council of Basel. As on former occasions the Greeks were at first deceived by false representations ; they were betrayed into recognition of papal supremacy, and tricked into signing what could afterwards be represented as a submission to Western doctrine. The natural consequences followed, a repudiation of what had been done ; and the Greek bishops on their way home took care to make emphatic their ritual istic differences from Rome. Soon after came the fall of Constantinople, and with this event an end to the political reasons for the submission of the Greek clergy. Rome s schemes for a union which meant an unconditional submis sion on the part of the Greeks did not cease, however, but they were no longer attempted on a grand scale. Jesuit missionaries after the Reformation stirred up schisms in some parts of the Eastern Church, and in Austria and Poland many of the Greeks were compelled to submit them selves to the se e of Rome. The result of these schemes has been what is called the U/iia, or the United Greeks. These various unions have commonly arisen from dissensions among the Greeks themselves when a portion of the dis sentients have made submission to Rome. Rome commonly promised to allow them to enjoy their own liturgies and rites of worship, but usually broke her promises. This was done so systematically that the college of the Propaganda prints what profess to be the old liturgies of the Eastern churches, which are really so interpolated as to bring them surreptitiously into harmony with the Western rites. This is done so universally that it is impossible to trust to any professedly Eastern creed or service-book printed at the office of the Propaganda in Rome.
Differentiation of National Churches included in the Orthodox Greek Church.—Mr Finlay, in his History of Greece, has shown that there has been always a very close relation between the church and national life. Christianity from the first connected itself with the social organization of the people, and therefore iu every province assumed the language and the usages of the locality. In this way it was able to command at once individual attachment and universal power. This feeling died down to some extent when Constantine made use of the church to consolidate his empire. But it revived under the persecution of the A rian emperors. The struggle against Arianism was not merely a struggle for orthodoxy. Athanasius was really at the head of a national Greek party resisting the domina tion of a Latin-speaking court. From this time onwards Greek patriotism and Greek orthodoxy have bsen almost convertible terms, and this led naturally to revolts against Greek supremacy in the days of Justinian and other em perors. Dean Stanley is probably correct when he describes the heretical churches of the East as the ancient national churches of Egypt, Syria, and Armenia in revolt against supposed innovations in the earlier faith imposed on them by Greek supremacy. In the East, as in Scotland, the history of the church is the key to the history of the nation, and in the freedom of the church the Greek saw the freedom and supremacy of his race. For this very reason Orthodox Eastern Christians of alien race felt compelled to resist Greek domination by means of independent ecclesiastical organization, and the structure of the church rather favoured than interfered with the coexistence of separate national churches professing the same faith. Another circumstance favoured the creation of separate national churches. While the Greek empire lasted the Greek emperors had a right of investiture on the election of a new patriarch, and this right was retained by the Turkish sultans after the conquest of Constantinople. The Russian people, for example, could not contemplate with calmness as the head of their church a bishop appointed by the hereditary enemy of their country. In this way the jealousies of race and the necessities of nations have produced various national churches which are independent or autocephalous, and yet are one in doctrine with the Orthodox Greek Church. The most important of these are the churches of Russia, Georgia, Servia, Roumania, Greece, and Montenegro. The churches of Russia and Georgia have been united.
The Church of Russia dates from 992, when Prince Vladimir Russian and his people accepted Christianity. The metropolitan, who was Church. subject to the patriarch of Constantinople, resided at Kieff on the Dnieper. During the Tartar invasion the metropolis was destroyed, and Vladimir became the ecclesiastical capital. In 1320 the metro politans fixed their seat at Moscow. In 1582 Jeremiah, patriarch of Constantinople, raised Job, 46th metropolitan, to the patriarchal dignity ; and the act was afterwards confirmed by a general council of the East. In this way the Russian Church became autocepha lous, and its patriarch had immense power. In 1700 Peter the Great forbade the election of a new patriarch, and in 1721 he estab lished the Holy Governing Synod to supply the place of the patriarch. This body now governs the Russian Church, and con sists of five or six bishops, one or two other ecclesiastics of dignity, and several laymen, all appointed by the emperor. The Church of Georgia, which has existed from a very early period, and was dependent first on the patriarch of Antioch and then on the patriarch of Constantinople, has since 1801 been incorporated in the Russian Church. Its head, the archbishop of Tiflis, is a member of the Holy Governing Synod, with the title of exnreh, and having under him four suffragans. Russia is divided for ecclesiastical purposes into eparchies of three classes, each of which is ruled over by a bishop. There are three eparchies of the first class, ruled by the metropolitans of Kieff, Novogorod and St Petersburg, and Moscow. The steady increase of the Russian Church makes it difficult to detail with exactness the number of bishops belonging to the three classes ; but, according to the report presented to the Holy Governing Synod in 1876, there arc, in addition to the three eparchies of the first class, twenty-one of the second, thirty-three of the third, and six vicariates. These sixty-three bishops possess diocesan authority; and there are besides, excluding the exarchate of Georgia, fifty-six bishops ruling over monasteries.
The Church of Servia has undergone great changes. 1 n mediaeval times, when Servia was a strong kingdom, the head of the church invariably claimed the title and authority of patriarch. In 1810, Avhen Kara George achieved the independence of the kingdom, the archbishop of Carlowitz in Hungary was recognized as the head of the church, but in 1830 the national church was reconstituted and declared to be autocephalous. In 1838 the seat of government was removed to Belgrade, and the metropolitan of Belgrade is now the head of the Servian Church, though his right is still disputed by the archbishop of Carlowitz. He has under him as suffragans the bishops of Shabatz, Csatsak, and Uschize, the last of whom resides at Karanowatz. Election to the episcopate is subject to the veto of the prince and of the patriarch of Constantinople. The extension of Servia under the provisions of the treaty of Berlin will probably cause some ecclesiastical changes.
Before the union of the two provinces of Moldavia and "Wallacliia, Roiuna the Orthodox Greek Church was ruled by two metropolitans the man. one at Jassy and the other at Bucharest. Since the independence of the united provinces there has been along-continued conflict, which had for its design, not merely to throw off the supremacy of the patriarch of Constantinople, but to curb the influence of the higher clergy, and to assert the pre-eminence of the Slavonic over the Greek element. The result has been that the state, aided by the lower clergy and the people, has thrown off the supremacy of Constantin ople, united the church under one metropolitan of Roumania, who has under him the metropolitan of Moldavia and six bishops, con fiscated the property of most of the convents, which were centres of Greek influence, published liturgies either in the Slavonic or iu the Roumanian language, and asserted the supremacy of the state.
The constitution of the Church of Modern Greece is the result of the peculiar position of the patriarch of Constantinople. The war of liberation was sympathized in, not merely by the inhabitants of Greece, but by all the Greek-speaking Christians in the East. But the patriarch was in the hands of the Turks; he had been appointed by the sultan, and he was compelled by the Turkish authorities to ban the movement for freedom. "When the Greeks achieved independence they refused to be subject ecclesiastically to a patriarch who was nominated by the sultan (June 9, 1828); and, to add to their difficulties, there were in the country twenty-two bishops who had been consecrated by the patriarch, twelve bishops who had been consecrated irregularly during the war, and about twenty bishops who had been deprived of their sees during the troubles—i.e., fifty-three bishops claimed to be provided for. In these circumstances the Government and people resolved that there should be ten diocesan bishops and forty additional provisional sees. They also resolved that the church should be governed after the fashion of the Russian Church by a synod ; and they decreed that the king of Greece was to be head of the church. All these ideas were
