Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/124

 5€a,' CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. now about a word, and again about a syllable, Have not added to the glory of the empire. There were times when Constantinople was con- verted into a vast theological seminary, in which everybody took part in controversies. " If you ask a person," says Gregorius of Nyssa, "about coins, he delivers a discourse about ^ey^ryrov and dy^v'^rjTov. You inquire concerning the price of bread; the baker informs you that the son is subordinate to the father. If you wish to know whether the bath is in good order, the answer is: 'The son was created out of nothing.' " Perhaps the controversies were so lively at Constantinople because the intelligent and culti- vated people found in them a field for the exer- cise of their mental activity, which was not furnished them by printed matter, by news- papers or telegrams, or by presidential elections. With the Byzantines religion was an object of public interest. The fact, however, that there was a war in Germany between Protestants and Catholics, lasting thirty years, and the records of the Spanish Inquisition, show how questions of conscience have excited human passion in other countries likewise. The question of truth in religion touched the Byzantine state more deeply than it did most