EDITOR'S PREFACE
Readers of the two previous volumes of this series[1] will be aware that Dr. Adrian Fortescue intended to complete it by a third.
This volume was to have contained a full treatment of the Uniate Churches corresponding to each of the separated Churches which are treated in his two published works.
The completion of this plan was prevented by that untimely death which, coming as a shock to all who had known Dr. Fortescue, has left in the ranks of Catholic writers a gap which may never be filled.
A few days before he died Dr. Fortescue expressed to me a wish that this work on the Uniate Churches should be published. He said that I might if I chose complete it, or else publish it as it stood; but he left little doubt in my mind which course he would prefer. I am therefore placing before the public his work in its incomplete state as it left the author's hands, with the certainty that in so doing I am fulfilling his wishes. Moreover, I am persuaded, and I think that not a few readers will agree with me, that the unfinished work of Dr. Fortescue himself is preferable to any attempted completion by another hand.
The plan of his projected work is indicated in the prefatory remarks to the introductory chapter (p. xxiii). From these it will be seen that the book was to have had four parts. The first, entitled "The Byzantine Uniates," dealt with the Uniate groups corresponding to the Orthodox Eastern Church. The second and third parts were to have described the Uniate com-
- ↑ "The Orthodox Eastern Church" (C.T.S., 3rd edition, 1911) and "The Lesser Eastern Churches" (C.T.S., 1913).
