Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/852

 GREEK

766

GREEK

last of the Byzantine emperors, died heroically for his country. He, also, feared at tlie beginning of his reign to impose the union on his clergy and people. He had to wait until 12 December, 1452, hardly six months before the entry of the Turks into the capital, when Cardinal Isidore solemnly proclaimed the union of Florence in the church of Saint Sophia. Admiral Notaras cynically observed that the Greeks preferred the turban of the prophet to the tiara of the pope. It must, however, be acknowledged that the seeds of union sown by the missionaries and by the envoys of Rome have never been completely stifled. There have always been Greeks who were sincerely Catholics, even in the darkest days of their country's history. Among them some have always defended with their pens, and often at the risk of their lives, the unity of the Church and the primacy of Rome. Demetraeo- poulos, it is true, has published a lengthy list of the principal anti-Roman wTiters among the Greeks, but it would be easy to prepare another very large work of the same kind exhil:)iting the pro-Catholic activity of many Greeks. John Veccos (Beccos), George Acropolites, Isidore of Kiev, Bessarion, Arcu- dius, AUatius, are names that carry weight with any unbiassed historian, and they had many disciples and imitators.

With few exceptions the popes have always leaned to the religious policy of recovering the East by every means of pacification and, when necessary, by theo- logical controversy. This last means, however, was as a rule foredoomed to failure. Polemics have rarely converted anyone, and when carried on, as in the Middle Ages, with .syllogisms and, above all, with insults and outrages, then, instead of conciliating and calming angry souls, they leave behind them only bitterness, asperity, and sometimes hate. If the popes, however, were misled in their choice of weapons, or rather, if their religious representa- tives in the East abused controversy and polemic, it m\ist be conceded that the popes stopped there. The violent solution of the Eastern question by the sword — the crusade which was to profit only the Westerns — was no doing of the popes. In his stirring appeal at Clermont-Ferrand that set afoot the first armed enterprise. Urban II exhorted the Chris- tians of the West to .save their bretliren in the East, even before undertaking to free Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre. Moreover — it is almost too well knowni to need repeating here — Innocent III denounced vigorously the diversion of the Fourth Crusade to an attack on Zara and Constantinople for the almost exclusive profit of Venice. From 1261 to 1282 (the Sicilian Vespers) Charles of Anjou was hindered from making war on Michael PaUeologus and recapturing Constantinople solely by the influence of the Roman Curia. It would therefore be an injustice to blame the popes for the abortive issue of the Crusades. Had they been supported earnestly by East and West alike, Christendom would have fared immeasurably better. Unfortunately, the Catholic States, especially the Italian Republics, were too selfish to grasp the high moral and religious significance of the conduct and aims of the popes. As a rule, the only success of con- temporary politicians was in embarrassing the popes. The East, moreover, it must be admitted, did its share in frustrating the work of the Crusades. Far from assisting the generous West in its sublime effort to save Christendom, the Greeks saw in the Crusades only sources of profit for themselves or attempted to hinder their success. While their theologians and polemical writers showed more rudeness and spleen in contro- versy than did the Latins, their princes and emperors were likewise less disinterested than the leaders of the Crusades. It is to be carefully noted that the crusad- ing movement was by no means a complete failure. At the time of the First Crusade, in the eleventh cen- tury, the Turks were in possession of Niccea, within a

stone's throw of Constantinople. Before the Fraiik- ish knights Islam retreated, or at least ceased its con- quests, in Asia Minor, in Syria, and even in Egypt. And if in the fourteenth century it was enabled to resume its conquering march and cross into Europe, a menace to Christian civilization, it was in consequence of the cessation of the Crusades. Nor must the foundation of the many Catholic institutions in the East, which long outlasted the Crusades, be reckoned as useless. It was their slow but continuous efforts that paved the way for the emancipation of many Christian peoples from the Turkish yoke, and brought about in those countries that increasing influence of the Catholic religion which we now behold. "More important perhaps", says M. Br(5hier in "L'Eglise et I'Orient au moyen age: les Croisades" (Paris, 1907), p. 354, "are the results which the Crusades never dreamed of and which sprang from the contact of Christendom and the Orient. The very complex question as to what European civilization owes to the East cannot be discussed here; yet every day we find traces of the charm which the culture of the East exercised on Europe before and during the Crusades. What we are most concerned with is the advance thus made in geographical knowledge and, in consequence, in the spread of European civilization by expeditions and travels in the East. Asia was really discovered in the thirteenth century by those Italian missionaries and merchants who were the guests of the Mongolian Khans. For the first time since the expedition of Alexander, countries which until then had remained in the penumbra of legend appeared as a reality." Lit- erature, finally, owes much to the Crusades, which, by the literary relations they established between the Latin and Greek worlds, called forth the magnificent movement of the Renaissance.

For general reference works relating to the Schism, see the foregoing bibliography. — Nohden, Das Papsttum und Byzanz (Berlin, 1903); Arsenij, Relations between the Latin and Greek Churches at the Time of the Crusades in Journal of the Ministry of Public Education (Russian, St. Petersburg, 1867), CXXXIII, 499-534; Brehier, UEglite et I'Orient au moyen dge: les Croisades (Paris, 1907)-, Lebedev, Sketch of the Byzantine Church from the end of the Eleventh to the Middle of the Fifteenth Century (Russian, Moscow, 1902); Theiner, Monumenta speC' tantia ad unionem Ecclesiarum grcecx et romana: (Vienna, 1S72) : Delisle in Notes et extraits des manuscrits (Paris, 1S79), XXVII, pt. II, 87-167; Draseke in Zeitschrift fUr wissensch. Tkeologie (1891), XXXIY, 325-55; Omont in BihliolKgue de I'Ecole des Charles (Paris, 1892), 254-57; Gat, Le Pape Clement VI et les affaires d'Orient (Paris, 1904); Haller, Concilium Basiliense (Basle, 1896); Zhishman, Die Unionsverhandlungen zwischen der Orient und der romischen Kirche seit dpn Atisgange des XV Jahrhunderts bis zum Condi von Ferrara (Vienna, 1858) ; Vast, Le Cardinal Bessarion (Paris, 1878) ; Rocholl, Bessarion (Leipzig, 1904); Pastor, GescAtcWe der Pnpsie (Freiburg, 1901), I, 33 and passim; Carra de Vaux in Revue de VOrient Chre- tien^ II, 69-93; Draseee. Zum Kircheneinigungsversueh des Jahres 11*93 in Byzant. Zeitschrift, V, 572-86; Diamantop- otiLOS, Marcus Eugenicus and the Council of Florence (Athens, 1899). See also for further bibliography the article Crusades.

(a) Internal Organization of Byzantine Churches. — We have already spoken of the Bulgarian Patriar- chate of Ochrida, which about 1020 was changed into an autonomous Grseco-Bulgarian archbishopric more or less Hellenized, and which, until its sup- pression in 17G7, remained under the influence of t'onstantinople. Another Biflgarian patriarchate, that of Tiniovo, was established in 1204 by legates from Innocent III and remained Catholic for a long time. Gradually, however, it began to lean towards the Greeks, till it finally disappeared in 1393, and its bishops all passed under the authority of the cecumen- ical patriarch. Something similar happened to the Servians. Up to about 1204 they were on the most cordial relations with Rome, although it is probable that they recognized the jurisdiction of Constanti- nople. In 1217 Sabas the Younger crowned his brother king in the pope's name, and established a Servian Church which was at first composed of six dioceses. It was recognized by the Byzantines in 1219. In 1346 King Stephen Douchan threw off all