Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/39

Rh "C'est dans cette circonstance que I'ambassadeur Français, Monsieur Guilleminot, protecteur legal de tous les Catholiques de l'empire Turc, opéra une réaction heureux au moyen de ses énergiques représentations." The effect of such powerful support, whilst it has led to the encouragement of proselytism, and to the extension of the authority of the see of Rome, has also had an undoubted tendency to loosen the dependence of a whole class of rayahs upon the justice and protection of the Porte, and to augment a pernicious foreign influence.

There are four Patriarchs residing at Constantinople, viz., the Greek and Armenian, and the so-called Greek Catholic and Armenian Catholic, who have large establishments here, called Patrik-khaneh, or patriarchates. They are the medium through which all the official affairs of their different communities are carried on at the Porte, to which end they receive a Nishân, or decoration, from the Sultan on their election to office. The incumbent of the Armenian Patriarchate, however, is generally a Bishop, who receives the honorary title of "Patriarch," in order to put him on a level with the heads of the other Churches: the Armenians, like ourselves, having no Patriarch,2 but a Catholicos or Primate, who resides at Etchmiadzine. The Jacobites have no representative at Constantinople, but their official correspondence with the Porte is carried on through the Monophysite Armenian Patriarch; and this doubtless is another cause why their ecclesiastical interests have been so much neglected. The affairs of the Chaldeans of Mesopotamia are in like manner committed to the care of the Armenian Catholic Patriarch.

During our residence at Constantinople, the Greek Patriarch died, and two days after a successor was appointed in the person of the Bishop of, which is one of the largest dioceses in the empire. It derives its name from two small islands in the Black Sea called ,3 but commences at Therapia, and includes a large extent of country around the capital. Some, I understand, proposed the late Patriarch, who had been deposed at the instance of Lord Ponsonby:4 but doubts arising whether he would be recognized by the Porte, another was appointed.

The mode of electing a new Patriarch is as follows: the