Page:Orthodox Eastern Church (Fortescue).djvu/284

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THE ORTHODOX EASTERN CHURCH

and customs of their fathers, acknowledge the Roman Primacy, and are in communion with the Holy See. These Catholics of Eastern rites are called Uniates, and for the Greek and Ruthenian Uniates Pope Gregory XIII (1572–1585) founded the Greek College at Rome. Of the students of the Greek College the greater part of course remained Uniates when they went back to their own country and worked for the cause of the Pope; but some afterwards joined the majority and turned Orthodox. So the Pope's College at Rome has the quite undesired honour of being remembered by Orthodox historians as one of the Western sources from which their fathers drew the knowledge that adorned in them the Orthodox Church. The Greek colony at Venice was the first to found an Orthodox school. Thomas Phlangenes of Kerkyra established the Academy, called after him the Phlangenion, in 1626; it lasted till 1795, and was the central home of their theology during that time. At last, in the 18th century, the Phanar managed to set up colleges and schools at home. The great "School of the Nation" (σχολὴ τοῦ γένους) at Constantinople was the first of these; then Smyrna, Janina, Mount Athos, Bucharest, and other towns had schools too.

Most, indeed nearly all, of the work of the Orthodox theologians during this time has been written against the Pope and the Latins. One can understand this. To the Eastern Christians the enormously greater, more powerful, and more prosperous Catholic Church looms very large; the question why they are not in union with the bishop, who should be the first of the patriarchs, is always the burning one. And the Popes have never ceased trying to convert them back: papal missionaries and schools are to be found all over Eastern Europe (except, of course, in Russia); there has always been a Latinizing party among the Orthodox, and they continually hear of some priest or bishop, sometimes of whole communities, that have made their submission to the Pope. So to people who believe that the claims of the Holy See rest upon nothing but a monstrous tissue of lies and forgeries, who look upon the Papacy as something almost diabolical (and many of these Orthodox writers hate Rome as violently as the wildest Protestants), to