegro, Roumania, Bulgaria. In the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy are four Orthodox Churches—Carlovitz, Hermannstadt, Czernovitz, and Bosnia-Hercegovina. The monastery of Mount Sinai is also an independent Church. There has been great friction about the establishment of most of these bodies; in the case of the Bulgars the schism still lasts. Meanwhile, Russia has entirely destroyed the old Georgian Church. Questions of politics and rival nationalities lead to endless quarrels among the Orthodox bishops, while Russia is steadily trying to absorb the whole body into her sphere of influence.

 

1. From Kattenbusch: Orient. kirche in the Realenz. (1904), xiv. pp. 436–467. See also Silbernagl: Verfassung n. gegenw. Bestand, pp. 3–214. This order from No. 4 to No. 16 is chronological, according to the date of their independence.
2. The Ἐκκλησιαστικὴ Ἀλήθεια is the official organ of the Phanar. Κωνσταντινούπολις is semi-official. Ταχύδρομος is unofficial and hates the Κωνσταντινούπολις. The Νέα Ἡμέρα of Trieste is, perhaps, the best Greek newspaper.
3. ἡ παπικὴ ἐκκλησία, this attractive name has become quite the classical one now, though when they do not mean to be rude they call us Catholics quite naturally.
4. The original Bulgars were Turanians, now the strain of Turanian blood has long been absorbed. They speak a Slav language, and are simply a Slav people. The Roumans too, in spite of their Romance language (with an enormous number of borrowed Slav words), may be counted as Slavs. The Albanians do not count in these ecclesiastical quarrels.
5. Quite lately, since the Bulgars have become the strongest element in Macedonia, the situation has become that of an alliance between Turks and Greeks against them. The war of 1897 is forgotten, the Sultan showers his decorations on Greek statesmen, and during the Macedonian insurrection of 1903, officers from Free Greece were not ashamed to offer their swords to the Turk (with the full consent of their Government) against the Bulgars. Pending the day when it shall all become Greek they would rather see Macedonia under the Turk than free and Bulgarian.
6. The accounts of the way in which the Patriarchist (Greek) metropolitans in Macedonia carry on their campaign against the other races sound like the most lurid stories of a frankly savage age. Mr. Brailsford tells of a bishop who hired assassins to murder a wounded Bulgarian chief and then kept a photograph of the blood-dripping head as a pleasant souvenir (p. 193), who is believed to have been responsible for a massacre of sixty Bulgars on April 6, 1905 (p. 217). They convert Bulgars by threats of massacre (p. 215) and by denouncing them to the Turks (p. 211). Another bishop refused to admit any wounded Bulgars to his hospital for the simple reason: "They are our enemies" (pp. 199–200). "They can all come in," said he, "if they will only acknowledge the Patriarch" (p. 201).
7. De la Jonquière, Hist. des Ottomans, pp. 364–368. "The Greeks of the Phanar, lowest and most corrupt servants of the Porte. It would be impossible to find greater abjectness united to greater vanity." The Vaivodes made huge fortunes and invented absurd princely titles for themselves, but they were flogged by the Turk if he was not pleased with them.
8. W. A. Phillips, The War of Greek Independence, chap. iii. p. 30, seq.
9. φίλος and ἔτης.
10. Echos d'Orient, iii. pp. 177–181: Les écoles russes de Palestine et de Syrie. In the seminaries all the Arab ecclesiastical students are carefully taught the Russian language. E. d'Or. vii. p. 117.
11. Echos d'Orient, iv. pp. 202, seq., 275, seq.: La politique russe dans la Palestine et la Syrie.
12. So the Metropolitan of Moscow in 1899: Echos d'Orient, ii. 246 (April, 1899).
13. Echos d'Orient, iv. p. 205.
14. Of course, there are the Raskolniks, &c., but the point is that Russia's idea is one vast Russian Orthodox Church and nothing else.
15. If Austria were to annex or occupy Albania, Macedonia, and Thrace, the various nations that devour these lands with their quarrels would, at any rate, have the advantage of a tolerant and civilized Government which would protect all their religions and languages equally while preventing them from persecuting one another. It is difficult to conceive any other solution of the eternal Nearer Eastern question that would answer so well. Bosnia and Hercegovina show that even the Turk is enormously better off under Austria than under the Sultan.
16. Hickmann (Karte der Verbreitungsgebiete der Religionen, Vienna, Freytag u. Berndt): ninety-five millions; Kattenbusch (Orient. Kirche, o.c. p. 445): "Something over one hundred millions."
17. The Metropolitans of Ephesus, Heraclea, Thessalonica, Crete, and Smyrna divide these twenty bishops among their provinces. The other metropolitans have no suffragans. For the list of sees land their revenues, see Silbernagl: Verfassung u. gegenwärtiger Bestand'sämtlicher Kirchen des Orients, p. 35.
18. Silbernagl, p. 24.
19. However, something similar is going on at Cyprus at this moment.
20. Cf. Echos d'Or. iii, pp. 1–7: Du pouvoir de consacrer le saint Chrême.
21. Silbernagl, o.c. pp. 24, 36.
22. Echos d'Orient, iii. p. 185.
23. That was still the case when the last edition of Silbernagl was published, p. 25. See the Echos d'Orient, iv. p. 183, seq.
24. However, the troubles are not over yet. Lord Photios has just categorically refused to allow a legate of the Œcumenical Patriarch to reside at his court, and the Phanar still counts him as an enemy. A weak point in his position has been this: he has only three metropolitans. Now the Canons require, for the election of a bishop, a synod of at least three members besides the patriarch. As soon, then, as a metropolitan dies. Lord Photios only has two left, and cannot canonically elect a new one. So he has to send to Constantinople to ask the synod there to elect for him. Since the whole of his policy, as that of the other patriarchs, is to shake off any pretence of authority still claimed by the Phanar, this obviously very much weakens his position. The latest news from Alexandria is that His Holiness is about to reorganize the Church of St. Mark, so as to do away with this inconvenience. Of course, he has only to found two or three more titular sees.
25. There are no less than seven Churches, each of which represents a fraction of the old Antiochene Church (E. d'Or. iii. p. 223, seq.)
26. Aleppo, Amida, Arcadia, Beirut, Emesus, Epiphania, Laodicea (in Syria), Seleucia, Tarsus, Theodosioupolis (Erzerum), Tripolis, Tyre - and - Sidon. Cf. Echos d'Orient, iii. p. 143; Silbernagl, pp. 25, 36.
27. So the Echos d'Orient, l.c. Silbernagl reckons 28,836 families; Kyriakos, 200,000 souls.
28. For the endless internal schisms and quarrels that have rended this see since the 15th century, see Kyriakos, iii. pp. 56–59.
29. For the whole story, see E. d'Or. iii. p. 183, seq., iv. p. 186, v. p. 247, seq., ix. pp. 123, 176–183. It was said that Meletios sent to Petersburg for the holy chrism (l.c. iv. p. 186).
30. The dioceses are: Cæsarea (Pal.), Bethsan (Skythopolis), Petra, Acre, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Lydda, Gaza, Jaffa, Nablus, Samaria, Tabor, Philadelphia. Silbernagl, p. 37.
31. We shall see that practically all bishops and candidates for bishoprics throughout the Orthodox Church are monks (p. 351).
32. Ech. d'Or. iii. 185.
33. For all this story see Kyriakos, iii. pp. 62–65, and, for the latest developments, the Ech. d'Or. iii. pp. 183–186, and v. p. 247. We may expect at any time to hear that Damianos has been made to resign, and is succeeded by Euthymios.
34. For the story of Nea Iustiniane, see p. 48. King Richard Lion-heart of England conquered Cyprus in 1191, the Crusaders set up a Latin kingdom and a Latin hierarchy, and treated the Greek bishops badly; Venice became mistress of the island in 1489, and continued the same policy. The Turks conquered it in 1571; the English occupy it since 1878. Besides the Latins there have been Armenian and Maronite bishops in Cyprus. But the old line of the Cypriote Church has gone on throughout. For its troubles under the Crusaders and Venice, see Hergenröther-Kirsch, Kirchengesch. ii. pp. 725, seq., 780.
35. In the year 1600 Joachim of Antioch made a belated attempt to assert the old jurisdiction of his see over Cyprus. It was Meletios Pegas of Alexandria who pointed out to him that that had been done away with at Ephesus and that you cannot go behind a general council (Kyriakos, iii. p. 66).
36. Of Kyrenia, Paphos and Kition.
37. Cyril Basiliu.
38. Cyril Papadopulos.
39. This would have secured two votes, those of the Metropolitan of Paphos and of Cyril of Kyrenia, for Cyril of Kyrenia against one, his own, for the other Cyril. So the Kyrenian would have been elected by a majority of two-thirds.
40. I cannot understand why he does not go to Russia; he would easily find consecrators there, or even in Serbia or Roumania. Has he, perhaps, a feeling that that would be too disloyal to the great cause of Hellas, which every born Greek must fight for, even if he hates the Phanar?
41. There had been Christians in Russia before, of whom Vladimir's grandmother St. Olga was one.
42. When Vladimir had settled that he would be a Christian he marched against the Empire at Constantinople. Since this religion was a desirable thing, there was of course only one way in which a Norman and a gentleman could acquire it—by conquest. So he seized the Chersonesos and then sent a message to the Emperor (Basil II), saying that what he wanted was: (1) Priests to baptize him and his people; (2) relics of Saints for churches; (3) Basil's sister Anne to marry him. If his wishes were not attended to at once he would come and destroy Constantinople. The Emperor promptly sent the priests, the relics, and the lady. Rambaud: Hist. de la Russie, p. 57.
43. For Russian acknowledgements of the Roman Primacy, see Gondal: L'Église Russe, p. 24, seq., and Nilles: Kalendarium, i. p. 100, seq.
44. The Mongols (Tatars) under Jenghis Khan ("the great Lord") came to the Russian frontier from Central Asia in 1222. At the battle of Kalka (1223) they annihilated the Russian armies and formed a sort of over-lordship over the Russians which was not finally shaken off till the battle of Oka in 1480, in which Ivan III (1462–1505) defeated them. But they did not really much interfere with the internal affairs of the country nor much influence its development. A very like case is that of the Moors in Spain.
45. Adrian, the last Patriarch of Moscow, died in 1700. The Czar, instead of appointing a successor, set up various temporary administrators until the scheme of his synod was ready.
46. Peter copied the idea of the Lutheran Consistories in his synod.
47. Bishops having a diocese sit in the synod for six months each year and for the other six months look after their sees. They can be dismissed from the synod at any time by the Czar.
48. Visit to the Church of Russia, pp. 48, 73, 221, &c.
49. E. d'Or. iv. pp. 187, 232, viii. p. 176, &c. See Palmer, passim, esp. pp. 100–105, 110–114, for examples of Russian Erastianism. On p. 160 is an amusing tu quoque argument from a Russian to the Anglican.

    For the constitution and jurisdiction of the Russian Holy Synod, see Silbernagl, pp. 101–110. The eldest metropolitan presides at the meetings, but has no more authority than the others. See there also the incredibly Erastian oath taken by each member of the synod: "I acknowledge him (the Czar) for the supreme judge in this spiritual assembly," &c. Throughout the Russian Church the Holy Synod is named in the liturgy instead of a patriarch.

50. Cf. e. gr. E. d'Or. ii. p. 247, seq.
51. At least outwardly. Under a tyranny like that of Russia, it is impossible to know what people really wish to be. The dissenters are those who have the courage of their opinions even in Russia. Moreover, among these eightyfive millions are the unhappy Catholic Ruthenians who have been so ruthlessly harried into schism.
52. Silbernagl, pp. 110–124; E. d'Or. iv. pp. 231–235, vi. pp. 396–399. For the monasteries see Silbernagl, pp. 135–146.
53. E. d'Or. vi. p. 398.
54. E. d'Or. ibid, and iv. p. 235. There is a Russian mission at Pekin under the Bishop of Revel with an archimandrite and about five hundred converts. Silbernagl, pp. 146–147. An Imperial Ukaze has given the Bishop of Alaska two vicars (in 1903 and 1904) for the Russian Church in the United States, See E. d'Or. vii. pp. 231–235, and viii. p. 103.
55. Three years ago Russia and China made a treaty about Tibet. This is one of its clauses: "In Tibet complete liberty of worship shall be established for the Orthodox Russian Church and for the Buddhist religion. Every other religion shall be absolutely forbidden" (E. d'Or. viii. p. 50). The treaties of 1858 and 1860 that marked the advancement of Russia in Manchuria put an absolute end to the Catholic missions there. Meanwhile, under the rule of the more civilized yellow man, Leo XIII was able to establish four Catholic sees in Japan.
56. Even of her Orthodox sisters. Nothing can exceed the hatred now shown by the Phanariote and Greek Orthodox for Russia, who is responsible for all the Bulgarian trouble, and for the gradual destruction of their supremacy everywhere. For the violent language they use against the "persecutor of all the Churches of God," see E. d'Or. vii. p. 366.
57. Nikon († 1681) was one of the last patriarchs before Peter the Great abolished the patriarchate. He was a very admirable and saintly person. In 1660 he was deposed by the Government for trying to be independent in ecclesiastical affairs. That he made an enormous fuss about quite absurd things (for instance, whether the sign of the Cross should be made with two or with three fingers), and that he quite lost his head in cases of Popery (he had all the ikons that were painted in Latin fashion seized, their eyes poked out and then ignominiously broke them on the church floor—"Latin fashion" meant that the figures were correctly drawn, as in Western Europe)—these things only mean that he was a true son of the Orthodox Church. Cf. Bonwetsch: Nikon, in the Realenzykl. xiv. pp. 86–89.
58. The word "true one" instead of " Lord " was just one of the many errors that had crept into the Old Slavonic books, The original Greek is, of course, to τὸ κύριον, τὸ ζωοποιόν.
59. E.gr. Palmer, p. 360, &c.
60. There is a gruesome picture of the conventicles of these madmen in D. de Mérejkowski: Pierre le Grand, Livre III, "La Mort rouge." French translation, Paris, 1904.
61. But the religious tolerance now proclaimed in Russia has brought them some relief at last.
62. Selivanov's secret Gospel, which is the raving of a lunatic, has been done into German by K. Grass: Die geheime h. Schrift der Skopzen, Leipzig, 1904.
63. For all this movement see Bonwetsch: Raskolniken in the Realenzyklopädie (1905), xvi. pp. 436–443. He counts fifteen millions as the highest probable figure; the E. d'Or., that are always well informed, give twenty-five millions as the number (iv. p. 231). One advantage of their existence is that they afford unequalled opportunities for the scientific study of lunacy. Russian doctors and psychologists are taking up the matter from this point of view, and they publish most deserving works on the pathology of mind-disease—they have plenty of material to study.
64. Palmer, o.c. pp. 287, 288.
65. P. 298.
66. P. 289.
67. P. 316.
68. P. 300.
69. Ibid.
70. P. 360.
71. P. 297. He admits that a student can live on £5 a year only "in the very poorest way." On his £9 he "lived well."
72. Tiflis, the capital of Georgia, was built in 455. Its name means "warm" (Slav, tepl; the same name as Teplitz in Bohemia), from the hot springs near the city. Iberia is the older name of the country: it is called Grusia, or Kursia, too.
73. For the text of this petition see the E. d'Or. viii. pp. 177–178.
74. For all this see Kaulen: Iberien in the Kirchenlexikon (1889), vi. p. 559, seq., and Nilles: Aus Iberien oder Georgien in the Innsbrucker Zeitschrift f. Kath. Theol., 1903, p. 652, seq. See also O. Wardrop: The Kingdom of Georgia.
75. For Achrida, see p. 317, and for Tirnovo, p. 328.
76. St. Sabbas († 1237) was the son of Stephen II, Prince of Servia. He had been a monk at Mount Athos, He crowned his elder brother, Stephen III, with a crown given by Pope Honorius III. The Serbs keep his feast on January 14th; they call him Sava, Cf. Nilles: Kalend. i. p. 446, and p. 438 for the very complete acknowledgements of the Roman Primacy made by the Church and princes of Servia at this time. E.gr. Stephen II writes: "I always follow the footsteps of the holy Roman Church, as did my father of happy memory, and always obey the command of the Roman Church." In 1199, a Servian national Synod declares that: "The most holy Roman Church is the mother and mistress of all Churches" (ibid.). That the Serbs were also in communion with schismatical Constantinople shows once more how little simple people, living away from the centres of the quarrel, realized its importance.
77. See e.gr. Freeman's Historical Geography, ed. J. Bury (1903), p. 392, seq. and map xli.
78. It was a tributary principality under the Turk for a short time, from 1442 to 1459.
79. The Turks had allowed a successor (Kallinikos I) to be appointed at Ipek when Arsenius III went to Hungary.
80. Carlovitz, Bács, Buda, Karlstadt, Pakrácz, Temesvár, Versecz. The Hungarian Government pays the Metropolitan of Carlovitz 80,000 fl. a year, and the others 10,500 fl. They have an ecclesiastical Congress to arrange their own affairs, which is entirely independent of the State, and all sit in the Hungarian House of Lords.
81. For all this, see the E. d'Or. ii, p. 156, seq., v. p. 164, seq., vii. p. 358, seq.
82. See W. Götz: Montenegro, in the Realenz. (1903), xii. p. 430, seq.
83. The legend is that angels brought St. Katharine's body from Alexandria to Mount Sinai.
84. For this story see Kyriakos, Ἱ.Ε. iii. p. 62, seq.
85. Gregory VI, who had been deposed in 1840 and who had seen eleven Œcumenical Patriarchs succeed him, was then appointed for the second time (1835–1840, 1867–1871).
86. For the constitution of the Synaxis, see E. d'Or. viii, p. 182. The diocese of Pharan, originally joined to the monastery, no longer exists. The only remnant of the old jurisdiction of Jerusalem is that the name of that patriarch is mentioned in the Holy Liturgy on Mount Sinai.
87. 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.
88. 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.
89. Kyriakos, iii. p. 155.
90. 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.
91. Kyriakos, iii. p. 160.
92. One wonders what would happen if the Phanar ever dared to talk like this to the Church of Russia.
93. This is just the case of the causæ maiores that among Catholics have to go to Rome. It is very curious how the Œcumenical Patriarch always tries (though quite futilely) to be a Pope.
94. ὁ συνοδικὸς τόμος, ἤ περὶ ἀληθείας, Athens, 1852.
95. Diomedes Kyriakos is very much concerned to deny the Erastian character of his Church (iii, pp. 155–156; he is professor of Church History at the University of Athens). The laws under which the Greek Holy Synod acts show how hopeless his defence is; see, for instance, Silbernagl, pp. 67–71.
96. Pharmakides was one of the many Greeks who studied at the German universities and brought back many German ideas to Greece with them. And of such is M. Kyriakos himself.
97. For the Greek Church see Kyriakos, iii. pp. 150–201; Silbernagl, pp. 66–76, and the E. d'Or. iii. pp. 285–294.
98. Arad (N. of Temesvár) and Karansebes (S.E. of Temesvár). These three bishops are also generously paid by the Government (Hermannstadt, 25,000 fl., the others, 10,000 fl.), form a congress for their ecclesiastical affairs, and sit in the House of Lords. As they have the good fortune to be under a Catholic Government, there is no Holy Synod as an instrument of civil oppression.
99. Its greatest extent was from the Danube to Epirus, and from the Black Sea above Thrace to the Adriatic. Simeon, the Bulgarian King (923–934), was their chief conqueror, the Emperor Basil II, the Bulgar-slayer (991–1022), their destroyer. This Bulgarian kingdom covered much of the same land as the later Servian kingdom (p. 306). See Freeman's Historical Geography (ed. Bury, 1903), p. 376, seq., and map xxxiv.
100. King Simeon asked the Pope to make his chief bishop an extra-patriarchal primate. Pope Formosus (891–896) did so.
101. During all that time there were endless examples of this race-hatred. Here is one that made some noise at the time. In August, 1903, two Greeks treacherously betrayed the Bulgarian leader, Thomas Saef, with ninety-eight men into the hands of a whole regiment of Turks. The Bulgars were all killed. Afterwards the Bulgars caught the two Greeks, and the Revolutionary Committee sentenced them to be slowly cut in small pieces in the marketplaces of two towns. This was done in September.
102. Voltaire, in Candide, wrote of an imaginary "Bulgarian" army that did "Bulgarian" exercises as one would write of fairyland or the Utopians. He had no idea that there was a real Bulgaria. See Brailsford, Macedonia, p. 100.
103. E. d'Or. vii. p. 36. There is no doubt about the kidnapping. See Brailsford, Macedonia, p. 73.
104. How little religion matters is shown by the fact that when, in 1903, they found that Russia would not help them, they all wanted to turn Catholic or Protestant, to get the sympathy of either Austria or England. Brailsford, o.c. p. 74.
105. There is, however, still a small Uniate Bulgarian Church.
106. 1845–1848, restored 1853–1855, and again 1871–1873.
107. Professor Gelzer publishes an interesting account of his interview with the Exarch Joseph in his Geistliches u. Weltliches, p. iii, seq. See also his very clear and temperate account of the whole quarrel (ibid.).
108. The Albanians are the only Balkan people whose national feeling is confused by no theological side issue. They call themselves Skipetars (the Greeks call them Ἀλβανίτοι), and consist of two great tribes, the Gega in the north, and the Toska in the south. They speak a very interesting Aryan language, which they try to express sometimes in Greek and sometimes in Latin letters (there is now a great movement in favour of their language throughout Albania, a newspaper is printed in it in Italy, and there is a chair of Albanian at Vienna). As regards religion, most of them are Moslems, who, however, still keep many Christian customs; there are some Orthodox (Patriarchists), and, in the north, very many Catholics, taught and cared for by heroic Franciscan missionaries and Sisters of Charity. And they all unite in reverencing their two great national heroes, the Catholic George Alexander Castriot (Scanderbeg, i.e., Alexander = Iskandir Bey), and the Moslem Ali Pasha of Janina. Cf. Gelzer, Vom Heiligen Berg, u.s.w., "Im Lande der Toska," pp. 182–225, and Brailsford, Macedonia, chap, viii., "The Albanians," pp. 221–289, where he has much to say about the civilizing influence of the friars and nuns. Both Austria and Italy have designs on Albania; but of all Balkan races they most deserve independence and autonomy.
109. In Bulgaria are about three and a half million Exarchists, in Macedonia about eighty-eight thousand families as against twenty-one thousand Patriarchist families. E. d'Or. vii. p. 110; Gelzer, Geistl. u. Weltl., p. 125, and Brancoff, La Macédoine, for tables of statistics and maps.
110. In Brailsford, Macedonia, p. 193, is a photograph of the Patriarchist Bishop of Kastoria gracing a review of Turkish soldiers. His Beatitude stands blandly and quite shamelessly side by side with the Kaimakam and the ruffians who are going to hunt down, shoot, and torture the Christian patriots.
111. Anthimos VI in 1873, Joachim II in 1883, Dionysios V in 1891, Neophytes VIII in 1894, and Anthimos VII in 1897. See Kyriakos, iii. pp. 46–47.
112. The text in E. d'Or. vi. pp. 408–410. Its language against the "apostles of Panslavism" is extraordinarily violent: "Ces fureurs et ces brutalités," "cette persecution inexorable contre les habitants grecs orthodoxes," &c. On the other hand, "Heureux de nous sentir guidés par la main paternelle de notre auguste souverain le sultan Abdul Hamid, nous souhaitons ardemment à ces provinces si éprouvées le prompte rétablissement du régime de l'ordre," &c. Only a Phanariot Greek can grovel like this. "La Macédoine n'est pas slave," say these bishops, which is a categorical falsehood. They estimate the Turkish and Greek population at three-quarters of the whole!
113. For instance, the Ἑλληνισμός (an Athenian paper) of November 15, 1902, published a furious protest against an atrocity that had lately been perpetrated at Sipka, in Eastern Roumelia. The atrocity was that three Russians—Alexander Zelobovski, the head chaplain of the Russian forces, John Philosophov, and Alexis Mestcherski, both Protopopes at Petersburg—had publicly concelebrated with Methodius, the Exarchist Metropolitan of Stara-Zagora, in open defiance of Photios, Patriarchist Metropolitan of Philippopolis, in whose diocese Sipka lies. The Russian Holy Synod had sent them officially to do so.
114. For the story of the Bulgarian schism see, besides Gelzer, o.c., Silbernagl, pp. 85–93, and E. d'Or. ii. p. 275, vi. pp. 141, 328, 408, vii. p. 110. Kyriakos (iii. pp. 42–49), being a Greek, of course, makes out a case against the Bulgars, but he is not intemperate, and it is interesting to see his side, too.
115. It was a strange chance that joined these two Servian dioceses to what is almost a Roumanian See at the extreme other end of Austria. The reason was simply that there are so few Orthodox in the Austrian half that it was not worth while making two independent Churches for them. Practically it would have been more reasonable to join these sees to Carlovitz, but that is in the Hungarian half. For the Orthodox in Dalmatia see E. d'Or. v. pp. 362–375.
116. According to the official Austrian Schematismus the exact figures are:—

     	Parishes.	Protopresbyteries.	Orthodox Population.
     Czernovitz	242	12	478,118
     Zara	54	5	76,866
     Cattaro	43	4	28,722
     	——	—	————
     	339	21	583,706

117. Theoretically the liturgy is to be said either in Roumanian or Servian according to the language most used in each parish. Really it depends rather on what language the priest prefers.
118. The present Metropolitan of Czernovitz (Vladimir), a Vlach, is accused of this policy.
119. For Czernovitz see Silbernagl, pp. 207–214; Kyriakos, iii. p. 126; E. d'Or. v. pp. 225–236, vii. pp. 227–231. Kyriakos counts about four million Orthodox in Austria and Hungary altogether.
120. Of Ušice, Niš, Timok, and Šabac.
121. For the Servian Church see Silbernagl, pp. 162–175; Kyriakos, iii. pp. 37–39.
122. The situation in Macedonia is quite simple. Each of the three races—Greek, Bulgar, and Serb—wants to assert its own nationality as far as possible and as far as it can to claim Macedonia for itself. As soon as one becomes very powerful the other two unite against it. Now the Vlachs are beginning to develop a national feeling too, so there is a fourth element. The Albanians do not enter the lists because they are secure in their mountains, and no one tries to Hellenize, or Bulgarize, or Serbianate, or Vlachize them.
123. Firmilian died in December, 1903, at Belgrade; the free Serbs and those of Macedonia at once agreed on the deacon Sebastian of Belgrade as his successor, and the Phanar had to acknowledge him.
124. For the case of Firmilian of Uskub, which made a great deal of noise at the time, see E. d'Or. iii. pp. 343–351, v. pp. 390–392, vii. pp. 46–47, 111–112.
125. See Bury-Freeman: Historical Geography, pp. 384, 431–433 (the third kingdom of Bulgaria), and maps xxxix to xli.
126. This was in 1393 under Bajazet I (the Thunderbolt, 1389–1402), so the Church of Tirnovo had only a short existence.
127. A curious remnant of this is that in the Roumanian language their own word for themselves (Roumân), at any rate in the country parts, is a word of abuse, and means "uneducated boor"!
128. He became Prince of the tributary States (Moldavia and Vallachia) when Cusa was made to resign in 1866. The kingdom of Roumania then consists of these two provinces, which had always had a certain amount of autonomy under the Phanariot Vaivodes, now made into an independent State. See De la Jonquière: Histoire des Ottomans, pp. 538–544.
129. Of Rimnik, Roman, Buzeu, Huš, Argeš, and the Lower Danube.
130. A third of the landed property in Roumania belonged to the Church before Cusa's confiscation.
131. The Vlachs are becoming more and more conscious that their language joins them to the Western and Romance world, and they are very much inclined to model their institutions after those of the Western States, especially of France. These rumours, at any rate as far as the Calendar, infusion, and dropping the kalemaukion are concerned, were connected with the reports of their Western tendencies that go about among their neighbours.
132. Both Belgrade and Athens have already shown signs of an inclination to follow the example of Bucharest. The Roumanian Parliament voted 10,000 francs for the expenses of the vessels and materials needed for the Holy Chrism. The king attended the ceremony, and all Roumania was triumphant at what they considered so great an assertion of complete independence. The Greeks at first denied the fact, and, when that was no longer possible, began a series of bitter attacks against the Roumanian Church, that lasted for three years.
133. Gelzer counts 430 Exarchist Vlach families in Macedonia, Geistliches u. Weltliches, p. 125.
134. Here is one example for many: "In 1904 a Vlach died at Monastir. His relations wanted to bury him in Roumanian, the Greeks insisted on Greek. The Bishop (a Greek) forbade a Roumanian funeral, the relations would not have a Greek one. As usual, both sides appealed to the judge of ecclesiastical affairs, the Turkish Kaimakam. The Kaimakam, as usual, could do nothing without instructions from Constantinople, and the Porte, as usual, could not make up its mind. So there came a preliminary order to put off the funeral till the Government had considered the case. Meanwhile, as it was becoming quite time to do something, the wretched man was embalmed. Time passed and nothing was settled. Then both sides began fighting over the body, the market-place was shut up, and two charges of cavalry could not disperse the mob. The Wali, desperate and helpless, at last telegraphed direct to the Sultan imploring him to let the man be buried somehow before the mob had pulled the town down. At last the decision came. The Government could not afford to gratify either side, so the man was to be just put in the ground without any burial service at all. See the newspaper report in Brailsford: Macedonia, pp. 189–190. "Nothing," adds Mr. Brailsford, "could be more Turkish, and nothing could be more Greek."
135. E. d'Or. viii. pp. 302, 303.
136. A Roumanian paper counts 394,700 Vlachs in Macedonia, 20,000 in Albania, 160,000 scattered throughout Turkey, 220,000 in Greece, and 100,000 in Bulgaria (E. d'Or. vii. p. 179). The Roumanian Government has just published a Green Book in French (Le Livre vert roumain, Bucarest, 1905) containing a most appalling indictment of the Patriarch's persecution of the Macedonian Vlachs, accusing the Greeks among other things of wholesale murder.
137. As a matter of fact the Phanar goes through this farce each time: as soon as they hear of the Emperor's appointment they set up the new bishop with two others as candidates for the see, hold an election, and elect the one the Emperor has chosen.
138. There seems to be an idea among the Orthodox that the rare title Archbishop means something more than the almost universal one of Metropolitan.
139. The sees are: in Bosnia, Sarajevo and Zvornik; in Hercegovina, Hersek (residence at Mostar) and Banjaluka.
140. All authorities, however, agree that the Orthodox population, as all the population of the land, has increased enormously. The Government is now preparing complete statistics and maps.
141. For the Church of Bosnia and Hercegovina see Silbernagl, pp. 63–65; E. d'Or. ii. pp. 243–244; viii. pp. 35–40.
142. For Hercegovina and Bosnia see Silbernagl, pp. 63–65, and Echos d'Orient, ii. pp. 243–244; viii. pp. 35–40. The Russian official papers carry on a campaign of libel against the Austrian administration of these lands. When the governor, Baron von Kallay, whose indefatigable care for the good of the provinces was admired throughout civilized Europe, died in 1903, a Russian paper, inspired by its Government, wrote a scurrilous attack on him beginning: "Yesterday millions of hearts breathed again freely … at the death of Kallay a whole people as one man cried out: Glory to God in heaven! " &c. Really Kallay was the man who had built roads, established courts of law that every one had to respect, put down brigandage and religious persecution, and had taught these wretched people for the first time after four centuries of martyrdom what it is to sleep in safety without fear of having their throats cut in the night. But Austria is Catholic, and so the Russians like to pretend that she persecutes the Orthodox. The irony of Russians accusing another State of intolerance is really unique. J. V. Asboth: Bosnien und die Herzegowina (Vienna, 1888) gives an account of the enormous benefits wrought in these provinces by the Austrians since they have administered them.