tains about 130 million victims of his government. Of these from eighty to eighty-five millions are members of the Orthodox established Church.[1] So the Church of Russia is enormously the greatest part of the Orthodox Communion; she alone is about eight times as great as all the other Churches together. She is ruled by eighty-six bishops, of whom three (Kiev, Moscow, and Petersburg) are always metropolitans, and fourteen archbishops. In Russia the title of metropolitan, which in most Eastern Churches has come to be the common name for any bishop, is much rarer. Besides the three above mentioned, others have it given to them as a compliment or reward by the Czar. In any case it has quite lost its real meaning, and is only an honorary title. No Russian bishop has any extra-diocesan jurisdiction; the Holy Synod rules all equally. There are also thirty-seven auxiliary bishops, whom they call vicars. There are 481 monasteries for men, and 249 convents of nuns.[2] The last Saint canonized by the Holy Synod is the monk Seraphim, who was an ascetic like those of the first centuries. He spent a thousand days and nights under the shelter of a rock, doing nothing but repeating: "Lord, have mercy on me a sinner"; then for five years he spoke no word, and he died in the odour of sanctity at the monastery of Sarov in 1833. The Holy Synod examined his cause and proved the miracles he had wrought, and the Czar ratified his canonization in January, 1903.[3] The Russian Church has missions throughout Siberia, and in Japan, Alaska, and the United States. A Russian bishop with the title of Revel lives at Tokio and governs twenty-five thousand Orthodox converts; the Bishop of Alaska, who resides at San Francisco, has fifty thousand subjects in the States, mostly Uniates from Hungary and Galicia who have left the Catholic Church.[4]
- ↑ At least outwardly. Under a tyranny like that of Russia, it is impossible to know what people really wish to be. The dissenters are those who have the courage of their opinions even in Russia. Moreover, among these eightyfive millions are the unhappy Catholic Ruthenians who have been so ruthlessly harried into schism.
- ↑ Silbernagl, pp. 110–124; E. d'Or. iv. pp. 231–235, vi. pp. 396–399. For the monasteries see Silbernagl, pp. 135–146.
- ↑ E. d'Or. vi. p. 398.
- ↑ E. d'Or. ibid, and iv. p. 235. There is a Russian mission at Pekin under the Bishop of Revel with an archimandrite and about five hundred converts.
