Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 15.djvu/170

 UNION

140

UNION

rulers stood to the Roman bishops. This then was the main cause of the separation which has endured so long, and still endures, but to estimate it at its full strength we must take into account the acconipanj'- ing negative cause. For, though Photius in one of his letters claimed for his see that it was "the centre and support of the truth", and though his followers would have us seek our standard of doctrinal purity exclusively in the prescriptions of the first seven oecumenical councils, St. Leo IX, in his letter to Caerularius, enumerated nineteen of the latter's prede- cessors as having fallen imder the condemnation of these seven councils, while Duchesne"(Eglises separi^es, p. 164) calculates that in the interval of 464 years which separates the accession of Constantine the Great from the celebration of the Seventh Council (7S7), Constantinople and its ecclesiastical dependen- cies had been in schism for 203 years. This means that the sense of unity, so strong in the West, had in the East, owing to the perversity of emperors and patriarchs, no fair chance of striking deep roots among the people, and so could seldom offer effectual resistance to the forces making for schism.

Unlike the Nestorians and the Monophysites (whom the Orthodox regard as heretics just as much as do the Catholics), the Photian schism commenced nearly nine centuries ago by Michael Cferularius is now represented not by a few scattered groups which taken altogether number not more than six or seven miUions, but by vast populations which, in the aggregate, number not far short of a hundred millions. This is chiefly, though not solely, because, the Russians having been converted by missionaries from Constantinople about a century before the time of Caerularius, their direct religious intercourse was with Constantinople and not with distant Rome; and accordingly they drifted gradually first into uncon- scious, and later into conscious, acceptance of its separatist attitude. The upshot is that out of the 95,000,000, at which the Orthodox Christians are estimated by statisticians, some 70,000,000 are Russian subjects, the remaining 2.5,000,000 being divided among the pure Greeks of the Turkish Empire and the Kingdom of Greece, the Rumanians, Servians, and Bulgarians of the Balkan Peninsula, the Cyp- riotes, and the comparatively small number, mostly Syrians, who reside in the former territories of the Alexandrian and two Eastern Patriarchates. (For particulars see Greek Church.) As against these must be set a group of Uniats who, since the disrup- tion, have been converted from their schism and are now in communion with the Holy See, though keeping religiously to their ancient Byzantine Rite, whether in its Greek, Slav, or other vernacular form. These are estimated by the author of the article just cited as numbering in all about 5,000,000, of whom the greater part are Ruthenians and Rumanians in the Austrian dominions.

Probably, when the Photian schism was first effected it seemed to the Byzantine leaders that, though by an unfortunate chance the see from which they were separating was the one which could claim the inheritance of the promise made to Blessed Peter, it was with themselves rather than with the Westerns that the main portion, the very substance, of Chris- tendom was and would always be found. Certainly the centre of the world's culture and civilization, religious as well as civil, was then on the Hellespont, and it may be that even in actual numbers the sub- jects of this one patriarchate surpassed the hordes of half-converted barbarians (as they would have called them) who formed the populations of the new Western kingdoms. Regarded under this aspect, however, it cannot be said that the comparison still tells in their favour or that the schism has profited them. Impressive as is the Orthodox Church numer- ically, it is far surpassed in that respect by the

260,000,000 or more who represent the old Patri- archate of the West, nor could anyone now compare, to the advantage of the former, the rehgious culture and activity of the East with that of the West. Indeed, until a quite recent date, stagnation and igno- rance is the judgment passed on the Orthodox clergy and laity by observers of all sorts; and if during the last century there has been a distinct improvement in the leaders among priests and people, it has derived much of its inspiration from Protestant sources, chiefly from German universities, and has not been obtained without some sacrifice of the integrity of their ancient tradition and without some admixture of the modern Protestant spirit.

In another very serious respect the Orthodox Christians have lost by their separation from Catholic unity, for they have succumbed to pro- gressive disintegration — the fate of all communities that are without an effectual centre of unity. The Patriarch of Constantinople's original claim to be exalted to the second, if not to the first, place in Christendom was (though never formulated dis- tinctly) that Old Rome had been chosen for the seat of primacy because it was the imperial city, and hence, with the transference of the empire, this primacy had passed to New Rome. Such a claim quite lost its significance when the Byzantine Empire was overthrown in the fifteenth centurj-, and the sultans sat in the seat of the former sovereigns of the East. For the time, indeed, the new order of things brought with it even an accession of power to the patriarchs. The sultan saw the advantage of keeping aUve a separation which alienated his Christian sub- jects from their brethren in the West. Accordingly he made the patriarchs, whom he could appoint, keep, or change at his pleasure, to be, under himself, the civil as well as the ecclesiastical governors of the Christians of whatever race, within his dominions. Still, the condition of patriarchs thus bound hand and foot to the chief enemy of Christendom was but a gilded servitude for which it was difficult to feel respect; and, as racial consciousness developed among the many nationalities of the patriarchate, it became more and more realized that the New Rome theory could now be given a fresh appUcation.

Russia was the first to revolt, and in 1.589 the Tsar Ivan IV insisted that the Patriarch Jeremias should recognize the Metropolitan of Moscow as the head of an autonomous patriarchate. Why should he not, when Moscow was fast becoming what Constanti- nople had formerly been, the metropolis of the great Christian Empire of the East? Later, to bring the ecclesiastical government more effectually under the thumb of the Crown and convert it into an instrument of political government, the whole constitution of the Russian Chm-ch was changed by Peter the Great, who, in contempt of every canonical principle, suspended the patriarchal jurisdiction of Moscow, and put the whole Church under a s>Tiod consisting of the three metropolitans, who sat ex officio, and some prelates and others personally appointed by the tsar, with a layman as chief procurator to dominate their entire action. Till the last century this was the only diminu- tion of the Patriarch of Constantinople's jurisdiction; but, with the weakening of the sultan's power, the various nationalities over which he formerly reigned supreme have succeeded one after another in gaining their independence or autonomy, and have concur- rently established the autonomy of their national Churches. Though adhering to the same liturgj' and to the same doctrine as the other Orthodox Churches, they have followed the example set by Russia and, casting off all subjection to the patriarch, have insti- tuted holy synods of their own to govern them ecclesi- astically imder the supreme control of the civil power. Greece began in IS,"?;?, and since then the Rumanians, the Servians, and the Bulgarians, with their respective