Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/65

 they represented neither more nor less, as far as the creation of a metropolitan church for Alexandru Șuluțiu was concerned, an abortive creation of the Jesuits. As this sect was proscribed by the Emperor Joseph the Second and the order was temporarily destroyed by decree of the Pope, the principal support of the Uniates crumbled beneath them. The Viennese Court was more disposed to favour the Roman Catholic rather than this bastard form of religion for a nation which was considered inferior.

The decay of Catholicism in the Principalities was, to all intents and purposes, identical. The Latin church remained alien, while their leaders committed the gross error of separating Moldavia, with its Italian friars, and the Jesuits in Jassy with their much-prized school, from Wallachia, subject to the bishop of Nicopolis in Bulgaria (the occupants of this See, Ercolani and Ferrer, were Italians too) who did not support the aspirations of Roumanian nationalism. Thus the Church at one time, in Moldavia, was the representative of a mere handful of Hungarians in the Carpathian districts of Roman and Bacău and in the tiny city of Huși. The Holy See, rejecting the appeal of the Hungarian Primate, had decided in favour of the Italian friars. The new episcopal church of Jassy and the archepiscopal one of Bucharest were more Roumanian in character, their present leaders being Roumanians. For this church and the Uniates of Transilvania a concordat was recently concluded with the Vatican.

The Serb, Bulgarian and Greek States moulded themselves on an Orthodox pattern. Only Austrian Dalmatia remained aloof, true to the old Catholic tradition, and recognised as such by the Yugoslav Government. In Bulgaria the few Catholics concentrated round the bishopric of Philipopolis are only the descendants of the Bogomiles, won over by Franciscan propaganda. In Bosnia and