In ecclesiastical matters they did the same. They had no idea of considering the Eastern Christians or the old lines of the Eastern bishops. If they did not actually persecute or massacre the schismatics, they left them as an inferior caste, a conquered population with endless disabilities, whom they never ceased trying to convert. On the whole, the Orthodox were distinctly worse off under the Crusaders than under the Moslem—the Crusaders promptly took their churches, for instance. The Frank knights, of course, never thought of anything but the Latin Mass and a Latin hierarchy, with mitres and chasubles and copes, just as at home. So they set up Latin Patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem, and under them archbishops and bishops, who sang the Roman Mass in the Anastasis and in all the churches of the Holy Land.
Two results of the Crusades still last. After they had lost Jerusalem, when Richard Lion-heart treated with Selaheddin to secure rights for Christians at the holy places, he, of course, only thought of his own Latins. And Selaheddin granted privileges to Christians as Richard wanted—that is, to Latins. Those privileges still exist, and that is why the Turkish Government formally recognizes certain rights that the Latins still enjoy at the Anastasis and at all the holy places. Another faint memory of the Crusaders' kingdom remains in the ecclesiastical titles they set up. There are still in Rome Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch of the Latin rite,[1] who are now only dignitaries of the Papal Court. These prelates do not in any sort of way represent the old line of Eastern bishops of those cities: they are the successors of the Latin patriarchs set up by the Crusaders. So also the titles of Eastern sees given to our auxiliary bishops, as far as they represent continuity from any line at all, are those of the sees established in the same way.[2]
- ↑ The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem was sent back to that city in 1847 to be the head of all Latins in the Holy Land.
- ↑ The Latin archbishoprics of the Crusades were: Adrianople, Corinth, Athens, Candia, Rhodes, Nicosia, Tarsus, Hierapolis, Apamea, Tyre, Nazareth, Cæsarea Pal., Petra; the bishoprics, Tripolis, Biblos, Beirut, Sidon, Acre, Sebaste, Lydda, Bethlehem.
