GREEK CHURCH GREEK FIRE 221 are besides eight bishoprics. The Greek church of Cisleithan Austria has an archbish- op (since January, 1873) at Czernowitz, and bishops at Zara and Cattaro. VIII. The church of Mt. Sinai has only one bishop, the 'Blessed Archbishop of Sinai." IX. The church of Montenegro likewise has but one Bishop, called " Metropolitan of Scanderia and the Seashore, Archbishop of Cettigne, Exarch of the Holy See of Ipek, Lord of Montenegro and of Berda." He had formerly both spirit- ual and temporal power, but recently the juris- dictions have been divided. The present bish- op was induced by the Russian government to to St. Petersburg, and not, as was done )y his predecessors, to Constantinople, to re- ceive episcopal consecration. X. The Hellenic church, in the kingdom of Greece, numbers 31 archbishops and bishops, governed by the
- Holy Hellenic Synod " of Athens. The pres-
idency of this board belongs by right to the letropolitan archbishop of Attica and Bceotia, aiding in Athens. This board was established 1852, and consists of five prelates of the ingdom. They meet annually in September, id have to take an oath of fidelity to the king before beginning their proceedings. All these ten divisions of the orthodox church recognize the supreme authority of a general council ; but as no general council has been ibled for 1,000 years, they do not agree the conditions required to make a council illy oecumenical. In addition to these ten ivisions, which recognize each other as ortho- lox, there are in Russia a number of sects, most of which fully acknowledge the doctrinal basis of the Greek church, but reject the lit- urgy of the Russian church as corrected by Patriarch Nicon (1654), and therefore keep aloof from any intercourse with the state church. By the state church they are called Raskolniki (separatists), while they call them- selves Staromertzi .(of the old faith). The imber of these sects dissenting from the state large. They also differ widely from each her, and some of them have placed them- selves in open opposition not only to the litur- gy and the government of the Russian church, but also to the doctrines of the Greek church in general. As from their origin they have been incessantly subjected to persecution, their peculiarities are but imperfectly known. The great argument employed against those of them who adhered to the orthodox doctrine of the Greek church was, that the true church is es- sentially episcopal ; therefore they, having no bishop, could not be the true church. Some years ago, however, the Greek bishops of the Austrian empire ordained for them a bish- op. t The former rigor of the Russian govern- ment against them has been- mitigated since the accession of Alexander II., and in 1859 an imperial decree even prescribed that the bish- ops of the state church shall in future ordain the priests and bishops of the Raskolniks. The Greek church predominates in all Russia, Eu- ropean Turkey, Greece, and Montenegro, and its area is continually extending by the pro- gress of Russia in central Asia. The number of Greek Christians in Russia amounts to about 54,000,000. This, however, includes the sects, whose number is estimated at from 5,000,000 to 15,000,000. Turkey numbers about 12,000,- 000 inhabitants belonging to the Greek church, of whom 4,275,000 belong to Roumania, and 1,295,000 to Servia; Austria (according to the census of 1871), 3,050,000; the kingdom of Greece, 1,440,000 ; Montenegro, 125,000 ; Ger- many, about 3,000. In all other countries only a few Greek churches are found, nearly all of which are connected with Russian embassies. Thus the whole population connected with the Greek church in 1874 was about 74,300,000. The greatest number of United Greeks is in Austria, nearly 4,000,000; Turkey has about 50,000; Russia, 229,000; southern Italy, 60,- 000. They were formerly very numerous in Russia, where under the Polish rule a consider- able portion of the church acknowledged the supremacy of the pope at the synod of Brzesc or Brest (1596). But most of them returned to the Russian state church under the reign of Catharine II., and the remainder at a synod in Polotzk in 1839. The total number thus lost by the Roman Catholic church in Russia is esti- mated at about 10,000,000. The Greek United church in Austria has two archbishops and six bishops ; in Turkey, one patriarch (of Antioch) and eight suffragans ; in Russia, one bishop at Chelm. See Chytrasus, De Statu Ecclesiarum hoc Tempore in Gratia (Rostock, 1569) ; Leo Allatius, Grcecia Orihodoxa (2 vols., Rome, 1652 and 1659) ; Thomas Smith, De Ecclesm GTCBCCB Statu Hodierno (London, 1678) ; Le Quien, Oriens Christianus(3vols., Paris, 1740); Wenger, Beitrage zur Kenntniss des gegenwar- tigen Geistes der GriechiscJien Kirche (Berlin, 1839) ; H. J. Schmitt, Kritische Gevhichte der NeugriecMschen Kirche (Mentz, 1840); Wig- gers, Kirchliche Statlstik (2 vols., Hamburg, 1843); rfiglise orihodoxe d? Orient (Athens, 1853) ; J. M. Neale, " History of the Holy East- ern Church " (London, 1847 et seq.) ; Dean Stan- ley, u Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church "(London, 1861; New York, 1870); Sil- bernagl, Verfassung und gegenwartiger Bestand sammtliclier Kirchen des Orients (Landshut, 1865) ; and Gagarin, Le clerge russe (Paris, 1871). GREEK FIRE, a name applied to compounds that burn on the surface of or under water. A summary of what is said about it in old writers is given by Gibbon in the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," chap. lii. The subject is also ably treated by Dr. McCulloch in vol. xiv. of the "Quarterly Journal of Science." The Greek fire was most advantageously employed in the defence of Constantinople during the two sieges by the Saracens of A. D. 668-675 and 716-718. The secret of its preparation and use was derived from Callinicus, a deserter from the service of the caliph to that of the empe- ror. It appears to have been a compound of
