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 GREECE

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GREECE

was ti charter studpnr and at St. John's College, Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, ronduoted by the Broth- ers of the t'lii-istian Soliools, and niadf his thenlof^ical studies at the (Inind Seminary, Hhmlrcal. t'anada, where he was ordained priest 21 December, 1879. Bishop Leni"ian was the first native of the State of Iowa to be raised to the priesthood. His first appoint- ment was at Vail ; his second, at Marshalltown, where he built, besides a school and church, the St. Thomas Hospital in memory of his brother, the late Rt. Rev. Thomas M. Lenihan, D.D., Bishop of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Immediately after his installation Bishop Lenihan devoted his energies to temperance reform, to the installation of a parochial school system, and to the erection of a cathedral. The fine cut^stone edifice which now serves as the cathedral of Great Falls was completed and dedicated, 1,5 December, 1907, to St. Anne, the mother of the Blessetl Virgin. Two more churches are now building at (ireat Falls, as well as a large orphans' home that will be conducted by the Sis- ters of Charity of Providence, who also have charge of Columbus Hospital and Maternity Home. The diocese is in a prosperous condition, both spiritually and materially. New parishes are being created and new churches are being erected in nearly every city.

Statistics. — At the creation of the diocese (1904) the Catholic population was 10,000; the number of the clergy was 17 (12 diocesan, 5 regular). At present (1909) there is a Catholic population of 15,052; the number of clergy has doubled iJ t diocesan, 8 regular); there are 45 churches, 44 stations, 9 chapels; 12 eccle- siastical students; 8 brothers; 98 religious women; 5 academies for young ladies (400 pupils); 5 parochial schools (680 pupils); 4 Indian schools (420 pupils); 4 hospitals (3200 patients annually). The religious communities in thediocese include : Jesuit Fathers, four charges; Brothers of the Christian Schools (Province of Quebec); Sisters of Charity of Providence (Mon- treal, Canada), three charges ; Sisters of Charity, Leav- enworth; Sisters of the Holy Humility of Mary (Ottumwa, Iowa) ; Daughters of Jesus ; Ursuline Nuns, five charges.

P.VLLADINO. Indian and White in the Northwest (Baltimore, 1894); The Iowa Catholic Messenger (Davenport. Iowa, 1904); WiLTZius, The Catholic Directory (Milwaukee, 1908).

Joseph Medin.

Greece will be treated in this article under the following heads: I. The Land and the People; II. The Church in Greece before the Schism; III. The Ortho- dox Church in Greece; IV. Constitution of the Church of Greece; V. The Catholic Church in Greece; VI. Protestants and Other Sects; VII. The Church in Enslaved Greece.

I. The Land and the People. — The Greeks are a people who appear first in history as separated in various small States, but bound together by a com- mon language, religion and civilization, in the south of the Balkan Peninsula, the islands around, and the coast of Asia Minor opposite. For about three cen- turies these States attained a perfection in every form of civilization that gives them the first place in the history of Europe. Then the Greek ideal — Hellenism —spread over Asia, Egypt, and westward to Italy. The original race gradually sinks in importance; the States have disappeared. But the power of the Greek language, Greek learning, Greek art is never ex- hausted ; the magic of the old memories still works in every age; while political changes cause the rise and fall of other governments, Hellenism never ceases from its conquests. The great Roman Empire, having be- come too unwieldy, is divided, and Greece gradually swallows up the eastern half. For nearly ten cen- turies again Greece reigns from Constantinople. The flood of Islarn sweeps over the lands she had moulded; in.stead of destroying her, this brings her to fresh con- quests across the distant West. Last of all, chiefly because of the magic of her name, the land where Hel-

lenism was born has succeeded in shaking off the tyrant and we have again a free Greece. But Hellas means more tlian this small country. It is that mighty force, undying from Homer to the present Phanar at Constantinople, that, through all changes of government, has been expressed in the same lan- guage, has evolved its own ideals, and, unbroken in its continuity for nearly thirty centuries, has moidded to its own likeness nearly every race it met. The bar- barous tribes of Asia Minor — Macedonians, Christian Arabs, Egyptians and Slavs, PhcBnicians and Italians, Wallachians and even some branches of the great Turkish race — met this ideal in turn, learned to talk Greek and to call themselves Hellenes. And at the knees of this mother all Europe has stood.

It is not the object of this article to tell again the long story of Greece. One or two salient points only will clear the ground for an account of Christianity among this people.

First of all, what is Greece? — The question may easily be answered now. The Conference of London, in 1831, and the Treaty of 1897 have arranged the frontier of the modern kingdom. In the past it is less easy to answer. Greece was not united as one State even in classical times; Alexander's empire included all manner of nations; under Rome the scattered Cireeks gradually learned to call themselves Romans. The only answer that can be given for any period is that Greece is the land where Greeks live ; any country, any city where the people in the great majority spoke Greek, were conscious of being Greeks, was at that time at any rate a part of Hellas: Syracuse and Hali- carnassus as much as Athens and Corinth. This only removes the question one step, since one now asks: What is a Greek? To demand evidence of pure de- scent from one of the original Dorian, Ionian, or ^olian triljes would be hopeless. It has been the special mission of Hellas to impose her language and ideals, even the consciousness of being a Greek, on other races. Of the enormous numljer of people since Alexander who spoke Greek and called themselves Greeks the great majority were children of Hellenized barbarians. Moreover districts were inhabited by mixed populations. The great towns — Antioch and Alexandria, for instance — were more or less com- pletely Hellenized, while the peasants around kept their original languages.

One must use the names Greek and Greece as com- parative ones. Where a certain degree of Greek con- sciousness (shown most obviously in the use of the language) prevails, there we may call the people Greeks, more or less so according to the measure of their absorption by Hellas. The old Greek States covered about the territory included in the modern kingdom and the islands, with colonies around the coast of Asia Minor, Sicily, Southern Italy, Northern Egypt, even Southern Gaul. Alexander (336-23 B. c.) upset these limits altogether. Himself a Hellen- ized Macedonian, descended from people whom the old Greeks certainly considered barbarians (though Mace- donians seem to have been akin to the .iEolians), his empire spread the Greek ideal and language through- out Asia and Egypt. When Rome conquered Greece (146 B. c.) there was no longer any question of a Greek political nation. But the race goes on, and the language never dies. Constantine (a. d. 324-37) meant his new city to be Roman. But here, too, Hellas gradually absorbed her conquerors. At least from the time of Justinian I (527-65) the Eastern Empire, in spite of its Roman name, must be counted a Greek State. The Byzantine period (roughly from 527 to 1453) is the direct continuation of the older Greek civilization. It is true that Byzantine civiliza- tion was influenced from other sides (from Rome and Asia Minor, for instance) ; but this would apply to the old Greek ideals too, on which Egypt, Persia, and Asia had their influence; it is the normal process of the