THE CHURCHES OF THE EAST
NESTORIAN, MONOPHYSITE AND OTHER EASTERN CHURCHES
Holy Father, keep them in Thy name whom Thou hast given me; that
they may be one, as we also are.
St. John, xvii: 11.
Our arrival at Mosul was to us a cause of gratification for many
reasons. Not the least of these was the very cordial reception tendered
us by the good Sons of St. Dominic whose hospitality to wayfarers like
ourselves has always been as proverbial as that of the Franciscans.
Indeed, the friars of both these venerable religious orders seem,
particularly in the Orient, to have made their own, the beautiful
Armenian saying “A guest comes from God.”
As for myself, I was specially glad to be in this famous old city,
for it is located on the Tigris which I was almost as eager to see as
the Euphrates. The names of both of these celebrated rivers had ever
been associated in my mind from my earliest youth and, seeing their
tawny waters for the first time, they evoked many pleasant memories of
boyhood days when I loved to picture to myself the remarkable peoples
who dwelt in the fertile land bounded by these two great waterways,
peoples whose marvelous achievements impressed me more then than did,
in maturer years, the matchless deeds of those incomparable men who
dwelt on the banks of the Nile and the Tiber.
But my chief reason for rejoicing on our arrival at Mosul was that I
there had a rare opportunity to complete observations which, during the
greater part of our journey, I had been making on the condition and
influence of what are known as the Eastern Churches. I do not speak of
an “Eastern Church,” about which so much has been written, for such
an organization, as contradistinguished from a Western Church, is mere
fiction.
The noted Venetian traveler, Marco Polo, in writing of the inhabitants
of Mosul, declares:
There is a kind of people called Arabi and these worship
Mohammed.[318] Then there is another description of people who
are called Nestorian and Jacobite Christians. These have a
Patriarch whom they call the Jatolic [he means Catholic] and
this Patriarch creates Archbishops and Abbots and Prelates of
all other degrees and sends them into every quarter, as to
India, to Baudas [Bagdad] or to Cathay, just as the Pope of Rome
does in Latin countries. For you must know that though there is
a very great number of Christians in those countries, they are
all Jacobites and Nestorians; Christians, indeed, but not in the
fashion enjoined by the Pope of Rome, for they come short in
several points of the faith.[319]
Nearly five and a half centuries after the illustrious Venetian
traveler had dictated these lines, the erudite historian and
Orientalist, von Hammer-Purgstall, referring to the inhabitants of
the terraced city of Mardin, located between Edessa and Mosul, wrote:
“There Sunnis and Shias, Catholic and Schismatic Armenians, Jacobites,
Nestorians, Chaldæans, Sun, Fire, Calf and Devil worshipers dwell one
over the head of the other.”[320]
These two quotations from writers who lived in such widely separated
periods give one a fair idea of what has long been the religious
affiliations of the greater part of the population of Mesopotamia and
what, with slight changes, they are still to-day.
Dismissing the Moslems and Pagans just mentioned as without the purview
of this chapter, a few pages on the different Christian bodies
above-mentioned will aid the reader to form an intelligent estimate
of the present condition of some of these Churches of the East and of
their relations to one another.
We begin with the Nestorians as they constitute the oldest of the
existing dissident Churches. The Arians, Novatians, Paulinists, and
scores of other heretics who gave such trouble to the early Christian
Church have long disappeared and only students of heresiology now know
what doctrines they really professed.
The distinguishing tenet of Nestorianism, which owes its origin
to Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople from 428 to 431, is the
assertion that in Christ there are two persons--the human and the
divine--and the denial that the Mother of Christ is the Mother of God.
The Catholic doctrine, as defined by the third Œcumenical Council held
at Ephesus in 431, is that in Christ there is but one person--the
person of the Son of God--and that the Blessed Virgin Mary is the
Mother of God--Θεοτόκος.
From its beginning Nestorianism has been essentially an eastern
organization and was early adopted by the successors of the “Parthians,
Medes, Elamites, and inhabitants of Mesopotamia,” who, on the first
Pentecost, were so amazed to hear the Apostles in Jerusalem speaking in
divers tongues the wonderful works of God.[321]
On account of political and other reasons, the Nestorians soon became
separated from the rest of Christendom. Banished from Edessa in 489
by the Emperor Zeno, they fled to Nisibis which then belonged to
Persia. The Persian King, learning that they did not profess the same
creed as that held by the Byzantines, with whom he was always at war,
took them under his protection. From that time the Nestorian Church,
which eventually became almost forgotten west of Mesopotamia, had an
extraordinary development in the East. For, although from his palace,
in the twin city of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the Nestorian Katholicos sent
missionaries to Arabia and Syria and Egypt, by far the larger number
went to far-off India and China. In the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, when the Nestorian Church attained its greatest development,
the jurisdiction of the Nestorian Katholicos rivaled in extent that of
the greatest of the Byzantine Patriarchs. For then the supreme head of
the Nestorians ruled over a vast number of bishops who were stationed
at important points in Asia from Mosul to Malabar and from Jerusalem to
Java and Peking.[322]
But from this period, the Nestorian Church, which had then reached
the zenith of its greatness and power, began rapidly to decline. Its
downfall was hastened by the Moslem hordes of Timur which then swept
over the greater part of middle and western Asia and subjected to the
fiercest persecution all who did not profess the religion of Mohammed.
In addition to the disasters which followed in the footsteps of the
Tartars from Delhi to Damascus and from the Aral Sea to the Persian
Gulf, the Nestorians suffered greatly from schisms and internal
quarrels. These, coupled with the devastations of the Tartars, from
which they never recovered, eventually reduced what was the greatest
Christian organization in Asia to a poor and insignificant community in
the bleak region of Kurdistan on the frontier between Persia and Turkey.
The Nestorian Patriarch now lives at Kochanes between Lake Van and
Lake Urmia and always assumes the title Mar Shimum--Lord Simon.[323] A
striking peculiarity of the Patriarchy is that it has been hereditary
since 1450 and passes from uncle to nephew. Realizing their miserable
condition in the spiritual as well as in the material order, many of
the Patriarchs during the last two centuries have sought reunion with
Rome. Thanks to the untiring missionary labors of the Dominicans of
Mosul the majority of the Nestorians, after fourteen centuries of
separation, have returned to the faith of their forefathers. Sometimes
the inhabitants of several villages returned together. All those in
and around Mosul who formerly professed the faith of Nestorians are
now members of what is known as the Chaldean Church, which is in
communion with Rome. And according to the latest reports from the
Dominican missionaries of Mosul, there is reason to believe that all
the remaining Nestorians will soon--if they have not already done
so--accept the teaching of the Council of Ephesus; and the schism,
which for more than fourteen centuries has kept countless myriads
outside the pale of the Mother Church, will, like many other schisms,
be but a matter of history.
Those who may still cling to Nestorianism--if there yet be any--have
long practically forgotten the great questions that so distracted
the Church in the East in the days of Nestorius, Diodore of Tarsus,
and Theodore of Mopsuestia. Few of them know why they have ever been
separated from the Church of Rome, and, when questioned about it,
are able to give no better reason than “Because we have always been
separated.” With the exception of the heresy of Nestorius which was
condemned at Ephesus, the faith of the Nestorians is virtually the same
as that taught by the Church of Rome. Like other Eastern Churches,
the Nestorian has its peculiar liturgy, rites, laws, customs, but
these are so far from affecting the truths of faith, that converts
from Nestorianism are allowed by Rome to retain all its peculiarities
of worship and religious observance, except in the rare cases in
which they actually conflict with Catholic dogma. This is evidenced
in the rites and liturgy of the Chaldeans--the Uniates, or converted
Nestorians--which are exactly the same as the schismatic Nestorians
have used from time immemorial.
When in 1750 the Dominican missionaries took up their abode in Mosul,
they found there but one Catholic family and that was one of the
Chaldean rite. But so fruitful was their work of conversion that the
Patriarch of Mesopotamia and Lower Kurdistan soon afterwards resigned
his position and his nephew and successor Mar Yohannan applied for
admission into the Church of Rome. He was followed almost immediately
by five of his bishops and by the greater part of his people in and
around Mosul.
This rapid movement Romeward of the Nestorian pastors and their flocks
is partly explained by the fact that they saw no valid reason for
remaining separated from a Church which taught the same doctrines as
they themselves had always believed and which, during long centuries of
persecution, they had preserved intact. But their reunion with Rome was
hastened by the tact and zeal of the learned and sympathetic Dominicans
whom all soon learned to revere and love. For these devoted priests not
only aided these poor but earnest people in becoming reconciled with
the Mother Church on the most lenient terms, but they also established
for them schools and asylums and hospitals where both souls and bodies
could receive much needed care.
In Mosul an up-to-date printing establishment was installed in which
were printed the Scriptures and other books in Arabic, Syriac, and
other languages. A seminary was founded for the benefit of Chaldean
students destined for the priesthood. The education of girls was
entrusted to the highly cultured Dominican Sisters of the Presentation
of Tours, France. Not only did they assume charge of preparatory and
normal schools but they also opened industrial schools for girls,
especially for the working girls of the city. They also took charge of
dispensaries where thousands of poor and sick people received free of
charge the medicine and treatment which their condition required and
which, before the arrival of these ministering angels of mercy, were
not available.
In view of all these facts is there anything surprising in the final
return of the followers of Nestorius to communion with Rome?[324]
The history of the Jacobites, of whom Marco Polo found many in
Mosul--“Christians indeed, but not in the fashion enjoined by the
Pope of Rome”--differs but little, except in one point of doctrine,
from that of the Nestorians. This point of doctrine is in one respect
the very opposite of the distinguishing dogma of the Nestorians. For,
whereas the Nestorians divided Christ into two persons against the
Catholic doctrine which maintained His unity, the Jacobites, contrary
to Catholic teaching, asserted that there is in Christ but one nature
and not two, the human and the divine, as decreed in 451, by the
Œcumenical Council of Chalcedon.[325] It is because this heresy teaches
the fusion of Our Lord’s humanity and divinity that it is called
Monophysitism. And because, in its early stages, it was so ardently
championed by Eutyches, an archimandrite of a monastery outside the
walls of Constantinople, it is also known as Eutychianism. The Syrian
Monophysites are usually called Jacobites, after Jacob Zanzalos, who
was an early and zealous propagator of the heresy.
So far as statistics are available the number of Jacobites is somewhat
larger than was that of the Nestorians when the Dominicans began to
lead them back to obedience to Rome. They are scattered throughout
Syria and Mesopotamia and Malabar. Their Patriarch, who always takes
the name Ignatius with the title of Antioch, resides at Mardin or
Diarbekir on the Upper Tigris to the northwest of Mosul. Although they
all talk Arabic, the Jacobites use the Syrian liturgy of St. James.
In consequence of the missionary labors of the Franciscans, Dominicans,
and Capuchins the majority of the Jacobites are again in communion with
Rome under the name of Melchites or Syrian Uniates. Their Patriarch
with the title of Antioch usually resides at Beirut. He has eight
suffragans, most of whom live in Mesopotamia. From present indications
the day does not seem distant when the Jacobites, like the Nestorians,
shall once more be reunited with the See of Peter, from which they have
so long been separated.
Another Eastern Church which has long been cut off from the rest of
Christendom is that of the Armenians. Like the Jacobites, the Armenians
early adopted Monophysitism, a doctrine which they still retain.
Although many of them have returned to Rome, the majority, known as
Gregorians from St. Gregory the Illuminator, the apostle of Armenia,
are still Monophysites. They have on various occasions sought corporate
reunion with the Church of their fathers, and, judging by their
friendly attitude towards Catholics, this union may take place at any
time.
A peculiarity about the Armenian Church is its intensely national
character. It is indeed the most national church in the world, for
its only members--whether Gregorians or Uniates--are Armenians. It
is their religion which has held the Armenians together in spite of
centuries of persecution by Persian satraps; in spite of the tyranny
of Seljuk sultans; in spite of the pogroms of Russian autocrats. To
no other people in the world, save only those of the real “Niobe of
nations”--the long-suffering but invincible sons and daughters of
Erin--has their religion served as a stronger bond of union than
it has to the cruelly harassed and down-trodden Armenians. It has
enabled them with unparalleled tenacity to preserve their language and
literature and live ever in the hope that they may one day--God grant
it may be soon!--achieve their national independence.
Statistics regarding the number of Armenians are very unsatisfactory.
If one were to believe all the horrible tales circulated during the
last few decades about wholesale massacres of Armenians by Turks and
Kurds and Russians, one would have to conclude that the brave and
patriotic race is now extinct. Fortunately we have positive evidence
that these bloodcurdling reports have, for political and other
un-altruistic motives, been greatly exaggerated and that there is
reason to believe that the number of Armenians still living in what was
once the Ottoman Empire is not far from three millions.
The Katholikos of the Gregorian Church, who is the successor of the old
line of Armenian Patriarchs descended from St. Gregory the Illuminator,
resides in the famous monastery of Etchimiadzin near Erivan in Russian
Armenia. This monastery, which has been the seat of the Patriarchs
for nearly five centuries, was formally ceded to Russia, after the
Russo-Persian War, in 1828, and since that time the Katholikos has been
subject to a Muscovite process of Russianization which has left him so
little liberty of action that his patriarchate has been reduced to what
is virtually only a primacy of honor.
In Turkey the Armenian Church is largely under the control of the
government. For, as far back as 1461, the Sultan Mohammed II, in order
to have the Primate of this Church under his direction, raised the
bishop of Constantinople to the dignity of Patriarch. As a result of
this arbitrary action of the Sultan the Patriarch of Constantinople and
not the Katholikos of Etchimiadzin has ever since been the real primate
of all the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.
In addition to the two Patriarchs just named, the Armenian Church
counts two others. For some centuries ago, as the result of schism
and usurpation, it was forced to recognize the self-styled Patriarchs
of Jerusalem, and Sis in Cilicia. But, although the schism has been
healed, the Patriarchs are still tolerated. They are, however, only
titular and have no jurisdiction as such.
Monophysitism was embraced not only by the Jacobites and Armenians but
also by a large part of the people of Egypt. It was these Egyptian
Monophysites who constituted what has since been known as the Coptic
Church. Like the Jacobites and Armenians, the Copts,[326] since their
schism has been out of communion with the rest of Christendom, have
suffered all the persecutions and been involved in all the internal
dissensions that have been the lot of the other schismatics of the East.
The Copts of Egypt now number about half a million souls. Their chief
ecclesiastical ruler, who usually resides in Cairo, is the Patriarch of
Alexandria. He pretends to be the direct successor of the Evangelist
St. Mark, the first bishop of Alexandria, and claims jurisdiction not
only over Egypt but over Abyssinia as well. Like the other Eastern
Churches, that of the Copts has its own peculiar rites and customs.
She uses old Coptic in her liturgy although it has for centuries been
a dead language and is no longer understood by any of her priests. As
is the case with most of the Nestorians and Jacobites, the language of
the Copts is Arabic. And like the sparsely scattered schismatics of
Syria and Mesopotamia, the great majority of the Copts and Abyssinians
live in a state of extreme poverty and ignorance, although their more
fortunate countrymen and coreligionists are now making efforts to
elevate them in the social scale and give them some of the benefits of
an elementary education.
In consequence of the missionary activities of Franciscans, Capuchins,
Jesuits, and Lazarists there are now many Uniate Copts and Abyssinians
and their number is gradually increasing. Like the Uniate Syrians, the
Uniate Copts are called Melchites.[327] The Primate of the Melchites
bears the title of “Patriarch of Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem and
all the East.” On specially solemn occasions he is called “Father
of Fathers, Shepherd of Shepherds, High Priest of High Priests and
Thirteenth Apostle.” Although he spends some weeks annually at
Jerusalem and Alexandria, where he administers the affairs of his
flock through vicars, he resides during the greater part of the year
in Damascus. The liturgy used by the Melchites is the Byzantine which
is usually celebrated in the Arabic language. On certain very solemn
occasions, however, the language of the liturgy is Greek.
Unique among all Eastern Churches is that of the Maronites. The members
of this interesting and flourishing communion are all Catholics and
it is their proud boast that their Church has never been tainted by
heresy. It is certain, however, that they were once Monothelites and
taught a doctrine which was but a veiled form of Monophysitism. But
this heresy they abandoned at the time of the Crusades when their
Patriarch made his submission to Rome. Since then, despite partial
defections and centuries of oppression on the part of their schismatic
and Mohammedan neighbors, their faith has been of practically
uninterrupted orthodoxy.
The Maronites constitute almost the entire population of the Lebanon.
There is besides a considerable number in Western Syria, Cyprus, Egypt,
and Palestine. According to the most reliable estimates available their
total number is about three hundred thousand.[328] The usual place of
residence of their Patriarch is the great monastery of St. Mary of
Kanobin in the Lebanon where for centuries the Maronite Patriarchs have
found their last resting place. The title of the Maronite Patriarch
is _Patriarchus Antiochenus Maronitarum_, but, curiously enough,
this Antiochene title is shared with him by no fewer than five other
Patriarchs, two of whom are schismatical and three Catholic. These are
the schismatic Patriarchs of the Jacobite and Orthodox Churches and
the Melchite, Syrian Catholic, and Latin Patriarchs, the last named
of whom is only titular. And strange to say, not one of these six
Patriarchs lives in Antioch. The language used in the Maronite liturgy
is ordinarily Syriac. But to priests who are not sufficiently familiar
with Syriac, permission is given to perform the liturgy in Arabic--but
Arabic written Syriac characters.
But a word needs to be said about the so-called Church of St. Thomas in
Malabar. Although Malabar Christians love to trace the origin of their
Church to St. Thomas the Apostle, it seems more probable that it was
founded by Nestorian missionaries when their activities extended over a
great part of Asia. At any rate, they were once Nestorians. At a later
period most of them became Monophysites. Now, however, the majority of
them are in communion with Rome under the name “Uniates of Malabar,”
with a peculiar rite of their own called the “Rite of Malabar.”
The different Churches which have engaged our attention in the
preceding pages and which cannot fail to enlist the interest of the
observant traveler in the Orient, suggest at least two questions
which demand an answer. What was originally the real cause of these
schismatic organizations which have no communion with one another? And
how explain the tenacity with which each of them, during more than
fourteen centuries, has clung to its peculiar rites and customs and
liturgies, and despite all the vicissitudes of war and conquest, has
preserved them intact to the present day?
In answer to the first part of the question it is usually asserted
that the cause of each of the dissident Churches in question was some
specific heresy. This is the truth but, as history proves, it is not
the whole truth. Misunderstanding, deception, national jealousies
and aspirations had probably as much--if not more--to do with the
separation of these Churches from Rome as the particular heresies with
which they are usually associated.
A striking proof of this assertion is the peculiar manner in which
Monophysitism was introduced into Egypt. The people of the Nile Land
readily embraced it because they were under the impression that it was
the teaching of St. Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria. As the chief
opponent of Nestorius and the valiant champion of Our Lady’s title
of Mother of God at the Council of Ephesus, he was regarded by the
Egyptians as their national hero and acclaimed their Christian Pharaoh.
They were confirmed in this view because Dioscur, Cyril’s successor
as Patriarch of Alexandria, was an avowed advocate of Monophysitism.
When his teaching was condemned at the Council of Chalcedon and he
was deposed from the office of bishop, the people of Egypt, who were
always loyal to their ecclesiastical Pharaoh, rallied to his support.
They did not stop to examine the merits of the case. The fact that
the doctrine, for which their Patriarch was deposed, was known to be
opposed to “the faith of the tyrant of the Bosphorus”--as the Byzantine
Emperor was called--was an additional reason why it approved itself
to the ever patriotic Egyptians. “Lurking under the dispute about one
or two natures in Christ was the old national feeling, the old hatred
of the Roman power.”[329] The decree of Chalcedon and the consequent
deposition of their Patriarch gave occasion for a recrudescence of this
hatred of Cæsar and Cæsar’s religion and for an anti-imperialistic
outbreak in Alexandria such as this great city had never before
witnessed. Thenceforth Monophysitism in its opposition to Byzantine
imperialism was identified with Egyptian nationalism. And when the
Mohammedans under Amru swept over Egypt, so great was the hatred of
the Copts for the Melkites that they sided with the Arabs against the
forces of Byzantium. But this with Monophysitism was the cause of their
downfall. “The great days when the Christian Pharaoh was the chief
bishop of the East have gone forever.”[330] And by a strange irony
of fate it was Constantinople, Alexandria’s detested rival, that was
eventually to hold the second place among the patriarchates of the
Church--a position which, since the days of St. Mark, had been held by
the world-famous metropolis of Egypt.
The events which attended the introduction of Monophysitism into Syria
were almost a repetition of those which occurred on the entrance of
this heresy into Egypt. And the causes which led to the introduction
of Monophysitism into the two countries and favored its development
there were practically the same. For Antioch, the capital of the
Seleucids, as well as Alexandria, the capital of the Ptolemies, was
a Greek city and each from the disruption of Alexander’s Empire had
been a center of Greek civilization and culture. But neither the
Syrians nor the Egyptians had ever become reconciled to the intrusion
of the Macedonians or other Greek-speaking peoples into their native
lands. Nor was their antagonism to foreign domination diminished when
their countries became appanages of Rome and Byzantium. They clung as
tenaciously as ever to the laws and customs and languages of their
fathers and welcomed an opportunity of concealing under the guise of
heresy their hatred of Cæsar’s religion as well as their ill-concealed
disloyalty to Cæsar’s empire.
In spite of the repeated efforts of the Emperors of Constantinople
to conciliate their disaffected subjects in Egypt and Syria and to
suppress a heresy that was a constant menace to the State, all their
endeavors proved abortive. And when the Moslems invaded Syria it was
in Monophysitism that its inhabitants found an outlash of their long
pent-up national and anti-imperial feelings which made the conquest
of Islam as easy in the Levant as it had been in the Delta of the
Nile. But the penalty paid by Syria for its disloyalty and schism
was no less terrific than that which reduced Egypt from its high
estate and degraded it to the rank of a dishonored province in the
ever-extending dominion of the Saracens. For just as it was schism that
led to the downfall of Alexandria--the seat of the greatest and most
celebrated patriarchate in the East--so was it schism that heralded the
inglorious collapse of her great rival--Antioch, the third city of the
empire--Antioch, where the followers of the Crucified were first called
Christians.
What has been said of Monophysitism as an outlet of national feeling in
Egypt and Syria holds equally true of it in Armenia. Its introduction
and rapid diffusion was in great measure due to jealousy of the
Orthodox Church and hatred of the Byzantine government. But far more
than in the case of other Eastern Churches, Monophysitism is the
religious bond that during long centuries of oppression and persecution
held the Armenians together as a nation and that, especially during
recent times, has won for this long-suffering people the sympathy of
the entire civilized world.
Only those who have traveled in the Near East and studied there the
aspirations of its peoples can fully realize the intense national
feeling of the Eastern Churches. Similarly only those who have
carefully studied the history of these various ecclesiastical bodies
can duly appreciate their present attitude toward the great Latin
Church of the West and understand that remarkable conservatism which
has ever been one of their most striking characteristics.
The truth is that in all the Eastern Churches--especially the
Armenian--national loyalty and national pride count for more than
religious conviction or dogmatic teaching. This, strange as it may
appear, means that the nation comes before the Church; that politics
takes precedence of theology.
To envisage the State as separated from the Church, politics as
distinct from religion, as we do in the West, is as alien to a Syrian
or an Armenian patriot as it is to a Persian mollah or an Ottoman grand
vizier. For this reason the Eastern Churches, like the theocratic
government of Islam to which they have so long been subject, have
always attributed so paramount an importance to everything that
specially bears on their national life and character. And they have
been confirmed in this view by their age-long treatment by the Sublime
Porte which, in organizing its Christian subjects, made religion the
basis of their nationality. Thus the Armenian Church was made _Ermeni
Millet_--the Armenian Nation; the Orthodox Church, regarded as
inheriting the name of the Roman Empire, became _Rum Millet_--the
Roman nation--while Catholics of the Latin rite are known as _Latin
Millet_--the Latin Nation. And so it was with the Churches of Egypt,
Syria, Mount Lebanon, and the various other Christian Churches in the
vast dominions of the Ottoman Sultan.[331]
From the foregoing it is seen that among Eastern Christians it is not
their particular church that counts so much as their _millet_.
This, although quite an artificial nation, is as dear to them as our
fatherland is to us, while in comparison all matters of dogma and
theology are quite secondary. For this reason it is that there are
rarely any conversions from one Eastern Church to another. And for this
reason, too, it is that--as has well been observed--“for a Jacobite to
turn Orthodox would be like a Frenchman turning German.”
This loyalty of the schismatic Christians in the East to the
traditions and national spirit of their forebears explains the
exceptional conservatism of the divers Churches to which they
belong--the tenacity with which through the ages they have clung to
their particular rites and customs and retained unchanged their special
liturgies since schism first separated them from their mother Church.
And it is this intense conservatism, this undying loyalty to their
_millet_ that constitutes the greatest barrier to the reunion of
the Eastern Churches with the primatial Church of Rome.
Then, too, there is ever before them the terror-inspiring specter of
Fragistan--Europe--which portends disasters innumerable. It is the
horrid old phantom of the land of mists and shadows which has been
haunting the East since the Trojan War--which reappeared with all
its horrid accompaniments of rapine and death during the invasion
of Alexander the Great and still again during the repeated and
long-continued campaigns of the Crusaders. These days of unalterable
woe have so seared the hearts and memories of the peoples of Western
Asia that, like the Trojans who feared the Greeks even when bearing
gifts, they have an inborn distrust of the Feringees,[332] of their
Churches, their schools, their laws, their governments.
It is because the Holy See is so thoroughly cognizant of all the
fears and jealousies and animosities of the divers Eastern Churches
and because she fully realizes the importance which they severally
attach to their _millet_ that she has always been so prudent and
considerate in her dealings with them and so disposed to conciliate
them and remove everything that might excite suspicion or distrust.
Always yearning for a return of the misguided children who so long ago
left her fold, she is ever ready to make any reasonable concession, so
long as it does not affect the deposit of faith of which she is the
divinely appointed custodian. Hence it is that, in her eagerness to
further the cause of the reunion for which she has always so ardently
longed, she has, in her supreme wisdom, ever been ready to allow each
Church and each _millet_ to retain its own laws and customs, rites
and liturgy, language and hierarchy. And it is because of this wise and
benevolent policy that recent years have witnessed the return to Rome
of so many thousands of Eastern schismatics--often whole dioceses at
a time--to the venerable Mother Church from which they had been lured
by heresy and schism in the long ago. So far, then, as the Eastern
Churches mentioned are concerned, it would appear from the foregoing
pages that the day is not very distant when, in great measure, heresy
shall be adjured and schism healed.
THE ORTHODOX CHURCHES
Just as it is not true to speak of an Eastern Church, so it is still
less true to speak of an Orthodox Church. For, whereas the Eastern
Churches we have considered are only seven in number, the Orthodox
Churches are no fewer than sixteen. But in their origin a very marked
difference is to be noted between the Orthodox and other Churches of
the East.
The Nestorian and Monophysite Churches, as we have noted, originated
in certain specific heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches. But the false
doctrines of these heresiarchs, as has been observed, contributed less
towards the separation of the Copts, Syrians, and others than did the
intense nationalism of these peoples who wanted only a pretext under
the guise of heresy for concealing their disloyalty to the Byzantine
Empire. Few of the rank and file knew anything about the theological
issues involved in the false doctrines of their leaders. The majority
of them were almost as ignorant of their real bearing on Catholic dogma
when the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon issued their famous decrees
as they are to-day. With possibly a few exceptions not even the clergy
or the bishops of the Eastern Churches are now aware of what was the
cardinal issue of their schism or are able to give anything more than
the vaguest and most shadowy reason for their continued separation from
the Church of Rome.
The Orthodox Churches--which embrace those Christians who use
the Byzantine rite but are not in communion with the Catholic
Church--unlike the Eastern Churches of which we have spoken, had
their origin not in heresy but in schism, pure and simple. Many
and various were the causes of this schism but the chief of them
were the jealousies and ambitions of the Emperors and Patriarchs of
Constantinople. And these jealousies and ambitions began at an early
date and gradually developed until they eventually culminated in the
fatal schism precipitated by Photius and Cerularius. For
_After that Constantine the Eagle turned_
_Against the course of heaven which it had followed_,[333]
there was ever-increasing friction between the East and the West.
Constantine, fully occupied with the affairs of his vast empire,
had wisely allowed the Church to govern herself[334] but such,
unfortunately, was not the policy of his successors. Continually
interfering in ecclesiastical affairs and determining questions of
doctrine by imperial decrees, they soon proved themselves the worst
enemies of the Church’s freedom of action. This was particularly true
during the Byzantine period which extended from the accession of
Justinian to the throne to the fall of Constantinople under Mohammed
II. During all this time the Emperors were unremitting in their
efforts to make the Church a subject of the State. In this they had
the ever-ready cooperation of the court bishops, whose subservience is
easily explained. Their ambitions were great and they counted on their
imperial masters to help them to realize their unholy aspirations. Nor
were they disappointed.
When in 330 Constantine established his new capital on the banks of
the Bosphorus and beautified it with all the artistic treasures he was
able to remove from the old capital on the Tiber, the ecclesiastical
head of Constantinople was but a simple bishop under the metropolitan
of Heraclea in Thrace. But this position was far from satisfying
the vaulting ambition of one who suddenly found himself the honored
chaplain of the Emperor and his court, the bishop of the magnificent
metropolis that was thenceforth to be the center of the Roman world.
What was now to prevent his becoming a Patriarch--the rival even of the
greatest of Patriarchs--of the successor of the Galilean Fisherman who
ruled the Universal Church from his palace in the old capital of the
Cæsars?
What indeed was to prevent him from making his dream a glorious
reality? The Emperor, he felt sure, would not thwart his ambitious
schemes. Nor did he. For it was in harmony with his policy of
centralization to have his court bishop raised to the highest
hierarchical position possible. It would add to his own prestige,
it would stimulate the loyalty of his subjects, and would augment
his power and influence in his dealings with the Church. Nor was he
mistaken. For history does not furnish more glaring examples of the
tyranny of Cæsar in the things of God nor of more ignoble subjection
of bishops to civil power than were exhibited in the Emperor’s
arbitrary and contemptuous treatment of those ecclesiastics--even the
highest--who, in return for the encouragement he had given to their
unholy ambitions, had become the willing vassals of the imperial
government.
In the evolution of the See of Constantinople, barely fifty years
were required for achieving the joint plan of Bishop and Emperor.
For as early as the year 381 it was decreed by a council summoned by
the Emperor Theodosius I, which was composed of only a comparatively
small number of Eastern bishops, and at which the Holy See had no
representative, that thenceforth the Bishop of Constantinople should
have the primacy of honor after the Bishop of Rome, because that
city--Constantinople--was New Rome. Thus, by a stroke of the pen, the
Patriarch of Alexandria, who had previously held precedence after the
Pope of Rome, was supplanted by the Bishop of Byzantium. The Pope and
the Alexandrian Patriarch protested against this outrageous proceeding,
but it was of no avail. The Emperor and his subservient bishops had
achieved their ambitious purpose and had virtually divided Christendom
into two dominant Patriarchates--that of the West, under Rome, and that
of the East, under Constantinople.
It was this realization by the bishops of New Rome of their most
cherished aspiration--the separation of the Church into two great
Patriarchates--that engendered and fostered that jealousy and friction
that ever afterwards existed between Rome and Constantinople and which,
more than anything else, led to that ever-regrettable schism that still
separates the East from the West. For the position of the Church of
New Rome, as that of the “first Church of all Eastern Christendom,
was so exalted that her bishops even ventured to think themselves the
rivals of the Roman Pope, so influential that when at last they”--her
bishops--“fell into formal schism, they dragged all the other eastern
bishops with them.”[335]
Besides the jealousy and overweening ambition of sycophantic bishops
and tyrannical Emperors, there were other determining causes of the
estrangement between the Eastern and Western halves of Christendom and
of the ultimate establishment of an autonomous Byzantine episcopate.
Not the least of these was the difference of language. For after
Constantinople had become the capital of the Empire, the Roman Court
became so completely Hellenized that the language of Virgil and Cicero
was no longer heard and was understood by but few. Even Photius, the
most eminent scholar of his time, was ignorant of Latin. For this
reason, it is quite possible that, aside from Byzantine ambitions and
aspirations, “the divergence of tongues, combined with the Hellenic
contempt of the Latin race might have contributed to ... a grouping of
the Eastern Churches around the See of Constantinople, and thus have
brought about, more or less rapidly, the formation of a Greek autonomy.
The Roman Empire had succeeded in overpowering and even in suppressing
the tongues of all the other conquered nations--such as the Syriac,
Coptic, Celtic, Iberian, Phœnician, Etruscan, and many others--but it
had never attempted anything in the direction of the Greek language.
The result was that Greek ranked side by side with Latin as a second
official tongue and this cause brought about the division of the
Empire. Nor was it merely a question of tongues. Latins as well as
Greeks knew and recognized that all intellectual culture in the West
had its origin in Greek antiquity; hence arose a superiority that,
when once the Empire was divided, promptly gave to the Greek portion a
preponderance over the Latin.”[336]
Nothing, however, was so calculated to stir up the rancor of the Greeks
against the Latins as the Pope’s coronation of Charlemagne as Emperor
of territory that was regarded as an integral part of the Byzantine
Empire. For the Greeks then held the theory, which was subsequently
so elaborated by Dante in his _De Monarchia_, that the cause of
Cæsar was the cause of Christ and that the perfection of the Church
presupposed the integrity of the Empire and harmonious relations
between Pope and Emperor. When, therefore, the Roman Patriarch set up
a rival Augustus in the person of Charlemagne and divided the Roman
Empire, which, under Justinian, extended from the Euphrates to the
Pillars of Hercules, he was in the estimation of the Byzantines guilty
of high treason. Claiming that they alone had the direct line of
imperial continuity they would never recognize Charlemagne as anything
more than “a barbarian King of a barbarian people.”[337] To what extent
the establishment of the Empire in the West contributed to existing
friction and to the fatal rupture between New Rome and Old Rome, which
occurred seventy years later, is a matter of speculation, but it can
scarcely be doubted that its effect on the exacerbated temper of the
Greeks was far greater than is usually imagined.
Although, during the first five centuries of its existence, the See of
Constantinople had several times been out of communion with Rome, the
“Great Schism,” as it is called, was not inaugurated until Photius,
with the connivance of the Byzantine Emperor, iniquitously usurped
the Patriarchate of New Rome. After the death of this intruder in 891
peace was again restored between the Eastern and Western Churches.
But the schism that had been engendered by the misunderstandings
and animosities, jealousies and ambitions, of centuries was healed
only temporarily. For but a little more than a century and a half
had elapsed after the mortal remains of Photius--who has been called
“the Luther of the Orthodox Church”--had been moldering in an unknown
grave when the Byzantine Church was again, in 1050, thrown into schism
by the overweening ambition of Michael Cerularius, whom the Emperor
Constantine IX had, in violation of the most sacred laws of the
Church, foisted into the See of Constantinople as its Patriarch.
Neither Photius nor Cerularius, it must here be observed, instigated
schism because of controverted questions of dogma. Photius caused it
by his shameless usurpation of the See of the lawful Patriarch of
Constantinople. Cerularius, in his opposition to Rome, was actuated
by similar motives. But he was not, like his schismatic predecessor,
satisfied to be Primate of the Byzantine Church. His pride and ambition
led him to aim at something far higher. This was nothing less than
the founding of a theocracy of which he was to be supreme head and in
which the State was to be subservient to the Church. This theocracy
was to be the antithesis of the Cæsaropapism which had flourished
almost uninterruptedly since the death of Constantine. At one time,
indeed, Cerularius thought seriously of uniting the imperial and the
patriarchal functions and proclaiming himself the Emperor-Patriarch of
the Roman Empire....[338] He began to wear purple shoes, one of the
Emperor’s prerogatives, and to join royalty and the priesthood in his
own person. Michael Prellos, who knew him well and who wrote a valuable
history of this period, informs us in referring to Cerularius: “In his
hands he held the cross while from his mouth issued imperial laws.”
But Cerularius’ ambition was the cause of his undoing. Like Photius he
was made Patriarch by the Emperor. Like Photius he was deposed from
his exalted position by imperial authority and sent into exile on the
charge of high treason. But, although he failed in his stupendous
scheme to make himself the Emperor-Patriarch of the East, he was
successful where Photius fell short--in definitively separating the
Greek from the Latin Church and by perpetuating the most disastrous
schism which has ever befallen the Church of Christ. It was for
this “unheard of offence and injury done to the Holy Apostolic and
First See” that the Papal Legates in Constantinople, who tried to
the last to prevent schism, pronounced Cerularius and his adherents
Anathema Maran-atha.[339] Their last words after laying the bull of
excommunication on the altar of Santa Sophia were _Videat Deus et
judicet_.
These words in which they called upon God to witness and judge were
uttered at nine o’clock in the morning, July 16, 1054. The Great Schism
which--aside from a brief interval--has ever since continued unbroken
was then a _fait accompli_.
No sooner had the schism of Cerularius become an accomplished fact,
than God-fearing men of both the Eastern and the Western Church set to
work to devise ways and means of closing the deplorable breach. The
Popes especially never lost sight of their erring children to the east
of the Adriatic. From the fateful sixteenth of July, 1054, until the
present, they have made efforts innumerable to bring about a reunion
between the tragically separated churches. With this object in view,
two General Councils were convened, the Second Council of Lyons in 1274
and the Council of Florence in 1439.
But since the outbreak of the schism, a new barrier had been erected
between the East and the West, which seemed almost insurmountable.
This was the result of the horrible sack of Constantinople by the
soldiers of the Fourth Crusade. The cruelties, massacres, and
wholesale destruction of the choicest works of art which attended this
unpardonable outrage made it one of the most shocking events in the
history of the capital.[340] Then, too, there was the establishment of
the Latin Empire in Constantinople and the erection of Frankish States
in Syria and Palestine. This ruthless ignoring by the Latins of the
sovereign rights of a Christian power and all the wanton cruelty that
accompanied it was still fresh in the minds of the Greek delegates when
they convened at Lyons and Florence and this, added to all the causes
of friction that had so long rankled in the hearts of the Byzantines,
made a successful issue of the deliberations of the assembled fathers
almost hopeless.
Notwithstanding, however, all the causes of rancor that existed, a
reunion was effected by each of the Councils but in each case it lasted
only a very short time. For no sooner did the people of Constantinople
hear of the action of the Council of Lyons than, exercising what should
now be called the right of referendum, they rose in insurrection
against it. As a result, however, of the reunion brought about by the
Council of Florence, the Byzantine Church remained, at least nominally,
in communion with the Holy See for a period of thirty-three years--from
1439 to 1472. It was during this fateful time that Constantinople was
taken by the Turks under Mohammed II.
The Conquest of Constantinople was almost as great a turning point
in the history of the Byzantine Church as was the Great Schism of
Photius and Cerularius. For the Sultan had scarcely taken possession
of the city when he sent for the leader of the anti-Papal party, one
George Scholarios, and, with a view of winning him together with the
schismatic Byzantines over to his rule as against that of the Catholic
Powers of the West, he had him made Patriarch, although at the time of
his appointment Scholarios seems to have been a layman.
No sooner had the Sultan championed the cause of the Greeks against
Rome than they at once exultingly rallied around their Patriarch and,
in words of deepest hatred and wildest fanaticism, shouted: “Rather the
Sultan’s turban than the Pope’s tiara.” They have had their choice but
with what long centuries of degradation and ignominy!
Neither the Patriarch nor his followers had to wait long before
the scales fell from their eyes. For no sooner had Scholarios,
under the direction of the Sultan, been appointed to the See of
Constantinople than Mohammed sent for him and handed him the
_berat_-diploma[341]--which defined what were his duties and
prerogatives as Patriarch under the Moslem Government. But this was not
all. For scarcely had he been invested with the signs of his spiritual
jurisdiction than the unfortunate Patriarch was given to understand
that he was nothing more than a puppet in the hands of his Moslem
master who could depose him at will. Each of his successors since that
time in the See of Constantinople has been obliged to submit to the
same humiliating ceremony of investiture.
To their intense chagrin the Patriarchs soon learned furthermore that
their appointment had to be followed by a gift to the Sultan of a large
sum of money; that their tenure of office would rarely exceed two
years;[342] that they could be deposed to make room for others who were
forced to pay similar exorbitant sums for their appointment; that they
might be deposed and reappointed no fewer than five times and at each
appointment to the office from which they had been deposed, they would
be obliged to renew the enormous bribe to their arbitrary and rapacious
overlord.
The result was simony of the worst kind, for, in order to obtain
the money required by the Moslem tyrant for their appointment, the
subservient Patriarchs resorted to the selling of benefices to priests
and bishops and metropolitans. To such an extent had this sacrilegious
traffic in the things of God been carried on that simony has long
made the Orthodox Church “a reproach and a scoff, an example and an
astonishment among the nations that are round about her.”
But the troubles and humiliations of the Œcumenical Patriarch--as
the Primate of the Byzantine Church is called--did not end with his
degrading investiture by the Sultan, or, as was more frequently the
case, by his Grand Vizier and by the payment of an enormous bribe for
his appointment. Owing to his subjugation to the Sublime Porte, he
soon found himself confronted with untold difficulties based on racial
jealousies and antagonisms. These were augmented by the subserviency of
the Phanar--the Vatican of the Orthodox Church--and the readiness which
Phanariote Greeks always exhibited to become the agents of Turkish
oppression of their fellow Christians--especially those in the Balkans.
It was because the policy of the Phanar was identical with that of the
Porte that the enemies of the Sultan were unwilling to acknowledge any
kind of dependence on the Byzantine Patriarch. This was strikingly
evinced in the war of Greek Independence, as one of the first acts
of the Greek Parliament was to declare the Church in Greece to be
autocephalous.
The example of Greece was subsequently followed by the different
states in the Balkans. For no sooner had they freed themselves from
Turkish rule than they proclaimed their independence of the Œcumenical
Patriarch.
This Philetism--love of one’s race--in things ecclesiastical, which
the various nations of southeastern Europe so conspicuously exhibited
during the last century was a great blow to the Phanar, but it was
this same kind of nationalism that was the chief cause of the Great
Schism. Greece and Roumania, Serbia and Bulgaria, and Russia, long
before any of them, had done nothing more than had the Orthodox Church
when it separated itself from communion with Rome. It was in vain that
the Phanar announced Philetism as a heresy. It was but the reassertion
of the national idea which had led the Œcumenical Patriarch to rebel
against the Pope--the construing of it into the principle _cujus
regio ejus religio_ which met with such favor in the seventeenth
century in Germany, according to which “each politically independent
state should have an ecclesiastically independent church.” As a result
of the frequent application of this principle the Orthodox Church has
shared the fate that never fails to overtake schism and heresy. In
consequence of political and ecclesiastical jealousies and antagonism;
of excommunications and counter-excommunications by rival bishops;
of divisions and subdivisions, the once great and powerful Orthodox
Communion now finds itself divided into sixteen independent Churches
whose jurisdiction ranges in extent from that of the Independent Church
of the monastery of Mount Sinai to that of the once great Empire of
Russia. There is now little left to the Patriarch of Constantinople but
the primacy of honor, for he has no jurisdiction outside of his rapidly
diminishing Patriarchate. Is there in all history a more striking case
of poetic justice than that afforded by the gradual disintegration of
the proud and ambitious Patriarchate of Constantinople?
Although the retribution which has visited Cerularius and his
successors is fearful to contemplate, stern Nemesis still pursues
the Œcumenical Patriarchs with unrelenting severity. For now these
unfortunate hierarchs are trembling under the Damoclean sword, which
the vengeful goddess has put into the hands of Russia.
In 1721 Peter the Great placed the Church of Russia under the Holy
Directing Synod, where it has since remained. As this Synod was never
more than the shadow of the Czar, the Church of Holy Russia was for
two centuries the most Erastian Christian organization that has ever
existed. For during all this time the Holy Synod was as much under the
domination of the Czar as any department of the imperial government.
Added to this is the portentous fact that the Russian Church counts
eight times as many communicants as all the other Orthodox Churches
together. Even in the famous monastic republic of Mount Athos--a
supposedly Greek community--where in 1902 there were seven thousand
and five hundred monks, the majority were Slavs and nearly one-half
were Russians.
All this being the case, the Russians, who are fully as ambitious as
were the Greeks in the time of Photius and Cerularius, are beginning to
ask themselves whether the time has not arrived for the Holy Synod to
assume the supreme headship of the entire Orthodox Church. Nor is the
Phanar ignorant of the aspirations and purposes of the Holy Synod. It
has read the writing on the wall and knows that as soon as the Russian
Church shall find a leader with the towering ambition and intense
national spirit of Photius, the fondly-entertained project of the Holy
Synod will be quickly realized, that the primacy of the Orthodox Church
will be transferred to Moscow or Petrograd, and that the power and the
prestige of the Œcumenical Patriarch will then be little more than were
those of his first predecessor when he was the humble suffragan of the
Metropolitan of Heraclea. The Great Church--the official designation
of the Patriarchate of Constantinople--will then have shared the fate
of the Churches of Antioch and Alexandria which, in the days of their
glory, were the rivals of the Mother Church of Imperial Rome. And then,
too, will the aspiring Greeks be rudely wakened from the fantastic
dream of their “Great Idea”--the idea of a great and reconstructed
Hellas that shall embrace the Balkans and have as its capital the Queen
City of the Bosphorus.
There are few things in the history of the Church, which the lover of
Christian Unity and peace finds more saddening than the clandestine
intrigues and open antagonism that led to the Great Schism; few things
that are more discreditable than the incessant machinations of those
politicians and ecclesiastics who were the cause of all those fatal
dissensions which were so characteristic of the Orthodox Church during
the nineteenth century and have led to that widespread disintegration
which, there is reason to fear, is just beginning. While one can have
no sympathy with the authors of these disastrous schisms in the just
retribution which has been meted out to them, one cannot help pitying
the countless thousands among the clergy and laity who, in spite of the
unpardonable scandals caused by Church and State are, nevertheless,
earnestly striving to further the cause of Christ and to reflect in
their lives the teaching of the gospel of their Redeemer. In Russia,
in Greece, in Asia Minor--wherever the Orthodox Church still retains
a hold on her children--one cannot help being edified by the piety,
the zeal, the deep religious spirit of innumerable thousands who are
not only ignorant of the cause of the schism that separates them from
the Church of Rome but are also ignorant that they have even been in
schism. Of those, however, who are acquainted with the origin of the
Great Schism there are many who ardently hope and pray that it may soon
be healed. For they have learned by long and sad experience the truth
of the words of St. John Chrysostom who--with the possible exception of
St. Gregory Nazienzen--was the most illustrious prelate who ever ruled
the See of Constantinople: “Nothing can hurt the Church so much as love
of power.”[343]
REUNION OF THE EASTERN CHURCHES WITH THE HOLY SEE
During my wanderings in the Near East, as during previous travels in
Greece and Russia, a question of ever-absorbing interest to me was
that of the long-desired and often-attempted reunion of the Eastern
Churches with the Church of Rome. When I contemplated the majestic
temples of Petrograd with their surging multitudes of pious worshipers
and examined the stately convents and monasteries of Moscow with their
vast number of devoted, God-fearing inmates; when I marveled at the
shiploads of Russian pilgrims who at great expense and with great
discomfort annually visited the Holy Land and noted the sumptuous
hospices and shrines that their government has there erected for
them; when I beheld the desecrated temples of Hellas and Anatolia and
recalled how the Greeks, during long centuries of oppression and
degradation--when they had everything to gain by apostasy--preserved
intact the faith of the Orthodox Church and augmented that vast army of
martyrs who sealed their belief in Christ with their blood--when I saw
and recollected all this, there was the ever-recurrent question, “Will
the fateful schism of a thousand years ever be healed?”
As we have already seen, the last reconciliation of the Orthodox Church
with the Holy See took place at the Council of Florence in 1439. On
this occasion, also, the Coptic, Abyssinian, Jacobite, Maronite, and
Armenian Churches were wholly or partially united with the great Mother
Church, from which they had so long been separated. It was then that
the Uniate Churches already referred to had their origin. But as the
reunion of the Orthodox Church had been based on political rather
than ecclesiastical grounds it was of short duration, for it was
formally repudiated by the Byzantines in 1472, nineteen years after the
occupation of Constantinople by the Ottoman army under Mohammed the
Conqueror.
But, although the reunions effected at the Councils of Lyons and
Florence were so short-lived, the hope of an eventual and enduring
reunion has always been cherished not only by the Latins but by an
influential body of the Orthodox Church as well. It will suffice here
to refer to two recent efforts to secure reunion--one of which was
made by the Œcumenical Patriarch, Joachim III, a little less than two
decades ago, and one made by Pope Leo XIII a few years earlier.
In a noted encyclical addressed to the divers Orthodox Churches, the
Œcumenical Patriarch requested them to consider the question of reunion
of Christendom. His courteous and charitable references in this letter
to the Latin Church and his expressed hope that it and the Orthodox may
again be reunited evince a man of a deeply religious spirit, whose sole
object was the cause of Christ, which, as he conceived it, would be
immensely advanced by the restoration of Church unity. But the replies
which he received from the sister Church--those in communion with the
Patriarch of Constantinople--soon convinced him that his efforts in the
direction of the proposed reunion were doomed to failure.
In his famous encyclical _Præclara_--aptly called the “Testament
of Leo XIII.”--which was addressed on June 20, 1894, to “Princes and
Peoples,” His Holiness speaks to his wayward and error-bound children
in words of surpassing tenderness and deepest paternal solicitude.
There is not a word of reproach, not a single expression to wound
even the most sensitive.[344] He refers lovingly to the East, “whence
salvation spread over the whole world”; to the resplendent history of
their venerable sees; to the Greeks who had occupied the Chair of Peter
and had edified the Church by their learning and virtue. In his plea
for reunion he declares: “No great gulf separates us; except for a
few smaller points we agree so entirely with you that it is from your
teaching, your customs and rites that we often take proofs for Catholic
dogma.”[345] And referring to certain unfounded charges that had often
been made against the Holy See, he declares in the most positive terms
that no Pope has the slightest desire to diminish the dignity and
rights of any of the great Patriarchates of the East. And as for their
venerable customs “we shall,” he assures them, “provide in a broad and
generous spirit.”
Had the occupant of the Patriarchal See of Constantinople been imbued
with the spirit of his illustrious countryman, Cardinal Bessarion,
who labored so strenuously for Church reunion at the Council of
Florence, and had he been actuated by a tithe of the zeal and charity
and love of peace that so distinguished the great St. Athanasius of
Alexandria, there is reason to believe that the Sovereign Pontiff’s
gentle and noble letter would have met a very different reception and
that measures would have been taken ere this to terminate a schism
which during ten long centuries has been so prolific of evil to untold
millions of souls redeemed at an infinite price.
But, unfortunately for the Eastern Churches, as well as for the Church
of Rome, Anthimos VII was then Œcumenical Patriarch. His offensive
and abusive reply to the gracious and generous appeal of the renowned
successor of the Fisherman shows that in character and zeal for souls
and ardent love of the Church of Christ he was the very opposite of the
great Pontiff whose overtures he so disdainfully and so ignominiously
rejected.
Although the efforts to restore union which were made by Joachim III
and Leo XIII were, apparently, completely ineffectual, there can be
no doubt that they set people--both clergy and laity--to thinking,
and that Church unity is now nearer realization than it has been for
centuries. Thanks to more frequent communication between the East
and the West, as well as to the all-powerful agency of the press,
the people of the Eastern Churches are beginning to realize as never
before the extent and magnitude of the frightful evils that have been
engendered by the Erastianism and the Philetism which so dominate the
Churches of Russia and the Balkans. They have learned that most of the
hatred, dissensions, and race antagonisms which have so grieved and
afflicted them may be traced to their lack of a central ecclesiastical
authority and to the fact that their clergy have been forced to become
mere tools of the government. Comparing their condition before the
Great Schism with what it is now, they find to their sorrow that
they are suffering from arrested development; that their boasted
conservatism is but an euphemism for fossilization; that they have
long ceased to be a living, active force, and that their only hope of
regaining their erstwhile power and prestige is to become reunited with
the Apostolic See.
Those who were familiar with the history of the past will recall the
days when the eminent saints and scholars Athanasius, Clement, and
Cyril of Alexandria reflected such honor on the Church in Egypt;
when St. John Damascene and St. Ephrem were the glory of Syria and
Mesopotamia; when St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory of Nyssa,
and St. Gregory Nazianzen were the great intellectual luminaries of
Asia Minor and the revered doctors of the entire Church of Christ. And
pondering these facts it may occur to them that had Photius been less
ambitious and more religious he might now be numbered not among sowers
of scandal and schism--
_Seminator di scandalo e di scisma_[346]
but among the great Fathers who were ever-zealous promoters of the good
name and the sacred union of the Church Universal.
They will also recall the disillusioning and disconcerting fact that
since the very beginning of schism, the Eastern Church, to quote
the words of Dean Stanley, “has produced hardly any permanent works
of practical Christian benevolence. With very few exceptions, its
celebrated names are invested with no stirring associations. It seems
to open a field of interest to travelers and antiquarians, not to
philosophers or historians.... As a rule there has arisen in the East
no society like the Benedictines, held in honor wherever literature
or civilization has spread; no charitable orders like the Sisters of
Mercy, which carry light and peace into the darkest haunts of suffering
humanity.”[347]
So far as intellectual life is concerned they will find that the above
words apply with equal truth even to the great monastic republic of
Mount Athos, which, during the Middle Ages, was so noted a center of
Greek learning. For, sad to relate, one finds even there the same
intellectual apathy and decay as elsewhere, and its seven and more
thousand monks are to-day as dead set against scholarship as when they
indignantly razed the school which Eugenius Bulgaris, the greatest
Greek scholar of the eighteenth century, had there established in their
own behoof.
It is the recollection of all these things--“the remembering in misery
the happy time”--combined with the kind and generous invitation of Leo
XIII to return to the Church of their fathers, that has swelled the
ranks of that long-existent party in the Orthodox Church known as the
λατεινόφοροντες--Latin-favorers--who have always deplored schism and
who would use all their influence to bring it to an early termination.
This party, which has long groaned under the Erastianism of the Czar
and the absolutism of the Sublime Porte, is only biding its time to
seize an opportunity to return to its allegiance to the Pope. Professor
Harnack, whose competency to express an opinion in this matter no one
will question, declared in a notable pronouncement on the encyclical
Præcala of Leo XIII that:
People who understand Russia know that there is a patriotic
Russian party--or rather tendency--in the heart of the country,
in Moscow and among the most educated people, that hopes for
a movement of their Church in the direction of the Western
Church--that is of the Roman, not the Evangelical Communion--who
work for this and who see in it the only hope of Russia. This
party manifests its ideas in writing, so far as circumstances
in Russia allow, and has already shown that it possesses men
of unusual talent, warm love of their country and undoubted
devotion to the Greek Church. They have also considered how they
shall reconcile Russia’s traditions and world-power with a
change in her Church affairs that shall harmonize with the views
of Rome and they believe in its possibility.[348]
If the Latin-favorers could now find a leader of commanding personality
there is good reason to believe that the reunion of the Eastern and
Western Churches would not be far distant. Had Russia a pious and
forceful monarch like her saintly Apostle, King Vladimir, or had
Constantinople a Patriarch of the zeal and influence of St. Theodore of
Studium, the great majority of the Orthodox Church, who know nothing
about the origin of the existing schism, would follow such a leader
without hesitation. And so slight would be the change in faith, in
consequence of reunion, that the great mass of the faithful would
scarcely be conscious of it. Their faith would remain exactly the same
as it was before the schism.
And this holds true not only of the Orthodox Church but of all the
other schismatic churches as well. They would, all of them, retain
their peculiar rites and customs; they would hear the same language in
the liturgy that has been consecrated by long centuries of use. The
Copts would retain the presanctified liturgy of St. Mark and continue
to use the venerable Alexandrine rite in the Coptic language. The
Jacobites would celebrate the sacred mysteries in Syriac according to
the age-old ritual of St. James. The adherents of the Orthodox Church
would still hear their strange chant echoing “backwards and forwards
through the gleaming inconostasis, while the deacon waves his ripidion
over the holy gifts and the clouds of incense are borne through the
royal doors. Still the people would crowd up for the antidoron and the
kolybas, dive for the cross at the holy lights, kiss each other on
Easter Day and dance for the Forerunner’s birth, while the psalms from
the Holy Mountain would still sound across the Ægean Sea.”[349]
It is because the venerable eastern rituals and liturgies, in their
several ancient languages, represent some of the most sacred traditions
of the Church that Pope Leo XIII in his noted encyclical _Orientalium
Dignitas Ecclesiarum_ praises them so highly and applies to
the bride of Christ the words of the Psalmist: “The queen”--the
Church--“stood on Thy right hand in gilded clothing; surrounded with
variety.”[350]
As I observed, during my travels in the Near East, the frightful
ravages that schism has everywhere caused, and noted the growing
tendency of many to return to “the unity of faith and the knowledge
of the Son of God,”[351] I repeated with ever renewed fervor
the supplication in St. Basil’s liturgy: Πãνσον τα σχίσματα των
ἐκκλησιῶν--“Grant that Church schisms may cease.” And never did I in
fancy more frequently hear reëchoed the touching words of Our Saviour
before his passion: “I pray ... that they all may be one, as Thou,
Father, in Me, and I in Thee; that they also may be one in Us.”[352]