breaking up of Eastern Christendom into schismatical sects. In the old days, when East and West were one Church, the situation was different. People then were separated by no difference of faith nor of final obedience. It was easy then to group Patriarchates geographically, and to maintain the principle that, as far as the normal inhabitants of each land were concerned, they should use the rite of the ecclesiastical Head of the land.
But when there were groups of Christians, living mixed together in one city, yet in schism with one another, this could no longer be the case. Each sect or Church naturally still claimed the allegiance of its members, wherever they might live. Already in the fifth century Egyptian Christendom broke up into the rival Churches of Copts and Orthodox; in Syria were Nestorians, Jacobites, and Orthodox.
Since the Moslem conquests of the seventh century the idea of separate communities living side by side in one place has been accentuated. People in the East are accustomed to see groups of Moslems, Jews, and Christians of various kinds in the same town. So the old geographical idea of Patriarchate has broken down completely. Now a man belongs to a certain "nation," in the Turkish sense. He belongs to this by birth and heredity, except in the rare cases of conversion from one "nation" to another. He keeps his membership of his "nation" wherever he may live. The sign of his "nation," at least among Christians, is the rite it uses. The rite has become much more important as a mark of membership than any point of faith. And he is subject ecclesiastically to the Head of his nation, even when that Head lives in a remote land. So the various Patriarchs organize hierarchies for their own people, wherever these people may live. In one town you will find an Orthodox community with an Orthodox priest, dependent ultimately on one of the Orthodox Patriarchs or holy Synods; in another quarter of the same town you will find an Armenian group dependent remotely on Etshmiadzin, a Jacobite group dependent on the Jacobite Patriarch, perhaps a handful of Copts who look to Alexandria as the source of authority to them; then a group of Jews with their Rabbi, and one of Moslems with their Mullah. The geographical distribution exists only as a memory, and as the remote source of the present state of things. There is now an intricate network of various religious bodies interlaced throughout the Levant.
This situation is reflected curiously inside the Catholic Church, in the case of the Uniates.
