CHAPTER X
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH
The Orthodox Church consists of sixteen separate independent bodies, who all profess the same faith, use the same liturgy (though in different languages), and are all (with one exception) in communion with one another and with the Patriarch of Constantinople; though he has no authority over them. The list of these sixteen Churches is: 1. The Great Church (Patriarchate of Constantinople). The Churches of: 2. Alexandria. 3. Antioch. 4. Jerusalem. 5. Cyprus. 6. Russia. 7. Carlowitz. 8. Montenegro. 9. Sinai. 10. Greece. 11. Hermannstadt. 12. Bulgaria (in schism). 13. Czernowitz. 14. Serbia. 15. Roumania. 16. Bosnia and Hercegovina.[1] It is curious to note how in this complex system the most unequal bodies, the colossal Russian Church and the one monastery of Mount Sinai, for instance, are ranged side by side as equal branches and sister-Churches.
1. The Political Situation and the Great Church.
It is with no malicious pleasure that one has to record the fact that, in spite of their inter-communion, the dominant note of these sixteen bodies in our time is their extreme quarrelsomeness. The thing is too patent to be ignored. It is the cause of nearly
- ↑ From Kattenbusch: Orient. kirche in the Realenz. (1904), xiv. pp. 436–467. See also Silbernagl: Verfassung n. gegenw. Bestand, pp. 3–214. This order from No. 4 to No. 16 is chronological, according to the date of their independence.
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