Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/742

Rh 712 EUROPE founded institutions for the higher education of women. The Jews of Frankfort-on-the-Maine have established two important schools the Philanthropinum and the Jfiister- schide; and the city of Carlsruhe has had a superior school for girls since 182G. The university of Zurich has set the example of the free admittance of women ; the London University opened its gates to them in 1877; and the older universities of England and Scotland have at least sanctioned extramural lectureships and condescended to ex amine if not to teach them. A women s college has been opened at St Petersburg by Catherine Dikhova under imperial patronage; Hungary has a similar institution ; and so the innovation is becoming familiar, and within a gene ration or two the condition of female education at the be ginning of this century bids fair to appear a semi-barbarian state of things hardly credible at so recent a date. To recapitulate, European education is being more widely diffused, is passing from the control of the clergy or the private citizen into the hands of the state, is becoming more secular and less sectarian, and in its higher depart ments shows a growing catholicity towards the more modern aspects of thought and life. lleligiou. Europe is pre-eminently the country of monotheism, which forms the central doctrine, not only of its dominant religion, Christianity, but also of the minor rivals Judaism and Mahometan ism. To none of these three religions has it given birth; and, what is more remarkable, its peculiarly Aryan population have adopted their religion from a Semitic people. The various nations of Europe were still polytheistic when they first entered within the historic horizon; and this polytheism has left more numerous traces of its influence than superficial observers might imagine. Not only have the gods of the Greek and Roman pantheons and their ruder rivals of the north obtained an immortality in the literature and art of all the cultured nation* of Europe, but amid the manifold traditions and half-unconscious beliefs of the common people there are fragments of older and baser creeds. Much has still to be done before the amount of such survivals can be estimated with anything like accuracy, but that their number is considerable has been already well established. 1 Nor need it be matter of surprise when we consider how recent the introduction of Christianity into Europe really is, and how, to vast masses of men, it came, not as a conviction of the intellect or a captivation of the heart, but as the infliction of a conqueror or the command of a king; and how, even when it was adopted through the persuasive eloquence of genuine missionaries, it obtained, in many cases, but a divided allegiance, and had to accept and sanctify as best it might the rites and symbolism of the religion which it expelled. That the English still speak of Wednesday and Thursday, that the French have their Vondredi and Mardi, the Italians their Venerdi and Martedi, is of purely historic interest, and implies no lingering attachment to Woden or Thor, to Venus or Mars ; but there is no country in Christian Europe in which the popular ideas about supernatural agency in general are not the mongrel products of paganism and Christianity. Christianity in Europe is broken up into three main divisions, the Roman Catholic Church, the Greek or Eastern Church, and the Protestant or Evangelical Church ; and each of thesa has received more or less numerous modifications and subdivisions under the influence of different political and social environments. Roman Catholicism not only can boast of the greatest number of adherents, but has the greatest claim to unity, at least in its external organization, and stands in direct contrast to many portions of the Protestant Church, which, while maintaining the superiority of their respective creeds, ac- 1 See Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. knowledge the local and temporary character of their con stitutions. The unity, however, has all along been more nominal than real, rather the beau-ideal of the administra tive hierarchy than the actual condition of the organization which they control. Discordant elements have frequently threatened a disruption; severe contests have taken place between the spirit of centralization in Rome and the desire for local independence in individual countries ; and in the present century the irreconcilability of tvo&amp;gt; great parties has given rise to the so-called Old Catholics in Germany and Switzerland, who in the latter country at least seem likely to break up into two distinct sections. There arc two religious communities in Europe which occupy a special relation to the Roman Catholic Church, the United Greeks and the United Armenians, otherwise known as Catholics of the Greek rite and Catholics of the Armenian rite. They both acknowledge the supremacy of the pope, but they are permitted to retain many pecu liarities of organization and ritual. The United Greeks have an archbishop at Gran in Hungary, and another at Lemberg in Galicia. The United Armenians are found in Russia and Austria, but are still more numerous in the Ottoman empire. A schism not unlike that of the Old Catholics broke out amongst them in 1809. The pope by the bull Reversuris claimed to exercise certain rights which his predecessors had never enforced, and the Armenians not only rebelled, but drove their patriarch Hussan into exile because he supported the papal authority. The small church of Utrecht, which dates from the year 1704, retains the doctrines of the church of Rome, but emphasizes the superiority of the councils over the pope, and has no- connexion with the papal organization. The Greek Church has been divided by political in fluences into several independent communities, each with its own organization, but all united by a common creed, and the consciousness of a common historic origin. The head of the whole church was at one time the patriarch of Constantinople ; but he never had the same supremacy as the pope, and has gradually sunk to be little more than the head of that branch which is subject to the Porte. The Greek Church of Russia began to establish its independence in the middle of the 13th century; till about the middle of the 15th it sent its nominees for the office of metro politan of Kieff to the patriarch of Constantinople for con secration ; afterwards the consecration was performed by a council of Russian bishops ; and in 1589 the metropolitan was raised to be the ecclesiastical peer of the patriarch. Peter the Great allowed the office to lapse, and supplied its place by a council or synod, which still remains the central authority in the Russian church, the emperor being re cognized as the supreme defender of the faith, and practically holding the place of chief administrator. The Austrian branch of the Greek Church is also governed by a general synod composed of all the bishops under the presidency of the patriarch of Carlo witz, and three pro vincial synods, the Austrian proper meeting at Czernowitz, the Servian at Carlowitz, and the Roumanian at Her- mannstadt. After the declaration of the political inde pendence of Greece, it was natural that there should arise a desire for the independence of the national church ; ami the patriarch of Constantinople was obliged to recognize its autonomy in 1850. A similar movement took place in Bul garia in 1870. Though the Greek church is dominant iu Russia, there is a very considerable number of sectarian communities. Chief of these are the &quot; Raskolniks&quot; (sepa ratists or non-conformists), who seek to maintain a more scrupulous accuracy in the ritual than the state church enforces. Of totally different character are the heretical sects, some of whom, as the Molokani, show great reverence f jr the letter of scripture, while others, as the Skoptsi or