Uniates in these parts.[1] So the Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, like his brother at Alexandria, lives rather on memories of his past splendour than on any practical importance. He rules over twelve metropolitans[2]—all that are left of the hundred and fifty sees that once obeyed his predecessors—and about two hundred and fifty thousand Orthodox subjects,[3] nearly all Syrian Arabs, who know no Greek. He also has two or three titular metropolitans to form his court. He now lives at Damascus. There has been trouble at Antioch, too, lately.[4] Since 1724 all the Orthodox Patriarchs have been Phanariote Greeks, who could not, as a rule, even speak Arabic. However, at last the Arab-speaking people, who were always discontented with that arrangement, got their chance. In 1899, the see being vacant, they elected Meletios, Metropolitan of Laodicea, to be Patriarch, and the Russian Palestine Society warmly took up his cause. Meletios was an Arab, so the Phanar would not have him. Of course, as always, the only question was, what the Sultan would decide. The Phanar, backed by the French Ambassador, implored the Sultan not to give him his Berat; the Russian Ambassador insisted on his having it. For a whole year the Sultan wavered, the see was vacant, and Meletios hoped and doubted. Then, of course, Russia won; the Berat arrived in 1900, and Meletios became Patriarch. But the Phanar, the Greeks of Jerusalem, and the Greek Church still obstinately refused to recognize him. On the other hand, the Russian and Roumanian Churches were on his side. He was pointedly left out in the last Encyclical from Constantinople (p. 345, n. 3), and all the Greek papers spoke of him as a schismatical intruder, and persecutor of the Greek clergy in his patriarchate. On February 8, 1906, Lord Meletios died at his residence at Damascus. In June,
- ↑ There are no less than seven Churches, each of which represents a fraction of the old Antiochene Church (E. d'Or. iii. p. 223, seq.)
- ↑ Aleppo, Amida, Arcadia, Beirut, Emesus, Epiphania, Laodicea (in Syria), Seleucia, Tarsus, Theodosioupolis (Erzerum), Tripolis, Tyre - and - Sidon. Cf. Echos d'Orient, iii. p. 143; Silbernagl, pp. 25, 36.
- ↑ So the Echos d'Orient, l.c. Silbernagl reckons 28,836 families; Kyriakos, 200,000 souls.
- ↑ For the endless internal schisms and quarrels that have rended this see since the 15th century, see Kyriakos, iii. pp. 56–59.
