Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/413

Rh exacting enquiry into the character of candidates for orders. The extreme importance attached to minutiae of ritual in the Eastern Church is well illustrated by the special emphasis which was afterwards given to this synod's prohibition of the custom of mixing the holy chrism with oil, and of the use of affusion instead of immersion in the rite of baptism.

When Cyril died ( 1281), for a short time no successor was appointed, because, although the Latin usurpation was at an end, and Michael Palæologus was now reigning at Constantinople, both the emperor and his patriarch were suspected of inclinations towards Rome. But when, after the death of Michael ( 1282), his son Andronicus restored the orthodox Joseph, that patriarch sent into Russia Maxim us, a Greek, to be metropolitan. It is to be observed that whenever the Russian prince chooses a metropolitan he selects a man of his own nationality, and that whenever the patriarch nominates anybody for the office he takes care to send a Greek. We may see in these facts a portent of the future, when Russia could dare to be more independent. In the last year of this gloomy thirteenth century the metropolitan Maximus moved his centre from the ruined Kiev and its desolated neighbourhood to the new capital, Vladimir. It was not long there; for on his death ( 1305) it was removed to Moscow, a city destined to be the great metropolis of the Russian Church and empire for many years to come.

To add to the troubles of these dark times, the princes, who were allowed a measure of home rule under the suzerainty of the khan, quarrelled among themselves. The Church was then the one bond of unity for the unhappy Russian people, and the metropolitan bishop its one visible centre. Thus this ecclesiastic acquired temporarily in Russia some shadow of the influence that was exercised by the pope in Italy during the quarrels of the barons. It was the perception of this fact that led Prince John at Moscow to invite the metropolitan to come from Vladimir and reside