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heretics, on the other. But it is not convenient to start from this basis in cataloguing Eastern Churches. Historically and archaeologically, it is a secondary question. Each Uniat body has Ijeen formed from one of the schismatical ones; their organizations are comparatively late, dating in most cases from the six- teenth anti seventeenth centuries. Moreover, al- though all these Uniats of course agree in the same Catholic Faith that we profess, they are not organized as one body. Each branch keeps the rites (with in some cases modifications made at Rome for dogmatic reasons) of the corresponding schismatical body, and has an organization modelled on the same plan. In faith a Uniat Armenian, for instance, is joined to Uniat Chaldees and Copts, and has no more to do with schismatical Armenians than with Nestorians or Abys- sinians. Nor does he forget this fact. He knows quite well that he is a Catholic in union with the Pope of Rome, and that he is equally in union with every other Cathohc. Nevertheless, national customs, lan- guages, and rites tell very strongly on the superficies, and our Uniat Armenian would certainly feel very much more at home in a non-Uniat church of his own nation than in a Uniat Coptic, or even Latin, church. Outwardly, the bond of a common language and com- mon liturgy is often more apparent than what every- one knows to be the essential and radical division of a schism. Indeed these Uniat bodies in many cases still faintly reflect the divisions of their schismatical rela- tions. What in one case is a schism (as for instance between Orthodox and Jacobites) still remains as a not very friendly feeling between the different Uniat Churches (in tliis case Melkites and Catholic Syrians). Certainly, such feeling is a very different thing from formal schism, and the leaders of the Uniat Churches, as well as all their more intelligent members and all their well-wishers, earnestly strive to repress it. Nev- ertheless, quarrels between various Uniat bodies fill up too large a portion of Eastern Ciiurch history to be ignored; still, to take another instance, anyone who knows Syria knows that the friendship between Mel- kites and Maronites is not enthusiastic. It will be seen, then, that for purposes of tabulation we cannot con- veniently begin by cataloguing the Catholic bodies on the one side and then classing the schismatics together on the other. We must arrange these Churches ac- cording to their historic basis and origin: first, the larger and older schismatical Churches; then, side by side with each of these, the corresponding Uniat Church formed out of the schismatics in later times.

A. ScHisMATir.\L Churches.

1. The first of the Eastern Churches in size and im- portance is the great Orthodox Church. This is, after that of the Catholics, considerably the largest body in Christendom. The Orthodox Church now counts about a hundred millions of members. It is the main body of Eastern Christendom, that remained faithful to the decrees of Ephesus and Chalcedon when Nestorianism and Monophysitism cut away the na- tional Chvirches in Syria and Egypt. It remained in union with the West till the great schism of Photius and then that of Ca-rularius, in the ninth and eleventh centuries. In spite of the short-lived reunions made by the Second Council of Lyons (1274) and the Council of Florence (1439), this Church has been in schism ever since. The "Orthodox" (it is convenient as well as courteous to call them by the name they use as a tech- nical one for themselves) originally comprised the four Eastern patriarchates: Alexandria and Antioch, then Constantinople and Jerusalem. But the balance be- tween these four patriarchates was soon upset. The Church of C'yprus was taken away from Antioch and made autocephalous (i. e. extra-patriarchal) by the Council of Ephesus (4-31). Then, in the fifth century, came the great upheavals of Nestorianism and Mono- physitism, of which the result was that enormous num- bers of Syrians and Egyptians fell away into schism.

So the Patriarchs of Antioch, Jerusalem (this was al- ways a very small and comparatively unimportant centre), and Alexandria, losing most of their subjects, inevitably sank in importance. The Moslem con- quest of their lands completed their ruin, so that they became the merest shadows of what their predecessors had once been. Meanwhile Constantinople, honoured by the presence of the emperor, and always sure of his favour, rose rapidly in importance. Itself a new see, neither Apostolic nor primitive (the first Bishop of Byzantium was Metrophanes, in 325), it succeeded so well in its ambitious career that for a short time after the great Eastern schism it seemed as if the Patriarch of New Rome would take the same place over the Orthotlox Church as did his rival the Pope of Old Rome over Catholics. It is also well known that it was this insatiable ambition of Constantinople that was chiefly responsible for the schism of the ninth and eleventh centuries. The Turkish conquest, strangely enough, still further strengthened the power of the Byzantine patriarch, inasmuch as the Turks acknowl- edged him as the civil head of what they called the "Roman nation" (Rum millet), meaning thereby the whole Orthodox community of whatever patriarchate. For about a century Constantinople enjoyed her power. The other patriarchs were content to be her vassals, many of them even came to spend their useless hves as ornaments of the chief patriarch's court, while Cyprus protested faintly and ineffectually that she was subject to no patriarch. The bishop who had climbed to so high a place by a long course of degrading intrigue could for a little time justify in the Orthodox world his usurped title of CEcumenical Patriarch. Then came his fall; since the sixteenth century he has lost one province after another, till now he too is only a shadow of what he once was, antl the real power of the Ortho- dox body is in the new independent national Churches with their " holy Synods " ; while high over all looms the shadow of Russia. The separation of the various national Orthodox Churches from the patriarchate of Constantinople forms the only important chapter in the modern history of this body. The principle is always the same. More and more has the idea ob- tained that political modifications shouKl be followed by the Church, that is to say that the Church of an independent State must be itself independent of the patriarch. This by no means implies real independ- ence for the national Church; on the contrary, in each case the much severer rule of the Government is sub- stituted for the distant authority of the CEcumenical Patriarch. Outside the Turkish Empire, in Russia and the Balkan States, the Orthodox Churches are shamelessly Erastian — by far the most Erastian of all Christian bodies. The process began when the great Church of Russia was declared autocephalous by the Czar I^eodor Ivanovitch, in 1589. Jeremias II of Constantinople took a bribe to acknowledge its inde- pendence. Peter the Great abolished the Russian patriarchate (of Moscow) and set up a " Holy Govern- ing Synod " to rule the national Church in 1721. The Holy Synod is simply a department of the government through which the czar rules over his Church as abso- lutely as over his army and navy. The independence of Russia and its Holy Synod have since been copied by each Balkan State. But this independence does not mean schism. Its first announcement is naturally very distasteful to the patriarch and his court. He often begins by excommunicating the new national Church root and branch. But in each case he has been obliged to give in finally and to acknowledge one more "Sister in Christ" in the Holy Synod that has displaced his authority. Only in the specially difficult and bitter case of the Bulganan Church has a perma- nent schism resulted. Other causes have led to the establishment of a few other independent Churches, so that now the great Orthodox communion consists of sixteen independent Churches, each of which (except