Chalkis, Tripolis (in Greece), and Kerkyra.[1] The universities of Athens and Bucharest have theological faculties. Nevertheless, the Orthodox clergy has not the reputation of being a learned one.[2] In order that they may acquire more scholarship than can be procured at home, a number of students are now sent by their bishops to study at the German Protestant theological faculties; and Berlin, Leipzig, Jena, Halle, &c., are full of Greek students, who, with the versatility of their race, very soon learn to talk German perfectly, and to think and argue about theological questions like German higher critics. The disadvantage of the arrangement is that they generally take the rationalistic ideas they have learnt back with them. There is much more freethinking among the better educated Orthodox clergy than would be supposed.[3] It is often said that Orthodox priests may marry. This is a mistake. The Sacrament of Holy Order is a diriment impediment to marriage with them, as with us. But if they are married before ordination, they may keep their wives; and this is what always happens among the secular clergy. They are appointed to parishes by the bishops, and live on small stipends paid by their parishioners and stole-fees. In Turkey a marriage costs from 5 to 10 piastres, a baptism 1 to 3 piastres, a funeral 3 to 5 piastres, a requiem about 5 piastres.[4] Collections are made in churches on Sundays and holidays. A priest who has faculties to hear confessions is called a Pneumatikos (Ghostly Father); he must be forty years old, and he receives jurisdiction from the bishop specially. The Diaconate is a much more actual thing in the Orthodox Church than with us. It is not merely the last stepping-stone to the priesthood, but numbers of clerks remain deacons all their lives and help as curates in the parishes. Under the Diaconate there are four minor orders, those of the
- ↑ Kyriakos, iii. pp. 105, seq. These other schools have come to an end from being insufficiently attended.
- ↑ Kyriakos himself continually complains of this (e.gr. l.c.); but he is of the German Protestantizing school (he studied at Halle), who always speak scornfully of the clergy educated at home.
- ↑ Brailsford, Macedonia, p. 193, tells of a metropolitan who avowed himself a freethinker. It is that impossible person Germanos Karavangelis.
- ↑ Silbernagl, p. 42.
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