Greece._
We look in vain in the history of the Church in Eastern Europe for the
missionary activity which {136} bears so prominent a place in the
annals of Western Christendom. [Sidenote: Lack of missionary zeal in
the East.] The minds of Eastern Christians were still much occupied by
continued contests between the Catholic Faith and developments of
already condemned heresies, and to these succeeded the scarcely less
absorbing controversy about Image-breaking. Nor was there in the East
the same pressing contact with Paganism, which made it in the West a
political necessity no less than a religious duty at once to
christianize and civilize the ever advancing hordes of heathen
barbarians. [Sidenote: Conversion of Bulgaria.] The evangelization of
Bulgaria was, however, begun early in the ninth century, by the
carrying off of the Bishop of Adrianople and many of his flock, in a
victorious inroad of the Bulgarians, A.D. 811. Half a century later
the Bulgarian King Bogoris, influenced by his sister, who had been
brought up a Christian at Constantinople, put himself and his country
under the tuition of the Greek patriarch Photius. Soon after, becoming
weary of his Eastern instructors, he applied for aid to the Western
Church, and, in A.D. 867, the Pope Nicholas I. despatched two Italian
Bishops and other missionaries to Bulgaria. [Sidenote: Collision
between Greek and Roman missionaries.] This interference of the Roman
Church, in an already occupied field of missionary labour, added
considerably to the jealousy between East and West, and helped to bring
about the eventual and lamentable schism. Bogoris soon after returned
to his allegiance to Photius, insisted on the withdrawal of the Roman
Mission, and obtained a Greek Archbishop of Bulgaria from
Constantinople.
[Sidenote: Peculiar position of the Eastern Church.]
The state of external isolation in which the Church of the Eastern
Empire was placed by the {137} Schism of A.D. 1054, had a tendency to
increase its exaggerated spirit of conservatism, which was also
encouraged by the indolent unenterprizing temper of the Greeks of the
later empire, whose blood had not been quickened by the same admixture
of races as had given new life to the worn out nations of the West.
[Sidenote: Effects of the Crusades.] Under these circumstances the
crusades were hardly less a cause of terror to the Greeks than were the
advances of the Turks themselves, and tended to widen rather than to
heal the unhappy breach between the Latin and Greek Churches.
[Sidenote: Unjustifiable proceedings of the Latins.] The foundation of
a Latin Patriarchate at Jerusalem, after the taking of that city in
A.D. 1099, could not but be accounted an usurpation on the part of the
Pope, which was, however, far surpassed in injustice by the erection of
a Latin empire and a Latin Patriarchate in Constantinople itself, A.D.
1204. During the time that this oppressive arrangement lasted (i.e.
till A.D. 1261) the rightful Patriarch took refuge at the court which
the Eastern emperors held at Nicaea in Asia Minor, and the fugitives
there clung to their national Church, and her rightful independence.
[Sidenote: Attempts at reunion.] The Emperor Michael Palaeologus, after
driving out the Latins from Constantinople, endeavoured once more to
effect a reunion between East and West, partly from political and
partly from personal motives, and a formal act of union was signed,
A.D. 1274. Neither the Greek Clergy nor the Greek people would,
however, consent to give up their own national religious customs, nor
to acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope; and this shadow of union died
out with the death of the Emperor, its originator. [Sidenote: Invasion
of the Turks.] In the fourteenth century {138} the Turks were
treacherously invited over to Europe as allies of the usurper, John
Cantacuzenus (A.D. 1347-A.D. 1353), and so firm a footing did they
gain, that the rightful Emperor, John Palaeologus (A.D. 1341-A.D.
1391), found himself obliged to appeal to Rome for aid, promising in
return to reconcile the Greek Church to the Roman communion. The
affairs of Western Europe, were, however too unsettled to admit of such
aid being afforded, and the Emperor was obliged to give up all his
possessions to the Turks, except Constantinople, Thessalonica, part of
the Morea, and a few islands. Another appeal was made, with the same
results, by his son, Manuel Palaeologus (A.D. 1391-A.D. 1425).
[Sidenote: New attempts at reunion.] John VII. (A.D. 1425-A.D. 1448)
opened fresh negociations with the West, and he and the Patriarch of
Constantinople, together with twenty-one other Eastern Bishops,
appeared (A.D. 1438) at the Council of Ferrara (afterwards transferred
to Florence). At this council a decree of union was once more signed
by the Greeks, on condition of their receiving aid against the Turks
(A.D. 1439). This fresh attempt at union was repudiated by the Eastern
Church at large, but a troop of French and Italian crusaders started
for the East. Constantinople was, however, doomed, and the good and
brave Constantine Palaeologus (A.D. 1448-A.D. 1433) was the last, as he
was one of the best, of the Greek emperors. [Sidenote: Fall of
Constantinople] The city fell, after an obstinate defence, on the 29th
May, A.D. 1453, and Constantine was among the slain. The Turks
pillaged and slaughtered indiscriminately, and turned into a mosque the
beautiful Church of St. Sophia, built by the Emperor Justinian in
honour of the "Holy Wisdom" of God.
{139}
[Sidenote: and the Greek Empire.]
All the Greek Empire had now fallen into the hands of the Turks, except
the small mountainous district of Albania, which held out until the
death of George Castriota (dreaded by the Turks under the name of
Scanderbeg), A.D. 1467. The rocky strip of land known as Montenegro
has been enabled to maintain an unbroken independence.
[Sidenote: State of the Church of Greece under Turkish rule.]
The Church of Greece was now no longer the dominant and recognized
religion of the country, but it was not extinguished. The numerous
mountain monasteries, inaccessible from their construction and
position, were the chief strongholds of the Christian Faith; and so,
"cast down, but not destroyed," the Church in Greece struggled on,
until, after nearly three centuries of Turkish rule, Greece itself once
more became a Christian kingdom.