YALE
DIVINITY SCHOOL
LIBRARY

Gift of
ROLAND H. BAINTON

The International Theological Library

EDITORS' PREFACE
THEOLOGY has made great and rapid advances
in recent years. New lines of investigation have
been opened up, fresh light has been cast upon
many subjects of the deepest interest, and the historical
method has been applied with important results. This.
has prepared the way for a Library of Theological
Science, and has created the demand for it. It has also
made it at once opportune and practicable now to se
cure the services of specialists in the different depart
ments of Theology, and to associate them in an enter
prise which will furnish a record of Theologies!
inquiry up to date.
This Library is designed to cover the whole field of
Christian Theology. Each volume is to be complete
in itself, while, at the same time, it will form part of a
carefully planned whole. One of the Editors is to pre
pare a volume of Theological EncyclopEedia which will
give the history and literature of each department, as
well as of Theology as a whole.

The International Theological Library
The Library is intended to form a series of Text-
Books for Students of Theology.
The Authors, therefore, aim at conciseness and com
pactness of statement. At the same time, they have in
view that large and increasing class of students, in other
departments of inquiry, who desire to have a systematic
and thorough exposition of Theological Science. Tech
nical matters will therefore be thrown into the form of
notes, and the text will be made as readable and attract
ive as possible.
The Library is international and interconfessional. It
will be conducted in a catholic spirit, and in the
interests of Theology as a science.
Its aim will be to give full and impartial statements
both of the results of Theological Science and off he
questions which are still at issue in the different
departments. The Authors will be scholars of recognized reputation
in the several branches of study assigned to them. They
will be associated with each other and with the Editors
in the effort to provide a series of volumes which may
adequately represent the present condition of investi
gation, and indicate the way for further progress.
Charles A. Briggs
Stewart D. F. S almond

The International Theological Library

ARRANGEMENT OF VOLUMES AND AUTHORS
THEOLOGICAL ENCYCLOP/E Dl A. By CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D.,
D.Litt, Professor of Theological Encyclopaedia and Symbolics, Union
Theological Seminary, New York.
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERATURE OF THE OLD TESTA
MENT. By S. R. Driver, D.D., D.Litt., Regius Professor of Hebrew
and Canon, of Christ .Church, Oxford. [Revised and Enlarged Edition.
CANON AND TEXT OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. By FRANCIS
Crawford Burkitt, M.A., Nornsian Professor of Divinity, University
of Cambridge.
OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. By HENRY PRESERVED SMITH, D.D.,
spmetime Professor of Biblical History, Amherst College, Mass. [Now Ready.
CONTEMPORARY HISTORY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. By
Francis Brown, D.D., LL-D., D.Litt., Professor of Hebrew, Union
Theological Seminary, New York.
THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. By A. B. DAVIDSON,
D,D., LL.D., sometime Professor of Hebrew, New College, Edinburgh. [Now Ready.
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERATURE OF THE NEW TESTA
MENT. By Rev. James Moffatt, B.D., Minister United Free Church,
Dundonald, Scotland.
CANON AND TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By CASPAR ReOTL
Gregory, D.D., LL.D., Professor of New Testament Exegesis in the
University of Leipzig. [Now Ready.
THE LIFE OF CHRIST. By William Sanday, D.D,, LL.D., Lady
Margaret Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford.
A HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE APOSTOLIC AGE. By
Arth.K8.-C McGiffert, D.D., Professor of Church History, Union Theo
logical Seminary, New York. [Now Ready.
CONTEMPORARY HISTORY OP THE NEW TESTAMENT. By
Frank C. Po.RTER, D-D., Professor of Biblical Theology, Yale University,
New Haven, Conn.
THEOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, By G.E0RGE B,. STEVENS,
D.D., spmetime Professor of Systematic Theology, Yale Uniyersity, New
Haven, Conn. [Now Ready.
BIB.LJOAL ARCHAEOLOGY. By G. BUCHANAN Gray, D.D., Prpfessor
of Hebrew, Mansfield College, Oxford.
THE ANCIENT CATHOLIC CHURCH. By Robert Rainy, D.D.,
LL.D-, same.ti.me -Principal of New College,, Edinburgh. [Now Ready.
THE EARLY LATIN CHURCH. By Charles BlGG, D.D., Regius Pro-
feesjir <rf .C^Wfih Iftstpr-y, University of Oxford.

The International Theological Library

THE LATER LATIN CHURCH. By E. W. WATSON, M.A., Professor
of Church History, King's College, London.
THE GREEK AND ORI ENTAL CHURCH ES. By W. F. ADENEY.D.D.,.
Principal of Independent College, Manchester.
THE REFORMATION. By T. M. Lindsay, D.D., Principal of the United
Free College, Glasgow. |> vols. Now Ready.
CHRISTIANITY IN LATIN COUNTRIES SINCE THE COUNCIL OF
TRENT. By Paul Sabatier, D.Litt.
SYMBOLICS. By Charles A. Briggs, D.D., D.Litt., Professor of
Theological EncyclopEedia and Symbolics, Union Theological Seminary,
New York.
HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. By G. P. FlSHER, D.D.,
LL.D., Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Yale University, New Haven,
Conn. [Revised and Enlarged Edition.
CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. By A. V. G. Allen, D.D., Professor of
Ecclesiastical History, Protestant Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge,
Mass. [Now Ready.
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. By Robert Flint, D.D. , LL.D., some
time Professor of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh.
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS. By GEORGE F. MOORE, D.D., LL.D.,
Professor in Harvard University.
APOLOGETICS. By A. B. Bruce, D.D., sometime Professor of New
Testament Exegesis, Free Church College, Glasgow. [Revised and Enlarged Edition.
THE DOCTRINE OFGOD. By William N. Clarke, D.D., Professor
of Systematic Theology, Hamilton Theological Seminary.
THE DOCTRINE OF MAN. By William P. Paterson, D.D., Professor
of Divinity, University of Edinburgh.
THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. By H. R. Mackintosh, Ph.D., Professor
of Systematic Theology, New College, Edinburgh.
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SALVATION. By GEORGE B. STE
VENS, D.D., sometime Professor of Systematic Theology, Yale University.
[Now Ready.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. By WILLIAM ADAMS
Brown, D.D., Professor of Systematic Theology, Union Theological
Seminary, New York.
CHRISTIAN ETHICS. By Newman Smyth, D.D., Pastor of Congrega
tional Church, New Haven. [Revised and Enlarged Edition.
THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR AND THE WORKING CHURCH Bv
Washington Gladden, D.D., Pastor of Congregational Church, Columbus,
[Now Ready.
THE CHR.ST.AN PREACHER. [Author to be announced later.
RABBINICAL LITERATURE. By S. ScHECHTER, M A Pr».M . f
the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York City. President of

ftbe 3ntevnationaI Gbeclogtcal library

EDITED by
CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., D.Litt.,
Graduate Professor of Theological Encyclopedia and Symbolics, Union Theological
Seminary, New York;

The Late STEWART D. F. SALMOND, D.D.,
Principal, mnd Professor of Systematic Theology and New Testament Exegesis,
United Free Church College, Aberdeen.

THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES.
By WALTER F. ADENEY, M.A., D.D.

International Theological Library
THE
GREEK AND EASTERN
CHURCHES

BY

WALTEE F. ADENEY, M.A., D.D.
PRINCIPAL OF LANCASHIRE COLLEGE
MAHCHEBTBR

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1908

PREFACE

This book is divided into two Parts. In the First Part
I have traced the history of the main body of the Church
throughout the Eastern provinces of Christendom, until by
losing one limb after another this is seen to become more
and more limited in area, although still claiming to be the
one orthodox Church. In the Second Part I have taken
up the stories of the separate Churches. In order to do
this intelligibly I have found it necessary to go back in
each case as far as possible to the particular Church's origin.
Since that was usually some controversy of the older Church
which was discussed in the first part of the volume, the
consequence has been a certain amount of repetition. But
I have deemed it better to say the same thing twice over —
first in the general history and then in the local — than to
leave either of them seriously incomplete. Besides, the
story is not just the same when viewed from the standpoint
of the local branch that it was when it first appeared in
the course of the main history.
If there is any special characteristic of this book to
which I would desire to lay claim, it is an honest endeavour
to do justice to all parties. Now that the heat of con
troversy has subsided and the dust of battle settled, it
should be possible to take a calm and clear view of the
facts, with a full recognition of all that was excellent in
various bodies of Christians who in their own day mutually
anathematised one another.
I have set at the head of each of the chapters two
lists of books. Those marked (a) are principal original

vi PREFACE
authorities ; those indicated by (l) are more or less modern
works, often selected out of a large number, as in my own
judgment the books most likely to be of service to the
student. I desire to express my thanks to Professor Gwatkin for
very kindly reading the proofs of the chapters on the Arian
period, and for his learned and acute suggestions in con
versation with reference to this and other parts of the
history ; to the Eev. E. Eubank for the loan of a number
of works from his excellent collection of books on the
Eastern Church; to the Greek, Coptic, and Armenian
priests and Protestant pastors and missionaries with whom
I have had conversations concerning the present condition
of the Eastern Churches ; to the Librarians and Authorities
of the British Museum, the John Kyland's Library, the
Dr. William's Library, and my own College Library for
their unfailing kindness and courtesy -in putting at my
disposal the many books — often from out-of-the-way regions
of literature — that it has been necessary to consult in an
attempt to cover a vast field of history, much of which is
little known and but rarely traversed.
Lastly, I record my indebtedness to the careful proof
reading and valuable literary criticism of my wife while
this book was passing through the press.
WALTER F. ADENEY.
Lancashire Colleob,
September 1908.

CONTENTS

PASES
Introduction  !_12

PART r
THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE
DIVISION I
THE AGE OF THE FATHERS
CHAPTER I
Christianity in the East under the Pagan Emperors
The Apostolic Age — The Attitude of Rome — The Persecutions —
Extent of the Church in the East .... 13-26
CHAPTER II
Constantine the Great
Accession of Constantine — Founding of Constantinople — Conver
sion of Constantine — The Edict of Milan — New Relations
of Church and State . . . . ~~ ~"1 ' . 27-40
CHAPTER III
Arianism
An Eastern Heresy — Its Origin in Antioch — The Arian System —
Arius at Alexandria — The Emperor's influence as Peace
maker — The Council of Nicsea — The Nicene Creed . . 41-57

viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER IV
The Later Arian Period FAOB8
Constantius — Athanasius — Julian— His Pagan Church and Theo
logy—The Persecution hy Valens— The Semi-Arians . . 58-70
CHAPTER V
The Cappadocian Theologians
The most brilliant Literary Period of the Greek Church — Basil —
Gregory Nazianzen — Gregory of Nyssa — Apollinaris . . 71-84
CHAPTER VI
The Movements that led to the Council op Chalcedon
Theodosius the Great — Chrysostom — The Christological Con
troversies — Nestorianism — The Council of Ephesus —
Eutychianism — The Council of Chalcedon . . . 85-101
CHAPTER VII
The Monophysite Troubles
- * f -
The Monophysite Idea— The Theotohos— Timothy JElurus—
Timothy Salofaciolus — Peter the Fuller — Zeno's Heneticon —
TheAcephali ....... 102-116
CHAPTER VIII
The Later Christological Controversies
Justinian and Theodora— "The Three Chapters"— The Mono-
thelete Controversy— Severus of Constantinople— Cyrus and
Sophronius— The Ecthesis— The Type— The Sixth General
Council (Third Constantinople) .... 117-131
CHAPTER IX
Organisation and Worship
Bishops — Metropolitans — Patriarchs— The new Constantinople
Patriarchate — Gregory the Great— John the Faster — The
Doctrine of Transubstantiation ... 132-146

CONTENTS LX

CHAPTER X

Eastern Monasticism

PAOEH

(1) General Asceticism — (2) Specific Asceticism — (3) Anchoritism —
Palladius— (4) Ccenobitism — (5) Regulated Monasteries . 147-159

DIVISION II
THE MOHAMMEDAN PERIOD
CHAPTER I
The Rise and Spread of Mohammedanism
No Middle Ages in the Oriental Churches — Mohammed — The
Doctrines of Islam — Heraclius and his Viotories — The Advance
of the Arabs — Treatment of Christians by Mohammedans . 160-173
CHAPTER II
Byzantine Art
Byzantine and Gothic Architecture — The Basilica — St. Sophia —
Icons ........ 174-186
CHAPTER III
The Iconoclastic Reforms
Revival of the Empire — Leo the Isaurian — Iconoclasm — Con
stantine Copronicus — The Abbot Stephen . . . 187-200
CHAPTER IV
The Restoration of Image Worship
Leo the Armenian — Constantine Porphyrogenitus— The Empress
Irene — Seventh General Council (Second Nicsea) — Leo's
Reforms— John of Damascus— Theodore of Studium . . 201-215

X CONTENTS
CHAPTER V
The Paulicians
PA0E3
The Origin of the Name— The Key of Truth— Constantine of
Msnanalis or "Silvanus" — Paul the Armenian — Sergius —
The Empress Theodora— Paulicians in Thrace— The Euchites
— The Bogomiles  216-228
CHAPTER VI
The Great Schism
The Cleavage of Christendom — Causes : (1) Difference of Race ;
(2) Separation of the two Empires ; (3) Rivalry of Patriarchs ;
(4) The Filioque Clause— The Final Rupture . . . 229-241
CHAPTER VII
The Crusades
Causes provoking the Crusades — Urban n. and Peter the Hermit —
The First Crusade — Bernard of Clairvaux and the Second
and Third Crusades — The Fourth Crusade — A Western Invasion
of Greek Territory — The Latin ' ' Empire " of Constantinople . 242-255
CHAPTER VIII
The Greek Church at the Fall of the Byzantine Empire
Decay of Byzantine Empire— The Latin "Emperors " — Restoration
of Byzantine Empire by Michael— The Patriarch Arsenius —
Negotiations with the Papacy — Constantine Palasologus —
Mohammed ii. — Fall of Constantinople ... 256-272
CHAPTER IX
Life and Letters in the Byzantine Church
Echoes of old Controversies— Church Government— The Liturgies
of St. Basil and St. Chrysostom— Service Books— The Byzantine
Historians— Later Byzantine Writers— The Story of Barlaam
and Joshaphat — Greek Hymns — The Monks of Mount
Athos— Religious and Moral Condition of the Church 273-291

CONTENTS Xi
PART II
THE SEPARATE CHURCHES
PA8E8
Introduction to the Separate Churches .... 292-294
DIVISION I
EARLY CHRISTIANITY OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE
Early Christianity in Persia — Persecution under Sapor — Conversion
of the Goths— Ulfilas ...... 295-308
DIVISION II
THE MODERN GREEK CHURCH
CHAPTER I
Cyril Lucar and the Reformation
The Janissaries — The Patriarch of Constantinople under the Sultan
— Contact with Lutherans — Cyril Lucar — His Confession of
Faith — Cyril at Constantinople — His Attempt at a Reforma
tion ........ 309-324
CHAPTER II
The Later Greek Church under the Turks
Patriarch and Bishops — Venetian Conquests — Revival of
Greece — The PhiliM Helairia — Massacre of Turks in the
Morea — Execution of the Patriarch Gregorios — The Inde
pendent Church of Greece ..... 325-339
CHAPTER III
The Outlying Branches of the Greek Church
Cyprus — Georgia — Bulgaria — Servia — Bosnia and Herzegovina . 340-354
DIVISION III
THE RUSSIAN CHURCH
CHAPTER I
The Origin of Christianity in Russia
The Sclavs — Early Missions — The Princess Olga— Vladimir . 355-370

xii CONTENTS
CHAPTER II
The Mongolian Invasion of Russia

PAGES

Spread of the Gospel in Russia— A Temporary Breach with Con
stantinople—The Mongol Invasion — Effect on Russia . 371-384

CHAPTER III
Revival of Russia
Reformation of Church Discipline — Poland and Lithuania —
Isidore — Russia and the New Age — The Metropolitan
Zosimus — Ivan the Terrible ..... 385-403
CHAPTER IV
The Patriarchate
Origin of Patriarchate of Moscow — Attempts to win Russia
to Rome — The false Dmitri — Philaret — Peter Mogila's
"Confession of Faith"— The Patriarch Nicon . . 404-419
CHAPTER V
Peter the Great and the Holy Synod
The Life and Character of Peter — Reorganisation of the Empire
— The Holy Synod — The Conservative Reaction — Condition
of Russian Church ...... 420-433
CHAPTER VI
The Orthodox Church in Modern Russia
Catherine ii. — Seraphim and Photius — Alexander and the
Emancipation of the Serfs ..... 484-440
CHAPTER VII
Russian Sects
Raskolniks — " Old Believers " — The Popbftsky — The Bef-
popbftsky— The Philippoftsky— The Theodosians— The Po-
mortsky— The Jumpers — The Khlysty — The Skoptsy —
The Molokans— The Doukhobors— The Stundists— Count
Tolstoi ... ... ._.
441-458

CONTENTS Xlll
DIVISION IV
THE SYRIAN AND ARMENIAN CHURCHES
CHAPTER I
Early Syrian Christianity
PAGES
The Churches of the Euphrates Valley — Four separating In
fluences — The Legend of Abgar — Palut — Tatian — Bardaisan
— The Homilies of Aphraates — The Ads of Thomas . . 459-476
CHAPTER II
The Syrian Nestorians
The Nestorians at Edessa — Rabbulas — The Catholicos — Thomas
of Marca's Book of the Governors — Syrian Monasticism — The
Monastery of Beth 'AbhS ..... 477-492
CHAPTER III
The Later Nestorians, the Chaldeans, and the Jacobites
The Nestorians under the Caliphate — Mohammedan Persecu
tions — The Jacobites — Jacob al Bardai — Persecution of
Syrian Monophysites — The Tetratheists — Literature of the
Syrian Church ...... 493-509
CHAPTER IV
The Nestorians of the Far East
Syrian Missions — The Acts of Thomas — India — The Syrian
Church in Travancore — Old Crosses .... 510-522
CHAPTER V
Later Eastern Christianity
The Portuguese in India — Xavier — The Inquisition at Goa —
The Synod of Diamper — The Dutch at Cochin — Syrian
Christianity in China — Syrian Christianity in Tartary —
Roman Catholic and Protestant Missions . . . 523-538

xiv CONTENTS
CHAPTER VI
The Armenian Church PUB
The Legendary Period — Gregory the Illuminator — Mesrob— The
Council of Tiben — The Council of Carana — Severance from
the Greek Church — The Armenian Constitution — Russian
Possessions in Armenia — The Massacres ... 689-552

DIVISION V
THE COPTIC AND ABYSSINIAN CHURCHES
CHAPTER I
Origin and Early History of the Coptic Church
The Copts — Origin of Christianity in Egypt — Its Character
istics — Alexandrian Opposition to Nestorianism — The
Monks — Monophysite Schism. .... 553-571
CHAPTER II
The Persian and Arab Conquests
The Copts during the Invasions — The Failure of Heraclius as a
Ruler — The Mohammedan Invasion — The National Patriarch
Benjamin — The Melchite Patriarch Cyril — The Mukaukas —
The Mohammedan Settlement .... 572-584
CHAPTER III
The Copts under the Caliphate
Coptio Art — John Semundaeus — A Friendly Caliphate — Persecu
tion — The Scandal of Simony — The Fatimite Period . 585-602
CHAPTER IV
The Turkish Period
Turkish Sultans— The Copts during the Crusades— The Dis
pute about Confessing over a Censer— Saladin — The Mame
lukes — The Copts in Modern Times .... 603-614
CHAPTER V
Abyssinian Christianity
Ethiopia— Frumentius and ^desius— The Vanishing of Christ
ianity from Nubia — Isolation of Abyssinia — Portuguese
Embassy— Bruce's Travels — Recent Events . . " ., 615-626
lNPBX  627

THE
GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES

THE
GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES

INTRODUCTION
An adequate and independent history of the Greek and
Eastern Churches would begin with the origin of Chris
tianity, and trace from its commencement the development
of the faith, which arose in the East and nourished for a
considerable time most conspicuously in Syria, Asia Minor,
Greece, and Egypt. But since two previous volumes of
this Series1 have been devoted to the earlier periods of
General Church History, the present writer is relieved from
the necessity of treating the first three centuries with any
fulness of detail Here the only requisite will be to take
a rapid survey of the story viewed from the standpoint of
the East, remembering that for our present purpose the,
centre of gravity is at Antioch, Ephesus, or Alexandria,
rather than at Eome or Carthage. When, however, we
come to the fourth century the scale of proportion must
be reversed, and subjects which the exigencies of space only
permitted to be discussed with comparative brevity in the
volume on The Ancient Catholic Church will now demand
a somewhat more extensive exposition. The age of the
great Fathers, with its essentially Oriental controversies
on the doctrines of the Trinity and the Person of Christ,
is by far the most important epoch in the whole history
1 McGiffert, History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age ; Rainy, The
Ancient Catholic Church.
I

2 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
of Eastern Christendom. This age was the crown and
flower of the earlier period, and it produced the seeds of
nearly all that was of vital interest in succeeding ages.
"With the exception of Hosius of Cordova, whose activity
was chiefly witnessed in the East, and Hilary of Poitiers,
the solitary theologian of first rank who discussed the
Trinitarian problem in the West during the fourth century,
all the great writers and teachers of that wonderful age of
theological dialectics were in the Greek Church. Ambrose
at the end of this century, and Augustine and Jerome in
the early part of the following century, restored the
balance to the West ; but by their time ominous signs of
the coming severance between Eastern and Western
Christendom were already appearing, and each branch was
now becoming more and more distinct and separate in its
life and history.
When we look back at the early period of Catholic
unity we cannot but recognise the preponderance of its
Oriental characteristics. Externally regarded, in its origin
and primitive development, Christianity must be reckoned
an Eastern religion. In fulfilling its amazing destiny it
quickly turned to the West for its richest missionary
harvests, for there it found its most fertile soil, and its
efforts at extension in the Farther East were long compara
tively infructuous.
To-day it is specifically the religion of the West, and
as such at length it is being introduced by slow and pain
ful efforts to the ancient civilisations of India and China.
We know it in a Latin or a Teutonic garb, so that its
original Eastern form is disguised by its Western habili
ments. Protestant Christendom sees it in the last of four
stages through which it has passed, the first being Aramaic,
the second Greek, the third Latin, and the fourth Teutonic.
These four stages may be especially represented by the
primitive apostles, the councils and creeds, the mediaeval
papal Church, and Martin Luther and Protestantism.
Now the Greek and Eastern Churches belong to the two
earliest of these stages, or rather, to be more exact,

INTRODUCTION 3
especially to the second ; foi even the later Syrian Church
was fundamentally dependent on the Greek. But we
begin with a thoroughly Oriental situation. Christianity
sprang up out of the soil of an ancient Semitic religion.
The Judaism of the rabbis only represented the faded glory
of the superb faith proclaimed by the ancient prophets,
and the gospel realised one of those prophets' predictions
by appearing as " a root out of a dry ground." Still, it
needed its soil, impoverished by neglect and ill-usage as
this was. We cannot regard the fact that Jesus was a
Jew as due to a freak of nature or a caprice of Providence.
Then, all the apostles were Jews ; so apparently were all
the writers of the New Testament except one, and probably
he was a proselyte. The gospel of the kingdom of heaven
was first preached in Aramaic, in the local Syrian dialect
spoken at the time by our Lord and His disciples. The
earliest record of the teachings of Jesus Christ of which
we have any knowledge was written in Hebrew, or
Aramaic.1 The Scriptures used by the primitive Churches
and appealed to for the authentication of their message
consisted of Hebrew writings ; and although the Old
Testament was commonly read in a Greek translation, its
Semitic ideas and imagery coloured the whole presentation
of Christian truth. In the present day, not only our
theology, our sermons, our prayers and hymns, but our
literature and political oratory are steeped in Biblical
Orientalism. When, as is often the case in his most
pathetic scenes, Sir Walter Scott adopts the language of
the Bible, or when one of our statesmen graces his diction
by drawing from that " well of English undefiled," the
Authorised Version of the English Bible, it is generally
some Semitism that gives its choice flavour to the
passage. Directly we pass on to the second stage of develop
ment, the Greek, we have an immensely enlarged field of
observation. The Semitic period was quite temporary
and provincial, although, as the earliest, it left its
1 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iii. 39.

4 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
mark on all that followed. But no sooner was the gospel
launched on the sea of the great world's life than it
passed into a Hellenic form, being at once expounded in
the Greek language and becoming gradually shaped in the
mould of Greek thought. It is probable that Jesus Christ
knew the popular Greek dialect of His day, although it is
nearly certain that He habitually spoke in Aramaic, the
language of His home and people. The apostles must
have preached in Greek when they passed the narrow
bounds of Palestine. Paul, Barnabas, Stephen, Philip
the Evangelist, Apollos, Timothy — in fact, all the early
missionaries of whom we know anything, except the
Twelve, James, and Mark — were Hellenists, or even in some
cases actually Greeks by race, such as Luke and Titus.
All the books of the New Testament were written in Greek,
in spite of the fact that two of them seem to have been
intended for Jews, and one was addressed to Eome and
another to a Eoman colony. All the writings of the
Apostolic Fathers are in the Greek language, although they
originated in places so far apart as Eome, Asia Minor,
and probably Egypt and Syria. Greek was the literary
language of the Church in the West as well as in the East
down to the end of the second century, except in North
Africa where Latin was used, and in the Valley of the
Euphrates where Syriac was employed. Until we reach
the third century we meet with no Latin writing of
importance in the Eoman Church.1 Hippolytus, whose
martyrdom is dated between A.D. 233 and 239, wrote in
Greek. The early bishops of Eome bear Greek nameB.
Justin Martyr, a native of Samaria, but a travelling
evangelist who carried his mission as far as Eome where
he ended it by death, wrote his appeals to the emperors
and the Senate, as well as his dialogue with a Jew, in
Greek. In Gaul we have the Churches of Lyonne and
Vienne sending an account of the persecution they had
passed through under Marcus Aurelius to their brethren
'There is the insignificant anti-gambling tract De Aleatoribus in Latin,
for the benefit of the uneducated.

INTRODUCTION 5
in the East in the Greek language. Irenaeus their
bishop published his famous work Against all the Heresies
in Greek. It seems probable that Christianity first made
its way in Western Europe among the Jewish, Greek, and
Syrian residents — colonists, merchants, and slaves^ We
know that at Eome it first appeared in the Ghetto
among Hellenistic Jews. The Churches of Lyonne and
Vienne seem to have sprung up in an offshoot from the
Greek colony at Marseilles. Their famous bishop Irenaeus
had come to them from Asia Minor, and they took care
to keep themselves in touch with the Greeks of that
Eastern region.
Now the importance of these facts can scarcely be
overestimated, although it has been overshadowed by
another series of facts. Church historians have often
called attention to the deep significance of the establish
ment of the Eoman Empire just before the appearance of
Christianity in the world. The Pax Bomana which
encircled the whole Mediterranean gave the first
missionaries freedom to travel and admitted of an
attentive hearing wherever they went. Everywhere they
appeared as subjects of one vast empire preaching to
fellow-subjects of the same empire. They were protected
from uprisings of fanatical mobs by the strong, just
Eoman magistracy ; and they could travel with ease and
safety along the well-made and well-guarded Eoman roads.
Choosing the great towns for their chief centres of work,
they found provincialism disappearing before enlarged
cosmopolitan ideas, and so an atmosphere in which a
gospel that overstepped the bounds of national jealousies
might most readily receive sympathetic attention. More
over, from the second century onwards, we see the growth
of Eoman law into a strong body of jurisprudence which
is destined to combine with Christian doctrine in forming
the two fundamental factors of mediaeval and modern
civilisation. Gradually the genius of Eome in government
passed over from the empire to the Church, and popes
came in for the inheritance of the power that had dropped

6 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
from the enfeebled hands of emperors. It is a truism
to say that the contribution of Eome to the development
 and subsequent degeneration — of the Church is a factor
of immense importance.1 Nevertheless it is an unfortunate
fact that reiterated insistence on the Eoman influence has
distracted attention from the Grecian. Until recently it
was supposed that the New Testament was composed in
a peculiar provincial and theological dialect. But the
discovery of contemporary papyri at Oxyrhynchus and the
study of inscriptions found in Egypt, Asia Minor, and
indeed scattered over a wide area of the empire, have
shown that this "Hellenistic" Greek was the common
language for business documents and private correspond
ence — bills of lading, receipts, family letters — throughout
all those widely scattered regions. This is a new and
convincing proof that the " common dialect " of Greek was
very much more used than had been imagined hitherto.
It is quite sufficient to account for the fact that the
earliest Christian literature is in Greek; and it disposes of
the erroneous idea that the authors were following a
literary convention like the mediaeval monks in their use
of Latin.8 They wrote in Greek simply because everybody
wrote in Greek, whether in business or in social intercourse.
The^onsequences of this fact are many and various. In the
first place, the Christian missionaries found a lingua franca in
which they could proclaim their message wherever they went,
at all events on the main roads which they usually followed,
and in the large centres of population where for the most
part they carried on their work. Thus the widespread use
of this one language co-operated with the common govern
ment of the one empire in providing such conditions for
the dissemination of a universal faith as the world had
never witnessed before. In the second place, the fact that
this language was Greek had as strong intensive effects on
the missionary work as its extensive influence due to the
1 See Renan, Hibbert Lectures (1880).
a See Deissman, Bible Studies, passim ; Moulton, Grammar of New Test.
Greek, vol. i. ch. i. ; Wellhausen, Einleitung in, die drei Ersten Evangelien, 9.

INTRODUCTION 7
general use of it throughout so large a part of the Eoman
dominion. There is no such thing as a " dead language "
for people who read and speak intelligently ; and certainly
in early Christian times, although the splendour of the
classic period had passed, the language in which Plato
wrote, degenerate as it now was, came into the Church
" trailing clouds of glory." For better or for worse, Greek
ideas invaded the Church under the cloak of the Greek
language. With the more scholarly writers this was
allowed consciously.1
Even St. JPaul jshows traces of the Hellenic influence,
especially in his doctrine of thejfesh, which was not found
in purely Jewish or earlier Christian teaching, and in the
language with which he describes the exalted Christ, which
reads like an echo of Philo, as well as in his evident
allusions to the Hellenistic Book of Wisdom. This
tendency is much more apparent in the Epistle to the
Hebrews. There are traces of it in the so-called " Epistle
of Barnabas." Most of the earlier Christian writers known
as the Apostolic Fathers wrote simply and practically
with little reference to the world outside. But the Greek
influence blossomed out in the Apologists, men who
made it their business to bring the gospel into contact
with the thought of their age. Aristides appeared in
Athens wearing the conventional philosopher's cloak ;
Justin Martyr came to Christianity through Platonism. and
he made the first serious attempt to reconcile Philosophy
to the Gospel, by combining St. John's Logos with the
Logos of Philo and the Stoics. In Clement of Alexandria
we have classic literary scholarship, and in his successor
Origen Platonic philosophy, brought over bodily into the
exposition of Christian truth. Henceforth the elaboration
of doctrine in the Church becomes a process of applying
Greek thought to the elucidation of the data supplied by
the facts of the gospel history and the truths of Scripture
and experience. Even the dialectical methods of the
1 See Pfleiderer, Urchristenthum, for an extreme view of this fact, which
we must admit while avoiding the danger of exaggerating it.

8 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
sophists were adopted by the Christian theologians, and
the oratorical services of the rhetoricians employed by the
Church's preachers. Biblical exegesis followed the lines
laid down by Alexandrian grammarians in their interpreta
tion of Homer, and the very form of the Christian sermon
based on a brief " text," which has been stereotyped
apparently for all time, is an imitation of the Bophisfcs'
cunningly elaborated oration as the development of the
hidden meaning of a single line of Homer.1
The Graeco-Boman world on which the vessel of the
gospel was launched by the apostles and their followers
was a segthing ocean of restless life and thought, in a
period of transition after the old national and racial_
boundaries had been swept away and before any tide had
been felt setting strongly in one definite direction. We
might compare it to a choppy sea, broken by the clash of
cross currents and tossed about by a whirl of winds from
all quarters of the compass. In literature, in art, in
philosophy, and worst of all in morals, it was a decadent
age; its society was like that which was recently
cEaracterised among ourselves as fin de siecle. And yet,
while bestial gluttony and monstrous vice ran riot among
the plutocracy, no doubt there were many innocent folk
who were living simple lives in remote country places.
Certainly not a few in the cities were wistfully groping
after the light of truth and the power of purity. But no
one clear answer rang out in response to their eager
questioning. Their ears were assailed by a babel of voices.
The quest for truth and goodness was baffled by the
many bewildering avenues that opened out before it ; and
seekers after the summum bonum were lost in a vast maze
of ideas. Philosophy was eclectic, religion syncretic-
Both skimmed a wide surface; neither touched bottom.
So there was no settlement, no conclusion. The almost
identical experience of Justin Martyr in the second century
and Augustine in the fourth, their going from teacher to
1 See Hatch, Hibbert Lectures: The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages
upon the Christian Church, Lecture iv.

INTRODUCTION 9
teacher and from school to school but finding rest in none,
was the inevitable fate of earnest souls in the centuries
that followed the break-up of the old world, but had not
yet seen the consolidation of the new world.
Nevertheless the _age was essentially constructive.
The theoretical scepticism of the "Academy/ the bold
unbehef of Julius Caesar, and the practical atheism of
Nero, had given place to a revival of belief in the Unseen.
This often took the form of superstition, which is the
Nemesis of outraged faith. Magic was widely practised by
its pretenders and widely believed in by its dupes. People
regulated their lives by omens. While the venerable
oracles of Delphi and other ancient shrines were com
paratively neglected, augury from the flight of birds or
the inspection of entrails was more widely prevalent than
ever. Nor was this all. Magic is the mockery of religion,
the materialistic substitute for the spiritual truth that has
been discarded. The heart of mankind " abhors a vacuum."
If it has not spirituality it will welcome sorcery, accepting
demonology in place of theology, and giving the conjurer
the seat from which the prophet has been ejected. All
this was seen in the age that also witnessed the advent of
the new faith destined to regenerate the world. Men
were making frantic efforts to save themselves from drown
ing in a black ocean of spiritual corruption by catching
at the floating wreckage of derelict cults. Meanwhile
there were serious attempts to stimulate a real religious
life. Augustus, alarmed at the mordant scepticism which
that astute ruler perceived to be undermining the
foundations of society and corroding the institutions of
civilisation, carried on a great work of temple-building
and reinstated sacrificial rites at neglected altars. This
State religion, however, never touched the life of the
people, who remained cold and indifferent. The Lares and
Penates were still honoured in out-of-the-way old-fashioned
places ; but Zeus and Athene, Jupiter and Minerva, were
no longer names to thrill the Greeks and Eomans with
awe. For the first century almost as much as for the

10 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
twentieth, among the cultivated, they were the titles of
the classical divinities of the poets. Still less was the
worship of the genius of Eome in the person of the
emperor, first the dead emperor, then the reigning despot,
anything more than a State function assiduously observed
in fear of the dread accusation of Icesce majestatis.
But it was not from this quarter that the awakening
came. That arose in the East and swept in wave after wave
of religious_excitement across to the demoralised, enervated
West. We might almost say that Christianity-itself was
carried over the empire on the crest of a waye_of_ religious
revival, if we did not know that it moved on by virtue of
its^own^sunje^jpiritual life. Still, it is just to affirm that
it appeared in an age of "revivalism, and was the one
successful among many rival efforts to bring back the
world to a sense of the Unseen. From AsiaJVIinor came
the worship of the '' great mother," 1 with which was
associated the ancient sacrifice of "the taurobolium and its
purifying bath of blood.' From Egyjjt^ was brought the
cult of Isis and Serapis by troops of white-robed, shaven
priests, who were to be seen going in procession through
the streets of the cities of Europe, introducing mysteries
of a dim antiquity to the wondering West — telling of
the tenderness of Isis, Queen of Heaven, who pre
pared the way for the Church's worship of her Queen
of Heaven, the Theotohos, the "mother of God" — pro
claiming the wonders of Serapis, the god of the unseen
world of the dead, with his promise of eternal life. Above
all, from Persia^came the worship of Mithra, who, from
being the angel Messiah of the earlier ZoToasTrian religion,
having absorbed the Babylonian worship of Bel, became
the great Sun-god, the chief divinity of Eoman emperors
for generations, so that even Constantine had his image on
the reverse of coins which bore on the obverse the
Christian labarum. So potent was this cult, that Eenan
has said, " If the world had not become Christian it would
have become Mithrastic." Its rites of baptism and of
' Magna Mater, the Roman devotee's name for Cybele.

INTRODUCTION 1 1
communion of bread and wine were denounced by
Christian writers as impious imitations of the Christian
sacraments. While the coarser Asiatic cults ran rampant
in the West, the Greeks were more attracted by the milder
rites of Adonis. These Oriental religions had their societies
of members, with clergy called " presbyters,^ so that when '
the apostles founded churches for their converts, superficial
observers in the Greek and Eoman world would see at first
in the Christian brotherhoods only what was to be expected
from the organisers of a new religion.
Lastly, this leligious revival was accompanied by
attempts at moral reformation and a marked advance in
ethical teaching. At Eome Seneca, the tutor and the
mentor of Nero and subsequently the mad emperor's
subservient minister, taught the loftiest principles of
duty that the pagan world had ever known, principles
so like much that we find in the New Testament that
ready currency was given to the forgeries which supported
the erroneous legend of the Eoman Stoic's connection with
St. Paul.1 In the East Plutarch was expounding the
ancient virtues, basing them on religious faith, and adding to
the stern, strenuous rigour of Stoicism a new humanitarian-
ism that was to have a marked effect in softening the
brutality of society. This would have attracted more
attention in later ages if it had not been outshone by the
greater glory of the enthusiasm of humanity that was
glowing in the breasts of the new sect from Galilee. The
next century saw the lame slave Epictetus teaching
bracing lessons of moral independence, and the melancholy
Emperor Marcus Aurelius sitting up at night by his camp
fire on the Danube to write meditations on duty and
resignation. Stoicism was winning the adhesion of the
strongest, finest natures to a very high type of duty. But
its glory was the secret of its failure. Only the strongest,
finest natures could breathe the keen air of its lonely
heights. The mass of the people never attained to it ; and
it had no power for recovering the failures. The world was
1 See Lightfoot, Theological Essays, "St. Paul and Seneca. "

12 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
not so utterly bad as the satirists Juvenal and Martial
might lead us to suppose ; nor must we judge it by the
character of the court gossip Suetonius served up for a
public eager to feast on scandals of high life, or the
sardonic irony of Tacitus who wrote as the critic in
opposition. Happily Eome was not the measure of the
empire. Not only was there much serious effort after
better things, but the monuments in the cemeteries contain
touching records of simple family affections that could not
flourish in a world that was utterly corrupt. And yet a
deep sense of failure gave a mournful tone to the specula
tions of the most earnest men who were labouring for the
social welfare. " No flight of imagination," says Harnack,
writing of a later period, equally corrupt, "can form_any
idea of what would have come over the ancient world or
the Eoman Empire during the third century, had it not
been for the Church.1
* Expansion of Christianity, vol. i. p. 158 (Eng. edit.).

PART I
THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

DIVISION I
THE AGE OF THE FATHEES

CHAPTER I
CHRISTIANITY IN THE EAST UNDER THE PAGAN
EMPERORS
(a) Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. ; Ante-Nicene Fathers ; Pliny, Letters ;
Tillemont, Memoirs, etc.
(6) Ulhorn, Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism, 1879 ; Momm-
sen, Provinces of the Roman Empire, Eng. Trans., 1886 ;
Ramsay, Christianity in the Roman Empire, 1893 ; Harnack,
Expansion of Christianity, Eng. Trans., 1904.
When we begin to inquire into the extension .of
Christianity, we are confronted by the questions : What
geographical area was /brought under evangelising
influences ? — By what time was each region reached ? —
To what extent was it actually Christianised ? This last
question is bylar the most important of the three, and it
is the most difficult to answer. We can obtain a fairly
safe rough idea of the area over whieh some knowledge of
the gospel had been carried and in which some Churches
had been planted during the first three centuries of the
Christian era. Italy, Spain, and Gaul in the West, Britain
in the North, the Eoman province of Africa in the South,
had all received Christianity to some extent ; but though

14 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Eome was the headquarters of Western Christendom, until
long after this period the majority of its population, the
Senate, and " Society," remained pagan. And beyond some
parts of Italy and the African province, Christianity in
Western Europe could not be regarded for most of this
time as more than a ray penetrating the darkness. It
is doubtful if this light had at all pierced the paganism of
the German forest villages. It is to the East that we must
look for the chief triumphs of early missionary activity and
the most vigorous life of the primitive Churches.
Eeligious movements are found to go forward in waves
or tides rather than with a continuous, even flow. There
are times of revival alternating with "flat, dull, comparatively
fruitless intervals. Three_ such times of revival may be
seen in the Christian historyoi the first three centuries.
The first was the Apostolic Age. In that period,
" beginning at Jerusalem," the gospel was first deliberately
spread in the surrounding area. Next, Samaria was
systematically evangelised. But soon it was seen that the
fire kindled at Pentecost was not to be confined to
officially organised missions. The pilgrims who had heard
St. Peter at that feast carried the astonishing news home
with them and spread it among their own people, and it is
not unlikely that Eome first heard of the gospel in this
way. Then the scattering of the Jerusalem Church, owing
to persecution by the Sanhedrin and afterwards by Herod
Agrippa, sent its members abroad to carry the seed of the
kingdom of heaven wherever they went, for in these
early days of enthusiasm every Christian was called to be
a missionary. Ao important step forward was taken when
a Gentile Church originatingliTthe irresponsible efforts of
certain entirely unofficial Greek Christians was established
at Antioch ; for this Church became the centre of Hellenic
Christianity, while Jerusalem remained only the head
quarters of Jewish Christianity. It proved to be the most
live Church of the Apostolic Age. Its charities outflowed
in gifts for the Christians at Jerusalem when they were
suffering from a famine; and its missionary zeal was

CHRISTIANITY UNDER THE PAGAN EMPERORS 15
proved by its equipping the only definitely organised
preaching expeditions to the heathen world in these early
days of which we have any account. Thus in very
ancient times this great Church came to the front, a
position it maintained for centuries as the metropolis of
Christianity in Syria. Chiefly owing to the work of St.
Paul, who had been sent out by the Church at Antioch as
a companion to Barnabas, at that time a more prominent
person, the gospel soon reached Cyprus, the south and
west of Asia Minor, Macedonia and Achaia, and even
extended as far as Illyricum. After Jerusalem and
Antioch — the two metropolitan centres— the chief Christian
cities in the Apostolic Age were Ephesus, the capital of
Asia ; Thessalonica, the capital of South Macedonia ; and
Corinth, the capital of Achaia; to which must be added
the one great outpost of the Apostolic Church in the
West, Eome itself, the seat of the empire. It is possible
that a Church arose in this early period at Alexandria,
the metropolis of Egypt, although but little weight can
be attached to the legend that this Church was founded
by St. Mark, since it does not appear in any extant
writing of Clement or Origen, and is first met with in
Eusebius, who only records it as a tradition.1
Nothing is more significant of the courage and con
fidence of the early Christian evangelists than the fact
that from the first they seized on metropolitan centres for
their missions. In St. Paul these characteristics led to a
magnificent prolepsis. With an enthusiasm which would
have been pretentious if it had not sprung from faith
and afterwards found justification in fact, the apostle
spoke largely of Eoman provinces — " Asia," " Macedonia,"
"Achaia" — as though they were already won, when he
had done little more than plant his standard in their chief
towns. For generations Christianity was a town religion.
The intelligence, quickness, and energy of urban popula
tions responded more readily to the new appeal of the
gospel than the slower and more conservative nature of the
1 ijxurlr, etc., Hist. Eccl. ii. 18.

16 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
country folk. Still there was a radiation from the town
centres that affected the surrounding regions in various
degrees. Thus in writing to the Corinthians St. Paul is
able to include " all the saints which are in the whole of
Achaia.1 No reliance can be placed on unauthenticated
traditions of the labours of other apostles in various parts
of the world,2 especially as the rivalry among the Churches
led to an eager desire to claim apostolic origin — and
consequent authority — wherever any pretence of the kind
could be put forward. During the later decades of the
first century the history of the Church is plunged into
obscurity only partially illumined here andthere by
transient gleams. The Johannine writings throw some
light on the district of Ephesus, and indicate that in their
early days Hellenistic thought was already affecting the
Churches of that part of Asia. The Epistle crfClement
(a.d. 95) shows us the Church at Corinth, factious as in
the days of St. Paul, rebuked by her sister Church at Eome-
for unchristian envy and for lack of the grace of love in
dismissing her elders. If the Didache' may be assigned to
so early a period, we have in this little Church Manual a
vivid picture of the life of a small community of Gentile
Christians, probably in Syria, severely antagonistic to the
Jews, and kept in touch with other Churches by the visits
of travelling Christians known as "apostles" and
" prophets." The destruction of Jerusalem by Titus (a.d. 70)
and the consequent 'ruin of "theTJewish State and power
had a mixed effect on the condition of the Christians.
On the one hand, it freed them from the persecution of
their worst enemies ; on the other hand, it revealed to the
world the distinction between Christianity and Judaism.
1 2 Cor. i. l.
J Matthew in Ethiopia ; Andrew in Asia Minor, Thrace, Macedonia, and
Greece ; Philip in the same wide region, with the addition of Scythia and
even Gaul ; Matthias in Ethiopia ; Simon the Zealot in Egypt, Lybia, and
Mauritania; Thaddsus preaching the gospel in the African language;
Thomas in Parthia and India. There is much confusion and contradiction
among the legends.

CHRISTIANITY UNDER THE PAGAN EMPERORS 17
The Christians had taken no part in the revolt ; on the eve
of the siege they had withdrawn to Pella. In early times
they had been treated favourably by the officials of the
imperial Government. St. Luke takes great pains to make
this clear, and his testimony is supported by St. Paul, who
always writes respectfully of the law and authority of
Rome. Nero's savage massacre of Christians at Eome
does not indicate any widespread persecution, although the
new attitude of bitter antagonism to the imperial Govern
ment taken by the Apocalypse — so completely the reverse of
that maintained by earlier New Testament books — may be
traced to the shock produced by that frightful outrage
among the Churches of the East.1 Professor Eamsay
considers that the attitude of Eome towards the Christians
was changed by the Emperor Vespasian.2 But if so it is
very remarkable that no tradition to that effect has been
preserved by the ecclesiastical writers. In point of fact,
Christianity was always illegal, until it was adopted by
Constantine, although it enjoyed periods of comparative
immunity from persecution and was favoured by one or two
direct acts of indulgence.3 During all this time it was
not a " licensed religion " as was the case with Judaism,
and it was never lawful to propagate a religion without
special licence. Judaism being licensed — at all events for
Jews — Christianity was not molested so long as it was
regarded as only a phase of the recognised religion of the
Jews; but after A.D. 70, when the two faiths stood apart
in the full light of day, this confusion with its consequent
protection of the Church was no longer possible.
It is true that Eome showed a large-minded, practical
tolerance in leaving to its conquered provinces the enjoy
ment of their own religions. As far as any religious faith
remained with the officials, they would think it as well not
to offend the indigenous divinities, and the Eoman genius
for government avoided needless irritation. But this did
1 Especially if " the number of the beast " represents Nero.
* The Church in the Eoman Empire, pp. 256 ff.
* By Gallienus, and again by Galerius.
a

18 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
not allow of the propagation of foreign religions in different
parts of the empire.1 No doubt such religions were spread
in wild confusion; but for the most part they were
content to exist side by side, without molesting one
another, like the various species of birds that live together
in a wood. They even went farther than this : they
adopted one another's rites and legends, welded together,
united in a syncretic amalgam. Such a process could be
encouraged as helping towards the unification of the
empire. But Christianity was of a very different temper.
Enthusiastically missionary, pushing, and aggressive, it was
intolerant of any other faith, since it claimed to be the one
absolute faith of the one true God, and regarded all other
religions as false and wicked and their divinities as demons
to be denounced and cast out. For this reason the
Christians were very unpopular. Some of them did not
hesitate to pour scorn and contempt on the superstition of
their neighbours to an extent that was not only insulting,
but, as sincere pagans believed, even dangerous ; and
earthquakes and pestilences were attributed to the anger
of the gods at the "atheism" of the Christians. Con
sequently, it was common for a great natural calamity to
be followed by an outbreak against the Christians who
were supposed to have provoked it. Thus they fre
quently suffered from the persecution of panics. Then their
refusal to share in the public games while they declaimed
against the lewdness of the theatre and the bloodthirsty
cruelty of the amphitheatre, their reluctance to join in
popular holidays or to accept municipal offices which
involved pagan sacrificial rites, and their reiterated pre
diction of the coming judgment and approaching end of the
world by fire, resulted in their being regarded as " enemies
of the human race." We can well understand how a
Government that was nervously anxious to prevent disorder
in its vast and incongruous dominions would be averse to
the spread of a sect whose presence provoked antagonism
and introduced a disintegrating element into society.
1 The rule to be observed was, Cujus regio, ejus religio.

CHRISTIANITY UNDER THE PAGAN EMPERORS 19
Above all, the new, monstrous cult of the emperor, which
was supposed to carry with it the worship of the incarnate
genius of Eome, was peculiarly obnoxious to the Christians, -
whose outspoken repudiation of it laid them open to a
charge of treason, to the terrible accusation of Icesce
majestatis. For these reasons they were always liable to
persecution. The_attagk assumed various foxra&- Sometimes it was
a mere rising of a fanatical mob, though, as in the Turkish
dominions to-day, there might be good reason for supposing
that this was winked at or even instigated by the
authorities ; sometimes^jiuwas a case of prosecution by a
private individual, before a magistrate who mayliave been
reluctant to put the law in force and anxious to find an
excuse for acquitting his prisoner; sometimes it was
directly ordered by the emperor. It was only in the
latter — a much more rare- — case that a serious, widespread
persecution took place. . There is no evidence that any such
persecution, as a deliberate act of State policy, was ex
perienced under Vespasian or Titus, or that those emperors
had any idea whatever of eradicating the then obscure
sect of the Christians. Domitian (a.d. 81-96) does
appear to have cast his suspicious eye on these dangerous
innovators, and probably his execution of persons of high
position for " atheism " and for turning aside to " customs
of the Jews" was an attack upon Christians. But the
known instances are few. Irenaeus's statement that St. John
was banished to Patmos in the reign of Domitian r is an
indication that there was then some persecution in the East ;
but, as we have seen, sporadic persecution was always
possible, and probably it never entirely ceased during
these times. There is no sign of an extensive general
persecution under Domitian.
When we come to the second century, the history of
the Early Church begins to emerge out of obscurity in two
quarters of great interest, during the reign of Trajan (a.d.
98-117). First we have Pliny's correspondence with the
1 Adv. How. v. 30.

20 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
emperor, from which we learn that in Bithynia the temples , ,
were almost forsaken, that there was no sale for sacrificial
victims, and that the Christians were in a majority of the
population. Pliny as proconsul had prosecuted inquiries
into this serious condition of his province, putting two
deaconesses to the torture, to extract from them the
secrets of the sect ; but he could ascertain nothing against
them. Still, he regarded Christianity as a " depraved and
immoderate superstition," and he had condemned many of
its adherents to death. Being a humane man and not self-
reliant, Pliny was perplexed at the problem that faced him.
He shrank from the drastic measures that would be
involved in the attempt to stem the popular movement ; 1
yet this movement was illegal. In fact, it was now
doubly obnoxious to the law, because Trajan had recently
issued a rescript forbidding the existence of secret societies,
and the churches appeared to be such societies. Ultimately
this difficulty was got over by the enrolment of them as
burial societies, since an exception was made in favour of those
serviceable clubs. Trajan's brief, decisive answer to Pliny's
inquiry as to how he should treat the Christians is highly
significant.2 There Js to be .no police hunt for these
people, and informers _are not to be encouraged But when
Christians are actually prosecuted they must be punished.
We can have no question as to what that means; the
penalty is death. Dr. Lightfoot regarded this as a
merciful rescript ; and no doubt it was merciful in intention.
Nevertheless, now for the first time — as far as we are
aware — Christianity as such is declared to be a.<}apital
crime. Previously it was this constructively ; henceforth
it is to be so explicitly, on the authority of the emperor.
The ¦.seeftndTcaseJn which we have a gleam of light
thrown on the state of the Church in the reign of Trajan
is that of the seven Ignatian letters now widely accepted
in their shorter Greek formX^gnatius, the bishop of
1 Pliny, Epis. x. 96. 2 Pliny, Epis. x. 97.
'Their genuineness is vindicated by Zahn and Lightfoot and admitted
by Harnack, Kruger, etc.

CHRISTIANITY UNDER THE PAGAN EMPERORS 21
Antioch, is taken to Eome during this reign to be killed
by wild beasts in the Coliseum.
Hadrian (a.d. 117-138), the "grand monarch" who
made it his pride to beautify the cities of his empire with
magnificent buildings while he lived in splendour and
luxury, had none of the rigour of the stern soldier Trajan,
and he does not appear to have taken any part himself in
the persecution of Christians. Yet there were instances of
martyrdom even under his easy rule ; and the insurrection
of the Jews stirred up by Bar Cochbar (a.d. 131) led to
great slaughter of Christians wherever their old enemies
got the upper hand of the Eoman Government. This
demolished the last remnant of confusion between Chris
tianity and Judaism in the official mind.
Formerly it was customary to regard the reign of the
just, conscientious emperor Antoninus Pius (a.d. 138-161)
as free from the stain of persecution ; but that agreeable
delusion had to be abandoned a few years ago, when the
date of the martyrdom of Polycarp, the aged bishop of
Smyrna and teacher of Ignatius, was ascertained to fall
within this reign (a.d. 155 or 156). Still, it was a local
affair, largely instigated by Jewish animosity, with which
the emperor was not directly concerned. His successor,
the gentle Marcus Aurelius, saint and philosopher (a.d.
161—180), must be held responsible for the savage per
secution of the Christians at Lyons and Vienne — so
graphically described in the letter from those Churches to
their brethren in Asia Minor — since he had been consulted
by the local authorities.1 His own reference to the
Christians shows that he regarded them as obstinate, self-
advertising fanatics whose folly was a menace to public
order. Marcus Aurelius went beyond Trajan both in
directly instigating persecution and in reviving the odious
practice of employing informers. According to Melito of
Sardis, the persecution spread to Asia Minor,2 and from
Athenagoras we should conclude that it extended over a
wide area.3 This is the period of the early apologists,
1 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 1. a Ibid. iv. 18. 3 Apol. i. 2.

22 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Quadratus and Aristides writing in the reign of Hadrian,
Justin Martyr and Athenagoras in the days of the
Antonines. The calm, courageous dignity of the defence
of Christianity now offered to the Government by men who
put it forth at the risk of torture and death, is as striking
as its intellectual vigour and rare moral enthusiasm. It
never descends to cringing excuses, cowardly subterfuges,
or angry retorts, although it is always prepared to drive
the war of argument into the enemy's territory. Calm,
open, frank, respectful, it reveals its authors as men who
are certain that they can justify their position and con
fident of the future triumph of their cause, while they
are quite ready to shed their own blood in the athletics of
martyrdom. Nowhere is the irony of history more manifest than in
the fact that when the two best of the Eoman emperors,
AnjtonjnusJPius and Marcus_Aurelius, were followed by
one of the most worthless in the person of Commodus
(a.d. 180—192), persecution was arrested and a season of
prosperity hitherto unparalleled set in for the Christians.
This idle, dissolute young man had not sufficient serious
ness of purpose to persecute, and he seems to have taken
a stupid pleasure in reversing his father's policy. At the
same time, Marcia, his favourite mistress, was distinctly
friendly to the Christians, among whom she appears to
have been brought up in her humbler days ; in particular
she exerted herself to have the exiles recalled from Sicily.
Now for the first time Christians were to be seen and
recognised as such in the imperial court.
At this point the second period of activity and growth
in the Church begins/^fitbTTbe" exception of one short
interval^of jaersecution a long summer of prosperity had
now set in. Commodus was succeeded' by~geptimius
Sjyerus (a.d. 193-211), a good emperor reigning well,
and therefore a persecutor of the Christians. But his
antagonism to the growing Church appears to have been
provoked by the extravagances of those Puritans of the
second century, the Montanists. There are two sides to

CHRISTIANITY UNDER THE PAGAN EMPERORS 23
this matter. The Montanists perceived that with growth
in numbers, wealth, and general prosperity, the Church
was losing its early purity and the fine, heroic enthusiasm
of simpler times. They not only practised a new rigour of
discipline within the Church ; they also showed themselves
eager to grasp the martyr's crown by provoking the
antagonism of the authorities. Now, Septimius Severus
while on progress in the East_had come^under,thain.fluence
of the priests of Isis_ and Serapis, among the most bitter
of the antagonists of the Christians. It is not surprising,
therefore, that under these circumstances he issued a decree
forbidding the propagation of new doctrines or any change
of religions (a.d. 203), a rather inconsistent thing to do
considering that he himself had jusTT™Deen initiated into
the Egyptian mysteries. But the decree was simply aimed
at the Christians, who were the chief, if not the sole,
sufferers from it. The consequent persecution extended
along North Africa and was felt severely in Egypt, where
Leonidas, tEe~father of Origen, was the first to "seal his
faitE""with his blood. Here too wa,s the scene of the
romance of Potameia, the beautiful, gifted girl who won
over her military custodian Basilides to follow her in
martyrdom. After this we come to forty years of peace,
not indeed without occasional local outbreaks of persecu
tion — for Christianity was illegal all this time — but with
no serious attempt to suppress the growing Church, which
is now seen standing out in broad daylight and challenging
the world's attention. One emperor, Alexander Severus,
has a statue of Christ set up in his palace by the side of
statues of Abraham and Orpheus ; another, Philip the
Arabian, is even rumoured to have been a Christian,1
though his celebration of the secular games contradicts
that notion.
Thus all seemed favourable, and the Church, growing
strong and rich, might consider that since she had
weathered the storms of her early days she could now
look forward to a course of unimpeded progress, till the
1 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vi. 34.

24 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
whole empire was won for the dominion of Christ, when
there fell upon her a violent persecution, in com
parison with which all previous attacks were slight and
local. This was the great Decian persecution (a.d. 250).
The emperor Decius, coming to the throne of what
appeared to be a decaying empire, determined to make
a supreme effort to restore the old Eoman virtue and
vigour. In particular he regarded the Christians as the
most dangerous innovators of the ancient customs.
Accordingly he eriterebT~bn the huge task of putting an
end to Christianity. The persecution which followed
was a life-and-death struggle. It mainly differed from
previous persecutions in being carried on by a strong,
determined man in pursuance of a deliberate policy to
root out what its author believed to be the most serious
menace to the State, an irrvperium in imperio, the growth
of which threatened to choke the civil power. Thus
instigated by Decius himself, this tremendous onslaught
on the Church — incomparably more searching and uncom
promising than anything that preceded it — was the first
really general persecution, the first attempt of Eome to
use all its might for the utter extirpation of Christianity.
And it failed. The Church proved too strong for the State.
When Decius perished miserably in a morass during a
war with the Goths, the persecution flickered out and
faded away. Gallus revived it faintly and Valerian more
seriously, until his capture by the Persians was promptly
followed by his son Gallienus's issue of the first edict of
toleration (a.d. 260). There had been hosts of martyrs ;
but multitudes of weaker men and women had been
terrified into apostasy, and the Church was now face
to face with the grave problem of " the lapsed," a
problem that led to a serious division. Still, the fiery
ordeal had been a great purgation, and now again the
Christians enjoyed a long spell of liberty, with ample
opportunities for pushing their conquests forward in
this third season of vigorous life and missionary energy.
It would seem that this time the victory was secure.

CHRISTIANITY UNDER THE PAGAN EMPERORS 25
But once again the forces of the enemy were marshalled
for a last decisive conflict. After more than forty years
of peace and prosperity the most severe of all the
persecutions was commenced. Christianity was now a
popularly recognised religion ; in the cities large
and imposing churches were among the chief public
buildings ; many Christians were to be found in high places
at court; and the emperor Dioclejian^was favourably
disposed to them. Although the persecution bears his
name, and although as senior Augustus he was actually
responsible for it and was even induced to sign the earlier
edicts, its real author was his colleague Galerius, whom
Lactantius calls the " Wild Beast " ; and the final edict com
manding all Christians to sacrifice or die was issued by
another colleague, Maximian, when the old emperor was laid
aside in broken health and in a state of melancholy border
ing on insanity. Eusebius gives us a vivid account of the
martyrs of Palestine under this last desperate attempt to
stamp out Christianity.1 But if the Decian persecution with
all the resources of the State to support it had failed half
a century before, the idea of destroying Christianity now
that it had grown so much stronger was preposterous.
All this bloodshed was so much waste as far as the
aims of the persecutors were concerned. In the agonies
of his deathbed, its author Galerius issued an edict putting
a stop to it and even commanding the Christians to pray
for him (a.d. 311). After this it is not so very won
derful that two years later Constantine went over to
the winning side and openly adopted Christianity; for
he was an astute ruler who had seen the outbreak of the
persecution from Diocletian's court and observed its utter
futility. It is not easy to estimate the position attained by the
victorious Church in the East after these centuries of
chequered history, but a rough idea may be formed from
the data afforded us by history. Professor Harnack points
to Asia Minor as "the Christian country tear e%oxw
1 De Martyribus Palcestince — following book viii. of Hist. Eccl.

26 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
during the pre-Constantine era."1 Half Nicomedia was
now Christian ; Bithynia and Western Pisidia were widely
Christianised ; in Asia and Caria the Christians were very
numerous ; the southern provinces of Syria, Pamphilia, and
Isauria sent twenty-five bishops to the Nicene Council and
Cilicia sent nine. Thrace, Macedonia, Dardania, Epirus,
and Greece were all provinces of the Church with their
own metropolitans, though little is known of their history.
North and west there were young churches planted as far
away as the banks of the Danube, and missionary work
was already begun among the Goths to the north-west
of the Black Sea.
In Palestine there was quite a number of churches —
Professor Harnack gives the names of about thirty — with
Jerusalem as their capital. There were three churches in
Phoenicia and a good number in Coele-Syria, with the
important bishopric of Antioch at their head. Less than
a century after this time Chrysosotom reckons the number
of members of the chief church — perhaps, as Gibbon con
sidered, meaning the total Christian population of this city
— to be 100,000. Then there were churches in Arabia,
and as early as the time of Origen numerous bishoprics in
towns south of the Hauran. In Egypt the Christians
were very numerous, those in Alexandria far out
numbering the Jews ; churches were flourishing in the
Nile towns as far up as Philae and on the two oases.
Lastly, Edessa was now an important Christian centre, and
there were several churches in Mesopotamia, and some
even beyond the confines of the empire in Parthia and
Persia. 1 Expansion of Christianity, Eng. Trans., vol. ii. p. 326.

CHAPTER II
CONSTANTINE THE GREAT
BORN PROBABLY A.D. 274; DIED A.D. 337
(o) Pagan historians : Eutropius ; Aurelius Victor ; Zosimus.
Christian writers : Lactantius ; Eusebius ; Socrates ; Sozomen.
(6) De Broglie, I'Eglise et I'Empire au IV Siecle, vol. i., 1856;
Stanley, Easter n Church,186l; Smith's Dictionary of Biography,
article " Constantinus I." ; Frith, Constantine the Great, 1905-
The name of Constantine marks the commencement of a
new era of history both in the empire and in the Church.
The transition from the old form of government which was
nominally republican, with the emperor as prince of the
Senate, commander-in-chief of the army, Pontifex Maximus,
and much else, accumulating in his own-person the chief
republican offices, to the new form of government which
was frankly despotic, must be attributed to Diocletian. It
was that keen-sighted ruler who saw that the time had
come for the abolition of empty formulae and a readjust
ment of the whole machinery of government. Diocletian
abandoned all pretence of maintaining the stern Eoman
simplicity of manners, and introduced into his palace the
pomp and ceremony of an Oriental court. By centralising
the government, and then subdividing it, so that there were
two Augusti — an Eastern and a Western — and two Caesars
under them, he so knit up the imperial authority that when
the senior Augustus died the junior Augustus took the first
place as a matter of course, and one of the Caesars became
junior Augustus. Each Augustus nominated his own
Cassar. All decrees affecting the whole empire were
signed by the joint rulers, the supreme authority resting
27

28 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
with the senior Augustus. In this way three advantages
were gained : the vast work of government was subdivided ;
the unity of empire was preserved; and the succession
was regulated, in a peaceful and orderly method. Then,
by settling his court at Nicomedia, Diocletian already
began to transfer the centre of gravity in the empire from
Eome to the East. Constantine came to the throne under
this arrangement. His father was Constantius Chlorus, of
a noble Dardanian family, who had been Caesar over the
provinces of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, and then Augustus.
His mother was the famous Empress Helena, whose
traditional "Invention of the Cross" has made her a
conspicuous figure in Christian art. By a confusion of
traditions she has been taken for a British princess of the
same name ; but she was really a Cilician and servant at
an inn. Helena has been described as a " concubine " of
Constantius; but she must not be regarded as only the
emperor's mistress. There can be no doubt that they
were husband and wife according to a secondary order
of marriage recognised in the empire at the time.
The young Constantine was brought up at his mother's
village home tin he was sixteen years old, when the
suspicious Diocletian had him come to reside at court in
Nicomedia, evidently as a hostage for his father's good
conduct. When Constantius became Augustus he sent for
his son to help him with the government (A.D. 305).
Though outwardly consenting, Galerius, who was senior
Augustus at the time, was really unwilling to let him go,
and Constantine had to slip away secretly and hurry
Westwards to escape recapture. The next year (a.d. 306)
Constantius died at York, having nominated his son as
his successor ; and at York Constantine was hailed by the
soldiers as Augustus. When he had obtained supreme
power, Constantine, like Diocletian, made the centre of
his government in the East. For a time Nicomedia, not
Eome, was the real capital of the empire. Then Constantine
determined to found a new Eome. With the insight of
genius he chose Byzantium as the site, and built there the

CONSTANTINO THE GREAT 29
city which as Constantinople has ever after commemorated
its famous founder. Magnificently situated on the Bosphorus
by the high road between Europe and Asia, this city was
naturally the key to the gates of empire in both directions.
It was in Europe, not in Asia, as was the case with
Nicomedia. We may regard that fact as not without
significance. Diocletian, though so alive to the exigencies
of the times, looked Eastward and emulated the Oriental
despots in his court methods. But although his mother
was an Asiatic and although he himself had spent his youth
in Asia, Constantine was in sympathy with Greek culture,
and Constantinople was a Greek city. From the first and
throughout its history till its capture by the Turks, the
new city was a centre of Hellenic life and influence. The
significance of this fact can hardly be overestimated.
The Eoman empire in the East was fast degenerating into
an Asiatic despotism after the Persian type. Constantine
saved it from that fate. Nevertheless he accentuated the
most significant line of policy pursued by Diocletian ;
while preserving the European character of the govern
ment, he recognised that the centre of gravity must be in
the East and acted accordingly. The consequences were
as momentous to the Church as to the empire. Eemoval
from Eome was escape from Eoman pagan traditions and
Eoman aristocratic influences. It was the death-blow to
the last lingering influence of the Senate. Henceforth the
empire, except in one vital element, "was Eoman only in
name. It was no longer the rule of a city over its
conquered provinces ; it was the rule of a prince and his
colleagues, who might be of any nationality. The one vital
element which preserved the integrity of the empire
throughout and perpetuated it in the Byzantine rulers
was Eoman law. Like " the kingdom of God," this vast
civilising influence came " without observation." Having its
foundations in old civic usages of republican times, and
built up by jurists quite unknown to fame from the time
of Marcus Aurelius onwards, it was destined to become
the basis of the jurisprudence and public ethics of

30 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
mediaeval and modern Europe. Eoman law stands only
second to Christianity as a moulding influence of European
civilisation. This system was so firmly established by
the time of the transference of the chief seat of govern
ment to the East, that the world was saved from what
might have been total ruin, from the submerging of the
stern Eoman sense of justice and the swamping of per
sonal as well as public right beneath a flood of Oriental
customs. The founding of Constantinople profoundly affected both
the Western and the Eastern branches of the Catholic
Church, but in very different ways. To the West it
brought ecclesiastical liberty, and it made the papacy
possible. Now, while the papacy became a tyranny within
the Church, it secured a measure of freedom from the
tyranny of the imperial Government over the Church. At
Eome the pope soon assumed a position which would have
been impossible to him if the emperor had been residing
there. While other cities — Treves, Milan, Eavenna — subse
quently became centres for the empire in the West, Eome was
left severely alone, with the consequence that the pope was
the first citizen and even came to take the place of the
emperor as the chief centre of power and influence in the city.
It would be grossly unfair to attribute the enormous power
that has accreted to the papacy to nothing but the rapacity
of popes. A^more than one crisis of European peril the pope
proved to bethe saviour of society. When the arm of
the empire was .paralysed, the power of the Church came
to the rescue of civilisation, in face of barbarian invasions.
Leo I. was able to protect Italy as effectually as though
he had been a powerful prince, although his only weapons
were persuasion and diplomacy. Gregory the Great was a
potent influence for the saving of civilisation in the Old
World, as well as for the missionary work of the Church
among the new rising races of the West. Hildebrand may
be regarded in the light of a champion of the spiritual power
in opposition to the brute force of mediaeval tyranny.
The Middle Ages saw the long duel between the popes and

CONSTANTINE THE GREAT 31
the emperors, and on the wjiole the popes were on the side
of religion, culture, and progress. It was otherwise when
the Eenaissance and the Eeformation were followed by the
counter-Eeformation. Then all the forces of obscurantism
and despotism ranged themselves with the papacy, while
the new light, life, and liberty were driven out to fresh
fields. How different was it in the East, where the Church
was subservient to the State throughout all these ages !
No doubt we must attribute the contrast between the
histories of Eastern and Western Europe in part to racial
distinctions. In some respects the former is more allied
to Asia than to Europe. Thus we are able to trace the
history of all the Eastern Churches in a common conspectus.
But while this is the case it must be seen that Constantine's
political move in finally and effectually transferring the
centre of government from the banks of the Tiber to the
shores of the Bosphorus immensely aggravated the tendency
of the civil despotism to crush out the liberties of the
Church. The Eastern Church, from the days of Constantine
onwards, lived under the shadow of an imperial palace.
That we may take to be an epitome of its history ; and the
ominous fact is directly traceable to the founding of New
Eome by Constantine.
But while this is obvious to us to-day, and is the most
significant phenomenon in the appearance of Constantine
on the stage of history when viewed in the broad light of
the ages, it was another department of the famous emperor's
action that arrested the attention of contemporaries; The
man who really inaugurated the Eastern Church's
paralysing bondage to the State was hailed by the
Christians of his day as their emancipator, friend, and
patron, and panegyrists loaded his name with fulsome '
praises for his services to Christianity.
The story of the conversion of Constantine belongs to
the romance of history ; but, like many another romantic
tale which has been made to pass through the fires of
criticism, it has not come out scathless. The adulation of

32 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
a panegyrist, the natural thirst for marvels, and the con
vention of mediaeval art have combined to set the scene of
Constantine's vision on the road to Eome side by side with
St. Paul's vision during his journey to Damascus. When
viewed in the sober light of history, neither this event,
whatever it may have been, nor its consequences, is in any
way comparable to that stupendous crisis and turning-point
in the career of the great apostle. Newman argued
strenuously for the Belief that here was a real miracle, a
direct supernatural intervention by God, at a*"fitting time;
But when we consider the fact that it was a war banner
that the Prince of Peace was said to have inspired, and
when we go on to look at the subsequent character of the
man who is said to have been thus favoured and the whole
effect of the patronage of Christianity by the empire, it is
not easy to believe that all this indicates nothing less than
the finger of God. When, however, we come down to the
lower plane of simple history, it must be admitted that
something strange did happen, and that this occurrence,
whatever it was, became the occasion of stupendous con
sequences. The accounts vary ; but that is no more than
must be said of all independent reports of the same event.
What is plain is that, in October 312, while Constantine
was marching to Eome against the usurper Maxentius, the
champion of paganism, something occurred to lead him to
claim the Christian symbol for his standard in the
approaching battle. Whether we accept the narrative
which Eusebius says the emperor gave him on oath1 —
perhaps not to us the more reliable for that fact — that the
emperor " saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of
light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the in
scription, " Conquer by this," 2 and received an explanation
from Christ in a dream ; or stretch our credulity to the
1 Vit. Const, i. 27. On this point Prof. E. C. Richardson acutely remarks :
"Note here the care Eusebius takes to throw off the responsibility for the
marvellous " (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. i. p. 490). In his History
Eusebius' statement is both vague and cautious (Hist. Eccl. ix. 9).
1 roirif vtica.

CONSTANTINE THE GREAT 33
still more marvellous and much later account of Sozomen,
according to which angels appeared at the time of the vision
and gave the explanation there and then ; or fall back on the
sober statement of Lactantius, whose report is the earliest of
all, and who resolves the whole occurrence into a dream 1 
whichever of these narratives we accept, or whether we
attempt to combine any of the elements contained in them,
we cannot well escape from the conclusion that something
happened to bring Constantine to a definite decision at
this great crisis of his life. Possibly there was some
curious effect of sunlight — such as that known to
astronomers as the " parhelion," in which a cross of light
may be seen radiating from the sun, which the emperor's
mood at the time could not but lead him to welcome as a
sign from heaven. That is the point. The fascination for
a supposed physical miracle has diverted attention from
a most interesting psychological process. Unlike St. Paul,
Constantine had never been opposed to Christianity. He
had inherited from his father a friendly feeling towards
the Christians. Eusebius prefaces his report of what
the emperor had said to him about the vision with a de
scription of Constantine's perplexity and his prayer for
light at a moment of terrible anxiety. None of the
narratives will allow us to assign his adoption of
Christianity to mere statecraft or cunning policy.
When the battle at the Milvian Bridge in which the
tyrant Maxentius was killed gave Constantine a magnificent
victory, he felt in this a confirmation of his resolve to
accept the Christian faith and adopt its sign. It is plain
that he threw in his lot with the Church on conviction.
How deep that conviction went it is not easy to say.
His subsequent syncretism and his vague treatment of
the essentials of Christian truth forbid us to believe that
he had any definite intellectual grip of the subject.
Still, he honestly accepted Christ as a Divine Lord, and
he consistently leaned to the side of the Christians in
their differences with the pagans. It scarcely lies within
1 De Morte Pers. 44.

34 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the province of history to penetrate still deeper into
the inquiry as to whether the so-called conversion of
Constantine brought with it a real change of character.
He was large-minded, generous, pacific before this ; and he
remained so afterwards. Yet he cannot be acquitted of
charges of savage outbursts of cruelty even after his " con
version." Possibly he was not guilty of the murder of his
wife Fausta, but he could not plead innocence with re
gard to that of his son Crispus. Eeasons of State have
been urged in defence of his action in this matter;
evidently it was a political murder. Still, the guilt of
blood and that the blood of his own child lies on
Constantine in the Christian period of his life. In other
respects he was an honourable and upright man, and a
faithful husband, free from all accusations of impurity
among the great temptations of an Oriental court.
Most men act from mixed motives, and certainly we
could not credit Constantine with the single eye of a
George Washington or a John Bright. There were high
reasons of State to encourage so astute a master of the art
of government to follow up his undoubted sympathy
with Christianity and more or less solid convictions of its
truth with vigorous practical patronage. He was far-
seeing enough to perceive that it was the winning side in
the conflict of princes and parties. He had been a hostage
at Nicomedia when the Diocletian persecution had broken
out; he had witnessed the mad fanaticism of Galerius
which had failed to subdue the calm courage of the
Christians ; Maxentius the usurper, and later Licinius, his
partner, but also his rival, had enlisted their forces in
favour of paganism. Manifestly it was to the interest of
Constantine to have the powerful, growing influence of
Christianity thrown into the scale in his favour. It is
highly to the credit of his discernment that he perceived
how futile the long intermittent conflict of the empire
with the Church had been, and saw that the time had come,
not merely to make peace, as even Galerius and still earlier
Gallienus had seen, but to accept the situation frankly and

. CONSTANTINE THE GREAT 35
turn it to the best account. We may admit the genuine
ness of Constantine's conviction of the truth of Christianity
and the honesty of his decision to adhere to it, and still go
a long way with Seeley when he asserts, concerning
Constantine's adoption of Christianity, that " by so doing he
may be said to have purchased an indefeasible title by a
charter. He gave certain liberties and he received in
turn passive obedience. He gained a sanction for the
Oriental theory of government ; in return he accepted the
law of the Church. He became irresponsible to his sub
jects on condition of becoming responsible to Christ."
It is necessary to consider this position and come to
some clear understanding of it, because we are here at the
source and fountain of the political history of the Greek
Church. What that Church became, not only in relation
to the State, but also in its own life and character, was
largely determined by the action of Constantine in
patronising Christianity and the conduct of the Church
in accepting his patronage. At this point we may say^
the die was cast, the Eubicon was crossed, the fate of
Christendom — or rather of Eastern Christendom, for the/
West soon shook itself free — was sealed. It is desirable,
therefore, to trace out carefully the stages of Constantine's
treatment of the Church till we reach the final issue which
was to stamp the ecclesiastical policy of the empire for
all succeeding ages. These may be regarded as four,
characterised respectively by sympathy, justice, patronage,
and control.
In the first stage Constantine feels drawn to Chris-'
tianity and adopts the Christian symbol ; in the second he
grants religious liberty for the benefit of the Christians ;
in the third he. bestows on the Church privileges, im-
munitie&j and funds from the State purse ; in the fourth
he interferes with ecclesiastical affairs, tyrannises over
bishops "and congregations "and forces them to his will.
Constantine's first public confession of Christianity con
sisted in his adoption of the Labarum as his standard in
battle. This symbol consisted of a spear with a cross-

36 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
piece near the point, a gold wreath containing the initials
of Jesus Christ (I and X) as an anagram (X) mounted
above and a banner hanging below the cross-piece. After
his victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge,
Constantine was welcome'! by the citizens of Eome as
their deliverer from an odious tyranny, and by none
more warmly than the Christians. The emperor justified
their enthusiastic support by having a statue of himself
with a cross in his hand erected in the most frequented
part of the city. An inscription ascribed his victory to
" this salutary sign." Constantine now showed favour to
the Chii . ms at every opportunity, and no persecution
of Christianity was possible under his government.
""it would appear from a phrase in the edict of Milan
that at an early date Constantine had issued rescripts to
his officials favourable to the Christians. But the legal
pronouncement which granted them complete jeligious
liberty followed a n^gjetinsof ConstaTatine with Licinius at
Milan on the 13 th of June a.d. ,,3 14. This Magna Charta
of religious liberty is one of the most significant documents
in all history. It grants absolute freedom in religion,
though it mentions Christians as especially needing the
boon, declaring that " the Christians and all others should
have liberty to follow that mode of religion which to each
of them appeared best." It applies to the whole empire —
to all races, all creeds, all cults. There is no restriction
of the heathen in favour of the Christians. Further, it
permits people to change their religion, allowing them to
¦adopt Christianity or any other religion. Lastly, it orders
the confiscated property of the Christians to be restored,
" and that without hesitatibn or controversy " ; there are
to be no lawyers' quibbles with this delicate question of
property.-- Compensation to the present holders of Church
b**dfngs may be "paid out of the imperial- treasury.1 '
Here is the ideal of- religious liberty, though not
Cavour's "Free Church in a Free State"; for until the
1 Lactantius, De Morte Pers. 48, for the Latin form of the edict;
Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. x. 5, for a Greek version of it.

CONSTANTINE THE GREAT 37
State is free it is difficult for the Church to escape from
the interference of the Government even when the despotic
ruler starts with the honest intention of respecting its
liberties. Nevertheless the conception of the edict of
Milan is magnificent in the breadth of its liberalism. As
we read it we feel that the author of such a document
must be classed with those rare minds that are centuries
in advance of their age, and have the genius to adumbrate
brilliant ideas the real scope of which is quite beyond
their actual principles. Except for a very brief interval,
the large conception of the edict of Milan was not
realised even in the West before the Eeformation, and
indeed not then except by a few obscure separatists such
as the Baptists, the early Independents and Pilgrim
Fathers, and a century later the Quakers, We must
eome down to the Dutchman William in. for a sovereign
who really practised what Constantine so boldly sketched
out in the famous edict nearly fourteen hundred years
before. Meanwhile this idea has never been realised in
the Eastern Churches.
In point of fact this law of religious liberty was an
imperial permit, emanating from the good pleasure of
Constantine. It was only the law of the empire because
it was the will of the emperor. Thus from the first it
rested on a very precarious basis. The world was not
only not ripe for complete religious liberty ; no party in
State or Church was really prepared to concede it to an
opponent. We can scarcely look in the fourth century
for what the greater part of Christendom is not yet within
measurable distance of obtaining or even desiring.
Accordingly we must not be at all surprised to see that
from licensing all religions — and so liberating Christianity
from penal restrictions — Constantine quickly proceeds^ to
patronising the religion he has publicly adopted, nor that
the leaders of the Church gratefully accept his favours,
quite blind to the fact that they are thereby selling their
liberties, deliberately walking into a cage.
Constantine's favours took two forms. First, he

38 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
exempted _ the clergy from the obligation of filling
municipal offices— -a" eostj^Jsurdjmrome obligation. This
was already enjoyed by the pagan priesthood, so that in
granting the privilege to the Christian" clergy Constantine
was only putting them on a level with the priests in the
old temples. Similarly, when in England Nonconformist
ministers share with Established Church clergymen
exemption from the obligation of servingonjuries, they
do not regard this as a peculiar favduftoNonconformity.
Still, in both cases there is a clear recognition of official
status. Constantine's order was confined to North Africa
in the first instance ; subsequently it was extended to the
whole empire.
Second, Constantine granted contributions from the
imperial treasury for the building of churches and towards
the support of the clergy. It may be said that similar
grants had been made to the pagan temples and their
officers, so that this was a case of concurrent endowment.
But, as far as we know, all Constantine's favour in this
form was shown to the Christians. Here was indeed a
dangerous power — the power of the purse. In accepting
the money of the State the Church was deliberately
putting herself more or less under the control of the
State. Besides, this favouritism, which was a departure
from the large liberalism of the Edict of Milan in spirit,
though not in the letter, roused the jealousy and alarm of
the old temple authorities. Constantine was thus pro
voking to enmity a party with huge vested interests at
stake. This party found a champion in Licinius, the
second Augustus. Licinius could have been only a half
hearted supporter of the Edict of Milan ; he was unable
to resist Constantine's desire for his concurrence when it
was issued, had he wished to do so. But at a later time
he threw in his lot with the disaffected pagan party, and
by means of the support he thus obtained broke connection
with Constantine and claimed independence. So long as
he could hold his own he pursued an openly pagan policy,
forbidding the Christians to assemble in their churches,

CONSTANTINE THE GREAT 39
and leaving them only to worship in the open air, excluding
them from the civil service, banishing some, and perhaps
even proceeding to inflict the death penalty in a few cases.
But before he could go far in this direction his defeat by
Constantine, followed by his death, put an end to the
pagan reaction (a.d. 324).
As sole emperor, Constantine now had a free hand.
For the second time, flushed with victory over a champion
of paganism, he proceeded to a much more emphatic
patronage of Christianity; he even issued a rescript
urging his subjects to become Christians. There was no
direct violation of the edict of toleration in this decree.
Everybody was still left free to follow his own choice.
The decree was but an exhortation. Still it meant much.
Next we see Constantine interfering in matters of Church
government. In the first instance this was on the
invitation of the Christians for the settlement of the
Novatian schism, a schism mainly turning on a question of
discipline. Constantine was reluctant to interfere, and
when he did so, he wisely appointed bishops as assessors.
Still, the fatal step was taken. Before long emperors
will be seen tampering with ecclesiastical affairs on their
own initiative, without any appeal from the Church, and
that even in questions of doctrine.
Nevertheless, Constantine was careful not to com
pletely alienate the pagan party. He retained the office
of Pontifex Maximus and thus secured his influence at
Eome. He had the image of the sun-god impressed on
one side of his coins, while the monogram of Christ was
stamped on the other side. He ordered the Government
offices and law courts to be closed on the Christian day of
worship, but he referred to this day by its pagan title as
" the venerable day of the sun." He went so far in the
direction of syncretism as to order a prayer of pure
theism for use in his army. His conception of Chris
tianity was never very profound. At heart he seems
to have been an eclectic theist with a distinct pre
ference for Christianity and a measure of real belief in

40 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
it; and in these respects his State policy reflects his
own ideas.
, The effect of Christianity on legislation, always slow
in so conservative a region where precedent is power,
j begins hopefully under Constantine. The emperor put an
I. end^to crucifixion — as a desecration of the cross of Christ,
the breaking of the legs of criminals, and the branding of
slaves. According to Eusebius he forbade sacrifices to
idols, jivination, the erecting of images, and gladiatorial
combats.1 "if so, the law was a deadletter; for certainly
all these things went on for generations after the time of
Constantine. Possibly we have here a reference to some
of his pious exhortations, such as that in which he invited
all his subjects to become Christians. But although
Constantine even patronised the amphitheatre as late as the
year 323, when he received a panegyric for so doing, and
two years later sanctioned the establishment of new
gladiatorial games at Cpello in Umbria — the force of public
passion for this cruel sport being simply irresistible among
the Italians — it was never introduced into his new city of
Constantinople. Then, though _ slavery was continued,
masters were forbidden to kill or torture their slaves,
and manumission was facilitated. The cruel lot of
prisoners was mitigated ; they were not to be so chained
up as to suffer from want of light and air. Debtors were
not to be scourged, and they were to De" brought to trial
as quickly aspTtesible. Above all, the position of woman
was elevated. Adultery was treated as a crime to be
punished; concubinageTwas forbidden, though intercourse
with a female slave was not regarded as such; the old
freedom of divorce was abolished ; marriage received high
sanctions ; and assaults on consecrated virgins and widows
were made punishable with death. Thus Constantine's
legislation moved in the direction of humaneness and
Parity — two characteristic ideas of Christian ethics.
1 Fit. Con. iv. 25.

CHAPTER III
ARIANISM
(a) The historians mentioned in the previous chapter ; Athanasius,
Orationes Con. Arianos, Hist. Arianorwm, etc. ; fragments of
Philostorgius, the Arian historian.
(6) Gwatkin, Arian Controversy, 1889, a masterly authority ;
Newman, Arians of the Fourth Century, 1838 — the 2nd edition,
1854, is unaltered, a vigorous but polemical treatise ; Hefele,
History of the Councils, Eng. Trans., vol. L, 1872.
Arianism caused the most serious division in the Church
I that has occurred during the whole course of the history of
Christendom. It was the most momentous subject of
controversy during the fourth century, the age of the
greatest Fathers of the Eastern Church, the age of its
keenest polemics and most masterly theological literature.
The Nicene Creed, the essential standard of doctrine for
the orthodox in the East, was formulated for the express
purpose of excluding and crushing this heresy, which at
times held its head so high, encouraged by imperial favour,
that it threatened to dominate the Church and supplant
the rival orthodox theology. So serious was the question
deemed to be, that it was treated as of primary importance
to the State, and the chief factor of politics throughout
the century was the attitude of the emperors towards
Arianism. During all this time it was essentially a
question of the Eastern Church ; the West was but little
affected, although a protagonist in the controversy was
Hosius of Cordova. Hilary of Poitiers was the only
Western theologian of importance to take part in the con
troversy at this early stage. Much later, after Arianism had
41

42 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
been stamped out in the East, it became dominant in the
West, coming in with the invading Goths who were heretics
without knowing it, having become such in a way by
accident, simply because the great missionary Ulfilas, to
whom they owed their conversion happened to be an
Arian. Thus the later Arianism of the West was purely
adventitious, a mere result of the migration of peoples.
The real home of Arianism is the East, and it is with the
Eastern Church that the great controversy is almost
entirely concerned. It therefore demands some attention
in the present volume, although it has been treated in two
previous works of the same Series.1
The origin of this tremendous controversy, which shook
the whole fabric of the Church down to its foundations —
like that of many a mighty river which may be traced
back to a little runnel of water trickling down the hillside
— was seemingly quite insignificant. Arius, from whom
the heresy derives its name, was a presbyter of the Church
at Alexandria, where the presbyterate retained its import
ance longer than in other places, and he exercised the
functions of pastor in the neighbouring village church of
Baukalis from about the year a.d. 313. Five years later
(a.d. 318) he accused his bishop Alexander of Sabellianism.
That his motive in doing so was jealousy on account of his
disappointment at not having been elected to the episcopate
has not been proved, and we must always be on our guard
against the personalities that are continually being bandied
to and fro among the ecclesiastical controversialists, and
constitute the most painful and humiliating features of
Church history. Alexander saved the situation by turning
the tables on his daring opponent and accusing Arius of
false teaching. Thus, as has often happened, the heresy-
hunter himself turned out to be a heretic. There can be
no doubt in this case that Arius was in the wrong. That
Alexander was not a Sabellian is proved by his statement
of his views contained in an important epistle. On the
other hand, undoubtedly Arius was a heretic, in the
1 Fisher, History of Christian Doctrine ; Rainy, The Ancient Church.

ARIANISM 43
technical sense of the term ; that is to say, he advocated
private opinions that were at variance with the general
trend of Church teaching.
Although Arianism sprang up in Alexandria, its roots
have been traced back to Antioch. Origen had taught a
strong subordination doctrine; but he had affirmed the
eternal generation of the Son, and the tone and temper of
his thought were alien to what we see in Arianism. The
great Alexandrian theology was intensely Platonic, and
the development of the orthodox faith during the fourth
century was largely controlled by an infusion of Platonism ;
but the dry, hard, logical method of Arius was Aristotelian,
and so was that of the school of Antioch. Harnack says,
" This school is the parent of Arian doctrrrfe and Lucian
its head is the Arius before Arius." 1 Nevertheless, Pro
fessor Gwatkin traces it to Alexandrian heathenism.
The gravamen of Arius' objection to Alexander's teaching
was the doctrine of the eternity of the Son of God, which,
he maintained, involved Sabellianism. ""On the other hand,
the non-eternity of the Second Person of the Trinity was
the starting-point of Arianism. Pressed into a corner,
Arius will not say that " there was a time when He was
not," because time itself did not then exist, since it began
with creation, and He was before all other things ; but he
affirms that "there was when He was not." As he
develops his system the following features emerge : —
1. The unity of God. He alone is neither generated
nor created^-eternal, essential being, to op, Deity apart
from all else. Arius is in sympathy with the heathen and
later Jewish conception of the transcendence of God.
2. The independent personality of Christ. Here Arius
is in direct antagonism to Sabellianism. Extreme op
ponents of Arius — Marcellus, Photius, etc. — went over
the knife-edge of orthodoxy on the other side and became
Sabellian. Every system of thought that has enlisted
the sympathies of earnest men has its merits, and one
of the merits of Arianism is that it tended to rescue the
1 History of Dogma, Eng. Trans., vol. iv. p. 3.

44 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
idea of a Mediator, of an actual personal Eedeemer of the
world revealed in the gospel, an idea that was becoming
swamped in metaphysical conceptions of the Godhead.
3. The .origin of Christ by creation. According to
Arius, the sonship of Christ was only a figurative con
ception. God could not really have a Son begotten of
His own nature. Christ must have been made, created
out of nothing, and that by the will of God. He was
made before all other creatures; and the difference
between His origin and that of the rest of the universe
was that He was created directly by God, while all other
existences that came into being were created through Him.
4. He had no human soul. The exalted being Christ
came down and was incarnate in a . human body ; that
was all. Thus the problem of the nature of Christ
was simplified. There was no complexity of a double
consciousness. 5. Christ was naturally mutable. He could turn to
evil, if He so chose.
6. A somewhat inconsistent part of the system was the
contention that Christ received Divine honours in recogni
tion of His worthy conduct. At this point Arianism is
linked on to adoptionism. It is not easy to harmonise
such a conception with Arius's idea of the pre-existing
Christ ; but the reconciliation is sought in the Divine
foreknowledge. God foresaw how Christ would conduct
Himself and rewarded Him accordingly by anticipation.
Arianism was an extremely simple system ; herein
was its recommendation. It professed to be free from
the obscurities of the popular theology. It banished
mystery from religion. Its appeal was to logic. Further,
it claimed to be conservative, falling back on the verbal
sense of Scripture against the speculative elaborations of
metaphysical theology; but its range of scriptural
authority was small, a mere group of texts arbitrarily
selected and in some cases wilfully misapplied. In this
matter both parties were almost equally guilty of offending
against sound principles of textual exegesis.

ARIANISM 45
Still, when we make due allowance for all such con
siderations, it may yet strike us as remarkable that a
system so artificial in structure, and so harsh in outline,
should have won its way in the Church. The objections
to it were obvious. On the face of it Arianism toned
down the honour that enthusiastic Christians were eagerly
offering to their Lord. While it allowed of a Mediator,
this strange being was neither God nor man, neither
united to the Divine on the one hand nor to the human
on the other. Thus the gulf still remained unbridged,
and all that was offered was a monstrous figure standing
isolated in the middle of it ; or if we view the idea another
way, while Christ was not one with us in human nature,
He did belong to our created nature, so that if we think
of God on one side of the gulf and creation on the other,
Christ adheres completely to the side of creation, and
there is no real mediation at all. Nevertheless, it is
allowed that some measure of worship may be offered to
Him, and He may be called God in a secondary sense, as
the locust is called the " great power " of God.1 But then,
since He is but a creature, such worship is the worship
of the creature, that is to say, idolatry. The essential
paganism of the scheme was apparent to Athanasius, who
urged this charge home against the Arians. They were
importing the demi-god of the heathen world into the
Church of the only true, living God.
Since these objections are obvious, we may wonder
how it came about that Arianism got a lodgment in the
Church, spread so rapidly, and attained to so much
influence as was the case. Something may be set down
to the personal fascination of its author. Athanasius'
first attack on the heresy is based on its name, the
Arians naming themselves after a man while the
orthodox called themselves simply " Christians." This
is significant, showing that the name was not a label
attached to them by their enemies, like the title
" Swedenborgian " commonly given to the community
1 See Athanasius, Orat. Cont. Arian. i. 6.

46 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
that calls itself the "New Church." The Arians were
proud of Arius — at least this was the case in the early
days ; later, when opprobrium had been heaped on his
name, some of them were not so eager to claim it.
Arius appears before us as a strange figure — a tall,
gaunt man, wearing his hair in a tangled mass, with a
wild look in his eyes, and restless convulsive movements
in his limbs, ascetic in his habits, generally grave and
silent, but capable of fierce excitement when fairly
roused, and very attractive in the earnestness of his
manner and the sweetness of his voice. He resorted to
a dubious device for the popularising of his doctrines,
composing dry, didactic hymns in the metre of vulgar
banquet songs, to the scandal of sober Churchmen, but
indicating that he knew how to catch the ear of the
public. These hymns would be sung to lively music and
dancing —a curious compound of worldly gaiety and
orgiastic pagan practices, inherited from the ancient
religion of the Egyptians and continued down to the
present day in the weird practices of the dervishes.
Still, it is doubtful if Arius would have made much
headway if he had been left to propagate his ideas on
their own merits and only by the force of his unaided
influence. Alexander summoned a synod of neighbouring
bishops which excommunicated the heretic, who then left
Egypt and visited leading ecclesiastics in Syria and Asia
Minor, from some of whom he received sympathetic
treatment. But there was one man whose adhesion was
the making of his cause. This was Eusebius of Nicomedia,
the most powerful prelate in the East, an old friend of
Arius, who soon became the real leader of the party, and
to whom must be attributed the political character of
the movement in its subsequent development. With the
obscure presbyter Arius it was only a ferment working
locally ; under the hands of the great bishop Eusebius it
leaped into imperial importance, so that the settlement of
it became a first concern of the State with Constantine
himself. After this, political intrigues in the interests of

ARIANISM 47
men and parties had more influence in its dominance
and extension than theological arguments. Although for
long periods Arianism was the recognised religion of
Eastern Christendom, this was mainly because the plots
of diplomacy had secured for it imperial favour. A
majority of the bishops of the Greek portion of the
Church were Arian for a time, but only because the
adherents of the opposite party had been violently
deposed by acts of despotism and their successors thrust
into their sees and imposed upon their flocks against the
will of the people. There is nothing to show that the
main body of the Church in the East was ever Arian ;
and certainly this was never the case in the West.
Lastly, we must notice how the Arians obtained support
from an unexpected quarter quite adventitiously, by the
adhesion of the Meletians. These people, the party of
Meletius, a bishop of Lycopolis, the modern Assist — in
the fourth century second only in importance to
Alexandria, who had been condemned purely on grounds
of discipline and apart from any suspicion of doctrinal
error, threw in their lot with the Arians, and so helped
to swell the body of the heretics in common opposition
to the dominant majority.
Fortified by the encouragement he had obtained when
on his travels, Arius returned to Alexandria and organised
a church of his followers in defiance of his bishop. This
was an act of independence which could only be regarded
by an ecclesiastic as one of rebellion. The crisis was
becoming acute. So widespread was the quarrel now,
and so bitter the spirit it was engendering, that it
became a matter of serious concern to Constantine. This
is a plain proof of its great importance.
Here is a pitiable situation indeed, a most painful
instance of the irony of history. No sooner has peace
been established between State and Church than the State
interferes to preserve the peace of the Church. Still half
a pagan, quite a novice, in character sadly below the
Christian standard, the recently converted emperor finds

48 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
it necessary to rebuke the faults of the Church in order
to prevent it from ruining its own cause. One might
have thought that the Christians would have blushed
for shame to have brought down upon their heads the
moral disapproval of a convert. But that would be
viewing the case from the emperor's point of view. To
Alexander and his friends it would appear in a very
different light. Constantine wrote a letter to Alexander
urging a settlement of the dispute, on the calm assumption
that the ground of it was quite trivial, and treating
the bishops concerned almost as though they were a group
of quarrelling schoolboys. Thus he says in the course of
his letter : " For the cause of your difference has not
been any of the leading doctrines or precepts of the
Divine law, nor has any new heresy respecting the worship
of God arisen among you. You are in truth of one and
the same judgment ; you may therefore well join in
communion and fellowship. For as long as you continue
to contend about these small and very insignificant
questions, it is not fitting that so large a portion of
God's people should be under the direction of your
judgment, since you are thus divided between your
selves." 1 In reading such words we do not know
whether to admire most the amazing arrogance that
presumes to attempt the settlement of religious difference
by a message of imperial authority, or the sublime
simplicity that is totally incapable of perceiving the
gravity of the question at issue or the depth of the
fissure in the Church that it is producing. Not a
"new heresy" — "one and the same judgment" — "small
and very insignificant questions " — these are phrases that
indicate total incapacity to grasp the actual issues of
the dispute. The letter is a living, characteristic docu
ment, in every paragraph revealing its writer as the
man of the world who would brush aside the most
serious theological discussions as mere hair-splitting, but
also the earnest, practical statesman who is anxious to
1 Vii. Const, ii. 70, 71.

ARIANISM 49
establish peace in the community for the government of
which he is responsible.
Constantine's object was excellent; but it was not
long before he learnt that the first method he had
employed for securing it was utterly futile. This olive
branch had no effect whatever; the document was
literally a dead letter. It had been accompanied by
one of the emperor's chaplains, a man highly venerated
in the Church, who was to play a prominent part in the
subsequent negotiations, Hosius, the bishop of Cordova.
But even this good and able man's efforts at effecting
a settlement on the spot were quite abortive.
Then the emperor resorted to another method much
wiser, much more practical. He summoned the bishops of
the whole Church to discuss the question and settle it by
vote. This is the first instance of any attempt at a gather
ing representing the general body of Christians throughout
the world. Local councils had been held in various districts
— in Asia, at Eome, at Aries, at Carthage, at Alexandria,
and elsewhere. Now for the first time there was sum
moned a general council, as distinguished from a provincial
synod. It was the krge-minded, widely comprehensive
imperialism of Constantine that gave birth to the idea.
The emperor summoned the council and paid the expenses
of the members out of the funds of the State. This
precedent was so much recognised in the summoning of later
councils that the Church of England formally recognised it in
the 21st of the Thirty-nine Articles : " General councils may
not be gathered together but by the commandment and will
of princes." Still, this council aimed at going beyond the
limits of the empire in including the whole Church, and in
point of fact two bishops from beyond its border — John of
Persia and Theophilus of Scythia — were present in the
assembly. The great idea was that the Church was to settle
its disputes for itself. " Councils," writes Dean Stanley
when summing .up their characteristics, " are also the first
precedents of the principle of representative government." J
1 Eastern Church, Lecture n.
A

50 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Presbyters and deacons were present, as well as bishops ; and
the latter were really popular representatives, since they
had been elected by universal suffrage in their churches.
This first and most momentous general council met in
the year a.d. 325 at Nicaea, a small town at the head of a
sea loch where the Bithynian mountains descend towards
the shore not far from Nicomedia, the emperor's Eastern
capital before the building of Constantinople. The quarrel
in the Church that occasioned the summoning of the bishops
arose in the East and essentially concerned the East ; the
council met in the East ; it consisted almost entirely of the
representatives of Eastern churches. Although bishops had
been called from all over the empire, and beyond, and although
the proceedings of the council were recognised and endorsed
in the West, it was to all intents and purposes an Oriental
assembly. The same may be said of all the ancient
councils ; they were all held in the East and they all con
sisted almost entirely of Eastern prelates. At Nicaea there
were only seven bishops from the whole area covered by
the Latin Church. Sylvester, the bishop of Eome, was not
present, his age being his reason or excuse for not attending,
and he was represented by two presbyters. This was in no
sense a papal council. It was not summoned by the pope ;
it was not presided over by the pope. Hefele argues that
Hosius, who sat in a place of honour next to the emperor,
was really in this position because he represented the West
for the pope. But his close relations with Constantine,
and the leading part he had taken in the preliminary
negotiations added to the weight of his personal character
will account for the dignified position that was accorded to
him. Besides, Sylvester's representation by the two pres
byters is inconsistent with this notion. In the absence of
the emperor Hosius appears to have presided in turn with
three other bishops, Eustathius of Antioch, Alexander of
Alexandria, and Eusebius of Caesarea — the learned historian
whom we must not confound with the Arian leader,
Eusebius of Nicomedia. These three were all Eastern
bishops.

ARIANISM 51
The dangerous temper of the assembly was seen at the
commencement, in the fact that a number of letters con
taining charges against various bishops were presented to
the emperor ; and Constantine's good sense and pacific
intentions were as quickly revealed by his calling for a
. brazier at his first meeting with the council, and burning the
whole sheaf of them unread. He had come to make peace,
and his policy was toleration, not repression, or expulsion,
or persecution. It was not his fault that the course of the
discussion took another turn. Constantine spoke in a gentle
voice and with a modest demeanour, calling himself a bishop,
evidently with the sole object of softening the asperity of
the debate and obtaining a pacific decision. But Arius was
soon denounced in the most angry terms and expelled from
the assembly. Members of the lower clergy, although perhaps they had
no votes, were allowed to be present and contribute to the
discussion, so free and open was it. This liberty gave his
opportunity to the hero of the whole controversy, the one
man who was soon to tower head and shoulders over every
body else by sheer force of intellectual energy and moral
earnestness, Alexander's attendant deacon, the young
Athanasius. The romance of the Arian period circles
round this great man in his strange adventures, his hair
breadth escapes, his magnanimous victories; but better
than that, it is he who lifts the whole controversy out of the
miserable arena of person and party, seizes on its really sig
nificant features, and holds to the vital issues notwithstand
ing calumny, spite, and brutal violence, with a tenacity that
is perfectly heroic until he brings them out to a triumphant
issue. Then, best of all, he reveals true greatness of soul
and the generosity of a genuine Christian character, by
insisting only on what is vital, by labouring to bury the old
quarrel, by gladly welcoming back old opponents when they
return to what he holds to be the true faith.
Guided by this young deacon, who soon proved himself
to be the most masterly theologian present, the assembly
that had quickly determined to stamp out Arianism was

52 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
able to accomplish the more difficult task of settling the
positive creed of the Church. And yet Athanasius was far
too real and large-minded to care much for the mere
phrases of any creed. It is a significant fact that while he
is the indomitable champion of the Nicene ideal, he rarely
uses in his writings the term that became the watchword
of the Nicene party and their battle-cry in conflict with
opponents — the word Homoousios.1 At an early stage of
the discussion the Arians saw that there was no chance of
their own specific phrases being allowed by the council,
Accordingly they fell back on Scripture language. In their
simplicity the majority of the Fathers seemed disposed to
acquiesce in this way out of the difficulty. Then a bomb
shell was thrown into the meeting in the shape of a letter
from Eusebius of Nicomedia, declaring the assertion that
the Son was uncreated to be equivalent to saying that He
was of one essence {homoousios) with the Father. The
assembly seized on the word; it was just what they
wanted. The Son was of one essence with the Father.
So the fight raged round this word. Here the Arians had
a certain advantage over their opponents. There was a
taint of heresy about it. We first meet with it in a
description of the notions of the Gnostic Valentinus.2 And
although, according to Pamphilus, it was used by Origen,
and Tertullian employs the Latin equivalent of the rela
tion of the Son to the Father,3 it had been subsequently
condemned in a synod at Antioch in connection with the
heresy of Paul of Samosata, either as descriptive of his own
idea of the Godhead, or in repudiation of Sabellian ten
dencies by his opponents. Thus the Arians were able to
appeal to precedent, and pose as conservatives, when really
appealing to prejudice. These two courses — the claim to
use only Bible language in opposition to the defining phrases
of scientific theology, and the objection to a dubious term
as a dangerous innovation in the language of the Church-
gave Eusebius and his friends some hold on the majority of
1 iiiooi<nos. a See Irenaeus, Adv. Host. i. 1.
* Unitate Substantia, Apol. xxi. ; cf. Adv. Praxean. ii

ARIANISM 53
the council, which consisted of country pastors of no theo
logical pretensions. It became necessary to expose the
Arian tactics, and this was done successfully. Nevertheless,
when the reaction came it was made apparent that the
final decision of the council had been rather acquiesced in
by the majority than intelligently conceived and earnestly
desired. Certainly the majority were not Arian; but
neither were they at this time convinced of the necessity
of the technical language of the opponents of Arianism.
Left to themselves they would have been satisfied with a
simpler solution ; but they were overawed by a few men
of superior culture and great determination — especially
Alexander, Athanasius, and Hosius. It was in this way
that at length they were led to give an almost unanimous
vote for the final definition.
The creed thus adopted was based on an old Palestinian
confession introduced by Eusebius of Caesarea. Hitherto
there had been no one form of words accepted by all Chris
tians as an expression of their faith. Although the " rule
of faith " was recognised by Irenaeus and insisted on with
great vehemence by Tertullian, this could not have existed
in any rigid verbal form, because it is variously worded in
different places. Therefore the phrase would seem to repre
sent simply a generally understood common agreement of
belief. Still, as early as this time, i.e. by about the end of
the second century, we have the Apostles' Creed at Eome
in its primitive form. This, which is the most elementary of
the creeds, is based on the baptismal formula,1 the basis
of all the creeds. But there is no reason to believe that
any elaborate creed was actually repeated by converts at
baptism. At first renunciation of the old life and faith in
Christ were the only requisites. In the iEthiopic version
of the Apostolical Constitutions, representing the oldest text,
the candidate for baptism says, " I believe in the only true
God, the Father Almighty, and in His only begotten Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour, and in the Holy Ghost
the Giver of life " — with other phrases which must have
1 Matt, xxviii. 19.

54 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
been inserted after the council of Nicaea. Meanwhile the
creeds were growing up, probably as schedules of doctrine
in use by the teachers of catechumens. In this way the
example of Eome was followed, and thus among others
was produced that early Palestinian creed which was
adopted as the base of the Nicene Creed. When this was
adopted by the council it became the first creed established
by authority for the whole Church. Even then only the
clergy were required to sign it. It was a test for the clergy,
not a condition of membership in the Ghurch. The laity
were not required to assent to it. And yet a great step
had been taken towards the fixing of orthodoxy. Hitherto
there had been no one formal standard by which a Church
teacher's doctrine could be settled. Now there was an end
to this Ante-Nicene liberty. Henceforth any divergence
from the established formula on the part of a bishop or
priest would involve the loss of office and even excom
munication. A series of stern anathemas was added to the
creed to secure this end. All the members of the council
were required to sign the document ; the five who refused
were deposed from the posts they held and expelled from
the Church. The Catholic Church was now to be the
orthodox Church, and orthodoxy was made the test
of Catholicity. On the other hand, it should be noted that points not
in the creed were left open. When we consider how large
a part of the field of theology was thus not fenced in,
the silence becomes significant : moreover, if a standard of
orthodoxy was necessary, here was one that guarded the
very citadel of the faith. After all, when we penetrate
behind phrases to facts, we see that with an earnest,
large-minded man such as Athanasius the real test was
not subscription to a highly technical creed ; it was what
that subscription implied, namely, loyalty to the Divine-
human Christ.
Some other matters were also settled at the council of
Nicaea. The Paschal controversy, which had divided some
of the churches of Asia Minor who kept Easter on the

ARIANISM 55
Jewish plan only according to the day of the month, from
the churches of the West and others that agreed with them
who fixed it according to the day of the week, was decided
in favour of the Western usage. At the time many
thought this as important as the Arian question. The
Meletians were condemned and their ordination disallowed.
Lastly, certain canons of discipline were passed. But the
council had been summoned to settle the Arian dispute and
its decision on this was absolute and peremptory. Then
Constantine came in with the power of the State to enforce
the ruling of the Church, denouncing the Arians as " Por-
phyrians," banishing Arius and his few determined followers,
and ordering all Arian books to be burnt — which indeed
was not so cruel as the action of the princes of the time of
the Inquisition, who burnt the heretics themselves — and
threatening death to anybody detected in concealing a
book compiled by Arius1 — a most significant, a truly
ominous threat.
Nevertheless, the dispute was far from being settled.
Instead of being the end, this was but the beginning of the
great Arian controversy which was to ravage the Church
and almost rend the empire for more than half a century
longer, and even after that to linger on and break out
again in unexpected quarters. It is true that at first the
Arian protest was reduced to insignificant proportions.
Two of Arius's friends deserted him and signed the creed ;
so that of the five who had supported Arius throughout
the discussion only two bishops stood by him at the end
and shared his penalty of exile. But a sign of coming
trouble might have been detected in the conciliatory action
of one of the most pacific of men. Eusebius of Caesarea, ^
the famous historian, the most learned scholar of his day,
wrote to his Church explaining the sense in which he had
signed the creed ; and his explanation amounted to what was
afterwards known as " Semi- Arianism," for he interpreted
the test word " homoousios " in the sense of resemblance,
saying that " it suggests that the Son of God bears no
' fioci ates, i, 9.

56 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
resemblance to the creature, but is in every respect like
the Father only who begat him." x Many must have given
their assent to the creed without really knowing what they
were signing; others must have been overawed by the
imperial authority conjoined to the vehement insistence
of the majority, and when released from the pressure of the
council and the emperor's presence these people soon
showed that they had no love for the creed, and some of
them ventured to come forward as champions of Arius.
Then an immense weight was swung into the scale of re
action. Constantine recalled the banished bishops and
ordered the restoration of Arius. This amazing change of
front has been attributed to the influence of his sister
Constantia, who was a patroness of Eusebius of Nicomedia,
to the fact — perhaps due to this court influence — that
Eusebius superseded Hosius in the emperor's favour, to
the diplomatic subtlety of the Arians, and to other causes,
all of which may have played their parts in what had now
become a political drama of huge dimensions. But we
must not forget that Constantine's aim throughout was
mainly peace and good order throughout his dominions.
This was apparent in his first act of interference, the
famous letter to Alexander. At first he had sought peace
by silencing discussion; then, finding this expedient un
successful, he took the course of supporting uniformity and
suppressing dissent ; this too proving ineffectual, he
returned to the idea of comprehension which he had
advocated at first. But whether by forcible uniformity
or by violent comprehensiveness, his aim was to end the
irritating polemic. First he tried a soothing medicine;
next he took up the surgeon's knife ; finally he resorted
to ecclesiastical splints, a forcible binding together of the
body of the Church which he saw split by faction, working
continuously with the one aim of ending the dispute. Thus
at last the emperor appears in the paradoxical r61e of a
despot insisting on toleration.
1 Socrates, i. 8. There are several versions and accounts of the letter,
but this appears to be the most sober and reliable.

ARIANISM 57
Worn out by fatigues and anxieties, the aged Alexander
died three years after the council of Nicaea (a.d. 328),
nominating Athanasius his deacon to be his successor
as bishop of Alexandria. The Church accepted his
nomination, and duly elected the champion of the faith.
Nevertheless this decision was challenged, and the most
cruel charges were trumped up against the new bishop by
absolutely unscrupulous enemies. The next chapter in the
history of the Arian dispute is largely occupied with the
romantic story of the adventures of Athanasius, his startling
vicissitudes of fortune, his hairbreadth escapes, his heroic
course of fidelity, though at times he seemed to stand alone.
But this isolation was more apparent than real, for probably
at no time was the majority of people in the Church Arian.
The West was always at heart with Athanasius, when this
was possible openly so ; and great numbers of quiet people
in the East did not really acquiesce in the Arian tyranny
to which they were forced to submit. But Athanasius never
allowed himself to be coerced into yielding. Meanwhile
there were synods, packed with Arian bishops — at Tyre,
removed to Jerusalem (A.D. 335), and at Constantinople
(A.D. 336). Athanasius was condemned at Tyre on
trumpery charges and banished to Treves by Constantine,
and Alexander the bishop of Constantinople, to his con
sternation, was ordered to receive Arius into the Church.
The sudden awful death of Arius at the height of his
triumph saved the bishop from his dilemma. The next
year Constantine died, taking care to be baptised in his last
illness.

CHAPTER IV
THE LATER ARIAN PERIOD
(a) Authorities mentioned in previous chapters ; Basil, Gregory
Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa (Eng. Trans, in Nicene aid
Post-Nicene Fathers) ; Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History
(Bohn).
(6) Works named in previous chapters ; Rendall, The Emperor
Julian, 1879 ; Gaetano Negri, Julian the Apostate, 2nd edit.
1902, Eng. Trans., 1905.
The death of Constantine (ad. 337), followed by the
division of his empire between his three sons, Constantine II.
and Constans in the West, and Constantius in the East,
introduces us to a new chapter in the history of Arianism.
The first of these rulers died three years later while fighting
against his brother Constans, who thus became sole master
of the West, and there championed the Athanasian cause
without difficulty, since Arianism found all its support in
the Eastern provinces. Constantius, on the other hand,
had Arian leanings, and he oppressed the orthodoxy that
had seemed so triumphant at Nicaea a few years before.
In so acting he was largely influenced by his jealousy of
Athanasius, whose influence rivalled that of the emperor.
This was a very different policy from the persecution of the
Nicene party by Constantine, which had always been carried
on in the name of toleration, in order to force the Athanasians
to fraternise with the Arians. Pompous, vain, mean, cruel,
Constantius was quite incapable of inheriting his father's
; large ideas ; he was frankly intolerant, throwing his in
fluence wholly into the scale of the Arian faction. At
first, however, he was compelled to proceed warily and his
58

THE LATER ARIAN PERIOD 59
initial actions even favoured the Nicene party, so that for
the moment his accession might have been regarded as the
end of the oppression of orthodoxy. This was simply due
to the influence of the Western emperors. Until he was
firmly established in power, Constantius dared not openly
flout his brothers' wishes. Thus we have the paradox that
the exile of Athanasius, which had lasted to the end of the
reign of the liberal-minded Constantine, was terminated by
his Arianising son Constantius (a.d. 338). Then the patri
arch was welcomed back to Alexandria in a scene of popular
rejoicing that was compared to our Lord's triumphal entry
into Jerusalem. It was a shortlived triumph. The wily
Eusebius of Nicomedia, past master of court intrigue,
wormed himself into the favour of Constantius, got pro
moted to the Constantinople bishopric, and thence swayed
the imperial counsels so effectually that the whole influence
of the Government went to favour his party. The temper
of the Arians against Athanasius was positively spiteful ;
but the new charge they now brought against him had some
show of propriety. It was that he had been reinstated by
the civil power without being restored by the ecclesiastical
after his deposition at the council of Tyre. What could
equal the effrontery of such an accusation on the part of
men who were violating the decrees of the most august
Church council, ruthlessly setting aside the bishops who
adhered to them, and unhesitatingly accepting the emperor's
interference to effect that end ? Still it succeeded ; and
Athanasius was again banished and a Cappadocian, Gregory,
sent from the court, was forced on the protesting Church
at Alexandria amid outrageous scenes of violence (a.d. 339).
Since such unblushing conduct was seen at the head
quarters of orthodoxy in the East, it may be surprising to
observe how diplomatically the Arians had to work elsewhere.
In wearisome succession, several councils — most of them
packed meetings — were held in various places with the
hope of getting a final settlement, and to that end distinctive
Arian phrases were dropped and more neutral expressions
substituted. At Sardica — now Sophia (a.d. 343) the

60 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Athanasians were actually in a majority, and their opponents
could only get their way by removing farther east, to
Philippopolis — there to register their decisions comfortably
without the inconvenience of opposition. This plainly
shows that the mass of the Church was with Athanasius.
The powerful Eusebius had died the year before the council
of Sardica, and two years after that event Gregory also
died — perhaps murdered Things were not going well for
the Arians, and Constans seized the opportunity to force
his brother, under threat of war, to let Athanasius return
to his see. Constantius actually himself received the
patriarch quite graciously. But the death of Constans in
i 350 put an end to the truce. Now that Constantius was
undisputed master of the empire, the Arians sprang into
power and became quite overbearing and most trucu
lent. After hairbreadth escapes and romantic adventures
Athanasius fled up the Nile and took refuge with the
monks in the desert. The venerable Hosius and Liberius
the bishop of Eome were detained in captivity till their
patience was worn down and they both signed a virtually
Arian confession. It was a dark period for the Nicene
faith. Still the time was not all lost. Athanasius in his
quiet retreat now wrote some of his most important works,
including his famous Four Discourses on Arianism and his
History of the heresy. So things went on for eleven dreary
, years, till the death of Constantius (a.d. 361) brought
deliverance from an unexpected quarter in the advent of a
pagan emperor.
Julian, the cousin and successor of Constantius, has
been execrated in the Church as " the Apostate." When at
liberty to show his hand he manifested bitter antipathy to
Christianity, after apparently having been baptised in his
infancy — a fact, if this were the case, for which it would
be hard to make him responsible. While in the power of
his cousin Constantius, he had conformed, as he was bound
to do unless he had developed a very precocious martyr
conscience. But as soon as he was free to act for himself
he threw off the hateful yoke of his oppressor's religion.

THE LATER ARIAN PERIOD 61
Consider in what light Christianity must have appeared to
the boy Julian. It was the religion of the man who had
murdered his father and every member of his family except
one brother, and that merely in accordance with the
Oriental monarch's drastic policy of clearing off dangerous
rivals. Then Julian never knew true Christianity. The
form in which it had been forced on him in his boyhood
was Arianism ; but that was by no means the worst feature
of the case — the great apostle of the Goths was an Arian ;
Arianism could present an attractive aspect. But the
young prince had been drilled in hard monkish ways.
When he was out walking he had to keep his eyes fixed on
the pavement in order to avoid the sight of vanity. He
was allowed no companions of his own age. The specimens
of Christian profession he witnessed in the circle of his
acquaintance had little of the savour of godliness. They
were court chaplains — adroit in political intrigue, fierce par
tisans of polemical theology, jealous ecclesiastics. Nothing
was done to awaken in Julian an appreciation of the
genuine graces of the gospel. But he was compelled to
attend the heartless services that he inwardly loathed.
Who can wonder that his young, ardent nature revolted,
that his eager soul was full of bitterness ? On the other
hand, forbidden to attend the lectures of the Neo-Platonist
Libanius, who was the greatest teacher of the day, he
obtained copies of them, read them with the more avidity
since " stolen waters are sweet," and at length allowed
himself to be secretly initiated at the temple of Artemis.
When Julian was permitted to go up to the university of
Athens, he threw himself with hot enthusiasm into the
intellectual life of this centre of pagan learning. He
revelled in the classics, charmed with Hellenic culture,
both its mythology and its philosophy. Intercourse with
the liberalising pagan society at Athens made him look
back with disgust on the old prison days, in which his
tutors had been his jailers. Here he felt the pulse of a
larger life, free and vivacious, sunny and natural.
Julian had no political ambition. Like Marcus Aurelius,

62 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
a much greater philosophical emperor, he was distressed at
the call of duty that compelled him to plunge into practical
affairs when he would so much have preferred the con
templative life. The difficulties of the empire having
constrained Constantius to recall him from his studies and
make a Caesar of him, Julian is said to have exclaimed,
" 0 Plato, what a task for a philosopher ! " Yet he
proved a capable general when in charge of the troops in
Gaul, who forced him to become emperor in opposition to
his cousin,1 and a bloody conflict would have been the
result if Constantius had not died just in time to prevent
it. At first he was welcomed by all classes — Christian and
pagan ; for the tyranny of Constantius had become odious
and unbearable. Julian began his reign with a proclamation
of complete religious liberty. " Blows and injuries," he
said, "are not things to change a man's religion." The
effect of this reversal of policy was twofold. In the first
place, it led to the return of the orthodox Catholic bishops
from exile. The death of Constantius had been the signal
for the people of Alexandria to rise in riot and murder
George of Cappadocia, who, like Gregory at an earlier
period, had been forced upon them as patriarch in the
interests of Arianism. Then once more Athanasius was
able to come back to his flock.
In the second place, the oppression of the old pagan
religions which Constans and Constantius had carried on
was ended for the brief period of the pagan emperor's reign.
His predecessors had ordered all " superstition " to cease in
the temples, and even threatened persons privately sacrificing
with death — for so we must understand the references to
earlier legislation in the Theodosian code. The active per
secution, however, had not gone beyond the confiscation of
temple property and the stern punishment of magic. Now
Julian not only granted freedom for the worship of the old
gods again ; he ordered the confiscated property to be restored
without compensation, a hardship on the holders of it for
the time being in sharp contrast with Constantine's arrange-
1 Amm. Marc. xx. iv. 14.

THE LATER ARIAN PERIOD 63
ment for the use of the funds of the State in buying back
Church property for the Christians. Julian's whole influence
leaned heavily on the pagan side. All the court favour
was 1 for men of the old religion; and under an absolute
despotism this must have meant much, quite apart from
any change of legislation. Knowing which way the wind
blew, the enemies of the Christians ventured on many an
act of violence in various localities, and always with im
punity, and these local outbreaks led to cases of martyrdom,
reminding people of the dark days of the Diocletian perse
cution. Thus, for insulting the sacrifices, Basil of Ancyra
was flayed alive, slowly, seven strips of skin being peeled
off at a time. Modern psychology will lend some credit to
the story of a young man named Theodore who was tortured
at Antioch by the reluctant prefect under orders from
Julian to punish those people who had been most prominent
in the procession that had transported the coffin of the
martyr Baby las from Daphne, where its sacred contents
were supposed to have silenced the oracle when Julian was
consulting it, much to the emperor's annoyance. Eufinus got
the story direct from the lips of its hero,1 who in reply to
a question whether in the process of scourging and racking
he had not suffered the most intense pain, said that he felt
the pain but a very little while, for a young man stood by
him wiping off the sweat and so strengthening him that
his time of trial was a season of rapture.
Later in his reign, Julian, annoyed at the failure of his
attempts to galvanise the corpse of the old paganism into
life again, began a subtle attack on the Christians by for
bidding them to teach the classics in the schools, on the
theory that the bible of paganism should only be taught
by those who believed in it. So he said of them, " If they
feel they have gone astray concerning the gods, let them
go to the churches of the Galilaeans and expound Matthew
and Luke." To meet this severe blow at the culture of the
Church, the two Apollinarises — father and son — set them-
1 Rufinus, Hist. Eccl. i. 36, who is appealed to by Socrates as the
authority for the story. See Socrates, iii. 19.

64 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
selves to the task of turning the Scriptures into verse,
adopting the idioms of classic Greek in the work.
Julian might have proceeded to actual violence
had he not been arrested in mid career. His early
death when fighting the Persians came as a great
deliverance to the alarmed Church. It was the end of a
strange tragedy. With all his serious aims, the emperor
had been made to see that his life was a failure. His
own religion was a curious compound of old - fashioned
paganism and Neo-Platonic ideas. He restored the worship
of the gods at many a neglected shrine, and renewed the
sacrifices on long deserted altars ; but the misery of it all
was that the people would not respond. He paid Chris
tianity the sincere homage of imitation, organising a regular
hierarchy with choirs and liturgical services and pulpits
for the preaching of pagan sermons. He founded pagan
monasteries and hospitals. It was all in vain. Nobody
cared. He had all the zeal of a revivalist. Yet he was
laughed at by the people of his own religion. It has been
suggested that if he had promoted Eoman instead of Greek
religion he might have met with some success.
A strange figure ! — as dirty as a saint, if only Julian
had been a Christian, his grimy hands, his tangled beard —
at which the people of Antioch laughed outright, his coarse
clothing rarely changed,1 would have earned him the honour
of sanctity. Undoubtedly he was a conscientious religious
devotee, as he was also an honest, indefatigable administrator.
And yet directly he died the whole fabric of renovated
paganism that he had toiled so strenuously but single-
handed to build up fell to the ground like a house of cards.
It may be said that he failed because he aimed too high.
Perceiving that the old paganism was dying of its own
rottenness, he set himself to be its reformer as well as its
champion. He would support the pagan priests and supply
the altars with sacrifices ; but then these priests of his
must show Christian sanctity in their conduct. But they
had no wish to be screwed up to the new standard of virtue
1 See Amm. Marc. xxn. xiv. 3.

THE LATER ARIAN PERIOD 65
in the name of the hoary old gods who hitherto had let off
their worshippers on much easier terms. The dismal failure
of this last attempt at the restoration of paganism with
which its reformation was to go hand in hand was a plain
proof that the whole system was outworn. With all his
enthusiasm Julian's desperate efforts had proved to be no
better than the galvanising of a corpse. It is true that
paganism was not actually extinguished for years to
eome ; indeed it is with us to-day, for it is inherent in
human nature. The Church was able to make a place
for it by developing her hagiology, which sheltered the
ancient superstitions of the dead pantheon. But Julian's
failure demonstrated once for all that the old cult of
the gods, open and recognised, had gone, and gone for
ever. The simple soldier Jovian whom the army voted into
the high position of emperor to rescue it from the
Persians was an orthodox Christian, who, as Theodoret
states,1 hesitated to accept the honour till he was assured of
the Christian sympathies, and with his accession to power
the brief gleam of sunshine which had broken out so un
expectedly on the fading faith of the old regime died away
never to revive. Not only paganism, but its sometime ally
Arianism, also suffered by the accession of an emperor who
belonged to the Nicene party. Jovian lost no time in
reversing the policy of his predecessor, giving an early in
dication of this change by restoring the Labarum which
Julian had laid aside. He issued an edict granting full
religious liberty to his subjects. This was a revival of
Constantine's large-minded statesmanship; it permitted
Arianism and even paganism — which Constantius had
persecuted. The immunities of the clergy were restored
and the grants of public moneys for widows and consecrated
virgins in the Church renewed. Jovian issued a decree
condemning to death any who forced these virgins into
marriage or even proposed marriage to them. Athanasius v
was now the greatest figure in the Church. Julian, after
1 Hist. Eccl. iv. 1.
5

66 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
permitting hi'm to return to Alexandria, had felt his power
ful influence thwarting his plans and had banished him as
"the great foe of the gods.'' We must distinguish this
action which was clearly a piece of pagan persecution of
Christianity from the many Arian attacks directed against
Athanasius. With the accession of Jovian of course the
great bishop was free to come back to his post. The
emperor addressed him a letter of warm admiration, and
obtained from him a reply setting forth the orthodox
belief as opposed to Arianism.1
Unfortunately this state of things lasted but a very
short time. Jovian was accidentally killed after only
reigning eight months, being suffocated when sleeping in a
room heated with a charcoal brazier.2 He was succeeded
/by a military officer, Valentinian (a.d. 364), who was both
^ orthodox and tolerant. But Valentinian assigned the
eastern provinces of his empire to Valens his brother, who
... proved to be a bitter Arian, influenced, as Theodoret 3 says,
by his wife. In spite of this fact, Valentinian was able to
induce Valens to join him in signing an edict ordering that
" those who labour in the field of Christ are not to be perse
cuted nor oppressed, and that the stewards of the Great
Euler are not to be driven away." 4 After this it may strike
us as surpising that Valens should have been allowed to
persecute the Nicene party, and Gibbon endeavours to dis
credit the idea that he did so before the death of Valentinian,
which occurred in the year a.d. 375.5 But he ventures on
this doubt in the teeth of the unanimous testimony of the
Church historians, who agree in describing acts of cruelty,
including one almost incredibly barbarous crime, as com
mitted during the lifetime of the elder brother. The story
of this outrageous deed is that eighty men — Theodoret says
" presbyters " — who had come as a deputation to Constanti
nople were sent out to sea in an unballasted ship and there
burnt to death by men who had accompanied them in
1 Theodoret, iv. 3. a Am. Marc. xxv. x. 12, 13.
s Hist. Eccl. iv. 12. * Op. cit. iv. 8.
6 Decline and Fall, chap. xxv.

THE LATER ARIAN PERIOD 67
another vessel with orders to execute them in this horrible
way (A.D. 370).1
Although we may hesitate to believe so amazing a story
— and it is not easy to accept it even on the positive
testimony of our authorities — there can be no question as to
the outrages which were witnessed at Alexandria after the
death of Valentinian had left the Arians in Valens' half of
the empire free from all restraint. The pagans were glad
of an opportunity for uniting forces with any opponents of
the orthodox Church, and of course the men of the baser
sort would be only too ready to seize their chance of a
share in any commotion that was going on. Common
decency compels us to ascribe to these lower elements of
the population, the dregs of a dissolute city, doings with
which no Christian however " heretical " he might be would
disgrace himself. Thus the mob invaded the church of
St. Thomas ; a young man in woman's clothing danced oh
the altar ; another young man sat naked in the bishop's
chair, from which he openly preached immorality to a crowd
that roared with laughter at what they took to be a fine
joke; virgins of the Church were stripped, scourged, violated.
In fact, the recent Bulgarian and Armenian horrors were
anticipated by the Alexandrian atrocities committed in the
name of Christian theology. During these troubles an
attempt was made to seize Athanasius, but once again the
old man escaped as though by miracle, and this time he
hid himself in his father's tomb. The best testimony to
the weight of the great bishop's influence may be seen in the
fact that even after all this Valens was induced to let
Athanasius return to his beloved flock. That was the end
of his wanderings. Although the Arian persecution still
1 Socrates, iv. 16 ; Sozomen, vi. 14 ; Theodoret, iv. 24. None of these
writers charge Valens with the diabolical device by which the obnoxious
deputation was got out of the way — evidently from fear of interference from
the people of Constantinople if the victims were not put beyond the reach of
rescue. Theodoret ascribes the crime to "the Arians of Constantinople."
But he is an untrustworthy writer. Both Socrates and Sozomen state that
the emperor secretly ordered the prefect to put the men to death, and that
it was this prefect who carried out his master's command in the manner
described on his own account.

68 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
raged in other places, henceforth the venerated patriarch
of Alexandria was able to hold his own without further
molestation till his death in the year a.d. 373. No hero
of romance ever passed through more strange adventures
and hairbreadth escapes. Singled out by four emperors—
Constantine, Constantius, Julian, and Valens — as a pecu
liarly dangerous person, hated with murderous passion by
the Arian faction, no less than five times driven into exile,
Athanasius always maintained the affection of his flock,
and throughout the long oppression was known to all the
world as the sure champion of the Nicene faith. He may
not have been so profound a theologian as his contemporary
Hilary in the West, nor as the Cappadocians of the succeed
ing generation in the East ; but undoubtedly he was a very
great man indeed, of proved integrity, loyal faith, unflinch
ing courage, wise statesmanship, large-hearted charity; the
supreme hero of his period, and one of the best, truest,
strongest Christians the world has ever seen.
Athanasius had lived to see remarkable changes in the
Arian contention and some modification of the orthodox
position, although his own position remained firm on the
ground of the Nicene confession of his youth. Arianism
split up into several parties each with its own watchword,
The most important novelty was that of the Semi- Arians,
who endeavoured to formulate definitely the mediating
ideas which had appeared at the time of the council of
Nicaea in the explanations of the creed which Eusebius of
Caesarea had given his Church. It is hot fair to call the
great historian a Semi-Arian. No party which could bear
that name was known in his day : he accepted the creed,
which at a later time the Semi-Arians wished to alter,
although he explained its test word homoousious in his
own way, and he lived and died in communion with the
orthodox Church. The watchword of the Semi-Arians was
Homoiousios — " like in essence." Gibbon's sarcasm on the
division of the Church on a diphthong is as shallow as it is
bitter. The faintest difference in spelling may involve a
world-wide difference of meaning. There can be no ques-

THE LATER ARIAN PERIOD 69
tion that with Athanasius homoousious meant identity of
essence or substance, so that He who came " from the
essence " 1 of the Father not only resembles the Father but
is inseparable from the essential being of the Father. Thus
he says, " We must not imagine three divided substances in
God, as among men, lest we like the heathen invent a multi
plicity of gods, but as the stream is born of the fountain and
not separate from it although there are two forms and names,"
and asserts the Son's "identity with His own Father."2
A conviction thus deliberately stated is not to be set
aside by appealing to the unquestionable fact that there
are instances in which Athanasius uses the word homoousios
of separate existences in the sense of identity in nature.3
It has been asserted that he gave up insisting on his earlier
rigorous use of the word and would allow any one as orthodox
who would adopt it even in the sense in which it is em
ployed of man and man. But even if that be admitted —
and Athanasius had no sympathy with verbal pedantry and
was really anxious for the cause of charity and peace — he
must not be supposed to have agreed to the Semi-Arian
position, since he no more accepted the Semi-Arians them
selves than the full-fledged Arians.
Subsequently two other parties emerged. First, the
extreme Arians stiffened their position and sharpened their
antitheses against the mediating Semi-Arians. Thus they
changed their tactics entirely. In the earlier period
Athanasius had accused them of shiftiness and a vagueness
of language deliberately chosen in order to throw dust into
their opponents' eyes. This was their policy at the council
of Nicaea when they saw themselves in a hopeless minority,
and the insincerity of it was one of the heaviest accusations
brought against them by Athanasius in his Orations.4 But
during the Arian ascendancy under Valens the situation
was very different, and now the extreme Arians, seeing no J
further need of compromise, went so far as to declare that
1 in. rijs oicrlas. 2 Nicene Def. 9 ; cf. Orat. i. 20, 22.
8 e.g. de Sent. Dionys. 10 ; de Synodis, 51.
4 e.g. Orat. i. 8, 81.

70 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the Son was " unlike " the Father, and thus came to be desig
nated "Anomcean." J They were also called "Aetian," after
Aetius a deacon at Antioch, said to have been very disputa
tious in pushing the dry Aristotelian logic that characterised
Arianism generally to its ultimate issues, and therefore main
taining that since the Son was a creature He must be unlike
the Father, not only in essence, but also in will. Another
name given to these ultra- Arian Arians was "Eunomian," after
Eunomius the bishop of Cyzicum, who went even farther,
discarding all mystery in religion and holding that man can
know as much of God's nature as God Himself can know.
Such extravagance led to a revolt of sober minds. The
•court party took a more politic line. Sometimes named
"Acacians" after Acacius the successor of Eusebius of
Caesarea, they maintained a vague and moderate view nearer
to that of the great historian, coming between the Semi-
Arians and the Anomceans, though in a very different
temper. They were content to say that the Son was like
the Father, — and therefore were called " Homcean," 2 — and
to dispense with further definitions, affecting to fall back on
Scripture language and condemning the Semi-Arians equally
with the Nicene bishops for employing an unscriptural
term. But it was now too late for the plea of conservatism
with which Arius had tried to win over the simpler country
pastors at Nicaea. These Homoeans were regarded as
unscrupulous, crafty politicians, who really agreed with
the extreme Arians, but disavowed them whenever it suited
their convenience. The existence of such a party in
influence at court even under Valens is a plain proof that
the Nicene belief had strong hold of the people as a whole ;
and the breaking up of Arianism into mutually antagonistic
factions was a sure sign of its approaching downfall, as it
was also an evidence that the shot and shell poured in by
the great orthodox theologians was doing deadly work against
the Arian positions. These three parties — the Homoiousian,
the Anomcean, and Homcean — by their mutual antagonisms
were preparing for the triumph of the Homoousian.
1 ivi/ioios. > 6/iolot.

CHAPTER V
THE CAPPADOCIAN THEOLOGIANS
(o) Nicene and. Post-Nicene Fathers, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen,
Gregory of Nyssa ; Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, Philo-
storgius.
(6) Besides works on the history mentioned in earlier chapters,
Bright, Age of the Fathers, vol. i., 1903 ; R. Travers Smith,
St. Basil the Great; Ulmann, Gregorius von Naziam de Theologe,
first part of first edit, trans, by Cox ; Newman, Church of
the Fathers, pp. 116-145; Ceilier, Auteurs Eccles., torn. vii. ;
Tillemont, Memories, ix. ; Dorner, The Person of Christ,
Div. I., vol. ii. ; Ottley, The Incarnation, vol. ii., part v.,
1896 ; Lietzmann, Apollinaris von Laodicea, 1904.
The second half of the fourth century is the most brilliant
period in the theological literature of the Greek Church.
This fact creates a sore temptation to spend some time in
the company of its great men rather than to hasten on to
duller scenes and poorer minds. But the immense field to
be covered by the present volume compels that act of self-
denial, and the more so since we are still dealing with the age
of a united Catholic Church. Nevertheless, not only on their
own account, but also for the sake of coming to a right
understanding of the life and thought of later centuries in
the East, we must have some conception of the teachings
of the men who did most to shape the orthodoxy which it
became the business of subsequent generations to defend.
After Athanasius, who stands apart, the one magnificent
hero of the first half 6f the fourth century, the three
greatest theologians of the orthodox Eastern Church appear
in the second half of that remarkable century, all of them
natives of the province of Cappadocia. These are Basil.
71

72 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Gregory Nazianzen, and Basil's brother, Gregory of_Nyssa.
The first two were highly educated in the university culture
of their day ; and, although Gregory of Nyssa was privately
trained by Basil, he was even more well-read in classical
literature. In these leaders of the Church, therefore, we
see men endowed with a first-class liberal education bring
ing to bear on the problems of theology knowledge of the
best things that have been said and done during past ages
in the large outer world. In this respect we may compare
them with the Alexandrians, Clement and Origen, a century
and a half before, or with such men of the " New Learn
ing " among the Eeformers as Erasmus and Melanchthon.
Of these three Basil was the most prominent in his own
day, since he was a man of affairs as well as a scholar and
writer, energetic, courageous, masterful. He was born at
Caesarea, the capital of Cappadocia, in the year 329.
Having distinguished himself at school in his native town,
he was sent by his father to study at Constantinople and
perhaps at Antioch under Libanius — the famous lecturer so
much admired by Julian.1 After this he went to the
university of Athens, then the intellectual centre of the
civilised world, and there began his life-long friendship
with Gregory Nazianzen, the two spending some years
together in the delightful atmosphere of rich- scholar
ship and refined thinking which was so congenial to both
of them. Here too Basil met the future Emperor Julian and
became intimate with that eager student on their common
ground of intellectual interests. Flushed with the scholar's
fame he had returned to Caesarea, apparently as yet having
no perception of his great mission, when his sister Macrina
turned his thoughts to the higher aims, and he was baptised.
Then he determined to devote himself to the ascetic life,
and appointed a bailiff for his estate — for he was a wealthy
landowner and always behaved like an aristocrat. Basil
1 Socrates, iv. 26 ; Sozomen, vi. 17. But a doubt has been raised on this
point, and it has been suggested that his namesake, a friend of Chrysostom,
may be confused by the historians with Basil of Oesarea. See Blomfield
Jackson, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. xiii. p. xv.

THE CAPPADOCIA N THEOLOGIANS 73
; spent five years in the desert of Pontus, where he founded
1 monastic establishments. He slept in a hair shirt, he had
' but one meal a day, and he lived only on a vegetable diet.
1 The sun was his only fire. His constitution was not
robust ; and on one occasion, when the governor of Pontus
threatened to tear out his liver, Basil replied, " Thanks
for your intention; where it is at present it has been
no slight annoyance."
Basil's monasteries were schools of Nicene orthodoxy,
at which the clergy who had been banished from their
churches took refuge and trained up a generation of men
faithful to the oppressed faith, and Basil himself was
indefatigable in labouring for its restoration. It seemed as
though the mantle of Athanasius had fallen on his shoulders.
Throughout the East he was recognised as the champion of
the Nicene cause. At length some Church troubles led his
friend Gregory to urge his recall, and on the death of the
bishop he was elected to the bishopric of Caesarea (a.d. 370).
Basil's commanding character was now felt most power
fully all over Syria and Asia Minor. When the prefect
Modestus proposed to the bishops of his district the
alternatives of Arianism or deprivation in accordance with
the orders of the emperor Valens, he came to Basil and
urged him to yield to the will of his " Sovereign." " I have
a sovereign," he answered, "whose will is otherwise, nor
can I bring myself to worship any creature " (alluding to
the Arian Christ). The prefect threatened confiscation,
exile, torture. " Think of some other threat," was
the fearless man's reply ; " these have no influence on me."
Modestus was constrained to respect the great bishop's
firmness, and he appealed to the emperor, who soon after
visited Caesarea, where, awed by the presence of Basil —
the old writers add, by the miracles he wrought — he was
generous enough to dismiss the bishop and his friends with
out punishment. Basil did not live to see the restoration
of the Nicene faith. He died in the year 379.
The principal extant works of Basil consist of homilies
entitled Hexcemeron, on the six days of creation ; five books

74 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Against Eunomius, the extreme Arian, the last two of which
are sometimes regarded as by another hand ; an important
work upon the Holy Spirit; Letters, which give a vivid
picture of the writer's life and its surroundings; various
ascetic works and sermons. The "Liturgy of St. Basil"
and the " Liturgy of St. Chrysostom " subsequently used in
the East were in all probability both based on an older
liturgy that Basil used and gave to his clergy.
In defending the Nicene position Basil developed a
new terminology whieh we may take as indicating some
change of view. With Athanasius there is in God one ousia1
(essence) or hypostasis2 (substance), the two words being
synonymous. But, according to Basil, while there is one
ousia, there are three hypostases; and in this change of
terminology the two Gregories agree, so that under the
influence of the Cappadocian theologians it passes over into
the language of the Greek Church. Meanwhile in the Latin
Church there was no change of usage. Here it was taught
all along that in the Trinity there' was one substantia
existing in three personce? But the Latin Church used
the word substantia as equivalent to both the Greek words
ousia and hypostasis. Thus the East saw three hypostases
in the Trinity, but the West only one. The difference
however was not so great as it appeared to be on the
surface. The Greeks had no word equivalent to the Latin
persona which they could use with safety, because the nearest
corresponding term, prosopon* was already appropriated in
a Sabellian sense for a mere phase or aspect of God without
any real distinction of person. Since the Arians were con
stantly charging the Nicene party with Sabellianism, it
would never have done to adopt so suspicious a word.
Accordingly a new term had to be found for what the
West regarded as the personce, literally the "characters"
(as the word is used in a drama) of the Trinity, and
1 ofcrfa- a uTrdorao-is.
8 It has been suggested that the great test word was of Latin origin—
6/iooi5<rioe being a translation of unius substantia:— an improbable hypothesis.
* Trpovunrov.

THE CAPPADOCIAN THEOLOGIANS 75
hypostasis was taken over for this purpose. Nevertheless
the change was more than verbal. Basil treated the differ
ence between ousia and hypostasis as equivalent to that
between common and proper nouns, as between " man "
and "Peter, Paul, John, or James."1 When it was
objected that the term homoousios implied a kind of
division and distribution of a previously existing sub
stance, Basil replied, " The idea might have some applica
tion to brass and coins made of it ; but in the case of
the Father and of the Son the substance of one is not
older than that of the other, neither can it be conceived
as superimposed on both." 2 We must remember that the
orthodox Greek theologians were Platonic in their spirit
and thought, so that to them the idea corresponding to a
general term was a high reality. Nevertheless, language
such as this reveals a growing tendency to emphasise the
numerical distinction between the persons in the Trinity.
Surely Harnack goes too far when he regards this as
virtually the adoption of the Semi-Arian position,8 for the
firm adhesion to the unity of the substance (the ousia)
seems to preclude that amazing conclusion. But un
doubtedly some approach to it was made, perhaps in
part owing to the fact that most of the Semi-Arians were
coming over to the orthodox Church. The final result was
that without any formal divergence of doctrine, while in
the West the emphasis was always laid on the unity of
the Godhead, in the East it came to be put more on the
division of the persons.
Gregory Nazianzen was in some respects the opposite,
or the complement, to his friend Basil in nature and disposi
tion. An indefatigable student, retiring and unambitious,
he would never have come out into a position of responsi
bility if this course had not been forced upon him, or at
all events reluctantly accepted by him under a strong sense
of duty. He was born in the year 325, or a little later,
at Nazianzus in Cappadocia, where his father, the elder
1 Letter 38. 2 Letter 52.
* History of Dogma, Eng. Trans., vol. iv. p. 82.

76 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Gregory was bishop, honourably illustrating as late as the
fourth century the right of bishops to live in the married
state. He appears to have first met Basil at Caesarea, where
he had been sent to school. The schoolboy attachment
ripened into a life-long friendship. Afterwards studying
at Caesarea in Palestine, and then at Alexandria, he came
on at length to the great university of Athens, where he
found Basil already winning a brilliant reputation for
scholarship. In his funeral oration over his friend he
gives a vivid account of university life at the classic
centre of culture during the fourth century. Theatres,
wine parties, frivolous discussions dissipated the time and
energies of fashionable students. But the two Cappa-
docians had come to work, and sternly avoiding all these
distractions, they gave themselves to severe study. Gregory
stayed on longer than his friend, apparently for twelve years
altogether, from the age of eighteen till he was past thirty.
At last, fascinated by the attractions of the devotional life,
he joined Basil for a short time in his Pontic retreat.
In the year 360 Gregory returned home, probably to
assist his father. Much against his will, but at the urgent
wish of the people of Nazianzus, his father ordained him
presbyter. It was " good form " to appear reluctant to take
office in the Church ; but evidently Gregory's shrinking from
the responsibility was genuine ; he even described his ordina
tion as an act of tyranny, and immediately after fled to his
old retreat with Basil. His Defence of his Flight to Pontus
— his first sermon after his return — sets forth the loftiest
ideal of the Christian ministry with a richness of thought
and a passionate earnestness of feeling that make this book
live to-day as truly as Baxter's Reformed Pastor — a work on
similar- lines. But he could not long resist the call of duty.
Subsequently Basil forced him to the episcopate of a little
posting-station named Sasima, a noisy, dusty village of one
narrow street with no grass or trees in its neighbourhood.
The masterful Basil did this for the benefit of his friend's
soul, as a discipline in submission and humility — an action
the merit of which was not highly appreciated by its victim.

THE CAPPADOCIAN THEOLOGIANS 77
After an obscure time at Seleucia in Isauria he was dragged
out into the glare of day by being appointed to the charge
of the one orthodox Church at Constantinople, when the
Arian tyranny was at its height. There he preached his
famous Five Theological Orations, which placed him in the
foremost rank of Christian preachers ; they are not un
worthy of comparison with the utterances of the classic
Greek orators. His sermons are his greatest works ; after
them his letters and his poems claim our interest.
On the accession of Theodosius, Gregory was rewarded
for his fidelity in holding the fort during the Arian period by
being made patriarch of Constantinople. In virtue of this
fact he presided at some of the sessions of the council that
assembled in that city in the year 381, till, feeling unequal
to the distasteful task of maintaining order amid the wrang
ling of the bishops, he retired to his home at Nazianzus,
although according to Socrates 1 he had " surpassed all his
contemporaries in eloquence and piety."
Gregory defended the Nicene position, as held by himself
and Basil, by elaborating the mysterious connection of unity
and threefoldness in the Trinity. He explained that the
unity of the "monarchy"2 consisted in " common. dignity s
of_the essence," " harmony of sentiment," i " identity of
motion," 6 and " inclination " 6 of the Son and the Spirit
towards the Father. How striking, even startling, are
these various expressions, one and all indicating the dis
tinctions of individuality in the Trinity even when toiling
to find means to express the idea of the unity — so char
acteristic of the later development of the Nicene theology,
so different from the attitude of the Western Church !
Only the underlying Platonism can save such language
from a charge of tritheism. But the unity is really found
in the idea of derivation. The Son and Spirit are twin
rays from one light and that by an eternally continuous
process. The third of the great Cappadocians was Basil's
1 Hist. Eccl. v. 7. s fuovo-pTito.. * 6/j.oTi/j.ta..
* yvti/ii)s ffv/ATrfota. ' TV.irrjt Kwrfirews. * abvvewn.

78 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
younger brother Gregory . P1 Nyssa, wno was Dorn a^0ut
a.d. 335 or 336. Owing to the delicacy of his health he
enjoyed none of the university advantages that fell to the
lot of Basil and Gregory Nazianzen. He was privately
educated by his brother Basil, and he became a great
reader on his own account. After this it is significant
that he proved to be a much more original thinker than
either of the two highly-tutored senior members of the
famous trio. Basil appointed him bishop of the little
town of Nyssa (now Mrse) in the west of Cappadocia.
During the Arian persecution under Valens he was driven
from his church on a charge of irregularity of appointment
by a too subservient synod held at Nyssa, and then banished
by the emperor, to be restored after the death of Valens
and " the crash of Hadrianople." On the death of Basil
he became one of the two leading defenders of the faith.
Gregory of Nyssa is chiefly interesting to us on
account of the profound arguments and daring speculations
with which he justified the orthodox view against the
Arians. These are elaborated in his great work Against
Eunomius, as well as in some of his shorter writings.
The Nicene fathers had simply thundered out a great
affirmation — strong, definite, conclusive — still only an
affirmation, a bare assertion voted by authority. Even
Athanasius was content for the most part to defend it by
rebuttin£_fahe_cqnceptions while tearing the rival theory
to shreds. Gregory of Nyssa goes further. He digs into
the roots of the mighty affirmation ; he seeks to justify
it metaphysically ; he carries orthodox theology into the
free atmosphere of philosophy and there attempts to argue
for its truth on principles "of abstract reason — a daring, a
perilous effort, but still one that some minds not satisfied
with authoritative dogma might welcome with a sense of
liberty and enlargement. In particular, Gregory helped
to develop a new line of thought that opened up fruitful
sources of discussion among subsequent writers. Hitherto
the nature of Christ had been almost exclusively con
sidered on its Divine side. The one question had been,

THE CAPPADOCIAN THEOLOGIANS 79
How did He stand related to God ? The orthodox were
content to affirm His full Divinity and also to assert the
fact of the incarnation ; but they made no attempt to
correlate these two truths. They had no theory as to
how the Divine and the human could subsist together,
how there could be such a fact as an incarnation at all.
The full discussion of this most difficult problem belongs
to the controversies of later times — those of the fifth and
sixth centuries. But before the end of the fourth century
there had emerged a burning question as to the actual
presence of complete human and Divine natures in the
Person of Jesus Christ. Now both the Gregories, but
Gregory of Nyssa the more emphatically of the two, fol
lowed Origen in pronouncing for a real human soul in
Christ. According to Gregory of Nyssa, this was trans
formed under the influence,of the Divine^Nature after the
resurrection and ascension. The very body of Christ was
then sublimated into the essence of the Divine Nature, so
that it has laid aside the attributes of gravity, shape, colour,
and all limitation. Thus we have the omnipresence of that
glorified body, for the body of Christ was transmute to the
flesh of God by the indwelling word.1 It is easy to see
how readily such a theory would agree with the doctrine
of transubstantiation, a doctrine which Gregory did more
than anybody else of his period to advance.2
On the other hand, Apollinaris the younger, of Hier-
apolis, took the opposite line. A man of great intellectual
power, he made an original attempt to shape an intelligible
conception of the incarnation. But by abolishing its
mystery he virtually denied the fact. His motif was
opposition to Arianism. Nevertheless, he shared with
Arius a view which the Church always rejected as false
and fatal to the central idea of the gospel, the coming
of the Divine into the human ; for he too denied to Christ
a complete human nature. Like Arius, he was Aristotelian
in temper of mind and method of thought. His clear,
1 Oratio catechetica magna, 37.
2 See Hebert, The Lord's Supper, vol. i. pp. 202-209.

80 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
crisp logic worked out definite conclusions without regard
to side issues. Accepting the tripartite division of man
into body or flesh, soul, and mind or spirit,1 he ascribed
to our Lord only theTirst two, and taught that the spirit
or higher consciousness of Christ was purely of Divine
Nature, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity.
He thought that you must sacrifice the personality on one
side or the other. Paul of Samosata had sacrificed it on
the Divine side ; with him Christ was only a man com
pletely influenced by God, the ego, the centre of personality
and self-consciousness being human. To allow of two
spirits or minds is to admit two wills — which the Church
did actually admit and even affirm on peril of excommuni
cation at a later time, — and so two persons. Then the
human mind 2 is naturally changeable, owing to its posses
sion of free will ; but to say that Christ was changeable
was Arian, the Nicene party denying this. Further,
Apollinaris thought that the usual way of representing
the nature of Christ was inconsistent with the doctrine
of redemption, since it only allowed the man Jesus, not
the Divine Christ, to have suffered for us.
Apollinaris was vehemently assailed, for the denial of
the incarnation these ideas were supposed to involve. But
he endeavoured to save that mystery in another region.
Since man was made in the image of God, there must be
something in God which is like man. In other words, there
must be an inherent humanity in God. Now it was that
man-like element in God which entered into earthly human
nature in the incarnation of Jesus. Therefore it would
exactly correspond to a perfect human spirit. We might
compare this view to the Semi-Arian, by applying to the
human nature of Christ the watchword that the Semi-
Arians used to describe His Divine Nature, and say that,
while the Athahasian party regarded Christ as homoousios
with us in His humanity, Apollinaris considered Him to
be only homoiousios with us. It will be found that most
1 The Greek <rS>im, fvxf), vovs ; the New Testament <rd/>£, fvxn, rvev/M.

THE CAPPADOCIAN THEOLOGIANS 81
subsequent approaches to an explanation — over and above
the mere orthodox affirmation — of the incarnation have
moved in the direction here indicated by Apollinaris ; they
have denied the existence of the enormous gulf commonly
thought to separate human nature from God, and they
have asserted a natural affinity between God and man, a
something in us that is akin to God, and therefore corre-
latively a something in God that is akin to us. Some
zealous opponents of Arianism were driven by the recoil
of their attack on the heresy back on the Sabellianism
that Arius had originally set out to resist. Thus they
played into the hands of their opponents, who could turn ,
round on the Nicene party saying, " There ; that is just
what we told you — you are Sabellian." Marcellus of
Ancyra was one of these too thoroughgoing champions of
the homoousion doctrine. He was a friend of Athanasius,
who long defended him from the suspicion of Sabellianism ;
but when at last his position became too clear to be
doubted, the great patriarch was driven to correct him.1
Still more pronounced was the Sabellianism of his disciple
Photinus, bishop of Sirmium, who was condemned in a
synod at that city.
Meanwhile the Arians were pushing their views to a
logical conclusion with regard to the whole conception of
the Trinity. At first only the doctrine of the nature of
Christ was in question. But the enquiry could not stop
there. The notions we entertain concerning the second
Person of the Trinity must affect our ideas of the third.
If the Son is a creature, it will be impossible not to assert
that the Spirit also is a creature. Athanasius met with
this view when in exile in the Thebaid, coming across
Arians who went beyond Arius in asserting that the Holy
Spirit was not only a creature but " one of the ministering
spirits " ; 2 he says they were called Figuraturists, and
Fighters against the Spirit.8 Probably not much would
1 Oration against the Arians, iv.
31 Kai tu>v irvev/Aa.TSn> \arovpyiK(ov iv atrb etvai, Letters to Serapion, 4.
* rpowiKoi, irvev/iaro/iaxovvTc!.
6

82 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
have been heard of this by-product of Arianism — since the
battle was raging round the doctrine of Christ — if it had
not succeeded in obtaining a champion in high quarters.
Macedonius the patriarch of Constantinople maintained
the same position, and consequently the party who agreed
with him was known as Macedonian. Since this consisted
largely of Semi-Arians, unlikely as we might have supposed
it, the orthodox were quick to seize the new weapon, and
call all the Semi-Arians Macedonians. But that was not
just. With this babel of voices from Eunomians, Acacians,
Semi-Arians, Macedonians, Apollinarians, followers of Mar
cellus and Photinus, rending the air, all more or less opposed
to the party of the three Cappadocians in their support of
the Nicene position, there seemed to be an urgent need for
another general council of the Church to settle the various
disputes involved. Accordingly, Theodosius summoned a
synod of the Eastern bishops at Constantinople. This
synod is reckoned to be the second Oecumenical Council,
none of the councils — at Tyre, Constantinople, Antioch,
Sardica, Sirmium, Eimini — which had met in the interval
since Nicaea, being regarded as of that character. And
yet even this council at Constantinople only represented
the Eastern half of the Church. Not a bishop from the
West was present. Theodosius only ruled over the Eastern
branch of the empire, and he was only able to command
the bishops within the area of his jurisdiction. The sole
justification for regarding the council as oecumenical is the
(fact that its decisions were accepted by the bishop of
Eome and the Church of the West. This council first
assembled in the year a.d. 381 ; then it broke up for a
time. It reassembled the next year. There were 150
bishops present. The first president was Meletius of
Antioch ; but he died during the discussions and was suc
ceeded by Gregory Nazianzen, who, as we have seen,1
retired because he felt out of his element among the
wranghng, quarrelsome theologians, and his place was then
1 P. 77.

THE CAPPADOCIAN THEOLOGIANS 83
taken by Nectarius, his successor in the patriarchate of
Constantinople. The council reaffirmed the Creed of Nicaea
and anathematised Eunomians, Semi-Arians or Pneuma-
tomachoi, Sabellians, Marcellians, Photinians, Apollinarians.
Our " Nicene Creed," which differs slightly from the creed
as it was. originally shaped at Nicaea, has been long regarded
as the " Creed of Constantinople." But that view is now
abandoned by scholars for the following reasons : The creed
omits strong anti- Arian expressions,1 an omission that would
be unaccountable at this council, since the council's raison
d'etre was to stiffen up orthodoxy against Arianism ; it was in
existence previous to the assembling of the council, since it
was mentioned by Epiphanius at an earlier date ; it is almost
identical with the creed of Cyril of Jerusalem ; for two
hundred years after the council of Constantinople nobody
is found connecting it with that council ; we know that
the council reaffirmed the Creed of Nicaea. Possibly Cyril
— who was present — read his creed to the council and got
an endorsement of it as a creed he might use in his own
church, and if so this fact may have originated the
legend.2 Meanwhile the one important conclusion of the
council was simply the reassertion of the Nicene position,
together with an explicit repudiation of whatever more
recent schemes and speculations were deemed inconsistent
with it. Some advance of thought may be seen in the
three Cappadocians, especially in Gregory of Nyssa ; and a
very original attempt to break up new ground and carry
theological ideas further forward in explanation of the
incarnation is to be acknowledged in Apoljinaris. But
the latter is denounced as a heretic, and even Basil and
the Gregories have only been utilised in defence of the
established position. Gregory of Nyssa, the most original
thinker of the trio, comes to be regarded with some sus
picion on account of his sympathy with Origen's uni-v
versalism. The council thinks it can do nothing better
' tout' iarlv in ttjs oialas toO irarpbi and 0e6v in 0eov.
3 See Hort, Two Dissertations.

84 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
than fall back on the decision of "the 318," now fifty-
six years old, and treated with growing veneration as an
inspired oracle. That decision was to be the stamp and
seal of orthodoxy for all time. There remained to do
nothing more in the matter than to safeguard it against
the attacks of heresy, which in the meantime had risen up
to assail it on all sides. Already the keynote of Eastern
Christianity was sounded. This was to be orthodoxy —
fixed, settled dogma, with no encouragement for widening
views or the exploration of new realms of truth.
Having determined this point, the council only had to
proceed to certain practical decisions in its later canons.
The object of one of these was to confine a bishop's
authority to his own district. Another, the third, declared
that " the bishop of Constantinople shall have the privi
lege of rank next after the bishop of Eome; because
Constantinople is new Eome"3 — a decision of great sig
nificance in view of the subsequent division of the Church.
1 Tie /xiv tol Kav<rravnvovir6\eii>s iirlaKOirov lxelv T& irpea-peta ttjs np.rjs
fierd. rbv rijs 'Pi6/«js (irlaKmrov, Si& rb cXvai air^v viav 'Pib/iijv. Observe
the preposition — /terot, and note the reason for the position — a wholly
political reason, and therefore thoroughly characteristic of the Greek
Church.

CHAPTER VI
THE MOVEMENTS THAT LED TO THE COUNCIL OF
CHALCEDON (A.D. 382-445)
(a) The Church historians — Socrates (to a.d. 439), Sozomen (to
A.D. 439) ; Theodoret (to a.d. 429), Evagrius (to a.d. 594).
The pagan historian Zosimus (to a.d. 410). Nicene and Post-
Nicene Fathers, " Chrysostom."
(6) Hefele, History of the Councils, Eng. Trans., vol. ii., 1876
Bright, Age of the Fathers, vol. ii., 1903 ; Stephens, Life of
Chrysostom, 1872 ; Dorner, Person of Christ, Div. II. vol. i.
Ottley, The Incarnation, part vi., 1896 ; Loofs, Nestoriana.
With the tragic death of Valens and the accession of
Gratian in the West and Theodosius in the East the long
Arian tyranny comes to an end. Here then a new
chapter opens in the history of the Eastern Church.
Theodosius was more generous in conduct and more liberal
in ideas than either his enemies have been willing to admit
in the one case or his friends in the other. One frightful
outbreak of his fiery Spanish temper has left an indelible
stain on the emperor's memory in spite of the humble
penance to which he afterwards submitted. Hearing of a
riot at Thessalonica in which a general and other officers
of the army had been killed by the populace, who were
indignant at the punishment of a favourite charioteer,
although this had been on account of a vile crime,
Theodosius flew into a rage, ordered the citizens to be
invited to the hippodrome as for an expected race, and
set his soldiers on to an indiscriminate slaughter, which
resulted in a massacre of 5000 men, women, and children.
Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, after writing to the emperor
to express his horror of the crime, though in courteous

86 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
terms, stood at the door of his church when Theodosius
presented himself for the Christmas festival, and would not
permit his entrance till some time after he had humbled
himself and confessed his guilt. It was an unheard of
act of daring. We may note that it took place in the
independent West, not in the obsequious East, and further
that it was the deed of one who had the most exalted idea
of the duties of the episcopate, and who held a very high
place in the estimation of his people. For all that, although
the dramatic event is often quoted as an indication of the
growing power of the Church in its age-long conflict with
the empire, in so personal a case as this much must be set
down to the character of the sovereign who could thus
humble himself in owning his wrong-doing before a minister
of religion, like David when accused by Nathan. It was
very different from the Norman Henry H. doing penance
at the shrine of Becket in superstitious terror and more
practical alarm of insurrection.
In his ecclesiastical policy Theodosius ruthlessly
expelled Arian bishops, treating them about as badly as
his predecessor had treated the Nicene clergy. They would
see that they were just paid in their own coin ; and it was
only what everybody expected. The emperor's measures
against paganism have been misunderstood and their severity
has been exaggerated. It is true that much happened
during the reign of Theodosius to bring the tottering,
crumbling fabric of the cult of the old gods to the ground
The failure of Julian's fanatical attempt at resuscitation
combined with reformation was a plain proof that its days
were over. It was like the case of Monasticism in the
reign of Henry vni. ; the passing away of the anachronism
was inevitable. From the days of Constantius laws against
sacrificing had been inscribed in the statute book; but,
except with reference to magic — which people dreaded, the
demons being reckoned dangerous — and obscene ceremonies,
against which the growing sense of decency in a Christian
community revolted, these laws had not been executed.
Theodosius put the already existing and acknowledged laws

MOVEMENTS TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON 87
in force. No statute of Theodosius ordered the destruction
of temples — he was no vandal. The demolition went on
merrily in some districts, but as the result of popular
violence, which however found encouragement in the
known fact of the emperor's activity in repressing pagan
rites. It was in this way that the destruction of the famous
Serapeum at Alexandria was brought about, although
Socrates states that "at the solicitation of Theophilus,
bishop of Alexandria, the emperor issued an order at this
time for the demolition of the heathen temples in that
city ; commanding also that it should be put in execution
under the direction of Theophilus, which occasioned a great
commotion." 1 First we see the temple of Mithra cleared
out and its abhorrent contents exposed to view. That
was not an instance of temple demolition ; the building was
not destroyed. But in the case of the Serapeum, inasmuch
as the pagan party was using it as their fortress, a riotous
attack was made on it by the mob led by the monks, the
image of Serapis was hacked to pieces, and the temple itself
pulled to the ground. This act of violence provoked a
counter movement from the pagan section of the population,
and the result was a street fight in which many lives
were lost. Socrates states that most of the victims were
Christians, it being found afterwards that very few heathen
were killed. We may gather from this fact that the pagan
element in the city was still strong — at least in its anti-
Christian activity, although it did not show much energy in
support of its own religious rites. Other temples in Egypt
and elsewhere were destroyed, probably in similar popular
tumults, and nobody was punished by the government.
Still, Theodosius himself had wished the buildings to be
preserved and used as government offices.
Theodosius did not confine the distribution of offices to
Christians ; he granted them to pagans when he saw merit.
Thus he appointed Symmachus consul and the rhetorician
Themistius prefect of Constantinople and even tutor to his
1 Hist. Eccl. v. 16.

88 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
son Arcadius — although both of them were pagans. Alto
gether it may be concluded that, while he did not restrain
the growing popular violence directed against the buildings
and images of pagan worship, and even took action to
suppress the ritual, he bore no grudge against persons
and was quite ready to appreciate the good qualities of
adherents of the old religions. The empire which had
been united for a time was divided at his death (a.d. 395)
between his two weak sons, Honorius in the West and
Arcadius in the East. The latter was a puppet in the
hands of his unscrupulous minister Eutropius, who induced
him to marry a beautiful Frank maiden Eudoxia.
Meanwhile the one really great man in the Eastern
Church was being brought into public notice as much by
his stern fidelity as by his unparalleled pulpit gifts. This
was John, first known as a presbyter at Antioch and always
described by this simple name during his lifetime, but now
recognised by his posthumous title, Chrysostom. Antioch
was the seat of a school of Bible study, the method of which
was very different from that cultivated at Alexandria.
Following the example of the grammarians in their treat
ment of Homer and of Philo in his adaptation of the Old
Testament to current philosophical ideas, the Alexandrian
Christian scholars took great liberties with the Scriptures —
the New Testament as well as the Old — in freely allegoris
ing them. The scholars of Antioch, on the other hand,
pursued the method of grammatical and historical interpreta
tion. For this reason, while we are often amused at the
ingenuity of the Alexandrian interpretations of the Bible,
we find Antiochian expositions of permanent value as guides
to a correct understanding of Scripture. No commentator
is of more use in this respect than Chrysostom. He is
the prince of expository preachers. The modern expositor
is a debtor to the great presbyter of Antioch for many
suggestive ideas which he thinks he owes to Westcott,
Lightfoot, Alford, or Matthew Henry, but which if he had
the patience to trace the stream up to its source he would
see to have sprung from the sound perceptions of Chrysostom.

MOVEMENTS TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON 89
It must have been an age of Bible reading, at least in that
chief centre of Bible study, Antioch ; for Chrysostom assumes
a knowledge of Scripture on the part of his hearers which
few preachers of the present day would venture to take for
granted in their congregations.
It was a crisis in the fate of his city that brought
Chrysostom to the front as the greatest preacher of his age,
perhaps of any age. There had been a riot, springing from
popular irritation at the emperor's demand for a large
contribution from Antioch towards a largesse for the army,
in which the statues of the emperor and empress were
destroyed. No sooner was this mad freak over than its
perpetrators repented of their folly. In the despotic East
the emperor and empress were flattered with almost divine
honours and their statues treated with some approach to
the veneration that the pagans professed for the images of
their gods, that is to say, they were political idols, to insult
which was more than treason, almost sacrilege. This was
during the reign of Theodosius, whose hot temper and
the ruthless vengeance he did not scruple to wreak on those
who offended him were well known — though the incident was
earlier than the massacre of Thessalonica. The reaction
was appalling. The people were simply numb with horror.
Then the old bishop Flavian set out on a journey across
the mountains in the snows of winter to plead for his flock
with the emperor, who could not but be justly offended.
Happily, his mission was successful, and he was able to
return with a pardon to be received by the city of Antioch
on certain conditions that were not unreasonable. Mean
while the people sat terror-stricken, awaiting the verdict on
their crime and anticipating the worst. Then Chrysostom
seized the opportunity to conduct a mission. Every day
his church was thronged, while the preacher denounced the
luxuries and lashed the vices of his fellow-citizens. Like
Savonarola at Florence he daringly attacked popular sins,
directly accusing the trembling people who stood spellbound
under the scathing torrent of elpquence. The result was a
revival of religion in the dissolute city.

90 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
In the year 397 the death of Nectarius, who had been
patriarch of Constantinople for the previous sixteen years,
left the most important post in the Eastern Church vacant.
It shows the good sense of the imperial minister Eutropius,
worthless man as he was, that this de facto ruler persuaded
his master to assign the episcopate to Chrysostom. Then,
focussed in the blaze of publicity at the imperial capital,
the wonderful preacher more than justified the discern
ment which had led to his appointment. . The influence
which he exerted from the cathedral pulpit excelled that
of the court. Short in stature, unsociable in manners,
riving the life of a recluse in the patriarch's lordly palace,
and so disappointing those who had enjoyed the princely
hospitality of his predecessor, Chrysostom swayed the
people of Constantinople as he chose, by the magic of his
eloquence. Yet he was no flatterer of common habits and
notions. He proved how the supremely great preacher
can win the confidence of his congregation without ever
stooping to the arts of popularity. Chrysostom was a
John the Baptist in his stern denunciation of prevalent
evils among all circles of society up to the very highest. He
even anticipated the rude daring of John Knox in com
paring the empress to Jezebel — and that at Constantinople,
the city of subservient prelates. At the same time he was
both just and generous, and it was his large-hearted sense
of fairness that led to his first troubles in the city. The
occasion was the attack on the teachings of Origen that
was then being promoted by the narrower-minded monks.
The story is complicated. The most vehement
opponents of Origenism were too ignorant to understand
the teaching they decried. These men who came from
the desert cells of Egypt were known as Anthropomorphists
from their grossly materialistic conception of God as
possessing a human body with physical features like our
own, so that the Scripture references to His eyes, ears,
hands, and feet were to be taken literally. When one of
these simple souls was shown the error of such a notion,
he exclaimed with tears, "They have taken away my

MOVEMENTS TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON 91
Lord, and I know not where they have laid him." How
could such people understand the profound ideas of the
philosophic Origen ? Unfortunately they regarded the spirit
of Origen as the chief opponent of their own views, and it
was in self-defence that they promoted the anti-Origen
agitation. The movement swelled to dangerous dimensions,
till Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria, who at first
had opposed it, swung round, from fear or policy, and
threw the aegis of his protection over it. Meanwhile
the more spiritual monks were strongly opposed to this
literalism, and the opposition was led by four old men in
the Nitrian desert who were known as the " tall brothers "
from their remarkable stature. Theophilus attacked these
men, and they fled to Palestine and ultimately to Con
stantinople, where they sought the intercession of
Chrysostom. The large - hearted patriarch would not
undertake to judge the case ; but he wrote to Theophilus
begging the Alexandrian patriarch to receive the old men
back. This brought into the field the ever - recurring
jealousy between Alexandria and the upstart imperial city
of Constantinople. Theophilus charged Chrysostom with
interfering with a matter that was not within his juris
diction. Then the emperor was persuaded to summon
Theophilus to Constantinople. He came, but at his own
pace and gathering adherents on the road, so that when
he presented himself he was strong enough to hold a
council in a suburb of Chalcedon called " the Oak," at
which Chrysostom was condemned and deposed on the
ground of a number of frivolous charges. But the rage
of the people and an earthquake which alarmed Eudoxia,
who took it for a supernatural portent, led the empress
to persuade her husband to recall the patriarch. He was
received back with wild joy, led into his church by his
people, and compelled to preach to them there and then.
This uncanonical act of resuming his ministerial office
after deposition was made a ground of accusation against
Chrysostom when he was again out of favour with the
court. It was like the charge against Athanasius when

92 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
he returned to Alexandria on the invitation of the civil
government after deposition by a Church council at Tyre.
But in both cases the defence was really unanswerable.
The condemning synods were not fairly representative, and
they had no jurisdiction over the bishops they presumed
to depose. Chrysostom's second offence was final. A silver image
of Eudoxia had been set up opposite his church and the
inauguration of it was celebrated with dances and
buffoonery, which the patriarch detested as morally
pernicious. He vehemently denounced the whole of the
proceedings, an action which of course mortally offended
the empress. There is extant ' a sermon attributed to
Chrysostom on this occasion, beginning with the sentence,
" Again Herodias is raging, again she is excited, again she
is dancing, again she is seeking to obtain the head of John."
The sermon as it stands is spurious, and Gibbon thought
that this celebrated sentence in particular was certainly
an invention ; but the preacher who could call a woman
" Jezebel " on one occasion might be imagined when more
provoked on a later occasion to have designated her
" Herodias." At all events, Chrysostom's offence was
unpardonable. For a time he remained in seclusion at
Constantinople, twice escaping assassination, while the city
was in a great state of commotion. Then he was banished,
a synod condemning him for having resumed his office
without ecclesiastical permission since the synod of the
Oak had deposed him. After three years of exile the
hardships he had endured hastened his death (Sept. 14,
407). Passing on now to the Christological controversies
which followed the formal settlement of the Arian disputes
at the council of Constantinople, we notice two opposite
tendencies of thought, each of which had to be guarded
against by those who would keep to the ever sharpening
knife-edge of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. The Church having
reaffirmed the primary facts of the perfect Divinity and

MOVEMENTS TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON 93
the true humanity of Christ, the next question was as to how
the two elements could co-exist in one and the same Person.
Thus the discussion moved from the question of the
Trinity, which had occupied the thoughts of theologians
of the fourth century, to the consideration of the nature
of Christ, which was to- engage the minds of disputants
during the fifth century, and beyond into the sixth and
even the seventh. The controversies became more and more
hard and narrow, unspiritual and purely polemical, as the
weary process went on, till the Church woke up with a rude
shock in the advent of Mohammedanism, to face the vital
question whether Christianity was to continue to exist at
all — -in any form, orthodox or heterodox. The two heresies
which rent the Eastern Church during the fifth century
scarcely touched the West, although the bishop of Eome
intervened from time to time to help towards a settlement.
Therefore they belong essentially to the Oriental branch
of Church history. Moreover, their effects are seen in
the divisions of Eastern Christendom in the present day,
one of them being represented by the Nestorians -of the
Euphrates and India, the other by the Syrian Jacobites
and the Copts in Egypt. In the controversies of the fifth
century we see the rise of both the movements which have
perpetuated themselves in these two groups of Christians
out of communion with the Greek Church, both of them
denounced by " the holy orthodox Church " as heretical.
We saw how the Christological speculations began to
appear even during the course of the fourth century in
those two very original thinkers, Apollinaris and Gregory
of Nyssa.1 The former had been condemned by the
council of Constantinople for denying the full humanity
of Christ ; and the latter had come to be looked on with
suspicion on account of his sympathies with the ideas of
Origen. After this, whatever new lines of thought are
followed had to come within those laid down in the Nicene
and Constantinopolitan settlement. Still, within the limits
thus decided there was room for considerable variety of
'P. 79.

V

94 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
opinions. These turned in one or other of two directions
according as the mind was directed to the distinction of the
natures in Christ or to the unity of the Person. Emphasis
on the distinction between the Divine and human natures
in our Lord issued in Nestorianism. Insistence on the
unity of His person pushed to 'an extreme led to the
heresy known at the time as Eutychianism. In point of
fact, however, another and a deeper tendency may be
traced through each of these movements when we consider
the motives that inspired them. The underlying motive
of Nestorianism was interest in our Lord's humanity,, His
earthly life, His brotherly relations with mankind; the
motive,„prompting to Eutychianism was the aim of exalting
the Divinity of Christ in which the human nature was
quite swallowed up and assimilated to the infinite, all-
controlling Divine. Nestorianism took its origin in the
school of Antioch, where the Gospels were studied historic
ally and the earthly life of Jesus Christ highly valued.
Antioch was in close touch with Constantinople, and thus
the influence of the Syrian city was readily felt in the
great metropolis. The opposition to Nestorianism — which
ultimately came over the fine edge of orthodoxy on the
other side, in the form of Eutychianism — sprang from
Alexandria, the home of Athanasius a century before,
famed as the stronghold of the doctrine of the Divinity
of Christ. But immediately we name these cities we are
prepared to see how the age-long jealousies of the
patriarchates of which they were the seats were roused
to range themselves on one side or the other of the
discussions, which thus obtained local colour and excited
partisan passions quite irrespective of the claims of truth
or the honour of Him about whose nature the rival
disputants professed to be so deeply concerned.
The originator of the Nestorian line of thought was
Theodore of Mopsuestia, and his mind was set going in
this direction in opposition to the Apollinarians. He
urged that for the restoration of the shattered unity of the
cosmos it was necessary that God the Word should become

MOVEMENTS TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON 95
a perfect man. Theodore developed his ideas of the moral
perfection of Jesus as a man, resting this partly on the
Virgin birth and the baptism, and partly on His union
with the Divine Word.1 He held that there was an
indwelling of God in Christ, generically the same as in
the saints, but specifically different. " I am not so mad,"
he says, " as to affirm that the indwelling of God in Christ
is after the same manner as in the saints. He dwelt in
Christ as in a son." 2 It will be seen that such language
finds the actual personality of Christ in His human nature,
however closely and in however unique a way the Divine
may be united to it. Thus the tendency of. thought will be
towards a separation into two persons — the Divine Person
of the Logos and the human Person Jesus. That will
not be so far from Paul of Samosata's idea of the God-
influenced man, except that as regards the Divine, the
Logos, the Trinitarian conception is preserved.
Theodore's views were introduced to Constantinople by
Nestorius, who was appointed patriarch in the year 428,
like Chrysostom after having been a presbyter at Antioch.
He was blameless in personal character, and he had gained
some reputation by his fluent, sonorous eloquence. And
yet he commenced with a false step, for in his first sermon,
addressing the emperor, he exclaimed, " Give me the
earth cleared of heretics, and I will give you the kingdom
of heaven in exchange ; aid me in subduing the heretics,
and I will aid you in vanquishing the Persians." 3 Such
an untimely boast of bigotry disgusted sober minds, and
Nestorius came to be branded as an " incendiary " in con
sequence. Not long after this the heresy-hunter was
denounced as a heretic — a just retribution of which history
furnishes many instances.4 The trouble began with the
sermon of a presbyter Anastasius, who had accompanied
Nestorius from Antioch and shared with his bishop the
ideas of Theodore, in which the preacher attacked the
1 De Incarn. 2 lis iv vie?. * Socrates, vii. 29.
4 It will be recollected that Arius began by denouncing the heretical
teaching of Alexander his bishop.

96 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
title Theotokos (" Bearer " or " mother of God ") as applied
to the Virgin Mary. The term had long been in use, and
it had the sanction of Athanasius and other trusted Fathers.
Nevertheless Nestorius defended his friend and adopted
the same position with reference to the title. The famous
Cyril, a man of intense, fierce determination, now patriarch
of Alexandria, took up the case against Nestorius. His
record was not unblemished. Even if he had taken no part
in the outrageous murder of the beautiful, learned, and
refined Neo-Platonist lecturer Hypathia, when the monks
seized her in the street, dragged her from her carriage,
tore off her clothes, scraped the flesh from her bones with
oyster shells, and flung her mangled remains on a fire, the
cruel patriarch cannot be exculpated from acquiescence in
the awful crime.1 Such was the self-appointed champion
of the faith in opposition to the " blasphemer " Nestorius.
The pope Celestius held a council at Eome (430), which
condemned Nestorius. Cyril was to execute the sentence
of deposition, but Nestorius took no notice of it.
The quarrel became so serious that the emperor
Theodosius n. summoned a council which met at Ephesus
the next year (431), and is known as the Third General
Council. Cyril and his party arrived before the friends of
Nestorius from Antioch with John the patriarch of the
church in that city at their head. It was assumed that
he had purposely delayed. Anyhow, Cyril's haste in
procuring the condemnation of Nestorius before the
council was complete, and in the absence of the defenders
of the accused, was scarcely decent and certainly not fair.
Naturally enough Nestorius declined to appear before so
one-sided a tribunal. When John arrived he and his
bishops replied by voting the deposition of Cyril. Neither
decision was effective at the moment. Nestorius relied on
the protection of the emperor ; but this did not long save
him. Theodosius yielded to the powerful court intrigues
that were brought to bear upon him — for unlike his
grandfather he had more piety than power — and Nestorius
1 Socrates, vii. 15 ; Philostorgius, viii. 9.

MOVEMENTS TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON 97
was banished first to Petra in Arabia and then to the
oasis of Ptolemais in Egypt. After being captured by
Arab brigands and suffering many other hardships for
which the orthodox authorities showed no pity, he died
from the effects of ill-usage in the year 439. Meanwhile
his followers were hounded out of the empire, being driven
over into Persia. And yet the influence of Theodore and
Nestorius lived on, chiefly owing to the hold it got on the
important school of theological scholarship at Edessa.
The opposite tendency of thought which ripened into
Eutychianism was just the emphasising and perhaps carrying
further forward of the ideas of Cyril. Although this notorious
Alexandrian dogmatist has been canonised and although
his writings are now prized among the most highly honoured
works of the Fathers, it is not easy to distinguish his
position from that of the heresy that came under con
demnation at the next general council. He held that
Nestorianism involved a duality of persons in Christ — the
human Jesus being one person, the Divine Logos another.
And yet he was not content to assert a unity of persons ;
he maintained that there was a unity of nature.1 Nor
would he aUow of any real kenosis in the incarnation.
While Jesus lay in the cradle, to all appearance a helpless
infant, He was actually administering the affairs of the
universe. When as a man He appeared to be ignorant of
anything, this was only in appearance. Even when He
said He did not know the day or hour of the Parousia, that
only meant that He had no knowledge for the disciples
which he could communicate to them.
But it was the pronounced expression of such views,
carried perhaps a little further by Eutyches, the archi
mandrite of a large monastery near Constantinople, that drew
1 tvwtns tCiv Tpoadrsav will not suffice ; there must be Ivwrts ko.6'
ivboraaiv. This was quite in accordance with the idea of birSaraais in the
Cappadociau theologians, so that there is nothing peculiar to Cyril so far u
Domer seems to imply (Person of Christ, Eng. Trans., Div. II. vol. i. p.
57). But Cyril goes further and has the expression fita <pi<ris (Ep. ad Acae.
p. 115, quoted by Dorner, op. cit.), verbally at any rate an anticipation of
Monophysitism, also ivorys Qvo-udi, Ep. ad monarchas Aeg. p. 9.

98 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
down on them the disapproval of a lynx-eyed orthodoxy.
Eutyches was an obstinate, narrow-minded old man who
had spent several years in retirement when he came
forward to contest the error of Nestorianism.. He did this
so extravagantly that to his amazement he found himself
charged with heresy in an opposite direction. He main
tained that the two natures in Christ were fused together
in the incarnation, so that there became " one incarnate
nature of God the Word." His opinions were condemned
at a local synod; but Eutyches would not submit and
demanded a general council, which was convened at
Ephesus by Theodosius H. and met in August 449. It
was grossly packed by the friends of Eutyches. Those
bishops who had taken part in the condemnation of the
archimandrite at Constantinople, as weU as others coming
from the East, and therefore suspected of Nestorianism,
were not allowed to vote. All reporters except those of
the Eutychian party were expelled. If any one who had
taken part in the obnoxious Constantinople synod ventured
to open his mouth in favour of " two natures," he was
immediately shouted down with cries of " Nestorian ! "
" Tear him asunder ! " " Burn him alive ! " " As he divides,
so let him be divided ! " The orthodoxy of Eutyches was
vindicated, and an anathema was pronounced against
Nestorius amid shouts — " Drive out, burn, tear, cut asunder,
massacre aU who hold two natures ! " Dioscurus, Cyril's
successor at Alexandria, was not satisfied with a mere dis
cussion and its vote. " Call in the counts," he shouted.
Thereupon the proconsul of Asia entered, attended by
soldiers and monks armed with swords and clubs and
carrying chains. The panic-stricken bishops tried to hide
under the benches, in dark corners of the church, wherever
they could creep out of sight. But they were dragged forth,
threatened, even struck, and ultimately forced to sign the
condemnation of Flavian, the patriarch of Constantinople,
who was leading the opposite party.
It is said that Dioscurus, Cyril's successor, the patriarch
of Alexandria, struck Flavian in the face, kicked Mm,

MOVEMENTS TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON 99
stamped on him. Be that as it may, Flavian died a few days
later from the ill-treatment he had received at the council.
The emperor confirmed the decisions of this disreputable
council. But Leo I., bishop of Eome, the first of the great
popes, repudiated it as invalid and sternly denounced its
proceedings, designating it Latrocinialis — the " Eobber
Council."1 The Eastern Church was now miserably divided.
Egypt, Thrace, and Palestine held to the Eutychian side,
while Syria, Pontus, and Asia supported the opposite
position, which Flavian had championed, but which was
now maintained by the most powerful man of his age, the
great Leo. The next year (a.d. 450) Theodosius n. died
through a fall from his horse. His sister, Pulcheria, was
already exercising great power in the State, and she now
married a senator Marcian, sixty years of age, who thus
becoming emperor, at once reversed the policy of his
predecessor and entered into communication with Leo for
the settlement of the troubled state of the Church. An
indirect proof of what this condition was may be gathered
from the fact that the foUowing year Marcian issued a law
against brawling in church and forbidding meetings in
private houses or in the street. The same year he
banished Eutyches. The result of the emperor's cor
respondence with the pope was that Marcian summoned a
general council which was to have met at Nicaea, the now
venerated site of orthodoxy. Subsequently, to suit the
convenience of the emperor, the place of assembly was
changed to Chalcedon on the Bosphorus, as that was near
Constantinople. The council of Chalcedon is the last of the four general
councils recognised both by the Churches of the West —
Protestant (i.e. Lutheran and Anglican) as well as Eoman
Catholic — and by the main body of the Eastern Church.
It met in the church of St. Euphemia, holding its first
session on 8th October, ad. 451. There were some five
or six hundred bishops present, most of them from the
1 Leo, Epis. 95, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. xii. p. 71.

190 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Oriental provinces of the empire. Thus this council, like
each of its three predecessors— at Nicaea, Constantinople,
and Ephesus — was not only held in the East, but was also
almost entirely Oriental in composition. Leo was very
desirous to have the council at Eome. But that was
not to be. All the councils were summoned by emperors,
and it was in the East that the imperial government held
supreme sway over the Church. No emperor with any
concern for his authority could have consented to the
assembly of a general council of the Church at Eome,
especially under so important a person as Leo I., who was
really much more influential in the West than Marcian
himself. Leo was not present ; but he exerted a weighty
influence on the proceedings of the council. The papal
delegates insisted that Dioscurus should not be allowed to
sit as a judge in a case where his own conduct was on trial.
He was condemned, and deposed, and subsequently banished
to Gangra in Paphlagonia, where he died three years later
(a.d. 454). Although this was on the ground of his mis
conduct at Ephesus and his having dared to excommunicate
" the most holy and most blessed archbishop of Eome,"
the heresy he had defended was condemned. Having
first confirmed the decrees of the three earlier councils, the
council of Chalcedon anathematised Nestorianism on the one
hand, and Eutychianism on the other. Leo's " Tome," an im
portant doctrinal statement contained in a letter which the
pope had addressed to Flavian, was adopted as the standard
statement of orthodoxy ; and to this was added a minutely
discriminating definition of doctrine. The " Tome " is
an admirably balanced statement of the Church's position
with regard to the unity of the Person and the distinction
of the two natures in Christ, and the formula of Chalcedon
which accepts and confirms this statement carefully re
capitulates the ideas contained therein. It is to be
observed that neither document attempts any explanation
of the incarnation, nor does either really attempt to resolve
the apparent paradox propounded by its definitions. Each
is content to define the orthodox position, clearly, unmistak-

MOVEMENTS TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON 1 0 1
ably, finally. In these two documents we have the
Church's authoritative declaration of the incarnation. The
settlement of Chalcedon declares that, "We, therefore,
following the Holy Fathers, confess one and the same Son,
our Lord Jesus Christ ; and we do with one voice teach,
that He is perfect in Godhead and that He is perfect in
Manhood, being truly God and truly Man ; that He is of
a reasonable soul and body, consubstantial with the Father
as touching His Godhead, and consubstantial with us as
touching His Manhood . . . acknowledged to be in two
natures without confusion, change, division, separation," —
and more to the same purport. This then is the final
orthodoxy, to defend which has been the main business of
the theologians of the Greek Church for all subsequent
ages. Those who want more than statement and defence ;
those who desire metaphysical explanation, must look
, elsewhere than to the orthodox confession of the Eastern
theologians.

CHAPTEE VII
THE MONOPHYSITE TROUBLES
(a) Evagrius ; Nicephorus ; Procopius ; Theodore the Reader,
fragments (to a.d. 518). Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum . . .
collectio, vii.
(6) Dorner, Person of Christ, Eng. Trans., Div. n. i., 1861 ; Hefele,
Hist, of Councils, Eng. Trans., vol. iii., 1883 ; vol. iv., 1895 ;
Ottley, Incarnation, part vii., 1896.
The sequel to the council of Chalcedon was more like the
sequel to the council of Nicaea than the history consequent
to the council of Constantinople. That second general
council which condemned Arianism did really seem to be
successful, for after it we hear much less of the heresy
within the borders of the empire ; but then, as we have
observed, it was already breaking up in consequence of
internal divisions. On the other hand, the fourth general
council, like the venerated first council, was quite unable
to suppress the heresies it was especially summoned to
condemn. Nestorianism was only banished ; in exile it
spread and flourished among the Persian Christians, and
farther east Eutychianism, slightly modified, went on
within the empire under the new title of Monophysitism.
By dropping the obnoxious name of its founder, who was
sacrificed as a victim to the passion for orthodoxy, and
adopting a descriptive title, it was better able to emphasise
its central idea and at the same time spread its influence
within the Church, although its adherents, being out of
sympathy with the dominant party, stood aloof and gradu
ally crystallised into a sect. There was some softening of
the extreme views that had been put forth by the old

THE MONOPHYSITE TROUBLES 103
monk Eutyches, a man of no breadth of mind or depth of
insight. The Monophysites were more refined and meta
physical in their thinking. While they insisted on the
oneness of our Lord's nature in opposition to the Chal-
cedonian dogma of the continuance of two natures in the
one person, they were willing to admit that He came to be
the incarnate Christ by the union, the fusing together, of
two natures. Thus they would allow that He was " of two
natures,"1 though they denied that He existed "in two
natures";2 and while with Eutyches the human nature
was so absorbed that it virtually vanished, according to
the Monophysites Christ had a composite nature.8 More
over, they admitted the continuance of the two sets of
attributes — the human and the Divine — although only as
qualities of one substance. The union of the natures,
however, could not be justly compared to a mere amalgam
for two reasons. In the first place, each nature underwent
change, the human taking on Divine properties and the
Divine taking on human characteristics. There was this
difference, that change in the Divine nature was only " by
grace," an effect of an act of will done for the sake of the
redemption of the world, while full freedom remained to
abstain from it. There was no kenosis, no actual self-
emptying, but only a condescending to the forms and
modes of a human life, while the Divine remained in essence
unchanged. Then, in the second place, the Divine nature
so completely dominated the human element that, except
in the outward appearance of a man's form and an earthly
life, this human element really counted for nothing. We
might state it thus. The fractional existence of the human
nature being a finite numerator with an infinite denomin
ator, it was really equivalent to zero. If / stands for
a finite and oo for infinity we might express the doctrine
by the formula — =0.
' CO
When we endeavour to trace out the course of the
1 in Bio qiiaewv. a iv Sio ipiataa).
' Called /ita <j>iais oivfferos.

104 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
dreary Monophysite controversy which circled round this
position we do not see on the surface of it sufficient cause
for all the heat it developed, all the dust it raised. Here
was a fine point of theology, so difficult to determine that
only an expert could state it correctly, and yet it divided
cities into furious factions with howling mobs and fatal
riots. It is not enough to lay down the cynical principle
that the heat of a controversy varies directly with the
smallness of the difference between the contending parties —
although there are not wanting instances apparently con
firming it — as in the quarrel between the "Old Lights"
and the " New Lights " among the Presbyterians of Scot
land. The long-drawn Monophysite controversy threatened
the disintegration of the Church and endangered the peace
of the empire ; in fact it did actually effect the disintegra
tion of the Church by breaking off huge fragments that have
remained down to the present day in separation from
the Greek communion, which arrogates to itself the title
of orthodox. Surely there must be some sufficient cause
for so obstinate a schism.
Among men earnest in their religious faith no doubt
the charm of the Monophysite doctrine was found in the
honour it appeared to give to Christ. This view was most
vehemently maintained by the monks of the Egyptian
deserts, men who were at once grossly ignorant and
passionately in earnest, of the stuff that fanatics are
made of, prototypes and in part ancestors of the modem
dervishes. The immediate motive of the movement into
which these half savage monks threw themselves with
such fiery enthusiasm was antagonism to Nestorianism.
It was represented to them by Dioscurus that the council
of Chalcedon favoured that heresy — which had been con
demned at the council of Ephesus ; it was even rumoured
that Nestorius had been invited to Chalcedon and had
only been prevented from attending by his timely death
on the way thither. Then the Nestorians were regarded
with horror as men who divided Christ into two persons,
who really denied the incarnation, and who were virtually

THE MONOPHYSITE TROUBLES 105
Unitarians. To oppose this dishonouring error the Mono
physite presented himself as the champion of the perfect
Divinity of Christ. Moreover, the popularity of the term
Theotokos, the watchword of anti-Nestorianism, tended in
the same direction. With this, and powerfully aided by
it, came the growing cult of the Virgin, especially welcome
in Egypt, the original home of the Mother-god Isis. The
visitor to Cairo will see displayed in shops of antiquities
statuettes of Isis with Horus in her arms, found in ancient
Egyptian tombs, which are almost perfect counterparts of
Christian statuettes of the Virgin and child. There came
gradually into use such phrases as " God was born " ; " God
died." The whole tendency of thought in the Church was
moving in this direction. It was rather hard on the Mono
physites that they were excommunicated as heretics, since
generation after generation of the orthodox was moving
nearer and nearer to their position during the course of
the succeeding centuries. In fact, all through the later
patristic period and down into the Middle Ages the
humanity of Christ became more and more shadowy, and
His Divinity increasingly dominated the minds of the Church
teachers, so that sorrowful people who were craving for
human sympathy turned from the awful Byzantine Christ
to the compassionate Mary, and found in the mother that
actual human sympathy which it had been the object of
the now neglected incarnation to bring them in her Son.
It is hardly too much to say that Mary became to all
intents and purposes the incarnate Saviour, while the
humanity of Christ and His incarnation were lost in the
grandeur of His Divinity.
But while these religious and doctrinal tendencies were
influencing serious minds, the disgraceful history of the
dispute shows that personal pique, party passion, political
intrigue, jealousy, and ambition only too often swept all
before them, impelling men to the clash of collision
with little or no genuine appreciation of the merits of the
cause they were defending. We must go further afield,
beyond the Church and the cell, to the decaying society of

106 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the empire in the throes of dissolution, for an explanation
of the abominations that now accompanied the theological
quarrels of monks and clergy. The squat, savage Huns
from the East — the yellow peril of the empire, and the
rough, vigorous Teutons from the North — its real salvation,
were now pouring over the rich fields of southern and
western Europe. At the same time the helplessness of the
legionaries, due to their numerical impoverishment in the
dwindling population of the provinces, that was waiting for
the fresh blood of a new healthy stock, had left the cities
a prey to the worst elements of society. In some respectB
Alexandria and Antioch, and occasionally even Constan
tinople, were now like Paris at the time of the Eevolution.
Men came to the front who in more settled times would
never have been heard of ; inhuman deeds were done which
revealed the conscious corruption of an old civilisation as
more cruel, more foul, more bestial than the unabashed
habitude of primitive barbarism.
The Emperor Marcian had forcibly upheld the decisions
of the council of Chalcedon by forbidding the Eutychians
to hold meetings, to ordain clergy, or to build churches or
monasteries. But to silence an obnoxious party is not to
convert it. The death of the emperor, in January 457,
was the signal for an outbreak of violence by the followers
of Dioscurus against his successor Proterius and the orthodox
Alexandrians. Timothy, nicknamed Mlurus — " the Cat "—
one of the presbyters of Dioscurus, who had been deposed
and banished to Lybia, now returned secretly to Alexandria,
and crept about at night, cat-like, visiting the cells of ignorant
monks. On being asked who he was, he would answer, " I
am an angel sent to warn you to break off communion with
Proterius, and to choose Timothy as bishop." 1 Unfortu
nately Proterius had behaved like a tyrant, and had only
held his position by the aid of a guard of 2,000 soldiers, so
that Timothy had no difficulty in gathering a following
from the indignant populace as well as from the monka
Towards the end of Lent, with the support of these
1 Theodore the Reader, i. 1 ; see Gibbon, ohap. xiii.

THE MONOPHYSITE TROUBLES 107
adherents, he seized the great " Caesarean " church, and was
there consecrated by two bishops whom Proterius and his
synod had deposed. Meanwhile the patriarch was sitting
in his palace with his clergy. A few days later Timothy
was expelled from the city by the civil authorities. This
enraged the mob, who rose in riot on Easter Tuesday, hunted
Proterius into his baptistery, and there murdered him. After
hanging up his body for a time, they dragged it through the
streets and then hacked it to pieces. Some of them, reduced
to the level of the lowest savages, devoured the entrails.
The remains were burnt and the ashes scattered to the
winds.1 The clergy of the orthodox party were now
expelled from their churches and their places filled by
men whom Timothy appointed. Fourteen of the deposed
bishops, who had been driven, as they said in their account
of these proceedings, to " a life more full of fear than that
of hares or frogs," travelled to Constantinople to lay their
complaint before the new emperor, Leo I.2 Timothy also
sent a deputation to represent his side of the case.
Unwilling to bear the onus of a decision, Leo consulted
the bishops of the various provinces, all of whom but one,
Amphilochius of Side, condemned Timothy, and, with the
exception of Amphilochius of Side, also accepted the
council of Chalcedon.3 Timothy was described as " a
tyrant and a man of blood," " a homicide, a slayer of his
father," one who " became not a shepherd of Christ's sheep,
but an intolerable wolf," and more to the same effect,
though some added the qualifying clause, "if the state
ments of the exiles were true." *
The subsequent career of this unscrupulous schemer is
highly significant. In spite of the condemnation by the
bishops, and although the pope wrote to the emperor
urging the deposition of such a character, the influence
of his friends at court delayed this action on the part
of the government for two years. Even then Timothy
1 This is stated in the letter of the Egyptian bishops to Anatolius of
Constantinople, Mansi, vii. 533.
2 Mansi, vii. 536. s Evagrius, ii. 10. * Mansi, vii. 537 ff.

108 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
obtained permission to come to Constantinople and plead
his cause, on the cool assumption that the only objection
to him was his heresy ; but though he was restored for a
time he was soon after again removed from Alexandria.
Some years later, when Constantinople was in the hands
of the usurper Basiliscus, Timothy was summoned to the
capital and welcomed by his admirers with the acclama
tion, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the
Lord." Eeinstated in his position at Alexandria, the outrageous
hypocrite took credit to himself for his gentle treatment
of Timothy Salofaciolus, who had held the patriarchate
for sixteen years, and now had to make way for the
returned exile. When his flatterers cried, "Thou hast
fed thine enemies, pope," he accepted the compliment,
exclaiming, " Yes, indeed I have fed them."
We may be sure that Timothy iElurus had good reason
for acting so mildly. He could see how popular his rival had
become. A man of a gracious, pacific disposition, Timothy
Salofaciolus had been rebuked by the Emperor Zeno for not
exercising discipline more severely. He was so universally
appreciated that even Monophysites would stop him in the
streets to express their personal respect for him and their
regret at being compelled to stand aloof from his com
munion. It is pleasant to meet with such a character
amidst the narrow-minded partisans and fiery polemical
theologians of the age. We need not conclude that he
was a wholly exceptional character. Those were times of
war, when fighting men came to the front. But mean
while no doubt many a country pastor was quietly at work
on his labour of love among the members of his simple
flock, and a host of good men and women were endeavouring
to walk in the footsteps of their Master, although history
has preserved no records of their unexciting lives. The
emergency into publicity of such a man as this amiable
patriarch of Alexandria lifts for a moment the veil
that hides the better side of the life of the Church.
Ecclesiastical history is mainly the story of important

THE MONOPHYSITE TROUBLES 109
bishops. A picture of the Christian life of their times
might surprise us with its much brighter colours. Al
though subsequently an attempt was made to again
remove iElurus, it was frustrated on the plea of his old age,
and he was allowed to remain patriarch of Alexandria till
his death. Now the significance of this extraordinary story lies
in the fact that, although the conscience of Christendom
must have revolted against the enormity of his crime, and
although his subtle, intriguing ways proved him to be
a cunning schemer as well as a man of violence, Timothy
had a powerful following throughout his career, and was
permitted to end his days at one of the highest posts of
honour in the odour of sanctity. The indignant protest of
the bishops voiced the wholesome horror which we should
expect all right-minded people to feel at such deeds as he
had committed. Yet it only came from the orthodox party,
that is to say, from his enemies. His friends the Mono
physites were ready to profit by his wickedness and even to
condone it for the sake of their cause. The only approach
to an excuse for them is that they had a cause which they
believed to be right and true, that therefore they were not
merely place-hunters. But in view of the development of
theological rancour and partizan passion which such a state
of affairs reveals, this very excuse is a plain proof how
entirely the degenerate monks and their adherents in the
mob had substituted metaphysical accuracy as their test of
true religion for the old sound idea of the prophet : " What
doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? "
Next to Timothy ^Elurus the most conspicuous leader
of the Monophysites at this time was Peter the Fuller (a.d.
465-474), the patriarch of Antioch. It is difficult to
piece together the several accounts of his early life,1 but
according to the arrangement of the data worked out by
Tillemont, he first appears as a monk in Bythinia. Expelled
1 In Acacius of Constantinople, Theodore the Reader, and Alexander
a monk of Cyprus.

110 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
from his monastery for heresy and misconduct, he goes to
Constantinople and worms his way into the confidence of
Zeno, the future emperor. His true character being dis
covered here also he is obliged to move again, and going
east in the train of Zeno he comes to Antioch, where he
wins the ear of the populace, especially those who are
still in sympathy with Apollinarianism, persuading these
people that the patriarch Martyrius is a secret Nestorian.
The result is a public tumult resulting in the expulsion of
Martyrius and the election of Peter to his place.1 In all
these historical studies it is a wholesome caution, due as
much to justice as to charity, to be slow to admit accusa
tions against the moral character of heretics brought
forward by their opponents. For us the significant fact is
that a Monophysite secured the patriarchate of Antioch.
Thus for the moment the rival sees are both in possession
of representatives of the Alexandrian doctrine. Peter is
especially notorious for having supplied to the Trisagion
the phrase, " Who was crucified for us." 2 He formulates
the liturgical sentence, " Holy God, holy Strong One, holy
Immortal One, who for our sakes was crucified, have mercy
on us." This gave rise to what has been known as the
"Theopassian controversy." Thus, as Dorner justly re
marks, " Patripassianism had, consequently, returned in an
exaggerated Trinitarian form." 3
The affairs of the Church in the East now became
more and more mixed up with those of the empire. Leo I.
died in the year 474, and was nominally succeeded by
his daughter Ariadne's young son Leo n., who died within
a twelvemonth, when Ariadne's husband Zeno became
emperor. He was a rude Isaurian, a native of the moun
tainous region north of the Taurus range, and he used the
opportunities of a court to plunge into the most outrageous
debauchery. It was not difficult for the one strong person
in Constantinople, the late Emperor Leo i.'s widow, to raise
a revolt in favour of her brother Basiliscus, before which
I Tillemont, Emp. vi. p. 404 ff. s 6 aTavpu8eU si ^as,
¦• Persmi of Christ, Div. n. vol. i. p. 125.

THE MONOPHYSITE TROQBLES 111
Zeno fled to his old home beyond the mountains. Basi-
liscus leaned on the support of the Monophysites, and even
dared to issue a circular letter condemning the council of
Chalcedon — the first instance of an emperor on his own
authority presuming to reverse the decision of a general
council. It carries the State's interference with the
Church a stage further.
Acacius the patriarch of Constantinople stoutly resisted
this imperial favouring of Monophysitism ; he draped the
cathedral and the clergy in black in sign of mourning for
the calamity that had come on the Church. Daniel, the
greatest of the Stylites then living, came down from his
pillar, entered the city, and preached to the awestruck
populace. Crowds assembled at the gates of the cathedral
in protest against the doings of the emperor. Meanwhile
the reign of Basiliseus had~oeen disgraced by disorderly
and violent scenes in the court. Thus another revolt was
provoked which issued in the deposition of the usurper and
the return of Zeno to power. This man was the very last
person who should have ventured to interfere with the
creed of the Church. What could an ignorant debauchee
know of such abstract mysteries as it involved ? in what
spirit could such a man handle them ? The very idea of
such a thing is shocking to the Christian conscience. But
Zeno was a weak creature who lent himself as a tool for
abler hands. It is an ominous sign of the settled sub
servience of the Church to the State, that a great ecclesiastic
should have condescended to make use of so unclean an
instrument. Nothing could more forcibly demonstrate the
immense contrast between the condition of the Church in
the East and its condition in the West than a comparison of
the policy of Acacius the patriarch of Constantinople with
Leo of Eome who had died but a few years earlier (a.d.
461). Soon after the Eoman pontiff had proved himself the
most powerful personage in the West, saving the empire,
saving civilisation, by his courage, energy, and ability, his
brother in the Eastern capital was to be seen cringing
before the throne of a low, semi-barbarous sensualist in

112 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
order to obtain imperial influence in favour of his Church
policy.1 The result of Acacius's adroit manipulation of the
emperor was the issue of the famous document known as
Zeno's Henoticon (a.d. 482).
This document, which aimed at bringing the divided
Church into unity, sought peace by means of vagueness.
It was destined from the first to fail, although it was well
meant by Acacius whom we should probably regard as its
author. While re-affirming the decrees of Nicaea and Con
stantinople, it asserts that our Lord Jesus Christ is "Himself
God incarnate, consubstantial with the Father according to
His Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to His
manhood . . . was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the
Virgin Mary, mother of God " ; and that He is " one Son, not
two." Further, it condemns those "who divide or con
found the natures," or admit only a fantastical incarnation,
and it anathematises all who do or think "anything to
the contrary, either now or at any other time, either at
Chalcedon or in any other synod," especially Nestorius and
Eutyches and their followers.2 The very different manner
of referring to the councils of Nicaea and Constantinople,
on the one hand, and Chalcedon, on the other, is highly
significant. The Henoticon was formally addressed to the
bishops and clergy, monks and people, of Egypt and the
Lybian district, but really only intended for the benefit of
the Monophysites in order to reconcile them to union with
the Church.8 They could accept it without abandoning
their specific tenets, while the orthodox could admit it
while still holding to Leo's Tome and the Chalcedon de
cision. Some may think this a reasonable compromise on
so difficult and abstruse a question. But no one who
understood the temper of its age could have hoped much
from it. It failed to accomplish its immediate purpose
1 Robertson, however, justly remarks that " it must be remembered that
the subsequent quarrel of Acacius with Rome has exposed him to hard treat
ment by writers in the Roman interest " (Hist, of Christian Church, vol. ii.
p. 275). 2 Evagrius, iii. 14. i
8 So Tillemont points out, Mem. Ecclis. xvi. 827.

THE MONOPHYSITE TROUBLES 113
of uniting the Monophysites and the " orthodox " party of
Chalcedon. At Alexandria the Monophysite patriarch Peter Mongus
signed, and he was allowed to retain his bishopric on
condition that he received the Catholics to his communion.
But the result of this concession on his part was that his
own party broke off from him and remained in stiff separa
tion from the main body of the Chtirch under the title of
the Acephali — " the Headless." So little or nothing was
gained in Egypt, the scene of the schism. Meanwhile, the
unfortunate document that was meant to be the flag of
truce, if not the treaty of peace, developed a new line of
cleavage in quite another direction. This cavalier treat
ment of Chalcedon gave mortal offence at Eome. For
Chalcedon was the most Eoman in its sympathies of all the
general councils, since its elaborate statement of doctrine
had been based on the great Leo's venerated Tome. The
Henoticon was regarded in Eome as a distinctly heretical
document, and it produced a severance between the Eastern
and the Western churches which lasted for thirty-six years.
Peter Mongus, the one champion of the document, was an
unworthy man quite unfit to act as peacemaker, and while he
was trying to force his bishops to accept it on pain of depo
sition, he was privately negotiating with the Pope Sylvester.
On the accession of Felix to the papacy (a.d. 484), that
pope immediately took strong measures. He cited Acacius
to Eome ; but Acacius declined to come at the bidding of
his brother patriarch. Then Felix, with the support of an
Italian synod, " deposed " Acacius ; but the patriarch took
no notice of his " deposition," and retained his position un
molested. Thus the Henoticon was another wedge driven
in between the East and the West, and it scarcely wanted
a prophet to predict what must be the end with this ever-
widening fissure in the Catholic Church.
Anastasius, who succeeded Zeno in the year 491, was
already well advanced in age, and yet he reigned for twenty-
seven years, during the whole of which time Eome stood
aloof from the Eastern Church in stern disapproval. The
8

114 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
emperor was welcomed as "the sweetest tempered of
sovereigns," and greeted with the complimentary acclama
tion, " Eeign as you have lived." 1 Unfortunately an im
maculate character even when joined to an amiable
disposition will not secure success in a ruler who lacks
discernment and vigour. The emperor's spirit of toleration
was intolerable to a society which clamours for violent
polemics. Gradually he was driven to lean more and more
to the Monophysite side. Wild stories were told of how
monks and priests, archimandrites and patriarchs, behaved
like dancing dervishes round the old man, some shouting
"Anathema to the council of Chalcedon!" others, "Anathema
to Eutyches — to Zeno — to Acacius ! "
Constantinople now became a centre of frequent dis
turbances. The symbol of the Monophysites was Peter's
addition to the Trisagion, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God
Almighty," consisting oT the phrase, " Who was crucified
for us." When this full sentence was sung in the great
Basilica the Catholic party shouted the Trisagion in its
original shorter form. Soon the opponents came to blows
and the quarrel spread to the streets. The orthodox
party carried about the head of a Monophysite monk on a
pole, crying, " See the head of an enemy of the Trinity " ;
they flung down the statues of Anastasius, burnt the houses
of the two prefects, and received the emperor's emissaries
with a shower of stones. The next day they rushed into
the circus to see the aged man — now eighty-one years old —
seated on his throne without either purple robe or diadem.
Not having strength of voice to make himself heard in that
wild, seething mob of excited people, he proclaimed his
readiness to abdicate. Touched by the pathetic sight of
their feeble, humiliated emperor, the people accepted some
vague assurance that he would respect the faith of
Chalcedon. But Anastasius was now in the hands of the
Monophysites, and even after this pitiable scene he was
driven to demand an anathema on the council of Chalcedon
from the bishops. Since they refused, all over the East,
1 See Gibbon, chap. xxxv. ; Tillemout, Hist, des Emp. vi. 472-652.

THE MONOPHYSITE TROUBLES 115
but especially in Syria, orthodox bishops were driven out of
their churches. When the pope interfered some negotia
tions followed, which Anastasius ended with unexpected
dignity by declaring, " We can bear insults and contempt,
but we cannot aUow ourselves to be commanded."
Meanwhile, the rigour of persecution under the domin
ance of the Monophysites in the East even surpassed the
ugly record of persecution by Valens and his Arian allies
more than a century earlier. The bad pre-eminence in
these exploits is accorded to Severus, who was patriarch
of Antioch from a.d. 512 till 518.
These were six terrible years for those Syrians who
adhered to the decision of Chalcedon. Neale, who is too
ready to listen to the denunciation of a heretic by the
orthodox, paints the character of Severus in the darkest
colours.1 But while we must accept the testimonies of
bitter foes with some caution, it is difficult to resist the
conclusion that this Monophysite patriarch was a man of
blood. His presence in Alexandria and Constantinople at
an earlier period had been the signal for sanguinary outbreaks
at both places, for which he must be held more or less
responsible. No sooner did he obtain the exalted position
of the headship of the Church at Antioch with its sup
remacy over the Oriental bishops, than he expressly
anathematised the council of Chalcedon in his synodical
letters announcing his enthronement. A few complied at
once ; some yielded to violence ; others stoutly resisted the
heretical patriarch's contention. Among these, as Evagrius
tells us, was Cosmas the bishop of the historian's native
place, Epiphanea on the Orontes, who sent his senior deacon
with a letter deposing Severus. It was a dangerous
embassy, for the patriarch maintained the majesty of royal
state at his palace and was held in awe by all about his
court. So the deacon disguised himself in woman's attire,
and approaching Severus " with delicate carriage," having
let his veil fall to his breast, acted the part of a weeping
suppliant presenting a petition, as he handed in the letter,
1 Patriarchate cf Antioch, pp. 163, 164.

116 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
and immediately after slipped away unobserved among
the crowd.1 The anecdote vividly illustrates the tyranny
of the stern prelate and the terror he was inspiring. Of
course he took no notice of what he would only regard as
a daring insult. 'Poor Anastasius was now so much under
the power of the Monophysites that he ordered his mihtary
commander in the Lebanon to eject Cosmas and another
recalcitrant bishop from their sees, although with his usual
mildness sending an apology with the order, and expressly
stipulating that it must only be executed if this could be
done without bloodshed.2 Severus himself, if we are to
believe the statements of the opposite party, acted in a very
different spirit, loading orthodox monks and clergy_ with
irons, slaughtering some and flinging out their dead bodies
for birds and beasts to devour, drowning others in the
Orontes.3 1 Evagrius, iii. 34. 2 Ibid.
• .Neale, Patriarchate of Antioch, p. 164 ; Theophanes, p. 136,

CHAPTER VIII
THE LATER CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES
(a) Evagrius, Hist. Eccl. iv. ; Mansi, ix. x. ; Theophanea, Chrono-
graphia ; Anastasius, Historia.
(6) Gibbon, chap, xlvii. ; Domer, Person of Christ, Div. n. part i. ;
Otley, The Incarnation, part vii. ; Hefele, History of the
Councils, Eng. trans., vol. iv.
I. The death of Anastasius and the accession of the rough
soldier Justin (a.d. 518) put an end to the Monophysite
prosperity, and with the withdrawal of the Henoticon also
brought the separation from communion with Eome to an
end Except in Egypt, which remained Monophysite, the
work of reunion was comparatively easy. The result was
a triumph for the papacy and a strengthening of the power
of Eome in the Church.
In April 527 Justin's nephew, Justinian, was associated
in the government of the empire, and in August he became
sole emperor by the death of his uncle. He was a man of
simple, frugal habits, most industrious, and very decided in
his adhesion to the decision of Chalcedon — proving his
orthodoxy in the usual way — by persecuting the heterodox.
One of the most important of Justinian's actions marks a
further stage in the suppression of paganism. In the year
531 he closed the schools of philosophy at Athens, where
the Neo-Platonists, the most determined enemies of Chris
tianity, were teaching. This was the end of the faded glory
of ancient Athenian culture. The same year Justinian
enacted that aU pagans and heretics should be excluded
from civil and military offices. ' According to Procopius, one
result of bis drastic measures was that some of the ancient
117

118 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
sect of Montanists in Phrygia shut themselves up with
their wives and children in their churches, set fire to the
buildings, and perished in the flames.1
Justinian's consort, the beautiful and facinating Empress
Theodora, has come down to history as a woman of utter
depravity, to be classed with a Messalina or a Lucretia
Borgia ; but this scandal is solely owing to the account of
her which Procopius left in his secret history, published
after his death, according to which she was a notoriously
vicious actress when she married the staid emperor.8
Nothing that the same writer published during his lifetime
brings the slightest reproach against her moral character,
nor has any evidence been adduced to support the charges
contained in the posthumous work. It appears that her
name has suffered all these years from a gross libel due to
wicked spite, or at best, to the inventions of a prurient
imagination. Theodora was hated by the orthodox party
on theological grounds ; and yet none of the bishops whom
she opposed ventured to breathe a word against her reputa
tion. Surely that is strong evidence for the defence.
There is no doubt that she had been an actress. But the
real charge against her was that she was a zealous Mono
physite. As patroness of the heretics, she was able to
secure her friends some advantages while the attention of
the government was distracted by the Gothic invasion
of Italy and the consequent troubles that enveloped the
empire. Meanwhile the interminable theological controversy
was entering on a new sphere in the discussion concerning
" The Three Chapters." s This title is given to a formulated
series of accusations — (1) against the person and writings
of Theodore of Mopsuestia; (2) against the writings of
Theodoret in opposition to Cyril ; and (3) against the letter of
Ibas of Edessa, a friend of Nestorius, addressed to the Persian
1 Procopius, Hist. Arc. 11. An authority to be taken with some suspicion ;
but in the present case there does not seem to be good reason to doubt hii
terrible story.
1 Hist. Arc. 9. » T/j(a /ce^dXoia.

THE LATER CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES 119
bishop Maris. It was cleverly argued that the real objec
tion to the council of Chalcedon was not occasioned by its
doctrinal statements, but was found in its approval of these
men, who, it was asserted, were tainted with Nestorianism.
Justinian accepted the convenient suggestion, and published
an edict condemning the accused writers — one more of the
many imperial acts of interference with fine questions of
doctrine in the Church. The Eastern bishops, with their
usual subserviency, for the most part submitted to the
emperor's decree. The Westerns, especially the Africans,
together with the Pope Vigilius, with their customary spirit
of independence, refused to sign it. Thereupon Vigilius
was summoned to Constantinople, where he was detained
for about seven years, during the first of which Theodora
died At length the pope so far submitted as to secretly
promise Justinian that he would condemn "The Three
Chapters." But when a synod of Western bishops was
got together they could not be brought to a similar com
pliance. The emperor then issued a long profession of
faith which he commanded the pope and his bishops to
sign. This was an inordinate act of despotism, and poor
Vigilius, in spite of his submission earlier, felt compelled to
resist, and even threatened excommunication against all
who should yield. But the vacillating pope was no Hilde-
brand, and when soldiers were sent to arrest him he crept
under the altar, whence he was being dragged out by his
hair and beard when the outcries of shame from the people
stopped the outrage, and he was allowed to escape to
Chalcedon. Meanwhile summonses were out for a general council,
which met at Constantinople in May 553, attended by
165 bishops, including all the patriarchs of the East, but
only five African bishops. This council, known as the
Fifth General Council, condemned " The Three Chapters." J
Vigilius, who had excused himself from attending, was
terrified into submission to the decision of the council,
after which he was permitted to return to Eome ; but the
1 Mansi, ix. 376 ; Evagrius, ii. 38,

120 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
miserable man died on the way, at Syracuse (a.d. 555)
The bishops of Italy, Illyria, and Africa broke off from
Eome because of the action of Vigilius, some of the churches
they represented remaining aloof for nearly half a century.
The council of Ephesus in its severe condemnation of
Nestorianism had prepared the way for Eutyches, and so
for Monophysitism ; the council of Chalcedon — acting under
the influence of Eome — had condemned Eutychianism and
thus apparently rather favoured its opposite, Nestorianism.
Now the pendulum swung again. Undoubtedly this second
council of Constantinople indicated a partial reaction against
the council of Chalcedon, and a partial movement in the
direction of Monophysitism. But it had more important
issues in consolidating the Eastern Church and the authority
of the emperor over it in opposition to the pretensions of
Eome and the claims of the pope. This, and not the
doctrinal decision, may be taken as the real note of the
so-called " Fifth General Council."
On one side the Monophysite position was now advanced
a further stage. Eutyches, the originator of the whole
movement, had maintained that Christ's body was not as
our body ; that the transformation of the human nature in
its combination with the Divine affected the body as well
as the soul. Similarly, Dioscurus had asserted that it would
be profane to speak of the blood of Christ as of the same
substance with anything merely natural. In the later
period Timothy iElurus had held that Christ's humanity was
different from ours. This was going further than Apollin-
arianism, further than Patripassianism, a long way on
towards Docetism. But a new quarrel broke out among
the Monophysite refugees at Alexandria in regard to this
question. It was Julian of Halicarnassus who now especi
ally developed and emphasised the doctrine of the incor
ruptibility of the body of Christ. He taught that it was
insensible to natural passions and weaknesses, in opposition
to Severus, the ex-patriarch of Antioch, who maintained
that the body of Christ was corruptible up to the resurrec
tion, after which it became incorruptible. Julian contended

THE LATER CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES 121
that it underwent no change at the resurrection. His
professed object was not to minimise the actual sufferings
of Christ, but, as he argued, to exalt our conception of the
great condescension of One who was naturally not liable
to suffering in willingly accepting it for the sake of the
redemption of the world.
The discussion might have come and gone as an
innocent pastime of the refugees, if it had not been for a
high-handed act of interference in another quarter. As if
he had not enough to occupy his attention in the great
crisis of the empire brought on by his Gothic wars, Jus
tinian, always ready to meddle in Church affairs, plunged
into this new dispute. While under the influence of
Theodora, on whom he doted with an uxorious husband's
infatuation for a sprightly young wife, he had yielded con
cessions to the Monophysites ; after her death (a.d. 548)
he had treated them more coldly ; but in his later days he
had again begun to favour them. Julian's views repre
sented extreme Monophysitism, and Justinian adopted those
views. He went so far as to issue an elaborate statement
affirming the incorruptibility of our Lord's body, which he
required the bishops to accept. Here was an emperor's
creed to be forced upon the Church by the power of the
State, an intolerable piece of tyranny ! If this were sub
mitted to, it would be just to say that while the bishop of
Eome was pope of the Western Church, the emperor was
pope of the Eastern Church. In fact this action went
beyond the normal papal pretensions. Even popes left
it for councils to decide the creed of the Church ; but
Justinian was usurping the function of an oecumenical
council Moreover, he was doing this in face of an excep
tionally divided ecclesiastical condition among his subjects.
Not only was he siding with those whom the majority of
his people regarded as heretics, but, in regard to a point
on which those heretics were divided, he was taking a
side, and that the side of the extremists. The emperor
followed up his doctrinal statement with coercive measures ;
for a despot's requirement of a creed is an edict ; it has

122 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the force of law. He deposed Eutychius the patriarch of
Constantinople for refusing compliance with the imperial
theology. He threatened the noble Anastasius, patriarch
of Antioch,1 but assailing him, as Evagrius says, " like some
impregnable tower.2 The timely death of the emperor
(A.D. 565) put an end to further proceedings.
Now, in order to understand the policy of Justinian in
this matter, we must not credit the vacillating emperor with
theological bigotry. The key to the imperial policy in the
long Monophysite dispute is to be sought in statecraft.
Before this last piece of presumption the emperor had
repeatedly interfered in the doctrinal disputes of the Church,
and more than once he had ventured on making his own
will known concerning one side or the other. Several of
his predecessors had set him an example for such actions.
But in the main the imperial aim throughout had been
what we should call to-day an Erastian comprehensiveness.
In the West Justinian saw huge limbs of his empire being
torn away by the Goths ; in the opposite direction he had
to watch the rival power of Persia, ever on the alert to
snatch at his Eastern provinces ; and now he had his sub
jects divided among themselves by a bitter feud. The
orthodox found it an easy and congenial task to thunder
anathemas against the heretics ; they felt no compunction
in cutting them off from the Church. But the penalty of
the close union of Church and State now obtaining in the
Greek world was that this action was perilously like
cutting them off from the State also, and so manufacturing
rebels. No sovereign could take kindly to such a wilful
disruption ; in the perilous times of Justinian it would be
simply suicidal. Thus his policy naturally tended to the
reconciliation of the Monophysites. In the earlier part of
his reign he had assembled leaders of both parties with a
1 According to Evagrius, ' ' a man most accomplished in Divine learning,"
"accessible and affable,'' yet "so strict in his manners and mode of life, as
to insist on very minute matters, and on no occasion to deviate from a staid
and settled frame, much less in things of moment," etc. (Hist. Eccl. iv. 40).
"Ibid,

THE LATER CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES 123
view to their coming to an agreement. It was an abortive
conference; such conferences usually are abortive when
the question is doctrinal, however useful they may be when
it is practical. It is true that the emperor's last action
was not conciliatory ; it was to throw the apple of discord
afresh among his people. Plainly this was a mistake.
Justinian often acted foolishly. But his aim had been to
bring even the extreme Monophysites into the communion
of the main body of the Church. The blunder, of course,
was that for this purpose he was attempting to convert
this main body of the Church to an extreme form of the
heresy in question. That is like ordering a whole line of
troops to change its pace to the time of the awkward
squad which is out of step.
Justinian is best known to-day by the codificatioii„_of
Eomanjta^v_whichj3£ajB_his_name. It does not fail within
our province to discuss that grand achievement which
determined the character of European jurisprudence for all
future ages. But it should be noticed that ecclesiastical
laws take their place in the system side by side with civil
and legislative. Some of these laws date from the time
of Constantine onward ; others are new edicts promul
gated by Justinian himself. But the bulk of the code
consists of old laws handed down from ancient times.
This fusion of civil and ecclesiastical legislation is a sign
not only of the close identification of Church and State
now obtaining in the empire, but also of the absolute
supremacy of the latter over the former in the Eastern
provinces of the empire. The spirit of independence in the
West and the rival power of the popes kept the same
tyranny out of the papal provinces. Perhaps this is the
best thing that can be said for the papacy, and it is a very
great and honourable thing to be able to say. If it had
not been for the popes — especially the two greatest popes,
Leo and Gregory — Western Christendom would have been
in imminent danger of sharing the fate of Eastern Christen
dom, the whole Church crouching subservient at the foot
stool of the emperor. And yet this must not be said

124 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
without quaUfication. While the popes were the chief
champions of the Church's independence, the spirit of the
Teuton in the West was very different from the spirit of
the Eastern Greek and Armenian. Luther would have
been equal to defying an imperial pope in his palace by
the Bosphorus. II. The Monothelete controversy, even more wearisome
and unprofitable than the Monophysite discussions, of
which it was a continuation and a new refinement, belongs
chronologically to the second division of the history, that
which opens with the advent of Mohammedanism and
other factors of mediaevalism. Nevertheless, it is essen
tially a patristic subject; its roots are altogether in the
past ; it has no relations with the special problems of the
new age. Logically, therefore, and in the classification of
subjects, it must have its place in this first division as
the last flickering flame of theological thought lingering
after the blaze of light that distinguished the age of the
great Fathers had faded away. Since here at length the
long series of discussions about the nature of Christ comes
to an end, it will be most fitting to see this conclusion of
patristic Christology before passing on to other subjects.
The Monaphysites had contended that there was only
one nature in Christ, the human and the Divine being
fused together. Practically this meant that there was
only theDivine nature, because the two did not meet on
equal terms, and the overwhelming of the Finite by the
Infinite left for our contemplation only the Infinite. Thus
the Monophysite Christ was an Infinite Divine Person, who
had drawn into His being our human nature, when He
condescended to be born of Mary, and who had appeared
under this veil of humanity, but who in His own con
sciousness and activity possessed and exercised all the
faculties and powers of Divinity, and these only, not any
borrowed from the human nature which He had completely
absorbed and assimilated. This in fact, if not in verbal
statement, was the ultimate issue of the Monophysite
position.

THE LATER CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES 125
Now we must regard the Monothelete contention as
historically a branch of the Monophysite. But it appeared
as an irenicon, as a happy compromise granting to the
orthodox their main requirements and yet operiing a door
for the heretics. According to this view Christ did possess
two natures. He was not only of two natures, combining
in His person the human and the Divine. He remained in
two natures ; that is to say, He retained the two natures
subsequent to the act of incarnation, all through His
earthly life, and even after the resurrection, although that
event resulted in a change in the condition of His body.
But, according to the Monothelete, these two natures were
so harmonised and blended in their co-operation that there
was only one will in Christ, and that, of course, the Divine
will. ^-,
At first, however, the notion of the wills was not
raised, and the controversy began with the question as
to whether we are to affirm "one activity,"1 or "two
activities,"2 as operative in Christ, Sergius, the patriarch
of Constantinople, states that he and Cyrus the bishop of
Phasis were consulted by the Emperor Heraclius about
this question, showing that whatever had been its source
it was now much interesting the emperor's mind. True
to the traditional ecclesiastical policy of his predecessor,
but with more vigour in the execution- \>f it, Heraclius
was anxious to establish a modus vivendi between the
Monophysites and their opponents. Thus from the first
MjmoJ^ieletism appears as a political movement. It was
the energetic Heraclius' proposed compromise for bringing
together the two parties whose bitter mutual antagonism
he saw to be a menace to the State. Sergius worked well
to further his master's object. First, he had a synod to
fortify him for his enterprise ; then he made good use of a
collection of sayings of the Fathers supposed to favour the
view of the one energy or operation, which was attributed
to Mennas, patriarch of Constantinople under Justinian.
At the third council of Constantinople (a.d. 680) this
1 /da ivipyeia. a Sio ivipyeiai.

126 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
document was proved to be a forgery ; the Eoman legates
pointed out a discrepancy of date, and the monk who had
written it was discovered, dragged before the assembly
and compelled to confess his guilt. But at its first
appearance it was unquestioned. When Heraclius asked
Sergius to supply him with testimony from the Fathers
to the doctrine of the one activity, the patriarch sent him
this precious fabrication. Cyrus also stood by the emperor
and was rewarded by being promoted to the patriarchate
of Alexandria (a.d. 630). Thus the two most influential
patriarchates of the East were now in the hands of
supporters of the new doctrine. But it was not to remain
unchallenged. The great opponent of the Monothelete heresy was the
monk Sophronius, who proved to be the ablest and most
vigorous controversial theologian of his age, and who has
since been classed with Athanasius and Cyril as one of the
chief champions of the faith. It was no light matter to
lead the opposition, not only against the patriarchates
of Constantinople and Alexandria, but also against the
imperial government. Sophronius had to undertake his
crusade in opposition to the united forces of Church and
State. Nevertheless he fearlessly accepted the challenge
which Cyrus flung down, and fought well for the opposing
position. Cyrus selected for his watchword a phrase in
the pseudo-Dionysius writings.
These writings, consisting of four treatises followed by
some letters, were attributed in an uncritical age to St.
Paul's convert, Dionysius the Areopagite. But we find no
reference to them earlier than a conference at Constan
tinople in the reign of Justinian during the course of
the Monophysite dispute (a.d. 532), when they were
brought forward in favour of the heretical position.
They cannot be much older than this period. If Cyril
of Alexandria had known of them, surely he would
have made use of the excellent weapons he could have
found among them, exactly suited to his purpose. But
when once in circulation, they were eagerly read and

THE LATER CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES 127
before long they were made use of by all parties in sup
port of their several contentions. In course of time
they came to take a high place in the estimation of
the Church, so that we must regard them as among the
chief formative influences that issued in mediaeval theology.
In the West the papacy fed and fattened on them ; and
there scholasticism drew from them its root ideas. In the
East they profoundly affected the final shaping of orthodoxy
under the hands of the last of the Fathers, John of
Damascus. The pseudo-Dionysiac writings are of a
mystical character, and in them we find Christian theology
intermingled with Neo-Platonic thought.1
Cyrus's watchword, borrowed from " Dionysius,"^ was
the phrase " one Divine-human activity." 2 Sophronius
thought this a dangerouTexpression detracting from the
humanity of Christ and bringing back the old error of
Apollinaris. When Cyrus showed him a document asserting
this single activity in Christ, Sophronius was so deeply
moved that he flung himself at the patriarch's feet
beseeching him by the sufferings of Christ not to impose
such teaching on the Church. But his entreaty had no
effect; the new position was welcomed with enthusiasm
by a number of Monophysites, who thus became reconciled
to the Church. It would seem for the moment that the
policy of Heraclius was proving itself to be brilliantly
successful. But this was only the beginning of the
contest. The new Athanasius was not to be daunted.
Finding his appeal to Cyrus of no avail, Sophronius went
to Constantinople and laid an urgent plea before Sergius.
This patriarch, an abler politician than his brother of
Alexandria, saw the danger of the situation. The wand
of peace was being converted into a battle standard.
Accordingly Sergius endeavoured to suppress the contro
versy. At the same^time he expostulated with Sophronius
1 Migne, Patrol. Gr. iii., iv. ; Westcott, "Dionysius the Areopagite,"
Contemp. Review, May 1867 ; Kanakis, Dionys. der Areop., nach seinem
Character als Philosoph (Leipz. 1881); Moller in "Herzog."
2 pta Seavdpudj ivipyeia.

128 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
for hindering the return of thousands now separated from
the Church, with so much earnestness that the good man
promised to remain silent. But when three or four years
later he was made patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius did
not consider the seal of silence any longer binding on
him. The situation was entirely altered. In his position
of influence he felt it his duty to speak out. So he gathered
a synod which pronounced definitely for two wills and two
activities. Unfortunately he stated the result of this
decision in such a lengthy, bombastic document, that,
before he could get copies of it sent round to the leading
bishops, Sergius was able to present his views to the Pope
Honorius, who never suspected the cloven hoof, and in
his simplicity pronounced in favour of the essential
Monothelete position. The pope's view was that there
were two natures, each working, its own way — therefore
not with_only one activity — but still under the control
of one will.
~This brings us to the second stage of the controversy.
Never did a pope commit himself to heresy with a more
innocent intention. But in point of fact not only did
Honorius fall into what the Church was afterwards to
condemn as a heresy ; he even originated this heresy in
the final shape which it assumed Hitherto there has
only been a question of one activity. Now, Honorius
introduces the idea of the one uriM. Sophronius only
lived two or three years after this; but shortly be
fore his death, since the Mohammedan invasion then
prevented him from leaving Palestine, he led Stephen
the bishop of Dore to the site of Calvary, and there
solemnly adjured him by the sufferings of Christ and
the prospect of the final judgment to go to Eome
and never rest till he had obtained from the apostolical
See a condemnation of the doctrine of the single will in
Christ. In the year 638 Heraclius followed the unfortunate
example of his predecessors and attempted to settle the
theological dispute by imperial authority. At the suggestion

THE LATER CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES 129
of Sergius he issued an edict entitled Ecthesis 1 — an
Exposition of the faith. This was intended as a pacific
regulation. It forbade the use of the word " activity " £
in connection with the whole subject, and expressly pro
hibited the assertion of two activities as leading to the idea
of two wills, which might be contrary one to the other.
Thus it was distinctly Monothelete ; it took the notion of
the one will for granted. The Ecthesis was approved by
councils at Constantinople, under Sergius and his successor
Pyrrhus, and at Alexandria, under Cyrus — which was to
be expected since these were now the two Monothelete
centres. The other two Eastern patriarchates — which
would have taken the opposite view — were silent. An awful
calamity had overtaken them. The cities of Antioch and
Jerusalem were now both in the hands of the Arabs ; the
Mohammedan wave of conquest had swept over Syria
and Palestine. The new pope John condemned the
document. Thus the papacy was purged of heresy. Then
Heraclius was alarmed. These were not times for
quarrelling with so powerful a man as the chief personage
in the West The one object of his ecclesiastical policy
had been the consolidation of his empire in face of the
devastating flood of Mohammedanism. The irony of
history is rarely more apparent than in this dividing of
Christendom on fine and yet finer points of doctrine at
the very moment when its very existence is at stake.
It is like the suicidal folly of the Jews at Jerusalem in
carrying on civil war among themselves while the Eoman
legions were at their gates. Heraclius saw the danger
and wrote at once to the pope disowning the unfortunate
edict and throwing the blame of it on poor Sergius.
Ten years later (a.d. 648) Constantine iv., the grandson
of Heraclius, issued another mandatory document which was
called the Type,3 that is to say, the model of faith.4 This
was less theological than the Ecthesis, and entirely neutral
in tone. It forbade further discussion on the question of
''Eirfforts rijs irlareus. a ivipyeia.
1 i riros irepl vhrreus. * Mansi, x. 1030.
9

130 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
one will or two wills, and commanded all parties to
be satisfied with the statements of Scripture and the
decrees of the five general councils. It then formally
repeated the Ecthesis; and it concluded with a scale of
penalties for disobedience — degradation for clerics, con
fiscation of goods for laymen of the upper classes, flogging
for those of lower station. The tyranny of this forcible
silencing of discussion was quite in harmony with the
methods of the empire.
Undoubtedly it was high time that some final step was
taken if interference by the State was to be submitted
to at all. Theodore the pope of Eome excommunicated
Paul the patriarch of Alexandria. Paul retaliated by
overthrowing the altar of the papal chapel at Con
stantinople and insulting the pope's envoys. The next
year Theodore died, and Martin, one of these envoys, was
elected to succeed him. The new pope summoned a synod
at Eome, since known as the " First Lateran Council,"
which condemned Monotheletism, anathematised the leading
supporters of the heresy, and denounced " the most impious
Ecthesis" and " the most impious Type." For this Martin
was arrested by the emperor's Western representative, the
Exarch, carried off to Constantinople, rudely handled, and
flung into prison more dead than alive. After suffering
six months incarceration, and being subject to repeated
trials, the pope was banished to Cherson in the Crimea,
where he died (a.d. 655).1 The next most prominent
opponent of Monotheletism was Maximus, a member of a
noble family. He and two other champions of the orthodox
cause were dragged from Eome to Constantinople, first
punished by having their tongues and right hands cut off,
and then driven into exile.
At last this disastrous controversy was brought to a
close by a decision of the sixth general council — the third
council of Constantinople — which the Emperor Constantine
Pognatus assembled in the imperial city on the 7th of Novem-
1 There is a graphic account of Martin's cruel sufferings in the letter
of an unnamed writer, entitled Commemoratio eorum quae scemief, etc.

THE LATER CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES 131
ber, ad. 680. Its proceedings were conducted with unusual
decency and impartiaMty. The emperor presided during
most of the sessions, and when he happened to be absent
the presidential chair was left unoccupied. This council
condemned Monotheletism, and even anathematised Pope
Honorius for sanctioning " the impious doctrines " of Sergius.
The heresy enjoyed a temporary revival during the brief
reign of the adventurer Philippicus, who publicly burnt the
original copy of the Acts of the Council. But his death
was followed by its rapid extinction. After this it only
lingered on among the Maronites of Lebanon till they came
under the protection of the papacy, with which they are
now in alliance. Originated with the sole object of estab
lishing peace and union, it had been a source of discord
from first to last. The reason of its failure is palpable. It
was an olive branch presented on the point of a sword.
Such a peace-offering could only provoke war.

CHAPTER IX
ORGANISATION AND WORSHIP
(a) Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers; Fulton, Index Canonum; The
Apostolical Constitutions; The Canons of Athanasius; The
Codes of Theodosius and Justinian.
(6) Bingham, Antiquities ; Smith, Dictionary of Antiquities ; Allen,
Christian Institutions (I.T.L.) ; Stanley, Christian Institu
tions, 1881.
The Church which had commenced as a simple brotherhood
of Christians had now developed into a highly elaborated
hierarchical organisation. Genuine Christianity with hope
of future salvation was taken to be conterminous with
membership in the Catholic Church. This membership
was secured by baptism, and continued subject to discipline.
Orthodoxy in belief and tolerable correctness of conduct
were recognised conditions, failure in regard to either of
which could be punished with excommunication — specifically
exclusion from attendance at the Eucharist. But in point
of fact discipline was almost confined to the question of
orthodoxy, and there almost exclusively among the clergy ;
so that much laxity of conduct prevailed among the laity,
who, though subject to pastoral oversight, rarely suffered
the extreme penalty of expulsion from the Church. In
other words, from being a select community dedicated to a
holy life, the Church tended to become co-extensive with
Christendom, especially with the empire regarded as Chris
tian, though of course only consisting of the baptised.
Then those men and women who aimed at a higher life
began to separate themselves from the secularised Church.
Yet they did not form a church within the Church. They

ORGANISATION AND WORSHIP 133
lived the life of ascetics, either separately or in communities.
These people — as we shall see in the next chapter — largely
escaped from ecclesiastical discipline. The monks to a
great extent shook off the yoke of the bishops.
The centre of this hierarchical system was the bishop ;
the lower clergy were his ministers ; the higher clergy were
but bishops of important cities with extended authority
over their brother bishops. Episcopacy was the essential
characteristic of the Church organisation.
The clergy were drawn from all ranks of life. No
special training was considered necessary to fit them for
their duties, and some came direct from secular work to
administer the affairs of the Church. In the smaller cities
bishops carried on businesses for their livelihood — as farmers,
shepherds, shopkeepers, etc. It was expressly ordered that a
bishop should not neglect his flock by travelling out of his
parish for business purposes, take interest for loans, or
lower the wages of his workpeople. But where the funds
of a Church were sufficient to support its bishop his
engagement in secular affairs was discouraged. Thus we
read in the Canons of Athanasius : " 0 thou levitical priest,
wherefore dost thou sell or buy ? Unto thee are given the
first-fruits of all," etc.1 So lucrative did the post become
that in some cases it was sought for the sake of its emolu
ments ; 2 and the bishops had to be warned that the money
at their disposal should be used for the assistance of widows
and orphans or as loans to other persons in need.3 The
council of Chalcedon expressly forbade bishops, priests, and
monks to engage in commerce.4 During the fourth century
it was taken for granted that the bishop was a married
man. Thus in the Canons of Athanasius, the Pauline
precept is repeated that " the bishop must be in all things
blameless, married to one wife," etc.;6 and again, "The
1 Canons of Athanasius, iii. The probable genuineness of these Canons
has been vindicated by Mr. Crumm, who has clearly demonstrated their
antiquity. 3 Ibid. v. 3 Ibid. vi. * Canons of Chalcedon, iii.
5 Canons of Athanasius, v.

134 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
priests must behave themselves according as the apostles
have ordained; wherefore the bishop must be in nothing
blameworthy, married to one wife," etc.1 Gregory of
Nazianzus's father was the bishop of that town. Of course
the case of monks who became bishops was different.
While a college training was not considered to be
essential as a preparation for the ministry, the more famouB
bishops were highly educated men. Literary culture was
acquired at Caesarea, Alexandria, Constantinople, and above
all at Athens; theological training was taken after this
in one of the great schools of theology, at Alexandria,
Antioch, or Edessa. The canonical age for the priesthood
or a bishopric was thirty. One of the Sardican canons (ad.
346, 347) ordered that if a rich man or a lawyer were
proposed as bishop he should not be appointed till he had
ascended by degrees through the offices of reader, deacon,
and priest, and that he should spend a considerable time in
each grade of the ministry. But this rule of caution was
frequently set aside, and candidates were hurried through
the inferior orders when their appointment was urgent.
The bishops were supposed to be elected by their con
gregations ; but more often they were designated by the
metropolitans of their provinces, with the co-operation of
the neighbouring bishops. While the priesthood of the
clergy was now universally recognised, their social separation
from the laity was a slow and gradual process. At first
they wore no distinctive vestments. By the beginning of
the fifth century some among them began to don clothing
of a more sober hue than was fashionable at the time. So
they appeared as the Puritans or Quakers among the gay
society people of their day. Jerome condemned this distinc
tion of dress. The sixth century saw the invention of the
tonsure. The clergy were now forbidden to wear the long
hair of the dandies of their day. The unmarried clergy
lived together under the eye of their bishop and slept in a
common dormitory.
The bishop presides over his own church and also the
1 Canons of Athanasius, vi.

ORGANISATION AND WORSHIP 135
surrounding district, which is known in the East as a
" parish," not a " diocese " — that word being applied
politically to a large division of the empire. It is
his function to appoint and ordain the lower clergy. He
is treasurer of the Church funds and custodian of her
doctrine and discipline. It is the voice of the bishops
that settles both the creed and the canons of discipline in
the synods. Bishops have certain privileges and immuni
ties. They are not to be sworn in courts of justice;
they can act as intercessors ; they preside at Church courts.
Each bishop is strictly confined to his own parish. We
meet with neither a plurality of bishops in one such
district, nor with the pluralism which disgraced the
Western Church in later times when one prelate enjoyed a
host of Church dignities. That was expressly forbidden at
Chalcedon.1 The unity of the Church is mainly preserved by the
intercommunication between the bishops and their meeting
together in local synods or larger councils. These synods
and councils are not held in our modern Presbyterian
style at regular intervals for the transaction of normal
business, at all events at first. They are special
expedients resorted to on occasion for the settlement of
difficulties. But the council of Chalcedon ordered that
synods should meet twice a year.2 While the oecumenical
councils were always summoned by the emperor, local
synods were called together by the bishops of the chief
churches in the districts concerned.
The bishop of the principal city in a province is
known as the " metropolitan," and he corresponds to the
archbishop of a province in the West. The specific
functions of the metropolitan are to act with the other
bishops of his province in ordaining bishops — his consent
being deemed essential to a valid election ; to exercise
supervision over the bishops and take action where discipline
was needed ; to summon and preside at synods ; to com
municate the decisions of synods to the other metropolitans.
1 Canon x. a Canon xix.

136 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Lastly, we have the patriarchs, higher even than the
metropolitans, with corresponding duties, namely, to ordain
one another and the metropolitans; to exercise supreme
supervision and discipline over their section of the Church ;
to preside at the larger synods and oecumenical councils ; to
communicate with one another and co-operate for the unity
and harmony of the Church, not however as a joint com
mittee of government, since in the last resort each is
independent in his own sphere ; to serve as the link of
connection with the State, communicating with the emperor
and the civil government.
In this way we see all the parts of the Catholic Church
linked together, while a considerable amount of home rule
is permitted for the individual bishops. The lower clergy
are directly responsible to their own bishops. While free
and independent under normal conditions, these bishops are
bound by the canons of the councils, and it is for them especi
ally that the creed is authorised ; since they are the custodians
of orthodoxy their own orthodoxy is a matter of supreme
concern. Thus in the main theological controversy is a
battle of bishops. At critical times, in special emergencies,
the metropolitans may have to interfere with the bishops
of their provinces ; and in great affairs affecting the whole
Church or branches of it the patriarchs take action.
Most of this system was developed during ante-Nicene
times. The one feature which becomes specially prominent
in the later period is the patriarchate. There were five
patriarchs. Of these only one was in the West — the
patriarch of Eome. The others were at Jerusalem, Antioch,
Alexandria, and Constantinople. The bishop of Eome
presided over the Italian and Gallican prsef ectures ; but
Milan and Eavenna — being in turn imperial capitals — as
well as North Africa, long clung to their independence. The
patriarch of Jerusalem was exceptional. He only presided
over a very small area, holding his post of dignity in deference
to the sanctity of his city. The patriarch of Antioch had
charge of the fifteen provinces contained in Syria, Cilicia,
Arabia, and Mesopotamia ; the patriarch of Alexandria was

ORGANISATION AND WORSHIP 137
set over the nine provinces of Egypt; the patriarch of
Constantinople had as many as twenty-eight provinces
under his control, contained in the three imperial dioceses
of Pontus, Thrace, and Asia Minor.
At the time of the council of Nicaea there were only
three patriarchs — those at Eome, Antioch, and Alexandria.
Though the first place was allowed to Eome, they were
regarded as essentially equals, in recognition of an established
custom. Canon vi. begins as follows: "Let the ancient
custom prevail in Egypt, Lybia, and rentapolis ; so that the
bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these provinces,
since this is customary1 for the bishop of Eome also.
Likewise in Antioch and the other provinces, let the
churches retain their prerogatives." Constantinople was
not then existing ; the building of that city was only
commenced five years after the council (a.d. 330). Half
a century later the patriarchate of the new imperial capital
is not only recognised in the second oecumenical council —
the council of Constantinople (a.d. 381); but it is set
higher than its seniors in the East and associated in a
sort of double primacy with that of Eome. The third
canon of this council runs as follows : " The bishop of
Constantinople shall have the prerogative of rank next
after the bishop of Eome ; because Constantinople is new
Eome."2 The Greeks commonly interpret this canon as implying
no inferiority for their own city by giving a temporal sense
to the preposition /jLerd. In itself that interpretation
might seem strained ; but it appears to be confirmed by
the less ambiguous language of a later council. The
council of Chalcedon (a.d. 451), in Canon xxviii., when
referring to " the prerogatives of the most holy church
of Constantinople, new Eome," decrees as follows : " For
1 rovro (rwijOte tanv, i.e. this sort of thing, a similar arrangement is
customary. 2 rbv /liv rot KoivaTavrtvovwiKeus iirlaKoirov &xeiv rb. irpeafieio. rrjs npajs /lera
rbv ttjs 'Pi4/ti?s iirlcricoirov, Sib. rb elvai airTjv viav 'Ytbfirjv. This is confirmed
by Socrates, Hist. Eccl. v. 8 ; and Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. vii. 9.

138 THB GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the Fathers rightly granted prerogatives to the throne of
the elder Eome, because that city waB the capital.1 And
the 150 most religious bishops, actuated by the same
design, assigned equal prerogatives2 to the most holy
throne of new Eome, justly judging that the city which
is honoured with the sovereignty of the Senate, and
enjoys equal privileges with the elder imperial Eome,
should in ecclesiastical matters also be magnified as she is,
and rank next after her." 3 Here we have the same
ambiguity in the use of the preposition fierd ; but in this
case following unambiguous terms of equality. Surely
the not very difficult reconciliation of the two forms of
expression is that Eome is simply regarded as primus inter
pares. The two patriarchs are really equal in rank ; but
a certain precedence is given to the bishop of Eome, for in
this case the temporal sense of p.erd is scarcely allowable.
Two facts of importance should be noted here. First,
the essential equality of the patriarchs of Eome and Con
stantinople ; second, the purely political grounds of this
equality. It is the imperial rank of the new city that
gives dignity to its bishop. New Eome has no St. Peter,
no power of the keys ; she is supported in case of necessity
by something very different from that mystical privilege —
by the power of the sword. Thus from the beginning we
see the Erastianism of the church at Constantinople.
At first the rivalry with distant Eome was not felt.
It was Alexandria that resented the honours accorded to
the upstart patriarchate. We have seen how the theological
controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries were
entangled with personal jealousies of the patriarchs of
Alexandria and Constantinople, and when very pronounced,
with the more widespread rivalry of the cities they
presided over. Subsequently they developed into national
and racial divisions, the Copts of Egypt standing opposed
to the Greeks of Constantinople. Antioch was not bo
1 Sib. rb fia<ri\eAav rty ir6\iv iKelvtjv. z rb. foa irpecrfieta.
Kal iv rots iKKhtio-iao-TiKois is iKelvtjv neya\iveo:0ai irpdy/uuri Sevripav /»er
iKelvtjv birApxovarav.

ORGANISATION AND WORSHIP 139
directly concerned with this deadly feud between the two
rival Western patriarchates. While they were in constant
communication by that highway of commercial traffic, the
iEgean Sea, the Syrian capital lay back in the East. Still,
she had her old differences with Alexandria, and she was
more directly associated with Constantinople, so that she
more often sided with the imperial patriarchate.
In the year 550 Justinian conferred on the patriarch of
Constantinople the privilege of receiving appeals from the
other patriarchs. By this time, backed up by the power of
the autocrat, the bishop of the chief city of the empire was
threatening to become a veritable pope, in our later sense of
the title. It would have needed rare prescience then to have
discerned that not Constantinople, but Eome, was destined to
develop the monstrous assumption of universal supremacy
over the Church. It looked as though that city of ruins,
neglected by the emperor, subject to the ravages of successive
invaders, pillaged and impoverished, were doomed to decay,
if not to extinction, with her episcopal See and all its
Petrine claims. Meanwhile the brilliant metropolis on
the Bosphorus, with its basilicas and palaces, its wealth,
its splendour, its luxury, promised not only to take
the first place politically and socially — which indeed it
had already done most effectually — but also to secure
ecclesiastical primacy. Nobody could then have dreamed
of the proud triumphs of a Hildebrand. But the Latin
Church never did dominate Constantinople except at a
much later period, and then only for a brief interval and
by brute force.
The rivalry between the two patriarchs came to an
acute crisis Before the end of the sixth century. Fortun
ately for the Western Church one of the greatest of all the
popes was then seated in the chair of Peter. This was
Gregory the Great — the missionary pope to whose zeal
South England owes the light of the gospel. He was also
the Italian patriot who saved Eome from the Lombards
when the miserable Exarch at Eavenna had hopelessly
failed to repel the rude invaders. Thus he followed in

140 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the brilliant tradition of his greatest predecessor, Leo i,
the almost miraculous saviour of Eome from the Huns.
Further, Gregory is reckoned the last of the Latin Fathers,
If not an original theologian, still he struck the keynote
of mediaeval theology, and left in his works almost all the
doctrinal notions that prevailed during the Middle Ages.
This remarkable, many-sided man now came forward as the
champion of the Church's liberty, rebuking the lofty claims
of his brother at Constantinople.
Gregory had been to the imperial city at an earlier
time on the bootless errand of seeking the aid of the
emperor's troops to defend Eome from the Northern
invaders. When there he had witnessed the elevation of
a famous ascetic, "John the Faster," to the patriarchal
dignity. No accusation has been made against the char
acter of this patriarch, who was said to be personally
humble and unambitious. But he put forth the highest
claims for his office, claims which were all the more
dangerous because they were detached from his own
individuality and urged with a sense of loyalty to his
Church. In summoning a synod at Constantinople in the
year 588 to settle the affairs of the Church at Antioch,
John assumed the title of " Universal Archbishop." 1
Gregory was indignant at what he regarded as the pre-
tensiousness of the title. " I hope in Almighty God," he
cried, " that the Supreme Majesty will confound his hypo
crisy."2 He sent to the offending patriarch what in
writing to the emperor he called "a sweet and humble
admonition," in which, as he said, " honesty and kindness
were combined," s but promising an appeal to the Church if
this failed. Gregory also wrote to the Emperor Maurice
urging that the title of " Universal Bishop " was novel and
unheard of, and a contravention of the precepts of the
gospel which enjoin humility, and further, that it deprived
the other patriarchs and bishops of the honour due to
them.* In both these letters he claimed that the title had
1 okov/uviKbs apxteirltrKoiros. 2 Gregory the Great, Epp. v. 45.
s Epp. v. 18. * Epp. v. 20.

ORGANISATION AND WORSHIP 141
been offered by the council of Chalcedon to the bishop of
Eome, but never used by him. That, as Gieseler points out,
was a mistake — in the way Gregory understood it — for
the title had only been used generally for all patriarchs.1
This incident has been pointed to as an instance of
papal aggressiveness, and Gregory has been accused of
priestly pride and ambition. But such a view is neither
charitable nor just. It is true that he uses strong language
in his expostulation ; but patriarchs were accustomed to
write to one another with moral fervour and in a tone of
authoritativeness when they believed that they had the
judgment of the Church at their back. Gregory made no
direct claim for himself or his office. The curious fact is
that when the title " Universal Bishop " was first appropri
ated, this was not by the pope of Eome, but by the pope of
Constantinople, and that the Eoman patriarch rebuked his
brother, not for seizing a title that he used himself —
though he hinted that it had been offered to a predecessor
— but for adopting one that no bishop had a right to hold,
since it was derogatory to his fellow-bishops. Gregory here
furnishes the opponents of the papacy with admirable argu
ments to be used against the monstrous claims of later
occupants of his own See,
Side by side with the development of the organisation
of the Church there went on the increasing elaboration of
its rites and ceremonies. In the conduct of worship various
functions were assigned to the different orders of the clergy,
according to their places in the ascending scale of the hier
archy. In the town churches the bishops were at the head
of their own congregations taking the leading part of the
solemn functions, and, as a rule, preaching to their people.
The whole ceremony of the worship centred in the Eucharist.
This was known as " the mystery " 2 par excellence. It is a
highly significant fact that, while the Eoman Christian,
with his respect for law and authority, called the chief
1 Gieseler, Eccl. Hist., 2nd Period, 1st Div. ch. iii. § 94, note 72.
2 rb uvtrrfyiov.

142 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
office of his religion a Sacrament? or oath of allegiance, his
Greek brother used a word that was already familiar to the
people as the title of a secret ritual witnessed only by the
initiated and carefully guarded from the intrusion of
the vulgar. Thus the word, which in the New Testament
always means a truth formerly hidden, but now through
Christ publicly revealed,2 came to be torn entirely away from
its primitive Christian signification and used altogether in
its conventional pagan sense. Meanwhile there was a grow
ing approximation to pagan ritual in the ceremonials of the
Church and the feelings of awe with which they were
approached. The homely love feast, at which rich and poor
sit down to a common meal side by side, while they com
memorate their Lord's death by eating and drinking some
of the bread and wine or milk provided for it, has given
place to a solemn function of miraculous potency. Baptism
precedes the right to share in this tremendous mystery, as
an ablution is necessary for those about to be initiated in
the secret rites of Demeter at Eleusis. The priest at the
altar is regarded as performing a really efficacious act
Although as yet the doctrine of the real presence is not form
ally and officially pronounced and authorised by the Church,
it is now very generally held and very distinctly taught.
It is in the fourth century that we see the mystical
character of the body of Christ so treated as plainly to
involve the doctrine of transubstantiation, although the
notion has to wait long for official definition and confirma
tion as a dogma of the Church. It had been adumbrated
in still more ancient times. Even as early as the first half
of the second century we have Ignatius using ecstatic
language about the body and blood of Christ that faintly
foreshadows the idea which is destined to become the
central factor of the Catholic faith.3 The Alexandrian
teachers Clement and Origen are satisfied with the
symbolical meaning of the communion ; and so is Eusebius
in the fourth century, as when he refers to " the memory"4
1 Sacramentnm. a eg_ ]_ Cor xy 51 . Col_ L 26.
* e.g. Ignatius, Epist. to Rom. vii. « rty /iv^/itiv.

ORGANISATION AND WORSHIP 143
of Christ's sacrifice, " by symbols x both of His body and of
His saving blood." 2 On the other hand, Athanasius shows
signs of mystical ideas attached to the elements, especially
as the sources of immortality by their effects on our bodies
when we participate. Thus he speaks of " the holy altar,
and on it bread of heaven, and immortal, and that giveth
life to all that partake of it, His holy and all-holy body " ; 3
and yet in another place he says that the very object of the
ascension was to draw men away from the thought of eating
the body.4 Evidently we are here at a transition stage.
Some minds go further than others, and the same mind
oscillates between the symbolical and the mystical concep
tions. Basil dwells on the peculiar sanctity of the communion
and the benefit of daily participation in it ; but he is far
from ascribing to it a merely magical efficacy irrespective
of intelligent ideas. Thus he says, " In no respect does he
benefit who comes to the communion without understanding
the word according to which the participation of the body
and the blood of the Lord is given. But he that partakes
unworthily is condemned " ; B and again, more definitely,
" What is the peculiar benefit of those that eat the bread
and drink the cup of God ? To keep the continual
memory 6 of Him that died for us and rose again." 7
But now when we turn to Basil's brother, Gregory of
Nyssa, we find a very different tone. Gregory was an
enthusiastic Platonist and Origenist. Here however he
entirely departs from the simple symbolism of the Alex
andrian school. We are sometimes told that the dogma of
transubstantiation dates from the Fourth Lateran Council,
as late as the thirteenth century. That is true as regards
the authoritative enforcement of acceptance of it on the
papal Church, although Berengar had been condemned
1 Si A aviifibXuv. * Demonst. Evang. i.
* De Nicosno Con. c. Arvu/m, p. 125, in Hebert, The Lord's Supper, vol. i.
p. 154. 4 Ibid. p. 156. e Ibid. p. 194. 6 T7)i< fu>I\it.t\v ipvKaoaeiv StrjveKq.
7 Hebert, Lord's Supper, vol. i. p. 193.

144 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
more than a century earlier (a.d. 1059) for denying it.
The mediaeval schoolmen were the first to attempt meta
physical explanations of the doctrine. But the essential
idea appears full blown as early as the fourth century, and
to nobody is the formulation of it more distinctly attributable
than to Gregory of Nyssa. This daring and original Church
Father writes, " The body of Christ was transmuted 1 to the
flesh of God by the indwelling of God the Word. I do
well then in believing that now also the bread of God the
Word, when consecrated, is being transmuted 2 into the body
of God the Word." 3 Together with this notion of transub-
stantiation Gregory also has the idea of miraculous effects
produced by the Divine food on the persons of the recipients
of the communion. Thus he says, " For as a little leaven,
as the apostle says, changes and assimilates the whole
lump to itself ; so the body of Christ which was by God
put to death, having come to be in our body, transmutes
and transfers it all into its own character. For as when
the destructive agent * was mingled with the sound (body),
all that it was mingled with was made worthless with it, so
the immortal body also, having come to be in him that has
received it, transmuted the whole also into its own nature.
But indeed it is not possible for anything to come to be in
the body except it be well mixed with the bowels by being
eaten and drunk. Surely then it is requisite to receive, in
the way possible to our nature, the power of the Spirit that
is to quicken us." 5 We can scarcely conceive of a more
grossly materialistic notion of the use of the Sacrament.
But we must observe all along that it is a materialistic end
the theologian has in view. The body of Christ is so
to transmute the body of the communicant that it shall
survive the shock of death and be capable of resurrection.
Thus the eating and drinking of the Eucharistic elements
by the Christian is supposed to secure for his body what
the Egyptian aimed at by the art of embalming, what the
1 ueratrm^eti. a ueraToieur0at.
' Hebert, p. 266. * i.e. Sin, as the context shows.
• Hebert, pp. 204, 205.

ORGANISATION AND WORSHIP 145
Pharaohs would make doubly sure with granite sarcophagus
and massive pyramid.
What Gregory of Nyssa laboured to expound and en
force was accepted and popularly preached by Chrysostom,
and it became henceforth the normal doctrine of the Church.
The West was not slow to adopt the same ideas. We have
movements towards them in the writings of Hilary; and
Ambrose tells strange things of the magical efficacy of the
sacred elements. Still, with this doctrine which meant so
much for the Latin Church in all subsequent ages, as with
so many other doctrines, it was the Greek theologians who
first gave definite expression to it. Nevertheless, belief in
transubstantiation did not make way without difficulties
and objections in some quarters. For instance, Palladius
tells of an old monk near Scetis who much distressed two
of his comrades by being unable to accept it. They
agreed to pray for a week that the doubter might be
enlightened. " And the Lord hearkened to both," says
Palladius. " And when the week was fulfilled they came
on the Lord's Day to the church, and the three stood
together alone on one seat, and the old man was in the
middle. And their eyes were opened, and when the bread
was placed on the holy table, it appeared to the three only
as a child, and when the presbyter stretched out his hand
to break the bread, lo ! an angel of the Lord came down
from heaven with a sword and slew the child as a sacrifice,1
and emptied its blood into the cup. But when the pres
byter brake the bread into small portions, the angel also
began to cut out of the child small portions ; and as they
drew near to partake of the holy things there was given,
to the old man alone, bleeding flesh ; and he cried out,
saying, ' I believe, Lord, that the bread is Thy body and
the cup Thy blood.' And straightway the flesh in his hand
became bread according to the mystery, and he partook,
giving thanks to God. And the old men say to him,
' God knew man's nature, that it cannot eat raw flesh, and
on this account transmuted 2 the body into bread and His
1 10we. 3 aeretroliiae.
10

146 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
blood into wine for them that receive in faith.' And they
gave thanks to God concerning the old man that he did
not lose his labours ; and the three went with joy into
their cells." * Here it is plain enough that Berengarius,
Wycliffe, and the Eeformers had been anticipated by the
old sceptical monk. The interesting point in the story is
that his doubts were dispelled by a vision in answer to
prayer. This must be taken in conjunction with the many
other monkish marvels with which Palladius fills his pages.
No unprejudiced person can read the story without being
convinced of the sincerity and genuine devoutness of these
three simple-minded monks. It carries us beyond the
plain paths of history to obscure regions of psychology,
and there we must be content to leave it.
1 Hebert, vol. i. pp. 329, 330.

CHAPTER X
EASTERN MONASTICISM
(a) The Book of Paradise, by Palladius, etc., trans, by E. A. Wallis
Budge ; Nicene and Post - Nicene Fathers ; Socrates, Hist.
Eccl. iv. 23 ; Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. i. 12-14 ; iii. 14 ; vi.
28-34 ; Evagrius, Hist. Eccl. iv. 33-35 ; vi. 23, 24 ; Sul-
picius Severus, Dialog, i.
(b) Zochler, Kritische Geschichte der Askek, 1863 ; Texts and Studies,
vi., Dom Cuthbert Butler, " The Lausiac History of Pal
ladius " ; Harnack, Monasticism, 1901 ; Gibbon, Decline and
Fall, chap, xxxvii.
We have seen that in the region of thought it was the
Eastern branch of the Church that developed theology and
settled the creed of Christendom. Now we have to
observe how in matters of practice and conduct it was
this same Oriental district that shaped the ideal and ad
vanced farthest towards its attainment. After the early
days of joyous liberty, not only during the patristic period,
but right through the Middle Ages, asceticism is synonymous
with sanctity for the bulk of the Church, both Eastern and
Western. Now and again there appears a mystic, out of
all relation to time and circumstance, as by its nature
mysticism always is ; and then we have a flash of light on
the spirituality of religion realised by practical love. But
in the main, the ideal of the Christian life all down the ages
involved on one side renunciation of the world, castigation
of the body, a crushing down of natural affections, and on
the other side intense, whole - hearted devotion, stoical
endurance, unflinching fidelity to creed and Church. Only
a select minority seriously pursued this difficult aim.
147

148 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
The fourth century is the great age of the rise and
development of monasticism in the East ; a century later
we see it rapidly spreading through the West. This
Western movement was mainly stimulated by Jerome, who
had spent years in his cell at Bethlehem, and organised by
Cassian, who brought to Marseilles ideas he had gathered
from Basil's arrangements in Asia Minor. Thus both of
these men who were the chief influences leading to the
formation of early Western monasticism — the one for its
inspiration, the other for its regulation — derived their
impulses and directions from the East. It is to the his
tory of the Eastern Church, therefore, that the origin and
development of monasticism belong.
The roots of monasticism he far back in the past. Its
development may be traced through the following stages :
— (1) General Asceticism; (2) Specific Asceticism; (3)
Anchoritism; (4) Ccenobitism ; (5) Eegulated Monasticism.
1. A spirit of asceticism is always found hovering
round the idea of religion even where it has not pene
trated deeply into that idea. Prayer and fasting go often
together. While our Lord never commanded the latter
practice nor even commended it,1 and while He justified
His disciples in neglecting the custom,2 He assumed that
it would be practised in times of sorrow,3 and He also gave
directions for unostentatiousness in the performance of it by
His disciples, implying that, as Jews, they would be carrying
on their Jewish habits in this matter.4 In point of fact it
was practised in apostolic times, though especially if not
exclusively on critical occasions of exceptionally earnest
prayer.6 The Palestinian Christians of the sub-apostolic
age were warned not to fast on the Jews' fasting-days — an
admonition implying that fasting on set days was part of
their regular practice.6 In later times it was always pursued
'The word "fasting,'' vrjarela, in Mark ix. 29, of A.V. and T.R., is
not critically authorised ; nor does it appear in the parallels of Matthew
and Luke.
2 Mark ii. 18, 19. * Ibid., ver. 20. « Matt. vi. 16-18.
• Didachi, 8.

EASTERN MONASTICISM 149
more or less as part of the regular Christian life among
those who aimed at thoroughness.
2. During the second century asceticism received a
powerful impulse from sectional bodies of Christians in pro
test against the increasing secularisation of the Church after
the high enthusiasm of primitive times had cooled down.
This was especially cultivated by the Gnostics, who claimed
that in practical ethics as well as in intellectual concep
tions they constituted a sort of spiritual aristocracy among
their fellow Christians. Marcion, while attempting to
follow St. Paul in his gospel of grace, appeared as a moral
reformer in a quite un-Pauline asceticism, although his
" forbidding marriage " like his other extravagances was
really an exaggerated and distorted Paulinism.1 The
Montanists also pressed the rigour of their Puritanism in
the same direction. On the Jewish side the Encratites
were pronounced ascetics. Meanwhile, as usual, the main
body of the Church took a middle course ; it regarded
asceticism with great .jcespect, while not requiring, it.
Virginity is repeatedly honoured in the Shepherd of
Hermas* and Justin Martyr refers to celibate old men and
women in terms of admiration.3 By the third century
this idea is much advanced, and we find Cyprian ranking
celibacy as definitely higher than marriage.4 By the
fourth century we see this view of giving exceptional
honour to virginity (while not demanding it, as had been
done by the Encratites, Marcion, Tatian, and other Gnostics)
definitely registered as the rule of the Church. In the
Apostolical Constitution vows of virginity are recognised
though not demanded6 Here then we are at the second
stage in the development of asceticism. Certain people
elect to live a celibate life and take vows accordingly.
But these people do not come out from among their
fellows ; they mingle with general society ; they remain as
members of the family in their own homes.
3. The next stage is the most fertile and significant.
1 e.g. 1 Cor. vii. 1, 7, 8. 2 e.g. Sim. 9, 10. " 1 Apol. 15.
4 e.g. de Habitu Virg. 23. B Const. Apost. iv. 14.

150 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
The end of the third century and the beginning of the
fourth saw the rise of the anchorites. Thesejmen forsook
the cities and fled into the desert, living in solitary hut? or
caves or even out in the open "air exposed to all weathers,
roughly and thinly clad, feeding meagrely on aCjffigitafian
diet, .castigating themselves with vigorous self-discipline,
vying with one another in an eager rivalry of self-mortifica
tion, spending their time in prayer, meditation, wrestling
with evil impulses, performing a minimum of work, if any,
just sufficient for a bare livelihood, by cultivating a little
plot of ground, basket-making, or other manual labour, but
when otherwise provided for doing nothing of the kind,
often developing amazing extravagances of self-torture,
sometimes going mad in their wild, cruel life, sometimes
flinging it up and rushing into the vortex, of city dissipation
with the fury of a fierce reaction. *- -'*
The rapid rise and spread of this movement, which
proved to be so immensely influential on all subsequent
ages, demands an explanation ; and seeing that it took
place at a particular historical moment, we must look for
that explanation in part at least among the,, circumstances
of the times. The main root of monasticism, as of all
asceticism, is to be found in the dichotomy of human nature,
the discord between the animal part and the soul in the
constitution of man, the war between the flesh and the
spirit — a conflict realised in Indian religions as keenly as
in Christianity. But if that is always present the question
faces us, Why did it take this peculiar form of monasticism
especially at the beginning of the fourth century A.D.?
This was just the time when the tempest of persecution
which had Jtwept^ oyerjjhe Christians fronT"time~to~time
passed away, and the sunshine of imperial favour bringing
with it a luxurious summer of fashion broke out over the
Church. Formerly the better life had been braced by the
buffeting of adverse winds ; now it was in danger of being
relaxed by the soft zephyr of worldly prosperity. The
adoption of Christianity as the court religion turned on to
it the stream of fashion. The world crowded into the

EASTERN MONASTICISM 151
Church; the consequence was that the Church became
rapidly assimilated to the world. In the hard times the
confessor was regarded as the athlete. His endurance
then toughened his spiritual muscles. Now the occasion
for that fine athleticism had passed. How was the pure
flame of devotion to be kept clear and bright in the
stifling atmosphere of a world nominally Christian, but x
really almost as unspiritual as the pagan society it was suc
ceeding ? That was the question of the hour. Earnest men
answered it in a way that we may think selfish, if not
cowardly. Instead of remaining in the world as its leaven,
they fled from the world to escape its contamination. But
the mischief of their mistake has been exaggerated where it
was least hurtful. These men were not lost to society as
moral influences. It became customary for town bishops
and Sthers to take their holidays in a retreat with an
anchorite for a spiritual tonic, as modern town workers
recruit their strength by mountaineering or some other
recreation in touch with nature. The fame of great
anchorites spread through the Church and held up the
idealjjf_ttie_jrimple life to the people of a decadent civilisa
tion. Some were preachers whom the multitude sought
after like John the Baptist in the wilderness^ Again and
again a monk trained by the discipline of solitude was called
to fill some high post in the Church, and then, responding
to the unwelcome summons, proved himself singularly ¦
effective by reason of his detachment from secular concerns.
There is another side ; but that is scarcely where the
superficial observer might look for it. It is doubtful if the
men who fled from the world could have influenced it
much more by adopting the ordinary life of citizens than
they did by awakening the popular imagination and firing
the popular enthusiasm from their lonely retreats.
The real mischief of monasticism was more remotejnd
subtle, but not less_hurtful in the^end. The empire suffered
by the withdrawal of so many of the strongest^ men jrom
pubjic^eryice. Besides, for the best people not to marry,
and for the continuation of the population to... be left to

152 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
men and women of a second grade morally, must have
made for the deterioration of the race. Yet to hold up
the ascetic ideal as the loftiest to aim at tended in that
direction. It is evident that the diminution of the effective
population caused by the enormous exodus of celibates into
the wilderness, just at the time when swarms of rapidly
growing Teutonic peoples were gathering on the confines of
the empire and even bursting through and pouring over
it, was one of the direct causes of the break-up of the
empire. The later emperors saw this and some of them
regarded the monks as the deadliest enemies of the State.
Moreover, even considered ecclesiastically, monasticism —
especially in its earlier stages — acted as a disintegrating
influence. In his desert retreat the monk was well out of
reach of the bishop. He recited his psalms and conducted
his devotions in his own way, and so shook himself free
of the stiffening rubric that was followed in the usual
assemblies for public worship. He was a Free Churchman
at a time when authority was strenuously maintained in
the Church as a whole. In the honour that was spon
taneously given him by an admiring public he became a
dangerous rival to the bishop. Usually he was a fierce
champion of orthodoxy ; but his orthodoxy tended to become
narrowl_iardi_cruel. Nevertheless, in spite of all this, it
may be that monasticism saved the situation at the critical
moment when the Church was in danger of being confused
with the world, a river suddenly let loose from its confining
banks to spread in swamps and marshes over society and
finally lose itself in the sands of secularity.
The specific form of monasticism which emerged in
separation from the world, and in a measure even from
the Church as a society, first appeared in Egypt. It is
doubtful whether floating traditions of Indian customs had
anything directly to do with its rise, although there are
remarkable comcidences of habit. The Therapeutse— if
Mr. Conybeare's vindication of Philo's description of them l
is accepted as satisfactory — were singularly similar fore-
1 D» Vita Oont. 6.

EASTERN MONASTICISM 153
runners of the Christian monks. But it is more likely
that similar causes led to similar effects than that in either
case there was direct imitation. Alexandria was a centre
of highly artificial civilisation; the desert was close at
hand for those who desired to escape from the corrupting
influences of city life. The country that had Therapeuta?
before the Church appeared, and later dervishes under the
Mohammedan regime, might naturally invite to similar
practices in Christian times. We need not always assign
the most strenuous motives to this movement. Doubtless
there have always been men and women drawn to solitude
by its own fascination, like Thoreau in his Walden ; there
have always been lovers of nature who preferred the
country to the town.
Fresh light has been recently thrown on the lives and
manners of the early Christian ascetics, especially in
Egypt, by the publication of The Lausiac History of Pal
ladius, a series of biographical sketches of monks, many
of whom the writer had known personally, with some of
whom he had shared their cells for a time, while he obtained
information about others from reports of their disciples.
Palladius was born in Galatia in the year 367 ; he visited
the Egyptian ascetics in 388, spending three years among.
them. All this was in hig_v_outh. Subsequently he visited
asceScs in other parts, and he wrote his book in the
year 42 0.1
The earliest fugitives to the Egyptian desert simply
retired before persecution without any ascetic design.2
The first of the actual hermits is said to have been
Paul, who lived in a cave near the Eed Sea and was
1 It was dedicated to Lausus, a chamberlain at the court of Theodosius ii.
Hence the name by which it is now known. Its amazing stories have led to
its being regarded by some — especially Weingarten and Luciua— as »• pure
fabrication. But Dom Cuthbert Butler has vindicated its genuineness. The
whole question of monkish marvels must be determined with regard to many
considerations of hypnotism, telepathy, the sub-conscious ego, inaccuracy of
observation, curious ideas as to the obligation of truth. We cannot doubt
the genuineness of the life of St. Martin of Tours by Sulpioius Severus ; yet
that book offers us miracles galore.
2 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vi. 42.

154 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
visited a short time before his death by St. Anthony.1
Jerome calls him "the founder of the monastic life";2
but he is rather a shadowy personality, although we really
have no reason to deny his existence. Much more im
portant is the great Anthony himself. Keen controversy
has raged as to the genuineness of the famous life of
Anthony ascribed to Athanasius. It has been urged that
the extravagances, the puerilities, the absurd miracles of
this story are utterly unworthy of the champion of the
Nicene faith, and could not have issued from the pen that
wrote the well-known treatises contained in his acknow
ledged works. But now we have equally extravagant
and seemingly impossible things said of other anchorites by
Palladius, and he vouches for some of his most marvellous
stories as a personal friend who in some cases had shared
for months the cells of the men concerning whom he
narrates them.8 Athanasius calls Anthony "the founder
of asceticism." There were anchorites when he~took~up a
similar life, but living in huts4 which they had builtjhem-
selves near the towns. Born in the year 250, he received
his call at the age of eighteen in the words of Christ to
the young ruler which he once heard in church. He spent
fifteen years in a hut near his native village ; after which
he shut himself up in one of those rock tombs that are so
abundant in Egypt.6 After this he lived in close seclusion
in a ruined .castle, and blocked up the entrance with a
huge stone. His final place of abode was at a still more
remote spot by the Dead^Sea, where he died at the age of
105, ministered to in his extreme old age by his faithful
1 Jerome, Vita Pauli ; Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. i. 13.
2 Auctor vitoe monasticos ; princeps vitas monastics.
8 The genuineness of Athanasius' Vita Antonii is defended by Preuschen,
Stulcken, Bardenhewer, HoU, Vblter, Leipoldt, Gnitzmacher, Dom Butler,
Text and Studies, vol. vi. No. 2; Texte v. Unterschungen, N.F. iv.
4, 79. 4 Called p.ova.ar'qpla^f
5 The present writer was invited by a friend who was conducting ex
ploration work in Egypt to "spend a night with him in his tomb ; there
would be plenty of sand." Such a retreat is not altogether devoid of
comfort, being warm at night and cool during the day.

EASTERN MONASTICISM 155
disciples Amathas and Macarius. During this long life
of asceticism Anthony had won a fame which made his
example a model for multitudes who now entered on the
life of anchorites. At times of critical importance he
would leave his retreat and appear in the city of Alex
andria to preaehjto the people with immense effect, being
received as a most venerated counsellor. He practised the
exorcism of his times, fully believing in i£7 In the Arian
controversy he was a staunch supporter of the Nicene
position, and he did Athanasius good service by bringing
the weight of his saintly reputation to bear on that side
of the question. Altogether he is described as a man
gifted with brain power and able to persuade men with
forcible arguments. When dying he bequeathed his sheep
skin to Athanasius, who received it as the most precious
legacy. Women as well as men were caught by the fascination
of the ascetic life. In some cases they had personal
reasons for adopting it. Thus Palladius tells the story
of the maiden Alexandria, who shut herself up for ten
years in such complete seclusion that even her attendant
could not see her face. She told this attendant that she
was never idle, for she spent her time in prayer, reciting
the psalms, and weaving linen. Asked why she chose to
five in this way, she said that it was in order to escape
from the importunities of a lover. Among the most
curious anchoriteTwere the Stylites, men who lived on the
summits of pillars. The practice originated in the fifth
century with Simeon, who was born at Sisan^a village on
the borders of Syria and Cilicia. He went through a suc
cession of self-imposed austerities, living for a summer
buried up to his neck in a garden ; then in a dark cave
with a spiked girdle round his waist ; later on in a cell near
Antioch where a number of admirers gathered about him.
In the year 423 he built a low pillar, lived on that for a
time, then on a higher pillar, and so on till he was raised
40 cubits above the earth, either in a hut, or, as seems
more probable, merely on a railed platform. There he

156 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
spent thirty years — the wonder of the world. Crowds of
Arabians and Armenians, and even pilgrims from as far as
Spain and Britain, flocked thither to see the holy man and
obtain his blessing. Simeon preached to them from his
lofty pulpit, and thus became one of the most potent
religious influences of his age. Others followed his
example, especially in Syria and Greece. The eccentricity^
was not adopted in Egypt and it was disapproved of in
the Western Church.
4. Meanwhile the fourth stage of the ascetic life was
well advanced. This is known as the coenobite. It is the
common life, the life of a community. The contrast with
the hermit life is very marked. The ancient anchorite
sought absolute solitude, chose his own course, lived as he
thought fit a very self-contained life. The monk in a
convent was to sink self in the common life, pursue no
self-willed aims, obey the authority under which he was
put. Of the three monastic vows that dominated monas
ticism throughout the Middle Ages — poverty, chastity,
obedience — the first two only were observed by the primi
tive anchorites ; the third came in with the coenobite life.
A movement" in this direction was originated by the
gathering of admiring disciples round the cell of some
famous anchorite. When these men had their own cells
they were set well apart out of earshot of one another.
Still, here we see an approach to the idea of a group
ing of monks together. Sometimes a group of hermits
would meet for the communion in an ordinary church
if such a place happened to be within reach. But the
definite founding of the coenobite system is ascribed to
Pachomius, who established his first monastery at Tabenniti
near.JJenderah, about the year 305. The idea spread
rapidly, and "by the time of the death of Pachomius in or
near the year 345 there were eight monasteries and
several hundreds of monks. It was a fully organised
system from the first, with a superior, a system of visita
tion, and general chapters. A monastery consisted of
a number of houses each containing some thirty or forty

EASTERN MONASTICISM 157
monks. The rules were rigorous on the principles of a
military system. Still there was room for variations of
habit. Describing the monastery at Panopolis (Akhmlm),
Palladius tells us that the tables were laid and that a
meal was prepared at midday and at every successive
hour till late in the evening, to suit the convenience of
monks who fasted up to various times in the day. Yet
some, he says, ate only every second day, some only every
third dayy-soine only every fifth day.
palladius/ is full of strange stories of the Egyptian
anchorites and monks, some of them too fantastic to be
better than childish fables, yet most of them significant
of some trait in the ascetic life. The fidelity with which
he records the faults he discovered in his visits to the
desert retreats must be set down to his credit for good
faith. Macarius punished himself for killing a gnat in a
moment of irritation by retiring to the Scetic marshes,
and there spending six months in a state of nudity among
the insects, till on his return he was only recognised by
his voice, his skin being like an elephant's hide. To Valens
of Palestine the devil once came in the appearance of
Christ, with such flattery of speech that the poor man's
head was turned, and he told his brethren the next day that
he had no need to partake of the communion. " For," said
he, " I have seen Christ Himself." He was put in irons
for a twelvemonth, and thus effectually humbled and cured
of his delusion — if such it was ; but Sir Walter Scott's
famous story of Colonel Gardiner reminds us that the
incident is capable of a very different interpretation.
Another story of a similar character does not look quite
so innocent. One night, as Palladius tells us, the devil
came to Eucarpus, who had spent fifteen years in the
ascetic life, speaking to nobody, and said, " I am Christ."
The monk believed, and fell down and worshipped his
vision. The intoxication of this scene encouraged the
poor man to insubordination, so that he called Macarius
* a painted image " and Evagrius " a mere hewer of words."
He too was put in irons for a year, after which he only

158 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
lived thirteen months, ministering to the sick and washing
the feet of strangers. Stephen lost all desire for meat
and treated with contempt those who when out of health
took milk or cooked flesh. His pride had a terrible fall.
Eesenting the authority of Macarius, he ran off to Alex
andria, and there plunged into gluttony, drunkenness, and
debauchery. 5. The last stage in the development of Eastern monas
ticism is due to the statesmanlike wisdom and energy of
the great Basil, who may be regarded as the Benedict of
the Oriental Church. The arrangements made by Pach
omius applied only to his own monks. By far the larger
number of the ascetics were living according to their
private lights, and even where there were monasteries
these were very variously administered. Basil travelled
widely, visiting many of these institutions and discovering
their objectionable features. Two practices in particular
he held to be very mischievous. The first was the hermit
habit. Solitudejhe thought dangerous to humility and
charity. "Whose feet wilt thou wash?" he asks; "whom
wilt thou serve ? how canst thou be last of all — if thou
art alone ? " The second of these evils was idleness.
Basil's rule insists on industry^ At the same time he puts
restraint on the wild extravagances of asceticism. A man
of ascetic habits himself — with his one daily meal of beans
— he writes, " If fasting hinders you from labour, it is
better to eat like the workman of Christ that you
are." The monk can possess no private property, meet no
woman, drink no wine, read only canonical books. The
true ascetic uses the dry and least nourishing food and
eats but once a day.1 There is to be reading during the
meals.2 Basil's pride and masterfulness should not be
allowed to blind us to his careful, considerate kindness.
He studied the welfare of the monks, relaxed their more
severe exercises, but braced them for regular, wholesome
work. Lofty-minded himself, he seeks to kindle a fine
flame of enthusiasm in others. Thus he exclaims,
* Const. Monast. cap. vi. » Reg. href, tract. Interr. 186.

EASTERN MONASTICISM 159
"Athletes, workmen of Jesus Christ, you have engaged
yourselves to fight for Him all the day, to bear all its
heat. Seek not repose before the end ; wait for the
evening, that is to say, the end of life, the hour at which
the householder shall come to reckon with you and pay
your wages."

DIVISION II
THE MOHAMMEDAN PEEIOD

CHAPTER I
THE RISE AND SPREAD OF MOHAMMEDANISM •
(a) Sale's Koran. Original authorities; traditions collected by
Zohri, Musa ibn Ochba and Abn Mashar ; followed by Rm
Ishse, Ibn Hisham, Wakidy, Tabari, Ibn Athir, whose works
are extant more or less in their original state ; Michael the
Syrian (edit, and French trans, by Chabot, 1899-1907).
(6) Muir, Life of Mahomet, 3rd ed. 1894; The Caliphate, Its Rise,
Decline, and Fall, 3rd ed. 1898; R. Bosworth Smith,
Lectures on Mohammedanism, 2nd ed. 1876 ; Butler, Aral
Conquest of Egypt, 1902; Sprenger, Das Leben und ik
Lehre Mohammad, 1869 ; Weil, Emleitung in den Koran,
2nd ed. 1878.
Oub familiar Western divison of Church History into three
periods — the Patristic, the Mediaeval, and the Modern —
does not rightly apply to the Eastern half of Christendom.
There were no Middle Ages in the Oriental Churches,
for the simple reason that there was no Eenaissance or
Eeformation to inaugurate a third period from which those
ages could be sharply divided — no terminus ad quern.
Nevertheless, other events roughly mark off a corresponding
block of time. In the West the chief cause of the immense
change that broke the classic traditions of the past and
introduced medisevalism was the Teutonic flood of colonisa
tion, before which half the Eoman Empire crumbled away,
and which ultimately issued in the shaping of the nations

THE RISE AND SPREAD OP MOHAMMEDANISM 161
of Europe. About the same time the tempest of Moham
medanism arose in Arabia to sweep over some of the
fairest provinces of the Eastern branch of the empire,
tearing them off limb by linib, and leaving only a truncated
torso to represent the dominion of the Caesars.
This happened in the seventh century, just after the
last of the Latin Fathers, Gregory, had laid the foundations
of mediaeval theology. But the two invasions — the
Teutonic in the West and the Arabian in the East — were
very different in character. They agreed in one lamentable
feature. In both cases a more barbarous race came to
wreck and destroy an ancient civilisation. They also
agreed in one redeeming characteristic. Each, appearing
as the besom of destruction, was really an instrument of
judgment on an age already perishing in its own corruption.
While the Germans brought physical and moral health
from their remote forests to the effete city-life of Italy,
the Arabs came with the simplicity of the desert to
castigate the effeminacy of Oriental luxury — until in a
very short time they themselves fell victims to the same
fatal narcotic. But there was this radical difference
between the two immigrations. The Goths were Christians,
and as they settled down among the conquered peoples,
intermingling with them, if the unfortunate accident of
their Arianism had not stood in the way they would have
fraternised from the first with the churches of their adopted
land But the Arabs appeared as missionaries of a new
religion, who held themselves aloof from the peoples they
subdued in proud scorn — except in the one significant
fact, that they wedded the wives and daughters of their
victims. Liberal and lenient at first towards all who
submitted to their yoke, they soon made it apparent
that Jews and especially Christians were only allowed to
practise the rites of their faiths under sufferance, and that
with increasingly galling restrictions. From the seventh
century onwards right down to our own day the chief
factor of Church politics in the East has been its relation
to Mohammedanism. ii

162 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Mohammed was born at the city of Mecca in the
year 570 ; but he was brought up in the tents of the
Bedouins, from whom he learnt simple manners and among
whom he maintained a primitive purity of life. He was
forty years of age before he was conscious of the first
impulse to his mission. Then the great thought of One
God, Creator and Euler of All, dawned upon his mind as
a revelation. Mohammedanism has been traced to Jewish
and Christian sources combined with Arabian traditions.
There can be no doubt that both the rival Monotheistic
faiths indirectly affected the prophet. We meet with
references to them in the Koran; and Bible characters
and Hebrew legends have had a considerable part in its
composition. But while we may recognise these materials
as fuel for the sacrifice, we cannot discover in them the
fire. It was the personality of Mohammed, his vision of
truth gained through deep brooding and struggling of soul,
that constituted him the founder of Islam. There can
be no question of his sincerity at the beginning of his
career, nor of the purity of his original motives; it is
equally clear that he deteriorated in his later days, became
at least a self-deceiver, fell into self-indulgent vices, and
justified them with supposed visions and voices from
heaven. The burden of his message was a stern protest
against the prevalent idolatry of Arabia, and his enunciation
of the unity, the spirituality, the supremacy of God as
at once almighty and most merciful. The Mussulman
cry — "Allah Akbar! — God is Great!" — is the root
principle of Mohammedanism. The sublime truth burst
on the desert like a revelation. Undoubtedly it intro
duced a purer faith than the gross heathenism that it
supplanted. This clear, vigorous new teaching braced the minds of
its adherents with belief in an inflexible fixture of events
which was not mere fatalism, as is commonly asserted,
but the idea of a personal purpose in the dominant will
of the merciful Allah. Further, with this creed was
conjoined the doctrine of the equality of all male believers,

THE RISE AND SPREAD OP MOHAMMEDANISM 163
involving the duty of brotherly-kindness. Then the pro
hibition of wine was one sign that Mohammed aimed at
moral vigour and simplicity of life. On the other hand,
the most fatal defect of Mohammedanism is its permission
of polygamy and concubinage, which together with the
veil involves the degradation of woman and her separation
from the duties and interests of the world. This, as Sir
William Muir points out, is more hurtful to men than to
women. Lastly, under the rule of Islam, slavery also is
sanctioned and largely practised.
The tolerance of the early caliphs has been frequently
applauded. But in its essential nature the Mussulman
faith is dogmatic and intolerant. The Koran, which its
founder claimed to have received by dictation from heaven,
is to be taken as infallible. Thus thought is paralysed
and all religions but that of Islam are treated with contempt.
As a consequence, cruelty to the unbeliever and especially
the apostate — that is to say, the convert to Christianity —
has been frequently permitted, and that with ruthless
fanaticism. Mohammed must have had real faith in his message
to bear him through the early period of discouragement
when his converts were but few. At that time they
could only be won by persuasion in face of popular dis
favour, and at length it was necessary for the prophet to
escape from Mecca, a hunted fugitive. The Hegira —
the flight to Medina — took place in the year 622, which
afterwards became the starting - point of the Moham
medan era.
In the second stage of his enterprise Mohammed
sanctioned the sword for the rooting out- of idolatry and
the spread of the faith. By thus following up preaching
with force, he had secured most of Arabia at the time
of his death (a.d. 632). But there is no proof that he had
ever contemplated crossing the borders of his own land.
With Mohammed Islam was the religion of the Arab.
While the death of the prophet produced consternation
among his followers, it was the occasion of insurrection on

164 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the part of the conquered tribes of the desert. The crisis
was acute ; but among the " companions " were men equal
to its demands. When Omar was passionately haranguing
the people who crowded the mosque at Medina, the calm
Abu Bekr put him aside with the memorable words:
" Whoso worshippeth Mohammed let him know that
Mohammed is dead; but whoso worshippeth God, let
him know that God liveth and dieth not." Abu Bekr,
then sixty years of age, was elected first caliph — i.e. successor
to the prophet. He had a heavy task before him in the
subjugation of the apostate tribes, but the work was
triumphantly accomplished by his great general Khalid.
In the conduct of this war and the behaviour of its leader
we may discover the secret of the success of Islam and its
marvellous career during the next few years. Everywhere
the terms were submission or the sword. While idolatry
was to be rooted out completely, for Jews and Christians
submission might take the form of tribute. But all Arabs
who accepted Islam were at once enrolled in the army and
endowed with its privileges. Under the early caliphs
there was very little for the civil administrators to do
beyond collecting and distributing tribute and booty.
These caliphs were anxious to prevent their people building
houses or engaging in agriculture lest the settled life
should chill their martial ardour. Thus all Islam was
an armed camp, and the chief service of religion was to
fight for it. In the conduct of war all who resisted were
slaughtered, and their property, their wives, and their
daughters confiscated. One-fifth of the booty was reserved
for the treasury, but immediately distributed among the
faithful after the small expenses of administration were
paid; the remaining four-fifths were divided in equal
proportions among the men who had engaged in the fight.
The same was done with the women captives. It was
accounted a scandal that Khalid once married the wife
of an opposing leader on the battlefield, and the caliph
rebuked him for his indecent haste. Nevertheless he
retained his post and acted very similarly another time.

THE RISE AND SPREAD OP MOHAMMEDANISM 165
If an Arab fell while fighting for Islam, he was to expect
two bright-eyed damsels to descend from heaven, wipe the
dust and sweat from his face, and carry him away to a
voluptuous paradise. Thus the reward of fighting was in
any case a harem — if the warrior survived, a harem on
earth ; if he died, a harem in paradise. This was the
precise opposite of the Christian ideal preached by the
priests and professed by the monks. Celibacy with
chastisement of the flesh was the stern Church conception
of the saint ; gross sensuality in multiple marriage was held
out as the bait for the Mohammedan warrior. A more sharp
antithesis between two ideals of life was never conceived.
Nevertheless this is only one side of the shield. We
should do deep injustice to Islam and at the same time
flatter Christendom hypocritically if we refused to sternly
face the other side. The Mohammedan sincerely believed
that he was an instrument in the hand of Allah ; he was
sure that it was Allah's will for the infidel to be smitten
down on refusing submission, and for the faith of the
prophet to be maintained and spread at the point of the
sword. Thus he was fired with the zeal of the missionary.
Under these circumstances we can only admire the com
parative tolerance of the early caliphs and their readiness
to protect Jews and Christians on the simple condition of
the payment of tribute. Now look at the state of the
Christian world at this crisis. The Church was torn with
internal factions. The strength of its best minds was given
to the discussion of the most difficult points of dogma.
On account of heresy in regard to these remote abstractions
whole provinces were driven by persecution to disaffection.
At the same time the morals of the empire were abominably
corrupt. The saintly ideal of the monks — not always
realised by its own professors — left the mass of the people,
who frankly confessed that they could not attain to it, all
the more ready to abandon any strenuous endeavours after
virtue. City life was sinking into the slough of luxurious
self-indulgence ; and the government was feeble and only
spasmodically energetic by fits and starts.

166 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Although after the death of the prophet Islam had first
to fight for its very existence, and although it was only
by desperate courage and energy that the revolting tribes
were reduced to sullen submission, Mohammedanism had
this singular power that it could cast a spell over its
reluctant converts and convert them into fervent disciples,
Moreover, when it spread beyond the borders of Arabia
a new inducement was added to encourage loyalty. The
Arabs became an aristocratic order with distinctive privi
leges, and although the equal brotherhood of all behevers
was preached in the Koran it was never practised as be
tween the army from Arabia and the Syrians, Persians,
Copts, in other countries. Apparently Mohammed had not
contemplated its extension to alien races. Therefore the
brotherhood of Islam was really the union of the Bedouin of
the desert in equality of privilege and community of mutual
service. The rule that required all the children of the
faithful, whether from wives or concubines, to be brought
up as Mohammedans with the full status of their fathers,
led to the rapid growth of the army of Islam and its con
tinual infusion with the renewing vigour of fresh blood.
So this conquering host poured out spreading death and
terror, always gathering spoil, and often exacting tribute.
When it looked beyond the borders of Arabia Moham
medanism found itself confronted by two great empires —
Persia in the East and Eome in the North and West.
United these two powers could easily have nipped the new
terror in the bud. Even separately under normal circum
stances either of them should have been more than a match
for it. But at this most momentous juncture their century
long enmity, which had sometimes slumbered for genera
tions, had broken out into deadly feud.
A few years before the appearance of the new and
totally unexpected danger, Chosroes the king of Persia had
effected a successful invasion of the Eoman Empire, first
penetrating to Palestine and seizing Jerusalem. That city
of unparalleled misfortunes was then given up to outrage
and plundering, during which time thousands of monks,

i jidLcfi.^ J. J. i.

THE RISE AND SPREAD OF MOHAMMEDANISM 167
nuns, and priests were slaughtered. Fire followed pillage.
The church of the Holy Sepulchre and other churches were
partially or wholly wrecked. From Palestine the victor
advanced to Egypt, and seized Alexandria amid similar
scenes of slaughter and outrage (a.d. 618).
At length Sergius the patriarch of Constantinople
roused the Emperor Heraclius to a tremendous effort for the
recovery of his lost territory and Jerusalem in particular.
The tide now turned. Victory after victory attended the
Byzantine arms. A great point was made of the fact that
the Cross in its reliquary was recovered and restored to the
altar at the Holy Sepulchre. Thus this was in a way a
war for religion, a crusade of the Eastern Empire. But no
sooner was the great feat of his life achieved than Heraclius
began to live at ease, till he sank into enervating self-indul
gence among the lavish luxuries of life at Constantinople.
The Eoman emperor's success in the Persian war led
him to underrate the new danger already looming on the
southern horizon. Besides, when the conflict with Islam
began in deadly earnest the imperial troops were divided
among themselves, half-hearted, and so reluctant to fight—
if we may credit the Arab chronicler — that in some cases
they were dragged forward chained together. Such an
army had little chance against the hardy desert veterans,
dashing into battle aflame with fanaticism. Modern science
has armed the civilised nations with weapons that are
practically irresistible by barbarous races. But before the
invention of gunpowder, civilisation and barbarism were
more on a level in military resources.
Chaldaea and Southern Syria were in close touch with
Arabia, and naturally these were the first districts to be
overrun by the advancing tide. At Hira the Arabs came
upon a monastery outside the city walls, and the defence
less monks, exposed to the full fury of their attack, and seeing
no alternative to submission, acted as intermediaries and
arranged terms of surrender between the invaders and the
besieged inhabitants (a.d. 633). The Christians in this
city retained their faith and were found to be true to it

168 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
several centuries later, in spite of their subjection to a
Mohammedan government.
It was in Syria that the Arabs came into contact with
the Eoman Empire. At first the forces of the invaders
were paralysed by the confusion and jealousies of separate
commands. Then Abu Bekr fetched the great General
Khalid from Mesopotamia to put fresh vigour into the
attack. Under his leadership a terrible battle was fought
close to the Yermuk, one of the eastern tributaries of the
Jordan, which resulted in a rout of the Eomans (1st of
September, a.d. 634). The Arab chronicler states that the
beaten imperial troops were " toppled over the bank even
as a wall is toppled over," and adds that over 100,000
men were lost in the chasm. The Byzantine chroniclers are
discreetly silent with reference to these disasters of the
empire. But after making every allowance for the Oriental
habit of exaggeration, we can see that the defeat must have
been complete. This astonishing event struck terror into
the court at Constantinople. For a time it paralysed the
opposition of the empire to the daring invasion of one of
the fairest of its provinces. What was thus lost was never
again permanently recovered.
The same year Abu Bekr died. He had lived in
extreme simplicity — a marked contrast to the luxury and
splendour of the courts of the emperor and the great king.
When the treasury at Medina was opened only a single
gold piece fell out of the bags. Although much wealth
was now pouring in from tribute, " all shared alike, recent
convert and veteran, male and female, bond and free."
Abu Bekr was succeeded by his friend and counsellor, the
passionate, energetic Omar, now mellowed with age, who
as the second caliph proved at least an equally capable
ruler. Thus to its other advantages over the corrupt and
decrepit empire Islam added consummate ability in its
early leaders.
The next year (a.d. 635) Damascus was stormed, but the
city capitulated just in time to save the lives of its inhabit
ants. Half of the property of the place was seized, and,

THE RISE AND SPREAD OF MOHAMMEDANISM 169
in addition to the taxes raised under the empire, a tribute
of one piece of gold was imposed on every male adult who
did not embrace Islam, and a measure of corn was taken
from every field. This became the model for the treat
ment of Christians elsewhere. The churches were equally
distributed between Christians and Mohammedans. The
great cathedral of St. John the Baptist was at first divided
in two, one half serving for each religion ; and so it remained
for eighty years, after which time the Christians were ejected
and it became wholly a mosque. But down to our day-
even in spite of a recent fire — the visitor can read over
its chief entrance the Psalmist's magnificent words —
"Thy Kingdom, 0 Christ, is an everlasting Kingdom;
And Thy Dominion is prom Generation to Generation."1
The next step was to carry the war with Persia to a
conclusion. This was now prosecuted with the utmost
vigour till the capital Medain fell into the hands of the
invaders. On account of the unhealthiness of its site for
men accustomed to the pure air of the desert, they removed
the centre of government to two new places which rapidly
grew into the important cities of Kufa and Bussorah.
Meanwhile the movement in Syria was advancing.
Heraclius retired to Eoha (Edessa), and the Arabs under
Khalid defeated the Byzantine forces at Chalcis, and then
advanced on Aleppo, which they seized. A battle was
fought in the woods near Antioch, and this too went
against the Greeks, who were driven back to the city,
which was then invested. It soon capitulated. Thus the
great, rich capital of Syria, the centre of Christianity in the
province, fell into the hands of the Mohammedans. The
Bedouin Christians of Syria, who had never been very
fervent in their faith, for the most part went over to Islam ;
but the inhabitants of the cities remained true. These
people were treated with moderation ; their churches were
1 H BACIABIA- COT XE BACIABIA- IIANTflN- TON AIONON- KAD
H- AECIIOTEIA- COX- EN- nACH- TENEAI- KAI TENEAI.

170 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
not taken from them, and public Christian worship was
permitted. Heraclius now retreated to Constantinople,
admitting sadly that the valuable province of Syria was
lost to the empire.
Palestine was next invaded by armies under Amr' and
Shorahbil. At Jerusalem the patriarch Sophronius, as the
representative of the people, sued for peace. Omar attached
so much importance to the possession of the sacred city that
he travelled to Jabia — the first journey of a caliph out of
Arabia — and there met a deputation from the patriarch,
with whom he arranged terms of capitulation (A.D. 636).
Then he went up to Jerusalem and received Sophronius
and the citizens in a kindly manner, imposing a light tribute
and permitting the continued possession and use of all the
churches and shrines by the Christians. This event is of great
importance in view of subsequent history. When we come
to the time of the Crusaders and observe the fanatical fury
they exhibited while rescuing the holy sites from the hands
of the infidel, it will be well to recollect that the city had
been transferred to the Mohammedans without any resist
ance by the action of the Christian patriarch. Thus
Sophronius carried out under new circumstances the same
policy that Jeremiah had urged in vain upon his infatuated
contemporaries when an earlier invasion from the East was
coming up with a force that made resistance hopeless.
Much happened between the peaceful surrender of the city
in the seventh century to the courteous and reasonable
Omar and the wrongs and sufferings that provoked the
Crusades five hundred years later. The so-called Ordinance
of Omar attributes to the great caliph a number of humiliat
ing exactions for which he was not responsible and which
represent the accretions of succeeding years of despotism.
When the caliphate was established at Damascus and
Bagdad, the simple requirement of tribute was not deemed
enough to stamp the inferiority of the Christians. They
were to become marked men and women by wearing yellow
stripes in their dress; they were forbidden to ride on
horseback; if riding an ass or a mule it must be with

THE RISE AND SPREAD OF MOHAMMEDANISM 171
wooden stirrups and saddle knobs ; their graves were to be
level with the ground ; their children were prohibited the
instruction of Moslem masters ; no high office was to be
entrusted to them ; no new churches were to be erected ;
no cross was to remain outside a church ; no bells were to
be rung ; no processions were to be permitted at Easter or
any festal occasion ; the Mohammedans were to be allowed
free access to the holy sites. Worse was done apart from
any ordinances ; but these recognised rules were sufficient
to set a badge of inferiority on the Christians and restrain
the demonstration of their religion. Perhaps, however,
when we consider the intolerance practised between the
several parties in the Church one against another, often
amounting to serious persecution and sometimes breaking
out into bloodshed, we may still respect and honour the
comparative liberality and patience of their Mohammedan
masters. Arabia, however, presents an exception to this policy of
comparative tolerance. This was par excellence the land* of
Islam. Mohammed had said, " In Arabia there shall be no
faith but the faith of Islam." Accordingly an ancient body
of Christians in the province of Najran was driven into exile.*
Some settled in Syria, others near Kufa, both parties, it
will be observed, still under the Mohammedan government.
In the year 340 Amr' invaded Egypt. Approaching
the country in a south-westerly direction, he first subdued
Upper Egypt and thence descended on Alexandria. During
the siege Heraclius died ; the Greek naval troops took to
their ships and fled ; and the weakened garrison found it
necessary to capitulate. This saved the city from destruc
tion ; its Christian inhabitants like the Copts elsewhere
were treated leniently and merely put under tribute.
Nevertheless, here was another limb torn from the Eoman
Empire in the East. First Syria, next Egypt, two of the
most important provinces, had fallen into the hands of the
Arabs. The two great patriarchates of Antioch and Alex
andria now came under the yoke of the Mohammedan
government.

172 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
The case of Egypt is peculiarly important for the
glaring proofs it affords of the suicidaL policy of the Church
and State in preparing for the final collapse of the power of
both in this province. Chosroes had done great mischief in
his invasion ; but this came and went, while the oppression
of the imperial government was almost more intolerable,
because it was continuous. As Monophysites the Copts
were disowned by the Church and persecuted by the State.
In comparison with the Byzantine intolerance the yoke of
the Mohammedan government seemed easy. To these
ill-treated Copts the invader came as a deliverer. It was
the policy of the Arabs to favour the schismatics and
heretics among the Christians in order to weaken the
empire's power of resistance. These people have been
accused of directly aiding the infidels. While it cannot be
denied that in some cases they did so, the wholesale charges
brought against them by their opponents go beyond verifi
able facts. All down the course of history we have to
be* on our guard against the libels perpetrated against
heretics by the narrow-minded, passionate champions of
orthodoxy. But for the purposes of an invader mere
passivity and non-resistance would be almost as serviceable
as direct assistance. There was no question of patriotism.
From time immemorial the Egyptians had lived under
tyrannical masters, and certainly they had little reason to
cultivate a sentiment of loyalty to the Greek despot at
Constantinople who lent his forces to aid the Church of the
empire in punishing them for what they regarded as their
higher loyalty — their loyalty to Christ and truth.
Thus it came about that the Nestorians in Syria and
the Jacobites in Egypt — both out of favour with the Greek
government, because out of communion with the Greek
Church — found rest and protection under the aegis of
Islam. This fact needs to be grasped in all its wide-
reaching significance if we would account for the success of
the Mohammedan movement. But even at first the rest was
often disturbed and the protection accompanied by irksome
conditions, and it was not long before the mild sway of the

THE RISE AND SPREAD OF MOHAMMEDANISM 173
early caliphs was followed by the harsh and cruel tyranny
of their degenerate successors. Meanwhile the mischief
was done. The empire had lost its provinces ; the Church
was divided and insuperable barriers were raised against
reunion. Further, when we consider that, while theological
rancour ruled among the clergy, relic and image worship
was the most popular form of religion among the laity,
we can understand how the Mohammedan gained ground
by presenting to the world what on the face of it was a
purer faith. The wonder is that most of the Christians
remained true to their religion. No doubt there was much
genuine piety among the people of which history — chiefly
concerned with the quarrels of the clergy — does not con
descend to take account. That was the saving salt. We
come across pleasing instances of friendships between
nberal-minded caliphs and Christian scholars. Moham
medanism had its lessons to teach Christendom. Lastly,
the iconoclastic controversy, which became the next
disturbing movement in Eastern Christendom, can be
traced in a measure to the influence of Islam. It was
Mohammed's war against idols carried over into the
Church.

CHAPTER II
BYZANTINE ART
(a) Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. x. 4 ; Vit. Const, iii. 48, 50 ; Procopius,
de M&ificiis Justiniani, i. 1-3 ; Evagrius, Hist. Eccl. iv. 31.
(6) Fergusson, Handbook of Architecture, 1859 ; de Vogue, Eglises
de la Terre Sainte, 1860; Hiibsch, Alt. Christ. Kvrchen,
1862 ; Smith, Diet. Christ. Antiq., Articles : " Church,"
" Image," " Jesus Christ, Representations of " ; Mrs. Jameson
and Lady Eastlake, Hist, of our Lord . . . in Works of Art,
1864 ; Bayet, I' Art Byzantine, 1883 ; Leclerq, Manuel
d'Arche'ologie Chritienne, 1907.
The characteristics of Church life at this period are quite
as clearly impressed upon its art as upon its literature.
By studying the controversial writings of the time we
may be able to gain some insight into the intellectual con
ditions of bishops and other leading theologians ; but when
we look at the churches, with their paintings and mosaics,
many of which are still extant, onjjcome to imagine what
they are and were by means of plans, photographs, and
descriptions, we are really brought much nearer to the
actual lives of the men and women who constituted the
mass of Christendom in these days of the Greek Empire.
The iconoclastic controversy which broke out early in the
eighth century has forced the attention of historians to one
phase of this subject, and its importance cannot be weighed
or its significance appreciated till we have before our minds'
eye a vivid conception of the scenes amid which it moved.
But more than that, we need to have some idea of the
large place occupied by art in the Eastern Church in order
to understand the life and character of the people who
composed it. Dean Stanley pointed out that what music

BYZANTINE ART 175
is in the Western Church, pictures are in the Eastern. They
express the colour, the emotion, even the passion of religion.
In considering this subject we will look first at the
architecture of the churches, and then consider the pictorial
art with which their walls were clothed.
Byzantine architecture is the only style of building
that can be correctly denominated Christian architecture.
We are accustomed to assign that title to the Gothic order ;
but neither its area, its age, nor its origin justify us in
doing so. Our English cathedrals and the great churches
of France are sometimes described as embodiments of the
Christian idea, with its far-reaching mystery and its soar
ing aspiration. Those forests of clustered pillars and long
vaulted aisles, like avenues in stone, the fine pointed arches,
the "storied windows richly dight," the towers and spires
and pinnacles, the quiet side-chapels, the sheltered cloisters
— all contrast strongly with the ordered symmetry and clear
daylight beauty of the self-contained, perfect Greek temples.
Accordingly we have come to take them as expressive of
the essential difference between the spirit of Christianity and
the spirit of classical paganism. To be more accurate, we
should say that this Gothic, as rich in colour when it was
first produced as it was elaborate in form, really repre
sents only the mediaeval mind and life of north-west
Europe. It is Anglo-Saxon and Frankish. We meet
with little of it in southern Europe. In Italy the Eoman
and Eomanesque styles persisted till they blossomed into
the Eenaiscent. We have Gothic architecture in northern
Italy, in Tuscany, and to a small extent even in Eome,
but only as an exotic, a temporary, alien visitor. Its most
glorious product, Giotto's Campanile at Florence, that
work of jewellery in architecture, with its straight lines
and right angles, and its horizontal summit, has many
traces of the persistence of the Eomanesque about it.
Moreover, it must be admittted that on the whole
St. Paolo outside the city of Eome represents more truly
the earlier period of the Christian architecture of south
Europe and St. Peter's the later.

176 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Then, if we turn to the measurement of time, the
limited range of the Gothic art will be equally apparent.
It rose in the twelfth century and it declined in the
sixteenth ; it did not flourish in full vigour for more than
three or four hundred years. Even in the north it was
preceded by the Eomanesque, especially in the type
commonly called Norman, and it was followed by
Eenaiscent. In England the great Durham nave and
many another cathedral and church structure of the
twelfth century and earlier bear witness against the
unique claim of the pointed arch to represent antiquity,
and St. Paul's Cathedral is the plainest proof of its tran
sience. Christianity is nearly two thousand years old ; the
reign of Gothic architecture lasted less than one-fifth of
this time.
The third point concerns the question of origin.
Fanciful theories about the Gothic symbolism must give
place to sober conceptions of a very different kind when
we trace the early English and the corresponding
Continental styles to their origins. Then it is seen that
the pointed arch did not arise from a contemplation of
the effect produced by the crossing of round arches in
mural decoration — as at Norwich and many other places.
Structurally, it came from the desire to improve on the
Eoman barrel-shaped vault — to strengthen it by raising
its centre, so as to adapt it to the sloping roof by bringing
the top of the vault nearer to the ridge of the roof, and
at the same time to admit of the adjustment of transverse
vaulting for transepts, chapels, and windows. The pointed
window naturally followed the pointed vault above it. No
doubt northern requirements helped the evolution of certain
Gothic features. The steep roof would be useful for throw
ing off snow ; the large window would be good for light in a
dull and cloudy climate. This would admit of tracery, and
when stained glass was introduced it would be desirable for
it to become larger still. Then in turn the great windows,
by weakening the walls, would concentrate the weight and
thrust on what remained so as to necessitate the support

BYZANTINE ART 177
of buttresses, considered by some 1 to be the essential note
of Gothic architecture, its one invariably characteristic
feature. Thus we have the system of balance, thrust and
counter-thrust, and ultimately the skilful adjustment of
points of support and resistance to the total elimination
of constructive walls, as at Sainte Chapelle in Paris, at
Beauvais, and at Amiens. All this no doubt is a western
and northern development taking place within Christendom.
Still it is not exclusively religious architecture. We have
some of the finest specimens of Gothic in the cloth halls
and town halls of Ypres and Bruges, Louvain and Brussels.
The pointed arch is an importation from the East, where it
was used centuries before it appeared in the West. There,
however, it was not Christian in origin or usage, but
Saracenic It is no mere coincidence, therefore, that it was
adopted in Western Europe just after the Crusades, which
had reopened communication with the East. At the same
time this architecture was being directly developed by the
Mohammedan invaders of Sicily and by the Moors in
Spain. Now let us turn to Byzantine architecture. This has
dominated Eastern Christendom from the sixth century
to our own age. For fourteen hundred years it has been
the one system followed by the Oriental half of Christendom.
From the first it was conterminous with the Byzantine
Empire, and therefore it has extended as far as Eavenna
in Italy, the capital of the Exarchate, and given us one
of its most magnificent products in St. Mark's at Venice.
Further, this architecture is not only spread over a much
larger area and found to be flourishing for a much longer
period than the Gothic ; unlike that system, it can claim
a purely Christian origin. It was developed on Christian
soil and to serve Christian purposes. From the first it
was essentially Church architecture. It is the one style of
building that has been evolved for the express purpose
of meeting the requirements of Christian worship as this
is practised in the Greek Church. Gothic, as illustrated
1 e.g. Bond, Gothic Architecture.
12

178 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
in our cathedrals, is a northern adaptation of ideas, in
themselves independent of the Church, to the requirements
of mediaeval Catholicism north of the Alps ; Byzantine is
the one style of architecture that can claim to be ecclesi
astical both in its origin and in its intention.
Previous to the development of the Byzantine style,
the church building was an adaptation of Eoman archi
tecture to Christian uses. At first meetings were held
in rooms of houses, in a portico of the Jerusalem Temple,
perhaps in hired halls.1 The worship in the catacombs
was organised simply because there the brethren could
assemble at the tombs of the martyrs. Justin Martyr
declares that the Christians are not dependent on sacred
places for their meetings, as they can worship anywhere.2
Still, as the numbers grew it became necessary to have
buildings of sufficient size to hold large congregations. At
the same time the Church began, to acquire property in
buildings. We come across an instance of this during the
reign of Alexander Severus (a.d. 230) in Eome, and
again under Aurelian at Antioch (a.d. 270-275), when
the emperor was appealed to by the orthodox section of
the Church to decide their right to take possession of the
building at Antioch which Paul of Samosata had retained
in defiance of deposition by a council, so long as he had
enjoyed the patronage of Queen Zenobia. Aurelian
granted it to those "with whom the Christian bishops of
Italy and Eome were in correspondence." 3 By this time
there must have been many important church buildings.
The Diocletian persecution began with the destruction of
the great church at Nicodemia, in accordance with an
imperial edict for the general demolition of churches.4
With the time of Constantine we come to the great age
of church building, and now much more magnificent
structures appear than those of the period before the
1 e.g. Acts xix. 9— but this was for public discussion, not for Church
worship. 2 Martyrdom of Justin and Others, 2.
3 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vii. 27-30. * Ibid. viii. 2.

BYZANTINE ART 179
imperial recognition of Christianity. The emperor him
self was foremost in promoting the work, especially in
his new city of Constantinople, but also at Jerusalem
and Bethlehem.
The model for this church architecture was not the
pagan temple, which was manifestly unsuitable for the pur
poses of public worship. The temple was the home of a
god, not a place of assembly. Here priests sacrificed, and
worshippers prayed, made vows, brought votive offerings.
There were special festivals, and some temples were the
scenes of the celebration of mysteries. None of these
functions required the large assembly hall needed by a
Christian congregation. Accordingly, although in a few
cases, as with the Pantheon at Eome, a pagan temple came
to be consecrated as a Christian Church, the Christians did
not take the temple as the model for their place of
worship. They found this in the basilica, or Hall of
Justice, the Eoman law court. In consequence the large
churches have come to be called " basilicas." Eusebius
gives us the earliest description of such a church in his
account of the new building at Tyre, at the dedication of
which an Arian council was summoned. It stood in a great
open space enclosed by a wall, and was approached through
a magnificent portico,1 which led into a quadrangular
atrium,2 surrounded with interior porticoes, and having a
fountain in the centre for washing the hands and feet, as
we see now at Mohammedan mosques ; beyond the atrium
was the basilica proper,8 a building roofed with cedar wood
and, having side aisles and galleries. There were chairs4
for the bishop and his clergy round about the altar at the
end of the church, fenced off from the rest of the nave with
lattice work.5 The Apostolical Constitutions knows of no
such separation between the clergy and the laity, showing
that this significant barrier must have been quite a recent
innovation, for our present redaction of that work cannot
be earlier than the fourth century. Yet we read in
1 trpbirvKov. '* afflpiov. 3 /SacrfXeios oTkos.
* 0p6voi. 6 Eusebius, Hist, Eccl. x. 4.

180 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
it the following directions for the arrangement of a
church ; —
" And first, let the building be long, with its head to
the east, with its vestries on both sides at the east end ;
and so it will be like a ship.1 In the middle let the
bishop's chair be placed, and on each side of him let the
presbytery sit down ; and let the deacons stand near at
hand, in close and small girt garments, for they are like
the mariners and managers of the ship : with regard to
these, let the laity sit on the other side, with all quietness
and good order. And let the women sit by themselves,
they also keeping silence. In the middle let the reader
stand upon some high place." 2
This may be taken as the method followed down to
the fourth century. The separation of the clergy from
the laity by a screen tended to assimilate the Eucharist
still more to the pagan mysteries, and to make it a
sacrifice offered by the priest rather than a meal, partici
pation in which by the people is its principal function.
Although the Western Church adopted the full sacrificial
idea it did not screen off the clergy as that was done in
the Eastern Churches ; it was content with a slight railing,
leaving the officiating minister full in view. Here we
have one of the most striking differences between Eastern
and Western Churches.
From the time of Constantine to the age of Justinian
the Eoman style of basilica prevailed. In the sixth
century the new order which we know as Byzantine
appears, and the rise of it synchronises with the great
impulse to church building that was given by the latter
emperor. This development may be attributed in part to
the influence of Persian architecture on the Greek branch of
the empire.3 But although the stimulus came from the
Eastern neighbour, the system itself was a legitimate
development of the preceding Eoman style. That was not
1 "<"$s = nave. * Apost. Const, ii. 57.
"Fergusson regards Byzantine architecture as a combination of Roman
and Sasanian, See Handbook of Architecture, p. 945.

BYZANTINE ART 181
an original style, nor was it true to any central idea. It
was mainly a combination of the Eoman arch with the
Greek column and architrave. But the combination was
really superfluous, for structurally the arch dispensed with
the architrave. Accordingly the columns and architraves
were relegated to the surface of the walls for decorative
purposes. They were mere survivals, and Byzantine archi
tecture dispensed with them altogether as superfluities,
being content to have plainer exteriors, while the whole
attention of the decorator was devoted to the elaborate
adornment of the interior with gold, mosaic, and mural
painting. The Eomans invented the dome and left the most
magnificent specimen of that daring structure in the Pan
theon ; but they did not develop this original idea, seeing
that they could only apply it to round buildings. Since
they required length in their basilica they made use of the
arch for its roof, simply prolonging this in the form of
a barrel. Now the primary characteristic of Byzantine
architecture is its development of the method of roofing
with domes. The most perfect specimen of this work is
the great church of St. Sophia at Constantinople, which
it was the pride of Justinian to have built. Two earlier
churches had been burnt — Constantine's church in A.D.
404, at the time of Chrysostom, and its successor in
AD. 532. Strictly speaking, Justinian's St. Sophia — still
standing and now used as a mosque — is not typical
Byzantine architecture. It is quite unique. Nothing of
the kind had preceded it ; it was never successfully
imitated. Its famous architect, Anthemius, has the proud
distinction of having produced a work without peer or
parallel in all the ages of building. " St. Sophia," says
M. Bayet, " has the double advantage of marking the
advent of a new style and reaching at the same time such
proportions as have never been surpassed in the East." 1
The most essential trait of this invention and its crowning
lL'Art Byzantine, p. 41. Cf. L. M. Phillips, "Santa Sophia" in
Contemporary Review, No. 493, pp. 55-76.

182 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
glory is the adaptation of the dome, which hitherto had
only appeared on round buildings, to a rectangular building
by means of a series of lesser domes filling up the angle
spaces and mounting one above another, till the great
central dome soars over all, and the whole cluster looked
at from beneath has the effect of cavernous vaults in a vast-
ness of lofty space. The Byzantine architecture which
followed also adapted the dome to rectilineal lines, some
times by having the building beneath it octagonal, or by
means of other devices, but never with any approach to the
glory of St. Sophia.
While this structural triumph of genius is the chief
peculiarity of St. Sophia, another feature of Jus
tinian's basilica, being more easily imitated, has become
a marked characteristic of Byzantine architecture. This
is its wealth of decorative splendour. In the decoration
of St. Sophia the richest materials — gold, silver, ivory,
precious stones — were used with incredible prodigality.
The great dome was constructed with white tiles from
Ehodes, one - fifth the weight of ordinary tiles. Soon
after it had been completed it was thrown down by
an earthquake. It was rebuilt more strongly, and it
has stood through nearly fourteen centuries till our own
time. The ambo placed near the centre, made of most
beautiful marbles and surmounted with a dome and cross
of gold, consumed one year's Egyptian revenue. The
choir was separated from the nave by a solid silver screen.
The altar was of gold set with jewels beneath a gold
dome and cross sustained by four silver columns. The
interior surfaces of domes and walls were completely
covered with immense mosaics, consisting of majestic
figures, on a ground in some places of gold, in others of a
deep blue colour ; some of these however were later than
the time of Justinian. At night, when the whole. building
was lit up with the scattered radiance of 6,000 candelabras,
the effect must have been superb. Justinian appears to
have been more proud of his basilica at Constantinople
than of the conquests of his great general Belisarius,

BYZANTINE ART 183
which gave him back for a time the best part of the lost
western half of the empire, or the codification of Eoman law
with which his name has become most familiarly associated
in later history. Truth will not allow us to think that
this work was executed solely for the glory of God. Very
significant of the spirit in which all its splendour was
produced is Justinian's famous explanation in comtempla-
tion of it : "I have beaten thee, Solomon." 1
While in its peculiar glory of construction St. Sophia
was never followed by subsequent builders, there is a
church at Salonica that appears to be an imitation of it,
and from the period of Justinian the Latin basilica form
declines and we have churches with domes, plain exterior
walls, and rich interior decoration of gold surfaces, mosaics,
frescoes, and elaborate capitals — the best known of which is
St. Mark's at Venice. Earlier Byzantine work is illus
trated in the West at Eavenna and in Sicily. It is the
prevalent style of Greek church architecture.
Manuscripts now began to imitate the architectural
decorative style. The Laurentian monastery at Florence
contains a Syriac MS. executed as early as a.d. 586,
with beautiful Byzantine decorations on nearly every

At the same time sculpture declined. There were
statues of emperors and bas-reliefs of religious scenes in
the earlier period, but sculpture was rarely if ever used in
the East for statues of Christ, the Virgin, or saints. This
is a point in which the Eastern Church differs from the
Western, where statuary is a marked feature of church
decoration and comes into close connection with worship.
There are no statues in Eastern churches. The icono
clastic dispute to which our attention will next be directed,
though commonly described as concerned with " image
worship," refers to pictures, the only kind of images
worshipped in the Greek part of Christendom. There
never was any Church decree to forbid the use of solid
images. It appears to have been by a sort of tacit
1 NeW/oj/ca <re 2o\o/ju&v.

184 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
understanding and mutual consent that they were ruled
out. At first the horror of pagan idolatry was sufficient
to preclude Christian idolatry. Subsequently, no doubt,
the fierce Mohammedan war on idols would keep the
Eastern Christians from following the example of their
Western brethren for very shame. When the image wor
shippers were opposed by the Iconoclasts on the ground
of idolatry, they could better defend their pictures than
they could have defended statues which would have been
very like the pagan idols. Sculpture was now only used for
bas-reliefs on ambos and for other architectural decorative
purposes. At Eavenna the human figure is neglected, and
we have lambs, doves, peacocks, vases of water, mono
grams, crosses. A seventh century work at Venice repre
sents the apostles as twelve lambs.
The religious veneration given to pictures never cor
responds to their artistic merits. Some of the ugliest
paintings have received the highest honours owing to their
antiquity, their legendary origin, or the miraculous powers
with which they have been credited. In the church of St.
Sylvester at Eome there is the portrait of Christ said to
have been sent to Abgarus of Edessa, given to the church
of St. Sophia at Constantinople, and thence transferred to
its present resting-place. Among the relics at the Vatican
is the portrait, according to the legend, impressed on the
handkerchief which St. Veronica lent to the Saviour on His
way to the Cross. These two most precious of all pictures,
regarded from the standpoint of the adoring worshipper, do
not come into the region of Christian art. They belong
to the fantastic category of relics. The earliest Christian
art of which we have remains in the catacombs is entirely
after the model of contemporary Greek and Eoman painting.
Its subjects are chiefly Biblical or allegorical — Daniel in
the Lion's Den, the Good Shepherd, etc. ; and its spirit is
cheerful. During the days of persecution the Christians did
not take pleasure in the contemplation of torture ; nor did
they then represent the ascetic type of face. Pictures of
the Crucifixion come later, and so do representations of fasting

BYZANTINE ART 185
saints and suffering martyrs. The serene, youthful appear
ance of Jesus, sometimes symbolised by Orpheus, or
modelled on the type of Apollo, gives place in the Byzantine
period to the exalted Christ, the King on His throne,
glorious, majestic, awful to approach. The walls of
Byzantine churches were decorated in fresco or mosaic
with illustrations of Old and New Testament history. The
purpose of this was educational, in order that, as St. Nilus
said, " Those who could not read the Scriptures could learn
from the pictures the good actions of those who have
served God faithfully." For the same reason scenes of
martyrdom, which the early Christians had avoided, were
now rendered with brutal realism. Originally the object
in view was as innocent as our modern illustrated Bibles,
Bchool-room pictures, and mission-hall lantern exhibitions.
Then first the picture of Christ was worshipped, then
pictures of the Virgin and of saints came in for similar
adoration. Although the iconoclastic dispute led to an immense
destruction of pictures, it does not seem probable that many
valuable works of art were lost to the world in this way. But
the victory of the image worshippers gave a great impulse
to the arts of painting and mosaic work which was followed
by a veritable renaissance in the Greek Church. Here,
then, we come upon one of the points at which it is incum
bent upon us to free our minds from the narrowness
of Western prepossessions if we would understand the
very different course of Church history -in the East. We
are accustomed to regard the period between the short,
brilliant epoch of Charles the Great and Alcuin on the
Continent and King Alfred and Bede in England on the
one hand, and the great revival under St. Bernard, with the
subsequent rise of scholasticism and Gothic architecture
on the other, as containing emphatically " the dark ages."
No doubt the lamp of learning was kept alive by the
monks even during this gloomy period ; but the flame did
little more than shed a mild radiance through the dim
cloisters. Any MS. decoration of this period is Byzantine

186 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
in character. Western art was dead. But at this very
time art was reviving in the East and attaining to a life
and a freedom which it had never reached before. It
might have advanced still further, had not the Crusades,
which promised deliverance for the holy sites of the East
from the desecration of the infidel, brought ruin and misery
to the Greek Christiana.

CHAPTER III
THE ICONOCLASTIC REFORMS
(a) Nicephorus, Antirrhetica ; Theophanes, Chronographia ; Letters
of Popes in Mansi, xii and xiii.
(6) Pinlay, History of the Byzantine Empire, Book I. ; Hefele,
History of the Councils, Eng. trans., vol. v. ; Freeman,
Historical Essays, Series in., 1892 ; Oman, Byzantine Empire,
1886 ; Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire, vol. ii., 1889.
Nothing is more remarkable in the history of the Eastern
portion of the Eoman Empire centred at Constantinople
than its repeated revival after what may well have
appeared to be hopeless decay and ruinous devastation.
We shall make a great mistake if we think of it as simply
characterised by Gibbon's classic title. This is by no
means merely the story of a " Decline and Fall." First we
have Constantine founding his new city on the Bosphorus
and going far to make it the centre of the civilised world.
Then, although the Germanic tribes repeatedly sacked and
desolated Old Eome, they could do little more in the East
than make raids into Greece, leaving Constantinople on one
side as beyond their reach. Two hundred years after the
founding of this city which stood for all that was most
splendid and powerful in Eastern Europe, in a time of
revival, while the great General Behsarius was regaining
the lost territory of the empire in Africa and the south
west, his master Justinian was beautifying Constantinople
and other Greek cities with unparalleled architectural
splendour. Another hundred years passes, and we see the
Eastern Empire ravaged by Persia and brought to the brink
of ruin. Then the gifted Heraclius turns the tide of victory,
187

188 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
wrests the stolen provinces from the hands of the invader,
and presses far into his enemy's territory with crushing
effect. No sooner has this military miracle been achieved
than a new and totally unexpected enemy comes up from
the desert and defeats the victorious Byzantine power, to
the amazement and dismay of the empire. The Arabs,
fired by the new creed of Islam, tear off Syria, Egypt, and
southern regions farther West, leaving only a mutilated
torso to represent the ancient Eoman Empire. Yet in vain
does the mighty flood gather to sweep this remnant away.
Constantinople still remains a virgin fortress, impregnable.
Miserable times follow. The Mohammedans raid Asia Minor ;
tribes from the Danubian countries pour over Macedonia and
Greece ; the empire is virtually reduced to the limits of
the one city of Constantinople. Now indeed it might
appear as though the ancient Eoman dominion in the East
were approaching final dissolution. But that is not to be
its fate. It has been called "effete," but still it displays
marvellous vitality.
What is the explanation of this remarkable -vitality ?
In part, the persistence of the empire through all the
vicissitudes of fortune is to be attributed to its just
judicature and skilful administration of government. The
Eoman law was well applied all through these changing
times, and the machinery of government was worked with
scientific exactness. Nowhere else in the world was the
art of government so ably practised. Constantinople was
the centre of civilisation in politics as well as in art and
letters. Still, civilisation cannot be self-supporting. If
the vigour of the early caliphs had been preserved by
their successors no human power could have saved the
world from the overthrow of the Christian religion as
well as the destruction of European culture. Even after
the ardour of missionary zeal among the Mohammedans
had cooled they were still formidable, and when rein
forced by the Turks, almost invincible. Then deliverance
came from one of the most powerful men of history. It
has been pointed out that while Charles Martel has

THE ICONOCLASTIC REFORMS 189
been immortalised for having checked a Moorish raid in
the West that had nearly spent its force, and that could
never have resulted in the permanent subjection of Europe,
a much greater man who achieved a much greater feat
has missed his laurels, partly because his action as a
heretic offended the Church, but no doubt partly also
because his achievements were carried out in the East.
This man was Leo the Isaurian — Leo in. — the hero of
Finlay's Byzantine history, a rough, uneducated peasant
from a remote part of Asia Minor, who is said to have first
attracted attention by bringing a present of sheep to the
reigning emperor, but a man of genius, vigour, and
character. Leo founded a dynasty of able rulers who held the
Eastern Empire together for generations, while the last
relics of the Western Empire were in the melting-pot, out
of which issued the nations of modern Europe. His own
mighty task was to put an effectual and final stop to the
Arab encroachments. Syria and Egypt were lost for
ever; but Leo retained and strengthened all the empire
north of the Mediterranean, remodelled the system of
government, and established a military power that put an
end to the danger of the swamping of Christianity by Islam.
Here then is a man deserving of the highest honour by the
Church, since in proving himself the saviour of the empire he
became also the deliverer of the Church, with which it was
to so great an extent conterminous. In spite of this fact,
his own action in the Church called down on his head
execrations instead of benedictions. Let us proceed to
examine this remarkable phenomenon.
Leo seized the imperial power at a crisis of confusion in
the year 716. Ten years later he issued an edict ordering
the destruction of the sacred pictures. It has been com
monly supposed that he first ordered them to be raised to a
higher position on the walls so that the people could not
reach up to kiss them. But the only authority for this
opinion is the Latin translation of the life of the monk
Stephen, on which Baronius bases his assertion of it. On

190 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the other hand, Hefele has demonstrated that this must be
a mistake. For one thing, many of the pictures were
frescoes that could not be moved. There is a letter from
the pope protesting against the destruction of images
which we must date earlier than the year 730 ; but that
year is the date commonly assigned for a second edict
which is taken to be the earliest order for the demolition of
the pictures. The decree does not appear to have been
widely operative. But one of the first actions, if not the
very first, taken in execution of the emperor's orders led to
serious trouble. It was a daring deed, for it was the
destruction of the most conspicuous and in some respects
the most sacred of all the pictures. This was a representa
tion of Christ over the great brass gates at Constantinople,
which was reputed to work miraculous cures. Officials
mounted a ladder in spite of the screaming protests of a
mob of women, and one of them rudely smashed his axe
into the face. Thereupon the exasperated women seized the
ladder, flung the sacrilegious officials to the ground, and
murdered them on the spot. Other scenes of violence
followed in various places.
Now the question is, What led Leo to take this step
and so to come into conflict with his people's religion?
The action was his own ; if it was a reformation, it was an
imperial, not a popular reformation. The author of the
article on Leo III. in Smith's Dictionary of Biography seems
to sympathise with the old orthodox view of the case,
according to which the emperor was a heretic denying the
actual humanity of Christ, and therefore the possibility of
representing our Lord by any picture. This was a charge
frequently brought against the Iconoclasts by the defenders
of images. It has been pointed out that Leo's old home in
Isauria was a seat of Monophysitism. But we have no
proof whatever of the existence of this subtle theological
motive at the basis of Leo's policy, although it may be
allowed that the atmosphere of the church of his youth
would have predisposed him to turn with disgust from the
materialism of the popular religion. We must look deeper

THE ICONOCLASTIC REFORMS 191
into the history of the whole question in order to under
stand the emperor's reasons for his revolutionary policy.
More than a century before this, Serenus, bishop of Mar
seilles, flung all the pictures out of his church, an act
of vandalism which drew down upon his head a letter of
mild rebuke from Gregory the Great. The pope then
took occasion to explain the use of pictures and to guard
against the idolatrous abuse of them. " You ought not to
have broken what was put up in the churches, not for
adoration," he says, " but merely for the promotion of rever
ence. It is one thing to worship an image, and another to
learn represented in the image what we ought to worship.
For what the Scriptures are for those who can read, that
a picture is for those who are unable to read; for in
this also the uneducated see in what way they have to
walk. In it they read who are not acquainted with the
Scriptures." 1
No statement of the case could be more unexcep
tionable. The stiffest Puritan would be hard put to
it to answer such an argument. Not only stained-glass
windows, but illustrated Bibles and lantern services are
justified to-day on similar grounds. But the pope's argu
ment is one thing, and the people's practice another.
In point of fact, throughout the East at the time of Leo
the pictures were worshipped. The physical act of kissing
them was called worship, and this act was made illegal
by the iconoclastic emperors. But over and above that,
pictures and relics were often treated as fetishes and
venerated for their supposed miraculous cures. No doubt
there would be all gradations from the aesthetic pursuit
of art among the cultured and the simple contemplation
of pictorial lessons on the part of the devout, to the
grossest idolatry and magic-mongery among the more
degraded and superstitious. It was against the popular
adoration of the images that Leo was fighting.
We must remember that at this very time the em
peror's great rival was the caliph, and the standing
1 Lib. ix. Ep. 9.

192 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
menace to Christianity the religion of Islam which made it
the first duty of the faithful to extirpate idolatry. The
case for Mohammedanism was strengthened by the exist
ence of idolatry in the Christian Church, and a wise Chris
tian ruler might well be anxious to remove that scandal
from his cause. Only two years before Leo took action
the caliph was vigorously engaged in destroying the
pictures among the Christian churches in his dominion.
Naturally enough this similarity of policy' led the image
worshippers to accuse their fellow Christian Iconoclasts of
treasonable connections with the Mohammedans. At the
seventh oecumenical council (II Nicaea, a.d. 787) the monk
John accused Constantine, bishop of Nacolia in Phrygia, of
collusion with the caliph. This bishop, who had been
actively engaged in tearing down the images in his own
district, came to Constantinople to consult the Patriarch
Germanus on the subject. He got no encouragement in
that quarter. Germanus was a staunch supporter of image
worship, and in the case of this bold bishop we have a rare
instance of independence on the part of the head ecclesiastic
of the Greek Church at Constantinople in opposition to the
emperor, which is in marked contrast to the too common
subservience of the Constantinople patriarchs. But that
fact makes it all the more remarkable that Leo should have
so acted as to stir up a hornets' nest just when he was
consolidating his power for the security of the empire.
The fair and reasonable explanation is that which is also
most simple and straightforward, namely, that we should
accept the emperor's own declared motive as genuine. He
regarded image worship as idolatry. He saw that Chris
tianity as a spiritual faith was becoming swamped and
drowned in the grossest superstition. The pictures were
actually idols. The people were satisfied to kiss and adore
them; in illness they resorted to them for miraculous
cures; if they had any other religious practice to which
they attached weight, it was the treasuring of relics.
Perhaps the reason why Leo did not attack this also was
that it was practised in private. The relics were the

THE ICONOCLASTIC REFORMS 193
Christian Lares and Penates. They were, like Eachel's
teraphim, survivals in the home of a kind of superstition
not so openly observed in public. But the pictures were
in the churches or out in the open air, and the adoration
of them was public. Here was an overt public super
stition which could be directly attacked. That this is not
too harsh a verdict on the popular image worship is proved
by the serious commotion that the emperor's policy aroused.
If no more than Gregory the Great's didactic use of pictures
had been in practice, people would not have been so pro
foundly stirred at the removal of their lesson illustrations.
What roused them to fury was the idea that the emperor
was taking away their idols, their gods. Thus this very
passion of opposition justified Leo's theory of the system
he was attacking. In a word, Leo was a reformer, a
protestant, a man who saw the fatal character of the
materialistic religion of his day, and endeavoured to alter it.
Nevertheless Leo made two serious mistakes. First,
he acted solely on his own initiative and by force. His
reformation was purely a State action ; there was no popular
movement supporting it. Such a reformation, coming on to
the Church from without, does not stir up an internal
revival of better things. Secondly, it was negative, only
destructive; it did nothing to substitute a new living
religion for the old superstition. Leo was no Luther. It
is the positive revival of religion alone that can effect
genuine reformation.
Still, while we must admit these two damaging factors
of the case, we may hold that the emperor's motive was
good and honest and enlightened. In point of fact, there
was some revival of religion under the iconoclastic em
perors, and it was accompanied by a betterment of morals.
The period that followed Leo's reforms was a real im
provement on that which preceded ¦ it. Mr. Bury holds
that the Iconoclasts should not be regarded as Puritans ;
that it would be more correct to consider them to be
Eationalists.1 Certainly they did not anticipate the grim
1 Bury, History of Later Roman Empire, vol. ii. p. 429.
'3

194 . THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
rigour which is associated with Puritanism in Sir Walter
Scott's novels. The reverse was the case ; they introduced
gay living into court and city, and set their faces against
the ascetic ideal cherished by the monks. Nevertheless
they were not unlike the true English Puritans of Eliza
beth's time, the men who discarded " vain traditions " in
order to have the Church governed by " the pure word of
God," and who opposed the more materialistic ritual in
favour of inward religion.
It has been maintained that one aim of Leo and his
successors in suppressing image worship was to oppose the
influence of the monks. Now it is a fact that, while the
parish priests for the most part submitted tamely to the
imperial orders, as became government officials, the monks
stoutly resisted them, for it was in the monasteries that the
liberty of the Church was cherished.
Besides, while the monks opposed imperial interference
in ecclesiastical affairs, they were out of favour with the
authorities on other grounds also. Monasticism was the
deadliest enemy of militarism, and that in two ways. The
monks would not fight ; and therefore the monasteries were
draining the empire of a large part of its able-bodied
citizens, and these especially the men of grit. At the
same time their celibate life was keeping down the popula
tion, and so, as has been pointed out earlier in this book,
rendering the provinces too weak to withstand the onrush
of teeming multitudes of more prolific races that hovered
on their borders.
While, however, all this is worthy of consideration, it
will not account for Iconoclasm, for Leo could have found
other means of opposing monasticism, and means which
would not have enlisted the populace in its favour. It
was bad policy to select a ground of attack which involved
a direct assault on the religion of the people. Turn where
we may for an explanation, we are driven back to the con
clusion that the iconoclastic enterprise was a reformation
movement, the aim of which was to save Christianity from
degenerating into the merely mechanical performances of

THE ICONOCLASTIC REFORMS 195
idolatry. It may be remarked as a further confirmation of
this position that both Leo and his son Constantine opposed
Maryolatry.1 The execution of Leo's orders met with violent opposi
tion ; but as this was combined with resistance to a harsh
and burdensome system of taxation, it is difficult to appor
tion the relative forces of the two influences. There were
risings in Italy and in Greece. The imperial fleet in the
Cyclades mutinied, and was accompanied by one of the
imperial armies in an attack on Constantinople, carrying
with it a man named Cosmas, whom the rebels elected
emperor. The expedition turned out to be a disastrous
failure. Leo defeated the fleet on its approach to Con
stantinople by means of "Greek Fire." The commander
Agallianos plunged fully armed into the sea and was
drowned. Cosmas was taken alive and executed. So was
another leader. But Leo treated the rest of the insurgents
with leniency. His action throughout was milder than
that of Constantine, his son and successor.
Writers of later times 2 have charged Leo with one
act of inconceivable barbarity. Near the bronze bazaar
at Constantinople was an imperial institution consisting
of a library and a theological college, presided over by
a scholar entitled the " Oecumenical Doctor," with whom
twelve learned men were associated for the instruction of
the students, the whole body being supported from the
public funds. Leo was in the habit of consulting these
professors, and he naturally turned to them to join him
in his policy of reform. It would have been a great point
to have gained a verdict of theological science from such
an authority. That however was refused him. Then,
according to the incredible story of the later writers, the
emperor had faggots heaped against the building, set
them on fire, and so burnt the library and with it the
" Oecumenical Doctor " and his twelve colleagues. No con
temporary writer mentions any such atrocity. Theophanes
1 For proofs see authorities cited in Bury, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 428, note 1.
' e.g. Zonaras and George the Sinner.

196 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
merely remarks curtly that Leo put an end to "pious
education " and shut up the educational institutions.1
In other matters Leo now proceeded further towards
what we know as Protestantism. He gave up the inter
cession of the saints and the worship of relics.2 At first
he had only interfered with pictures outside the churches ;
subsequently he carried on his Iconoclasm within their
walls. A later decree forbade anybody even to make a
picture of a saint, martyr, or angel ; all these things were
accursed. This was a condemnation of sacred art in itself.
It was a great annoyance to Leo that Germanus the
patriarch of Constantinople stoutly opposed his reforming
action, and quite contrary to precedent for this man to be
showing a spirit of independence more like that of his
brother at Eome than anything the Eastern Empire was
accustomed to. The emperor sent for Germanus (a.d. 729)
and expostulated with him, but in vain. Leo even appears
to have tried to entangle the intrepid old man in a charge
of treason ; but this unworthy device also failed3 In
January, A.D. 730, Leo held a Silentium* in support of his
policy. This was a civil council that had no authority
over the Church. Nevertheless it was impossible for the
patriarch to retain his office in face of the government's
disapproval, and therefore he quietly retired. Here we
see the difference between the East and the West. A
Eoman pontiff would have held his ground and defied the
emperor to do his worst. Germanus was aS intrepid as
any pope. But it is one thing to be defiant to a distant
potentate when supported by enthusiastic followers in a
position of virtual independence, which was the case with
the pope in the West ; and quite another thing to show
independence under the very shadow of the imperial palace
in the East, where for generations the Church has meekly
submitted to the patronage of the State. Germanus never
wavered from his convinced policy. When, at last, a
venerable man ninety years old, he saw that he could
* Theophanes, i. 623. * Ibid. p. 625. » Ibid. p. 626 ff.
* i.e. A consultative assembly.

THE ICONOCLASTIC REFORMS 197
never hope to give effect to that policy, he resigned his
office. Gregory m. was now pope at Eome. He had sent to
Leo for the emperor's confirmation of his election, and he
had not been consecrated till it had arrived. This was
the last occasion on which a pope solicited approval of
his appointment from Constantinople. Now Leo's action
in the iconoclastic crusade greatly angered Gregory, who
assembled a council at Eome which excommunicated the
Iconoclasts. The emperor replied by confiscating all the
pope's estates in the Eastern provinces, and by separating
the ecclesiastical government of south Italy, Sicily, and
other parts farther east from the jurisdiction of Eome, and
transferring it to the patriarch of Constantinople. Gregory
wrote to Germanus saying that if anybody misuses the
words of the Old Testament, which were only directed
against idolatry, " we can only hold him to a barking dog."
This was before the Silentium. After that council had
been followed by the resignation of Germanus, the pope
wrote to the emperor explaining his views and justifying
the use of images. He urged that this did not involve
idolatry. The Israelites were commanded to make images
of cherubim. Leo had compared himself to Uzziah — he
meant Hezekiah, who destroyed the brazen serpent. " Yes,"
says Gregory, " Uzziah was your brother, and like you he
did violence to the priests." *
Leo m. died in the year 741 and was succeeded by his
son Constantine v., nicknamed " Copronymus," after an
infantile misdemeanour which occurred when the patriarch
was plunging him into the baptismal font.2 The name
clung to him in later years and was used as an encourage
ment for the foulest calumnies concerning his conduct. No
emperor was ever bespattered with more disgusting accusa
tions, but seeing that these were flung at him by bitter
enemies in the fury of the iconoclastic contest no historical
value can be attached to them. The devastating plague
1 Mansi, xii. p. 959 If. ; Hardouin, iv. p. 1 ff.
* Theophanes, p. 615.

198 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
which swept over the empire and reached Constantinople in
747 was regarded by the populace as a judgment of heaven
on the sin of Iconoclasm. Unfortunately Constantine
cannot be exonerated from the charge of cruelty. He went
to greater lengths than his father in the suppression of
image worship, and even carried on a severe persecution to
the extent of torture. The protestant spirit of the icono
clastic movement which appeared in Leo was also seen in
Constantine, for he was accused of rejecting the intercession
of the Virgin Mary, though it was allowed that he called
her the mother of God — as would be expected if there was
any connection between Iconoclasm and Monophysitism ;
and, further, he was charged with denying the transference
of the merits of the martyrs.
Constantine was superseded for a time by his brother-
in-law Artavasdos, who was acknowledged by the pope and
who restored the pictures to the churches. On recovering
his power, Constantine had the eyes of Artavasdos and his
two sons put out and then exhibited the miserable men in
triumph at the chariot races, after which they were im
prisoned in a monastery.
Constantine now consolidated his government and
proved himself to be a vigorous ruler in Church as well
as in State affairs. More than ever the ecclesiastical
discipline of the East came to be concentrated at Constanti
nople and controlled by the emperor. He ordered the
metropolitans and provincials to hold provincial synodB,
and convoked a general council which met at Constanti
nople in the year 754, and was attended by 338 bishops.1
But though this was probably the largest Church council
that had ever been held, the patriarchs of Antioch, Alex
andria, and Jerusalem — being now in the Saracen dominions
— were unable to attend it ; nor were- any bishops from
the Western Church present. It could not therefore be
taken as an oecumenical council. This council forbade the
employment of images and pictures in churches as a pagan
practice, condemned the use of the crucifix, proscribed " the
1 Theophanes, p. 654.

THE ICONOCLASTIC REFORMS 199
godless art of painting," and ordered all who made cruci
fixes or pictures for worship in the churches to be excom
municated by the Church and punished by the State. Two
years later image worship was proscribed with greater
severity than ever, and so were both the use of relics and
the practice of praying to the saints. Many monks and
clergy were banished for their disobedience to these orders ;
some were flogged, tortured, and mutilated.
The most popular defender of image worship was the
abbot Stephen, who has been so highly honoured in the
Greek Church as a saint and martyr that he bears the name
of " Stephen the younger " by comparison with the proto-
martyr. According to the story of his life written half a
century later, in the year 763 Constantine Copronicus sent
an order to this monk, who was resident at Mount St.
Auxentius, to sign the decree of the Constantinople council.
On his refusal he was dragged by soldiers from his cave and
imprisoned with some other monks for six days without
food. Liberated for a time, he was seized again on libellous
charges, dragged once more from his cave, beaten, tortured,
and banished to the island of Proconnesus in the Propontis.
Here a number of monks, driven from their cells by the
persecution, gathered round their hero and leader. Thus
his place of exile was becoming a rallying point for the
forces of opposition to the government policy, or, as it would
be regarded at headquarters, a nest of sedition. So Stephen
was arrested a third time, bound hand and foot, and carried
off to Constantinople, where he was flung into the great
prison of the Praetorium, together with 342 mutilated
monks, some of whom had had their ears, noses, or hands
cut off, their eyes gouged out, or their beards smeared with
pitch and fired. The saint turned the prison into a
monastery for worship and meditation. He was put on his
trial and condemned to death. A saying attributed to
Constantine may help to account for the vindictive fury
with which Stephen was treated. Seeing how popular the
monk was and how obstinately he maintained his cause,
Constantine is reported to have declared that Stephen was

200 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
emperor and that it was only this man who was obeyed.
Thereupon — as in the case of Henry n.'s impatient ex
clamation about Thomas a Becket — obsequious attendants
took action. The imperial bodyguard dashed into the
prison, dragged the bold monk out into the street, and
there battered him to death with clubs and stones.1
Euthless conduct such as this provoked fierce opposition
on the part of the image worshippers. The patriarch of
Constantinople was suspected of taking part in a con
spiracy against the emperor. He was deposed, tried, and
condemned to death. Thereupon he confessed himself an
Iconoclast ; but no mercy was shown him. He was set on
an ass with his face towards the tail and conducted in this
insulting way to the amphitheatre, where he was beheaded.
The persecution had now become much more than an
iconoclastic reformation. It had developed into a brutal
attack on monasticism. The victims were no longer painted
pictures; they were living men. As at the English Ee-
formation, there was a " dissolution of monasteries." But
this was less general, and more cruel Where the monks
were turned out of their monasteries, these buildings were
converted into taverns. Constantine degraded himself in
his attempt to degrade his ecclesiastical enemies. He com
pelled a number of monks to march round the circus at
Constaninople hand in hand with women — either nuns or
persons of less respectable character ; 2 it is not clear which.
1 Vita Stephani in Analecta, pp. 546 ff. Hefele admits that this is
largely legendary (Hist, of Councils, v. p. 323).
a Theophanes, p. 676 ; Nicephorus, p. 83 ; Zonaras, xv. 5.

CHAPTER IV
THE RESTORATION OF IMAGE WORSHIP
(a) Nicephorus, Antirrhetica ; Theophanes, Chronographia ; John
of Damascus (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers) ; Theodore of
Studium (Migne, xcix.) ; Mansi, xiii.
(6) Finlay, Hist. Byzantine Empire, Book I. ; Hefele, History of
the Councils, Eng. Trans., vol. v. ; Bury, Later Rom. Empire,
vol. ii, 1889 ; Alice Gardner, St. Theodore of Studium, 1905.
The war of the Byzantine emperors against image worship
falls into two periods, being broken by an interval of a
generation during which the practice was revived and
encouraged by the government. The first period, consist
ing of the reigns of Leo the Isaurian and his son Constan
tine Copronicus, lasted for nearly half a century (from
Leo's first decree in ad. 726 to the death of Constantine
in 775). This was followed by thirty-eight years of peace
to the image worshippers, when the custom so dear to the
hearts of the monks and the populace flourished again under
the favour of the court as well as with the unvarying
approval of the Church. Then another strong emperor,
Leo the Armenian, returned to the example of his name
sake from Isauria and renewed the attack on the pictures, .
and his policy was continued by his two successors; but
this second iconoclastic campaign only lasted for twenty-
nine years (ad. 813—842), during most of which it was
carried on very mildly ; and in the end image worship was
effectually restored It has since continued for more than
a thousand years down to our own time, and it is now one
of the chief characteristics of the Greek Church. In other
words, the premature reformation, twice attempted, and
Ml

202 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
each time successful as a government measure, never laid
hold of the Church, and ultimately it failed entirely, the
old order re-establishing itself as completely as though
nothing had ever happened to interfere with it. Therefore
we must regard Iconoclasm as an episode, not as a stage in
the development of Church history. Nevertheless it is
extremely suggestive, for both the attack on image worship
and the defence are symptomatic ; by means of them we
can learn much about the actual condition of Christendom
in the East during a little-studied period. The iconoclastic
emperors, for the most part, were strong rulers who success
fully defended the empire against the encroachment of
foreign powers and who maintained good order within its
borders. During their reigns the law was justly adminis
tered ; security of life and property — except in the case
of the persecuted monks — was well guarded ; and the
morals of the people were higher than at any other time in
the history of the Eastern Church. On the other hand —
and here we come to the paradox of the situation — the
defence of image worship was carried on with genuine
religious motives on the part of the ecclesiastical leaders.
The most cultivated and devoted Churchmen of the day
were champions of what the Iconoclasts stigmatised as
" idolatry." Further, it is a curious fact that, while each
of the two reforming campaigns was initiated by a powerful
emperor — the first by Leo the Isaurian and the second by
Leo the Armenian, each of the reactionary movements
sprang from the energy of a woman — the first from that of
the Empress Irene and the second from that of the Empress
Theodora. Unhappily we cannot ascribe to these ladies
very lofty motives, at all events not to the first of them.
Leo iv., the son and successor of Constantine Copro-
nicus (a.d. 775), was in delicate health during his short
reign, and when he died leaving as his heir his son Con
stantine vi., Porphyrogenitus — (born in the purple, i.e. the
purple chamber at the palace), then only ten years old, the
regency devolved on one of the many remarkable women
who figure so conspicuously in the history of the Byzantine

THE RESTORATION OF IMAGE WORSHIP 203
Empire. This was the cultivated and brilHant Athenian
beauty, Irene, who was only twenty-eight years of age when
she became a' widow. Of Greek blood, she found in her own
people the sympathy and support she wanted in order to
maintain her independence against her late husband's family
and racial connections. The iconoclastic emperors were of
Asiatic origin — Isaurian and Armenian ; the chief supporters
of image worship were found among the Greeks. It was
good policy therefore for Irene to favour the icons. She
was a woman of illimitable ambition, an ambition that
smothered the instincts of motherhood. Discovering a
conspiracy against her power instigated by her brother-in-
law, Caesar Nicephorus, she forced Leo's five brothers into
the priesthood and compelled them to officiate at the high
altar of St. Sophia during the Christmas ceremonies.
Meanwhile Irene was actively engaged in the restoration of
image worship. With this end in view she was just as
Erastian as the iconoclastic emperors had been. It was
all government action and forcible interference with ecclesi
astical affairs. Irene deposed the patriarch Paul who was an
Iconoclast, and nominated for the head cf the Greek Church
Tarasius, a man of high reputation for learning and char
acter, but a civilian, the secretary of the imperial cabinet.
The assembly of citizens to whom the empress proposed her
candidate elected him by acclamation. He was a popular
personage and the empress's policy was also popular. But
had the case been otherwise resistance to the court would
have been regarded as preposterous. Tarasius was reluctant
to take office, and he refused to do so till his election had
been confirmed by a council — consisting, of course, of image
worshippers. The newly appointed patriarch then revived
the intercourse between Constantinople and the other
patriarchates which had been broken off during the domin
ance of the iconoclastic emperors. Thus the schism was
brought to an end, and the Eoman Pope Hadrian wrote a
joyful letter at the return of the empire to the fold of
orthodoxy, in the course of which he defended the practice
of image worship by an appeal to Scripture, quoting, among

204 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
other instances, the case of Jacob kissing the top of his
staff.1 Tarasius desired to have the matter finally settled by
an cecumenioal counciL The empress agreed, and the
council assembled first at Constantinople, where it was
violently broken up, and then at Nicaea, in the year. 787.
This was the so-called " seventh general council," and the
second council of Nicaea. Neither Irene nor her young son
were present in person ; but they were represented by high
officers of State. Nicephorus, the historian, who after
wards became patriarch of Constantinople, was the secretary.
There were two delegates from Eome, and to them was
assigned the first place of honour as representing the pope.
Next came Tarasius as the bishop of " New Eome." Two
Oriental monks named John and Thomas were supposed
to represent the absent patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch,
and Jerusalem. The virtual imprisonment of these patriarchs
within the dominions of the Saracens would have prevented
their coming even if they had been summoned; but as
things turned out they were not even communicated with,
the messengers finding that they could not get safely
through to them.2 All the other members of the council
were subjects of the Byzantine Empire. Therefore, with
the all-important exception of the presence of the Eoman
delegates, this second council of Nicaea was no more
oecumenical than the iconoclastic council of Constantinople
in the reign of Constantine Copronicus. Nevertheless,
there can be no doubt that it registered the prevalent
opinion of the Church. The enlightened iconoclastics had
proved themselves to be a minority with no popular power ;
they had only succeeded for a time by means of the strong
arm of the State. The second council of Nicaea carried the
people with it when deciding positively in favour of the
1 "Adoravit fastigium virgse ejus," Heb. xi. 21 (Vulg.).
' Nevertheless Hefele considers that the two monks had a right to
represent the absent patriarchs, because they "represented in fact the
faith of the three patriarchs in regard to images and the veneration of
them " (Hist. Councils, vol. v. p. 361).

THE RESTORATION OF IMAGE WORSHIP 205
pictures. It argued that " the oftener one gazed on these
representations, the more would the gazer be stirred to the
resemblance of the originals and the imitation of them, and
to offer his greeting and reverent homage to them,1 not the
actual worship,2 which belonged to the godhead alone,"
... for "whosoever does reverence3 to an image does
reverence to the person represented by it." *
The pope adopted the decrees of the council, and thus
Irene had her ecclesiastical policy justified by the Church
voting at a great council and speaking through its chief
pontiff. Her personal history is an ugly commentary on
these transactions. She was so greedy of her authority
that she was unwilling for her son Constantine to take up
the government when he came of age. For five years he
succeeded in having the upper hand. Then he misused his
opportunity by putting out the eyes of one of his uncles,
Nicephorus the Caesar, and cutting out the tongues of four
other uncles. These crimes might have been condoned by
the cruel custom of the times. But when Constantine
divorced the Empress Maria, whom his tyrannical mother
had forced upon him, and married Theodota, one of his
mother's maids of honour, that ecclesiastical offence alienated
the Church authorities and destroyed his popularity. Irene
came back into power. Thereupon she showed her vindic-
tiveness, or at least her unappeasable ambition, by having
Constantine's eyes put out. This unnatural mother who
blinded her own son has been canonised by the Greek
Church for her restoration of image worship. She was
more reasonably appreciated in her lifetime. Dethroned
by a court conspiracy (a.d. 802), she was exiled to the
island of Lesbos, where she died a few months later ; and
Nicephorus, the imperial treasurer, who had led the con
spiracy, succeeded to the empire. He proved to be a
man of moderate ideas, who wished to maintain image
worship without persecuting its opponents ; but, like Zeno
and Justinian, he tried to bring about peace by forcibly
1 aatraaphv Kal niirp-iKty irpoo'Kiv7i<riv, 2 r%v a\t]8w!i\v \arpelav.
8 rpoo-Kvvei. * Mansi, 374, et seq.

206 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
silencing discussion. Where two strong men had failed it
is not surprising that this weaker ruler did not succeed.
In pursuit of his policy of encouraging image worship, on
the death of Tarasius, Nicephorus appointed his namesake,
known to us as Nicephorus the historian, to be patriarch of
Constantinople, a man of principle and a conscientious
supporter of the orthodox position at the return of Icono
clasm (a.d. 806).
A disastrous war with the Bulgarians, in which the
Emperor Nicephorus was slain, led to a revolution, in con
sequence of which his son Staviacius, after having been
acknowledged by the soldiers for two months, was sent to
a monastery, there to die of his wounds ; and the previous
emperor's son-in-law Michael i. was set on the throne.
This revolution was carried out by the bigoted party of the
image worshippers who had resented the comprehensive
policy of the late emperor. But Michael turned out to be
a weak ruler. He was regarded as pious, and undoubtedly
he pleased the Church by granting out of the State funds
lavish doles to her charities and to leading clergy; but
since he made similar grants to high-placed court function
aries and chief officers of the army, such action was
remarkably like bribery. Another of his pious deeds was
to cover the tomb of Tarasius with silver, in grateful
acknowledgment of the kindness of the dead patriarch —
now prayed to as a saint — -for causing a severe epidemic to
spread among the invading Bulgarians. But best of all, he
won the admiration of the orthodox by yielding to their
persuasion in abandoning his liberal policy and persecuting
the supporters of Iconoclasm. This fact shows that the
movement which Leo the Isaurian had commenced as a
piece of high-handed imperial policy, despotically forced on
the Church, was not so entirely without popular support
as its opponents contended ; or, at all events, that it had
gained some friends in the course of the eighty years that
had intervened. A number of Iconoclasts together with
Paulicians and other heretics were persecuted, some even
being put to death.

THE RESTORATION OF IMAGE WORSHIP 207
Then came the reaction, originated on other grounds.
Michael was quite incompetent to sustain the war with the
Bulgarians, and in order to save the empire the soldiers
elected one of their generals, Leo the Armenian, as its head
(a.d. 813), sending Michael like his predecessor into a
monastery. The new emperor proved his strength at once
by refusing the patriarch's demand that he should follow
his predecessor's example and sign a declaration of ortho
doxy — which, under the circumstances, meant image wor
ship. In course of time he brought about an effective
reorganisation of civil government, and throughout his
reign he maintained good order and the regular adminis
tration of justice in the law courts. Thus in the second
iconoclastic period, as in the first, we see under the reform
ing emperors both good government and respectable morals.
Leo appears to have been in sympathy with Iconoclasm
from the first, although as a calm, statesman-like ruler,
he desired to act with moderation and to maintain the
peace of the Church. But he was urged to take stronger
measures against the image worshippers by a remarkable
man known as John the Grammarian.
We have now reached the period of Alfred and Alcuin
in the West, when a temporary revival of letters seemed to
promise an end to the intellectual slumber that was settling
down over Europe — a promise doomed to miserable dis
appointment. At this very time in the Eastern Church
we have John the Grammarian, a scholar, versed in the
science of his day, which he appears to have acquired from
the Arabians. Of course he -was accused of magic by the
orthodox. But John- was an abbot and of an illustrious
family. With him were associated other learned men who
also repudiated the superstition of image worship. The re
formers were numerically weak ; but morally and intellectually
they were worthy of respect — a small body of clear-sighted,
cultivated men, who strove in vain to stem the tide of the
popular religion, which consisted of materialistic ideas and
sensuous ceremonies. These scholars persuaded Leo to have
the pictures removed from the churches which were in

208 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
possession of the clergy of their own party. Even that
mild action — a trifle in comparison with the tyrannical
persecution by Constantine Copronymus — provoked violent
opposition on the part of the monks. The soldiers re
taliated. A riotous body of men from the army broke into
the patriarchal palace at Constantinople and destroyed the
sacred pictures that adorned its walls. Passion was rising
to fever-heat on both sides. Then, much against his in
clination, Leo found it necessary to take action. He deposed
the patriarch Nicephorus — a deed for which we may be
selfishly grateful, since it gave this leading actor in the events
of his times leisure to write his history. The emperor
appointed a layman Theodotus Mellissenus to the vacant
post ; and he summoned what he wished to be regarded as
a general council at Constantinople (a.d. 816), which con
firmed the decision of the earlier iconoclastic council in the
same city (that held A.D. 754), condemned image worship,
and anathematised the patriarchs Tarasius and Nicephorus
and all image worshippers. Eeealcitrant clergy were to be
deposed ; but there were few such, for most submitted.
We have seen that this was the normal practice in the
Byzantine Empire. Now again, as on previous occasions, the
stubborn opposition came from the independent monks, not
from the demure State-endowed and State-regulated clergy.
Leo was rewarded for his vigorous reforms in the civil
service by assassination, and was succeeded by one of the
conspirators, a trusted friend — Michael H., nicknamed
"the Stammerer" (ad. 820). This emperor was tolerant
towards both parties, since he wished to be conciliatory,
although he leaned towards the iconoclastic policy. He
died in the year 829, and was succeeded by Theophilus,
who at first followed the same fine of policy, but three
years after his accession issued a decree prohibiting image
worship, which was executed in some instances with much
harshness.1 Lazarus, a famous painter, was imprisoned
1 Continuator, 62 ; Cedrenus, 514. We now have to part company with
our two chief authorities for the iconoclastic period— Theophanes and
Nicephorus.

THE RESTORATION OP IMAGE WORSHIP 209
and scourged, and two monks, Theophanes the Singer and
Theodore Graptus, were tortured — the latter receiving his
surname from the fact that some verses were branded on
his forehead. A little later John the Grammarian was
elected patriarch and was induced to summon a synod
which condemned image worship.
On the death of Theophilus (a.d. 842), his widow
Theodora, as regent to her son Michael in., surnamed " The
Drunkard," restored the image worship and so put an end
to the second iconoclastic campaign. Within a few months
of her accession to power she summoned a council, which
confirmed the decision of the second council of Nicaea.
Still, the fires of the controversy were only smouldering;
for in the year 860 the patriarch Photius proposed to Pope
Nicholas another council against the Iconoclasts, which met
in the following year. But, though this council deposed
Ignatius, who had supplanted Photius, we have no record
of any reference to images during the course of its pro
ceedings. Eight years later (a.d. 869) yet another synod
denounced the Iconoclasts and upheld the pictures as useful
for the " instruction " of the people. Henceforth they have
hung on the walls of Greek churches, undisturbed except
by the ravages of war and time, and adored by successive
generations of the devout.
Although the iconoclastic movement sprang from the
enlightened policy of two dynasties of strong emperors,
while the practice of image worship was maintained by the
ignorant populace and the fanatical monks, it must not be
supposed that the latter lacked aapable and high-minded
defenders. On the contrary, the ablest theologian in each
of the two periods of Iconoclasm was a champion of image
worship. To the first period belongs John of Damascus,
and to the second Theodore of Studium, the only church
men of permanent fame who appeared in the Eastern Church
during the eighth and ninth centuries.
John of Damascus is known as the last of the Fathers.
He it was who summed up the results of the previous
centuries of controversy and gave to his Church the dogmas

210 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
of orthodoxy in the stereotyped form which has character
ised them during all subsequent ages. There is much that
is mythical in the story of his life. We cannot fix the date
of his birth; but it is clear that he was ordained before
the year 735. His death occurred sometime between the
years 759 and 767. Thus his active life coincides with
the period of the great iconoclastic persecution beginning
in the reign of Leo the Isaurian and extending through the
greater part of that of Constantine Copronymus. John
came from a Christian family in the city of Damascus
bearing the Arabic name of Mansour, and he held for a
time an honourable post in the court of the caliph. From
this place of shelter he launched his attacks on Leo the
Isaurian with impunity, when that emperor was engaged
in putting down picture worship. Unable to get at him
directly, Leo is said to have sent the caliph a forged letter
in the handwriting of John offering to let the emperor into
Damascus. Thereupon, we are told, the caliph had John's
right hand cut off. It was restored to him in response to
his prayer to the Virgin. Subsequently John retired to the
famous monastery of Mar Saba, still overhanging the gorge
of the Kidron in the wilderness of Judaea. The monks
were afraid to receive so important a personage from the
court till they had tested his humility. This they did by
sending him back to Damascus with a load of baskets manu
factured at the monastery. There is no reason to question
the second story simply because we must regard the earlier
narrative as legendary, for truth and fiction are always
mixed up in these lives of saints, and the ordeal was
quite characteristic. John stood this and every other
test that was devised to try him, after which he was
duly accepted. He lived the rest of his days in his
out of the world retreat, composing hymns and theological
works. The most important of the works of John of Damascus
is the De Fide Orthodom.1 What the Summa of Thomas
Aquinas is for the Eoman Church and what Calvin's
1 "Ei> Jo<ris aKpiffis T7js ipBoSbl-ov Trlorews.

THE RESTORATION OF IMAGE WORSHIP 211

is for the Eeformed Church, that is this work
for the Greek Church — the most orderly and systematic
exposition of the accepted theology. It is divided into
four books : Book I. discusses the doctrine of God and the
Trinity ; Book II. is concerned with Creation and the
Nature of Man ; Book III. states the doctrine of Christ
and the Incarnation, including the relation of the two
natures and the two wills, Mary as the mother of God, the
death of our Lord and His descent into Hades ; Book IV.
carries on the doctrine of Christ to His resurrection and
reign; but it is chiefly occupied with a number of
miscellaneous subjects — such as faith, worship, images,
Scripture, sin, virginity, resurrection, etc. Like Augustine,
who gave its character to Latin theology, especially
in so far as he was followed by Gregory the Great —
the last of the Western Fathers and the first mediae /al
theologian — John of Damascus, the last of the Eastern
Fathers, sets before us the essence of Greek theology. It
is interesting to see where these Fathers differ. The
mysterious subject of the procession of the Holy Spirit,
on which the two churches divided, really belongs to a
later period, although John anticipates the Greek position.
The following are his chief points of distinction from"
Augustine and Gregory : — His assertion of free will — a
marked feature of Greek theology throughout in contra
distinction from Latin ; his silence as to original sin ; his
distinction between foreknowledge and predestination ; his
denial of the physical fire of hell — so prominent in the
lurid horrors of the mediaeval inferno from Gregory to
Dante; and his moderate views of the sacraments,
which he holds to be only two — Baptism and the Lord's
Supper. The other important theologian of the iconoclastic
period is Theodore of Studium, who comes in the second
and milder time of imperial attacks on image worship as
the champion of the pictures. He may be said to have
pronounced the final word of orthodoxy on the subject.
Theodore was born in the year 759 in a family of high

212 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
social position at Constantinople. Thus he was a youth
sixteen years old when Irene restored the worship of pic
tures, and the greater part of his life was spent in the
subsequent period of image worship. Under the influence
of his uncle Paul, who renounced the gay society of Con
stantinople and retired to a cave, a wave of enthusiasm
for monasticism swept over the whole family. Theodore,
with his father, his remaining uncles and his brothers, went
into a monastic retreat under the direction of Paul, while
his mother took her one little daughter to live with her
" in cellular fashion." It would seem that the mother was
the dominant influence in this scattering of her family, for
when her youngest son, breaking down at the piteous
moment of parting, clung to her neck begging her to let
him stay with her, the determined woman answered, " If
you do not go willingly, my ehild, I will drag you with
my own hand on board ship."
For thirteen years Theodore lived in the monastery of
Saccudio under his uncle Paul, who ordained him to the
priesthood and then insisted on consecrating him abbot in
place of himself — a singular act of self-abnegation, which,
while it does honour to the devotion and humility of the
senior, and helps us to understand the spell he had cast on
his family, also testifies to the high qualities that had been
revealed in the junior. Practically they lived as joint
abbots — for Theodore would not let his uncle retire — first
at Saccudio and then at Studium, a monastery situated
within the walls of Constantinople. Constantine Por-
phyrogenitus had broken up the establishment at Saccudio
in a rage because the monks would not give their consent
to his second marriage. This incident, revealing the
emperor's desire to have an endorsement of his conduct
from the monks, followed by the refusal of the monks
to grant it, shows how powerful the monastery was aB an
independent body. On her return to power Irene had rein
stated the scattered monks. But a raid of the Saracens .
afterwards made it necessary for them to retreat across
the Bosphorus; and then it was that Theodore was

THE RESTORATION OF IMAGE WORSHIP 213
appointed abbot of the great monastery of Studium.
The monks in this monastery were of the order of
Accemeti (the Sleepless), so named because they took
turns in a continuous chanting of the praise of God in
their chapel that never ceased day or night all through
the twenty -four hours the whole year round This
monastery was also a famous centre for the copying of
manuscripts, and the beautiful handwriting here developed
became famous.
When Leo the Armenian revived the iconoclastic
movement, Theodore appeared as the champion of the
pictures. In defiance of the imperial commands, he
arranged a procession of sacred icons borne aloft through the
streets of Constantinople on Palm Sunday in the year 815.
It is in Theodore's writings that we get the clearest under
standing of the case for image worship. We can understand
the popular idolatry. But what we want to see is how
men of intelligence, culture, and genuine religious earnest
ness, like John of Damascus and Theodore of Studium,
could support what the reforming emperors were endeavour
ing to suppress as childish superstition and rank idolatry.
There must have been some intellectual reason and some
high religious motive in the strenuous opposition of these
men to what strikes us as an enlightened and elevated
policy. Our best answer to this question is to be found
in the writings of Theodore — his Antvrrhetica Adversus
Iconomachos and his letters. His arguments amount in
the main to three: (1) Theodore insists on the impiety of
the secular government in interfering with the affairs of
the Church. It was late in the day to raise such a point,
at Constantinople of all places. But although people
had tamely submitted to interference which only affected
bishops and theologians, in appointing and deposing
ecclesiastics, and in dictating doctrinal statements, it was
another matter when emperors ventured to lay their finger
on the popular worship in the churches. Besides, the
monks had always stood for the independence of the
Church, even when the bishops had meekly bowed to the

214 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
yoke of the State. (2) Theodore thought he detected an
attack on the doctrine of the incarnation. Here the dis
cussion enters the region of theological controversy. The
Iconoclasts were suspected of monophysitism. They had
come from the home of the Monophysites in Asia Minor —
the instigator of the first attack from Isauria, the leader
of the second from Armenia. Then the controversy was
diverted from its original question. It was no longer
merely supposed to be the contention of the Iconoclasts
that the worship of images was idolatry; they were
charged with denying that any true picture of Christ could
be made, because as God He had no longer a circumscribed
bodily form. The contention of the image worshippers,
on the other hand, was that this line of argument destroyed
the permanence of the incarnation. The humanity of
Christ is lost if He is not such that He can be represented
in a picture. (3) The dreadful charge of Manichaeism
— so often revived in heresy controversies — was raised
against the Iconoclasts. Their aversion to a representa
tion of the bodily appearence of Christ was taken by
the image worshippers as a sign of their reprobation of
matter as evil in itself. So was their objection to kissing
the pictures. We must admit that there was some ground for
Theodore's contentions. The iconoclastic emperors may
have had a good cause ; but they spoilt it by their tyranny.
They did not go the way to effect a genuine reformation of
religion. Then there was a real danger lest the incarna
tion itself should be lost in theories about it. A picture
of Christ was a wholesome antidote to the abstractions of
metaphysical theology in relation to the Second Person of
the Trinity. Possibly, too, some truly religious influence
was exercised by the contemplation of the pictures. They
were thought to have a sacramental efficacy. Whatever
may be said of the mysticism or materialism of this view,
we must acknowledge that the aim of devout defenders of
the popular worship was high and pure. They maintained
that the picture of Christ brought Him near to those who

THE RESTORATION OF IMAGE WORSHIP 215
gazed on it reverently. Theodore writes in the spirit of
St. Francis and Thomas a Kempis : " The true Christian is
nothing but a copy or impression of Christ," 1 and he quotes
Dionysius the Areopagite when he says, " The archetype
appears in the image." 2 Unfortunately this line of argu
ment would almost justify idolatry per se, when distinguished
from fetishism. 1 Lib. ii. Ep. 22. ' Lib. ii. Ep. 38.

CHAPTER V
THE PAULICIANS
(a) George Monachias; Photitis; " Continuator " ; Nicetas; Anna
Comnena ; Michael Psellus ; Euthymius, The Key of Truth ;
Petrus Siculus ; Zonaras.
(b) Gibbon, chap, liv., and Bury, Appendix 6 ; Finlay, Byzantine
Empire, Book I. chap. iii. ; Smith's Dictionary of Chr. Biog.,
article " Pauliciani " ; F. C. Conybeare, The Key of Truth,
1898 ; Karapet Ter-Urkrttschian, Die PauUkianer in byzan-
tinischen kaiserreiche, 1893.
The Paulicians, to whom Gibbon devotes a whole chapter
of his history, have been the most egregiously libelled of
all the Christian sects. The orthodox Church accused
them of the very scandals that the pagans had imagined
with regard to the early Christians, and with no more basis
of fact to rest their charges upon. Even ecclesiastics who
behaved more reasonably confounded them with the hated
Manichaeans, or at best with the heretical Marcionites. The
simplicity of their religious faith and life, and their rejection
of the extravagances and superstitions of the later Church,
led to their history and tenets being dragged into theological
controversies with which they had no immediate concern,
and therefore, of course, to monstrous perversions of them.
But quite recently, following minor results of research, Mr.
Conybeare has rendered a great service to their memory by
his publication and translation of the ancient Paulician work,
The Km) of Truth} together with a valuable historical and
critical study of it. We are now able to brush away the libels
of centuries and go to an original source for our knowledge
1 From a MS. written a.d. r782 and found by Mr. Conybeare in the
archives of the Holy Synod of Edimatzin. 216

THE PAULICIANS 217
of the teachings and practices of these much maligned
people.1 ¦ Beyond the Taurus mountains in the south-east of
Armenia there lived during the eighth and ninth centuries a
community of Christians cherishing their own discipline,
rites, and doctrines apart from the main body of the Eastern
Church and all its later developments. These people, who
came to be known in the outside world as Paulicians, and
who afterwards accepted the title for themselves, owe their
original separateness to their geographical seclusion. There
fore it is quite arguable that they should be regarded as
representing the survival of a more primitive type of
Christianity rather than as the followers of a heresy which
sprang up nearer the time when they emerged into the
daylight of history, and Mr. Conybeare connects them with
the primitive Adoptionists, whose views can be traced back
to very early times.2 The ideas of these people are now to
be seen in The Key of Truth, which is a book of the
Throuraketyi, or Paulicians of Thouraki, composed about
1 The origin of the name " Paulician " is somewhat obscure. There is no
foundation for the notion of ninth century polemical writers, that it is to be
traoed to a Manichsean of the fourth century named Paul, since the Paulicians
were certainly not of Manichsean origin. The writer in Smith's Dictionary of
Christian Biography regards it as a reference to the Apostle Paul. Like
the Marcionites, the Paulicians made much of St. Paul's Epistles, and
Photius says that they themselves derived their name from the apostle
(Photius, ii. 11 ; iii. 10 ; vi. 4). Mr. Conybeare derives it from Paul oi
Samosata, quoting tho Armenian writer Gregory Magistros, who says, ' ' Here
then you see the Paulicians who got their poison from Paul of Samosata "
(Key of Truth, p. cv.). In the 19th Canon of Nicaea the followers of Paul of
Samosata are called Pauliani; Pauliciani is the Armenian form of this
name, the " ic " or " ik " being a diminutive introduced in contempt. They
did not at first call themselves by the title, but simply designated themselves
" Christians." It may have been flung at them by opponents to connect
them with the heretic Paul, and subsequently interpreted by them in a new
meaning to refer to the apostle and so throw off the libel.
a Adoptionism is found in the Shepherd of Hermas and other early Church
writings, perhaps also in the New Testament, in the discourses of St. Peter
(e.g. Acts v. 31), which represent the primitive Christology, preceding (1) the
miraculous birth idea expressed in the infancy narratives of the first and
third Gospels, especially in Luke i. 35, and (2) the still more developed con
ception of the pre-existent Son of God becoming incarnate, in St. Paul and
St. John (e.g. Gal. iv. 4 ; John i. 14).

218 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the year 800. This book reveals a simple Church order
with no hierarchy. There is only one grade of the ministry
consisting of the " elect," and the ministers are called
indifferently by the various titles of apostle, priest, bishop,
elder. Admission to the Church is by baptism, which
must be sought voluntarily. Infant baptism is repudiated.
There is no idea of original sin ; therefore infants do not
need baptism. The proper time for baptism is the age of
thirty. After his baptism, which should be in a river, the
Holy Spirit enters the immersed person. There are three
sacraments — repentance, baptism, the body and the blood.
The latter, the Eucharist, is taken -at night, and not separated
from the Agape, which is still preserved. Mariolatry and
the intercession of saints are rejected ; image worship, the
use of crosses, relics, incense, candles, and resorting to sacred
springs are all repudiated as idolatrous practices. The idea
of purgatory is rejected. The holy year begins with the
feast of John the Baptist. January 6 th is observed as the
festival of the baptism and spiritual rebirth of Jesus.
Zatik, or Easter, is kept on the 14th Msan. We meet
with no special Sunday observances, and possibly the
Saturday Sabbath was maintained. There is no feast of
Christmas or of the Annunciation.
When we come to consider the question of doctrine, we
note that the word " Trinity " never appears in the book.
Yet it is to be observed that the rite of baptism consists of
one immersion followed by the throwing of three handfuls
of water over the candidate. The system is not Marcionite,
for it has no traces of Docetism. On the contrary, it is
Adoptionist. The Paulicians have been accused of rejecting
the Old Testament. But The Key of Truth shows that this
was not actually the case. It contains quotations from the
Old Testament, though these are but few, and its chief
authority is the New Testament, the whole of which it aceepts.
The Paulicians have also been accused of the Manichseism of
holding that the world was created by Satan. This is a libel,
perhaps to be attributed to their denial that Christ created it.
We can well understand why people holding such

THE PAULICIANS 219
views and carrying on such practices as are here described
were persecuted by the Greek Church. In many respects
their position resembles that of the iconoclastic emperors,
some of whom came from the neighbourhood of the
Paulicians and may have been influenced by them. Ancient
Oriental Baptists, these people were in many respects
Protestants before Protestantism. They held to a simple
spiritual conception of Christianity, to a democratic Church
order, and to an unorthodox view of the nature of Christ.
A dogmatic, hierarchical, ritualistic, superstitious Church
could not possibly tolerate them. Their fiercest enemies were
the monks, of whom they had no good opinion. They said that
the devil's favourite disguise was the appearance of a monk.
The first leader of the Paulicians known to us,
commonly regarded as their founder, was Constantine, who
came from the village of Mananalis, not far from the
cataract of the Euphrates mentioned by Pliny. Like so
many other great leaders of religion he received his first
impulse from Scripture. A deacon coming home from Syria,
where he had been held captive by the Saracens, was
hospitably entertained by Constantine, in return for which
kindness he gave his host two volumes, one containing the
Gospels and the other St. Paul's Epistles. Constantine
eagerly devoured them, and they lit in him the fire of
missionary enthusiasm. Especially interested in St. Paul,
he adopted the name of the apostle's companion Silvanus,
started on a tour of preaching about the year 657, and
continued his work for some twenty-seven years. Going
up the course of the Euphrates, he crossed the great barrier
of the Taurus and carried his gospel into more western
regions of Asia Minor. He had now left the tolerant rule
of the caliphate, which in so far as it gave liberty to the
Christians did not trouble itself to distinguish between the
sects, regarding orthodoxy and heresy with equal contempt,
and he had come within the bounds both of the empire and
of the Church. There his success in founding churches of
his own persuasion, which he named after St. Paul's
churches, was so great that the Emperor Constantine

220 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Pogonatus had his attention directed to it, with the result
that he sent an imperial officer named Simeon to the spot
to suppress the movement. Constantine Silvanus and
many of his followers were arrested. They refused to
recant, and their faithful testimony was so striking that it
won over Simeon to their side, and he was to be seen later
going about as a teacher in the mission under the Pauline
name of Silas. Meanwhile Silvanus had been stoned to
death, and in the year 690 Simeon and several others
among the Paulicians were killed by order of the cruel
Emperor Justinian II.
During the next century divisions broke out among
the Paulicians. For a time Paul the Armenian — to whose
name some trace the title of the sect — was its leader, and
on his death each of his sons, Gegncesius and Theodore,
claimed the succession. Gegncesius, who was the elder,
based his claim on appointment by his father. The doctrine
of apostolical succession was now creeping into this church,
which had stood at first for spirituality and democratic
simplicity. But Theodore claimed to receive his grace, as
his father had received grace, direct from God. The
unseemly disputes that now arose again called the govern
ment's attention to the Paulicians, and in the year 722
Gegncesius was summoned to Constantinople and brought
before Leo the Isaurian. It was well for him and his
followers that the emperor was the great protestant
Iconoclast. Had he been a bigoted champion of orthodoxy
it would have gone ill with the Paulicians ; but there was
much in common between these people and the iconoclastic
emperors,1 and Leo listened to Gegncesius very tolerantly
and could see no harm in his doctrines, nor could the aged
patriarch Germanus detect any lurking error in them.
The result was that the accused teacher was sent back home
with imperial letters for the protection of the Paulicians.
Throughout the reigns of the iconoclastic emperors they
generally enjoyed imperial favour and were seldom molested
After a period of depression owing to divisions and
1 Mr. Conybeare regards the iconoclastic emperors as virtually Paulicians.

THE PAULICIANS 221
unworthy leadership during the latter part of the eighth
century, the Paulicians revived at the beginning of the
ninth century under the leadership of the good and gifted
Sergius. Like Silvanus, this man was led to a new way
of life under the influence of the Gospels and the Epistles
of Paul, to which he had been referred by a woman member
of the sect. He now objected to the orthodox Church on
account of its withdrawal of the Scriptures from the
attention of the people. As we read this story of Sergius
we seem to be anticipating the history of the Eeformation,
which took the same lines in regard to the Bible.
Sergius followed the curious example of earlier leaders
of the sect and took a Pauline name, Tychicus, when he
entered on a similar missionary career. He carried on his
labours for thirty-four years, visiting almost every part of
the central plateaus of Asia Minor. In one of his letters
he wrote, " I have run from east to west, and from north
to south, till my knees were weary, preaching the gospel
of Christ."1 Meanwhile, like his great predecessor
St. Paul, he maintained himself by working with his own
hands, his trade being that of a carpenter. This really
promised to be a great religious revival. If the iconoclastic
party of the government had joined heartily with the
spiritual movement among the Paulicians we might have
seen a reformation in the East anticipating the Eeformation
in the West by many centuries. But there was one fatal
hindrance to this grand consummation. The methods of
force pursued by the imperial government were not such
as could effect a real reform of religion. The contamination
of unscrupulous politics vitiated the hope of effective
improvements and even led to a reversal of policy. Leo
the Armenian, although an Iconoclast, endeavoured to
strengthen his position by pleasing the Church party in
permitting an attack on the Paulicians. It was a wicked
course of action, and fatal to any statesmanlike improve
ment of the situation So terrible was the persecution
which now broke out, that some of the Paulicians murdered
» Photius, i. 22.

222 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
their judges and then fled out of the empire and took refuge
with the Saracens.
Under Michael n. the sect again enjoyed peace, and
the influence of Sergius grew and spread. Photius ascribes
to him terms of strange elation in saying, " I am the porter
and the good shepherd and the leader of the body of
Christ and the light of the house of God. I, too, am with
you always, even unto the end of the world." x ' But we
must be always on our guard against the reports of an
enemy, especially when he is also an ecclesiastic.
When the iconoclastic regime was broken, and the
orthodox party came back into power under the Empress
Theodora (AD. 842), there was no hope of a just treatment
of heretics. Imperial commissioners were now sent into
the suspected districts, and those who refused to submit to
the Church were condemned to death by hanging, crucifixion,
beheading, drowning. The deaths have been reckoned at
from 1 0,0 0 0 to 1 0 0,0 0 0. Again the Paulicians were goaded
to measures of retaliation. An officer in the imperial army
of the East, named Carbeas, raised a rebellion, and was
joined by 5,000 of the troops.2 He had the best excuse
for his action, if civil war is ever permissible, for he had
learned that his father had been impaled by the orthodox
officials. This barbarous method of execution, which has
been frequently practised by the Turks in their recent
massacres of Christians, was here adopted by men who
pretended to be Christians themselves and who professed
to be acting in the interest of a holy Church and in
defence of its creed. The maddened insurgents crossed
the border of the empire, and with the permission of the
caliph fortified the city of Thephrike,3 which became their
headquarters. Thence they issued in raiding parties, with
the co-operation of Omar the Emir of Melitene, and
repeatedly ravaged the frontier of the empire. Petronas,
the brother of Theodora, who was entrusted with the
command of the imperial army, could not do more than
stand on the defensive. At length Theodora's son, Michael
1 Photius, i. 21. a Continuator, 103. » Now Divigri.

THE PAULICIANS 223
the Drunkard, led an army in person against the combined
Saracens and Paulicians. He was defeated at Samosata
and compelled to flee for his life. More than a hundred
tribunes were taken prisoners, and those who could not
ransom themselves were put to torture. Carbeas was
succeeded in the leadership of these fierce, fighting Paulicians
by Chrysocheir, who, still in alliance with the Saracens,
carried the war into the heart of Asia Minor, as far as
the western coast and almost up to Constantinople itself,
pillaging Ancyra and Ephesus, Mcaea and Nicomedia. At
Ephesus the invaders stabled their horses in the cathedral,
and showed the utmost contempt for the pictures and
relics, of which they regarded it as the idol temple. The
Emperor Basil I. was compelled to sue for peace and to
offer a heavy bribe to buy them off. But Chrysocheir
scornfully refused his terms and would be satisfied with
nothing less than the emperor's retirement to the West
and surrender of the whole of the Eastern Empire. Basil
had no alternative but to fight. He collected all the
available forces of the empire and precipitated them on
the rebels.1 Chrysocheir was taken by surprise and killed
while in retreat. Thephrike was deserted by the insurgents,
entered by the imperial troops, and laid waste (ad. 871).
It was a complete and final victory for Basil, and it
put an end to any further danger of serious invasion.
But many of the rebels had escaped to the mountains.
There they continued their independence in alliance with
the Saracens, and from time to time joined in border raids.
Meanwhile there was another body of Paulicians in
Thrace, the descendants and converts of some whom
Constantine Copronicus had transported to this part of
Europe. These people conformed outwardly with the
orthodox Church, and did not attempt any revolt on their
own account ; but they were credited with sending aid to
their more warlike brethren, to whom they stood in the
1 It is a mistake of the Continuator to suppose that Basil crossed the Eu
phrates. Failing to take Tephrice, his aim was Melitene, the Saracen strong
hold west of the Euphrates. See Anderson in Class. Rev., April 1896, p. 139.

224 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
relation of Covenanters to Cameronians, or that of Corsican
villagers to the banditti. They assiduously propagated their
protestant teaching throughout Thrace ; they also sent to
Bulgaria missionaries, who were very successful in winning
over many of the recent converts of the Greek missionaries.
The Paulicians in Thrace were allowed a measure of home
rule in return for their services in defence of the empire.
They held the city of Philippopolis and occupied a line of
villages and castles in Macedonia and Epirus, and the
orthodox inhabitants were dominated by them. During
the Norman war in the reign of Alexius Comnenus, 2,500
of them deserted. But they were afterwards subdued and
punished. Alexius wintered at Philippopolis and devoted
himself to arguing with them.1 So successful was he —
according to his daughter — that she styled him "the
Thirteenth Apostle." Philippopolis was beautified with
gardens for the benefit of those who had succumbed to the
arguments of the imperial controversialist ; but while they
were permitted to remain there, they had lost all power.
We must not make too much of the admiring princess'
testimony in this matter. Undoubtedly there were many
stubborn heretics who could not be persuaded even by an
emperor's apostolic eloquence, and probably these people
joined the new sects that were now springing up.
One of these sects consisted of the later Euchites,
who have been associated with the Paulicians as con-
tinuators of the hated heresy. They were scattered over
the same districts of Thrace in which the Paulicians had been
planted. All that we know of them is dependent on a
treatise written by an opponent,2 who was probably the
very man whom the Byzantine government had sent to
Thrace to suppress them. We cannot therefore expect an
unbiased opinion from such a source. The Euchites were
1 Anna Comnena, Alexias, xv. 9.
8 biiXoyos trepl ivepyelat Sai/i6vuv, by Michael Psellus. He was a teacher
of philosophy at Constantinople, of wide knowledge on a variety of subjects.
His book is a storehouse of information concerning con temporary information.
He died a.d. 1105.

THE PAULICIANS 225
charged with the curious dualism of believing in two sons
of God. Satanael the elder corresponds to the Gnostic
demiurge, while the younger is Christ to whom heavenly
things are assigned. The sect was said to worship both
sons, as springing from the same Father. If so, these
Euchites could not be Manichaean, and their dualism must
be different from the Persian. But some were reported only
to reverence the younger son, since he had chosen the better
part, the heavenly — still without saying anything ill of the
senior; while others were said to honour the elder as the
first-born and creator of the world, and even to ascribe
envy to the younger son, on account of which he sends
earthquakes, hail, pestilence. But this is confusing and
uncertain. What seems clear is that the Euchites were an
ecstatic sect who attributed great value to long, exciting
prayers. We first hear the name as early as the fourth
century ; and traces of them in Mesopotamia, Syria, and
Asia Minor are to be met with again and again during the
intermediate ages. There is therefore reason to suppose
that they lingered on to the time of the activity of the
Paulicians, under whose influence they were quickened into
renewed earnestness. If it is true that they held every man
to be inhabited by a demon from his birth, they would seem
to have accepted a very extravagant doctrine of original sin,
which would be in sharp conflict with the belief of the Paul
icians, who denied anything of the kind. But demonology
was now rampant in Christendom, and people would not look
too nicely at the question of consistency in accepting it.
Still, if the Euchites held this view, they must not be
identified with the Paulicians, who show no trace of it.
Another body commonly associated with the Paulicians,
especially in Bulgaria, was that of the Bogomiles, or " Friends
of God." 1 The fullest account of their tenets is given by
Euthymius,2 according to whom they rejected the Mosaic
1 6e6<pi\oi.
2 Panoplia, Tit. 23, Narratio de Bogomilis. The Princess Anna Comnena
will not describe their tenets lest she should pollute her lips. She writes :
Iva p.% t-jjc yhwrrav ptoXivw rijv inavrrjs (Alexias, xv. 9 ; vol. ii. p. 357).
*5

226 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
writings and the God of the Pentateuch, and regarded
the men who are there said to be well-pleasing to Him as
inspired by Satan. Thus they invite comparison with the
ancient Cainites. But a curious peculiarity in the views
of the Old Testament attributed to them by Euthymius is
that they reckoned the Psalms and the Prophets among
the Christian Scriptures. The Pentateuch is not concerned
with the supreme God. It only narrates the doings of His
elder son Satanael, who was originally seated at the right
hand of his Father, but was cast out of heaven for plotting
a revolt, together with the angels he had corrupted. The
creation of the world, including mankind, is his work, except
that in order to have men endowed with souls he is com
pelled to call in the aid of his Father. This he does with
the promise that the newly created race shall take the
place in the service of the Supreme that has been vacated
by the fallen angels. But he cheats his Father by seducing
Eve in tne form of a serpent, and from her begetting Cain
and his twin-sister Calomena. Then Adam begets Abel from
Eve. Thus Satanael is the father of Cain, and Adam the
father of Abel, while they both have the same mother,
Eve. When the supreme Father discovers the fraud he
deprives Satanael of divinity. But this strange being
continues to exert great influence over mankind, and through
Moses produces the law which brings many evils on
our race. In order to counteract these evils the Father
sends forth the Logos, who is like Michael, the angel d
great counsel, and who enters the Virgin Mary, appears
with a phantom human body, teaches the gospel, over
comes Satanael — afterwards called Satan — ascends to
SatanaeTs place at the right hand of the Father, and
finally sinks into the bosom of the Father, from wnich He
originally came.
Unlike the Paulinists, the Bogomiles rejected water
baptism, and allowed only the baptism of Christ as a
spiritual baptism, called "exhortation."1 This was con
ferred by a rite which consisted in laying the Gospel
1 irap&KXijau.

THE PAULICIANS 227
according to St. John on the head of the candidate,
invoking the Holy Spirit, and chanting the Lord's Prayer.
Like the Euchites, they attached great value to prayer,
which they regarded as the essence of religion in opposi
tion to the Catholic view of the sacrifice of the mass.
Here they were Protestant of the Protestants. For as
with baptism, so with the Lord's Supper, they repudiated
the material elements in the sacrament, and in this respect
anticipated the Quakers.
Too much must not be made of these statements in
detail. We possess no service book of the Bogomiles, and
we have to view them through the coloured glasses of
prejudiced antagonism. Still, much of what is attributed
to them reads like a revival, or perhaps even a survival,
of second century Ophite Gnosticism ; and the very antiquity
of these notions makes it likely that they were really held
by the Bogomiles more or less as described. We can
hardly suppose that such old-world fancies would be raked up
out of the rubbish heap of a past nearly one thousand years
old in order to be gratuitously attributed to them. There
fore it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the Bogomiles
must have adopted some system of dualism. On the
other hand, there are Armenian scholars who have recently
studied the subject, and come to the conclusion that
they are not Marcionite. Now we saw that The Key
of Truth makes it quite certain that the Paulicians were
not Marcionite. Yet both have been so regarded in the
past. In the Greek historians they are both called
Manichaeans. That is Anna Comnena's title for all these
bodies of heretics — a convenient title because odious. Since
we now know that the Paulicians were grossly libelled,
we may suspect that the Bogomiles were also more or
less seriously maligned. Their dualism was probably less
pronounced than has been supposed. Yet, inasmuch as
we cannot deny to them something of the kind, we should
scarcely class them with the Paulicians. A prominent
Paulinist, a physician named Basihus, has been commonly
regarded as the leader of the Bogomiles of his day ; but

228 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
that is an error.1 This man was closely examined by the
Emperor Alexius at Constantinople, and proving true to
his faith burnt at the hippodrome. The Princess Anna
spreads her description over several pages in dilating on
the scene — how the fire was constructed of the biggest
trees, and how in every respect this was a magnificent
triumph for her father over the horrible heresy. Her
filial enthusiasm would be quite touching if it were not
so tigerish.2 In the year 1140 there was a great stir at the
discovery of supposed Bogomile errors in the writings of
Constantine Chrysomalus soon after his death; and they
were condemned at a synod held under the patriarch Leo
Stypiota in Constantinople. According to these writings
Church baptism is inefficacious, and nothing done by uncon
verted though baptised persons is of any value. God's grace
is received at the laying on of hands, but only in accordance
with the measure of faith. Three years later two Cappa-
docian bishops were deposed at another Constantinople synod
as Bogomiles.3 As late as the year 1230 the patriarch
Gennadius complained of Bogomiles stealing secretly into
houses and leading the pious astray. The Albigenses in
the West — so cruelly slaughtered in the crusade of Simon
de Montford — appear to be more or less closely related to
these heretics. Probably they suffered from the same
libels. These people may have held theoretical errors'.
But their real offence was opposition to the sacramental
materialism of the Church.
1 See Bury's Gibbon, chap, liv., Appendix 6,
2 Anna Comnena, Alexias, xv. 9. ' Mansi, xxi. 583.

CHAPTER VI
THE GREAT SCHISM
(a) Hergenrother, Photius, 3 vols., 1867 ; Ratramnus, Contra
Grcecorum Opposita ; Anselm, De Proc. Spirit. S. ; Mansi, xv.
and xvi.
(V) Gibbon, chap. lx. ; Neale, History of the Holy Eastern Church,
Introd., vol. ii., 1850 ; Tondini, The Pope of Rome and the
Popes of the Oriental Church, 1871 ; Swete, Hist, of Doctrine
of Procession of the Holy Spirit, etc., 1876 ; Howard, The
Schism between the Oriental and the Western Churches, 1892 ;
BreMer, Le Schisme Oriental du XI™* Siecle, 1899.
The most momentous fact in the history of Christendom
during the Middle Ages is the separation between the
Eastern and the Western Churches. When we look at
the two great communions, each of which claims to be the
one genuine Church, we see them to have so much in
common that we may wonder at the absolutely irreconcil
able attitude they maintain towards each other. In
discipline, ritual, and doctrine they are much nearer to
gether than Eoman Catholics and Protestants, nearer even
than High Anglicans and Evangelical Churchmen. Both
are episcopal, sacerdotal, sacramental, orthodox in relation
to the historic creeds. The note of the Eastern Church, is
said to be orthodoxy and that of the Western catholicity,
so' that the one is called " The Holy Orthodox Church,"
and the other " The Catholic Church." To some extent
these differences of title are indicative of distinctions in the
essential characters of the bodies they represent. The one
is especially concerned with the defence of the creed, the
other with the maintenance of organic unity. And yet

230 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the Western Church stands for orthodoxy in its proud
claim to infallibility, and the Eastern is equally intolerant
of heresy, schism, or insubordination. The division fol
lowed centuries of close mutual communication, and it was
so gradual that much of the common thought and life of
the patristic trunk from which they spring is to be found
in each of these great branches. As we contemplate them
in their stubborn separation we may be reminded of
Coleridge's famous metaphor in Christobel —
" They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder,
A dreary sea now flows between."
In tracing the causes of this tremendous cleavage of
Christendom we may be surprised to see how insignificant
and unimportant some of them were. A personal quarrel
between two patriarchs, a slight step of advance in the
implied claims of a title, and last of all, a subtle point in
the definition of the Trinity — these are among the influences
that in course of time by their cumulative effect scooped
out the great chasm, like the water brooks that running for
past ages have at length separated whole mountains.
Nevertheless, we must not set down the final result to a
mere chapter of accidents. The occurrence of various
incidents — each in itself apparently so unimportant — in a
series coming down several centuries points to the exist
ence of persistent causes lurking beneath. Deep lying,
slow moving, gigantic forces, operating through centuries,
worked with the inevitability of fate.
1. First among these causes we must place the racial.
It is true that the Greek and Latin races were near akin,
members of the common Aryan stock which has peopled
India, Persia, and Europe. But historically, in the period
with which we are concerned, neither of these races was
self-contained or unmixed with alien elements. The
Latins were invigorated and transformed by an infusion
of German blood resulting from successive Gothic invasions.
The Greeks, on the other hand, were mingled with a host of

THE GREAT SCHISM 231
Northern and Oriental races, especially the Sclavs and the
Armenians and other peoples of Western Asia. Probably
the Greeks were now a minority of the population of Greece,
being outnumbered by the Sclavs. Constantinople ceased to
be a Greek city except in language and culture. Her citizen
ship became more Oriental than Greek, and especially
Armenian. The strongest rulers of this late Eoman Em
pire which we call Byzantine were natives of Asia Minor.
Thus the natural sympathies and affinities of the two
branches of the Church tended century by century to
mutual estrangement.
We saw how at the beginning the freer Christianity,
the Pauline, that which was emancipated from Judaism,
was Grecian.1 First and second century literature in Eome
was composed in the Greek language. The churches of
Lyons and Gaul were offshoots from the Greek colony at
Marseilles, and their famous bishop Irenaeus was a native
of Greek-speaking Smyrna, who wrote his work Against
Heretics in Greek. Latin Christian literature first appeared
in north Africa a few years later. The great heresies of
the Church nearly all sprang from the Eastern branch of
the Church, and though at first they flowed to Eome and
other Western places, by the middle of the fourth century
they were successfully beaten back by the established
hierarchial system of the West. The West had its schisms
on questions of discipline — first the Novatian, then the
Donatist, and its one great heresy, Pelagianism, which was
concerned with the human side of religion. The East elabor
ated the orthodoxy of the Church. The Apostles' Creed
grew 'up in the West, but as a schedule for catechetical
teaching, probably originating in earlier Eastern schedules ;
the West, too — apparently in the monastery at Lerins —
gave birth to the Athanasian Creed ; but that is rather a
hymn to be set by the side of the other great Latin psalm
of praise, the Te Deum, not properly a Church creed at all.
The one test creed is the Nicene, and this is Eastern. Its
greatest exponents were in the East. During the fourth
1 See pp. 3-5.

232 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
century and after, in spite of the strength of Ambrose, and
the massive genius of Augustine, the intellectual centre of
gravity of the Church was in the East. Eome accepted
the elaboration of the doctrine of the Trinity from the East.
It is true that by a flash of inspired political wisdom she
stepped in at the critical moment and said the word that
settled the orthodoxy of the whole Church for all subsequent
ages ; for Leo's Tome determined the decision of Chalcedon.
But it was the thought which the great pope had received
from the East that he was able to enshrine in that immortal
document. After this, the West, absorbed in its own
practical problems, came to view with weary indifference
the hair-splitting controversies of the Eastern Church. She
was concerned for orthodoxy, and again and again she struck
in with a word of authority to save the situation. But as
first the Nestorians by the Euphrates, and then the Mono
physites in Egypt and Syria, were cut off, Eome came to
have less and less vital connection with what was now
essentially the Byzantine Church, identical in area with the
Byzantine Empire.
2. A second influence that worked gradually but with
inevitable consequences towards this cleavage of the Church
was the separation of the Eastern and Western Empires,
followed by the slow dissolution of the latter, and then its
marvellous resurrection as an independent power, no longer
a Eoman Empire at all except in name. This process began
when the emperors ceased to treat Eome as the centre of
government. Diocletian thoroughly Orientalised the ad
ministration with its headquarters at Nicomedia. But the
most significant fact in this connection was the founding of
Constantinople. When Constantine transferred the centre
of social influence and intellectual life, as well' as the centre
of government, from the banks of the Tiber to the shores of
the Bosphorus, he began to make a fissure which nothing
could stop. Subsequently this severance was widened by
the Gothic invasions — the establishment of a Gothic king
dom, only nominally subject to the emperor in the East as
its suzerain lord — the failure of the exarch at Eavenna to

THE GREAT SCHISM 233
shelter Italy from the awful scourge of the Huns — and the
success first of Leo, then of Gregory, in stepping into the
breach and saving civilisation and the Church, when their
professed protector at Constantinople had proved to be an
impotent defence. Meanwhile in the East the Church
was becoming more and more identified with the empire.
There she was tied hands and feet by the imperial will.
Emperors and empresses appointed and deposed patriarchs
and 'bishops. The Byzantine Church was being converted
into a department of the highly organised bureaucratic Byzan
tine Empire. Naturally the West asked, Why should the
free Latin Church tie itself down td the servile ways of the
subject Greek Church ? If the emperor could not protect
the Church in the West there was no reason why she should
not be independent of his servants in the East. When the
pope crowned Charles the Great as emperor at Eome on
Christmas Day, A.D. 800, he definitely broke with the emperor
at Constantinople, in whose eyes the Frank was a usurper.
Again the marvellous political insight of Eome proved
to be correct. It was useless to look across the Adriatic
for protection against the Lombards ; then the wise course
was to find safety in the rising power across the Alps. But
the price for the new alliance had to be paid. Henceforth
the papacy, with all its dreams of a universal Church, must
content itself in fact with being the dominant influence
only in Western churches, and see the other half of
Christendom drift wholly out of its sphere of authority.
3. A third influence tending to the severance of the
two churches is to be detected in the rivalry between the
patriarchates of Eome and Constantinople, and especially in
the lofty claims put forth by the papacy. We saw how
gravely Gregory the Great had expostulated with John the
Faster, when that patriarch had laid claim to the title of
"Oecumenical Bishop."1 Long before this, though not
urging precisely the same titular claim, the popes had made
great demands on the ground of their succession to the
chair of Peter. The council of Sardica (a.d. 344) had
1 6ee p. 140.

234 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
given a right of appeal on the part of a bishop who had
been deposed by his fellow-bishops to Juhus the bishop of
Eome. But it is a matter of dispute whether this was
intended to refer only to this particular pope or also to his
successors, and further how far he might take the initiative.
It is to be observed that in this council the Eastern as
well as the Western Church was represented ; there were
bishops from Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, Thessaly, and other
Oriental districts. But since the Eusebian bishops had with
drawn and Hosius of Cordova was presiding, it is possible
that there was a majority of Western bishops when the
canon was voted. Then Leo the Great (a.d. 440-461)
put forth high papal claims, referring to Peter and his
successors as constituting the rock on which the Church is
founded.1 Peter is the pastor and prince of the whole
Church. To resist his authority is an act of impious pride
and the sure way to hell. Considering the many times in
which the popes make great demands in various ways, it is
difficult to think Gregory the Great wholly disinterested
when he rebukes his brother at Constantinople for arrogance
in calling himself the " Oecumenical Bishop." Gregory
claims some merit for not adopting the title for himself on
the ground that it has been allowed to earlier popes ; but
here he is not accurate, for the previous use of the term
has been generic, applying to all the patriarchs,2 whereas
now the question turns on the exclusive use of it for one
patriarch in particular.
The conflict between pope and patriarch reached an
acute condition in the ninth century. Ignatius, the
patriarch of Constantinople, had dared to rebuke the im
morality of the Caesar Bardas, refusing to administer the
sacrament to him on Advent Sunday, A.D. 857. No
ecclesiastic in the Eastern Church could follow with im
punity the bold example of Ambrose in the West, when
he stood at his church door and refused admission to
the Emperor Theodosius. Ignatius was arrested and im-
1 e.g. Letters, cv., exx.
2 See Dudden, Gregory the Great, vol. ii. pp. 209 ff.

THE GREAT SCHISM 235
prisoned on a false accusation of sedition, and in his place
the emperor nominated and a synod formally elected a very
remarkable man to the headship of the Byzantine Church.
This was Photius, who has been greatly maligned by the
papal party, but who appears to have been really of high
personal character, though haughty and ambitious. Eminent
for learning in a church that has prided itself on its
scholarship, Photius mentions no less than 280 pagan and
Christian authors whose works he has read. He comes
only second to John of Damascus among the leading church
men of the later Byzantine period. If John was the last
of the Fathers, Photius may be considered the last of the
scholarly leaders of first rank in the Greek Church. His
controversial writings reveal intellectual contempt spring
ing from superior knowledge and culture, which he does
not scruple to express in dealing with the pretensions of
his western rival, the pope, a man his inferior both in
learning and in brain power. Here we see the age-long
scorn of the finished Greek for the ruder Latin civilisation.
Photius was a layman when he was suddenly called to
his lofty post in the Church. But he was a man of noble
birth and rank, and he then held the office of chief
Secretary of State. He was rushed through the minor
orders with a haste that scandalised the proprieties, taking
one step a day, till he was promoted to the highest place of
all. Ambrose was a layman when he was elected bishop
of Milan by acclamation, and though he took some time for
preparation and his promotion was not quite so rapid as
that of Photius, it was somewhat similar. In both cases,
proved ability in the administration of civil affairs was
taken as a qualification for the regulation of Church
government. But there was one vital difference between
the two cases. Ambrose had been elected by the people of
Milan in a popular assembly ; but Photius was forced on
the people of Constantinople by the government.
These high-handed proceedings met with serious opposi
tion, and in order to settle the matter the Emperor
Michael invited the pope, Nicholas i., to send delegates to a

236 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
general council. This was done, and the council was held
at Constantinople in the year 861. It deposed Ignatius,
although he had the support of the people, and its decision
was ratified by the papal delegates. Then the friends of
Ignatius, that is to say, the real representatives of the Greek
Church, appealed to the pope, who threw over his delegates,
and convoked a synod at Eome, which decided in favour of
Ignatius, and pronounced excommunication on Photius in
case he should dare to retain the patriarchate (a.d. 863).
Photius replied by insisting on the equality in rank of the
patriarchs of Eome and Constantinople. The emperor sum
moned another council at Constantinople four years later, at
which the patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem
were represented ; and this council pronounced a sentence
of deposition on the Eoman pontiff. But Photius was in a
precarious position, only able to hold on by the support of
his patron Michael ; and when that was removed by the
murder of the emperor, he was seized and imprisoned in a
convent, and Ignatius restored to the patriarchate. In the
year 869 a council was held in St. Sophia, which the
Latins reckon as the "Eighth GEcumenical Council" It
condemned Photius and confirmed the right of Ignatius to
be patriarch of Constantinople.
This miserable quarrel ended happily. The rival
patriarchs were both really good men, and ultimately they
were reconciled. Even Ignatius, who had owed so much
to the papacy, could not endure the arrogant interference of
Pope John viii. with the missionary work which the Greek
Church was carrying on in Bulgaria with remarkable
success; and the pope had threatened to excommunicate
him too, when death removed him from his difficulties
(Oct. 23, 877). Three days later Photius was quietly
restored to the patriarchate. It was not to be expected
that the pope would find him more complacent. In the
year 879, a council, three times as large as Ignatius's council,
met with much pomp in St. Sophia, pronounced the
previous council a fraud, re-affirmed the Nicene Creed
without the Filioque clause on which the Latins were in-

THE GREAT SCHISM 237
sisting, and ended by eulogising the virtues and learning
of Photius. This council is sometimes reckoned by the
Orientals as the "Eighth Oecumenical Council," though
generally only seven general councils are allowed in the
East. Thus if an eighth is to be counted at all — and that
is the case definitely in the Eoman Church, though less
decisively in the Greek — it is taken differently in the
West and in the East. With the Latins it is Ignatius's
council of AD. 869 ; with the Greeks it is Photius's council
of A.D. 879. The papal delegates assented to the decision
of the latter council, and deceived the pope on their return
to Eome by representing that it had conceded his Bulgarian
claims. When he learnt the truth and discovered that it
had done nothing of the kind,* he pronounced an anathema
on Photius for deceiving and degrading the Holy See. But
it does not appear that the patriarch had had any share in
the diplomacy which the papal legates had practised.
Photius ended his days in learned leisure at a monastery,
and died in the year 891. The feud between the two
churches now went on and it only ended with final and
complete severance.
4. The last stage of the long quarrel was concerned
with the controversy on the Filioque clause of the Nicene
Creed. The irony of history is nowhere more apparent
than in the fact that the chief difference between the two
great historic churches is so fine a point of doctrine
that ordinary people could never guess its supposed im
portance. Nobody could pretend to decide it without
penetrating into the profound mystery of the Being of God.
Both churches accept the Nicene Creed as confirmed in the
great Church councils ; both are loyal to the idea of the
homousion, and to the full Divinity of the Holy Spirit as
well as that of the Son ; both are thoroughly Trinitarian.
But while the Eastern Church maintains that the Holy
Spirit proceeds from the Father alone though through the
Son, the Western Church contends that He proceeds from
the Father and also from the Son as a joint source. Not
only does the Greek Church object to the latter idea, it

238 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
accuses the Latin Church of a wrong action in venturing to
insert a word in the venerated Nicene Creed. The clause
in the Latin version asserting the procession of the Holy
Spirit originally ran : " Qui ex patre procedit." The Eoman
Church now renders this clause : " Qui ex Patre Filioque
procedit." The insertion of Filioque at this point in the
creed became the chief ground of division between the two
churches, and it has remained so down to the present
day without any hope of reconciliation, each community
anathematising the other on account of the fine point of
doctrine. As with most controversies, it was possible for each
party to point to testimony in the writings of venerated
Fathers of antiquity that seemed to favour its own specific
contention. That is nearly always the case, because it is
controversy that sharpens definitions ; and inasmuch as
there is certainly something to be said for both sides of an
argument in which sincere and able men are engaged, it is
pretty certain that before the ideas crystallise on one side
or the other they will be found in a mixed state of solution.
Thus Tertullian in the West seemed to favour what was
adopted later as the Eastern view, when he said, Spiritum
non aliunde puto quam a Patre per Filium,1 and Hilary of
Poitiers, the most important literary defender of the
Nicene Creed in the West during the fourth century, writes,
Loqui de Eo (i.e. the Holy Spirit) non necesse est, Qui a
Patre et Filio auctorHhus confttendus est,2 and at the close,
referring to the Holy Spirit, he says, ex te per unigenitum
suum ; 3 and again explicitly, A Patre procedit Spiritus
Sanctus, sed a Filio et a Patre mittitur.4 On the other
hand, Athanasius in the East seems to anticipate the
Western view when . he writes, " The Word gives to the
Spirit, and whatever the Spirit hath, He hath from the
Word." 6 This may not refer to original being. St. Basil
is more definite, writing, " Since the Holy Spirit . . . de-
1 Adv. Praxean. 4. 2 De Trin. ii. 29. s Hrid. xii. 57.
* Ibid. viii. 20— an important passage discussing this very question.
5 Cont. Ar. iii. 25.

THE GREAT SCHISM 239
pendeth x from the Son, and hath His being dependent 2
from the Father as its cause, whence also He pro-
ceedeth." 3 The latter part of this sentence would appear
to favour the Eastern view. Nevertheless in another
place Basil writes, " God generates, not as man, but truly
generates. And that which is generated of Him sends
forth the Spirit through His mouth." * On the other hand,
Gregory Nazianzen definitely asserts that the Spirit pro
ceeds from the Father only.5
Ambrose appears to be the first to teach in express
terms that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father
and the Son. Thus he writes, " The Holy Spirit also
when he proceeds from the Father and the Son,6 is not
separated from the Father, is not separated from the
Son " ; 7 and Epiphanius frequently teaches that the Holy
Spirit is from both.8
Augustine frequently teaches that the procession is
from both the Father and the Son.9 As yet, however,
nobody had ventured to tamper with the venerated creed
so as to insert this idea into it. As far as has yet been
pointed out, " the first known instance in which the
Filioque was inserted into the Processional Clause of the
Symbol " 10 is at the third council of Toledo (a.d. 589). It
reappears in the fourth (a.d. 633) and sixth (a.d. 638)
councils of Toledo. The doctrine was received in England
at the council of Hatfield (a.d. 680). Passing on to the
eighth century, we find Tarasius in his letter announcing
his elevation to the patriarchate of Constantinople writing
of the Holy Spirit as " proceeding from the Father through
the Son " — the Greek doctrine. This expression was
1 ijprtirai. 2 ifa/iiiivov. 3 Epis. xxxviii. 3.
4 Adv. Eunomium. " Orat. 1 ; De Filio, 1.
6 Cum procedit a Patre et Filio. ' De Sp. S. i. 10.
0 trapa (Ancor. lxvii.), ii (Hser. lxxiv. 7) of Both, and irapA of the
Father, but t£ of the Son (Ancor. viii. 9).
9 e.g. Trin. xv. 48 and passim.
10 Howard, The Filioque and the Schism, pp. 18, 19— a book to which I
am indebted for much information on this subject, and the quotations given
above.

240 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
vehemently disputed in the Caroline Books — theological
writings claiming the sanction of Charles the Great, who
forwarded them to Pope Hadrian, and the controversy was
now fully alive. After a council at Aix-la-Chapelle (ad.
809), Charles sent legates to confer with the pope (Leo
in.) on the subject. Leo, while approving of the doc
trine, hesitated about the insertion of it in the venerated
creed. Four years later the council of Aries formally
sanctioned the double procession.
After this, when the quarrel broke out between Photius
and Nicolas, the patriarch charged the Eoman Church with
heresy for accepting what he reckoned an error in the
Western doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit. Still, in
spite of this difficulty and all other grounds of quarrel,
there was no formal severance between the two churches
till the middle of the eleventh century. Meanwhile the
clause which was the source of so much contention was
being gradually adopted by all the local churches in the
West. It is a question whether the insertion of it in the
creed was ever formally authorised by the Church of Eome
in a council at which the pope was represented.1
We now approach the final rupture. Michael Ceru-
larius, who was ordained patriarch of Constantinople in
the year 1043, addressed an encyclical letter to the
bishops of Apulia, some nine or ten years later, in which
he sought closer union with the Western Church, at the
same time mentioning some of the difficulties in the way
of such union, the chief of which was the Western use of
unleavened bread at the Eucharist.2 The last item that he
referred to was the Dogma of the Procession from the Son.
This letter fell into the hands of the pope, Leo ix., who
addressed a reply to the patriarch in a very different
spirit, ending with a threat that if necessary he would
not " Seethe the kid in its mother's milk," but " scrub its
mangy hide with biting vinegar and salt." s The patriarch
1 Dr. Dollinger attributed the insertion of it to Pope Benedict viii. on the
demand of the Emperor Henry n. , in a.d. 1014. See Howard, op. cit. p. 88.
3 Pro eo maximo, quod dc azymis, etc. s Mansi, xix. 649.

THE GREAT SCHISM 241
refusing to submit to the pope's directions, the papal
legates formally laid on the altar of St. Sophia a sentence
of anathema denouncing eleven evil doctrines and practices
of Michael and his supporters, and cursing them with the
awful imprecation : " Let them be Anathema Maranatha,
with Simoniacs, Valerians, Arians, Donatists, Nicholaitans,
Severians, Pneumatomachi, Manichees, and Nazarenes, and
with all heretics; yea, with the devil and his angels.
Amen. Amen. Amen" (July 16, a.d. 1054). The
schism was now complete.
The modern mind is naturally amazed that so huge a
disaster to Christendom could be seriously promoted by so
fine a point of controversy as the Filioque clause. We
have seen that this was by no means the only ground of
contention. It was but the last ingredient in a bitter cup
which the Eastern Church refused to take from the hands
of overbearing Eoman prelates. Then we must remember
that, all along, the deplorable mistake of substituting doc
trinal orthodoxy for personal faith was maintained by both
branches of the Church. Nor was the doctrinal point
under dispute without what people thought to be serious
consequences. Some have revived it in recent times.
When the idea of the immanence of God has suggested
that the Divine presence could be secured without the
mediation of Christ, it has been argued that the Spirit of
God comes to us from Christ ; that otherwise the special
' Christian gospel would vanish. But this was not the ques
tion at the time of the dispute. It was not how we
receive the Spirit ; but how the mysterious existence of
the Third Person in the Trinity comes to be in itself. The
Greeks allowed that we receive the Spirit through Christ
Still their opponents thought that the honour of Christ
was involved in the controversy. It was in the West, in
St. Augustine and the Athanasian Creed, for example, that
the absolute equality of the Son with the Father was em
phasised. The Filioque clause seemed to agree with that
equality, the Greek rejection of the clause to discredit it
16

CHAPTER VII
THE CRUSADES
(a) Official reports and letters from individual Crusaders ; Fulcher,
Gesta Peregrinantium Francorum, the diary of a witness;
Albert of Aix, Chronicle, second-hand, from eye-witnesses,
with masses of details uncritically handled ; William
of Tyre, Historia Rerum in partibus transma/rinis gestatnm,
also in touch with eye-witnesses, and using written sources,
a book composed with discrimination and literary skill, but
mingling legend, toned down, with historical fact — the
Herodotus of the Middle Ages ; Anna Comnena, Alexias ;
Nicetas, Historia ; Chronicles of the Crusades (Bohn) ; The
Chronicle of Morea (14th century ; ed. Schmidtt).
(6) Gibbon, chaps, lviii.-lxi. ; Michaud, History of the Crusades (Eng.
trans.), popular, rich in incident, untrustworthy ; H. von Sybel,
History and Literature of the Crusades (Eng. trans., edited
by Lady Duff Gordon), a valuable critical study ; Archer and
Kingsford, The Crusades (" Story of the Nations ") ; S. Lane
Poole, Saladin, and the Fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Foe the most part the Crusades have been studied from
the standpoint of Western Europe, since it was there that
they originated. Instigated by the Latin Church, they were
carried on by swarms of devotees, fanatics, penitents, and
adventurers from France, Germany; Italy, England. While
the goal of their enterprise was in the East, and while the
people most seriously affected by their achievements were
Orientals, the Eastern Church and Empire took but a
small part in the actual movement, which was a great
upheaval and eruption of Western Christendom. Neverthe
less, it falls in with the object of the present volume to
study the Crusades from the novel standpoint of that half
of Christendom which was the witness of the romantic
242

THE CRUSADES 243
feats of chivalry that adorned these quaint wars fought on
its own soil. Too often it was the victim of their disastrous
consequences. What did the Crusades mean to the Eastern
Church ? Did they bring it liberation, security, prosperity ?
That is the question which forces itself upon us when we
plant ourselves in imagination at Constantinople or Antioch,
at Tyre or Jerusalem, and watch the sanguinary fights of
Latins and Teutons with Turks and Saracens.
If we would take a broad view of the situation, we
must not be satisfied to regard the Crusades either as mere
freaks of fanaticism, or as only European police manoeuvres
for the protection of pilgrims. Their immediate object
was recovery of the sacred sites of Palestine from desecra
tion by the infidels, and their direct provocation was ihe
ill-treatment at times endured by people who visited those
sacred sites. Palmers' tales told by the fireside and in
the market-place stirred the minds of men in the
towns and villages of Europe. But when we orientate the
whole movement we see that these wars take their place
in the age-long conflict between Islam and Christendom.
That conflict began in the seventh century when Mohammed
started on his conquering career ; it will not cease till the
cross is seen again on the dome of St. Sophia in place of the
usurping crescent, till the last Turkish sultan is dethroned,
and the last Turkish pasha dismissed. Nevertheless these
strange enterprises had their own peculiar features, which
happily are without parallel in history ; for the world has
never seen less wisdom or greater incompetence, attended
by more waste of life and deeper misery, in proportion to
the purpose pursued and the end accomplished.
In their actual inception the Crusades sprang from the
pilgrimages. As early as the fourth century a continuous
stream of immigrants from Western Europe was pouring
into Palestine. Some came and went, like the modern
tourists ; others remained to live and die in the Holy Land.
When Jerome settled down for life in a cave at Bethlehem,
the fame of so eminent a man induced many to follow his
example. Under his influence Paula came from Eome, and

244 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
being a woman of social position and religious reputation, she
induced many other Eoman ladies to join her. There were
two colonies of ascetics from Italy — one of men, and the other
of women — settled in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem.
These processes — the settling of immigrants and the
pilgrimages of temporary visitors — continued without
intermission except in times of war. Thus Western
Europe was always in touch with the East. In the break
up of civilisation and the consequent deepening ignorance
of the Dark Ages, the value of relics as fetishes rose ; and
then those primary but untransferable relics, the scenes of
our Lord's birth at Bethlehem, and death and -burial at
Jerusalem, came to be adored pre-eminently.
The Persian occupation in the sixth century only put a
temporary check to the pilgrimages ; and the Mohammedan
conquest of the country, which followed so soon after its
recovery by Heraclius, hindered them much less than might
have been expected, for the early caliphs were more
tolerant of unbelievers than the Christian emperors of
heretics. Especially was this the case with the enlightened
and mild caliphs of the Fatimite line who resided in Egypt,
and it was a good thing for the pilgrims that Jerusalem
came under their authority and protection. One short
interval of fearful persecution occurred under the mad
caliph, El-Hakim, who ended by outraging the principles
of his fellow-Mohammedans, in proclaiming himself the
creator of the universe, and was slain by order of his sister
as a menace to Islam. This terrible man had most
cruelly oppressed both the Jews and the Christians under
his power. It is said that in the year 1010 he ordered
the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre; if so, hiB order
could not have been effectually executed.
A far worse calamity was soon to follow. The Turks
swarmed over Syria and Asia Minor, defeating the effemi
nate Arab caliphs of the Abbasside line. Toghrul, the
grandson of Seljuk, had adopted Mohammedanism,1 and in
1 Michael the Syrian gives three reasons for the ready amalgamation of
the Turks with the Arabs »nd their speedy adoption of Islam— (1) their

THE CRUSADES 245
the year 1055, after conquering Persia and regions farther
west, he was appointed sultan, or vice-regent for the
caliph. This man was succeeded by his nephew, Alp
Arslan, who conquered Armenia and defeated the Emperor
Romanus Diogenes at the battle of Manzikert (a.d. 1071).
All Anatolia was now at the mercy of the Turks, who
continued to press north and west till they threatened
Constantinople. In the year 1081 the sultan fixed his
headquarters at Nicaea, the sacred centre of Christian
orthodoxy. Happily for the world the confusion into which
the Byzantine Empire had been thrown by the defeat of
Eomanus was now subsiding, and a strong prince, Alexius
Conmenus, was on the throne. But he could do little to
stem the spreading flood of barbarism. A ghastly peril
threatened the remnant of the empire of the Caesars.
The Arabs had received culture from Greeks and Persians ;
and their policy had become pacific and moderately liberal.
But the Turks were fierce, brutal Mongols from Central
Asia, little better than savages, spreading destruction and
ruin in their path. Their capture of Syria and Asia
Minor threatened the ruin of civilisation throughout those
regions which for centuries had been in the van of human
progress. Happily they soon came to some extent under
Persian civilising influences, or all would have been lost-
In his despair the emperor sent urgent requests to
Europe for assistance. Doubts have been thrown on
a letter he is said to have addressed to Eobert, Count of
Flanders — a brother-in-law of William the Conqueror,
especially for the reason that in it Alexius mentions the
beauty of the women of Constantinople as an inducement
for the warriors of the West to come to the rescue of his
city. The letter exists in several forms, and therefore
manifestly it has been tampered with. While we cannot be
sure of its original features in every particular, there can
own earlier Monotheism ; (2) the fact that they found Turkish immigrants
already settled in Persia, which had been won over by the Mohammedan
power some time previously ; (3) the service of Turks as mercenaries in the
army of the caliph, Chronicle (ed. Chabot), vol. iii., p. 156.

246 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
be no reasonable doubt that the emperor did write some
such letter, appealing for aid in his desperate need. " From
Jerusalem," he says, " to the Mge&n, the Turkish hordes
have mastered all ; their galleys, sweeping the Black Sea
and the Mediterranean, threaten the imperial city itself,
which, if fall it must, had better fall into the hands of
Latins than of pagans." x
Here then was a new motive for the Crusades unexpect
edly sprung upon the Western world. Had Constantinople
fallen into the hands of the Turks nearly four centuries
earlier than the actual time of that fate, and this when the
Asiatic invaders were flushed with their recent victories in
Asia Minor, and before the kingdoms of Europe had become
consolidated and strengthened as great national powers, it
is difficult to see what could have prevented the westward
rush of the devastating flood from sweeping over all
Christendom, and reducing Italy and France to the con
dition of Syria and Anatolia. From this threatened doom
of Christianity and civilisation the world was saved by the
earlier Crusades. That, and not the sentimental glory of
the recovery of the sacred sites, or the pitiable achievement
of the temporary establishment of the little, shadowy
kingdom of Jerusalem, is their supreme, their one solid
result. Yet, stupendous as this task was and momentous
as its consequences were, the thought of it was by no
means uppermost in the minds of the Crusaders. They
were jealous of the Greeks, as uneducated people commonly
are jealous of their more cultivated neighbours, especially
when the latter display the airs of superior persons, as the
Greeks were only too ready to do. Besides, were not
these Byzantine heretics excommunicated and cursed by
the holy pope? The behaviour of the Crusaders at
Constantinople and other Eastern cities was scarcely that
of a lifeboat crew saving the victims of a shipwreck ; nor
did the people they rescued evince much gratitude towards
their deliverers. The character and conduct of many of
1 Martene, Thesaur. p. 266 ff. Cf. for the Abbott Guilbert's account of
this celebrated letter, "Lappenberg" in Pertz. Archiv. vi. p. 630.

THE CRUSADES 247
the Crusaders rendered them perfectly odious to the
men and women- on whom they were billeted. The
whole matter is very complicated. Still, when we
consider the course of events, we must come to the
conclusion that for history the supreme significance of
the Crusades lies in the fact that they put a check on
the Turkish advance, and so effectually broke its power
that the fatal consequences momentarily threatened were
for ever prevented. He who believes that God is in
history will see the fanaticism of relic worship over
ruled for the deliverance of Christendom from total
destruction. While the appeal of Alexius and the thundercloud in
the East to which it pointed may have furnished the
motives of statesmen, it was the maltreatment of holy
pilgrims and the desecration of holy sites that roused the
passion of the multitude. In this age of relic worship it
was intolerable that infidels should hold the most sacred
of all relics — the cave in which the Saviour was born, the
Cross on which He had died, and the tomb in which He
was buried. A practical age will smile at the fanaticism
of such a thought rousing Europe to a war fever. But it
has been justly observed that we have here a rare instance
of warfare waged for an idea. For this reason we may
perceive in the inception of the Crusades the poetry of
chivalry, as we see in the legends that followed them its
romance; unhappily, when we come to study the grim
story of the actual events, poetry and romance vanish in
horrors of carnage.
The popes have the credit of originating the Crusades
and of being their chief promoters. The earliest effort of
the kind has been sought in a letter ascribed to Pope
Sylvester il, about the year 1000, in the midst of the
crisis of gloom and terror when people were expecting
the end of the world. This letter is addressed to all
Christians in the name of the church at Jerusalem,
beseeching them to pity the miseries of the Holy City and
come to its rescue with money if not with arms ; but its

248 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
genuineness cannot be sustained.1 Gregory vii., the great
Hildebrand (a.d. 1073-1085), seriously -purposed inaugu
rating a crusade, and was only hindered from doing so, after
50,000 pilgrims had agreed to follow him, by the complica
tion of affairs in Europe that demanded his attention. He
said, " He would rather expose his life to deliver the holy
places than live to command the entire universe." Had
this remarkable man devoted his genius and energy to
the enterprise, no doubt great results would have been
achieved But the actual origination of the first Crusade
was the work of Urban n. (ad. 1088-1099), who held
a council at Piacenza, in which he broached the scheme,
and then, crossing the Alps, convened a larger and more re
presentative council at Clermont (November 1095), where,
after the settlement of French affairs, he called upon the
people of Europe to aid him in rescuing the Holy Sepulchre.
The popular imagination has seized on Peter the Hermit,
who came from Amiens, as the real inspirer of the Crusades,
and Michaud has written a dramatic description of the
interview between this strange person and Urban at
Clermont, in which the pope takes quite the second place ;
but that conversation is wholly imaginary. Peter was not
even present at the council. The organisation and spread
of the movement through Europe must be attributed to
the pope. On the other hand, we should beware of the
modern tendency to undervalue Peter's influence. An
enthusiast of intense fervour, he set all the northern parts
of France on fire with his passionate eloquence as he rode
about from town to town, bareheaded and barefooted,
carrying a huge cross before him, and preaching in churches
and streets and highways. Everywhere his proposal was
entertained with enthusiasm as from the call of heaven.
Deus vult, Deus vult, cried the educated ecclesiastics in
the council ; Dieu la volt, Dieu la volt, echoed the rustics
in their vernacular. The council freed the Crusaders from
taxes, and ordered that debtors who joined their ranks
should not be pursued. An extraordinary assortment of
1 Ep. cvii. in Bouquet, x. 426.

THE CRUSADES 249
people rushed into the enterprise, including old men,
women with children, prostitutes.
Peter and his horde of peasants were too impatient to
wait for the lords and knights who were coming together
in military array. Without any organisation or commis
sariat the simple multitude set out for their tremendous
walk in the spring of the year 1096. After they had
crossed Austria and passed the confines of civilisation, they
still had 600 miles of forest and wilderness to traverse
in Hungary and Bulgaria before they could reach Con
stantinople. They came on like a swarm of locusts eating
up the countries they passed through. We can neither
blame them nor the people of these lands when we see
that raids of hunger provoked retaliation and slaughter.
The multitude was divided into two parts for better
provisioning — half under Peter, and half under another
leader, Walter the Penniless. They were in a pitiable
plight when they reached Thrace, and all might have
perished if the Emperor Alexius had not sent to rescue
them. We can understand with what disgust the citizens of
Constantinople viewed the approach of the ragged host.
Alexius was glad to ship them across the Bosphorus
as quickly as possible. There they would have been
killed outright, if it had not been for the dissentions
that had broken out among the Turks. But even as
things were, a great number — Gibbon accepts the figure
at "three hundred thousand" — perished before a single
city was rescued from the infidels.
In August a more regular army followed, under Hugh
the Great, Count of Vermandois ; Eobert of Normandy, the
eldest son of William the Conqueror ; Stephen of Chartres,
said to own as many castles as there are days of the year :
Eaymond of many titles ; Bohemond, son of Eobert
Guiscard; Tancred, the perfect knight of chivalry cele
brated in Tasso's poem ; but, above all, Godfrey of Bouillon,
Duke of Lorraine, a man who combined a spirit of genuine,
unselfish religious devotion with the talents of a great

250 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
general. Even this army was ill-organised under its
several leaders, and the undisciplined footmen immensely
outnumbered the knights on horseback Like the ragged
regiments of their precursors, these troops also came
through Germany and Hungary, and were admitted into
Constantinople with fear and suspicion. Crossing the
Hellespont, they defeated the Turks at Nicaea. Then they
divided. One body struck off east under Baldwin and
conquered Edessa. The main army proceeded to Antioch,
which fell after a fearful siege, both sides having suffered
very heavily.1 At length Jerusalem was surrounded, be
sieged, and taken (July 15, 109 9).2 Then, with lighted
torches, but still among scenes of blood, the Crusaders made
their way to the goal of their difficult undertaking — the
Holy Sepulchre. Part of the supposed cross, still contained.
in its silver casket, was recovered and borne with singing
in procession to " the temple." " And all the people went
after, which wept for pitie, as much as if they had seen the
Saviour Jesus Christ still hanging on the Cross. They all
held them for much recompense of a great treasure that
our Lord had thus discovered." s
Godfrey of Bouillon was elected king of Jerusalem;
and, though he declined the honour of the title as unworthy
to hold it, he accepted the actual rule.4 Godfrey died the
next year, and his brother Baldwin, when summoned from
Edessa to succeed him, being less scrupulous, allowed
himself to be crowned at Bethlehem (a.d. 1100). Thus
there was founded the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem.
The sequel is an anti-climax. Having accomplished the
end of their vow, the mass of the surviving Crusaders re
turned home, and the leaders who remained in charge of the
chief cities that had been captured — Jerusalem, Antioch, and
Edessa — found to their dismay that they were left stranded,
like shipwrecked sailors on three desert islands. Both
politically and ecclesiastically then- position was altogether
anomalous. They had formally submitted to the Greek
1 See William of Tyre, pp. 84-143.
2 Ibid. pp. 167-188. » Ibid. p. 194. * lUd. pp. 192, 193.

THE CRUSADES - 251
emperor as the condition of being permitted to pass
through his territory ; but in reality they showed him no
fealty whatever, but behaved as foreign princes colonising
a land that they had won by the sword. This was the
political position. The ecclesiastical was not more satis
factory. They were now in the region of the Eastern
Church; yet they owned allegiance to the pope, whose
supremacy that Church did not recognise and who had
denounced it as heretical In the eyes of the patriarch
of Constantinople the Crusaders were both schismatics and
heretics. Their subsequent conduct did not lead the Greek
Church to view them with favour; for they abandoned
themselves to the pleasures and luxuries of Oriental life. A
Latin patriarchate was founded at Jerusalem, with Dagobert,
a haughty, ambitious prelate, as its first occupant, having four
archbishoprics and a number of bishoprics under him.
The kingdom of Jerusalem lasted for nearly a century ;
but during much of this time it was in a state of degenera
tion and decay. The descendants of the Crusaders, called
Pulleni, were for the most part a weak and worthless race,
rendered effete by luxury and self-indulgence. Damascus
was still unconquered. In the year 1146 Edessa was
recaptured by the Saracens. Then Europe was alarmed,
and a second Crusade was projected and inspired by a
much greater man than any of the originators of the first
— Bernard of Clairvaux, the reformer of monasticism and
restorer of the papacy to its power and dignity. The
earlier Crusade had not seen any sovereign at its head.
But this new movement was led by both Louis vn., king of
France, and the German emperor, Conrad hi. It proved
to be a dismal failure. The Greeks were now more
than timorous and suspicious: they actually opposed the
defenders of Christendom. There is good reason to believe
that the Emperor Manuel, a warrior of gigantic personal
prowess, entered into secret communications with the
sultan and treacherously misled the Crusaders. Be that
as it may, the siege of Damascus failed, and the princes
returned home having effected nothing.

252 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Nevertheless for two centuries the idea of the Crusades
was kept alive in Europe, and every spring saw fresh
bodies of men sewing the cross in gold, or silk, or cloth
on to their garments, and setting out for the holy war. It
was a great calamity that originated the next extensive
movement of this kind — known as the third Crusade. In
October 1187, Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Sultan
Saladin. This roused the old Emperor Frederick Barba-
rossa to go himself to recover the Holy City. He defeated
the sultan at Iconium, but was drowned in attempting to
ford the river Calycadnus (a.d. 1190). Eichard i. of Eng
land now became the chief leader of the Crusade, amid
great difficulties caused by the jealousies of other princes
and his own inconsiderate eagerness, for he was but a
glorified schoolboy. Eichard and Saladin — who was
neither a Turk nor an Arab, but a Kurd, and therefore,
like the Crusaders themselves, of the Aryan stock — came
to terms, which left Jerusalem in the hands of the courteous
Moslem, but allowed the Christians possession of the Holy
Sepulchre and the right of pilgrimage there.
The story of the fourth Crusade might well be told
with tears of shame and humiliation for the disgrace which
it was to Christendom. In the year 1217 Innocent in.
summoned the nations to yet another attempt to rescue
the holy sites from the possession of the infidel. No
emperor or king now responded There was no great
Bernard to inspire enthusiasm. But a preacher of a dis
tinctly lower type, Fulco of Neuilly, succeeded in obtaining
support from a number of French nobles, who involved
themselves in unworthy obligations to blind Dandolo, the
patriotic doge of Venice. He would supply them with
ships if they would do his business for him. Venice was
now quarrelling with Constantinople, and the Crusaders
consented to begin their expedition with an attack on their
fellow-Christians, the Greeks. They first took Zaras and
then sailed up to the very walls of Constantinople, gazing
with wonder on the gilt domes and spires of its 500
churches. The Crusaders — we should say, the invaders—

THE CRUSADES 253
were accompanied by young Alexius, son of the Emperor
Isaac, who had been blinded and imprisoned by his brother
Alexius Angelus, now usurping the throne. Thus their
expedition might be compared to the French aid offered to
the Pretender in England. But while this gave some face
to the invasion, the sequel showed that it was really an
outbreak of the long smouldering enmity between the East
and the West.
At the approach of the Latins the timid Greek troops
and their emperor fled from the camp where they had
assembled with a view of opposing the Crusaders. After
an easy siege the gates were thrown open, and the Latins
entered the city in triumph. They so far carried out their
programme as to release the imprisoned ex -Emperor Isaac
and crown the young Alexius, together with his father, at
St. Sophia. The junior emperor had promised that when
his father and he were restored he would put an end to
the schism which separated the Greeks from the Latin
Church. Isaac was obliged to consent to this and other
humiliating conditions — namely, a money payment of
200,000 silver marks, and the rescue of the Holy Land.
But the difficulties in the way of fulfilling his promises
were very great. A considerable sum of money was
paid over at once to the Crusaders ; but no serious steps
were taken to unite the divided churches. Before long
the Latin visitors became very unpopular. They were
pressing their demands with imperious insolence, forcing
their way into the palace, and threatening the timorous
Alexius that they would no longer recognise his sove
reignty if he did not comply. But that was beyond
his power. When the people perceived his helplessness,
they besieged the Senate clamouring for another emperor.
A time of confusion followed, in which young Alexius
was strangled, and his father, blind Isaac, died of fright.
The Latins then took Constantinople by storm under the
Marquis of Montferrat. The city was sacked. Many
of its priceless treasures were carried off to Europe;
more were destroyed. The patriarch fled on an ass without

254 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
a single attendant. The sacred vessels in the churches
were turned into drinking cups. Icons, even portraits of
Christ, were used as gaming tables. At St. Sophia the
splendid altar was broken in pieces, and a harlot, whom
Nicetas calls " a minion of the furies," seated herself on
the patriarch's throne, and sang and danced in the church,
ridiculing the Greek hymns and processions. It was a
scene of outrage and profanity anticipating Paris at the
Eevolution.1 A Latin Empire was now set up at Constantinople with
Baldwin of Flanders as its first emperor (a.d. 1204). The
Pope Innocent in. at first expressed strong disapproval of
the perversion of a Crusade against the infidels into a war
of conquest fought with Christians. But these Greek
Christians were heretics and schismatics, and when he
saw the great city of Constantinople brought under
Latin authority he sent the pallium to the new patriarch,
Thomas Morosini, a Venetian, and boasted that at last
Israel, after destroying the calves at Dan and Bethel, was
again united to Judah. Of course this was no real end to
the separation of the two churches. Among the Greeks
the Latin patriarch was regarded as an intruder ; he was
only recognised by the dominant invaders from Europe. The
rule of the Franks at Constantinople lasted for about sixty
years ; but it was no credit to its unscrupulous founders.
At length, with the aid of the Genoese, Michael viii.
(Palaeologus) expelled them and restored the Greek Empire
(a.d. 1261).
Meanwhile the Crusades went on as an intermittent
stream of warriors pouring over from Europe into Egypt
and Syria. In the year 1228 the German emperor,
Frederic n., driven to make good his word by threats of
excommunication from Pope Gregory ix., after much pro
crastination, set off for the Holy Land, where by good
fortune he found that the Sultan Camel of Egypt was
engaged in war with his nephew, and therefore willing to
make terms with the Franks. This Mussulman ruler
1 Nicetas, p. 757 ff.

THE CRUSADES 255
granted them a considerable part of the Holy Land,
including Jerusalem. Frederic claimed the kingdom through
Iolanthe, whom he had recently married, and placed the
crown on his own head in the church of the Holy
Sepulchre. But his troubles with the pope compelled him
to return home the next year.
The last Crusade of importance was undertaken by
Louis rx of France, a man of deep personal piety, who
deservedly earned the name of Saint Louis. Jerusalem
had been conquered and the inhabitants most horribly
treated by a rude tribe from the steppes of Asia, the
Chowaresmians, who, having fled before the Mongols, were
lured by the Egyptian Sultan Ayoub to serve as his mer
cenaries. The Christian dominion was now restricted to
Acre. Louis landed in Egypt in A.D. 1249, suffered defeat,
and was taken prisoner. Eansomed at a great price, he
sailed for Acre the next year ; but he could do little, and
he was compelled to return home in the year 1254. A
later attempt by St. Louis to break the Mohammedan
power at Tunis proved also to be a failure. Acre fell in the
year 1291, and with its fall the last remnant of the Latin
power in the East vanished. Henceforth all Palestine
remained under the rule of Islam.

CHAPTER VIII
THE GREEK CHURCH AT THE FALL OF THE
BYZANTINE EMPIRE
(a) Anna Comnena, Alexias ; Nicetas, Historia, de Rebus post
G. P. etc. ; Pachymer ; Nicephoras Gregoras ; Ducas ; Chal-
condyles ; Phranza ; and new sources later than Gibbon,
especially Nicolo Barbaro, Giornale dell' Assedio di Constan-
tinopoli— the diary of a besieged resident ; and Critobulus,
Life of Mahomet (filos rov Mua/icS j3').
(6) Gibbon, chaps, lxi.-lxviii. ; Bury, Later Roman Empire ;
Oman, Byzantine Empire; Pears, Destruction of the Greek
Empire, 1903 ; Revue de I'Orient Chretien, lre Annee, 1896,
No. 3, t
The decay of the Byzantine Empire involved the orthodox
Church in two serious calamities. The Turkish victories
brought disaster to those Christians who looked on Constanti
nople as the metropolis of their religion, over and above
the ruin of the State of which the same city was the capital
and at times almost the whole territory. That was bad
enough. But the mischief was aggravated by the schism
which divided the Eastern Church from the papal Church
of the West. As we saw in the previous chapter, under
these circumstances the advent of the Crusaders, who came
as the rescuers of the East from the infidel, was regarded
with very mixed feelings by the Christians on the spot.
The Greeks hated the Latins at least as much as they
feared the Turks. At times we find the emperor plotting
with the sultan against his friends from the West. The
conduct of the invading hosts intensified this antipathy.
The chronicles make it clear that this must have been
the case even before there was any outbreak of hostility

GREEK CHURCH AT FALL OF BYZANTINE EMPIRE 25*7
between the two parties. Take, for instance, some of the
occurrences in Syria and Palestine during the first Crusade.
After achieving their stupendous task, a task worthy of a
greater epic than Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, in the success
ful siege of Antioch, the Crusaders proceeded to resume
Christian worship in the city. In the churches they found
icons with the eyes cut out, the noses scraped off, the
whole smeared with filth. These they restored, putting
the fabrics in good order. They settled salaries on the
clergy and lavished on the churches gifts of gold and silver
for crosses and chalices, and silk for vestments and altar
cloths. They re-established the patriarch John with much
honour and solemnity. They even set up bishops in cities
that hitherto had not possessed them. So friendly was
their attitude that when they left Antioch and were on
their way to Jerusalem the Syrian Christians volunteered
as guides. All this was very pleasant. But the schism ! —
what had become of the schism ? That was in no way
healed. Personal convenience on one side, and some sense
of gratitude, not to say common decency, on the other,
kept it in abeyance for the time being ; but its re-emergence
was inevitable, sooner or later. John of Antioch was in a very
awkward position. He could not object to being restored
to his rightful place, the patriarchal throne of Antioch ;
and he could not be otherwise than courteous to the
deliverers from the West, through whose heroic valour and
almost incredible toil this happy result had been brought
about. Yet how could he fraternise with heretics — men
who affirmed the double procession of the Holy Ghost,
asserted the supremacy of the bishop of Eome, and worst
of all, used unleavened bread at the communion ? It was
impossible. In this dilemma John chose the prudent if in
glorious course of retreating. He went to Constantinople
"of his good will," our chronicler is careful to say,
" without any force or constraint." 1 The post being thus
vacated, the Crusaders felt no scruple in appointing another
patriarch, and accordingly they chose Bernard, whom they
1 William of Tyre, c. 144.
17

258 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
had previously made bishop of Tarsus ; he was a native of
Valence who had come from the West as chaplain to the
bishop of Puy. Of course he was a priest of the Latin
Church and subject to the pope. It was the same with
Dagobert whom the Crusaders had made patriarch of Jeru
salem. He was their patriarch ; he was no patriarch of the
indigenous Christians.
The situation at Constantinople was infinitely worse.
It was a Christian city in the hands of a Christian
government when the Crusaders captured it. Therefore
it had its patriarch at the time. This man was John
Camaterus.1 He fled to Didymotichum, but although he
was no longer treated as the head of the Church, there was
no disposition on the part of the Greeks to acknowledge
the Latin usurper of his throne at St. Sophia. Two years
later (a.d. 1205) Michael Antorianus was elected to the
patriarchate by the Greeks of Nicaea with as much cere
mony as if it had been at St. Sophia ; and so the Greek
Church went on in its independence notwithstanding the
boasted union of East and West at Constantinople, for which
Pope Innocent was grateful.
When we plant ourself in imagination among the
Greeks, we see how ridiculous the very idea of a Latin
Empire at Constantinople must have seemed to them.
There never was any Latin Empire in the East. A huge
band of brigands had seized the city ; that was about all
that had been done. Theoretically the barons divided out
the territory of the Byzantine Empire. But they did not
even know what that territory was, for in their distribution
they included Assyria and Egypt and other parts of the
Turkish dominions. Meanwhile they were actually only in
possession of Constantinople and its immediate neighbour
hood. Even here the " emperor " was little more than one of
the barons who found it hard to maintain his authority over
his turbulent fellow barons — like his contemporary King
John in England. After reigning only one year the first
"emperor" Baldwin was lost and probably killed among
1 Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, vol. i. p. 276.

GREEK CHURCH AT FALL OF BYZANTINE EMPIRE 259
the Bulgarians. His brother Henry, who succeeded him
and reigned for ten years, stayed the persecution of the
Greeks and permitted them to practise their religious rites
at Constantinople. Here was a gleam of hope for a settle
ment ; but it vanished with the death of the liberal-minded
" emperor." Peter, who followed, had only reigned for two
years when he was lost among the mountains of Epirus,
and nothing more was ever heard of him. Things went
from bad to worse with the usurpation ; a blight had seized
it from the first ; the doom of heaven was over it. The
people fled from its hard taxation ; fields were left untilled ;
trade died down ; abject poverty was the fate of the city and
its rulers. The barons tore the copper off the domes of the
churches in order to coin money. They sold the most
sacred relics, chief among which was the crown of thorns,
which went to St. Louis of France. The last " emperor "
even pawned his own brother to some Venetian nobles as a
pledge for a loan. This pitiable pretender to the throne of
the Caesars spent most of his time in Europe, travelling
from court to court and begging aid in money and men
to defend his city.
Meanwhile the real empire was partially pulling itself
together again. When the Crusaders took Constantinople
they seized the head. The limbs then broke off and
organised themselves as three separate governments at
Trebizond, at Thessalonica, and at Nicaea. The latter was
the chief centre, and by degrees it extended its power and
territory, till at last most of the Byzantine Empire as this
had existed when Constantinople fell had been gathered
under its rule. At the same time the Greek Church in
the provinces went on in its accustomed way as though
there were no Latin Empire at Constantinople, no -Latin
patriarch, no union with the West, no submission to the
papacy. These things were confined to the brigands who
occupied the city; and those brigands, as we have seen,
were being literally starved out.
Such was the condition of affairs when in the year
1261 some Greeks in the army of Michael Palseologus

260 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
crept through a hole in the walls of the once impregnable
city and quietly recovered Constantinople for its own
people. But disappointment followed. The hopes kindled
at Nicaea were not realised. It was impossible really to
restore the Byzantine Empire. The so-called Crusaders —
of the fourth Crusade — had done little good to themselves,
and infinite harm to the empire. The wonderful system
of Eoman administration was broken beyond possibility of
repair. Thus these pretended defenders of Christendom
against Islam prepared the way for the final overthrow of
Christian government in the East. If Constantinople had
not been captured by Latin Christians in the thirteenth
century, probably it would not have been besieged and taken
by Ottoman Turks in the sixteenth. At the door of these
professed Crusaders lies the awful guilt of the ruin of the
city and the opening of the road for the advent of a Turkish
Empire in Europe and all its attendant miseries.
The newly restored Greek government under Michael
at Constantinople found itself opposed by two enemies —
the Latin power in the West, coldly sympathetic with the
exiled Baldwin, but more effectually energetic in response
to the demands of the popes, and the Turkish power, grow
ing and spreading like a fungus till it reached the very
gates of the city. Thus once again the Byzantine Empire
shrank to the limits of the walls of Constantinople.
It is worthy of notice that the Church did not decay
with the empire. We have often had occasion to contrast
the subserviency of the Greek clergy with the independence
of the papacy. But we have met with many exceptions,
and these are all the more remarkable from the fact that
the patriarch of Constantinople never had the position held
by the pope at Eome. If he resisted the government it
was at his peril, for he was only a subject living under the
shadow of the imperial palace — not an independent prince,
sometimes the most powerful personage in Europe, able to
play one kingdom off against another, as was the case with
the great Innocent in. and his able successors.
Michael Palaeologus stained his succession to the throne

GREEK CHURCH AT FALL OF BYZANTINE EMPIRE 261
of Constantinople with an abominable crime. He was the
tutor and guardian of John, the heir to the throne, a child
only eight years old. It was expected that he would only
act as regent, or at most as co-emperor. Instead of doing
so, he seized the position of sole emperor, and blinded the
boy to render him incapable of ever taking over the govern
ment.1 Indignant at the crime, the patriarch Arsenius
summoned a synod of bishops, in which he formally excom
municated the emperor. Attention has been called to the
fact that he did not go further and depose the criminal.
But here we may note an important difference between the
Eastern and the Western Churches. Popes deposed princes,
because popes claimed for the Church supreme authority
over the secular government. That claim was never put
forth by the Greek Church. In the East the theory was
that each had power over its own province, though in
practice the secular interfered with the spiritual. This
spiritual power was now a serious reality. Therefore
Michael was thoroughly alarmed. He begged for penance
to be substituted for excommunication. Arsenius replied
that even if he were threatened with death he would never
remove the excommunication. The emperor paid the
patriarch a visit and asked if he desired his abdication, but
when, as he was unbuckling his sword, the patriarch held
out his hand as though to receive it, Michael drew back
and did not complete the action. He even spoke among
his friends about appealing to the pope. Some years passed.
Again the emperor applied to the patriarch for absolution ;
and again the stern servant of the God of righteousness re
fused. Then Michael could endure the strain no longer.
He brought a number of charges against Arsenius — that he
had shortened the matin prayer for the emperor, ordered
the omission of the Trisagion, treated the sultan of the
Seljukian Turks in a friendly way, etc., and on these
grounds induced an assembly of bishops to depose him.2
We have an account of the synod's proceedings recorded by
the clerk of the court. Arsenius was exiled, and his succes-
1 Pachymer, iii 10 j Gregory, iv. 4. a Pachymer, iv. 6.

262 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
sor, Germanus, granted absolution to Michael, who however
then persuaded him to retire, probably because he would
not publish the fact. That was done by the next patriarch
Joseph, a monk, who knew how to act the courtier. On
the 2nd of February, a.d. 1267, there was a solemn
function at St. Sophia, prepared for by a night spent in
the church. The emperor cast himself on the ground
before the patriarch, confessed his sin, and prayed for
pardon. He remained prostrate while Joseph, in conjunction
with the other bishops, read the absolution, after which he was
admitted to the communion. Thus at last he had his wish.
The whole story reveals surprising power in the Greek clergy,
or rather, what is of more significance, a remarkable respect
felt for religion and righteousness. It is not to be com
pared with Hildebrand's haughty conduct with the Emperor
Henry ; it is more like Ambrose's treatment of Theodosius
at Milan, when he refused to admit the Eoman emperor to
the church with the stain of blood upon him. It was a
moral protest, not an assertion of ecclesiastical arrogance.
During the whole period of the restored Byzantine
Empire the chief matter of diplomacy with the emperors
was their attempt to effect a union between the Eastern
and Western Churches. This was purely a question of
policy. There was no lofty quest for truth when dogma
was under discussion, and no yearning of brotherly love
when the attempt was to heal schism. The emperors,
weak in arms and cramped for territory, desired in the first
place to conciliate the popes; then by means of their
influence to prevent the Western powers from instigating
a new " Crusade " for the restoration of that floating shadow,
" the Latin Empire of Constantinople" ; and finally, to secure
their aid in resisting the continual encroachments of the
Turks. As early as AD. 1262, the pope, Urban IV., had
proclaimed a crusade against Michael as a usurper and a
schismatic, and also against his friends the Genoese who
had helped him. Urban had urged St. Louis to collect
tithes for this object. Nothing had come of it, and a later
pope, Gregory x., had replied to embassies from Michael

GREEK CHURCH AT PALL OF BYZANTINE EMPIRE 263
that no time was so favourable as the present for putting
an end to the Greek schism. Pachymer, the historian, our
chief authority for this period, had joined the Latin
Church. No doubt courtiers were ready to follow.
The popes appear to have been entirely ignorant of the
real condition of the Greek Church. Throughout these
negotiations and all that followed there was not the slightest
disposition on the part of that body to make any conces
sion or to take any steps towards union. The Greeks had
suffered too much from the cruel invasion and tyrannical
domination of the Latins to have the least desire for ecclesias
tical union with these people. The efforts towards union on
the Byzantine side came wholly from the government, not
at all from the people, the Church, or the clergy. Michael
tried his utmost to persuade the patriarch and the bishops
to join in his negotiations. But he failed completely. Is
that surprising ? At this very time the Greeks heard that
the Western powers were fitting out an expedition to restore
the Latin Empire. To them reunion with the Western
Church seemed to imply the restoration of an odious foreign
tyranny. Therefore, when delegates from the pope visited
Constantinople and tried to reason with the Greek bishops
and persuade them to accept the obnoxious Filioque clause,
they met with nothing but stubborn resistance. The
bishops replied that whatever the emperor's threats might
be, they would not consent to any alteration in the ancient
formula. The patriarch put forward Veccus, a learned,
eloquent man, to represent the Greek cause. After describing
various kinds of people who might be regarded as heretics,
Veccus came to the conclusion that the Latins were among
those " who are not called, but who are heretics."
Still Michael laboured for union. In the year 1274
he induced some of the bishops to join him in sending
delegates to Lyons with this end in view. Gregory x.
accepted their visit as a sign that they admitted the
Eoman form of the creed and submitted to his supremacy.
After the professions of the emperor and the bishops had
been read by their envoys, a Te Deum was sung, and the

264' THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
union of the churches proclaimed. The patriarch Joseph
declining to submit, he was promptly deposed, and his
orator Veccus, who had gone over to the emperor's side, set
in his place. Michael had his reward. The pope refused
Charles of Angou permission to attack him. But when
Martin IV. was pope he had sources of information or a
keenness of perception that had been denied to Gregory.
He was not to be hoodwinked by Michael's compliant
professions, made with the sole object of securing his
throne and empire, but not representing the thought and
will of his Church. In the year 1281 Martin put an end
to all negotiations for the time being by excommunicating
Michael and the Greeks as schismatics. The next year
the emperor died, and his son and successor, Andronicus II.,
who reigned for forty-six years (A.D. 1282-1328), returned
to the anti-papal policy. Veccus was forced to retire to a
monastery and Joseph was restored to the patriarchate.
Still being in danger both from the West, no longer re
strained by the papacy, and also from the Turks, Andronicus
accepted the aid of Spanish mercenaries, the " Catalans,"
whose advent was the beginning of grievous trouble.
Taking an independent course, these Spaniards were the
first to introduce the Turks into Europe by inviting them
to an alliance against an opposing faction at Constantinople.
The chief ecclesiastical „event of this long reign is
the curious episode of the patriarch Athanasius and his
anathemas. Next to the emperor, the patriarch was the
most important personage in Constantinople. It was there
fore a serious matter to have Athanasius revealing himself
as a stern, implacable ecclesiastic, scattering anathemas
right and left. He became so unpopular that he was
deposed and sent to a convent. A few years later, some
lads, climbing a ladder to the top of a pillar in the dome
of St. Sophia in search of a pigeon's nest, found there an
earthen pot containing anathemas of Athanasius against
the emperor and the rest of his enemies. The sequel of
this curious incident sheds some light on the religious
ideas of the times. Andronicus was terrified, and he sum-

GREEK CHURCH AT FALL OF BYZANTINE EMPIRE 265
moned a synod of bishops to consider his future prospects.
The synod pronounced that only the man who had written
the curse could withdraw it. So the emperor went on foot,
accompanied by the bishops, to the cell of Athanasius, who
was persuaded to absolve the imperial offender and resume
his own position as patriarch.
Being in desperate straits, the next emperor, Andronicus
in. (a.d. 1328—1341), reopened negotiations with the
papacy, and sent a message to Pope John xxn. conveying
his desire for union by the hands of some Dominican
missionaries who were returning from Tartary. The pope
replied by remitting preachers to Constantinople and by
promising to do all he could to further the emperor's pious
wish. On the death of Andronicus soon afterwards, the
dangerous heritage of the throne of Constantinople fell to
his son, John Palaeologus, a child nine years of age, whose
mother, Anne of Savoy, consented to the appointment of
Cantacuzenus as regent; the next year (a.d. 1342) he was
proclaimed joint-emperor. Cantacuzenus was a theologi
cally-minded emperor, who composed several controversial
works of no weight or significance. He retired in the year
1355, and the junior emperor John held the reins of
government for the following thirty-six years. This emperor
signalised the individuaUty of his policy by reopening
negotiations with the papacy, but they came to nothing.
The last and most important of all the serious attempts
to reconcile the two churches occurred in the reign of
John v. (sometimes reckoned John vn.), who reigned during
the years 1425—1448. He found his shrunken dominion
in a desperate condition. The Turks, who were now
established at Adrianople and other places in Europe, and
who had actually besieged Constantinople three years before,
though ineffectually, were continually threatening the very
existence of the empire. In the year 1429, following
the precedent set by Michael Palaeologus, John sent to
Pope Eugenius to reopen negotiations for union and asking
to receive an envoy at Constantinople to arrange matters
between the two parties. Two years later the council

266 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
of Bale met. Eugenius ordered the council to go to
Bologna for the convenience of the Greeks who were to
attend it. This the majority refused to do, denying the
right of a pope to remove an oecumenical council, and
alleging that the Bohemians, the followers of John Huss,
had already been summoned to Bale. No doubt on their
own account they were unwilling to cross the Alps and
bring themselves into the power of the pope. Eugenius
denounced this council as a " synagogue of Satan," and then
summoned his own council at Ferrara ; it was subsequently
removed to Florence on account of the plague.1 In
November 1437 the emperor set out with a large follow
ing. Joseph, the aged patriarch of Constantinople, though
without entertaining any hope for a successful issue, was
forced to accompany the party. One of the most important
members of it was the famous preacher Sylvester Syropulus,
who has left a valuable account of the expedition.2 Eugenius
received them courteously and did his utmost to smooth
the way to union. Both the pope and the emperor appear
to have been actuated by a true desire to put an end to
the schism. The visitors were struck with the splendour of Venice ;
but when they were shown the treasures of St. Mark's, they
thought, as Syropulus says, "These were once our own.
They are the plunder of the Hagia Sophia and our holy
monasteries." When the council was opened, after much
delay, which the Greeks felt to be very irksome, six
theologians on each side were appointed to formulate the
points for discussion. It was not till they had removed to
Florence, however, much against the wish of the Greeks at
being dragged so far across Italy, that the serious debates
began. •
There were two points to be considered with regard to
the Filioque clause — (1) the question of the truth or error
of it ; (2) the right of the Latins to add it to their creed.
1 Following Belarmine and other Roman Catholic writers, Hefele reckons
this to be an cecumenical council, Hist. Counc. vol. v., Appendix, p. 418.
2 Vera historia unionis non vera! inter Groscos et Latinos.

GREEK CHURCH AT FALL OF BYZANTINE EMPIRE 267
With respect to the first point, the Greeks had several private
conferences among themselves, by means of which they
came to the conclusion that the Latins did not mean that
the procession of the Holy Ghost was from " two principles,"
and on that understanding they decided that the language
of the clause was not in conflict with the Greek doctrine
that the procession is from the Father and through the
Son. That is to say, they did not change their own
position at all; they simply admitted that the Latin
position was not inconsistent with it. To this statement
the council agreed. Surely that was a most remarkable
concession on the part of the papal party, and thus far the
victory must be accorded to the Greeks. If ideas rather
than words are the essentials, the Eastern bishops did not
give up anything. On the other hand, the Western
bishops tacitly admitted that their test phrase was sus
ceptible of an interpretation harmonious with the Greek
doctrine. What then had become of the Greek heresy,
so often denounced by the popes ? It was allowed by a
papal council to be no heresy.
The second point was more difficult. The emperor
was led to admit that the clause was in the creed of the
seventh oecumenical council, the second council of Nicaea
(a.d. 787); but the bishops knew better. Angry debates
followed. At length, John, by the exertion of all his
influence, brought his party round to allow that the phrase
Filioque had been inserted into the creed lawfully and for
a good reason. If the decision of the first point had been
favourable to the Greeks, the pendulum had now swung in
the opposite direction, and on the whole it must be admitted
that the Latins had the advantage. It does not appear
that the other matter of serious dispute — the question of
papal supremacy — was ever discussed by the council, at all
events, publicly. We may recognise the wisdom of
Eugenius in the evasion of it, and also his sincere desire
for peace and union, Here, and indeed all along, we
see in these discussions the peculiar danger of the re
conciler. He glides over the thin ice : but the deep

268 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
waters lie beneath, and it will not be long before the ice
breaks. There can be no solid union without a frank
admission of differences. That was not seen at the time.
It rarely is seen by amicable peace-makers. In July 1439,
after twenty-six sessions of the council, the act of union of
the Eastern and Western Churches was signed. In August
it was published in the Duomo at Florence, and the
Te Deum, was sung in Greek.
It was not long before the futility of all these proceed
ings became apparent. The old patriarch had died just
before the signing, and he was buried in the baptistery at
Florence ; so he had escaped from the dilemma. But the
emperor's own brother, Demetrius, refused to sign the act
of union. Neither Mark of Ephesus nor any of the bishops
from Georgia would be present at the grand proclamation
service. When at Venice, on his way home, the bishop of
Heraclja was required to recite the creed in St. Mark's, he
did so in the Greek form — without the Filioque clause.
On, returning to the East, John saw to his chagrin that
all his efforts had been spent in vain. Mark of Ephesus
led the opposition to union. The patriarchs of Antioch
and Alexandria refused to sign it. The union was never
really effected, and from this time the schism went on
without any hope of healing.
The failure of the last important attempt to unite the
Churches was inevitably followed by coolness on the part
of the Western peoples towards the Greeks and indifference
to then fate. This fact should be duly weighed when we
are inclined to charge Europe with supine stupidity and
heartless selfishness in permitting Constantinople to fall
into the hands of the Turks. For generations that great
city had been the bulwark of Europe, the one outstanding
barrier against the rising tide of Asiatic barbarism, the only
safeguard of civilisation against savagery, of Christianity
against Islam. In the inception of the Crusades this
had been perceived by the wiser men of the West. To
their credit let it be said, the popes had seen it all along,
and had consistently shaped their policy accordingly.

GREEK CHURCH AT FALL OF BYZANTINE EMPIRE 269
Now the failure of the council of Florence finally broke
the bonds of sympathy between the East and the West
just when they seemed to be growing into some real
strength. Constantinople was left to itself; the con
sequence was its doom.
When the war-cloud was threatening, although all
hope of real reunion was now over, John's brother,
Constantine, who had succeeded him, effected a nominal
union. A united communion was held at St. Sophia
on December 12, 1452, and the names of the Eastern
and Western patriarchs were both mentioned in the
prayers. But the people looked on with amazement and
horror at the consecration of an unleavened wafer by the
officiating Latin priest. Eushing out in wild excitement to
the cell of Gennadius — who had been one of the promoters
of union at Florence, but who now denounced it — they
cried, " What occasion have we for succour, or - union,
or Latins ? Far from us be the worship of the Azymites."
The first minister of the empire was heard to declare that
he would rather see in Constantinople Mohammed's turban
than the pope's tiara or a cardinal's hat.
Under these circumstances the really surprising thing
is that the city had held out so long. She had never
recovered from the fatal blow that she had received in
the conquest and ravages of the Latins. Her final struggle
is a miracle of patriotic heroism. The end would have
come much sooner than was the case if it had not
been for a vast unforeseen movement arising in another
part of the world Timour, with his Tartar host, poured
over the Turkish Empire, threatening to sweep it entirely
away. Then, while engaged in a life and death struggle,
the Turks were compelled to relinquish their encroach
ments on the Greeks and concentrate their attention
on their own affairs. When the danger had passed they
returned to their age-long policy of absorbing the civilisa
tion of Eastern Europe. These Turks were of the Ottoman
stock, directly connected with an earlier conqueror, Genghis
Khan, who had devastated Western Asia, and therefore they

270 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
must be distinguished from the Seljukian Turks whom the
Crusaders had found in possession of Asia Minor and Syria.
Their leader at the final scene was Mohammed H., a man
possessing a singular combination of qualities, showing at
one time the student's thirst for learning and at another
the most heartless cruelty.
The scene of the siege and fall of Constantinople in
the year 1453 is brought vividly before us in Gibbon's
famous description,1 one of the most brilliant passages
in English literature. But the journal of the besieged
resident, Nicolo Barbaro, which was not known to Gibbon,
has enabled Mr. Pears to supplement the great historian
with many striking details. The vital character of the
interests at stake and the wide range of the issues involved
give a tragic grandeur to this event only comparable with
the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus.
The hero of the siege is Constantine Palaeologus, the
last Eoman emperor, a man worthy to sit on the throne
of the greatest of his predecessors. By the aid of the
General Justiniani, a Genoese noble, Constantine was able to
organise a good defence, and he maintained it with almost
incredible energy and courage.
When it became clear that there was no hope of
deliverance, and that the end was approaching, there was
no panic. A spirit of religious fervour took possession of
the citizens. They formed a solemn procession in which
orthodox Greeks and Catholics of the Eoman communion
united. All who were not fighting on the walls joined in
the Kyrie Eleison, as they marched through the streets, and
a great cry of a people in its agony went up to heaven,
Icons and relics were fetched from the churches and
conveyed to the places where the defences were weakest,
in the pathetic hope that where natural means failed
supernatural power might intervene. Constantine preached
"the funeral oration of the empire" — to use Gibbon's
phrase. At length the surging host of invaders broke
through a weak place and poured into the city. Then, at
1 Decline and Fall, chap, lxviii.

GREEK CHURCH AT FALL OF BYZANTINE EMPIRE 271
the most critical moment, Justiniani the general was
wounded Soon after this final misfortune, seeing that all
was lost, and refusing to survive his empire, Constantine
dashed into the thick of the fight and perished amid the
multitude of the slain.
Mohammed now gave the city up to plunder ; but he
ordered the buildings to be spared, reserving them for
himself. St. Sophia was found to be crowded with fugitives,
who had shut themselves up in their beloved cathedral,
vainly expecting a miracle of deliverence to spring from its
sanctity. They were caught in a trap. The barred door
soon yielded to the battle-axes of the Turks. The old people
were killed on the spot ; the young men and women were led
off in strings of captives for a worse fate. The Latins had
wantonly hacked to pieces many a work of art ; now the
Turks destroyed much that they had left. It is a significast
fact, however, that, as Critobulus tells us, many books were
sold at low prices.1 This suggests the hope that scattered
treasures from the Constantinople libraries may yet be
found in out of the way parts of the Turkish Empire.2
St. Sophia was now converted into a mosque. Moham
med called for an imaum, who ascended the pulpit and
there recited the Mohammedan Creed. Still he did not
desire the city to be deserted by the Greeks, and he
invited them back, sanctioned their worship, and ordered
them to elect a patriarch. Accordingly, a local synod was
held, and George Scholarius — also known as Gennadius
— was appointed to the unenviable post. The sultan
received him at his seraglio and presented him with a
pastoral cross of silver and gold, saying, " Be patriarch and
be at peace. Count upon our friendship as long as thou
desirest it, and thou shalt enjoy all the privileges of thy
predecessors." 1 Critobulus, xiii.
2 It would be well if consuls, traders, missionaries, and travellers in
Turkey would bear this in mind. They may yet discover Papias's
"Exposition of tlie Oracles of the God," "The Gospel according to the
Hebrews," or even Matthew's Logia.

272 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
This investiture of the patriarch by the sultan is a
sign that the destruction of the empire was not the destruc
tion of the Church. That calamity to the State might
even have been the salvation of the Church. During the
first three centuries persecution had proved a wholesome
discipline preserving the vigour of primitive Christianity,
With Constantine the Great's patronage of the Church,
worldliness invaded the whole body and degeneration fol
lowed. Now the fatal alliance was severed, and once
again the Church was set apart from the State and made
liable to persecution. But she could not recover her
pristine vigour ; she felt the east wind of adversity to be
blighting, rather than bracing.
One of the most serious evils occasioned by the fall of
Constantinople was the heavy blow that this disaster gave
to Oriental learning. Many of the Greek scholars fled to
Europe and there assisted the Eenaissance. But con
temporary with the revival of learning in the West was
its decay in the East. The priesthood sank into insig
nificance and lost influence for lack of culture ; preaching
disappeared ; the Church became intellectually stagnant.
Still, there were not wanting proofs of fidelity to conscience.
It has been said that the Church that can produce no
martyrs is doomed. There have been martyrs in the Greek
Church under Turkish dominance all down the centuries.
Treated as rayahs, as mere cattle, with no civil rights,
the Christians have always suffered from disabilities and
the infliction of unchecked wrongs. Yet they have re
mained true to their faith ; and thus their conduct has
testified continuously to a fidelity for whieh their brethren
in the West, who have not had to endure their age-long
trials, have been too slow to give them credit.

CHAPTER IX
LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH
(a) Greek historians named in earlier chapters.
(6) Neale, Eastern Church, Introd., and Hymns of the Eastern
Church, 1876 ; Pitra, Hymnographie de I'Eglise Gre'que, 1867 ;
Brownlie, Hymns of the Holy Eastern Church, 1902 ; Curzon,
Monasteries of the Levant, new edit., 1897 ; Lecky, History of
European Morals, vol. ii., 1868 ; Krumbacher, Geschichte der
Byzantinischen Litteratur von Justinian bis zum Ends des
Ostromischen Reiches, 1897.
The organisation of the Greek Church which was com
pleted during the patristic period has never since under
gone vital modifications in any of the three branches of its
constitution — its dogma, its ritual, its government — except
ing in so far as the last has been affected by political
influences. The Monophysite and Monothelete controversies
about the nature and will of Christ were the last serious
discussions on the creed. Henceforth it became the duty
of scholars and logicians to defend the settled dogmas of
the Church, which was deemed to be holy chiefly because
orthodox. The Western Church still felt free to develop
truth, and it was the clash of new ideas with conservative
loyalty to settled doctrine that produced the final and
irrevocable breach with Eome. Henceforth the Greek
theologians were to be apologists, but not primarily in the
region of Christian evidences ; they were more concerned
with the polemics of heresy within the Church than with
the war with unbelief outside her borders. Nevertheless,
the insistent presence of Islam also demanded a defence of
18 ™

274 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the faith against the unbeliever, and called for apologetic
literature of a more general character.
Faint echoes of old controversies agitated the Church
from time to time. In the reign of Manuel Comnenus
there was a scholastic discussion as to whether Christ pre
sented His sacrifice for the sins of the world only to the
First and Third Persons of the Trinity, or also to the Second,
the Logos. A synod at Constantinople in the year 1156
decided for the latter contention, and therefore decreed that
Christ offered His sacrifice in part to Himself. Ten years
later a question of the two natures was revived on the
words of Christ, " My Father is greater than I." To which
nature did they refer — the Divine or the human ? Heated
discussions followed, and much excitement was roused
among all classes of society. The Emperor Manuel favoured
the view that the phrase applied to the God-man, to the
whole incarnate personality, and this view was confirmed
by a synod held in the year 1166. It is mournful to
note that even with regard to so obscure a question as
this no freedom of thought was permitted. Those who
refused to accept the decree of the synod were banished
and their goods confiscated. But these discussions, though
very exciting at the time, left no permanent effects on
the established orthodoxy, and therefore they cannot be
regarded as landmarks of any importance in' the history of
doctrine. Since the Greek Church has not changed materially in
its doctrine or ritual through all the intervening centuries
down to our own day, it may be as well to state here once
for all the principal points of interest concerning the latter
subject— namely, the ritual. The doctrine has been illus
trated in the previous pages.
The seven sacraments are accepted by the Eastern as
well as by the Western Church. Baptism continues to be
observed in the form of immersion. It is administered to
infants, and at the same time they are anointed on the
eyes, mouth, nose, ears, and breast. Confirmation, which
follows immediately, can be administered by presbyters—

LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 275
a difference from the Western canonical arrangement, which
confines this rite to the bishop. Penance is enacted, but it
never developed in the East to the elaborate proportions
and with the mechanical devices which gave rise to the
sale of indulgences in the West. The priest tells the
penitent that he is a sinner himstlf, he cannot forgive ;
only God forgives. Nevertheless he pronounces absolution.
The Eucharist is treated equally in both churches as the
most sacred office of religion. Ordination can only be
conferred by a bishop, and throughout the hierarchy
the inferior is ordained by his superior. Marriage is a
sacrament carefully guarded by the Church. The higher
clergy may not marry after ordination. Bishops may not
have wives at all, and therefore the episcopate is mainly
supplied by monks. Presbyters are married before ordina
tion and retain their wives for life ; but if one becomes
a widower he may not take a second wife. Second mar
riages among the laity are permitted, or rather condoned,
but not favoured. Third marriages are forbidden and
treated as sinful. Unction is practised not so much as
the viaticum, known as "extreme unction," but for the
benefit of the sick who may be restored.
The government of the Church is maintained without
material alteration in a settled hierarchical form. But
the pre-eminence of the patriarch of Constantinople becomes
more pronounced in his own provinces, and less effectual
elsewhere. This twofold development was wholly due to
political causes. The weakening of the Byzantine govern
ment gave greater scope and wider range to the authority
of the Church. Next to the accession of a new emperor the
most important event in Constantinople was the election of
the patriarch. We now find patriarchs rebuking and even
defying the throne with a force and a freedom hitherto
unknown in the East, and more like the spirit of the great
ecclesiastics of Eome. ' On the other hand, the absorption
of Syria and Egypt into the realm of the caliphs and
sultans, made the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and
Jerusalem prisoners in their own cities, and cut them off to

276 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
a great extent from intercourse with Constantinople. This
enforced isolation of the three Eastern patriarchs became
an important factor in the final severance of the Churches.
The conduct of worship in the Byzantine Church was
also continued without serious alteration during this period,
the ritual becoming more and more stereotyped. This was
centred in the communion office, which, known as the
" mass " in the West, is named in the East the " liturgy." 1
At first every bishop was free to adopt his own forms of
prayer, though the liturgy of St. James was largely accepted
as the common basis. In its present form this cannot be
older than the end of the fourth century, but no doubt it is
a development from more ancient times. It was primarily
intended for use in the Church at Jerusalem. Next came
the liturgy of St. Basil, which is founded on the liturgy of
St. James, but is much longer and more elaborate; and
after that the liturgy of St. Chrysostom, which is not so
long. These two together constitute the Byzantine litur
gies, the lengthy liturgy of St. Basil being used only on
certain occasions.2 Originating in Asia Minor this became
the basis of the Armenian liturgy. The liturgy of St.
Chrysostom was primarily the form of worship adopted in
Constantinople, and it became the normal service for the
Byzantine Church on all Sundays except the few to which
the liturgy of St. Basil was assigned.
The service books of the Greek Church are in fourteen
quarto volumes. They consist of three parts — hymns,
poetry, portions of Scripture. No separate Bibles are
published for the use of the people, although the action of
the British and Foreign Bible Society in circulating the
Scriptures is not hindered by the Greek Church officials as
it is by the Eoman Catholic hierarchy, and in some cases it
is welcomed gratefully and encouraged. This Church pro
vides manuals, vade mecums for services, especially for the
burial service. It looks askance at the Eussian Church
1 \eirovpyia.
2 Lent (except Palm Sunday), the eve of Epiphany, Easter, and Christmas,
and the feast of St. Basil.

LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 277
for its alterations of the old service books and other in
novations. In the Greek Church the communion service is more
lengthy, elaborate, and dramatic than the Eoman mass.
There are prayers and lessons, but every function of the
service is accompanied by some action. While the Western
ceremonial appeals to the soul mainly through the ear, the
Eastern seeks to awaken the interest and chain the
attention more by its appeal to the eye in richly varied
symbolical acts performed by the priests and deacons. The
congregation watches the stir and movement of an elaborate
moving function. Now the candles are lighted ; now they
are extinguished ; doors are opened, closed again ; the
clergy kiss the altar, kiss the gospel, cross the forehead,
mouth, and breast ; there is the swinging of the censer ; the
liturgical vestments are frequently changed so that the
worshipping spectator may have passing before his gaze a
kaleidoscopic variation of colour — each tint having its
special symbolism ; processions, genuflections, prostrations,
all have their part in the great ceremonial. Much of this
is to be witnessed in a Eoman high mass, but not with the
volume and variety of symbolism seen in the performance
of the Greek liturgy. The pomp and ceremony of the
Church is parallel to the pomp and ceremony of the court
described with so much unction by the literary Emperor
Constantine Pogonatus. It agrees with the stiff em
broidered and jewelled vestments, the enamelled icons, the
gold and mosaic decorations of the basilicas in which it is
the scenic drama of worship. There is no attempt in all
this to rouse enthusiasm ; that can be done by the sermon
which precedes and prepares for it, when the excitable
congregation clap and shout and wave their handkerchiefs
at the eloquent periods of some popular preacher.1 In the
liturgy, on the other hand, all is decorum. The people
join in the responses ; they wail the Kyrie Eleison ; they
make the dome ring again with the mighty chant of the
1 This was the ancient custom. To-day preaching is rarely heard in the
Greek Church.

278 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Trisagion ; but it is all ordered and disciplined, and the de
sired result is awe and faith, rather than energy and action.
Nevertheless, while so much was done to make the
central facts of Christianity as embodied in the life-story of
Christ vivid and impressive by means of elaborate appeals
to the sensuous imagination, it was not here that people
found satisfaction for their strongest religious appetites.
Through much of our period preaching was still prominent.
Bible reading has always been encouraged in the Greek
Church. People could go to the churches and read the
Bibles there for themselves. Unlike the modern Eoman
service in an unknown tongue, the Greek service was con
ducted in Greek, the language of the people. All the
ancient services were carried on in the languages spoken
by the congregations engaged in them. In spite of this
fact the intellectual element was not the most prominent,
nor did the ideas so skilfully interwoven into the rich
symbolism of the liturgy really grip the people who
watched the ceremonial and took part in the reponses.
This is proved by what we have seen in the historic
controversies of the Byzantine age. Eelics were deemed
more important than ritual, icons than liturgy. To treasure
a saint's bone or kiss a picture of Christ — this was what
most concerned the Greek Christian of the Byzantine
period in the matter of religion. The best teachers of the
Church deprecated the fetishism of relic worship ; but they
were powerless to stem the tide of superstition that swept
over East and West alike.
After this the stoutest Protestant may regard the
invocation of the Virgin and saints, and even the worship
offered to them, as intelligent in comparison with such
childish superstition. A new mythology sprang up, and
legends of the saints took the place of pagan myths. Thus
the martyr Phocas, a gardener at Sinope in Pontus, super
seded Castor and Pollux as the sailors' guardian. On
board ship he had his portion set for him at table and
then sold, the proceeds being given to the poor as a thank-
offering for a prosperous voyage.

LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 279
Learning and literature flourished during the Byzantine
period, though not so as greatly to enrich the libraries of
bibliophiles in later ages. Like the Benedictine monasteries
in the West, the Basilian monasteries of the Greek Church
guarded and transmitted the writings of the great Church
teachers, the monks diligently copying manuscripts and
laboriously constructing catenae of the opinions of the
Fathers. But while their reading was wide, it was not
deep ; they were scholarly, but uncritical. They lacked
imagination, invention, construetiveness. It is a striking
fact that the stream of ecclesiastical history which flowed
so copiously through the previous centuries now began
to run dry, or rather perhaps we should say, was now
diverted into the main river of political and secular history.
This is the age of the voluminous Byzantine historians.
Anybody who attempts to wade through their pages must
soon be wearied with their unhappy attempts at cumulative
rhetoric. The style reminds us of popular Victorian prose
at its worst. There is a constantly recurring effort at pro
ducing effects by piling up clauses one upon another till a
sentence is sometimes expanded to the extent of a page of
print. Theophanes is about the last of the writers who
retain some traces of the literary spirit of Thucydides. He
gives weight to his narrative by his own contributions of
political wisdom. But, for the most part, these narratives
are choked with colourless details — details which neither
characterise nor vitalise the narrative. They are barren
of serious reflection, in place of which we have pages of
flat narrative varied by bursts of adulation or vitu
peration. After allowing for undeniable defects, we must per
ceive that these were not dark ages, nor were they inert
or infructuous according to their kind. After John of
Damascus, the last of the Fathers, the next great writer
and the last of his own calibre is Photius,1 who died in the
year 891. His chief work is the Bibliotheca,2 an encyclo
paedia of literature, containing accounts of nearly three
1 See pages 235, ff. * Mvptopip\tov.

280 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
hundred Christian and pagan works together with "elegant
extracts"; unfortunately a great part of this book has
been lost. His Nomocanon is the basis of Green canon
law, the first systematical arrangement of which known
to us was drawn up by Johannes Scholasticus (John the
Lawyer), a presbyter at Antioch, who afterwards became
patriarch of Constantinople (a.d. 565).1 About the year
1180, Photius's Nomocanon was commented on by Theodore
Balsamon, a deacon of Constantinople, as the standard
collection of canon law for the Eastern Church. Photius
was a voluminous writer, narrow in view, bitter in tone.
His works include controversial treatises against' the Latins
and against the Paulicians, and among other books the
Amphilochia,2 containing answers to more than three
hundred questions put to him by Amphilochius of Cyzicus.
With Photius we come to the end of the great Greek
Church writers whose names are known to fame. But
the period of the Comnenian dynasty was the Augustan
age of the Byzantine Empire — in some respects comparable
to our age of Queen Anne rather than to our glorious
Elizabethan period. Then we have that fierce opponent
and libeller of the Paulicians, Michael Psellus, a man of wide
culture, and a writer on a variety of subjects, who earned a
reputation as a teacher of philosophy.8 He died in the year
1105, leaving, among other books, a work on demonology4
which contains an invaluable store of information with
respect to mediaeval notions on a subject then deemed of
vital importance, and a compendium of universal science
1 This work by John the Lawyer was based on still earlier collections,
It reduced the sixty heads of canon law in the older writers to fifty, ana
added to the canons of Nicaea, Ancyra, Neo-Caesarea, Gaugra, Antioch,
Ephesus, and Constantinople, already collected and received in the Greek
Church, the "Apostolical canons," the canons of Sardica, and those con
tained in the canonical letter of Basil. When at Constantinople John
edited an abridgment of his earlier work with the addition of a comparison
of the imperial rescripts and civil laws (especially the Novels of Justinian)
under the title Nomocanon. See Smith's Dictionary of Chr. Biog. vol. iii.
p. 366, col. 2.
2 'Ap.ajiX6xia. » He was called <pi\o<r6<pwv (nrraros.
* trepl ivepyeids Sai/j.6vwv.

LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 281
based on theology,1 useful as a cyclopaedia of the knowledge
of his age. Theophylact, the archbishop of Achrida in
Bulgaria, was a contemporary of Psellus, who composed a
commentary in the form of a catena. Euthymius Zigabenus,
a monk at Constantinople, wrote a reply to the heretics at
the command of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus, a mere
compilation, though famous in its day. Eustathius, the
archbishop of Thessalonica, was a commentator on Homer
and Pindar, but also a Christian theologian and a reformer
of monasticism. Michael Acominatus, a respected states
man at Constantinople, produced a defence of orthodoxy in
opposition to the heretics, which is deemed an abler and
more independent work than Euthymius's official book
written to order. Nicolas of Methone in Messenia com
posed a reply to the Neo-Platonist Proclus, in which he
anticipated Anselm's doctrine of redemption. All these
writers belong to the same prolific period of late Greek
literature. The emperor's own daughter Anna has already
been mentioned She takes her place among the Byzantine
historians. Coming to the next period, which follows the disorders
and miseries of the Latin usurpation, we have two centuries
of less brilliant, but still more or less continuous literary
activity under the Palaeologi (a.d. 1250-1453), chiefly
occupied with the question of reunion with Western
Christendom. It is refreshing to discover in the midst
of this controversy a man who would direct our attention
away from arid theological and ecclesiastical polemics to
the eternal verities. This is Nicolas Cabasilas, archbishop
of Thessalonica, a mystic, who defended his brother mystics
at Mount Athos when they were charged with heresy,
and that with a depth of spirituality which throws a
favourable light on what, when seen among the monks,
has been regarded as an ignorant superstition. The very
title of this book is like a gleam of light from heaven in
a world of very secular ecclesiasticism, for that title is
Concerning the Life in Christ.2 The mystics are of no age
1 AidatTKaXta Travrobairi). 2 irepi rijs iv X/kotu fu^s.

282 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
or of all the ages. They stand apart from the logical
development of doctrine and pursue a method of their
own, which is always essentially the same. Cabasilas was
a contemporary of John Tauler, for he died in 1354,
while Tauler died but seven years later (in 1361). These
two, the former in Greece, the latter in Germany, apparently
having no connection one with the other, agree in their
vital principles and join hands with the pseudo-Dionysius
in the patristic period and with William Law in modern
times. Like our Western mystics who were forerunners
of the Eeformation, but more openly and actively so,
Nicolas Cabasilas was an opposing influence against the
deadening formalism of the Greek Church. He wrote a
mystical exposition of the liturgy to bring out its spiritual
meaning. Other writers of this later period are Demetrius
Cydonius, a contemporary of Cabasilas, who wrote on " Con
tempt of Death "• — Simeon of Thessalonica, who comes
about fifty years later, and whose book on The Faith, The
Bites, and the Mysteries of the Church is a valuable
storehouse of ecclesiastical archaeology — Marcus Eugenicus
of Ephesus, the ablest opponent of the reunion which was
supposed to have been effected at Florence, who also wrote
a defence of the doctrine of eternal punishment in answer
to John vii., Palaeologus, who had objected to it as incon
sistent with God's justice and man's frailty — Gennadius,
afterwards known as George Scholarius, whom we have
already met,1 forced to be a supporter of the union when
at Florence, but afterwards its most energetic opponent.
More popular by far than any of these works was the
romance of Barlaam and Josaphat, a book which was to
the Middle Ages what the Shepherd of Hermas had been
to the early Church at Eome, and what Bunyan's Pilgrim's
Progress has become to modern readers. It was their
favourite religious book, because concrete and dramatic.
In fact it was the one religious novel of the time. In the
Latin version of it, this book was even more widely read in
the West than in its earlier Eastern home. It is found
1 See page 269.

LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 283
complete or in part in an immense number of manuscripts.
An uncritical age attributed it to John of Damascus,
among whose works it appears; but this tradition can
not be maintained. The book was long read as veritable
history, and accordingly the Eoman Martyrology honours
its two heroes as saints and assigns the 27th of November
as their day. But its remarkable resemblance to the
legendary life of Buddha in the Latita Vistara led to
its being traced back to that Indian source by Dr.
Liebrecht.1 Josaphat is the son of the king of " the
land of the ^Ethiopians called India," who is kept
by his father in the royal park and palace in close
seclusion so that he may see nothing of the evil or misery
of the world, and especially that he may not come into
contact with Christianity and monasticism, which his father
is endeavouring to repress. But he gets leave to ride
abroad, and then sees a cripple and a blind man, with
the result that he is greatly depressed and saddened.
While he is in this state he receives a visit from Barlaam,
a monk disguised as a merchant, who has been sent to
India by a Divine vision. The result is Josaphat's con
version. When the king learns of this he is much
distressed, and in order to distract his son's attention
divides with him the government of his realm, but at
length he too is led over to Christianity by his son's
influence. Finally, Josaphat renounces his high position,
goes on a journey in quest of his spiritual father Barlaam,
whom after two years of weary wandering at length he
finds living as a hermit in a cave. He stays with Barlaam
for the rest of his life, and there the dead bodies of the
saints are found long after untouched by decay in the
odour of sanctity.
It remains for us to notice one other form of litera
ture originated in this period, the Greek Christian poetry,
consisting chiefly of hymns. Much of this has been made
1 See Ebert's Jahrbuch fur rbm. und engl. Literatur, 1860, ii. pp. 314-
334 j cf. St. Hilaire, Le Bouddha et sa Religion, and Max Muller, on
"Migration of Fables," Contemporary Review, vol. xiv. pp. 572-599.

284 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
famihar to English readers by the versions of Neale and
others. We have traces of Christian hymns in the New
Testament, and Pliny refers to the singing of them in the
churches of Bithynia at the time of Trajan.1 St. Basil
refers to a hymn of the martyr Athenogenes, who died in
the year 169, "Which as he was hurrying on to his per
fecting by fire he left as a kind of farewell gift to his
friends." 2 Hymns and psalms always had their place in
Christian worship.8 During the fourth century Church
psalmody was much advanced, first in Syria by Ephraim,
then at Constantinople by Chrysostom and others, later in
the West, especially under the influence of Ambrose. There
is a question whether the Greek hymns of the fourth
century were metric ; but though that may have been the
case, there is no doubt that from the eighth century onward
Greek hymns were simply rhythmic, not metric, and were
used like the psalms for chanting. Three or more stanzas,
called troparia,4, constituted an ode, three odes a triodeon,
and three triodia a canon. It was usual for each ode to
end with a doxa, i.e. a doxology, and a theotokion,5 which
was a stanza in honour of Mary as the mother of God.
These hymns occupy the greater part of the Greek service
book. Most of them are rubbish ; 6 but among them are
gems of immortal value.
The great age of hymn-writers commences with the
eighth century, and at its head stands John of Damascus,
who was thought to be inspired by the Virgin Mary, the
patron of his convent at Mar Saba. His canon for Easter
Day, known as the " golden canon," sung at midnight on
Easter Eve, begins with the words, " Christ is risen," to
which the antiphonal shout is "Christ is risen indeed."

it. 97.
2 De Spiritu Sancto, xxix. 73. This has been identified with two early
hymns, the A6£a iv bflarou (Gloria in excelsis), and the 0fis l\ap6v, still
used in the Greek daily service.
8 e.g. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 28.
" rpoirapiov, a small rpbros or mode. 6 Qeorodov.
6 A "deluge of worthless compositions," Neale, Hymns of the Eastern
Church, 3rd edit. p. 38.

LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 285
Then we have John's foster-brother and fellow -monk,
Cosmas of Jerusalem, " the Melodist," whom. Neale regards
as the most learned of the Greek poets. Stephen the
Sabaite, a nephew of John of Damascus, who spent fifty-
nine years in the convent of Mar Saba, is the author of
the Greek composition on which Neale founded his well-
known English hymn —
"Art thou weary, art thou languid?"
Another hymn- writer was Theophanes the historian, known
as " the Branded," who was mutilated for his devotion to
the icons and died about A.D. 820. Theodore of Studium
and his brother Joseph come half a century later (about
A.D. 890). Lastly, there is Theocristus, in the same
monastery at Constantinople, the author of "a sup
pliant canon to Jesus," which Dr. Neale anglicises in
the hymn1 —
"Jesu, name all names above,
Jesu, best and dearest,
Jesu, Fount of perfect love,
Holiest, tenderest, nearest !
Jesu, source of grace completest,
Jesu truest, Jesu sweetest,
Jesu, well of power Divine,
Make me, keep me, seal me Thine," etc
The Church which could produce such a hymn as that will
be entirely misjudged if it is only viewed in the light of
the quarrels of its bishops with heretics and schismatics.
It was the end of the ninth century, too, that age which
was the darkest of the Dark Ages in the West, when a
monk in the great Constantinople monastery poured out
his soul in one of the hymns of truest adoration and love
for his Lord ever produced, anticipating similar hymns of
personal devotion to Christ in the two Bernards at Clair-
vaux and Cluny. It is in its hymns that we can trace
the course of a pure stream of genuine spiritual religion
that is sometimes forced underground when we are
1 The Greek begins, 'Iiy<roi7 ykvKirare, etc.

286 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
watching the external course of Church history — its angry
debates, greedy ambitions, and bitter antipathies. These
ugly phenomena make up too much of the history of the
Church ; they are scarcely at all indicative of the history
of Christianity, the history of spiritual religion. For
understanding this we are better helped by the stories of
obscure lives and the breathing of simple souls. The
hymn- writing continued through the tenth century and on
into the middle of the eleventh, when it sank into silence.
It was no time for song when the Turks were pouring over
the larger part of Eastern Christendom, and the very
existence of Church and empire were at stake ; nor again
when the West came to their relief in the dubious garb of
Crusaders commissioned by the pope of Eome, with whom
they would have nothing to do.
During all this time, both in the West and in the East,
monasticism was cherished as the ideal of the religious
life and the true monk was regarded as the typical saint.
Two great monastic centres are now especially conspicuous.
One of these is the monastery at Studium, made famous
as the scene of the work of Theodore. Here a very active
common life was maintained. We have seen how it
was a centre of opposition to the iconoclastic movement.
It was the home of a succession of writers of devout
hymns of the Greek Church. It was also the place where
the reproduction of literature in the form of beautifully
written manuscripts was carried on with the greatest
assiduity guided by the best taste, so that this monastery
may be regarded as taking the place of a modern uni
versity press and school of technology in one of the
finest and "most characteristic arts of the Middle Ages.
The other great monastic establishment was the collec
tion of convents and cells, the many laura, of Mount
Athos. This mountain, rising to a peak of white marble
6,350 feet above the sea, is a conspicuous landmark visible
from the plain of Troy and the slopes of Olympus. It
gives its name to the peninsular in the ^Egean Sea of
which it is the southernmost point ; but it is known in the

LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 287
East as The Holy Mountain 1 on account of its collection of
religious houses. Curzon counted 935 places of worship, in
cluding churches, chapels, and oratories, every large convent
containing from six to twenty chapels, the walls of which
are covered from top to bottom with frescoes.2 The family
of the Comneni (ad. 1058—1204) bestowed special privi
leges on the monks of Mount Athos. Persecuted and
pillaged under the Latin dominance, they appealed to Pope
Innocent m. for protection and were favourably regarded
by him. With the recovery of Constantinople by the
Palaeologi their prosperity returned. Several emperors
retired here from the cares of the world. The shrines
richly decorated with goldsmith work of a high order, the
libraries with their fine illuminated manuscripts, the
splendid frescoes, reckoned among the finest specimens of
Byzantine art, and the natural advantages of its retreats
among rocks and ravines and woody slopes, with glimpses
out to the sunny sea, combined to render Mount Athos the
choicest spot in Eastern Christendom. The monks were
wise in making timely submission to the Turks, with the
result that, though they had suffered from earlier Saracen
raids and though they had been very cruelly treated by
their fellow-Christians from the West, when Constantinople
was taken by Mohammed and the rest of the Eastern
Church came under the Turkish yoke, Mount Athos was
allowed virtual independence subject to a tribute — a unique
privilege which it has maintained down to the present
day. But it is neither its lovely situation, its size, its
numerous population of monks, its many sacred buildings,
its treasures of art and literature, nor its home rule that
have given Mount Athos its high honour in the Greek
Church. That is due to the renowned sanctity of its
monks, and especially to one peculiar characteristic which
may be deemed either a sign of the highest spirituality
or a mark of the grossest, most ignorant superstition.
Influenced by the mysticism of the pseudo-Dionysius, and
^Ayiov 6pos. 2 Monasteries of the Levant, p. 18.

288 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
following the example of Simeon, an abbot of a Con
stantinople monastery, the monk of Mount Athos practised
the self-hypnotism of an Indian fakir. Sitting in a corner
of his cell, pressing his chin firmly into his breast, fixing
his eyes on his navel, and holding his breath as long as
possible, till his vision became dim, the devotee passed
through a condition of profound depression of spirit into
an ecstasy in which he saw himself surrounded by a halo
of light, the light of God that shone around Christ at the
Transfiguration. A rapture of what he took to be un
earthly joy seized him, and he felt himself brought into
the very presence of God by his experience of the beatific
vision. His cell, his monastery, his companion monks, the
world, his own personality, vanished from his conscious
ness, and he sat enthralled, without thought, or wish,
or movement, entirely occupied with his supernatural
experience. The quietness and passivity, the entire emptying of the
mind of all thought, and the exclusion of all sensations, which
were the condition of the trance, led those who indulged
in it to be called " Hesychasts." x Accordingly the con
troversy to which they gave rise has been designated the
Hesychast controversy. This was originated by Barlaam,
who had been the ambassador of Andronicus IH. to the
pope at Avignon on the question of the reunion of the
Churches. No sooner was this man back at Constantinople
than he accused the monks of Mount Athos of the heresy
of Ditheism — scornfully describing them as " navel souls." 2
Gregory Palamas, afterwards archbishop of Thessalonica,
defended them. For doing so he was included in Barlaam's
accusations. A council was held on the subject at Con
stantinople in the year 1341, when the unpopularity of
Barlaam's negotiation for the union came to the aid of
the Mount Athos monks. The council gave its sanction
to the doctrine of the uncreated light, connecting it with
a Divine energy,3 which was to be distinguished from the
essence * of God. The accuser would have been condemned
1 tynrx&Somt. 2 bfiqjaXb^vxoi. * ivipyeia. * oiela.

LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 289
if he had . not recanted, after which he withdrew to Italy
and joined the Latin Church. But this did not end the
controversy, which was taken up by Barlaam's admirer
Gregory Acnidynus and Nicephorus the historian. Two
more synods were held on the subject — the last in a.d.
1351, and these both followed the example of the earlier
synod and declared in favour of the monks. Thus the
idea of the uncreated light was repeatedly pronounced to
be orthodox by the Greek Church.
It is difficult for a Western, and especially an Anglo-
Saxon Protestant, mind not to feel contempt and disgust
for what appears to be a gross and degrading superstition.
And yet when we remember the trances of the prophets
— especially of Ezekiel — and take note of the curious
phenomena brought to light by recent experimental psy
chology, we may be led to suspend our judgment and
allow the possibility that to some, if not all, who went
through the abnormal experience, it may have been the
condition of realising genuine spiritual communion, by
means of its complete mastery of the distractions that
come from the world of sense. Therefore, although itself
apparently so completely materialistic, after all it may
not have been so very alien to that internal light preached
by George Fox, which his followers regard as the secret and
source of their deepest religious life.
When we turn from the monks to the main body of
the Church, and ask, What was its religious and moral con
dition during these later centuries of the Byzantine era ?
we are faced with a tantalising question which it is always
difficult to answer. For most historians confine their
attention to large movements and prominent personages.
Suetonius's gossip of court scandal at Eome under the
Caesars does not give us any idea of the habits of the
farmers on the plains of Italy, nor does Juvenal's satire
on the fashionable society of his day teach us anything
about the behaviour of the respectable citizens of the
country towns. Still less do the Byzantine chroniclers
throw hght on the conduct and character of the subjects
*9

290 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
ruled by the Comneni and the Palaeologi. Nevertheless,'
now and then we have hints of the existence of a public
conscience reflecting the private morals of the people.
Finlay repeatedly asserts his opinion that a high standard
of morality was maintained in the Greek Empire at this
time, and that morally as well as intellectually the Eastern
Church was now much superior to the Western. We have
seen that these were by no means dark ages in regard
to culture, scholarship, and art. They were centuries of
luxurious life and refinement, contrasting strongly with
the ignorant barbarism of the barons who conducted the
Crusades. The disapproval of second marriages and the
grave condemnation of third marriages indicate some strict
ness in the public conscience which a fortiori would repro
bate more serious offences in the relation of the sexes. But
even Finlay admits the degradation of morals in the eleventh
century under the unscrupulous Empress Zoe. The patri
arch Alexius declined to celebrate the- third marriage of
this empress, although he had performed the ceremony
when she married her second husband — a court servant
well known to be her accepted lover — the very night
of the death of her first husband. The third husband
was the dissolute Constantine ix., who had had two wives.
Yet the patriarch crowned the new emperor with the usual
Church ceremonies the day after his marriage.
In reading the history of these centuries, we are
horrified at the frequent cases of mutilation of their rivals
and victims perpetrated by the emperors. Blinding was quite
the rule when a dangerous person was so unfortunate as to
fall into the hands of his enemy. A young prince would
be suddenly torn away from all the splendour and luxury
of the court, and flung into a dungeon, there to languish
for decades. The operation of blinding was carried out
with cold-blooded, scientific skill. It was deemed an act
of humanity and refinement when, in place of the brutal
act of gouging out the eyes, a copper globe was held in
front of them reflecting and concentrating the sun's rays
so as to ruin the sight without, actually destroying the

LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 291
organs themselves. This shows that the purpose of the
cruel punishment was not mere torture or the savage
revenge of mutilation for its own sake. " Perhaps we
should say that the precise purpose of this common ex
pedient of blinding was not so much to incapacitate the
victim physically, as to render it improbable that people
should wish to restore him to a position of power, that is
to say, to incapacitate him in the eyes of the public." 1 It
is true that the blind Dandolo was the leader of the Latin
expedition against Constantinople ; but he was a man of
known ability and trusted integrity, loyal to Venice, with
none of the self-seeking that actuated most of the barons.
1 A suggestion made by Prof. Gwatkin in conversation with the present
writer.

PART II
THE SEPARATE CHURCHES

The idea of a catholicity so wide and generous, or, as some
would prefer to regard it, a comprehensiveness so lax and
latitudinarian, as to contain a number of churches differing
in doctrine, discipline, and ritual, which many people
cherish in the present day, was scarcely conceived before
modern times ; it was not contemplated by any of the
ancient churches, each of which anathematised all Christians
outside its pale. Justin Martyr's application of the Stoic
doctrine of the Logos spermaticos to Christianity might have
introduced an anticipation of such an idea, and the large
liberalism of Clement of Alexandria might even have wel
comed it, had it appeared above the horizon. But Cyprian's
close Catholicism was much more to the mind of the patristic
Church, and the mediaeval Church had no wider outlook.
In point of fact, however, there was a division of
Christendom into separate churches quite early, and that
division has never been healed. The causes of it were
twofold — partly racial and political, and partly doctrinal
and polemical. The spread of Christianity beyond the
confines of the Eoman Empire led to the establishment of
churches in foreign kingdoms. At first these churches
were regarded as integral parts of the one Catholic Church,
and their bishops had a right to attend oecumenical councils.
But several influences tended to cut them off. The mere
fact of distance, difficulties of travel, and troubles in cross
ing the frontiers — especially in times of war — tended more
and more to separate them. Then in their isolation they
developed their several types of racial individuality, together

292

THE SEPARATE CHURCHES 293
with a growing antipathy to the habits of churches of
other races. The adoption of Christianity by Constantine,
followed by the close alliance of Church and State, or
rather dominance of the Church by the State, had as its
natural consequence a tendency to limit the Church
which deemed itself Catholic to the confines of the Eoman
Empire. By an inevitable reaction the patriotism of local
churches in other countries would tend to develop their
individuality. This process was hindered by persecution,
which led foreign Christians ill-treated by their own
government to look to the friendly Eoman Empire for
protection. Still, it could not be ultimately frustrated.
The second cause of separation — the doctrinal and
polemical — was much more thorough and effectual. As
early as the second century there had been heretical bodies,
such as the Montanists and the Marcionites, existing as
regularly organised churches ; and a little later orthodox
but schismatic communions, such as the Novatians and
the Donatists, each regarding itself as the one true
Church. The Christological controversies had more serious
and permanent consequences, because here national and
racial influences combined with the doctrinal to aggravate
and perpetuate the severance. In this way Monophysites
became Coptic and Syrian Churches, and Nestorians shaped
into Churches of Persia, Chaldaea, and other Eastern parts.
The Mohammedan conquests tended to confirm these divi
sions. They made communication between the Christians
within their dominions and the Church of the empire
difficult and precarious. But that was not all. Under the
tolerant caliphs the territory of Islam became a harbour of
refuge for Christians angrily denounced and driven from
pillar to post by the holy orthodox Church of the empire.
The scornful Arab made no difference between the various
schools of " infidels " whom he tolerated. Thus churches
excommunicated as heretical by the Greek and Eoman
authorities remained in safety out of the clutches of the
tyrannical emperors and ecclesiastics, who would have
harried them if they had had a chance to do so. Mean-

294 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
while, persecution, whether actual or only held over as a
threat, became the most effectual barrier to reunion.
We have had abundant opportunities of observing how
ecclesiastical, pohtical, and doctrinal causes led to the total
and final severance of the two great sections of the original
Catholic Church. These we have seen in the clash of the
rival claims of Eome and Constantinople ; in the assump
tion of universal headship of the Church by the papacy,
denied and repudiated in the East ; in the crowning
of Charles the Great by Leo in., and the consequent
severance of the Latin Church from the remnant of the
Eoman Empire which was identified with the Eastern
Church ; and lastly, in bitterly contested doctrinal differ
ences, especially that connected with the Filioque clause
added by. the Western theologians to the Nicene Creed, and
the miserable quarrel over the question of the use of
unleavened bread in the communion, which seemed to
outweigh all other occasions of conflict in the minds of the
people of Constantinople.
Thus we have reached the stage when it will be no
longer possible to carry on one continuous story of Church
history. It will now be necessary to trace the history of
each of the separate churches. In order to do this
effectually we must go back to their origins, in the cases
where these origins have not been considered already, and
study them along the lines of their own distinctive courses
of development

DIVISION I
EARLY CHEISTIANITY OUTSIDE THE EMPIEE
(a) Eusebius ; Socrates ; Sozomen ; Theodoret ; Philostorgius ;
Aphraates, Homilies ; Auxentius ; Jornandk, Roma et Getica
(edited by Mommsen), 1882.
(6) Harnack, Expansion of Christianity, Book iv. chap. iii. ; Neale,
Patriarchate of Antioch, pp. 40, 74-78, 114-133, 146-150 ;
Duchesne, Les Missions Chretiens au sud de I'empire Romain,
1896 ; 0. A. Scott, Ulfilas, the Apostle of the Goths, 1885 ;
Bessell, Ueber das Leben des Ulfilas, etc., 1860.
Before proceeding to sketch in brief outline the continuous
story of the various Eastern Churches down the ages till
our own day, it may be well to revert to the earliest period
of the spread of Christianity in the outer world, and gather
up the chief events in connection with the origin and growth
of primitive churches beyond the confines of the Eoman
Empire. Much of this is shrouded in the mists of legend ;
but even that fact comes into history because the mere
existence of the legends is significant, as an indication of
the condition of the contemporary districts to which they
refer. If we come upon the story of the conversion of any
place, we may be sure that Christianity was well established
there at least by the time when that story was afloat,
however fantastic it may be in itself. While we cannot
accept the alleged correspondence between Jesus Christ and
King Abgar recorded by Eusebius,1 or place any reliance on
his account of the labours of Thomas and Thaddaeus, the
flourishing condition of Christianity in Edessa in the second
century, when Tatian produced his Harmony for the use of
1 Hist. Eccl. i 13.
206

296 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the Church in that Syrian metropolis, points to a very
early extension of Christianity in the East. Barsedanes
the Gnostic, whom Hippolytus called an "Armenian,"1
came from this place, which became an important centre
not only for Syrian Christianity, but for missionary activity
and the spread of the gospel into Persia and Armenia
The large province known as Armenia Magna — east of
Armenia Minor — which had been included in the Eoman
Empire when 'at its greatest extent, was lost to the empire
during our period ; and therefore its Christian inhabitants
were more or less cut off from their brethren in the main
body of the Church, while they were subjects of Parthian,
Persian, or Saracen rulers. This territory had been recog
nised as a Christian country as early as the fourth century.2
It is Origen who tells us that Thomas "received
Parthia as his allotted region," and that " Andrew received
Scythia," s a statement which implies that the extension of
Christianity into these two districts, the one directly east
of Syria, the other consisting of little known regions
indefinitely located at the north of the Euxine, was at least
some time earlier than the third century, or no such tradi
tions could have been then current. That points to a
second century extension of Christianity beyond the con
fines of the empire in two directions. Then we have the
famous journey of Pantaenus, who resigned his professorial
chair and the cultured society of Alexandria about a.d. 180
to go as a missionary to some far-off land known as " India,"
probably South Arabia, which was never conquered by the
Eomans, or, as Harnack suggests, "even the Axumitric
kingdom," * i.e. Abyssinia. There, as it was reported,5 he
already found a Christian Church, the origin of which was
attributed to Bartholomew, using a Hebrew version of
St. Matthew, that is to say, the "Gospel according to
1 Refuta. vii. 19. 2 See Sozomen, ii. 8.
s Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iii. 1.
4 Ibid. v. 10 ; see Harnack, Expansion of Christianity, Eng. trans.,
vol. ii. p. 299.
6 Observe Eusebius's cautious phrase, " He is said to have found there,"
etc., Hist. Eccl. v. 10.

EARLY CHRISTIANITY OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE 297
the Hebrews." This then would be a Jewish Christian
Church. The " Acts of Thomas " shows that Christianity had
reached the north-western part of India itself, our modern
India, as early as the third century. By the time of the
council of Nicaea there were churches in Arabia east of the
Dead Sea, a region over which the empire had very little
control. The gospel was carried up the Nile to the towns and
villages of Egypt at an early time, and thence it penetrated
the Soudan — "^Ethiopia," the south country beyond Philae —
in the fourth century, till perhaps it reached the mission
in Abyssinia, which had entered Africa from the east.
When we pass over to the fourth century the accounts
of foreign missions and the experiences of the churches in
the outlying regions round about the empire become more
definite and explicit. The Armenian Church, with the
:tory of its famous apostle Gregory the Illuminator ; the
Ethiopian and Abyssinian Church, the origin of which is
traced to the labours of two shipwrecked young travellers,
Frumentius and iEdesius ; the Georgian Church, springing
from the influence of a woman — the Armenian slave girl
Nunia ; the Syrian Church in India, which claims St. Thomas
as its founder — all of them independent churches in regions
outside the Eoman Empire — will claim our attention later
on ; because as they have remained in independent existence
on to our own day we shall want to know something about
the course of their history right down the centuries. But
incidents in connection with two outlying communities
of Christians lead the interest connected with them to
be concentrated for us in the early period, and therefore
seem to demand our consideration at once. These incidents
are the persecution of the Persian Christians and the
mission of Ulfilas among the Goths.
1. The origin of Christianity in Persia is hidden in
obscurity ; but, as we have seen, in all probability it was
an offshoot of the activity of the Syrian Church at Edessa,
which in turn must be traced back to Antioch, the earliest
great missionary church. In the district of Garamaea, east
of the Tigris, and south-east of Mosul, there appear to

298 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
have been Christians as early as A.D 170.1 This was then
part of the Parthian Empire, made famous in history by
the brilliant career of the great Queen Zenobia, which was
superseded by the new Persian Empire, known as the
Sassanid kingdom, in the year 227. Zenobia had shown
Christian sympathies — of a sort. When in possession of
Antioch she had petted and protected the gorgeous heretic
Paul of Samosata; but then he had been condemned by
the Christians of the Eoman Empire, through whom
perhaps she thought to spite Eome. By protecting and
patronising heretical Christians she gained the enthusiastic
support of one section of her subjects. It was the very
opposite with the Persians when they founded an empire
on the ruins of Zenobia's splendid dominion. They were
equally inimical to Eome ; but by this time Paul and his
faction had passed away. Besides, the Persian Empire did
not include Syria. The Christians in Persia were in
communion with their brethren in the Eoman Empire.
This fact roused suspicion of disloyalty in the minds of
their masters. It was feared that they were disaffected
subjects, spies in communication with the terrible enemy
in the West, perhaps conspirators plotting for the downfall
of the Sassanid throne. The adoption of Christianity by
Constantine and the growing combination of Church and
State that followed, immensely aggravated this suspicion.
In the Eoman Empire the Church was now treated as a
State department. Therefore, for subjects of Persia to be
communicating with the Church at Constantinople would
appear to be much the same as for English Eoman Catholics
in the times of Elizabeth and the Stuarts to be in com
munication with fellow-Eomanists in Spain and France;
Whatever may have been their real sentiments before the
persecution broke out, there can be no doubt that when it
was raging the Persian Christians would look with longing
eyes to their brethren safely sheltered within the Eoman
Empire. 1 Moeller, Hist, of Christian Church, Eng. trans., vol. i. p. 104, gives
authorities for this statement, drawn from the Syrian Acts of Persian martyrs.

EARLY CHRISTIANITY OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE 299
There was another factor in this persecution which
added fuel to the fire, or which perhaps had kindled the
fire at the first. This was the antagonism of the Magi.
That the leaders of so enlightened a rehgion as that of
Persia shoidd have stirred up a persecution of the Christians
is a plain proof of their vitality and vigour. In earlier
days a similar influence had roused violeilt opposition to
Christianity in the Eoman Empire. Thus the Valerian
persecution was instigated by a famous magician, Macrianus.
We must not confound the ancient order of Persian Magi
with the vulgar charlatans who professed magic in the
Western world. And yet the science of the Magi itself
was fast degenerating into magic, a practice against which
the Church waged deadly war, accusing it of alliance
with the deviL
The great Persian persecution of the Christians broke
out under Sapor, whose reign was extended to the extra
ordinary length of seventy years. His father had died
before his birth, and since the crown was then placed on
the spot that was supposed to conceal the future heir, the
years of his reign are reckoned from a time earlier than
his appearance in the world. The Magi began to work on
Sapor's mind when he was a youth, and there were many
violent deaths of Christians in consequence during the
early part of his reign. The first of them are dated two
years after the council of Nicaea (a.d. 327). But these
cases are scarcely noticed in comparison with the army of
martyrs that fell in Sapor's thirtieth year (a.d. 343) and
during the succeeding thirty-five years, over the whole of
which the persecution was spread intermittently. The
diptychs of the Persian Church celebrate the names of
16,000 clergy, monks, and nuns. We have no means of
estimating the number of the laity who suffered. At first
there were many apostasies. But the wonder of the
persecution is that as this proceeded down its path of
blood through many years, instead of wearing out the
patience of the Church, it welded her metal to the temper
of fine steel. According to the confession of the acts of

300 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the martyrs the religious character of the Christians was
low at first, but as in the case of the two great "Eoman
persecutions — the Decian and the Diocletian — the fires of
tribulation purged the Church.
The immediate motive of this especially severe per
secution at the exact time when it broke out appears to
have been political. The Magi had been urging the king
to suppress their rivals all along. But now Sapor saw the
Christian bishop James at Nisibis keeping that city firm
in its allegiance to the Eoman Emperor Constantius, so
that it successfully withstood, two sieges by the Persians.
This was a clear case of action on the part of the Church in
favour of Eome against Persia, although not within his own
territory. It was enough to embitter him against those of
James's friends and co-religionists whom he had in his power.
The persecution began with a heavy capitation tax on
the Christians. Their bishop Symeon proved himself to
be a very haughty passive-resister. " Christ," he answered,
" who had freed His Church by His death would not
permit His people to bow to such a yoke." Like the
young officer Marcellus who had spoken to his superiors
scornfully about "your emperors," during the Diocletian
persecution, because his sovereign was Christ, and like the
" fifth monarchy men " in the seventeenth century, Symeon
seemed to think that his status as a Christian involved
escape from the authority of the civil government ; or if
he did not go so far as that, he took it as a full justification
for refusing to pay an iniquitous tax. He was arrested,
tried, urged in vain to worship the sun, and condemned
to perish in torture. At the same time other martyrs
were beheaded. The very day of Symeon's martyrdom a
fresh and more severe edict was issued against the Christians.
It only stimulated the heroism of the martyrs. Sapor's
queen being attacked by an unknown disease, the Jewish
physician who attended her attributed it to the practice of
witchcraft by two Christian ladies of high station. They
were stripped, tied to posts, and hacked to pieces, and then
the queen was led through the yet reeking portions of

EARLY CHRISTIANITY OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE 301
their remains. The stories of the persecution, its horrors
and its heroism, are too numerous to repeat. A glance
over them reveals the fact that a great number of the
martyrdoms occurred in the district of Adiabene, which
appears to have been almost wholly Christian. But
multitudes fell in all the provinces. At first only the
clergy were aimed at ; nevertheless the persecution was
not confined to the official leaders of the Church.
When we next meet with Persian Christians we find
them adopting Nestorianism; and the later fortunes of
Christianity in Persia will be considered in the division
of this volume dealing with the Nestorians.
2. The other series of events occurring beyond the
borders of the Eoman Empire during the earlier period of our
history that now claims our attention is found in connection
with the story of Ulfilas and the conversion of the Goths.1
These people of our own Teutonic stock, whose repeated
invasions were among the most serious troubles of the
Eoman emperors, first meet us in the lands north of the
lower Danube during the third century of the Christian
era. Their traditional earlier connection with Scandinavia
has not been verified; but the fact that in the restless
migrations of their teeming populations they had swept east
ward from the ancient forests of Germany, and thus early
begun the characteristic colonising habit of which their Eng
lish representatives, the Jutes, gave evidence, is the probable
explanation of their appearance in Eastern Europe, wedged
in between the Sclavs on the north and the Greeks on the
south. Still pressing onward, during the course of the
fourth century they poured into the Eoman province of
Dacia in repeated and disastrous raids, the first of which
occurred in the year 238, ravaging Mcesia in the reign
of Philip the Arabian, and later defeating the Emperor
Decius, who fell while fighting them (ad. 25 1).2 Thus
indirectly they saved the Church by putting an end to
1 Formerly but erroneously identified with the Gets.
2 Zosimus, i. 19 ff.

302 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the first persecution that was systematically planned by a
determined emperor to effect its total destruction. During
the next seventeen years they devastated Eastern Europe
and Western Asia by land and sea as far as Trebizond;
but at length they were defeated and driven back by the
Emperor Claudius (a.d. 269), just about the time when the
elder Theodosius was repulsing the Saxons in Britain. A
wise compromise was now agreed upon. The Eomans
ceded the province of Dacia, north of the Danube, which
Trajan had added to the empire, so that the river became
the boundary between Eoman and Goth, while the name
Dacia was preserved by being transferred to the district
south of the Danube (a.d. 274). The pohtical sagacity of
this arrangement was seen in the ensuing peace of ninety
years' duration, only once seriously broken by an incursion
of Alaric, which was successfully repelled after its brief,
brilliant success. Under Ermanaric, in the fourth century,
the Goths north of the Danube grew into a great power,
conquering the Sclavs, and, according to their own
historian Jornandis — who is not altogether reliable —
extending their dominion as far as the Baltic.1 Ermanaric
was only a kind of overlord, for the Goths had no kings,
and therefore when Socrates2 describes a civil war as
a contest between two rivals — Athanaric and Frithigern —
for the sovereignty, we must understand this as a quarrel
between two separate chieftains for the place of primus
inter pares.8 But the important fact in regard to the
history of Christianity among the Goths is that these two
chieftains followed opposite lines of policy both in relation
to the Eoman Empire and with reference to Christianity.
The close neighbourhood of the two powers led to inter
communication and interaction. Athanaric took the side
of a usurper in making war on the emperor, but afterwards
came to terms with Valens. Christianity had already
1 Jornandis, 23. a Hist. Eccl. iv. 33.
"Ammianus calls Athanaric a "judge," Hist, xxvii. 5. According
to Freeman, he would be the equivalent of an Anglo-Saxon ealdorman or
heretoga. See Freeman's article "Goths " in Encycl. Brit.

EARLY CHRISTIANITY OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE 303
penetrated into his dominions, and he had persecuted the
converts severely. On the other hand, Frithigern had
found it politic to cultivate the friendship of the empire,
and therefore to be himself friendly to its religion, the type
of which, we must remember, was Arianism, then favoured
by the government.1
The actual beginnings of Christianity among the Goths
cannot be traced. A twofold process was at work leading
to the introduction of the gospel to the Teutonic tribes
beyond the Danube. In the first place, Christian captives
carried off in the Gothic raids of the empire brought their
religion with them ; and, inasmuch as every genuine
Christian is bound to be a missionary, we are not sur
prised to learn that some of these captives made the
gospel known among the heathen people with whom their
lot was now cast.2 In the second place, Goths served
in the Eoman army and there came under Christian
influences, so that those who were converted, when they
went back to their own country, would go as Christians
ready to spread the new faith among their people. To
these influences we must add that of fugitives from per
secution in the empire, who took refuge among the more
hberal " barbarians."
The earliest Gothic colony within the empire appears
to have established itself at Crim — the Crimea — long
before the Arian supremacy, to have become Christian of
the Catholic type, and to have remained such throughout.
There was a bishop of the Goths named Theophilus at the
council of Nicaea (a.d. 325).3 According to Philostorgius,
raids as early as the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus had
resulted in Christian captives planting the gospel among
the Goths ; among these captives, he - says, were the
ancestors of Ulfilas.4
1 Sozomen, vi. 37 ; Socrates, iv. 33. 2 Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. ii. 6.
8 Socrates, ii. 41.
4 Philostorgius, ii. 5. Athanasius, writing before the council of Nictea,
mentions both Scythians and Goths among barbarians who had received the
gospel. Cf. Cyril, Cat. xvi. 22.

304 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
We may therefore be certain that this famous man
was not the first to introduce Christianity to a Teutonic
race. Nevertheless, it is with justice that Ulfilas has
been described as " the Apostle of the Goths," because it
was owing to his labours that a great part of the nation
was won over to the faith of Christ. The discovery of a
Gothic account of his life by one of his own disciples has
enabled scholars to supplement and correct the prejudiced
narratives of the Greek Church historians from a more
authentic source.1 There are reasons for doubting Philo-
storgius's statement that Ulfilas was a descendant of one of
the Cappadocian captives.2 His name is thoroughly Gothic,
and his pupil Auxentius does not hint at a foreign
parentage. He was born among the Goths in the year
311. We cannot test the statement of Socrates that he
was converted by Theophilus, the bishop who attended the
council of Nicaea. If that were correct, he would have
been orthodox at first. But afterwards he was identified
with one of the schools of Arianism. While quite young,
probably in the year 332, when he was twenty-one years
of age, he was sent to Constantinople, either as an envoy,
or, as seems more likely considering his youth, as a
hostage. Arianism was now dominant in the city, and
naturally enough Ulfilas came under its influence. While
at Constantinople he learnt Latin and Greek, and served
in the minor order of a reader in the Church, probably
working in the city as an evangelist to his fellow-countrymen
1 See C. Anderson Scott, Ulfilas, the Apostle of the Goths, a book which
is mainly founded on a Gothic MS. at the Louvre, discovered by Waitz
in the year 1840, containing the life of Ulfilas by Auxentius, one of his
pupils, and Arian bishop of Dorostorus (Silistria).
2 Prof. Anderson Scott adduces three reasons — (1) Philostorgius, though
himself a Cappadocian, writing forty years later, was less likely to know
the origin of Ulfilas than people at Constantinople [surely a doubtful state
ment] ; (2) since the Ostrogoths of the Crimea were the Gothic people
who made raids on Cappadocia, it is improbable that a Cappadocian captive
would be found among Gotlis of the Danube ; (3) it is also improbable
that young descendants in the third generation of captive from the empire
would be sent to represent the Goths at Constantinople (Ulfilas, etc, pp.

EARLY CHRISTIANITY OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE 305
among the imperial troops. In the year 341 he was
ordained as a missionary by the Semi-Arian party and sent
back to his own country to evangelise it. This fact throws
an interesting sidelight on the period of fierce controversy
which follows the council of Nicaea. As we read the
Church histories we are in danger of regarding it as a
time when rehgion was nothing but a battleground of
angry polemics between the factions into which the Church
was broken up. But this mission of Ulfilas is a sign that
something better was to be seen in it, though that did not
make so much noise. It is interesting also to observe
that the missionary zeal was found among the Arians,
whom the Nicene party were for ever denouncing and
anathematising as impious infidels.
Ulfilas was thirty years of age when he set out on his
great enterprise, and he continued in it for forty years of
arduous toil, amid great perils and persecutions. He
began among the Visigoths beyond the Danube, where he
laboured for seven years with great success. He won so
many converts that the pagan chief, who appears to have
been wrongly identified with Athanaric, was roused to
anger and commenced a persecution of his Christian
people. Ulfilas then obtained permission from Constantius
to retire with his converts across the Danube into Mcesia,
within the confines of the empire, settling near the foot
of the mountain range of Haemus. In the year 360 he
attended a council at Constantinople, called together by
the Homcean party. It was the creed of this party to
which he gave his assent — a creed, it will be remembered,
devised for political reasons, in order to retain Arianism
within the Church. It aimed at so doing by putting an
end to controversy, by excluding all party watchwords —
homoousios, homoiousios, and the rest, and affirming a
simple likeness between the First and Second Persons in
the Trinity. There is no reason to doubt that Ulfilas was perfectly
honest in the theological position he occupied. As an
earnest missionary, more concerned with practical evan-
20

306 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
gelistic work than with theological controvery, he may
have been thankful for a simple form of Christianity that
he could make intelligible to his rough fellow-countrymen
more easily than one which was involved in subtle Greek
metaphysics. There is no ground for the malignant
insinuation of orthodox Church writers, that Ulfilas adopted
Arianism in a bargain with the Emperor Valens when seek
ing protection from the persecution of the pagan Goths.
He states in his will that he had always held the same
principles.1 The probability is that the Goths were already
Arians of the mild, non-metaphysical type. Arianism was
strong in Mcesia and along the line of the Danube, and the
natural explanation of the facts is that Ulfilas and his
people were simply carried with the current of their times
and became Arian without ever supposing that they were
adopting a specifically heretical position.
The result, however, was curiously complicated. In
the first place, it was a great thing for Europe that when
the Goths poured over Italy and even captured Eome they
came as a Christian people, reverencing and sparing the
churches, and abstaining from those barbarities that
accompanied the invasion of Britain by the heathen
Saxons. But, in the second place, many of these simple
Gothic Christians learned to their surprise that they were
heretics, and that only when their efforts towards frater
nising with their fellow-Christians in the orthodox Church
were angrily resented.
Ulfilas supplemented his direct missionary work by
his writings ; above all, by his translation of the Bible into
the Gothic language. For this purpose he had to create
an alphabet, since previously the art of writing was un
known among the Goths. Thus he is really the founder
of Teutonic literature — that great literature which after
wards blossomed out in Chaucer, Luther, Shakespeare,
Goethe. Ulfilasus omitted the Book of Kings from his
translation because of their warlike character — he
considered that his people did not need Scriptural
1 Ego Ulphilas semper sic credidi.

EARLY CHRISTIANITY OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE 307
encouragement for fighting, being only too ready for it
already.1 Perhaps this is the first instance of a Bible
expurgated on moral grounds.
Ulfilas's translation only exists in fragments, the most
important of which is the Codex Argenteus, containing
portions of the Gospels. This manuscript is described by
Scrivener as " the most precious treasure of the university
of Upsal." 2 It consists of quarto leaves of purple vellum,
with letters in gold and silver. The date assigned to it is
the fifth or early sixth century ; that is to say, only about
a century later than the time of Ulfilas himself. Other
copies are the Codex Carolinus and the Ambrosian fragments
published by Mai.3 Ulfilas went to Constantinople in the
year 380, and there he died, either that same year, or the
next year- — the year of the second oecumenical council,
worn out with his heroic, lifelong toils and the anxieties
for his people, which crowded upon his later years. He
was succeeded by Selenas — a man accounted " well fitted
to instruct the people in the Church."
The subsequent history of Gothic Christianity belongs
to Western Christendom, since it follows the migration of
the Goths. In Thracia, the home of its origin, it dis
appeared with the break-up of the nation in the year 395.
But it became most important in the Gothic kingdom
of Theodorie, which saw Arianism re-established for a time
in Italy long after it had been extinguished in the Eoman
Empire. Under the influence of the same wave of emigra
tion, it passed into Spain and across the Mediterranean to
Africa, where at length it perished together with Ohris-
1 Philostorgius, ii. 5.
2 Introd. to the Criticism of the New Testament, 4th edit. vol. ii. p. 146.
' Since Ulfilas was an Arian, the question arises, Did his heresy affect
his translation of the Bible ? Prof. Scott finds a faint indication of such
influence in the crucial test of the text, Phil. ii. 6, where Ulfilas has the
Gothic word galeiko as his rendering of the Greek too., although this word
corresponds to the Greek ip.oi.os, the watchword of the mild Arians whom he
represented. For the rest, his version has no suspicion of heresy. We
must remember — (1) that the Greek-speaking Arians claimed the Scriptures
to be on their side ; and (2) that Ulfilas was neither an extreme nor a con
troversial Arian.

308 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
tianity itself. The last remnants of Gothic Christianity
in Africa disappeared under the devastating scourge of the
Arab invasion, to give place to Islam and its blight upon
civilisation. Meanwhile, at its old home in the East,
another race and another type of Church life had blotted out
all signs and all memories of Ulfilas's Church, its victories
and its martyrdoms.

DIVISION II
THE MODEEN GEEEK CHUECH

CHAPTER I
CYRIL LUCAR AND THE REFORMATION
(a) Cyrilli Lucaris, Confessio ; Smith, Vit. Cyr. Lucar; Collectanea
de Cyrillo Lucario, 1707 ; Palmer, The Eastern Catholic Com
munion, 1853, and The Orthodox and the Non-Jurors, 1868.
(6) Neale, Patriarchate of Alexandria ; Ranke, The Ottoman Empire,
Eng. trans., 1843 ; Findlay, Greece under Ottoman and Vene
tian Domination, 1856 ; Kyriakos, Geschichte der Orientalischen
Kvrchen von 1453-1898, Ger. trans., 1902.
The fall of Constantinople was quickly followed by the
subjugation of almost all the remnants of the Byzantine
Empire. Even the Venetians and the Knights of St.
John were swept from the Levant by the victorious Turks.
The consequence was the subjection of the Greek Church to
Mohammedan despotism. The sultan recognised the Church
as a corporate institution, instituted and maintained official
relations with the bishops, and issued specific regulations
for the management of the Christians. The forcible con
version of the followers either of Jesus or of Moses, regarded
as two prophets of Islam, was forbidden by the Koran.
While obstinate idolaters were to be slain, Jews and Chris
tians were to be allowed to live and practise their religious
rites, though not to proselytise. But both were treated
with contempt, subjected to specific exactions and disabili
ties, and often liable to unchecked abuse and outrage.

310 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Christians were required to pay a capitation tax (called the
haratsh), from which Mussulman inhabitants of the same
provinces were exempt. But the most cruel and degrading
burden laid upon them was the tribute of children which
went to maintain the famous institution of the janissaries.1
A tithe of the young population, one boy in five, was
demanded by the government. Every two or three years
government officers went through the towns and villages
selecting the healthiest and strongest boys to be trained for
service as soldiers of the sultan. They were taken quite
young, and carefully educated in Mohammedanism. The
institution was a unique characteristic of the Ottoman
Empire. It was originated by Orkhan, about the year
1329, but organised much more thoroughly by his son
and successor Murad, who has therefore been generally
regarded as its founder. By this means the sultans were
able to maintain a strong fighting force unattached to the
pashas and unaffected by local interests, a rigorously disci
plined and highly trained standing army absolutely subject
to the imperial authority.
This, then, was the secret of the power of the Ottoman
Empire when at its zenith it boasted of ruling three conti
nents. At the time of the fall of Constantinople the
number of janissaries was 12,000 ; under Suleiman the
Legislator it rose to 40,000. But in later times these
janissaries themselves became a menace to the weakened
central authority, exercising their power for their common
interests like the Eoman armies under the feebler emperors.
In the year 1566 they obtained from Selim n. the right to
make recruits of their own children. Thus they became a
self-contained caste. At last the decline of the Greek
population of the empire, which was the chief tax-producing
element, rendered the serious drain upon it involved by the
tribute of children disastrous to the finances of the State.
At the same time the growing turbulence of the janissaries
made them a constant source of anxiety to their master.
During the reign of Mohammed iv. (a.d. 1649-1687)
1 See Kyriakos, p. 9 ff.

CYRIL LUCAR AND THE REFORMATION 311
this unnatural method of recruiting the army came to an
end. The last recorded case occurred in the year 1676.
Meanwhile its long continuance was a' proof of the abject
degradation of the people who endured it for centuries.
Not only was it a cruel outrage on the family ; it was a
barefaced insult to Christianity, since it was an organised
instrument of apostasy. How came the Greeks to bow
their necks to the humiliating yoke, instead of preferring
death to the dishonour of it ? In other respects their
peaceful submission to the Ottoman rule is not surprising.
This rule was not always harsh. In the Turkish Empire
the peasant was at least a free man, while in Christian
countries at the same time he was a serf, subject to cruel
feudal tyranny. Still, in spite of all that is unheroic in the
attitude of the Greeks, it is to the credit of the Church
that she held on her course through centuries of abuse and
hardships ; for all along the Christians were suffering from
wrongs and miseries which they could easily have escaped
by becoming converts to Islam. It is not to be supposed
that none took this tempting course. The truth is, immense
numbers did become Mohammedans. Manuel, the last of
the Palaeologi, joined the religion of the destroyer of his
ancestors' throne. But these facts do not derogate from
the stubborn fidelity of the multitudes who resisted the
temptation to apostatise; on the contrary, they enhance
the martyr-like character of it. The Greek Church has
always gloried in her orthodoxy ; she has more reason to
be proud of her very existence, more ground for congratula
tion in the fact that she has not been worn down by the
continuous friction of centuries of abuse and contempt.
Unhappily little can be said to the credit of the highest
officials of the Church during these desolate ages. For the
most part the simple peasants who clung to their faith did
so against all inducements to abandon it. The case of their
superiors presents a grim contrast to this unworldly fidelity.
The patriarchs of Constantinople were now chosen and
appointed by the sultan, although the fiction of a synodical
election was more or less ostentatiously preserved ; and they

312 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
generally proved to be pliant instruments in the hands of the
government. That is not very surprising, since they were
selected with this end in view. They commonly obtained
the post by bribery and held it by sycophancy. Thus the
Church was confronted with the unedif ying spectacle of her
chief priest cringing before the infidel. In return for his
subserviency the patriarch of Constantinople was allowed to
summon synods and to hold courts, not only for ecclesi
astical, but even for civil cases, among his own people.1
The patriarchs were frequently deposed by the sultans
quite arbitrarily, and they often bought their places back
again ; but some fell into perpetual disgrace, and some were
strangled. At one time there were fourteen patriarchs in
fifteen years. Some of the patriarchs were of notoriously
degraded character. The patriarch Eaphael was said to
have been a confirmed drunkard ignorant of Greek.
Following the example in high places, bishops bought
their positions, and were used by the government as magis
trates and tax-gatherers. The orthodox patriarchs of
Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem were very differently
situated. These chief pastors were still elected by synods
of local bishops as in older, happier times. But they had
very little power, most of the Christian inhabitants of their
provinces being heretics out of communion with their church.
The one patriarch who exercised effective control over the
Greek Church was regarded by patriotic Greeks themselves
as a renegade and a traitor to their cause.
1 Professor Kyriakos states that the patriarch of Constantinople not
only did not lose power under the Turkish government, but even increased
his privileges (Geschichte, p. 26). This is a most misleading statement.
Certainly in external form and range of influence such was the case, and
that in two ways — (1) This patriarch was now set over all the orthodox
Christians in the Ottoman Empire, including those of the other three
patriarchates — the patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, of
course only those of the orthodox Church, now known locally as Melchite.
(2) To his ecclesiastical authority was added civil jurisdiction. On the
other hand, he could not call his life his own if in any matter he offended
his despotic master. Moreover, what he gained in civil power was more
than counterbalanced by what he lost in spiritual influence, as the nominee
and officer of the hated Moslem power.

CYRIL LUCAR AND THE REFORMATION 313
A melancholy characteristic of the depression and
degeneration of the later Greek Church is the absence of
conspicuous names from its dismal history. If there were
any village Hampdens or Miltons, the former started no
successful rebellions and the latter were mute and inglori
ous. During outbreaks of popular fanaticism, and underi
the cold, calculating persecutions instigated by the govern
ment from time to time in opposition to its professed
policy, no doubt the noble army of martyrs was enriched
by the addition of many a humble hero of the faith. But
either the ability or the opportunity for any conspicuous
feat of fidelity was lacking. The story of the Church had
left the noble highlands where striking landmarks rivet
our attention and descended to a featureless plain with the
monotony of the desert. There was more learning silently
cherished in the monasteries than is commonly supposed,
and a higher standing of education was maintained among
the Greeks than among most of their contemporaries in
Europe. Moreover, Greek merchants grew rich in spite of
fiscal disabilities. But there was no intellectual originality,
no literature of genius, no movement of distinction.
In all this barren age there is just one name that has
emerged out of the fog of oblivion into European fame, and
that largely owing to the accident of Western connections.
This is the name of Cyril Lucar, patriarch of Alexandria,
and subsequently of Constantinople, who lived at the time
of the Eeformation, and became the courageous author of
an abortive attempt to introduce the principles of Pro
testantism into the East.
The Greek Church came into contact with Lutheranism
under the patriarchs Joseph n. and Jeremiah II., and later
with Calvinism by means of the activity of Cyril Lucar.
In the year 1559, Melanchthon, taking advantage of the
return of Demetrius, a deacon of Constantinople who had
been staying at Wittenburg, sent a copy of the Augsburg
confession to the patriarch Joseph, claiming agreement
between its tenets and the doctrines of the Eastern Church.
It was received in chill silence, the prosaic interpretation

314 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
of which may be that since it only existed in Latin and
German — languages not studied at Constantinople — the
patriarch did not put himself to the trouble of getting his
deacon to explain it to him. Fifteen years later (a.d.
1574), Martin Crusius produced a Greek version of the
confession and sent it to Jeremiah II., who was then the
patriarch of Constantinople, and received in return a polite
reply. Thus encouraged, Crusius proceeded to point out
how Lutheranism differed from Eomanism and to express a
hope of union with the Eastern Church. Jeremiah's reply
is uncompromising. The only way to union with the
orthodox Church is to " follow the apostolical and synodical
decrees." There can be no broadening out of a common
basis of union ; the sole possibility is conversion to the
Greek Church and admission into that communion as it
now stands in its changeless rigour of doctrine and dis
cipline. In the year 1578, Jeremiah received a fuller
account of Lutheranism ; but nothing came of any of these
Lutheran overtures.
Cyril's action was on different lines. It was at once
less ambitious and more courageous. He knew the Greek
Church too well to ignore its errors or imagine that in its
present condition any fusion with a Protestant Church was
either practicable or desirable. His aim was a reformation
within the Eastern Church on Calvinistic lines — not the
High Church idea of the reunion of Christendom, but the
Protestant conception of a true gospel and a pure Church.
Cyril Lucar was born at Candia, the chief town of
Crete, in the year 1572. The island was then under the
mild rule of the Venetians, who allowed more religious
liberty than any other power. Several Greeks of interest
in the movements of this time came from Crete. But
Cyril was sent to Alexandria at the early age of ten,
and there put under the tuition of his uncle Meletius Pega
— another Cretan — who had been in Italy and seen
enough there to return with strong anti-Eoman convictions.
Before he was twelve years old the lad was sent to Venice,
and thence to Padua, where he came under the influence of an

CYRIL LUCAR AND THE REFORMATION 315
anti-Eoman teacher Maximus, afterwards bishop of Cerigo.
Subsequently he travelled in Germany and Switzerland,
perhaps also in England during the reign of Elizabeth, though
that is doubtful.1 In the year 1595 he returned to Alex
andria and was ordained a deacon. During this period of
his life we find him for a time at Constantinople, though
on what business nobody knows. The Greeks having held
a conference at Wilna with several Lutheran nobles and
divines to seek a basis of union between the two communions,
although with no results, Sigismund, the king of Poland,
an energetic champion of the papacy, forbade the propaga
tion of Greek Church doctrines in his dominions under
severe penalties. Meletius then sent Cyril to Poland on
behalf of the cause of the Eastern Church, and he settled
down in Wilna for a time, supporting himself by teaching
the Greek language. He was now like an ambassador
from the Greek Church, an intermediary between Poland
and the East. The king of Poland sent him to Meletius,
exhorting the patriarch to revere the primacy of St. Peter
and acknowledge the pope. Meletius returned a respectful
but negative reply, and at ,the same time formally appointed
Cyril his exarch in Sclavonia. Meanwhile Sigismund began
to persecute in the interest of the Uniats — the party in
favour of uniting the Greek Church with Eome on the
Eoman terms. Necessarily Cyril had to " lie low " if he
would remain in Poland while this tempest was sweeping
over the country. But there is no evidence that he yielded
any more than by keeping silence. At a later time his
bitter enemy the Jesuit Sarga circulated a report to the
effect that he had written a letter to the archbishop of
Lowenberg professing his adherence to the Church of Eome.
The letter was a forgery and the accusation based upon it a
barefaced calumny.
On his return to Alexandria Cyril was sent to his
native island, to collect the usual contributions for the
patriarchate. In the year 1602 he succeeded Meletius as
orthodox patriarch of Alexandria. While he was in this
1 See Neale, Patriarch of Alexandria, vol. ii. p. 360.

316 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
office the English king, James I., offered him free education
for a Greek whom he might send over for the purpose.
The fortunate recipient of this favour was Metrophanes
Critopulus, who sadly disappointed his patrons by his extra
vagance and pretentiousness. Probably he was a clever
if not a high-principled young man. In Germany the
Lutherans assign to his authorship, " A Confession of the
Catholic and Apostolic Church of the East." On his
return to Egypt he became a metropolitan, and he ulti
mately attained to the patriarchate of Alexandria — of
course, like Cyril, for the " orthodox " Greek Church there.
The bulk of the Egyptians were of the Monophysite Coptic
Church. Cyril opened up a correspondence with Archbishop Laud,
whom he presented with an Arabic Pentateuch " as a sign of
brotherly love " ; this is now preserved in Oxford, at the
Bodleian Library. When on his travels he had secured a
fifth century manuscript of the Scriptures at Mount Athos.
This was the oldest accessible Greek Bible, the two older
manuscripts which scholars now use being as yet unknown —
namely, the Vatican, locked up in the pope's library, and
the Sinaitic, lying undiscovered in the monastery of St.
Catherine. All English students have reason to think of
the name of Cyril Lucar with gratitude, for he presented
his precious manuscript to the English nation in the person
of King Charles I. It now lies open to view under a glass
case in the King's Library at the British Museum — one of
the most valuable of all the valuable treasures owned by
Great Britain. We know it as the Alexandrian manuscript,
not like the Sinaitic as named after the place where it was
found, nor because it represents the Alexandrian text —
which is the text of the Vatican and the Sinaitic manu
scripts — but simply because its donor was the patriarch of
Alexandria, so that it came to England immediately from
that city.
Cyril commenced . his reforming efforts in the Greek
Church while at Alexandria. In the year 1621 he became
patriarch of Constantinople, where he still laboured in the

CYRIL LUCAR AND THE REFORMATION 317
interest of the Eeformation. He was succeeded at Alex
andria by Gerasius, another Cretan, but a staunch upholder
of old-fashioned Greek orthodoxy.
Cyril drew up a Confession of Faith, a perusal of which
makes it clear that he had strong leanings towards
Calvinism. But how far he went in this direction has
been a matter of dispute. His friends of the orthodox
Church, and also English High Churchmen anxious for union
with the Greek Church, have endeavoured to minimise his
Protestanism when they have not thrown over Cyril in
despair as a heretic. It is necessary, therefore, to have
some of his statements before us in their exact phraseology
if we would judge for ourselves where he stands. He
begins with an affirmation of the Trinity — with respect to
which all the leading reformers were agreed ; but he affirms
the Greek doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from
the Father by the Son. Article iii. is as follows : " We
believe that God, before the foundation of the world, pre
destinated His elect to glory without respect of their work
ing, and that there was none other cause which impelled
Him to this election than His good pleasure and Divine
mercy; in like manner that before the foundation of the
world He reprobated whom He would reprobate ; of which
reprobation, if a man will regard the absolute right and
sovereignty of God, he will without doubt find the cause to
be the will of God ; but if again he regards the laws and
rules of good order which the Divine will employs for the
government of the world, he will find it to be justice, for
God is long-suffering, but yet just." Here we have the full,
unqualified Calvinistic doctrine of election, including re
probation, logically supra-lapsarian, though the final clause
seems to introduce a qualification by insisting on justice,
but that only dogmatically without any attempt at a re
conciliation with the earlier statement. The confession
decidedly affirms baptismal regeneration — in which it
agrees with the majority of the reformers. It declares that
Christ alone " does the work of a true and proper Mediator "
— a phrase which by its defining attributes " true and

318 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
proper " has been said not to exclude the secondary inter
cession of saints.
Article ix. is as follows : " We believe that none can be
saved without faith. By faith we mean that which
justifies in Jesus Christ, which the life and death of our
Lord Jesus Christ produced for us, and which the gospel
preaches, and without which it is impossible to please
God." In treating of the doctrine of the Church, Cyril says:
" The Church which is called Catholic containeth all the
faithful in Christ," etc. Then he proceeds, "There are
particular visible churches," etc. In Article xii. he dis
tinctly affirms that the Church can err — a statement as
abhorrent to an orthodox Greek as to a Eoman Catholic.
Article xiii. declares that, "We believe that man is justified
by faith, without works. But when we speak of faith we
mean the correlative of faith, which is the righteousness
of Christ on which faith takes hold," etc.
If this is not Protestanism, what is Protestantism ? It
is not even Melanchthon's mild and tempered synergism;
it is nearer to Calvinism than to Lutheranism. On the
great dividing' question, the fundamental question of the
final authority, Cyril is decidedly Protestant. He says,
" The authority of Holy Scripture is far greater than that
of the Church, for it is a different thing to be taught by the
Holy Spirit from being taught by man. Man may through
ignorance err and deceive, and be deceived. But the Holy
Spirit neither deceiveth nor is deceived, nor is subject to
error, but is infallible." This reminds us of Chilling-
worth's doctrine — " The Bible the religion of Protestants."
In June 1627, Nicodemus Mentaxa, a native of Cepha-
lonia and a monk, who had been to England, arrived at
Constantinople with a printing press and a fount of Greek
types. The English ambassador housed them; but the
Jesuits tried to gain over Mentaxa. They plied him with
threats ; and at length they accused him of treason because
he printed the royal arms of England at the beginning and
end of his book. Mentaxa began the printing of Cyril's

CYRIL LUCAR AND THE REFORMATION 319
confession, but the Jesuits broke in and seized the types.
Cyril then sent the document to Geneva, where the con
fession was printed in a Latin version. The publication of
it created a sensation in Europe. Here was the first
ecclesiastic in the Greek Church professing the most
thorough - going Protestant tenets, even echoing arrant
Calvinism ! Most people took the document for a forgery.
Then Cyril issued a new edition of the confession, this
time in Greek, and with significant additions. He declared
that the faithful ought to read the Holy Scriptures. The
doctrines necessary to be believed, he said, may be dis
covered for themselves by regenerate persons, the Holy
Spirit aiding them, and Scripture being compared with
Scripture — most outspoken Protestantism again, and that
on its basal principle and central point of difference from
the Church, the question of the source of authority in
doctrine ! ' On the other hand, Cyril says nothing about
the authority of the Church. He adds an expression of
his detestation of the adoration of images — practically
the chief popular religious function in his own Church.
Cyril did not find his patriarchate a bed of roses.
No patriarch could have been at his ease in the office
under the anomalous circumstances, but a reformer amidst
stereotyped Eastern orthodoxy and papal intrigue was
doubly threatened in this post of danger. The Greeks,
however, did not at first trouble themselves to interfere
with their patriarch, and it was by the machinations
of his most deadly enemies, the Jesuits, that he was
molested. Cyril issued a pastoral calling upon the faithful
to withdraw from communion with all members of the
Latin Church. But he had not the authority to maintain
his policy. Five times he was banished ; and five times
he was restored to his office. He was fortunate in having
for his friend the grand vizier, who was not to be deceived
by the lies that were circulated about him. At last his
enemies found their chance. The Sultan Amurath was
absent from Constantinople and marching to Bagdad, when
the Jesuits contrived to get a message sent to him informing

320 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
him that Cyril was carrying on treasonable correspondence
with the Cossacks. Anxious in the prospect of war, unable
to investigate the charge at a distance, in hasty anger,
Amurath ordered the patriarch to be executed. Cyril was
strangled with a bow-string, and his body flung into the
sea, on the 27th of June, 1638, in the sixty-sixth year of
his age, and the thirty-sixth of his two patriarchates. Some
fishermen found the body, and it was buried at night on
an island in the bay of Nicomedia.
Professor Kyriakos considers that Cyril Lucar " must
be numbered among the first scholars of his time.*'1
Whether he should be admitted to that position in an era
of encyclopaedic learning among the men of the new en
lightenment in Germany may be doubted. But there can
be no doubt that in the East he stood absolutely alone, the
one brilliant star of his age. Better than that, he aimed
at a genuine reformation, although this was on lines of
Western theology for which his .people were in no way
prepared. It would be preposterous to look for reform of
the Greek Church by means of its conversion to Calvinism.
Cyril was followed in the patriarchate of Constantinople
by his namesake at Bercea, who summoned a synod within
three months of his predecessor's death. This synod
anathematised the confession and also Cyril Lucar, betray
ing no doubt that he was its author. It affirmed the
duty of Christian priests to repress all heresy to the utmost
of their power. Cyril Lucar was described as "an
intruder into the throne of Constantinople, abounding
with the poison of the deadliest heresy " ; he was especially
condemned for teaching "that the bread offered at the
altar and also the wine are not changed by the blessing of
the priest and the descent of the Holy Spirit into the real
body and blood of Christ"; and anathematised as an
" Iconoclast " and " worse than an Iconoclast." The decrees
of the synod were signed by the three patriarchs, including
Metrophanes of Alexandria, who had owed so much to the
murdered patriarch — an instance of base ingratitude.
1 Geschichte, p. 145.

CYRIL LUCAR AND THE REFORMATION 321
In the year 1642 another synod took a significant
course. It condemned Cyril's confession and Calvinism
together, thus plainly showing that the bishops perceived the
connection between them ; this synod did not name Cyril
as the author of the obnoxious document. But in the
synod of Jassy in Moldavia, which was held a little later,
this confession was again attributed to Cyril. Among the
bishops assembled at Jassy was Peter Mogila, the Eussian
ecclesiastic, who issued a counterblast in the form of
another confession of faith which came to be accepted as a
standard test of orthodoxy. It was not till thirty-four
years after Cyril's death that a public official denial of his
authorship of the confession that bears his name, was put
forth. This was at the famous synod of Bethlehem,
which Dositheus, the patriarch of Jerusalem — himself a
Cretan — took the opportunity of the dedication of the
new church in the year 1 672 to gather together there. The
synod condemned the Calvinistic confession and denied that
Cyril Lucar was its author. A patriarch of Constantinople
emitting such poison ! The idea was too horrible ! It
could not be so ! We can .. appreciate the psychological
attitude. But in view of sober historical criticism, can we
attach any real value to this repudiation ? The further
back we go, the closer and surer is Cyril's connection with
the confession. A late denial of it to which the policy
of convenience strongly urged has no weight whatever.1
1 Moreover, there is plenty of collateral evidence showing that the
confession was quite in accordance with Cyril's views expressed elsewhere,
and demonstrating his essential Protestantism. Thus he writes to the
archbishop of Spalatro, in the year 1618, stating that for three years he has
compared the doctrine of the Greek and Latin Churches with that of the
Eeformed, and adding as the result of this prolonged study, "I left the
Fathers and took for my guide Scripture and the analogy of faith alone. At
length, through the grace of God, because I discovered that the cause of the
reformers was the more just and the more in accordance with the doctrine
of Christ, I embraced it." What could be more explicit than that? He
contiuues, " I can no longer endure to hear a man say that the comments of
human tradition are of equal weight with Holy Scripture." Then he states
with approval the Calvinistic doctrine of original sin. He professes to
affirm what he calls "the Greek doctrine of the sacraments"; but he
repudiates the "chimera of transubstantiation." It must be remembered
21

322 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
In opposition to the anathematised confession the
council endorsed Peter Mogila's confession. That was
thoroughly Oriental. But this council in its antagonism to
Calvinism went further and leaned towards Eome. It
adopted a modified doctrine of purgatory, declaring that a
certain period of suffering in Hades would be assigned to
"those who had begun to repent, but who had not brought forth
works meet for repentance." The synod of Bethlehem in a
small way corresponds in the Greek Church to the council
of Trent in the Eoman Catholic Church. It is a deliberate
condemnation of the Eeformation and re-endorsement of
the old teaching and practice.
Although Cyril's attempt to originate a reformation
in the Greek Church had ended in failure, this fact must
not be set down to the brave man's discredit. He had
not displayed any intellectual originality; he had not
developed reformed doctrine from within his Church ; he
had only tried to transplant an exotic, and it is not
surprising that this would not take root in a strange soil.
The Eeformation in England was not indigenous. It
too was a foreign importation, first from Wittenberg, then
from Geneva. But the case of the remote Eastern Church
is very different. Greek thought had been rarely much
interested in movements of the Western mind. It was
hardly touched by the Novatian and Donatist schisms,
and but slightly affected by the great Pelagian controversy.
We should not have expected therefore that it would
that the Greeks had never worked out a metaphysical theory of the trans
mutation of the elements as the Latins had done, and had never accepted
the Roman Catholic theory of essence and accidents, leaving the subject a
mystery. But their doctrine was practically the same as the Eoman
doctrine, which indeed first appeared in the East, most distinctly, for
instance, in Gregory of Nyssa. Now Cyril denies it. He asserts that only
the faithful participate — a Calvinistic idea going even beyond Luther, who
held that the unworthy do receive the body of Christ, but to their hurt,
and certainly as foreign to the Greek as to the Latin Church. Then Cyril
goes on to denounce the popular cult of icons. " As to image worship," he
writes, " it is impossible to say how pernicious under present circumstances
it is." He also pronounces against the invocation of saints— all Protestant
and some of them advanced Calvinistic declarations.

CYRIL LUCAR AND THE REFORMATION 323
have been much moved by such a thoroughly Western
agitation as that of the Eeformation. But this is not all.
The times were not ripe. In the East there had been no
renaissance, no intellectual awakening as in the West.
There had been no precursors of a reformation such as the
German mystics, no stirring of conscience, no hunger and
thirst for better things. The world needs " the man and
the hour." Perhaps Cyril was not the man; he had
neither Luther's passionate energy nor Calvin's masterful
will. But if he had possessed both qualities he would
have failed because the hour had not sounded. The blow
may be struck; but there will be no explosion if the
dynamite is not ready. The Greek Church was still
in the patristic period. It had not advanced beyond
John of Damascus. To Eastern Christendom, the new age,
when, as the enthusiastic Ulric von Hutten declared,
"it is a joy to live," had not arrived. Will this ever
arrive ?
There is one fact of a more specific character that
must not be left out of account when we consider the
heroic career of Cyril and his ultimate failure. Whatever
views we may hold with regard to the question of an estab
lishment of religion and the right relations of Church and
State, we must perceive the anomaly of the Greek situation.
For a Christian Church to be officially connected with a
Mohammedan government could not but be an unholy
alliance. When Cyril accepted the position of patriarch
of Constantinople he put himself in a false position. In
one way he gained freedom for his attempted innovations.
The Ottoman government was more tolerant than most
Christian governments of his time. While Spain burnt its
heretics, the sultan was magnanimously indifferent to the
quarrels among his Christian subjects, or perhaps he was
ready to welcome them as weakening the power of the
rival of Islam. At all events, as the officially recognised
head of the Church owing his appointment to the sultan,
Cyril could pursue his own policy with a large measure
of independence. But he paid a dear price for that

324 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
independence. In proportion as he stood aloof from the
Greeks, sheltered by Turkish patronage, he lost influence
over his compatriots. His official position neutralised his
religious mission. He was bound to fail for the reason
that " no man can serve two masters."
Before passing from this disappointing passage of
history, it may be convenient to glance at a later approach
to the Eastern Church from the West, in the quaint
action of the English non-jurors. Most people will now
consider these worthy men to have been quite wrong-
headed. A little knot of conscientious " passive-resisters "
to the settlement under William and Mary, they contained
some of the saintliest souls in the Church of England,
among others Bishop Ken, the author of well-known
morning and evening hymns. No one can doubt their
sincere conscientiousness or their deep piety. Now it
happened in the year 1713 that Arsenius the archbishop
of Thebais was in England on one of those many humiliating
begging expeditions to which the representatives of the
Greek Church were repeatedly driven by the penury of their
flock. Here he came in contact with the . non- jurors, and
this led them to open a correspondence with the Eastern
patriarch through Peter the Great, then at the height of
his power in Eussia. In the year 1717 they asked the
tsar to send their proposals to the patriarchs, as from " the
Catholic remnant of the British Churches." It would
seem that neither Peter nor the Eastern prelates at first
suspected the isolated position of the non-jurors or their
comparative insignificance. Indeed, so obscure was the
movement on the English side, that it was not till after
some years that news of it reached Archbishop Wade.
Immediately he learnt what was going on — which was in
the year 1724— he wrote to Chrysarithus, the patriarch
of Jerusalem, exposing the true position of affairs. This
pricked the bubble. The non-juror's dream was shattered
in a moment.

CHAPTER II
THE LATER GREEK CHURCH UNDER THE TURKS
(o) Ricaut, State of the Ottoman Empire, 1670, and Present State of
the Greek and Armenian Churches, 1679 ; Smith, De Graces
hodiermo Statu, 1680; Covel, Some Account of the Greek
Church, 1722.
(6) Neale, Holy Eastern Church ; Ranks, The Ottoman Empire, 1843 ;
Findlay, Greece under Ottoman and Venetian Domination,
1856, and The Greek Revolution, 1861 ; W. A. Phillips, War
of Greek Independence, 1897 ; " Odysseus," Turkey in Europe,
1900 ; Cambridge Modern History, vol. x. chap, vi., 1907 ;
Kyriakos, Geschichte der Orient. Kirchen, 1902 ; Silbernage,
Verfassung und gegenwartiger Bestand samtlicher Kirchen des
Orients, 1904.
The later history of the Greek Church need not detain
us, for although Greece has never enjoyed the happiness of
the country whose annals are dull, the page is no longer
lit up by the presence of great men or fresh ideas. For
more than two centuries the Church was dragged through
the depths of degradation. The rapid succession of
patriarchs was maintained at Constantinople, precarious,
subservient. The provincial bishops — subject to the
patriarch, who was subject to the sultan — were entrusted
with a measure of local control over their flocks. An
other order of Greek officials serving under the Turkish
government consisted of the " Phanariots," who derived
their name from the quarter of Constantinople which was
their centre. These men had the charge of the taxation,
the chief concern of the Ottoman government, which was
often too weak to protect its subjects from attack and
outrage, and wretchedly indifferent to the administration

326 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
of justice, that should have been the first object of its
existence, but always energetic in the collection of the
taxes. This odious task was entrusted to local authorities
drawn from among the Greeks, who were despised and
hated by their compatriots, like the Jewish publicans in
the time of Christ. After the bishops and the Phanariots,
there were no people of any power or influence among the
Greeks. Hospitals and charities disappeared for lack of
support. The monks were so poor that they went about
visiting the markets with icons and cattle for sale.
Libraries were stripped of their treasures in ancient manu
scripts, which were sold to any chance purchasers and so
scattered in all directions beyond hope of recovery. In
course of time the central government lost vigour and the
result was atrophy of the extremities. A partial dis
integration took place and local pashas ruled as despotB;
even the Phanariots exercised tyrannical power with little
supervision, and, as men who had sold themselves to the
foreign oppressor, proved more cruel to their fellow-Greeks
than the Turks themselves. The extensive coast-line of
Greece left much of the mainland as well as the islands
dangerously open to piratical raids. For two hundred years
the most characteristic feature of the history of Greece under
the Turks consists in the repeated raids of the pirates, both
Turkish and Christian, and the fights to which they gave rise
among the peasants and islanders. The concerns of religion
seem to be swallowed up in a struggle for bare existence.
One interesting series of events breaks the monotony of
this story of suffering and humiliation, namely, the progress
of the Venetian conquests. Venice had suffered in the
general deluge that had swept over the wreck of the Byzan
tine Empire under the great Mohammed n. But gradually
she more than recovered the ground she had lost in Eastern
Europe, though never her own civic grandeur. After a
ruinous war, the Venetians succeeded in conquering the
Morea (ad. 1684). But while they were thus able to
restore a portion of the Ottoman Empire to Christendom,
their action was creating a fresh complication in the Greek

LATER GREEK CHURCH UNDER THE TURKS 327
Church. In the first place, they were Eoman Catholics,
with whose religious position the Greeks had no sympathy,
having lively memories of the intrigues of the Jesuits and
the attempts of the Uniats to capture the orthodox Church.
Then the patriarch of Constantinople was a functionary
under the Turkish government, and therefore officially
bound to be opposed to the Venetian aggression. Never
theless, Morosini, the able Venetian leader, contrived to
establish such good order that a number of Greeks were
drawn from the Turkish provinces in the north to share in
the growing prosperity of the Morea. Even Mohammedans
also yielded to the temptation, and some of them joined
the Greek Church, without any interference on the part of
the authorities. The Venetians established the only liberal Eoman
Catholic government of the age. They left the Greeks free
to practise their religious rites. In this respect the policy
of Venice was wholly different from that of Eome and the
Jesuits, by whom hitherto the Latin Church had been repre
sented in the East. The Venetians restored to the Eoman
Catholics the churches which the Turks had converted into
mosques ; but the chief of these churches had been built
by the Franks at the time of the Crusades or later. They
did not permit the pope to interfere with the Greek Church,
and they allowed it to retain all the powers and privileges
it had possessed under the sultan. But the situation was
awkward, because all the Greek bishops in the Morea were
nominees of the patriarch of Constanstinople, who also
appointed the abbots of many of the monasteries. The
Venetians would not permit an exarch of the patriarch to
live in the Morea or any patriarchal missive to be published
by the clergy, and they invited the Greek communes to
elect their own bishops. This can hardly be regarded as
ecclesiastical tyranny ; it was a political necessity, and,
considering the odious position of the patriarch, a necessity
not unwelcome to patriotic Greeks. The Eoman Catholic
priests, who of course were now free to enter the Morea,
were men of higher character, better education, and more

328 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
disinterested conduct, than the local Greek clergy, and as
such they won respect from the inhabitants. Altogether
the Venetian occupation was followed by an improvement
in the condition of the conquered province.
Gradually Morosini pushed his forces farther north
and took more of the Grecian territory from the Turks.
In September 1687 he entered the Piraeas, occupied
Athens, and besieged the Acropolis. This led to disastrous
consequences involving an irreparable loss to the civilised
world. The Parthenon was then standing in all the glory
of perfect Greek art, the grandest product of Doric archi
tecture, bearing in its pediment and on its entablature the
masterpieces of Pheidias, the most sublime sculpture the
world has ever seen. Into this centre of classic splendour
crashed the Venetian shells, reducing the temple to ruins,
pounding some of the sculpture to fragments, and leaving
the best of it in the battered and broken condition in which
we see it to-day at the British Museum, where, in spite
of the ill-usage from which it has suffered, it is still recog
nised as one of the wonders of the world under the title
of " The Elgin Marbles." 1 It is humiliating to Europe to
see that the ruin of the greatest relic of art in the city,
that had been the crown and flower of ancient civilisation,
was directly caused by men from the most beautiful city
of modern civilisation, that it was the owners of St.
Mark's who shattered the Parthenon. Here we perceive
the mockery of war, which flaunts flags of glory and yet
is in itself a shameful heritage of brutal barbarism.
The next hundred and fifty years afford little of in
terest to be recorded concerning the fortunes — or rather
the misfortunes — of the Greek Church under the Turkish
domination. Pirates still ravaged the coasts, and pashas and
Phanariots continued to oppress the inland people who were
beyond the reach of the wild sea-rovers. Simony was more
rampant than ever. The clerical office was systematically
bought for the sake of the power it conferred and the dues it
1 So named because sent to England by Lord Elgin (after suffering later
ravages of war), and thus at last saved from total destruction.

LATER GREEK CHURCH UNDER THE TURKS 329
commanded, and this evil continued in the Venetian territory
of Greece also. But in the Morea under the influence of the
Catholic priests education now made some progress. Thus
Venice was sowing the seeds of a better future. Eussia
also, under the influence of Peter the Great, was stepping
into the arena of European politics and preparing for her r61e
as the protectress of the Oriental Churches. But the tsar
was disappointed in not being joined by a general rising of
the Christians when in the year 1711 he advanced to an
attack of the Ottoman Empire, and he was compelled to
agree to peace on humiliating terms. Thus Eussia's first
serious act of interference only resulted in mischief. The
Porte, having discovered its power, proceeded to use it by
expelling the Venetians from Greece. In 1715 the Turks
seized and pillaged Corinth, making slaves of the Greeks
they captured there. This led the terror-stricken Greeks of
the Morea to prostrate themselves before their old enemies,
and to invite them to come and drive out the Venetians.
They must have seen good reason to repent of their short
sighted cowardice when they were suffering from the ravages
produced by the janissaries in the process of reconquest.
The reversion of Morea and other Venetian acquisitions to
Turkey was confirmed by the treaty of Passarovitz, which
followed the victories of Prince Eugene, and was signed
on the 21st of July 1718. But Venice still retained
possessions in Dalmatia and other parts.
After this, by degrees, Eussia again assumed the proud
position of champion of Eastern Christianity. In 1783
Catherine n. expelled the Mussulman power from the
Crimea, where it had held its ground with more or less
tenacity from the time of the Mongol invasion ; and about
the same time she extracted a treaty from the Porte grant
ing the Greeks of the Archipelago the right to use the
Eussian flag.
Meanwhile the Greeks had been doing nothing for
themselves. But a new day was now dawning. After
more than three centuries of humiliation and oppression,
once again Hellas was beginning to realise her national

330 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
existence. It has often been shown in history that
revolutions do not occur when the people who revolt are
suffering most severely from oppression. In those dark
and dismal days the power of tyranny is too great to allow
of any hope of successful resistance, and the misery of its
victims simply benumbs their minds and paralyses their
energies. It is with the beginning of better times that
the fatal spell of despotism is broken, and daring projects
of independence are engendered. Then the slumbering
emotions of patriotism awake from their unnatural lethargy
and the tyrant's slaves remember that they are men. Thus
it was in Greece at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Already it seemed as though the Ottoman rule was on its
decline, its vigour decaying, its power for mischief shrink
ing. There were isles of Greece that had become virtually
self-governing. Even the mainland was certainly not worse
treated than previously ; its crudest oppressors were not
the self-indulgent Turks, but those disgraceful Greeks,
nominally fellow-Christians — -the Phanariots. Another in
fluence made the goad of tyranny felt more acutely, although
it was not being applied more vigorously. This was the
stirring of the Greek spirit itself. Findlay points out
that it began with education. Greece had been singularly
behind the rest of Europe, not so much in the degree of
education, as in its nature. The modern spirit, with its
revival of classical antiquity, which rose in the West with
the Eenaissance, was not known in Eastern Europe. The
East had neither Eenaissance nor Eeformation — those two
mighty factors of the world as we know it. The vast signi
ficance of that double negation can scarcely be over-rated.
Greece was still back in the Middle Ages, or rather in
the late, the decadent patristic period. Her intellectual
development had been arrested with the death of John of
Damascus, the last of the Fathers. Since then her educa
tion had not been neglected ; for centuries it was far in
advance of that of the rude and brutal West, and it was
always maintained in some quarters with pedantic assiduity.
But it was patristic education, ecclesiastical education,

LATER GREEK CHURCH UNDER THE TURKS 331
education in the dead theology of an effete Church. All life
and soul, all adventure of speculation, all passion of poetry,
had long since withered out of it. And while it harked
back on the past it did not go far enough in that direction
to find inspiration. It cared nothing for the glories of
ancient Hellas. It prided itself in Chrysostom, not in
Plato. Its boast was the orthodoxy of its Church, not the
art, poetry, and heroism of its ancestry. It did not look
back beyond Constantinople; it never found in Athens a
name to conjure with.
Then a new spirit awoke. The Greeks were roused to
remember that they were the descendants and heirs of the
most magnificent classical antiquity. The educational
reform was commenced by Eugenios Bulgares of Corfu,
who introduced it to Joannina, Mount Athos, and Con
stantinople. This alarmed the conservative ecclesiastics
and annoyed the time-serving Phanariots, whose influence
with the sultan put a check to it. But it was wel
comed in Eussia, whither Eugenios was invited in the
year 1775, and where he was made bishop of Sclavonia
and Kherson. He wrote a book on religious toleration
which still more irritated the dignitaries of his Church,
and called forth a reply by Anthimus the patriarch of
Jerusalem. This miserable sycophant congratulated the
Greeks on having escaped the artifices of the devil to
which Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists had all suc
cumbed, and gave his version of the rise of the Ottoman
Empire as a mark of the particular favour of heaven to
protect them against the Western heresy with which the
last of the Byzantine emperors were infected. Eugenios
was followed by Adamantius Korais, a native of Chios,
who settled in Paris, and put modern Greek into a literary
form. At the same time, he urged the principles of
religious liberty and endeavoured to rouse his people from
the intellectual torpor of orthodox bigotry. Under these
influences the Greeks began to realise their nationality and
to dream dreams of the revival of their great past.
Nevertheless, the early chapters of the story of the

332 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
struggle for Greek independence are grievously disappoint
ing. The first leaders of the revolutionary committee
which was working for this end, known as the Philiki
Hetairia, were self-seeking men who deservedly lost the
confidence of their followers. The movement did not
make much headway till it was taken up by the peasants,1
and then it was conducted in some places with savage
ferocity. On the 5th of April, 1 8 2 1 , a thanksgiving service,
at which twenty-four priests officiated while 5,000 fighting
men gathered round, was held at Kalmata, in the open air,
by the side of a rushing torrent, to celebrate the success of
the Greeks in Messenia. Two days after this, Petrobey, the
commander of the insurgent army, issued a proclamation
in conjunction with a few primates — local Greek officials,
corresponding to the Constantinople Phanariots — whom he
designated the " Senate of Messenia." It was addressed
to all the Christian nations, and its object was to seek
their assistance in throwing off the Ottoman yoke. But
the Greeks had to fight for their liberties. Dreadful
scenes accompanied the popular risings which now ensued.
Perhaps the worst case was that of the Morea, where the
Greeks murdered the whole Mussulman population, amount
ing to ten or fifteen thousand peaceable men, women, and
children, scattered over the peninsular, and quite helpless
because overpowered by numbers. They first killed all
they could lay hold of in the country parts. Some escaped
to the towns. But one after another the towns were
taken, and all the Turks who had sought refuge in them
were also massacred. This was not a mere savage out
burst ; it was planned and instigated by the Hetairists. And
it succeeded. The Morea was freed from the Turkish
tyranny. The grim fact cannot be denied. The most
damning evidence of the evil of despotism is seen in its
destruction of natural human sympathies among the slaves
it debases by its cruelty.
The savage method of seizing the prize of liberty had
to be paid for at a heavy price. The sultan had already
1 See Findlay, Greek Revolution, vol. i. p. 195.

LATER GREEK CHURCH UNDER THE TURKS 333
begun to take severe measures for the suppression of the
insurrection. When the news of the massacre in the
Morea reached him he executed sixteen of the Hetairists
in one day. Then he had a number of Greeks of the
highest rank seized as hostages, under the circumstances
a sensible policy ; several were beheaded. On the 22nd
of April the despot's vengeance reached its climax in
the execution of Gregorios, the patriarch of Constanti
nople, now an old man, much respected by his flock,
who was hung from the lintel of the gate of the patri
archate with his sentence fixed to his breast. His body was
exposed for three days and then given to the mob to be
dragged through the streets and flung into the sea. Ee-
covered by the Christians, it was conveyed in an Ionian
vessel to Odessa, where it was received as a holy relic by
the Eussians and buried with great pomp. The accusation
against Gregorios was complicity in the insurrection. It
would seem that he had not taken any active part in it,
but that, on the other hand, he had possessed some know
ledge of what was going on which he had not reported to
the government. Constructively, this was treason against
the Ottoman power to which he owed his appointment, so
that the sultan was justified in executing him ; and yet
to have betrayed his fellow-Christians would have been
treason to his race and his religion. It was a terrible dilemma
for a good man to be in. Few can blame him for the
course he chose, which was that of silence. But this was
one more evidence of the monstrous anomaly of the position
he held as the chief pastor of the Eastern Church and at
the same time an official of the Mohammedan government.
Gregorios was a man of high character, and the calm and
dignified way in which he died helps us to sympathise with
the view of the Greeks who honour him as a martyr.
The violent death of so venerable a personage as the
old patriarch of Constantinople sent a shock of horror
through Europe. The Tsar Alexander withdrew his repre
sentative from the city. This was not merely a diplomatic
move, since it appears that the Eussian ambassador was in

334 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
personal danger. Finally, the tsar proceeded to concentrate
an army of 100,000 men on the borders of the princi
palities. Meanwhile the conflagration of insurrection was spread
ing. When the monks of Mount Athos discovered that
Eussia was not going to support it they were reluctant to
give it their sanction. Their predecessors had been wise
in coming to terms with Mohammed II., the conqueror of
Constantinople. Although for a time they favoured the
Hetairists, ultimately they too came to terms, believing
that the privileges of the Holy Mountain would be better
protected by the Turks than by the Greek revolutionists.
The situation was very complicated ; because in its origin
the i-evolution was mixed up with demands for religious
liberty. The orthodox Church, under the patriarch of
Constantinople and the bishops who were responsible to
the Porte, was in a way an appanage of the Ottoman
government. Besides, it was hide-bound in conservative
officialism. On the other hand, men who had tasted the
sweets of liberty thirsted for it in Church as well as in
State. But no Greek Churchmen were more conservative
than the monks of Mount Athos. While as Christians
they were opposed to the Mussulmans, and would naturally
have sided with their fellow-Christians in endeavouring
to free the Church from the yoke of Islam, they had
the greatest antipathy to the spirit represented by the
French Eevolution, the infection of which had been caught
by the Greek insurgents. A modern free - thinking re
volutionist was more alarming to them than a stolid, old-
fashioned Turk. So they finally decided that on the
whole it would be best for them to go on as they were
These monks have always enjoyed large privileges of self-
government, but little molested by the Turkish government.
Their peculiar situation on their isolated isthmus has
enabled them to live to themselves without interference
from the great world beyond. But the judgment of the
monks of Mount Athos was not without confirmation in
other quarters. The primates and bishops discovered that

LATER GREEK CHURCH UNDER THE TURKS 335
the military leaders were not at all inclined to hand the
powers of government over to them, so that they actually
possessed less power under their fellow-Greeks than they
had exercised under the Turks. . The spirit of revolution is
never sympathetic with officialism, whether lay or cleric.
It does not fall within the limits of this chapter to
sketch the course of the final establishment of Greek
independence. H there is much that is disappointing in
the issue, let it be remembered that history cannot repeat
itself. The modern Greeks could assume the names of
Pericles and Demosthenes ; they could not conjure into
life again the genius and glory of ancient Hellas.
Greece was now inhabited by a mixed population. Very
early, shoals of Sclavs had poured over the Balkans into
the south ; subsequently Albanians had come in great
numbers ; in some places the actual Greeks were quite out
numbered by the alien immigrants. The resultant popula
tion is only Hellenic in geography, language, and religion,
not at all in purity of race. The Greeks of to-day are not
the Greeks of Solon, and Pericles, and Plato. They are a
mixed race ; which, however, is bravely striving to revive
the ancient Hellenic traditions. We may well congratulate
them on the liberties they have won and the progress they
are still making, without burdening them with the absurd
expectation that they will emulate in the twentieth
century ad. the deeds of their predecessors of the fourth
century B.c.
After Greece had established her freedom, the con
nection of the Church in Greece with the patriarch of
Constantinople was difficult to define. At first all mutual
relations were broken off. This was inevitable, since the
patriarch was an accredited official under the Ottoman
government. The clergy ceased to mention the patriarch's
name in their prayers, and in this respect followed the
example of the prayers used in those parts of the Greek
Church which were outside his recognised rule. The
independence of the Church in Greece was not effected
without opposition. Bishops from provinces of the Turkish

336 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Empire, encouraged by the monks of Mount Athos, came
into Greece in order to support the patriarch's claim of
authority ; but the Greek bishops would not yield to their
persuasions. In the year 1833 a national synod decreed that the
orthodox apostolic Church of Greece, while it preserves
the dogmatic unity of the Eastern orthodox Churches, is
dependent on no external authority and spiritually owns
no head but the Founder of the Christian faith. In
external government, which belongs to the crown, it
acknowledges the King of Greece as its supreme head.
The Holy Synod consists of prelates appointed by the king,
and a royal delegate attends its meetings and counter
signs its decrees, having a veto on its proceedings. Since
the patriarch ignored this decision two parties now arose,
one supporting it, the other siding with Constantinople.
At length, after much negotiation, in the year 1850 the
patriarch and synod of Constantinople published a decretal
of the Oriental Church recognising the independence of
the Greek Church under certain restrictions, the terms of
which were adopted two years later by the Greek Parlia
ment. According to this decision, the rights of the Greek
synod in home affairs are recognised, but the patriarch can
interpose in matters that affect the whole Church. In the
year 1863, Prince George, a Lutheran, having become
King of Greece, it was enacted that " The orthodox Church
of Greece, acknowledging for its Head the Lord Jesus
Christ, is indissolubly united in doctrine with the Greek
Church of Constantinople and with every other Church
holding the same doctrines."
The patriarch of Constantinople is the spiritual head
of the whole orthodox Church, and the secular head of
the Greek Church in the Turkish dominions.1 ' He has
jurisdiction over the whole of European Turkey, part of
Bulgaria, Eumelia, Asia Minor, the JEgean Islands, and
Crete. During the years 1843 to 1845 there was a great
1 See Silbernagl, Verfassung und gegenwarliger Bestand sdmtlicher
Kirchen des Orients, p. 9.

LATER GREEK CHURCH UNDER THE TURKS 337
contest between the patriarch of Constantinople and the
synods of the patriarchates of Jerusalem and Syria on the
right to choose their patriarchs without reference to Con
stantinople, and the latter gained their point.1 But the
orthodox patriarch of Alexandria is still subject to the
patriarch of Constantinople. He, however, is a merely
titular official with but a shadow of a diocese, since the
Copts of the national Church in Egypt are Monophysites,
separated from the Greek Church. There are about 37,000
orthodox Greek Christians in Egypt, 28,000 under the
patriarch of Antioch, 15,000 subject to the patriarch of
Jerusalem.2 Melancholy as the story of the Greek Church during
the later centuries of its history may be, it is cheering to
observe signs of awakening life during quite recent years.
These are to be traced in two directions.
In the first place there is a remarkable development
of scholarship among the higher ecclesiastics. Learning
was never allowed to die out in the leading monastic
centres ; but hitherto this has been patristic learning
without the least recognition of critical scholarship. Now
the criticism of the West is breaking into the mind of the
East. Students from the Greek Church are now to be
found in German universities. The result is that the
studies of Berlin, and Heidelburg, and Strasburg are being
transplanted to Constantinople and Athens. Already these
studies have borne fruit, and the Greek Church is coming
forward with its contributions to historical theology.
The other movement is of a more popular character.
It consists of the formation of societies for Biblical study.8
These societies are quite unecclesiastical in form and are
chiefly maintained by laymen. At first they were frowned
upon by the clergy. But their good effects in reformation of
character are winning them recognition as truly Christian
brotherhoods, that men who have the spiritual and moral
1See Silbernagl, Verfassung und gegenwartiger Bestand samtlicher
Kirchen des Orients, p. 24.
3 Ibid. p. 26. ' Called <rb~KKoyoi, or verems.
22

338 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
welfare of the people at heart should welcome gladly.
Unlike similar movements in Eussia, which are almost
confined to dissenters in formal separation from the
national Church, these societies do not involve any such
severance. We may compare them to the Bible readings
of evangelical members of the Church of England, such
as those that are fed by the fervour of Keswick. But they
are more closely organised, and cannot but be recognised
as indicating some return to the primitive idea of the
Church. The movement is spreading rapidly. At Constantinople
there are more than ten of these brotherhoods. In Smyrna
quite a new religious life is blossoming out among the
associations. They have appeared at Ephesus, at Heleopolis,
at Arreon. In some places the brotherhood has led to
two preachings on the Sunday, one early in the morning
actually in the church, the other in the club-house ( Verein-
hause) later in the day ; for this second preaching, however,
sometimes there is substituted a catechising of men, women,
and children. In Athens there are two brotherhoods.
One has been formed at Patros in Cyprus. Meanwhile
the need of schools for the clergy is being pressed, and
already there is preaching by the parish popes in some
places and no longer only by visiting priests and bishops.
As early as the year 1818 a Greek society for the
circulation of the Scriptures was formed with the approval
of the patriarch Cyril VI., and in conjunction with the
British and Foreign Bible Society. Nevertheless, the excite
ment which arose in the year 1901 on the translation of
the Bible into the vernacular would appear to indicate
a reactionary movement on the part of the obscurantists.
But the case is very complicated. In the first place there
is a strong clerical aversion to a translation promoted by
laymen without any ecclesiastical sanction. Then the new
passion for classicism is irritated by a seeming degradation
of Scripture. It is said that no Greek vulgate is needed,
as the children are now taught to read classical Greek
in the schools. Behind all this there is the inveterate

LATER GREEK CHURCH UNDER THE TURKS 339
horror of innovations in the Greek Church, together with
the superstition of the ignorant population in clinging to
the old venerated form of the Bible.
Whether the brotherhoods will be able to remain in
connection with the ancient Greek Church, whether they
are the little leaven that is to leaven the whole lump — a
consummation to be devoutly desired, or whether the
garment of antiquity, stiffened with its threefold em
broidery — doctrinal, ceremonial, disciplinary, will prove
too inflexible to allow it breath and life, the future will
declare. In the latter case we may see a Greek Pro
testantism breaking away from the old orthodox Church.
But if that result can be avoided without stifling the new
movement, we may hope that the old dream of More and
Erasmus in the West may come true in our own day in
the East, and an ancient Church be revived and reformed
from within. With the sad history of that Church before
us it is difficult to be sanguine of such a result. We cry
with the sceptical prophet, " Can these dry bones live ? "
But at all events the new movement deserves warm
encouragement from earnest Christian people, that the
light thus kindled may not be quenched and the great
Church of the East sink down again into dim torpor.

CHAPTER III
THE OUTLYING BRANCHES OF THE GREEK
CHURCH
Hackett, History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, 1901 ; Malan,
History of the Georgian Church, 1866 ; Jirecek, Geschichte der
Bulgaren, 1876, and Das Fiirstenthum Bulgarien, 1891 ; Miller,
The Balkans, 1898 ; La Macedoine, 1900 ; von Mach, The Bul
garian Exarchate, 1907 ; Mijatovich, History of Modern Servia,
1872 ; Comte A. de Gubernatis, La Servie et les Serbes, 1898 ;
Silbernagl, Verfassung und gegenwWrtiger Bestand sdmtlicher
Kirchen des Orients, 1904.
The independence of the Church in Greece is not without
precedents. One of the most interesting is afforded by the
Church of Cyprus, the history of which is exhaustively
described in Mr. Hackett's learned work.1 That Church,
which was founded by Paul and Barnabas, claimed to be in
dependent of patriarchal interference on the ground of its
apostolical origin and its ancient usage. Nevertheless, the
patriarch of Antioch endeavoured to bring it into subjection
to his authority ; and therefore it sent an appeal to the
council of Ephesus on the question (a.d. 430), which
resulted in a decision in favour of the independence of
Cyprus. It was decreed that, " if it be not in accordance
with ancient custom for the bishop of Antioch to hold
consecrations in Cyprus, as the most religious men who are
in attendance at this holy council have assured us in their
memorials and orally, the presidents of the holy churches
which are in Cyprus shall enjoy, freed from molestation
and hindrance, the right of performing for themselves the
1 A History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus.
340

OUTLYING BRANCHES OF THE GREEK CHURCH 341
consecrations of the most holy bishops according to the
canons of the holy Fathers and ancient custom" (Canon
viii.). The caution of the council in making this decision
conditional is very remarkable. But no patriarch of
Antioch in later times was able to produce evidence
rebutting the statement of the Cypriolites concerning
the "ancient custom."
In the reign of Zeno (ad. 474-491), Peter the Fuller,
then patriarch of Antioch, revived the claim to authority
over Cyprus, and the emperor favoured his cause, till
the alleged appearance of St. Barnabas in a vision,
leading to the discovery of his bones in a chest under a
carob tree, silenced all opposition. Nevertheless, a certain
connection with Antioch was preserved, Cyprus receiving
the holy chrism from the patriarch of that city, but of
necessity in those later times when only patriarchs could
consecrate it. Therefore they were misled who took this
fact as a sign of general subjection. Subsequently Cyprus
became famous as the see of the Church writer Epiphanius.
In the year 647 the island was conquered by the Arabs,
the chief city Constantia destroyed, the metropolitan church
profaned, and many of the citizens massacred. So cruel
was the Mussulman oppression that a great number of the
inhabitants, led by their archbishop John, left Cyprus and
settled in the province of the Hellespont at the invitation
of the emperor, Justinian ii. There they preserved their
ecclesiastical independence, as an orthodox Church, now
within the confines of the patriarchate of Constantinople,
but no more under its jurisdiction than they had been
previously under that of Antioch. The migration of these
"pilgrim fathers" was not a success. They were not
destined to anticipate the story of the Mayflower and
the founders of New England. Many perished on the
journey. The remnant who landed did not stay long;
they soon returned to Cyprus, where they lived on as
best they could under the Mohammedan rule, but still
as a distinctly organised Church.
Under Constantine Copronymus Cyprus was temporarily

342 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
freed from the grasp of Islam (a.d. 743). But it was
recaptured early in the ninth century by the famous Harun-
al-Eashid. Yet even subsequent to this misfortune it
enjoyed a measure of liberty, so that it was used as an
asylum by fugitives from Moslem oppression in Palestine
and Syria. After undergoing various vicissitudes of fortune
Cyprus was finally wrested from the Arabs by the emperor,
Nicephorus Phocas (a.d. 963—969). It now remained
under the Byzantine rule till it was taken possession of
by the English king, Eichard 1., and then used for some
time as a strategical centre from which the Crusaders could
invade Syria. Eichard sold the island to the Templars,
who in turn gave place to the Knights of St. John.
After the scandalous capture of Constantinople by the
Franks, like the rest of the Greek Church, Cyprus was
annoyed by the impertinent pretensions of Western prelates.
At a meeting of the Latin clergy now domiciled in Cyprus,
it was decreed among other things that no Greek should
be ordained as a priest or admitted into a monastery
without the consent of his feudal superior, who of course
was a Latin. The orthodox clergy were required to swear
fealty to the Latins. They appealed against this exaction
to the Greek patriarch of Constantinople — now residing
at Nicsea — and he forbade them to yield. The result
was much distress and confusion for the Greeks in Cyprus,
which led them at last to petition for definite union with
the patriarchate of Constantinople, a proposal to which
many difficulties were raised owing to the alleged con
tamination of their Church with Western usages (a.d.
1405-1412). The monk Bryennios, who had been
commissioned to enquire into the situation, argued strongly
against the union, declaring that for his own part he would
rather suffer a thousand deaths than see the orthodox
Church united to the Cypriolite. Thus this unhappy
Church, which in the old days, had fought for her inde
pendence of Antioch, was now forced to remain apart
when she sought union with Constantinople. The Venetian
occupation made no difference to the strained ecclesiastical

OUTLYING BRANCHES OF THE GREEK CHURCH 343
situation. Cyprus was still submitting against her will to
papal intrusion on the one hand, and yet repudiated on
the other hand by the Eastern Church because of that
intrusion. In the year 1570 the island was captured by the Turks,
an event which was not altogether evil, since it put an end
to the tyranny that the Eoman Catholic Church had exer
cised over the Greek Christians for four centuries. At first
the Ottoman rule was mild ; the Cypriolites were allowed
the free use of their churches, the right to ransom their
monasteries, permission to acquire property, and the
supremacy of the orthodox over all other Christian bodies
in the island. No indulgence was shown to the Latins.
The Greek bishops were constituted guardians of the
Christian community, and in process of time the influence
of the archbishop overshadowed that of the Turkish
governor. But he had continual trouble with Turkish
rapacity and misgovernment. We cannot follow out the
weary story. The last scene of cruelty is the worst. It
occurred early in the nineteenth century. Archbishop
Cyprianos had exerted himself in promoting education and
improving the condition of his flock. When the Greek war
of independence broke out, Cyprianos and his clergy were
accused to the Porte of complicity in the rebellion. On
the 9th of July in the year 1821 the archbishop and
three metropolitans were saddled like horses in front of
the governor's palace ; bits were roughly forced into their
mouths, breaking their teeth ; they were driven along
with spurs, and finally hanged on trees. Nearly all the
Christians of eminence were also massacred. One account
gives 470 as the number of the victims. At length deliver
ance came. In the year 1872 Cyprus passed into the hands
of the British government. Since then the Greek Church
in the island has been entirely free. There is an English
missionary church ; but of course this has no official status,
and unlike the old Latin Church it has neither power nor
desire to interfere with the ancient orthodox Church of
Cyprus.

344 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
The Church of Georgia is another branch of the
Greek Church, which long enjoyed a virtually inde
pendent organisation. The Georgians appear to be the
most ancient race inhabiting the Caucasus, having no
affinity either with the Aryan or with the Turanian
families. They are famous for having preserved a line
of kings for two thousand years, reigning sometimes inde
pendently and at other times under the suzerainty of
Persia, of the Eastern Empire, and of Turkey. A similar
individuality is to be seen in their Church, although it has
always been considered as part of the great orthodox
Church, of the East. Claiming a fabulous origin under
the patronage of the Virgin Mary and through the preaching
of St. Andrew, it has been traced back to the third century,
under the influence of a woman named Nonna, or Nina, a
poor captive who is said to have converted the king,
Miriam (ad. 265 — 318). In the next century, under,
Constantine, Greek missionaries effectually Christianised
the little isolated mountain kingdom ; and from that time
to this it has preserved its fidelity to the faith in spite of
harsh persecution, first from the Persians, then from the
Mohammedans.1 Miriam's son and successor, Bakar, is said
to have been a zealous Christian who caused the gospel to
be preached among his people, and had churches built in
various places over the land. One of the most famous,
the cathedral of Khoni, is ascribed to the next king —
Muridat in. The Georgians — or Iberians as they were
also called, had bishops consecrated at Constantinople,
and were reckoned in the patriarchate of Antioch. But
their remoteness and national and racial distinctness led
to their Church history running its own course, apart
from that of the main body of the orthodox community.
At the end of the fourth century, Bishop Abda having
set fire to a Persian temple and refusing to rebuild it, the
The claim put forth for St. George as a missionary and patron saint
of Georgia is due to ignorance of the origin of the kingdom's name and
wholly without foundation. "Georgia" is derived from the Persian Gurj.
So we have Gurjistan = Gurgland = Georgia.

OUTLYING BRANCHES OF THE GREEK CHURCH 345
coimtry was invaded by the Persians. Near about the
same time it was ravaged by the Eoman forces and as
a result its church broken off from connection with the
Greeks. Muridat iv. came under the glamour of Julian's
strange rehgion, which had so little fascination for that
emperor's own subjects; but his son, Archil (413-446),
carried on an active campaign against heathenism and
heresy. The New Testament appears to have been trans
lated into Georgian during the fifth and sixth centuries.1
About the same time Archbishop Mobidakh, a Persian by
birth, introduced Arianism into Georgia and endeavoured
to force it on the Church. He was deposed by a synod
under the influence of Bishop Michael and the queen,
Sandukhta, an earnest Christian woman who had built a
church at Mtykhetha in honour of the proto-martyr, St.
Stephen. Subsequently Zoroastrianism made some progress
in Georgia; on the other hand, the conversion of one of
the Magi named Eajden to the Christian faith, and his
martyrdom among his own people by being nailed to a
cross and there torn to pieces, had a counter influence.
The Church of Georgia was now organised under its chief
bishop, who bore the title of Catholicos of Mtykhetha
and of Iberia. He does not appear to have been re
sponsible to any of the four patriarchs after the year 556,
when P'harsman m. separated the country from the Byzan
tine authority. During the reign of the same king a
great impulse was given to Christianity in Georgia by the
arrival of thirteen preachers from Syria. An air of
mystery surrounds them. They are said to have reached
Mtykhetha by crossing a river dry shod. Their advent
and influence suggests the coming of the friars to England.
The real miracle was the spiritual awakening that accom
panied their mission. Their reputed burial - places are
marked by churches still standing.
The story of the Georgian Church is a record of
repeated persecutions. After the successive Persian per
secutions under the Magi came the Mohammedan flood of
1 See Scrivener, Introduction, 4th edit. vol. ii. pp. 156-158.

346 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
conquest and its consequent sufferings for the Christians.
In the ninth century the district of Ap'hkhazia, which stood
politically separate from Georgia under its own king, also
had its own catholicos, so that the Georgian Church now
consisted of two mutually independent provinces. In the
same century an Iberian convent was founded at Mount
Athos It still exists and is now the third in impor
tance among the monasteries of the Holy Mountain.
David m., known as " the Eeformer," coming to the throne
in the year 1089, called together a synod which purged
the Church of the Monophysite and other heresies. He
showed himself a strong ruler both as regards Church and
State. Now came the most flourishing days of Georgia —
during the eleventh and twelfth centuries — when Georgians
of some eminence in science and literature did their work.
Among them were Arsenius, theologian, physician, meta
physician, and poet, called from the caves of Shiomgiusk
to be court chaplain ; Ephrem, his schoolfellow ; George,
the founder of the school at Tiphlis and translator of
Scripture ; Theophilus, the " creator of hymnology " in
Georgia ; John Taitcha, whose writings are said to be pre
served at Mount Athos ; and Demetrius the Solitary of
Garedj. The reign of Queen Tamar in the second half
of the twelfth century has been reckoned the golden age
of Georgian literature, both ecclesiastical and civil. Then
followed a time of overwhelming calamities during the de
vastating invasion of the Mongols under Genghis Khan, when
Christians of all classes and ages were burnt alive in the
churches, and pyramids of human heads marked the pro
gress of his soldiers. Mtykhetha was reduced to a heap
of ruins, its cathedral, said to have been a most beautiful
building, sharing in the general destruction, and all the
inhabitants remaining in the city killed. The number of
deaths attributed to this pest of humanity in Georgia alone
was estimated at 300,000.
Genghis Khan left the bleeding country disorganised
and in hopeless confusion. She had scarcely begun to
recover before the Turks commenced their incursions.

ODTLYING BRANCHES OF THE GREEK CHURCH 347
Almost in despair, the queen,, Eusudana, appealed for help
to the pope, Gregory ix. (a.d. 1239). She received in
response a mission of seven monks sent to convert her
country to the papacy! In the year 1400 came Timour,
with his sweeping deluge of ruin. Throughout all these
troubles Georgia remained true to the faith and added
continually to her glory of martyrdom. Alexander I.
(ad. 1414-1442) rebuilt the cathedral of Mtykhetha,
a structure which is in existence to-day. A little later
serious attempts were made by the papacy to bring
Georgia into the Eoman Church, but without any result.
The fall of Constantinople left the Georgians at the
mercy of the Mohammedans and without a friend. The
bishops were silenced, the schools closed, the people
harried by the Moslem Persians. At length this much
persecuted nation turned to Eussia for protection. In
the first instance that course did not bring much relief.
During the seventeenth century a succession of apostates
from the Church ruled Georgia as Mohammedans. But
in the year 1701, Wakhtang vi., a Christian, came to the
throne; he enacted a series of laws on Christian lines,
known as the " Code of King Wakhtang." Now followed
a period of temporary prosperity. But the next sovereign
was a Mohammedan, and after his reign Georgia suffered
again and again from alternate Persian and Turkish
tyrannies, in the midst of which troubles the Church
was seriously disturbed by a mission of Capuchin monks
and by other efforts to induce it to enter the Eoman
communion. For a time the current seemed to be setting
in that direction, no doubt in despair of deliverance from
intolerable oppression, except by help in the West. But
ultimately Oriental orthodoxy triumphed.
In the year 1783, Georgia came under the protection
of Eussia, and the Church of Georgia was then united to
the Eussian Church. In the year 1800 the country be
came an integral part of the Eussian Empire. Eleven years
later the office of catholicos was abolished and the
metropolitan then entitled "Member of the Synod and

348 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Exarch of Georgia." He is now known as "Exarch of
Karthalinia and Kakheth."
The Church of Montenegro may be mentioned as from
the first ' a virtually independent body in the orthodox
communion. This little mountain State has the unique
glory among its neighbours of never having been conquered
by the Turks. Formerly its Vladika, or prince bishop, if
not already ordained was required to obtain ordination
from the orthodox metropolitan of Carlowitz. In the
nineteenth century the ordination was transferred to the
metropolitan of Eussia. On the death of the Vladika
Peter n. (a.d. 1851) the offices of prince and bishop
were separated.
It remains for us to note those limbs of the Greek
Church which have been more recently severed from the
parent stock on national grounds, although retaining their
doctrinal orthodoxy.
One of the most important branches of the orthodox
Church now independent of the patriarchate of Con
stantinople and organised as a separate national church is
the Church of Bulgaria. Here a racial distinction lies
at the root of the severance from the Greek authority.
The Bulgarians are a Turanian race, akin to the Finns and
the Tartars, who first appeared on the banks of the Pruth
in the latter part of the seventh century. From the time
of the conversion of Boris in the ninth century they have
been a Christian people and part of the holy orthodox Church.
They have an ancient literature dating back to the age of the
founders and early organisers of their Church, Cyril and
Methodius, which consists for the most part of translations
of Greek theological works. Bulgaria became a centre of
the activity of the Bogomiles, and therefore a scene first of
religious revival and then of its too common sequel —
persecution. Conquered by the Turks in the fifteenth
century, Bulgaria long suffered from the withering blight
of the Ottoman tyranny in common with the other

OUTLYING BRANCHES OF THE GREEK CHURCH 349
Oriental Churches. She was even in a worse plight than
her neighbours. • The misgovernment of the Phanariots
and the despotism of the bishops who owed allegiance to
the patriarch of Constantinople as a minister of the sultan
were hard enough to be borne in Greece ; but there the
people had at least to deal with their fellow-countrymen.
In Bulgaria the oppression was in the hands of an alien
priesthood. The patriarch of Constantinople appointed
Greek bishops, and they in turn Greek parish popes. The
state of affairs may be compared to that of the Anglican
Church in Ireland and Wales until recent times. But it
was really ten times worse ; for this alien priesthood was
in the employ of the cruel, unjust, Mohammedan govern
ment of the Ottoman Empire. Thus the Bulgarians suffered
from a double grievance — the intrusion of foreign Church
leaders, and these men acting as servants of the Turkish
tyranny under which they groaned — a Greek ministry
serving the Turks.
At length patriotic or rather racial feelings began
to stir in the breasts of the long-enduring Bulgarians.
The revival sprang from a literary awakening, which was
first seen in the work of Paisii, a Bulgarian monk of
Mount Athos, who published a history of his people and
their saints.1 This was followed by the autobiography of
Bishop Sofronii,2 written in a modified Sclavonic dialect.
Bulgarian schools were now established. That provoked
the Greek clergy to establish schools of their own, and to
attempt the suppression of Sclavonic literature in favour
of the Greek. But the national movement spread. The
Bulgarians addressed an appeal for support to the pope,
and for a time some progress was made in connecting
their Church with the Uniats. But this never went far,
and it soon died out. The people's aspiration was for
an independent Bulgarian Church. There were repeated
attempts at insurrection ; but they all failed. It was the
Greek ecclesiastical tyranny, rather than the Turkish
1 Istoria Slaveno Bolgarska.
i Life and Sufferings of the Sinful Sofronii.

350 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
political despotism, against which the movement was
agitating. The sublime Porte was astute enough to take
advantage of this fact. It had no compunction in throw
ing over its own subservient slaves if by so doing it could
divide and weaken the Christian element in the empire.
On the 11th of March, 1870, the Turkish government issued
a firman granting the Bulgarians a right to possess their
own exarchate independent of the patriarch of Con
stantinople. He was to have jurisdiction over fifteen
dioceses, and others were to be added if two-thirds of the
population desired it. The patriarch strenuously opposed
this measure, and delayed the execution of it for two years.
In the year 1872 the first exarch was appointed; and the
patriarch immediately excommunicated him. On the 23rd
of April of that year the exarch, supported by three
bishops, all lying under the ban of the patriarch, celebrated
the communion in the Bulgarian church at the Phanar;
on the 11th of May the Bulgarian Church was declared
independent; and on the 16th of September the patriarch
of Constantinople formally cut off all followers of the
exarchate as schismatics.1
The issue proved that the Turks had miscalculated
their policy. The Christian cause was not weakened by
the ecclesiastical severance of Bulgaria ; on the contrary,
it proved to be strengthened thereby. Schools spread;
education advanced ; the revival of Christianity, so long
dormant and inoperative, but now quick and active, roused
a spirit of energy and independence. The Porte was
alarmed, and it showed its terror in the usual way by
indulging in massacre. Then came the infamous "Bul
garian Atrocities," in which 15,000 persons were killed
in the district of Philippopolis alone, while murders and
outrages on men, women, and children went on in many
other places. Mr. Gladstone roused the indignation of
England and compelled the English government to end its
shameful protection of Turkey. First Servia, next Eussia
invaded the Turkish Empire, the latter being completely
1 von Mack, The Bulgarian Exarchate, p. 18.

OUTLYING BRANCHES OF THE GREEK CHURCH 351
victorious after an arduous struggle. In the year 1878
the treaty of San Stephano granted independence to Bul
garia ; but under the infiuence of Lord Beaconsfield this was
modified in the treaty of Berlin, held a few months later,
when Bulgaria was divided into three parts, one of which
was handed back to Turkey with pledges of protection of
the Christians by the European powers — pledges which
have never been effectually fulfilled. The Bulgarian exarch
now resides at Constantinople.1
Macedonia is closely associated with Bulgaria. It
contains a mixed population of Greeks, Vlachs who repre
sent the aboriginal Thracians, Albanians — the old Illyrians,
Sclavs, Turks, and Bulgarians. Still included within the
Turkish Empire, the Macedonian Christians are subject to
the patriarch of Constantinople. But they were pro
foundly affected by the Bulgarian revival, which resulted
in the establishment of bishoprics under the exarch of
Bulgaria. Thus Macedonia shows a divided ecclesiastical
allegiance. In the year 1886 a priest named Margaritis
founded a gymnasium at Monastir on modern principles of
education. This was done with the approval of the Porte
and the sympathy of the French Eoman Catholic mission
aries, and with some signs of Austrian sympathy also. The
tendency of such a movement was directly contrary to
the obscurantism of the patriarch's policy. But it pro
voked an educational rivalry on the Greek side, and the
Greeks under the patriarch also commenced to establish

Servia, of which the original inhabitants were Thracians
or Illyrians, was known to the Eomans as Mcesia Superior,
and incorporated by them in the province of Illyricum. It
was won to Christianity under missionaries sent by the
Byzantine emperor, Basil n., and thus it became an integral
part of the orthodox Church. But in the year 1043
Stephen Bogislav drove out the imperial governors, and
seven years later his son Michael established the complete
independence of the country, with himself as king, secur-
1 Silbernagl, p. 89.

352 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
ing recognition of his sovereignty from the great pope,
Gregory vn. Hildebrand was always ready to seize on a
political opportunity of extending the influence of the
papacy on the borders of the Eastern Church. We have
here one illustration among many of the interaction of
State and Church in the mutual relations of the Eastern
and Western Churches. A people seeking independence
and out of sympathy with the government at Constan
tinople would turn to Eome for aid, and would meet with
a ready support, because the popes were on the watch for
opportunities to slip into a province of the Greek Church
as the protectors of some oppressed race. In this way the
bad government of the imperial authorities at Constantinople
led to the alienation of outlying branches of the patriarchate.
But Servia did not go over to the Latin Church. It now
became an independent branch of the Greek Church, hold
ing anomalous, undefined relations with the main body of
that Church, its essential union with which, as in other and
similar cases, was guaranteed by its orthodoxy. One
hundred years of struggle and two hundred years of power
and prosperity were followed by the ruin of Servia and the
death of her king, Lazar, at the battle of Kossovopolje in
the year 1389, when the country was made tributary to
the Turks. Its total subjugation was only a matter of
time, and this was completed in the year 1462 by the
victorious Mohammed n., when it became a Turkish vilayet
ruled by pashas. Servia was now not only groaning under
the tyrannical rule of the Ottoman government ; she was
long to be the battle-ground in the wars between Turkey
and Hungary. After Prince Eugene's victories a portion
of the country was made over to Austria by the treaty of
Passarowitz (a.d. 1718) ; but twenty-one years later it was
recovered by Turkey. At length, in the year 1804, Servia
attained its liberty in consequence of an insurrection
headed by the swineherd, Kara Gyorgye" (i.e. " Black
George "). The troubles which overwhelmed Europe during
the Napoleonic wars furnished the Turks with an oppor
tunity to recover some of their lost ground, and they again

OUTLYING BRANCHES OF THE GREEK CHURCH 353
took possession of Servia. This advance of Turkey west
ward was one of the dangers attending those wars that has
not been sufficiently appreciated. In Servia the work of
liberation had to be done over again. On Palm Sunday in
the year 1815 the Serbs rose and struck for liberty a
second time, their leader being Milosh Obrenovich. After
a contest of five years the sultan was compelled to grant
autonomy. Servia is now an independent kingdom. It
will be well understood that under these circumstances she
does not own any allegiance to the patriarch of Constan
tinople. In point of fact, the Greek Church in Servia is
entirely self-governing. It is organised under a synod of
bishops presided over by the archbishop of Belgrade, who
is the metropolitan of Servia ; and it is divided into five
dioceses. There are forty-eight monasteries of the Oriental
Church in the country.
The Greek Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina is still
further removed from the interference of Turkey or the
Constantinople authorities, since these provinces are now
under Austrian rule. About one-half of the population is
of the orthodox Church, the other half being equally
divided between Eoman Catholics and Mohammedans,
except that there are some Jews. The orthodox Church —
while at one with the Greeks in doctrine — is entirely
self-governing, under four metropolitans.
A survey of the situation thus produced affords a
striking illustration of the essential difference between the
Eastern and the Western Churches. No such detached,
independent churches as we see here belonging to the
orthodox communion would be possible under the papacy.1
Eome is most fearful of schism, Constantinople of heresy.
Eome will nave no dealings with a church that is not
obedient to the pope ; Constantinople will send its chrism
to a church that does not own allegiance to its patriarch,
so long as that church is strictly orthodox. Individual
1 Although the popes allow the Oriental Uniats to use their own
liturgies and to follow many peculiar local customs, this is all in submission
to the papacy. 23

354 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
patriarchs have excommunicated insubordinate bishops — as
in the case of the Bulgarian exarch. That is only natural ;
for even patriarchs are men. But the Church as a whole
admits the Christianity of all the orthodox in its several
brapches, and the transmission of the holy oil — a thing
impossible in the West — is a pleasing sign of this admis
sion. That is so in spite of many racial quarrels and
.partisan differences, which after all only lie on the surface
and do not break the bonds of the deep-seated union of the
holy orthodox Church.

DIVISION III
THE EUSSIAN CHUECH

CHAPTER I
THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY IN RUSSIA
(a) Nestor, and later Chroniclers ; French translations by
L. Leger, 1884.
(6) Mouravieff, Hist, of the Russian Church, English trans., 1842 ;
Ralston, Early Russian History, 1874 ; Morfill, Russia
("Story of the Nations"), 4th edit., 1890; Histories in
Russian Language : Karamzin, Ustrialov, Sergius Soloviev,
Bestryhev-Riumin, etc.
After the fall of Constantinople in the year 1453 the
centre of gravity of Oriental Christianity gradually moves
northwards. The process is slow, at first imperceptible,
occupying one or two centuries, and only to be recognised
as continuous and ultimate by after reflection. Never
theless it is now the chief outstanding fact in the history
of the Eastern Churches. The Sclav supersedes the Greek
as the dominant race in Eastern Christendom ; Moscow
takes the primacy so long held by Constantinople ; Eussia
becomes the most important part of the holy orthodox
Church and the protector of the Christians in the Ottoman
Empire. " The conversion of Eussia by the Greek Church," says
Mr. Hore, " is the mightiest conquest the Christian Church
has ever made since the time of the apostles." 1 When we
recollect what the conversion of the Teutonic races has
1 Eighteen Centuries of the Orthodox Greek Church, p. 7.
8*6

356 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
meant to Europe and America and the world generally, we
may hesitate to accept this unqualified assertion. But if
we confine our attention to the East, it is safe to admit it
as true within that area.
The vast area of Europe now known as Eussia is peopled
mainly by a Sclavonic race belonging to the Indo-Germanic,
or Aryan, stock, but with a considerable admixture of Fin
nish and Scandinavian elements from the north-west, and
Mongolians from the east. Most of the names that occur
in the early legendary history are of a Scandinavian type.
The very name Eussia, formerly traced to the Ehoxolani
who prove to be an Iranian people, is now generally
identified with the Finnish Euotsi, the name given by the
Finns to the Swedes, and is supposed to be a corruption of
part of a word meaning " rowers " 1 — representing seafaring
men, Vikings of the north, therefore people who had
drifted far from the scenes of their ancestry.
Eussia was late in coming into contact with civilisation.
The name " Scythian " was vaguely used by the Greeks
for the people north of the Euxine, but little was known of
them. The Eussian records begin with the chronicle attri
buted to Nestor, a monk born about A.D. 1056, who lived
at Kiev and died about A.D. 1 1 1 4, so that his time coincides
with the beginning of the Norman period in England and
the conquest of the Seljuk Turks in Armenia. He is
regarded as the Livy or Herodotus of Eussia, the father
of its history, the writer who collects the legends of
antiquity and brings the story down to the period of
authentic history; but more is attributed to this cele
brated monk than is now allowed to be his own work.
Still Nestor is the first of the chroniclers. Here, then, we
are more than a thousand years after the time of Christ
before we come upon any record of Eussian history.2
1 Rothsmenn or Rolhskarlar.
2 The earliest date that can be assigned to the first redaction of, the
so-called "Chronicle of Nestor" is a.d. 1000 ; but in its present form it
cannot be earlier than a.d. 1377, the date of the oldest MS., which was
written by a monk named Laurentius in Suzdalj. The questions of the

THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY IN RUSSIA 357
Nevertheless the Eussian Church claims an apostolic origin.
Did not Eusebius say that " Andrew received Scythia " ? 1
Out of this vague statement has grown the tradition that
the apostle founded the Church at Kiev, planting the cross
on the spot where the cathedral now stands. Nestor's
traditional history of Christianity in Eussia only carries
this back to the end of the ninth century, where we may
see the actual beginning of the Eussian Church.
According to tradition, the first Eussians to embrace
Christianity were two princes of Kiev, Oskold and Dir, who
invaded the Byzantine Empire in the year 866, and even
succeeded in bringing up their warships under the very
walls of Constantinople, when the patriarch Photius raised
a storm which wrecked the vessels, by plunging the virginal
robe of the mother of God into the sea, a miracle which
resulted in the conversion of the pirates.2 .The hymn of
victory which concludes the office for the first hour in the
daily matins of the Greek Church is said to celebrate this
triumph. It is addressed to the Virgin Mary as a victorious
general.3 The two converts are said to have carried the
Christian faith back with them to Eussia, and to have
spread it in their dominions. According to Constantine
Porphyrogenitus, who is followed by other Greek analysts,
a missionary bishop was sent to the Eussians by the emperor
Basil the Macedonian (a.d. 867-886) and the patriarch
Ignatius, and made many converts among them. Then
among the Sees subject to the patriarch of Constantinople
in Codinus's catalogue the metropolitan See of Eussia appears
as early as the year 891. Further, as in the case of the
Goths, Sclavs serving in the imperial army adopted the
origin, sources, and dates of Nestor's chronicle are critically discussed in
Die Entstehung Der Altesten Russischen Sogenannten Nestorchronik, by
Dr. Stjepan Sakulj, 1896.
1 Hist. Eccl. iii. 1. 2 Nestor, i.
8 The following are the words of this curious hymn, or rather anthem :
Tj bireppAxV o'rparijyip ra viKtjri^pia, lis \vrpw$ivres r&v Seivwv, eixapio'Ttjpi.a
Avaypiajo/iev ol Bov\ot aov Qcokokc, 'AXX' <!>s fyovaa rb Kpi/ros airpoa/idxtirov,
iK iravrotov tipHs KivSivuv i\ev8ip<aaov tva xp&l-biuiv aoi xaVe *&!>¦<(") avtifupevre,
Ad£a, Kal vvv.

358 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
religion of the empire. About the year 870, or a httle
earlier, two Greek brothers, Cyril and Methodius, carried
on successful missionary work among the Sclavonic tribes of
the Danube in and near Moravia, and translated the Bible,
or at least part of the New Testament, into the Sclavonic
language, for which, like Ulfilas with his Gothic version,
they had to construct an alphabet. This was subsequently
brought into Eussia, where it helped to further the spread
of Christianity.1 Thus it would seem that in various ways
Christianity was penetrating into Eussia during the ninth
century, although httle credence may be given to the
legends, with their accompanying marvels, which offer to
describe the process.
We come upon firmer ground when we reach the
traditions contained in the chronicle of Nestor concerning
the introduction of Christianity into Eussia by the Princess
Olga and her son Vladimir. Eurik, a Norseman who had
first settled at Novgorod, one of the oldest towns in Eussia,
followed the course of common migration among his people,
and travelled in a south-easterly direction till he reached
Kiev, where he established himself and founded the State
which subsequently expanded into the Eussian Empire.2
Dying in the year 879, Eurik entrusted his son Igor to a
chieftain named Oleg, who found him a wife in the person
of Olga. This Princess Olga was the real founder of
Eussian Christianity. After the death of her husband she
ruled his State during the minority of her son Sviatoslaff.
If we are to accept the story preserved by Nestor we must
see that Christianity was not then unknown at Kiev, because
it tells how the princess went to Constantinople for the
express purpose of learning about the true God ; there she
1 Since the fourteenth century this version has undergone many revisions,
apparently with the object of modernising it. The oldest MS. of the whole
Bible is dated a.d. 1499. There are many MSS. of the New Testament of
widely different recensions, some few as old as the eleventh, or even the
tenth, century, among which is an Evangelistarium dated 1056. See
Scrivener, Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, 4th edit.,
vol. ii. pp. 158-161.
a Nestor, ii

THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY IN RUSSIA 359
was baptised by the patriarch Polyeuctes, having the
emperor, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, for her godfather.
Olga became famous both for her wisdom and for her
saintliness. " She was the forerunner of Christianity in
Eussia," says Nestor, " as the morning star is the precursor
of the sun and the dawn the precursor of the day. As the
moon shines at midnight, she shone in the midst of a pagan
people. She was like a pearl amid dirt, for the people were
in the mire of their sins and not yet purified by baptism.
She purified herself in a holy bath, and removed the garb
of sin of the old man Adam." 1
Olga's fierce, warlike son Sviatoslaff never submitted
to the yoke of Christ; but he so far yielded to his
mother's influence as to allow the open profession of
Christianity among his people. In fact, very little per
secution attended the introduction of the gospel into
Eussia, which in this respect was a noble exception to the
usual experience among pagan nations. The chronicle only
mentions two Christian martyrs during this period of the
early evangelising of Eussia, Theodore and John, who were
put to death by the rage of the people because one of them
refused to give up his son as a sacrifice to Perun, the
Sclavonic god of thunder.
Sviatoslaff was killed in an ambush laid by the Pechenegs,
a Mongolian tribe who had invaded Eussia, and his skull
was made into a drinking-cup. Thus perished the last
pagan prince of the small territory out of which was
destined to grow the vast empire of Eussia. He had
foolishly divided his dominion between his three sons,
whose quarrels soon left only Vladimir, the third son, to
whom his father had bequeathed Novgorod. This prince
proved to be a strong man, who not only seized all the
territory that had been assigned to his brothers, but added
Galicia or " Eed Eussia." His name is of great importance
in Church history, because he proved to be the Constantine
of the Eussian Empire. He not only adopted Christianity
for himself, but he made it the State religion. Thus almost
1 Nestor, vi

360 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
from the beginning the Church in Eussia was a State
Church. The traditional story of the conversion of Vladimir
preserved by the chronicler 1 has the picturesque character
of an early legend. We must give the first place to the
influence of his grandmother, the capable and saintly Olga.
Although she had brought him up in the truth of Christ,
like Augustine, who had been privileged with the incompar
able training of his mother Monica, Vladimir drifted away
from the early influence when he attained to manhood and
the absorbing interests of ambition. Still, as we follow the
tradition, which has nothing improbable in this respect,
we learn that he was not satisfied with the religion of his
fathers. It represents how one after the other various
parties press their religion upon him. First come the
Mohammedans of Bulgaria, whose regulations he does not
choose to comply with ; next the Jews, boasting of the
ancient glory of Jerusalem. " But where is your country ? "
asks the prince. " It was ruined by the wrath of God for the
sins of our fathers," they answer. Vladimir will not accept
the religion of a people whom their God has abandoned.
Then come theologians from Germany with the Eoman
religion ; but this is rejected as different from the rehgion
of Constantinople in which Olga instructed her grandson.
A philosopher of the Greek faith, the monk Constantine,
has a better reception as he exposes the defects of other
religions and eloquently expounds the Christian faith, and
he is sent away loaded with presents. The story goes on
to describe the extraordinarily cautious methods further
employed by Vladimir in the choice of a religion. He
discusses the question with his council, which decides to send
commissioners, consisting of boyars — nobles of the highest
rank — to make their observations of each religion on the
spot. The authorities at Constantinople see their oppor
tunity. The patriarch celebrates the Divine liturgy in
St. Sophia with the utmost possible magnificence in the
presence of the awed and astonished visitors from Eussia.
1 Nestor, viii.

THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY IN RUSSIA 361
If this is a genuine tradition it describes a wonderful case
of open-minded truth-seeking, justly rewarded with success.
On their return to Kiev the commissioners presented the
report of the results of their investigations to Vladimir.
They were not attracted by the Mohammedan worship of
the Bulgarians, nor did they take to the Latin rites they
witnessed in Germany. But they brought back a glow
ing account of what they had witnessed in the great
cathedral at Constantinople, saying, " When we stood in the
temple we did not know where we were, for there is nothing
else like it upon earth : there in truth God has His dwelling
with men ; and we can never forget the beauty we saw
there. No one who has once tasted sweets will afterwards
take that which is bitter; nor can we now any longer
abide in heathenism." 2 This was before the sack of
Constantinople by the Frankish and Venetian brigands in
the so-called fourth Crusade. St. Sophia was still in its
pristine glory before the barbarians had stripped it of its
most magnificent decorations. These astonished ambas
sadors from the rude north found themselves in what
was probably the finest building in the world and certainly
the richest product of Byzantine art. Wherever they
turned their eyes they saw gold, silver, precious stones,
mosaic pictures, covering the whole surface of its walls
and its wonderful soaring domes, while the elaborate brocaded
vestments of the priests and the slow moving pomp of the
service harmonised with the scene of surpassing magni
ficence. They were completely conquered.
It would seem then that where argument had failed
ceremonial had succeeded, that what the monk had not been
able to effect by his verbal exposition of doctrine the
patriarch had triumphantly accomplished by the pomp and
ceremony of a sumptuous ritual. Perhaps it would be more
just to say that the emotional impression of the solemn
service at Constantinople confirmed the intellectual con
clusions which had preceded it at Kiev. Be that as it may,
the fact is not a little significant that a religion which
1Ibid.

362 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
consists so largely in ceremonies should have been intro
duced most effectively into the country of its most ex
tensive missionary triumphs under the influence of an
impressive ceremony. Happily an inducement of a higher
order is added as the final consideration which decided the
cautious prince to decide for Christianity. The commis
sioners appealed to the memory of his grandmother Olga,
saying, that if the religion of the Greeks had not been good
she would not have embraced it. Vladimir was convinced,
and simply asked, " Where shall we be baptised."
Another story, if it is more than a saga, does not show
us his conversion in so pleasing a light. It would appear
that Vladimir was besieging the Taurie town Cherson, then
subject to the Greek Empire, when a traitorous priest
within the walls sent him a note by means of an arrow,
informing him that the way to take the city was to cut off
its water supply in the aqueduct. The prince vowed that
if he succeeded in taking the town he would be baptised,
for was not his friend the priest a Christian ? He took the
town and kept his vow. Nevertheless, after his conversion
Vladimir remained a gross, cruel sensualist, wading through
blood to debauchery. He must have had great power at
this time, for he was able to force the Emperor Basil to send
him Anna, the emperor's sister, for his bride. The princess
seems to have gone willingly, with the desire of carrying her
religion into heathen Eussia. Vladimir was both baptised
and married at Cherson (a.d. 988), after which he restored
the city to the Greek Empire. Thus again a Christian
woman sat at the head of the Eussian court and used her
high influence to bring the people over to her faith. Anna
had a much better opportunity than Olga. The ruler's
grandmother had sown the seed; his wife reaped the
harvest. In the interval of the two generations mis
sionaries had been pouring over into Eussia from the
Byzantine Empire. Thus we may believe that Christianity
was already working like leaven in the community, slowly
permeating the mass, before the prince adopted it and pro
claimed it as his own and the national religion. This fact

THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY IN RUSSIA 363
renders the action of Vladimir entirely different from that
of Clovis when he forced the Franks to follow him in
adopting his newly accepted religion. This was indeed
a great missionary era. It has been reckoned as part of
the Dark Ages ; but that judgment only applies to Western
Europe. This period saw the spread of the gospel over
Bulgaria, Hungary, Bohemia, Saxony, Denmark, Norway,
Sweden, Poland, and lastly, to a considerable extent over
Eussia. We must not, therefore, regard it as a mere act of
subserviency to tyranny, that on the demand of their master
multitudes of the citizens of Kiev with their wives and
children flocked to the Dnieper, and there received baptism
from the Greek priests who had come over to welcome
them into the Church. Still, the impressiveness and
sincerity of the scene must have been maimed by the ugly
;hreat which accompanied the prince's invitation, for he
had issued a proclamation on the day before the ceremony,
that " whoever, on the morrow, should not repair to the
river, whether rich or poor, he should hold him for an
enemy." The acceptance of Christianity by Vladimir and his
people from Constantinople opened the way for intercom
munication between Eussia and the Byzantine Empire.
Commerce followed the gospel. Art and culture came in
its train. A Christian civilisation now began to spread
slowly through Eussia. The consequence was that in the
course of the next century this country, which we are
now accustomed to think of as the most backward of
European nations, became more advanced than Germany
or even France. She took a foremost place in the early
part of the Middle Ages. Byzantine culture was now at
its height and incomparably superior to the rude condition
of the Western nations ; and Eussia now came in for a
share of this rich civilisation. This was seen most evidently
in the erection of churches, which Vladimir zealously carried
on throughout the towns and villages of his dominions.
Like Eameses H. in Eygpt, like Hadrian and Constantine and

364 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHUPSHES
Justinian in the Eoman Empire, Vladimir gave himself
enthusiastically to building operations, and le?t his mark on
his country for all time in the lasting records of public
architecture. His first building was th3 church of St. Basil
at Kiev, planted on the very mound that had formerly been
sacred to the god Perun, and from which the national
deity's image had been hurled down in the enthusiasm of
the popular conversion. These churches were all of the
Byzantine order, although subsequently the style was
Orientalised, being modified under Persian, and much more
under Mongolian influences, to which are to be attributed
its characteristic bulbous domes.
But Vladimir was more than a church builder. He
saw that his churches were supplied with priests ; he also
established schools and eagerly promoted the education of
the children of the boyars. The bishops, not less zealous
in pushing forward their missionary enterprises, penetrated
into the interior of Eussia as far as the cities of Eostoff and
Novgorod, so that Christianity was rapidly spread over a
considerable area of Eussia. This however must be regarded
as little more than the scattering of seed broadcast. More
over, seeing that it was done in some degree as a measure
of State policy, it must have been characterised at first by
the superficiality which is always seen in missionary work
carried on with the aid of this tempting but delusive assist
ance. Neither Constantine, nor Clovis, nor Vladimir could
really convert a nation by court influence.
This new Christian movement in Eussia, which had
originated in Constantinople, continued for a considerable
time to look to the Greek capital for its sustenance and
guidance. Michael, a Syrian by birth, is reckoned the first
metropolitan in Eussia ; he died before the cathedral at
Kiev was completed, and was succeeded by a Greek named
Leontius, whom the patriarch of Constantinople had
appointed. In the year 993, Leontius solemnly conse
crated the building, and Vladimir celebrated the occasion
by making a grant to the Church out of all dues and
fines, customs and taxes, crops and cattle throughout his

THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY IN RUSSIA 365
dominion.1 For this reason the cathedral was called " The
Church of the Tithes." 2 The care of the building and the
charge of the funds were entrusted to the priest Anastasius,
whom Vladimir had brought from Cherson. From Greece
also came the canons of the councils and the Greek laws for
Church government. But from the first it was maintained
that the Scriptures constituted the basis of Christian life
and doctrine ; and encouragement was given to the reading
and study of the Bible. This characteristic of the Greek
Church in contradistinction from the Eoman passed over
into the Eussian Church, and is one of its happiest features.
Vladimir distinctly promised in his edict of the tithes
— which might be called the Magna Charta or the " Bill of
Eights" of the Eussian Church — that neither he nor any
of his descendants shall ever cite members of the clergy,
their wives, monks or nuns, before the State tribunals, or
usurp the judicial power which has been conceded to the
Church. After enumerating a list of offences which he
leaves the Church to deal with — such as divorce, poisoning,
witchcraft, heresy, family wrongs — he adds : " In all these
cases the Church is to pass judgment ;• but the prince and
his boyars and judges shall not take cognisance of such
judicial matters. These ecclesiastical privileges I have
accorded to the .holy bishops, in compliance with the
decisions of the Church, and the seven oecumenical
councils."3 Most of this only applies to clerical offenders.
In the case of a judicial matter between an ecclesiastic and
1 Modern missionary work, being voluntary and resting on free-will offer
ings, is frequently crippled for lack of funds. When one enquires how the
missionary activity of earlier times was maintained various answers have to
be given. Most of the evangelisation of the West was carried on by monks
whose wants were supplied by their own monasteries, or who worked for bare
subsistence in their new homes or accepted gifts from their converts. But
under State religions State funds supported the work. This was the case in
Eussia. Of course government support had to be paid for in government
control, although this was subject to a distinct right of the Church to
administer its own canon law.
2 Dessatingya.
3 A copy of the edict, contained in a codex of the thirteenth century,
is given in full by Mouravieff, Hist., Notes, pp. 357, 358.

366 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
a layman the tribunal is to be mixed, partly civil and partly
ecclesiastical. Further, the State shall interfere to punish
anybody who infringes the judicial rights of the Church.
Here then we see a Church established by the civil
authority, endowed with State funds, privileged to govern
itself and discipline its clergy and other ecclesiastical persons,
and granted immunity from interference in the exercise
of its rights and privileges. As yet there was no idea of
the supremacy of the head of the State in the govern
ment of the Church, such as has subsequently come about
in the person of the tsar. Vladimir's edict offered the
Eussian Church greater freedom than the Greek Church
enjoyed under the Byzantine emperors. Everything de
pended on the degree of respect shown to the spirit as well
as to the letter of this fundamental charter of the Church.
Now it became customary for the bishop of each district to
be selected by the prince of that district. Theoretically
that was not in accordance with canon law ; and practically
it gave great power to the civil governor, who of course
would be likely only to nominate a candidate who was
persona grata to himself. Then every bishop had the right
to appoint the priests, deacons, and inferior church officers
in his diocese, and also the archimandrites (i.e. the abbots
and abbesses) of the religious houses. Thus a firm hand was
kept on the personnel of the Church, even though liberty
was granted it in the exercise of its guaranteed functions.
In the pursuit of his. missionary enterprises the metro
politan Leontius formed five dioceses — the first five in
Eussia — namely, Chernigoff, near Kiev, Novgorod in the
north, Belgrod and Vladimir far in the north-east, and
Eostoff still farther off in the same direction. These were
not equally successful. At the ancient city of Novgorod,
from which the ruling family had migrated to Kiev,
Joachim of Cherson, the newly appointed bishop, was able
to take the daring action of throwing the statue of the
national god Perun into the river, without meeting any
opposition on the part of the inhabitants.1 On the other
1 Nestor, viii.

THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY IN RUSSIA 367
hand, the first two bishops of Eostoff were driven away by
the fierce tribes from the surrounding forests. Now, as on
other occasions, we find the most enlightened people and
those most in touch with the central life of the nation
quickest to receive the new message, while the remote
inhabitants of lonely places — the " heath-men," as our
ancestors called them — are slowest to abandon their pagan
habits. Vladimir repeated his father's mistake in dividing his
territory among his sons, with the same disastrous conse
quences. The result was that his death in the year 1015
was followed by a period of disorder. In the end the
supreme power was secured by Yasolaf, the eldest son,
who had received Novgorod in his father's partition. He
appeared as the avenger of his two brothers Boris and
Gled, who, it is said, had been murdered by another brother
Sviatopolk while in the act of prayer, so that they have
come to be honoured in the Church as Christian martyrs.
Sviatopolk had seized Kiev ; but Yasolaf succeeded in
driving him into exile, and so came into possession of the
southern capital. He ruled as a Christian prince, and his
name is famous as that of the founder of the Eussian code
of laws.1 His long reign was prosperous, and it saw a
continuous spread of missionary activity throughout his
dominions. Yasolaf not only confirmed the charter of
rights which his father had conferred on the Church ; he
went further, and granted ecclesiastical personages exemp
tion from all civil duties and payments. This was in
accordance with precedents set by Constantine and Con
stantius in the Eoman Empire. He took a personal
interest in the study and translation of Greek Church
writers, of whose works he collected a library at Kiev. At
the same time he established schools for the training of
candidates for the clerical office at the two chief towns —
Kiev and Novgorod. Like his father, Yasolaf distinguished
himself and immortalised his name by church building.
Earlier in this reign a prince named Mistislief built
1 Known as Russkaya Pravada (Russian Law).

368 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
St. Saviour's Church at Chernigoff. This is reckoned
the oldest church now standing in Eussia. Yasolaf
himself put up at Kiev the metropolitan cathedral,
which he named St. Sophia, after Justinian's glorious
temple, the ideal of all Greek and Eussian churches. His
son Vladimir built a second church of St. Sophia in
Novgorod. Thus Eussia had two modest copies of the
famous Byzantine basilica — one in each of his capitals.
The metropolitan Theopemptus — the first Eussian metro
politan named by Nestor — came to consecrate the Kiev
St. Sophia. On his death (a.d. 1051) occurred the first
ecclesiastical breach with Constantinople. There had been
war between the governments, in the course of which the
Byzantine emperor, Constantine Monomachus, the third
husband of the notorious Zoe, had put out the eyes of some
Eussian prisoners. Indignant at the cruel outrage, Yasolaf
summoned the Eussian bishops to elect a metropolitan
from among themselves without reference to the patriarch
of Constantinople, and they chose Hilarion, a peace-loving
man of devout character, who was the first to move for
reconciliation by seeking the benediction of Michael
Cerularius the patriarch. This was granted, and thus the
brief division between the two branches of the Eastern
Church, the cause of which had been in no way ecclesi
astical, was healed. The result of the reconciliation
was a still closer connection between Constantinople and
Eussia. The patriarch's authority was being curtailed and
crippled in the south by the inroads of the Turks and by
the distracted condition of the Byzantine Empire, followed
by attempts of emperors to effect union with Eome and
the Western Church simply on pohtical grounds, in order
to obtain aid in withstanding the serious danger now
menacing the empire. At this very time a vast new pro
vince of Christendom was opening up in the north and
gratefully submitting itself to his rule. It looked as though
what he was losing so disastrously in the old regions of the
Eastern Church was about to be counterbalanced by splendid
acquisitions of missionary achievements, first in Bulgaria,

THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY IN RUSSIA 369
but afterwards and much more effectually in Eussia. For
some time this really was the case, and the See of the
patriarch of Constantinople became more extensive than it
had been for many years. Thus, while the emperors were
losing ground till they were at their wits' end to see how to
retain their throne, the patriarchs were actually gaining new
provinces and rising in importance among the churches
of the East. But the prospect soon darkened. During one
century Eussia was torn with internal dissensions, and the
next century saw her devastated by a disastrous Mongolian
invasion. By the time when she recovered and the Church
was again in a flourishing condition, great changes had
taken place at Constantinople. The Latin kingdom and
its sham patriarchate had come and gone. Meanwhile a
foundation was being slowly laid for a new patriarchate
at Moscow, and so at length for the supremacy of Eussia
over the orthodox Church.
Brilliant as were the missionary achievements of this
early period, it must not be supposed that Eussia was
completely Christianised throughout the length and breadth
of her vast territory. The' new movement was chiefly
confined to the towns, and there principally carried on
among the more intelligent classes. The mass of the people
long remained in heathen darkness even after the State
had provided them with a church, to which they were forced
to submit outwardly while they knew little of the vital
character and spirit of the gospel of Christ. Virtually the
same heathenism has clung to the peasants in combination
with their ignorant notions of Christianity right down to our
own day. It is only by recognising this significant fact that
we can account for the grotesque phenomena presented by
some of the sects. These phenomena are the products of an
amalgam of ancient Sclavonic heathenism with perverted
notions of Christianity. In the twelfth century Christian
marriage was only practised by the upper classes. The
lower classes still continued to follow their old pagan
rites. When schools were established by the State and an
attempt was made to compel the attendance of the children,
24

370 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
their parents wept, regarding literature as a dangerous
kind of sorcery.
On the other hand, the leaven was working from the
first, and some good results were to be seen throughout
the population as a whole even in early times. Polygamy
was abolished. The virtues of hospitality and philanthropy
were recognised. Vladimir Monomachus wrote to his son :
" It is neither fasting, nor solitude, nor the monastic life
that will procure you eternal life. It is beneficence.
Never forget the poor. Nourish them. Do not bury your
riches in the bosom of the earth. That is contrary to the
precepts of Christianity. Serve as father to the orphans,
judge to the widows. Put to death neither innocent nor
guilty ; for nothing is more sacred than the life and the
soul of a Christian."
There grew up in Eussia a curious parallel to the
custom of clinical baptism in the earlier days of the Church
in the Eoman Empire, as in the case of the deathbed
baptism .of Constantine the Great. It became customary
for Eussian princes to take the tonsure in the article of
death. The tsars would smooth their passage to paradise
by dying as monks.
The only literature known in Eussia during these early
times was religious or ecclesiastical, consisting of the Bible,
the Fathers — especially St. Basil and St. Chrysostom, and
lives of the saints ; but some philosophy and so-called
science were introduced. The romance of Barlaam and
Josaphat was popular in Eussia, as elsewhere throughout
Christendom, in the early Middle Ages.

CHAPTER II
THE MONGOLIAN INVASION OF RUSSIA
(Rooks named in Chapter I.)
The history of the foundation and establishment of the
Church in Eussia must be read with caution, since it rests
on legends and traditions from one or two centuries before
the age of the first chronicles. But in the year 1073,
Nestor, the traditional father of Eussian history, came to
the monastery at Kiev.1 From this time onwards there
are contemporary records. Nestor's own chronicle is con
tinued to A.D. 1113, and it is followed by other chronicles.
At this point, therefore, we pass from more or less un
certain popular stories of the early Church in Eussia to
documentary evidence.
At this very time we also enter on a gloomy period of
Eussian history, consisting of two troublous centuries — first,
the twelfth century, when Eussia was torn with internecine
strife; second, the thirteenth century, when she was swept
and scoured and bled almost to death by a wave of invasion
of Tartar tribesmen from the steppes of central Asia.
In the midst of the petty quarrels of the princelings
who checked the progress of their country by their
ambitions and jealousies, the Church had its own difficulties
to contend with. The metropolitan George, who had
been appointed in the year 1072, was a man of a gentle,
timorous disposition, and he retired to Constantinople feel
ing unequal to his task in face of the troubles of the times.
The Church was now dragged into the vortex of political
1 Nestor, z.
8U

372 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
affairs. The Prince Isyaslaff had been twice driven from
Kiev by his brothers, when he turned for help to the
emperor, Henry iv., and Borislaff, King of Poland. Now
Poland was in the Eoman Church, and more than once this
country was used by the papal party as their point of
attack on the Eussian Church. At this time the most
powerful of all the popes, Gregory vn., was dominating the
councils of the West. Isyaslaff sought the great pope's
intercession with the two sovereigns. Gregory's reply has
been preserved among his letters.1 It is most gracious.
He has received Isyaslaff's son, who has come with the
petition, and who, as the pope says, has admitted the papal
authority, and wishes to have the kingdom as a grant from
Peter through the pope, asserting that he makes this request
with' his father's full authority.2 Here is Hildebrand's
high claim to have the disposal of thrones and kingdoms
in his hands, and his distinct assertion that it is admitted
by the son of the Prince of Eussia, with his father's de
liberate consent. We should like to have had the young
man's version of the story. It looks as though he had
been as wax in the hands of the masterful ruler of empires.
If it were indeed the case that he made this complete sub
mission on behalf of Isyaslaff, we cannot imagine that the
bargain would have been kept ; if the prince had secured
his throne by the help of a foreign alliance on such terms
as these, he could only have held it as a tyrant against the
wishes of his people. Fortunately he was able to regain
his position without the aid he had solicited from abroad;
and as he did not have occasion to claim his side of the
bargain, we are not surprised that we hear no more about
the other side. This was the first serious attempt of the
papacy to obtain the great prize of Eussia for the see of
Peter. Of the next metropolitan, John n., who was appointed
1 Baronins's Annals, tome xi. p. 472.
3 ' ' Filius vester limina apostolorum visitans ad nos venit, et quod regmim
illud dono Sancti Petri per manus nostras vellet obtinere, eidem beato Petro
ipoatolorum .Brincipi debita fidelitate exhibj.t^," etc.

THE MONGOLIAN INVASION OF RUSSIA 373
in the year 1080, Nestor, who was his contemporary,
exclaims, " There will never be his like again in Eussia."
A learned, charitable, courteous, humble man, he holds
a conspicuous place among the early bishops of Kiev.
Another metropolitan, Nicolas, came forward as a peace
maker at a time of civil war, when Monomachus, a young
prince who had married the daughter of Harold, the last
Saxon king of England, was besieging Isyaslaff's son, Sviato
polk, at Kiev. A httle later, when Monomachus had the
upper hand, he was supported by an enlightened and
eloquent metropolitan, Nicephorus.
In spite of repeated feuds and frequent disorders in
the political world, quiet missionary work was still going
on. From Polotsk the gospel now began to spread into
Lithuania; from Novgorod it was carried farther north,
and Moscow was founded as the result of an effort to con
vert the heathen in central Eussia and introduce them to
the civilisation of town life. The one bond of union during
these troublous times was the Church with its common
faith and life, and the chief ministers of peace were bishops
and heads of monasteries. It was fortunate that the
Church herself was not now divided. When a differ
ence of opinion did arise from time to time, usually it turned
on some minor point and proved to be only of a transient
character. Towards the end of the twelfth century we
meet with a temporary breach with Constantinople, which
indicates the awakening of national jealousy. Eussia was
still being supplied with metropolitans from the Greek
Church, when a second Isyaslaff, the grandson of Mono
machus, determined to have a Eussian for his chief bishop,
urged it is said by dissatisfaction with the conduct of the
deceased metropolitan, Michael, in absenting himself from
Eussia. Accordingly he followed the example of Yasolaff
and summoned a synod of Eussian bishops at Kiev to elect
a successor to Michael. The only protest was raised by
Niphont, bishop of Novgorod. All the other bishops
acquiesced in the daring act of innovation. It was in
vain that Niphont appealed to their written promise not to

374 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
celebrate the liturgy in the church of St. Sophia as a synod
while they were without a metropolitan. He was silenced
by a temporary imprisonment in the Pechersky Monastery,
and the synod elected Clement, a monk of Smolensk. But
how could he be ordained without applying to the patriarch
at Constantinople ? Here was a serious difficulty. The
bishops found a way out of it by an ingenious device. In
place of the imposition of the patriarch's hand, they laid on
the candidate's head the reputed hand of St. Clement of
Eome, which was among the precious relies that Vladimir
had brought from Cherson. At a time when the corpses
and bones of saints were valued as the greatest of treasures
and credited with marvellous powers, such a use of the
shrivelled hand of one of the most venerated successors of
an apostle might be regarded as singularly efficatious. A
curious feature of the incident is that the dead hand of a
bishop of Eome is used to flout the claims of the bishop of
the rival city of Constantinople. The quarrel lasted for
nine years. It got entangled with the civil feuds, which
were so fierce that one prince, Igor, who had been sent
to a monastery, was torn to pieces by the populace when
he reappeared in the city of Kiev. Soon after this the
Prince Isyaslaff was forced to flee, taking Clement with
him. Meanwhile Niphont was despatched to Constanti
nople to seek a duly appointed metropohtan. The
patriarch Luke was only too glad to comply with so
loyal a request, and he consecrated a man named Con
stantine as bishop of Chernigoff, and despatched him with
all due qualifications to Kiev (a.d. 1136). Constantine
proceeded to act with vigour in his new office, condemn
ing the deeds of the unfortunate Isyaslaff and his metro
pohtan, Clement, and even suspending for a time all the
clergy whom Clement had ordained. Thus apparently
Eussia was again brought into ecclesiastical submission to
Constantinople. Niphont, who had stood out as a solitary
Elijah among the priests of Baal, an Abdiel in the midst
of the all but universal rebellion, did not live to reach Kiev
and enjoy his triumph. But he had earned an undying

THE MONGOLIAN INVASION OF RUSSIA 375
reputation in the orthodox Church, where he is reckoned
among the saints as the " Defender of all Eussia."
A turn in the wheel of fortune brought back the opposite
party into power. Then Constantine was dismissed to his
original see, where he ended his days, ordering in his will
that his body should be cast out of the town as unworthy
of burial. After it had been thus exposed for three days,
it was buried with due honours in the church of St. Saviour.
We may doubt whether the poor man's singular command
should be attributed, as Mouravieff says, to " extraordinary
humility,"1 or to a melancholy sense of failure after his
ambitious mission had begun so successfully.
Meanwhile, of course, the patriarch did not recognise
Clement, who had been restored by the government and so
had renewed the schism. Constantine was no longer avail
able. Accordingly Luke appointed a third metropolitan,
Theodore. Andrew Bogolubsky, one of the contending
princes, wished him to make his own city of Vladimir the
metropolitan see. He had built there the magnificent
church of the Mother of God and deposited in it a miracle-
working icon brought from Greece. If he had succeeded
his daring policy might have cut the knot. Kiev would
have been left high and dry with its discredited metro
politan, while the tide of Church favour flowed to the new
ecclesiastical metropolis. But Luke was too wise to agree
to the proposal. It would have meant a serious division in
the Eussian Church, not only between two parties, but
between two great cities and their surrounding areas.
Local ambition would then have been roused ; and thus
the schism would have been perpetuated long after any
excuse for it had died away. All that the patriarch would
do to honour the city of Vladimir was to allow the bishop
of Eostoff to make it his centre, and sanction an annual
festival in celebration of the prince's victory over the
Bulgarians on the same day as that on which the Emperor
Manuel celebrated his victory over the Saracens, a festival
still observed on the first of August.
1 P. 37.

376 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
But now the schism which had sprung out of personal
and political sources was complicated with a charge of
heresy. This charge is significant of much in the life of
the orthodox Church during the Middle Ages. We are
familiar with the grave accusation of heresy and its terrible
consequences in the Western Church ; but there it meant
some serious departure from what were deemed great
and vital elements of the creed. No such thing was
seen in the case of the Eussian heresy of the twelfth
century. The Church was universally and securely settled
in its faith. It had not sufficient originality of mind or
intellectual interest to dream of loosening its moorings and
entering on unknown seas of speculation. The daring
heresiarchs of the East who have left their marks for all
time on the course of the world's thought belong to the
patristic period ; those met with later are of the Western
Church. The word heresy has shrunk to much narrower
limits within the safe orthodoxy of the later Greek and
Eussian Church. Nestor, the bishop of Eostoff, who had
been deprived of his diocese by the metropolitan Con
stantine, went to the Byzantine capital to defend his
case and vindicate his rights. There he was met with
a charge of heresy. The heresy was this, that he had
forbidden people to break their Wednesday or Friday fasts
even when the festivals of the Nativity and Epiphany
fell on those days. The irregularity did not begin with
Nestor, nor was he the only promoter of it. It was
revived by a bishop named Leon, who had come into
his diocese during his absence. Leon was first tried by
the metropolitan at Kiev, and then at Constantinople by
the patriarch. But the heresy was not crushed. It
appeared at Kiev in the person of the metropolitan
Constantine II., who adopted it in all innocence and
convoked a synod to establish it; but he was opposed
by two valiant champions of sound doctrine with re
gard to feasts- and fasts, Cyril, bishop of Touroff, and
Polycarp, archimandrite of the great Pechersky Monastery
and continuator of Nestor's Lives of the Saints. This

THE MONGOLIAN INVASION OF RUSSIA 377
man even suffered imprisonment for his fidelity in the
matter. Subsequently, in the course of the never-ending discords
of these times, Kiev was taken by storm and visited with
all the horrors of a sacked city. The orthodox Church
regarded this as Heaven's just punishment for the heresy of
her metropolitan. So ruinous was the disaster that the
post of metropolitan remained vacant for about ten years,
after which the city had sufficiently revived for a re
storation of its ecclesiastical functions, and the patriarch
of Constantinople then appointed a Greek, Nicephorus II.
(a.d. 1185). But the storm-cloud which had rolled back
for an interval soon gathered again, and Kiev was captured
and sacked a second time, a fate from which she never
recovered. Her ruin followed sixteen years later in the
Mongol invasion. This ends the first period in Eussian
Church history. Hitherto Kiev had been the metropolis
both of the State and of the Church, though sharing some
of the honour with the older capital in the north, Novgorod.
After her own civil wars and the cataclysm of the Asiatic
invasion this was no longer the case.
The internal disorders of the twelfth century were
followed in the thirteenth century by the infinitely greater
disaster of the Mongol invasion. This was part of a vast
movement that was sweeping up from Central Asia and
threatening to engulf Europe in a sea of barbarism. The
Mongols were of the same race as those devastating
invaders known as the Huns, who had brought terror to
Eome at an earlier period. But in course of time they
became Mohammedans, the rehgion of the Prophet having
passed on through Persia to the wild tribes of the region
since known as Turkestan. Therefore we might regard
their progress as that of the right wing of the vast army
of Islam which was advancing in half-moon formation, and
closing in upon the civilised world all round its limits
from Eussia to Spain. But this Mongol invasion had
really no relations with the movements of the Moors in
Africa and the West ; it was the greatest of a 3eries of

378 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
volcanic outbursts of wild peoples from the steppes of
Asia. The terrible leader Genghis 1 Khan — " Chief of
Chiefs" — became one of the world conquerers and empire
founders whom we might compare with Alexander the
Great, Julius Caesar, or Napoleon, if only he had added
more constructive genius to his mihtary gifts and powers.
At first the Eussians appeared able to offer effectual re
sistance, and they gave the Mongol host a temporary check
at the Kalka (a.d. 1224). But it was not long before
the pent-up forces burst forth and carried all before them.
First Vladimir was taken ; then Kiev fell. Still, on
marched the host, northwards as far as Novgorod, west
wards absorbing Hungary, then peopled by a kindred race,
the descendants of an earlier invasion, but now Christian.
The invasion was only stopped at the frontier of Poland
and Germany. By the end of the century the vast Mongol
Empire extended from China to the borders of these
countries of central Europe, covering all northern Asia and
eastern Europe. The occupation of Eussia lasted for
three centuries.
It is not easy to imagine the enormous significance
of this central fact in Eussian history. The Mongol
occupation cut that history in two, with the result that
the second period, the period that follows the dismal
gap of national effacement, differs in many serious re
spects from the earlier period, with which we were con
cerned in the previous chapter. The tendency of modern
historians is to make less of this fact than was formerly
assumed. Eussian writers in particular are anxious to
vindicate their country from a charge of having adopted
Mongolian habits.2 It seems clear that some of the
Oriental customs which were practised by the Eussians
were due to the influence of Constantinople rather than
to the effect of the Mongol invasion. For instance,
there was a strict seclusion of women in the court of the
1 Mr. Morfill spells the name Dchingish. M. Leroy Beaulieu spells it
Djinghiz. 2 e.g. Soloviev, the historian.

THE MONGOLIAN INVASION OF RUSSIA 379
Byzantine Empire, which was imitated when Eussia came
under Byzantine influences, and therefore must not be
attributed to Mohammedanism. Then the Sclavonic is
certainly still the basal element in Eussian life, as it
always has been. Moreover, the Mongols had not the
Eoman genius for ruling. They let the local Eussian
princes govern their territories though subject to the
supremacy of the " horde," wherever this moving army
might be. Novgorod, isolated by its marshes and the
barrenness of its neighbourhood, was left almost to itself
in virtual independence. We must not regard the
Mongols as a mere plague of locusts eating up everything
they came across.
Nevertheless, after due allowance is made for these
mitigating circumstances, the fact remains that the Mongol
invasion left lasting effects on the national life of Eussia.
Many Eussian princes married daughters of the Mongols.
Later on, a nobleman of Mongolian origin, Boris Godunov,
was elected tsar. Even in dress the influence of the
Mongols was felt, and Eussians adopted from them the
long flowing robe known as the " caftan." A less pardon
able Mongolian import was the knout, that horrible instru
ment of torture, the use of which was continued till the
reign of Alexander I., and has been revived in the prisons of
to-day. From the same source came the public flogging of
debtors, which was subsequently abolished by Peter the
Great. But the chief result of the Mongol invasion was
that it cut Eussia off from the West, and made it more and
more an Eastern country. In the previous . period Eussia
had belonged to the comity of European nations. It has
been already remarked that her civilisation was then superior
to that of France and Germany.1 She was joined with
Constantinople in the van of progress. But the Mongolian
invasion put an end to this state of affairs. For the time
being all national life seemed to be crushed. A cringeing
attitude was forced on princes and people. The princes
were compelled to travel to the horde — the movable court
\V. 363.

380 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
and camp of the khan — for their investiture, and to submit
to its authority whenever it chose to interfere with them.
To the horde they had to pay their tribute. Even at home
they were hampered by the presence of residents called
" baskaks." That thirteenth century, which is to us a very
golden age — the age of St. Francis and the friars and the
awakening of democratic religion throughout the West —
the age of early English architecture and cathedral build
ing — the age of the great English king Edward 1. and the
rise of the House of Commons — the age of Dante and the
origin of modern literature — the age of Giotto and Fra
Angelico and the beginnings of modern painting — this was
in Eussia the darkest of ages, the age of oppression and
stagnation and misery. Eussia had shared with Constanti
nople the glories of the earlier period, when the rest of
Europe was abandoned to the barbarism which followed
the break-up of the Eoman Empire, and which we have been
taught to call the Dark Ages. Now the case was completely
reversed. The darkness lifted from the West, and a brilliant
day dawned in England, France, and Italy ; at the same
time the darkness settled down on Eussia — just when the
abominable " Latin Empire " was filling Constantinople and
the Eastern Church with gloom and misery.
This national calamity of Eussia could not but have
a profound effect on the Church and the course of her
life during the period of trial. Here the first thing
to observe is that the Mongols, even after they became
Mohammedans, did not persecute the Christians in Eussia.
That country -was still the land least stained with the
blood of martyrs. It was when she began to persecute
her own sons whom she reckoned heretics, the members
of the various prohibited sects, that this cruelty became
common in Eussia. The Mongols permitted the Christians
to enjoy their religion freely and to conduct its public
services. The khans even protected the Church from attack,
and exempted its property from confiscation. But this
very fact had its peculiar influence, especially when it was
combined with the political factors of the case. Eussia

THE MONGOLIAN INVASION OF RUSSIA 381
was now cut off from Constantinople. Like the prince,
the metropolitan had to go to the horde for investiture.
He, too, was required to cringe before the great khan.
Then the Church centre was removed first to Vladimir,
and afterwards to Moscow, which was quite out of reach
from Constantinople. Ecclesiastically this is one of the
most important results of the Mongol invasion. As
regards the internal affairs of the Church, it meant
independence. The Eussian metropolitan was no longer
subject to the patriarch of Constantinople. Thus the
Eussian Church became free from Greek control. This
was one stage in the progress of her importance, to be
followed later by her primacy in the holy orthodox
Church, with the tsar as its head and protector.
A further consequence of the Moslem invasion is that
from this time onwards rehgion and patriotism blend. It
is like the union of the Eoman Catholic Church in Ireland
with the Nationalist party. In some measure this result
was brought about by the forced severance of connection
with Constantinople. Hitherto the Church in Eussia had
been in some respects an exotic growth. Her metro
politans had been Greeks, appointed by the patriarch of
Constantinople, despatched as foreign missionaries by this
ecclesiastic of another country, not always even knowing
the language of the people over whom they were imposed
as their chief pastors. But after the Mongol conquest the
metropolitans were Eussians elected by native Eussian
bishops. Then, in the second place, the common misery
of the alien yoke drove the Church along the same way as
the nation, or rather awoke national instincts in connection
with religion, and made the religious leaders ardent patriots.
Thus, through these two influences, the Mongol invasion
Eussianised the Church in Eussia.
It is more difficult to penetrate beneath the surface and
discover how far the interests of religion itself were affected
by this huge cataclysm ; but it would seem that in some
respects the trial was a stimulus to faith. In their desola
tion and wretchedness the people felt the need of religion.

382 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Certain fascinating and exciting forms of religion are always
found to flourish under such circumstances. The Jewish
oppression under Antiochus Epiphanes, and again under the
Eomans, gave rise to apocalypses which painted the future
in glowing colours for the people of God, but threatened
doom for their oppressors. Similarly, during the Mongol
oppression new prophecies were published and eagerly
devoured ; people saw strange visions ; icons were un
usually active in working miracles. At this time too a
great impulse was given to monasticism. No doubt there
was much poverty, for trade must have been terribly dis
organised, and other miseries besides hunger drove multi
tudes into the monasteries. Many sought the calm seclusion
of the monastic life simply because it was more congenial
to their devotional temperament. But monasteries which
were planted in remote and secluded places for the sake
of the retirement sought by their inmates became centres
of missionary activity. Thus Eussia repeated the experi
ence of Germany in an earlier age.
The consequence was that this very time, when the
normal development of the Eussians in civilisation and
secular progress was checked and thrown back, Christianity
was being spread farther afield in outlying regions of
northern and eastern Europe by Eussian monks. In the
East the far-off place called Great Perm, near the Ural
Mountains, formerly only visited by fur-hunters, was now
both Christianised and won to Eussia by the labours of a
single monk, bearing the common monastic name Stephen.
All alone he penetrated the forests, and, though opposed
by the pagan priests, succeeded in winning a body of
converts, for whom he built a rude church on the bank
of the river Viuma. The metropolitan consecrated him
bishop of Perm, where he laboured for many years; he
retired to Moscow in his old age. Eudocia, or Eupraxia
according to her name in the convent, founded the convent
of the Ascension in the Kremlin ; St. Euphemius established
the celebrated monastery of the Saviour at Souzdal; St.
Cyril founded the monastery of Bielo-ozero, one of the most

THE MONGOLIAN INVASION OF RUSSIA 383
famous of all Eussian monasteries. At first simply seeking
for a retreat like St. Anthony in the desert, Cyril retired to
the lonely shores of the White Lake ; but his fame spread,
and companions gathered about him peopling the solitude with
lives dedicated to the service of rehgion. Here the traveller
to-day sees a monastery of the first class, surrounded by
two strong walls flanked by lofty towers, and armed with
cannons. The enclosure contains two monasteries, a greater
and a lesser. The greater monastery lies between the
inner and the outer walls ; it has nine churches built of
stone. The lesser monastery is within the second wall.
This monastery is said to possess the richest treasures of
gold-embroidered and jewelled vestments in the empire.
In earher days it earned a more laudable reputation, for
then it was a centre of missionary activity in still more
remote regions. One of its offsprings is the Solovetsky
Monastery, which is built on one of a cluster of islands
lying out north of the bay of Onega in the White Sea.
The island is inaccessible for nearly eight months of the
year on account of ice-floes ; but during the summer it is
visited by crowds of pilgrims.
This monastery in its turn, long regarded as the
northernmost outpost of the Eussian Church, became a
centre of missionary activity in Arctic regions. On a rocky
island on Lake Loubensky, not far from Bielo-ozero, there
hved a community of monks who were engaged in preach
ing the gospel to the Finnish tribe of the Chondes. The
monk Lazarus founded a monastery on the shore of Lake
Onega as a missionary centre for the conversion of the
Laplanders, while the monks of Salaam on the neighbour
ing Lake Ladoga also evangelised these people. In the
south and east, and throughout the greater part of her
country, Eussia was now down-trodden and distressed by
a cruel, barbarous yoke. Yet we see these very years
of her oppression to be the times of greatest activity
in the extension of Christianity on her inhospitable borders
out of reach of the Asiatic intruder. History has few
more inspiring tales to tell than this record of the sweet

384 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
that came out of the bitter, the honey from the lion's
mouth. The Eussian Church was never more fruitful in
winning converts to the gospel than when so many of her
sons had fled from before the oppressor, not to rest in peace,
but to take up new work, and utilise their exile in the
service of their Lord. Thus the dreadful Mongol invasion,
which on the surface appeared to be nothing but a curse
to the Church as well as to the nation, proved to be the un
intentional stimulus of wide-spreading missionary activity,
and indirectly the means of transmitting, the greatest
benefits to unknown tribes by the northern seas.

CHAPTER III
THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA
Books named in Chap. II. ; also for Ivan the Terrible, Early
Voyages and Travels to Russia and Persia (The Hakluyt Society),
1856 ; Leroy Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, Eng. trans.,
1893-96.
At Eome the popes were always ready to regard the
distress of the East as their own opportunity ; and more
than once the threatened approach of the Turks to Con
stantinople had opened up the way for negotiations between
the Lateran and the Byzantine court. A similar condition
is to be observed in Eussia under the Mongol oppression.
The orthodox Church appeared to be now in the most
helpless and hopeless condition. The Latin conquest of
Constantinople had forced the Greek patriarch into exile,
and his immediate task was to gather together the scattered
remnants of his authority, while a usurper, a bishop of the
papal Church, was sitting on his throne at St. Sophia.
Thus harassed and hampered, he could not be expected to
do anything to help his proteges in the north. Under
these circumstances the Pope Innocent IV. proposed to assist
Russia by raising a crusade against the Mongols on condition
of union with Eome. With this end in view he sent his
legates to the two princes, Alexander at Novgorod, and
Daniel, the Prince of Galick in the south. The former,
being fairly out of the reach of the invaders, could afford to
reject the papal overtures ; but Daniel, whose territory was
suffering from the full force of the Asiatic scourge, accepted
the crown the pope had sent him and with it the title of
King of Galick, though shrewdly postponing the execution

386 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
of his part of the proposed bargain till an oecumenical
council had decided on the question of the union of the
two Churches.
The post of metropolitan of Kiev had been vacant for
ten years during the troubles of the times. This old
political capital and ecclesiastical centre of Eussia had been
sacked, and its principal buildings, which had been used as
fortresses during the siege — the cathedral of St. Sophia,
the church of the Tithes, the monastery of St. Michael,
and the great Pechersky Monastery — all captured one
after the other and destroyed. Daniel now took steps to
fill the vacancy. At the very time when he was carrying
on his negotiations with the pope he was also in communica
tion with the patriarch Manuel H. He selected a patriotic
Eussian named Cyril to be metropolitan of Kiev, and sent
him to Nicaea for consecration (a.d. 1250). Cyril proved to
be a great bishop ; it is to his energy that we must attribute
in a large measure the rapid revival of the Church in Eussia
after the stunning blow it had received from the Mongol
invasion. Cyril left the ruins of Kiev, passed through the
desolate towns of Cheringoff and Eiazan, and travelled
on to Novgorod, which had escaped the scourge. There
he consecrated an archbishop and met the Prince Alex
ander on his return from a journey to the horde to pay
his homage to the khan. The camp of the nomadic
Mongols had been moved from place to place during times
of war; but now it was settled at Sarai. Since many
Eussians were actually resident there, or were at least com
pelled to go there from time to time to visit their foreign
master, Cyril made it a bishopric, and consecrated Metro
phanes, its first bishop. This see remained in being as long
as the Mongol power existed ; it was brought to an end
when the horde was broken up.
In the year 1274, Cyril summoned a synod at Vladimir
on the occasion of the consecration of Serapias, the archi
mandrite of the Pechersky Monastery, to the bishopric.
The synod set about a reformation of Church discipline
with a view to rooting out simony and other abuses, and

THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA 387
exacting enquiry into the character of candidates for orders.
The extreme importance attached to minutiae of ritual
in the Eastern Church is well illustrated by the special
emphasis which was afterwards given to this synod's
prohibition of the custom of mixing the holy chrism with
oil, and of the use of affusion instead of immersion in the
rite of baptism.
When Cyril died (a.d. 1 2 81), for a short time no successor
was appointed, because, although the Latin usurpation was
at an end, and Michael Palaeologus was now reigning at
Constantinople, both the emperor and his patriarch were
suspected of inclinations towards Eome. But when, after
the death of Michael (A.D. 1282), his son Andronicus
restored the orthodox Joseph, that patriarch sent into
Eussia Maximus, a Greek, to be metropolitan. It is to
be observed that whenever the Eussian prince chooses a
metropolitan he selects a man of his own nationality, and
that whenever the patriarch nominates anybody for the
office he takes care to send a Greek. We may see in
these facts a portent of the future, when Eussia could
dare to be more independent. In the last year of this
gloomy thirteenth century the metropolitan Maximus
moved his centre from the ruined Kiev and its desolated
neighbourhood to the new capital, Vladimir. It was not
long there; for on his death (ad. 1305) it was removed
to Moscow, a city destined to be the great metropolis
of the Eussian Church and empire for many years to
come. To add to the troubles of these dark times, the princes,
who were allowed a measure of home rule under the
suzerainty of the khan, quarrelled among themselves. The
Church was then the one bond of unity for the unhappy
Eussian people, and the metropolitan bishop its one visible
centre. Thus this ecclesiastic acquired temporarily in Eussia
some shadow of the influence that was exercised by the pope
in Italy during the quarrels of the barons. It was the
perception of this fact that led Prince John at Moscow to
invite the metropolitan to come from Vladimir and reside

388 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
at his capital. Meanwhile another movement was going
on in the West. In the year 1392, Lithuania was brought
into connection with Poland ; eighteen years later, its prince,
Vitovt, defeated the Teutonic knights,1 and so stayed
the encroachments of Germany and the papal influence.
In order to strengthen his independence both politically
and ecclesiastically, Vitovt requested the patriarchs of
Constantinople to appoint a metropolitan for Kiev. This
would have involved the independence of Moscow and its
metropolitan. But the patriarch would not comply.
Then Vitovt convoked a synod of his orthodox bishops,
which elected a Bulgarian, Gregory Tsamblak, to the new
office. Gregory was orthodox according to the Greek standard.
But Vitovt sent him to the council of Constance, which
was then in session. A httle later the metropohtan
Photius seized a favourable moment for visiting both
Vitovt and Yagello the King of Poland. The death of
Photius was followed by a time of miserable dissentions at
Moscow. Vitovt died, and his successor, Svidrigailo, sent
Gerasimus, the bishop of Smolensk, to Constantinople to be
appointed metropolitan of Kiev. For some reason not easy
to divine, the patriarch Joseph consented. He may have
thought that the disorderly condition of Moscow unfitted
that new metropolis to be the seat of a primate. But he
may also have had some foresight of the inevitable con
sequence of the removal of the metropolitan so far beyond
the reach of Constantinople. There does not seem to have
been any formal act on the part of the patriarch to put
the central and eastern parts of Eussia under the new
metropolitan. Nevertheless, the appointment of Gerasimus
as metropolitan of Kiev while the see of Moscow was vacant
could not but imply a transference of the ecclesiastical centre
of gravity. Joseph could not recognise any independent
Church of Lithuania. To the patriarch of Constantinople
both Eussia proper and the Western provinces on its
border were but parts of the one holy orthodox Church.
1 An order established to convert the heathen Lithuanians by force.

THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA 389
There is not much advantage in discussing this curious
situation, because even though appointed metropolitan by
the patriarch, Gerasimus was unable to exercise any in
fluence in Eussia, or to be recognised by any of the Eussian
bishops. Though it was his wish to go to Moscow and
establish himself there, he had to remain at Smolensk.
Had he succeeded, the patriarch would have gained nothing
by his appointment. The magnitude of the Eussian
Church would have left Lithuania hanging on its fringe as
a mere outlying district, and Constantinople would have
had no better security for the retention of its influence and
authority. If we are to understand that from the first
Joseph had intended Gerasimus to reside at Moscow, it is
difficult to discover what good he could have hoped to reap
from his unpopular act in thrusting an outsider on the
Eussian Church. Eussia had not always submitted to Greek
metropolitans with good grace. But to be governed by a
Lithuanian when Lithuania was independent and looking to
Poland for sympathy, certainly this was not a thing for
her to meekly accept even from the hands of the patriarch.
Nor did Lithuania itself ultimately profit. Gerasimus
came to an awful end. His friend and patron Svidrigailo was
informed that he was carrying on a treasonable correspond
ence with Sigismund, a rival claimant to the principality.
In a rage at the ingratitude of a man whom he had so
much favoured, the prince burnt him alive. After this
tragedy the ecclesiastical independence of Lithuania
came to an end. Her metropolitan was never able to
take the lead of the Eussian Church. But she was not
strong enough to stand alone. The inevitable drift was
in the opposite direction. The independence of Lithuania
was maintained for almost a century and a half, and then
ended by the diet of Lublin (a.d. 1568). Gradually the
leading families joined themselves to Poland and accepted
the Eoman Catholic rehgion, and the people followed.
We now come to the important events associated with
the career of Isidore. At this point Eussia emerges from her
comparative isolation, and in the person of her ecclesiastical

390 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
representative takes a leading place in the history of the
universal Church. When the Emperor John was preparing
for the council, which, as he hoped, was to bring about the
union of Christendom and so help him in his resistance to
the encroachments of the Turks, Isidore was sent from
Constantinople to be metropolitan at Moscow. He was
deliberately chosen as a man favourable to the union of the
Eastern and Western Churches, and it has been maintained
that the Pope Eugenius had actually intrigued for his
appointment. Nevertheless, he met with a warm welcome
in Eussia. Both Kiev and Moscow gave him a public
reception. But he had not been in office more than four
months when he urged the prince, Basil, to permit him to
attend the council that was to meet in Italy, and obtained
a reluctant consent, on the ground that otherwise Eussia
would be the only Christian country excluded. It was a
difficult position. At Constantinople the emperor was
straining every nerve to be reconciled with Eome in order
to obtain the aid of the Western powers. But Constanti
nople's danger was not felt at Moscow, and there nobody
had the slightest wish for union, except the one Greek at
the head of the Church who had been sent there for the
express purpose of helping it on.
The princes and prelates assembled at Ferara waited for
Isidore, as representing the largest branch of the Eastern
Church, before opening the council. As soon as he arrived
the sessions began. It will be remembered 1 that while Mark
of Ephesus led the opposition, Bessarion, the metropolitan
of Nicaea, and Isidore of Moscow were foremost in support
ing the proposals for union. After the council had been
transferred to Florence, and when at length Eugenius had
triumphed and the union was declared, Bessarion and Isidore
were both rewarded by being made cardinals, and the latter
received the title, " Cardinal Legate of the Apostolic See in
Eussia." He returned home triumphant. He had accom
plished his object — at Florence. But what was the good
of that if his action should not be ratified in Eussia ?
1 See p. 268.

THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA 391
Isidore seems to have deceived himself with the notion
that he could simply assume that in what he had done he
had carried his Church with him. So enamoured was he
of the papal idea, that he seems to have behaved like a
pope himself. He appears to have been deluded by the
enthusiastic reception that had been accorded him when he
first came to Moscow. But then the people were delighted
at having a metropolitan of their own after a long interval,
during which the Lithuanian metropolitan had been trying
to get the upper hand in Eussia. Now the case was very
different. Without consulting his bishops the metropolitan
had surrendered the chief points of dispute between the
Eastern and Western Churches. It looked like a betrayal
of trust. We are prepared for the sequel.
Isidore is conducting the service at the church of the
Assumption on the first occasion after his return. The
archdeacon standing by his chair has read the acts of the
council of Florence to an astonished congregation. Isidore
names the pope in his prayers. Then the Prince Basil
cannot contain his indignation. He calls Isidore a traitor
to orthodoxy and a false pastor.
The first step is to summon a council of bishops and
boyars. They come together as men of one mind. Not a
bishop, not a lord will own the pope as vicar of Christ.
Every member of the council without exception rejects the
Western doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit. This
means the condemnation of their metropolitan. In spite
of his skilful pleading he can make out no case to win a
single vote for his side. The issue is the banishment of
Isidore to the Choudoff Monastery.
The subsequent story of Isidore is full of adventure.
He escaped from his prison and fled to Eome. Thence he
was sent to Constantinople to attempt there what he had
been unable to effect in his own see. The Greeks were
as reluctant as the Eussians to submit to the Florentine
decision. Isidore was one of the ablest men of the day ;
but ability counted for little when confronted with age
long orthodoxy. His efforts were brought to an abrupt

392 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
termination by the last act in the tragedy of the Eastern
Empire. While the Christians were quarrelling the Turks
were advancing. At the capture of Constantinople by
Mohammed n., Isidore was one of the many Greeks who
fled to Italy. No one had earned a better right to an
asylum at Eome, and there he was rewarded with the
phantom title of " Patriarch of Constantinople."
A shadowy attempt to maintain the papal authority
which Isidore had vainly tried to introduce into Eussia
was made in the appointment of one of his followers named
Gregory as metropolitan of Kiev. But although he was
recognised by Casimir, the Prince of Lithuania, Gregory was
never acknowledged by the Church in Eussia or even in
Lithuania. The schism was maintained for some time by
the appointment of a succession of Latin metropohtans at
Kiev ; but these men had no following. They can only
be regarded as papal agents resident in a country over
which they exercised no authority and in which they
were not in any way recognised by the people or the
Church. The fall of Constantinople, which makes the year
1453 a landmark in the history of Europe, while, it was
followed by disastrous effects on the Greek Church in the
dominion of the Turks, only had an indirect influence on
the Church in Eussia. Ecclesiastically the immediate
consequence was the gaining of independence. The
Eussians were no longer made to look to the imperial
patriarch for the appointment of their chief pastor. The
metropolitan was now elected by a council of Eussian
bishops. Still, there was no breach of Church unity ; the
Eussian Church remained in communion with the oppressed
Greek Church, as a branch of the one holy orthodox
Church, and was still nominally subject to the patriarch of
Constantinople. Jonah, who had been appointed after a
vacancy of eight years to succeed the deposed Isidore,
was the last primate who bore the title " Metropolitan
of Kiev." His successors were named " Metropolitan of
Moscow and of all Eussia." Thus the change which had

THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA 393
long been an accomphshed fact was now openly recognised
in that most conservative of all spheres — the ecclesiastical
vocabulary. Another influence, more positive in character, now
came in to advance the importance of the Greek Church.
This was the rise of Eussia as a great united nation.
Hitherto, although a certain common life had pulsated
through the populations scattered over the vast area which
we now know as European Eussia, this was not unified
under one government. We have seen how Lithuania
estabhshed independence in conjunction with Poland.
Novgorod was also virtually unattached to the southern
Sclavs and administered as a separate republic. Other dis
tricts had their autonomy under different princes. Even
the chief rulers at Kiev, and afterwards at Vladimir, were
regarded as princes, or grand dukes, not as kings or
emperors. But soon after the destruction of the Byzan
tine Empire there appeared in the north a new empire,
the Eussian Empire. Thus the rise of Eussia as a great
united nation nearly synchronises with the fall of the
power that had stood for Eome in the East. This most
important historical fact was mainly brought about by the
abihty and energy of Ivan m., who reigned for forty-
three years — from a.d. 1462 to ad. 1505. The power
of the horde had now broken up and crumbled away,
leaving only scattered fragments, such as the Mongol
settlement in the Crimea. A strong ruler had a clear
course for the consolidation of his nation. Ivan took a
politic step in marrying Zoe, a niece of the heroic Con
stantine Palaeologus, with the approval of Pope Sixtus ix.,
who saw in the match a hope of the fulfilment of the
dream of the papacy and chief end of all its diplomacy —
the union of Christendom under the pope. Here, however,
he was mistaken. Zoe proved to be a devoted member of
the Eastern Church. On the strength of this connection
with the Byzantine imperial family Ivan assumed the
cognisance of the double-headed eagle, ever afterwards the
badge of Eussia, and also in a tentative way the title of

394 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Tsar.1 It was a broad hint that the empire of the East
which had perished at Constantinople was to have its
resurrection at Moscow. Ivan laid the foundations of
empire broad and deep. He was anxious to encourage
letters and civilisation, and he welcomed many learned
Greeks who came to Moscow with the Princess Zoe,
bringing precious manuscripts with them. In some degree
Eussia shared in the scattering of pearls of learning which
followed the flight of the scholars from Constantinople, and
brought the works of classic literature, together with the
scholars who could interpret them, to Western Europe.
Moscow never enjoyed the Eenaissance, as that wonderful
awakening was enjoyed by Florence and Basle. On
the other hand, it must be remembered that, unlike the
benighted West, before the Mongol invasion Eussia had
been in close touch with the life of Constantinople.
Italian architects also visited the progressive city of
Moscow. The most important of these was Aristotle
Fioraventi, who designed many of the most important
public buildings.
We look to see what part the Church had in the life
and movement of the new age. There was no reformation
in Eussia. That is the first broad fact to be noticed,
differentiating the new empire of the tsars from the West.
Eussia had not suffered from the abuses of the papacy ;
she had not experienced the tyranny of the popes which
drove German princes to revolt quite apart from the
interests of rehgion ; she had no doctrine of purgatory
and no sale of indulgences — Luther's first provocation.
Not entering into the great intellectual awakening which
so opened men's eyes in regard to religion as well as
secular knowledge that in England it was popularly known
as " the new learning," she missed its inspiration of new
1 This title— corresponding to the Latin " Caesar " — did not necessarily
involve a claim to the supreme position, since that had been designated by
the higher name "Augustus." Roman emperors had given dependent
princes the honorary designation of Caesar, under their own imperial
suzerainship. Nevertheless, it is doubtful whether among the Russians
in this late age the distinction was recognised.

THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA 395
ideas. Having had the Bible from the first in the ver
nacular she had no such experience as that which resulted
from its translation into English and German, and the
consequent popularising of Scripture as a long lost treasure
gladly recovered. Lastly, she had no Luther, no Zwingli,
no John Knox. On the other hand, in justice to the
Sclavonic race represented by Eussia, it should be remem
bered that John Huss was a Sclav ; and in some respects
John Huss was the parent as he certainly was the pre
cursor of the Eeformation on the Continent. Originating
in an Englishman, Wycliffe, the first of the reformers
before the Eeformation, it passed through Huss the Bohe
mian into Germany, and so came back from the Sclav to
the Teuton again.
Now, though Eussia did not need reformation to the
extent that was requisite in Europe, because she was not
suffering from the specific corruptions of the Eoman Church
at the end of the Middle Ages, she had her own super
stitions derived from a still earlier period, in the magical
value attached to icons and relics by the mass of the
people, as well as what some would consider to be the
errors of both branches of the Church in their departure
from the primitive type. At all events, in so far as the
Eeformation, over and above its Iconoclasm, was a religious
awakening, to Protestants it must be a matter of regret
that Eussia had no share in it. The common habit of
treating the Western Church as though it were the whole
Church has resulted in regarding the Eeformation as a
movement stirring Christendom to its depths, instead of
which it was simply a Western movement. Great churches
occupying vast areas of Europe, Asia, and Africa, were quite
outside its range, being neither scourged by the evils against
which it protested nor favoured with the factors of its new
life. The consolidation of the Eussian Empire under Ivan in.
and his successors was accompanied by quite another
stimulus to devotion. In the West the year 1000 had
been anticipated with terror as the destined date of the

396 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
end of the world ; a • similar alarm was felt in Eussia
towards the close of the fifteenth century, on the ground
that the seven-thousandth year after the Creation was
approaching. Then the boyars showed their zeal by build
ing a number of private churches. A curious result
followed. Priests were sent to private churches apart from
the parochial clergy. Being responsible only to their
patrons who bad appointed and who alone supported them,
they were indifferent to the bishops and independent
of the State, since they did not live upon the tithes.
Accordingly, these chaplain priests were charged with
insubordination and suspected of laxity of morals due to
the absence of ecclesiastical discipline. We must not
admit this scandal too readily, knowing the source from
which it comes.
Instead of the dreaded end of the world, what Eussia
now came to experience was a final and victorious conflict
with the Mongols. The Church took a leading part in
this patriotic effort. An old man, Bassian, archbishop of
Eostoff, encouraged Ivan with the utmost enthusiasm,
declaring that if the sovereign would not go he would
lead the assault ; he was seconded by Gerontius the metro
politan, and Ivan set out to attack the Mongols. Their
chief Achmed fled without striking a blow, and Eussia was
free again.
A strange light is thrown on the mind of the Church
at this time by the story of Gerontius's successor, the metro
politan Zosimus. This man had been appointed by Ivan
without the consent of a synod (a.d. 1491). He was
accused of adopting " a blasphemous Jewish heresy which
rejected our Saviour Jesus Christ and all His doctrine."
A Jew named Zachariah was said to have brought the
heresy from Lithuania to Novgorod twenty years before,
and to have seduced two priests in that city, Alexis and
Dionysius, by magic and cabalistic art. When Zosimus
was at Novgorod he met the two priests, and was so drawn
to them that he brought them with him back to Moscow,
and appointed one to be the chief priest at the famous new

THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA 397
Church oi the Assumption and the other to be chief priest
of the Church of the Archangel. In this way the suspected
teaching was introduced to the very heart of the empire on
the highest ecclesiastical authority. The heresy which the
Jew had whispered in the closet was now preached on the
housetop. But Gennadius, the Prince of Novgorod, would
not let the matter rest. He viewed the new teaching with
horror, and induced Ivan and Zosimus to summon a synod
on the question. Joseph of Volokolamsk appeared as the
eloquent champion of orthodoxy, and the heresy was con
demned. Alexis had already passed to the silence " beyond
these voices." But Dionysius was alive to receive his
anathema, and he was punished with imprisonment in a
convent. Zosimus himself was spared for the time being.
But twelve years later he was required to resign by Ivan
and sent off to a monastery on the ostensible ground of
drunkenness (ad. 1496). So grave was the idea of the
head of the Church being guilty of heresy that this shock
ing scandal was hushed up under cover of what was
regarded as the milder evil of intemperance.
After this the new metropolitan Simon presided over
a synod which was called to bring about a reformation of
morals. It ordered that convents for women should be
kept apart from the religious houses for men, and that no
men should perform Divine service in them — a drastic
measure that throws a lurid light on the suspected con
sequences of the visits of priests to these convents in
discharge of the duties of their holy office. The same
synod enacted the canon, which has obtained down to
our own day, that a priest must give up his cure on
the death of his wife and retire into a monastery — so
dangerous did the Eussian Church consider a celibate
priesthood to be. Priests of unworthy chaiacters were to
be deprived of their posts and degraded from their orders.
The enactments of this synod imply a recognition of serious
moral decay in the Church.
Meanwhile practices little better than the doings of
savages were witnessed in the court. One physician — who

398 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
had staked his head in undertaking the case — was pubhcly
executed for not saving the life of Ivan's eldest son whom
he was called in to cure ; another — a German — for failing
in his treatment of a Tartar prince at court, was put to the
torture by the chief's son, who would have let him off alive
for a ransom. The grand duke, to use the chronicler's
title, would not allow this ; so " they took him to the
river Moska, under the bridge in winter, and cut him to
pieces with a knife, like a sheep." The decay of morals is
further reflected in the Sudebuik, a code of laws which
Ivan issued in the year 1497 and which marks the second
stage in Eussian jurisprudence, the first being seen in the
Busskaya Pravada.1 Clearly the rise of the tsardom and
the consolidation of Eussia into a great empire, while
indicative of a kind of progress, and while really associated
with a certain spread of culture, must not be confounded
with an advance of the people in those higher things
that make for a nation's real greatness ; nor may the
corresponding development of the Church be taken as a
proof that the spirit of Christianity was becoming a power
in the land.
Ivan m. was followed by his son Basil (a.d. 1505),
and he in turn by his son Ivan iv., known as " Ivan the
Terrible."2 This strong, capable ruler was the first to
definitely and persistently denominate himself tsar, and
so make a bold, open claim to be the heir of the Eoman
Caesars, or at least their equal. His grandfather had only
used the title casually and tentatively. Ivan iv. had no
hesitation about the adoption of it.
Ivan was but a child ten years old when his father
died (a.d. 1533), and the government was administered
first by his mother and then by the boyars, till he was
able to take it up himself. For a time he ruled well
under the guidance of an old priest of Novgorod, named
1 P. 367.
* In Russian this surname means one to be reverenced or respected ; and
it was originally applied to Ivan as a title of honour. History, however,
has justly connected it with its more ugly signification.

THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA 399
Silvester. At the age of seventeen he issued a revised
edition of his grandfather's Sudebuik, and the next year
the Stoglat or " Book of the Hundred Chapters " appeared.
Its object was to reform the discipline of the Church, and
among other improvements it ordered was the establishment
of schools throughout the country, where reading, writing,
and choral singing were to be taught.
The second half of Ivan's reign was totally different in
character. He had greatly increased the importance of
Eussia by his mihtary achievements ; but later on he grew
Buspicious of the disaffection of the boyars, and his conduct
bordered on insanity. Ivan now went about the country
with a body of six hundred young men, whom he called
his " Peculiars," burning and ravaging his towns and villages.
He claimed the lives of his slaves, the Eussians, as his
property. In a fit of passion he killed his own son. Yet
Ivan was religious in his way. He prided himself on his
orthodoxy, and was credited with being able to repeat
whole chapters of the Bible. He would ring the bell for
matins himself and call up his court at all hours of the
night to attend the prayers. When at Alexandrooskoe he
spent most, of his time in church. He practised severe
asceticism and attempted to force it on his servants.
One metropolitan after another fell under the dis
pleasure of the pious tyrant. When the tsar's insane
degeneration set in, Athanasius, the metropolitan in office
at the time, being of a mild, timid nature, retired from his
responsible post, unable to meet its new requirements.
Ivan then appointed Germanus, the archbishop of Kazan,
a good old man, who begged to be excused from under
taking the difficult task that was laid upon him. But the
tsar would have no refusal. Germanus, forced to accept
the post, now resolved to do his duty in it. He at once
sought an interview with Ivan, and in a faithful, earnest,
fatherly way, urged him to turn from his ruinous course.
Such impertinence was intolerable. The tsar flung himself
into a rage, and forthwith sent the old bishop back to his
former diocese.

400 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Ivan's next choice fell on a friend of his childhood,
the monk Philip, who had retired to the wild solitude of
the Solovetsky, where his influence was stimulating the
monastery's missionary work round the borders of the
White Sea. In his queer way the tsar felt the fascination
of the venerable man's holiness, and chose him as his
spiritual adviser. Phihp wept at the compulsion that
dragged him from his retirement. But he went forth with
the spirit of a hero and a martyr. Earely did any man
undertake a more perilous duty. He would gladly have
escaped the task ; but now that it was laid upon him, like
his predecessor Gerontius, he determined to discharge it
faithfully to the full. Philip called on the bishops to help
him in opposing the tsar's tyrannical conduct. Some were
openly conniving at it ; others, though disapproving dared
not offer a word of protest. They united in warning the
metropolitan of the danger to Church and State from
irritating the tyrant. But Philip would not hear of any
compromise with iniquity. On the day of his consecration
he uttered fearless words of admonition in his reply to the
tsar's address of recognition, and Ivan submitted to them,
being at present under the spell of his veneration for the
speaker. It was not long before a fresh outbreak of cruelty on
the part of Ivan sent the boyars to Phihp for protection.
Then he behaved like a second Ambrose, but under very
different circumstances. The mad Ivan was a far more
dangerous person to confront than Theodosius, passionate
Spaniard though he was. Yet Philip would not recognise
Ivan when he came to the church with his " Peculiars,"
and when the metropohtan's attention was called to the
tsar's presence he refused to own him. When Ivan would
have silenced the bold pastor with threats, Philip exclaimed,
"I am a stranger and a pilgrim upon earth, as all my
fathers were, and I am ready to suffer for the truth,
Where would be my faith if I kept silence ? " x
Although the tsar left the church in a towering rage
1 Mouravieff, p. 115.

THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA 401
even yet he did not dare to lay violent hands on the
revered metropolitan. But a little later some charge was
trumped up against Philip, and a slavish law court then
pronounced his deposition. While he was conducting the
hturgy in his church a crowd of " Peculiars " rushed in and
stripped him to his shirt — a brutal act ordered by the
spiteful tsar in revenge for the public rebuke he had
received in church from the metropolitan. Dragged before
Ivan, Phihp besought the tsar to mend his ways, but in
vain. Philip's punishment for this new act of daring was
to receive the bleeding head of his nephew sent by the
tsar as a present to him in prison. He was then banished
to the Otroch Monastery in Tver, where after a short time
he was strangled by Ivan's order. The story of Philip is
worth telling in detail for the sake of the revelation of
a noble character which it contains ; but also because it
relates to the one recognised " martyr " among her prelates
in the Church of Eussia — a Church singularly free from
persecution during the whole course of her history.
Ivan reigned for fifty-one years, and died in the year
1584. His career has been a puzzle for the historians.
Not only did it vary greatly in character during successive
periods, but throughout it revealed a nature of startling
contrasts and inconsistencies. The cruel tsar was
intensely religious in his own way, but he was actively
interested in hterature and culture. He set up the first
printing press in Moscow, where the Acts of the Apostles
and the Epistles were printed under the superintendence
of the metropolitan Macarius during the happy early part
of this reign. A little later the tsar had a copy of the
Gospels printed, and after that the entire Bible was printed
in Sclavonic at Kiev, under the directions of Constantine the
deputy-governor. Some of Ivan's actions were rather the achievements of
a strong, capable ruler than the doings of a mere despot,
even when he was most tyrannical In the course of the
consolidation of Eussia he destroyed the ancient liberties of
Novgorod, which hitherto had governed itself as a practically
26

402 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
independent republic. This may be compared to the later
policy of Eussia in invading the freedom of Finland. It
was cruel to the subjects ; yet it was regarded as a pohtical
necessity by the government. Like the State, the Church
at Novgorod was in a way self-contained. In the earlier
times, throughout the rest of Eussia the clergy were more
or less Greek, or at least under the influence of the Greek
patriarch. But at Novgorod they were entirely Eussian,
and the archbishop was elected by the citizens without
waiting for any investiture from the metropolitan of Kiev.
He took the first place of dignity in the republic; in
acts of State his name was cited before all other names.
Novgorod wanted to have a metropolitan ; but that was
not allowed, and now Ivan's vigorous action put an end
to both its political and its ecclesiastical independence.
The remarkable contrasts which the life of Ivan
contains have given rise to conflicting views about his
character. The Pohsh poet Mickiewicz describes him as
" the most finished tyrant known in history." The historian
Karamsin — in his eloquent denunciation of this tyrant
which he read to Alexander I., with the liberal tsar's
approval — writes, " His conversion would have scandalised
the world and shaken belief in providence. He had
advanced too far into hell to be able to turn back"
Karamsin regards him as a prince born vicious and cruel,
miraculously brought into ways of virtue for a time, and
abandoning himself to fury in his later years; and
Kostomarof follows on similar lines. On the other hand,
Soloviev distrusts the partisan tales on which his evil
reputation rests. He was opposed by the nobles whose
independence he was limiting, and they would be only
too ready to encourage discreditable stories about their
ruler. But M. Eamabaut calls attention to one terribly
significant piece of evidence — a document preserved at
the monastery of Cyril, in which Ivan asks for the prayers
of the Church for his victims by name — how characteristic
is this of his mixture of religion and cruelty ! This
document contains 986 proper names, and references

THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA 403
to as many as 3,470 persons. In some cases a name is
followed by one of the clauses, " with his wife," " with his
wife and children," " with his son," " with his daughter."
Probably the true solution of the problem is that there was
a strain of madness in the tsar which first showed itself
in melancholia during a time of seclusion, and then at the
end of his reign in some approach to homicidal mania. A
cruel, self-willed, passionate tyrant, of great ability, energy,
and prowess, successful to a remarkable degree in war,
strong and wise in much of his civil government, rigorous
in the observances of religion and enforcing the same
rigour on those about him, Ivan is one of the most weird
characters in all history — a mad genius, doing his worst to
ruin the empire he had built up with magnificent ability ;
a diabolical devotee wading through seas of blood to his
untimely prayers.

CHAPTER IV
THE PATRIARCHATE
Books named in Chap. I. ; also Peter Mogila, Exposition of the
Orthodox Faith, Eng. trans., c. 1750 ; The Patriarch and the
Tsar : the Replies of Nikon (trans, by W. Palmer), 1871 ;
Palmer, Dissertations on the Orthodox or Eastern Cornmvmon,
1853.
The reign of Ivan's son, the amiable, feeble Feodor, is
noteworthy in Church history as the time when the brief
patriarchate of Moscow was established. Hitherto there
had been five patriarchs — the patriarchs of Eome, Con
stantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. But Eome
was now apostate. Like Matthias who was chosen to fill
Judas's vacant place, the patriarch of Moscow was to make
up the normal number again. The piety of Feodor is
credited with the idea of this daring ecclesiastical innovation;
but circumstances had prepared the way for it. The fall
of Constantinople and the loss of liberty suffered by its
patriarchs under the Turks ; the spread of Christianity
over Eussia and the shifting of the centre of gravity of
Oriental Christianity from the Greek to the Sclavonic
peoples ; the removal of the metropolitan from Kiev to
Vladimir, and then his settlement at Moscow, in the very
heart of Eussia, so far away from Constantinople; the
centralising of government in the hands of the tsar and
the consequent consolidation of the vast area over which
his sway extended ; the printing of the Bible and other
books in the language of the people ; and the Eussianising
of the Church and exclusion of Greek elements — all these
factors combined to render the now merely nominal subjec-

THE PATRIARCHATE 405
tion of the Church in Eussia to the patriarch of Constanti
nople an anachronism and an inconvenience.
It was under these circumstances that Joachim the
patriarch of Antioch paid a visit to the metropolitan
Dionysius at Moscow in the year 1580, in order to seek
aid for his poverty-stricken people. Dionysius stood on
his dignity in giving the benediction to his visitor in the
first instance, instead of humbly submitting to the blessing
of an ecclesiastical superior and returning it. The tsar
then proposed to his boyars the suitability of establish
ing a patriarchate at Moscow, and sent one of them to
discuss the question with Joachim, who replied that it was
a matter that could only be settled by an oecumenical
council, but promised to consult the other patriarchs
about it.
Two years later, Jermiah n., the patriarch of Constan
tinople, followed the example of his brother at Antioch,
and came to Moscow on a similar errand. It is painful
to see how in both cases the need of pecuniary aid
introduces a sordid element into the consideration of the
tsar's proposal. The Greeks hoped to gain something by
the friendship of Eussia, and the Eussians were not slow to
take advantage of their poverty and weakness. Jeremiah
had been imprisoned at Ehodes by the sultan, and, though
now at hberty, he found himself in desperate straits when
he threw himself on the compassion of his fellow-Christians
in Eussia. He can hardly be regarded as a free agent.
Nevertheless at first he resisted the tsar's proposal. He
was an old man and learned, and the chief custodian of
the now ossified customs of the Greek Church. So great
an innovation must have startled him when he heard
of it from his brother prelate, the patriarch of Antioch.
But he had had time to think it over since then ; and in
asmuch as he came to Moscow of his own accord, well
knowing what was desired there, he must have been
prepared to face the question. He really had no alternative
but to yield, and he may have taken a common-sense view
of the whole case. After all, the new step was inevitable.

406 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
So Jeremiah gave his reluctant consent, and the new
patriarchate was established without the oecumenical council
which Joachim had said was necessary for the origination
of it. A synod of all the Eussian bishops was now summoned
at Moscow (a.d. 1587); and this synod submitted three
names to the tsar, who at once chose the first of them,
the metropolitan Job. The newly appointed patriarch
was addressed as " oecumenical lord," and treated with
the ceremonial honours so important in the eyes of an
oriental court, which were scrupulously equated with those
assigned by ancient custom to his guest, the patriarch of
Constantinople. But beyond this accession of dignity the
patriarch of Moscow had acquired no more real power than
had been secured already by the metropolitan. Now, how
ever, Novgorod was able to get its desire. The supremacy
of Moscow being assured, there was no longer any objection
to having a metropolitan at Novgorod. Accordingly, one
of Job's first acts in the patriarchate was to raise the
bishop of the northern city to the position of metropolitan ;
at the same time he made the bishop of Eostoff also a
metropolitan. A year or two later the Bulgarian metro
politan Tirnoff, a descendant of the imperial families of the
Cantacuzenes and Palaeologi, came to Moscow, charged with
synodical letters from the three patriarchs of Constan
tinople, Antioch, and Jerusalem, confirming the appointment
of Job as patriarch of Moscow. Thus the new patriarchate
was firmly established and duly recognised.
We are now approaching the time known as " the
period of troubles." During the disorganisation of the
civil government that followed the death of Feodor (ad.
1598) the Church came to the front as the chief permanent
institution of the Eussian nation, and the patriarch of
Moscow stood out as the one visible centre of unity. In
this way the temporary weakness of the tsardom led to
the temporary elevation of the patriarchate. We shall see
later how the appearance of a strong tsar was followed
by the total and final abolition of the patriarchate. Mean-

THE PAIRI ARCH ATE 407
while, however, the office was rendering good service to
the State as well as to the Church.
A fresh attempt was now made to win over Eussia
by the Church of Eome. This began in the lifetime of
Feodor, who had offered himself as a candidate for the
kingship of Poland and Lithuania. Sigismund of Sweden
was chosen, and he proved himself a zealot for Eome,
and roused so fierce an anti-Eussian feeling that his
people were excited to a sort of crusade, which ultimately
issued in the burning and sacking of Moscow. Terrible
persecutions of the " orthodox " were perpetrated by the
followers of the " union." At an early stage of the con
flict the Swedes devastated the lands of the Solovetsky
Monastery and some smaller convents. A Httle later the
Khan of the Crimea invaded Eussia and besieged Moscow.
Then the patriarch Job sent his clergy round the walls
chanting litanies and carrying the icon of "our Lady of
the Don," after which he had it set up in a tent in
the midst of the troops, like the ark in the tabernacle.
Feodor, who was showing no energy in the defence of
his city, calmly went to bed, assured that the spiritual
protection secured by his patriarch would be sufficient.
But the real protector of Moscow was Feodor's brother-in-
law, Boris Godunoff, the masterful head of the government,
who strongly fortified the city and succeeded in driving
off the Mongols.
A movement was now sedulously fomented in Little
Eussia to induce the bishops of that district to consent to
union with Eome. It is said that two bishops were got
to sign a request to King Sigismund and the pope for the
union as though in the name of a synod, on the pretence
that it was a petition for new priveleges for the
orthodox Church. Hearing of this, Jeremiah the patriarch
of Constantinople — who does not appear to have acted as
though he had handed over his authority in this region
to his brother at Moscow — wrote to the two bishops that
he should deprive them of their offices if they yielded to
Eome, and other ecclesiastics protested. Then Ignatius, the

408 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
leader of the movement, assembled a council at Brest
Litovsky, which he opened with a speech in favour of
union. Many discussions followed. In the end the metro
politan Michael was gained over, and then he and four
bishops signed a synodical letter consenting to union on the
terms of the council of Florence, but with the proviso that
the discipline and ceremonies of the Eastern Church were to
be preserved. Meanwhile the two bishops whose signatures
to the earlier document had been obtained by false
pretences discovered and exposed the fraud. At the same
time a great outcry was raised against the five apostates at
Brest. Accordingly a second synod was assembled at this
border town. It consisted entirely of the orthodox party.
The churches were all in the hands of the party of the
union, and the synod had to meet in a private house.
The metropolitan refused to answer two summonses to
attend. Then the synod pronounced an anathema on him,
and also on all the apostate bishops. On the other hand, the
Uniats held their synod in a church, where they pronounced
their anathema on the orthodox. The result was a schism.
Eome admitted the Uniates on remarkably liberal
terms. They were to retain their own ceremonies and
even their own form of the creed. All that was required
of them was submission to the pope. The Uniats had the
upper hand both in Poland and in Lithuania, and they
used their power to persecute both the orthodox party and
also the protestants who were found in these parts.
The ancient cathedral of St. Sophia of Kiev was taken
from the orthodox and held for a time by the Uniats.
But the apostate metropolitan did not dare to make it his
centre, and he resided in safer quarters at Novgorod.
An effort was made to seize the famous Pechersky
Monastery ; but this failed. Subsequently much of the
property of the orthodox monasteries was sequestrated,
and Dominican convents were established in various
parts of the country. This extraordinary condition of
affairs, in which no orthodox bishops were appointed for
Little Eussia, went on for over twenty years.

THE PATRIARCHATE 409
The disorders that next afflicted Eussia were occasioned
by one of the most amazingly successful impostures ever
known to history. A pretender personated young Prince
Dmitri, a son of Ivan the Terrible, who had died, probably
murdered, some years before. This clever man was able to
fight his way to Moscow and to reign there for some troublous
years as Tsar of Eussia. In the civil war thus occasioned the
Church was seriously affected, and monks and bishops were
directly involved. One man in particular now comes to
the front, both on account of his vigorous activity at the
time, and because his name has become famous in the
light of subsequent history. This is Philaret Eomanoff,
the ancestor of the now reigning imperial family of Eussia.
The house of Euric, the founder of the Eussian princedom
at Kiev, became extinct at the death of Dmitri. The
new family of tsars was not yet in evidence. But during
the time of confusion that intervened, its first known
ancestor was already a person of importance in national
and ecclesiastical affairs. Philaret was metropolitan of
Eostoff. When the city was attacked by the pretender's
party, most of the inhabitants fled ; but the bishop held his
ground, shut himself up in his cathedral with those who
refused to desert him, and there celebrated the liturgy as
usual. The rebels broke in, to find him preaching to his
people. They seized hold of Philaret, tore off his episcopal
robes, and dragged him out of the place, half dead from their
violent handling. At Moscow the Trinity laura became a
citadel of defence and supported a siege of sixteen months,
when attacked, it is said, by an army of 80,000 men with
sixty cannons pouring shot on its walls and churches. On
the side of the monastery eight hundred men fell ; but still
the place held out. Twice it supplied Moscow itself with
food. So wonderful an endurance was only accounted for
by the protecting presence of two saints, Sergius and Nicon,
who were beheved to appear to the valiant defenders in
visions or dreams. This monastery was now the heart of
the defence of Eussia against an impudent, lying usurpa
tion. At the same time the patriarch Hermogenes was

410 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
exerting all his influence to check the imposture. To add
to the miseries of the time, the Poles ravaged the country,
and seized and burnt its capital, deposed Hermogenes, and
imprisoned him in a monastery, where he was starved to
death (a.d. 1612). The Greek Ignatius, a follower of the
pseudo-Dmitri, was now set up as patriarch of Eussia.
Meanwhile the monks and their supporters in the Trinity
Monastery still held out. At length its devoted patriotism
and loyalty to its Church were rewarded. Gradually the
infection of heroism spread. A fast of purification was
observed all over Eussia. The new spirit now awakening
in the people infused itself into an army of rescue. The
Poles were defeated ; the Kremlin was captured ; and
Philaret's young son Michael was elected tsar in the
Trinity Monastery (a.d. 1613).
The new tsar showed his gratitude to the Church and
his appreciation of its support by uniting a council of
bishops to the council of the boyars. In this way the
Church was represented in the government of Eussia as it
is in that of England by the presence of the bishops in the
House of Lords. Much against his will, Philaret, now old
and worn with the hardships he had endured, was elected
patriarch ; and thus father and son stood at the head of
Church and State as patriarch and tsar. The two together
effected several important administrative reforms both in
civil and in ecclesiastical affairs. Centralisation was aimed
at throughout. Courts were established at Moscow for try
ing affairs concerning the provincial towns, and even the
governors were made subject to these courts. Similarly the
archimandrites of the monasteries and the priests and
deacons and other clerical officers were put under the juris
diction of the patriarch in all except capital cases. On
the other hand, Michael confirmed his father's edict for
bidding the monasteries to acquire any more real property.
By this time a large part of the land of Eussia had come
into the hands of the monks. The growth of the Church
is seen in the continual increase in the number of dioceses.
One addition, the bishopric of Astrachan, organised earlier,

THE PATRIARCHATE 411
was a sign of the extension of Eussia in Asia that was
now going on. Two dioceses in Tobolsk and Siberia were
added (a.d. 1623). Philaret prepared a new Trebuik, or
book of ritual,1 and other service books.
Modern Western scholarship was now gradually trick
ling into Eussia, though only in slender rills, which left
the greater part of the empire intellectually dry and
barren. The most prominent leader in this movement
was Peter Mogila. He had been educated at the university
of Paris, had served as a distinguished soldier in the Polish
war, and had subsequently taken the tonsure and retired
to the Pechersky Monastery, of which in course of time
he was made archimandrite. No sooner was Mogila in
charge of this great monastery than he established a school,
from which he sent the more promising students to uni
versities in Western Europe. Cyril Lucar took note of
his intellectual activity and appointed him exarch of his
See. Peter Mogila was more competent to appreciate the
various aspects of the age-long controversy with Eome
than any previous defenders of orthodoxy had been. He
had a printing press, from which he issued editions of the
Fathers, and service books carefully edited in the interest
of orthodoxy, in order to counteract the service books cir
culated by the Uniats. This is a curious feature of the
polemics of the Eussian Church and most significant of
the importance attached to ritual. Very few people could
read; sermons were rarely preached. Apart from the
schools, which could not have been numerous, most of the
people got their religious instruction from the contemplation
of pictures and from attendance at the services. The icons
were worshipped as mere fetishes ; still, to thoughtful
people many of them conveyed historical and allegorical
lessons. Then the ritual was all symbolical, and the words
of the service books embodied the dogmas of the faith.
For most people these were the only verbal or literary
«
1 The Trebnik is like the Roman ritual, a book directing the rites for
all the sacraments except the communion, which is regulated by the ritual
of the Liturgy, corresponding to the Roman mass.

412 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
presentations of orthodoxy. Accordingly both parties
manipulated them for their own purposes. The Uniats
altered them so as to favour Eoman Cathohcism, and the
orthodox ruled out these innovations and brought them
more into line with the authorised teaching of the Eastern
Church. But Peter Mogila did more than this. He broke
the silence of centuries which had brooded over the ice
bound sea of Greek theology, and published a Confession
of Faith, which was written partly by himself and partly
under his direction by the archimandrite Isaiah Trophinio-
vich. It was subsequently revised by Meletius Syriga,
and in its newer form it passed into the Eussian Church
proper, where it is still acknowledged as a standard
authority. This catechism was not only intended to
defend the orthodoxy of the Church against Eoman errors ;
it was also issued as a safeguard against Calvinism, which
was now penetrating into Poland and Little Eussia.
In the year 1643 there was held a synod at Jassy in
Moldavia, which condemned the doctrines of Calvinism.
Peter Mogila and four Eussian bishops signed the acts of
this synod. Thus, while as the most learned prominent
theologian of his country Mogila took the lead in the
campaign against Eomanism, he was equally decided in
his opposition to Protestantism. He was not drawn into
the tentative alliance between the two great opposing
forces that were contending with the papacy, which might
have become a mighty force changing the current of the
history of Christendom, if Cyril Lucar's large-minded
liberal policy had been pursued. The Eussian Church
has never been liberal. More than once reforming itself in
morals and discipline, it is intensely conservative in
doctrine and ritual. Thus its literature is almost wholly
devoted to apologetics and liturgiology. Scholarship, not
speculation, characterises its most intellectual leaders.
There are many instances of great scholarship among
the Eussian ecclesiastics. Thus Philaret's successor Joseph
was celebrated for his learning, and Michael conferred
with him and the bishops in regard to a project for

THE PATRIARCHATE 413
a common codification of civil and ecclesiastical law.
This great work was carried out, however, by boyars and
ministers of State.
By far the most famous of all the patriarchs of
Moscow is Nicon, who followed Joseph after an interval.
His long life extends over the whole of the patriarchal
period. He was born before the first patriarch was
appointed ; and he lived to see the patriarchate super
seded by the Holy Synod. The child of a peasant home
at Nijgorod, he learned to read the Scriptures in early life,
and he was so moved by them that he resolved to devote
himself to the service of God. Following the custom of
his age and Church, he understood this to mean becoming
a monk. He left home secretly, and was about to com
mence his novitiate in the monastery of Jeltovodsky. But
his father discovered him and persuaded him to return
home, marry, and become a priest. It was against his
own judgment, and he afterwards took the death of all his
children as a call to return to his earlier aims. Nicon
now induced his wife to enter a convent, and he himself
retreated to the distant northern monastery of Solovetsky.
After a time he sought still deeper seclusion in an island
hermitage amid the ice of the White Sea. In the year
1646 he submitted to the urgent entreaty of the monks
of Kojeozersky, and was appointed to the headship of their
monastery. This position following on the fame of his
asceticism led to his being regarded as a leader of the
Church, and he had to visit Moscow in connection with
ecclesiastical affairs (a.d. 1649). There he came under
the notice of the new tsar. Michael had died in the year
before Nicon's appointment to Kojeozersky and had been
succeeded by his son Alexis (a.d. 1 645), an intelligent, if not
a strong ruler, anxious to promote moral reform, Western
culture, and general progress. Attracted by the noble bear
ing and vigorous eloquence of Nicon, Alexis appointed him
archimandrite of the Novospassky Monastery, where the
members of the Eomanoff family were buried. He was now
brought into frequent contact with the tsar, who came to

414 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
lean upon his advice in regard to matters of State as well
as in ecclesiastical business. Three years later Alexis made
him metropolitan of Novgorod, and he then had the ex
ceptional honour of being consecrated by the patriarch of
Jerusalem, who happened to be in Eussia at the time on
one of the begging expeditions to which the once venerated
chief bishops of the Greek Church were compelled to
humiliate themselves.
Nicon was now entrusted with great power. For
instance, he had the right to enter the prisons, hear the
prisoners' complaints, and if he thought them innocent,
order their release ; so that his position in this respect was
something like that of the English Home Secretary. He
proved his heroism during a riot, when he faced the mob
and was knocked down and left for dead in the square at
Novgorod. Helped up by his assistants, he persisted in
penetrating to the most dangerous part of the city, walking
in procession with the cross, and actually entered the
building where the rebels were assembled. Struck with
admiration for his intrepidity, they did not molest him any
more. The rebellion went on for a time. But at last
Nicon was able to quell it by his personal influence.
In matters of religion Nicon was also felt to be a great
leader. Preaching was now almost extinct in the Eussian
Church. Dreary homilies prescribed by authority and
monotonously read took the place of real sermons. The
services consisted for the most part of the chanting of
long archaic liturgies on the part of the priests, unintelligible
to a later generation, or genuflections and prostrations by
the congregation. Nicon revived the practice of preaching.
His sermons were scriptural in teaching and full of life and
power. Crowds gathered to hear him, and felt the Bpell
of his eloquence. We may regard him as the Chrysostom
of the Eussian Church. Nicon also reformed the order of
the liturgical service, which had drifted into confusion, and
improved the singing arrangements after the model of the
Greek chanting.
Saint worship was as characteristic of the Eussian

THE PATRIARCHATE 415
Church as of the Eoman — perhaps more so. Advised by
Nicon, Alexis convoked a solemn synod in honour of the
three dead prelates — Job, Hermogenes, and Philip — with
the object of bringing their remains to the church of the
Assumption. Nicon himself went to the remote Solovetsky
Monastery to fetch the body of the martyred Philip, who
was addressed as though living, in an appeal from the tsar
that he would come to Moscow and absolve the spirit of
Ivan who was buried there. A more curious embassy was
never despatched. It was directed to the spirit of the
saint which was thought to be accessible at the place
where his bones were lying; he was requested to grant
permission for their removal ; with them he would come
himself. The spirit of the old mad tsar was also supposed
to haunt his own mouldering remains. Therefore, of course,
the martyr could bring relief to the lost soul by the coming
of his body into the place where Ivan's body was buried.
This is an application of the ideas of relic worship that
exceeds all precedents. It illustrates the character of the
Russian rehgion of the seventeenth century in the person of
one of the most enlightened of rulers. Then what must
that religion have meant to ignorant peasants, villagers living
in remote regions of the vast empire, cut off from the
metropolis by wolf-scoured forests ?
In the year 1653, after long resisting the entreaties
of Alexis, Nicon accepted the position of patriarch of
Moscow, which had been vacant for some time, since
the death of his predecessor Joseph. We cannot always
penetrate to the motives which lie behind the tradi
tional nolo episcopari ; but in the present case we can see
that, quite apart from any ascetic abnegation of ambition,
Nicon would perceive the serious difficulties of the position
offered to him. Two sections of the community were already
opposed to him — the ecclesiastics who resented his dis
ciplinary reforms, and the boyars who were jealous of the
imperial favouritism that he enjoyed. But no sooner were
his objections overborne by the entreaties of his friend and
master the tsar, than Nicon threw himself into the duties

416 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
of his exalted position with his customary fearless energy.
In the first place, he revised the service books. It has
been considered that his most important reform in this
matter was a correction of the position of the fingers in
the benediction. According to the Greek posture — which
differs from the Latin — the ring finger is bent so as to
touch the thumb and thus represent X for " Christ," 1 and
also for the cross, while the first finger being upright and
the second a little curved, those fingers perhaps represent
I C, the initial and final letters of " Jesus." 2 So great
importance was attached to this symbolism, that irregu
larities in regard to it were severely punished. On the
other hand, Nicon's discipline in dealing with the prevalent
laxity of finger posture' increased the number of his enemies.
To us his literary emendations may be more interesting.
Alexis took the greatest interest in a revision of the
Sclavonic version of the Bible. This was carried out under
the directions of Nicon, who got five hundred manuscripts
of the Scriptures and other books from Mount Athos for the
correction of the text, which had become very corrupt.3
Nicon's revisions of service books and Bible were confirmed
at a synod of Greek bishops convoked by Paisius the
patriarch of Constantinople. In sending this decision to
Nicon, Paisius urged him to preserve the unity of the
orthodox Church under the five patriarchs of Constanti
nople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Moscow, but
at the same time begged him to be indulgent to those
who erred in unimportant matters. Unhappily this was
not Nicon's way. He is grand when showing fearless
independence in opposition to a mob, and strong and bold
1 Xpurrbs.
2 'Itjo-oCs. In the Latin benediction the thumb and the first two fingers
are held upright, while the third and fourth lingers are bent.
8 One of the most important Sclavonic MSS. of the Gospels is the Ostromir
Codex written by Gregory, a deacon of Novgorod, and dating from the year
1056-57. The earliest dated complete Sclavonic MS. of the Gospels now
known is assigned to the year 1144, and the earliest MS. of the whole Bible
to the year 1499. The first printed edition is the famous Ostrog Bible
of a.d. 1581. See Scrivener, Criticism of the N.T., 4th edit, (edited by P.
Miller), vol. ii. pp. 158-161.

THE PATRIARCHATE 417
in carrying out his purging of the Church against all
opposition ; but the temperament which favours such
virile virtues is not so ready to cultivate the graces of
tolerance and gentleness, and Nicon was a stern ecclesiastic.
Even his admirer Mouravieff admits that his " ardent zeal
for eradicating all that was evil in the Church carried him
beyond the bounds which pastoral long-suffering might
have observed." 1
The first revised work to be printed was the Slonjebuik
or service book, which was followed by the Skreejdl (" The
Table "), a patristic catena of doctrines. The revision was
not left to make its way on its merits. The old MSS. of
the corrupt text were violently taken from the monasteries,
where they had been used for years, and the revised
versions forcibly substituted. Naturally such high-handed
acts roused fierce resentment among the ignorant, conserva
tive monks. The result was a schism which issued in
the large sect of the Staro-Obriadtsi, or Baskolniks, who
have suffered much persecution for their adhesion to the
old books.
. But while Nicon was severe in the discipline of the
Church, he showed a large-minded tactfulness in dealing
with foreign affairs. During his patriarchate Little Eussia
was united with the Church and empire after a war with the
Poles. The movement from within was led by Kmeltnitsky,
the "Hetman," who asked the army whether they would
belong " to the unbelieving khan (the sultan), to the Latin
king, or to the orthodox tsar ? " He saw and he made the
men see that independence was impossible. Faced by this
dilemma, they shouted, " We wish to be under the orthodox
tsar." It was more difficult to secure ecclesiastical submission.
The metropolitan of Kiev and the archimandrite of the
Pechersky Monastery had no inclination to exchange a
merely nominal subordination to Constantinople for a very
real submission to Moscow with its masterful prelate.
But Nicon's flattering reception of the delegates from
1 History, p. 206.
27

418 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
these two ecclesiastics and the presents he sent back with
them molified their resentment against the policy of the
government ; and although the union was not actually
effected at once, it came about some thirty years later.
Thus at last, after centuries of alienation, Kiev, the vener
able parent city of Christianity in Eussia, was reunited to
the national Church to which it had given birth. This
happy result, springing from the diplomatic skill of Nicon,
delighted the tsar. In another way he greatly pleased
Alexis. When Moscow was devastated by the plague,
the patriarch bestirred himself to improve the sanitation
of the place, and took personal care of the royal family.
For these services the tsar bestowed on him the title of
" Great Lord."
Meanwhile Nicon's severity of discipline increased his
unpopularity among the clergy. He punished intemperate
popes with flogging and imprisonment — customary modes
of chastisement at the time ; and he insisted on some
degree of education in candidates for ordination, the
minimum being ability to read and write. Then the
boyars' jealousy led to plots and intrigues, which produced
such an intolerable situation, that Nicon, being on one
occasion reproached for his pride by one of the princes,
broke out into a rage, declared that he was no longer
patriarch, and tore off his episcopal robes. Dressed in the
simple garments of a monk, he retired to the Krestnoy
Monastery, near the White Sea. He now became gloomy
and bitter in spirit, anathematising one after another of his
enemies. A little later, on the invitation of one of the
boyars who was friendly to him, he made a secret journey
to Moscow, suddenly presented himself in the Church of
the Assumption, resumed the patriarch's robe and staff of
office, and conducted the liturgy. Here was a dramatic
surprise for prince and people. The boyars persuaded the
mild Alexis, who was powerless in their hands, not to
receive his old friend in his palace. The situation became
intolerable, and a council was summoned to deal with it.
This was the most imposing Church council ever held in

THE PATRIARCHATE 419
Eussia. The patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria were
there as well as Eussian metropolitans and bishops. Nicon
came in his patriarchal robes. At the sight of the great man
summoned as a defendant, Alexis burst into tears. But
the tsar was impotent to save his old friend. A variety of
charges were brought against him, consisting in the main of
accusations of arbitrary, tyrannical dealings with the Church,
on the ground of which he was formally deposed, stripped
of his robes, and sent as a prisoner to a monastery at
Bielo-ozero. Nicon lived to see the end of the patriarchate and the
establishment of the Holy Synod under Peter the Great.
He may have owed his fall from power in a measure to his
own harshness ; but he had been a great ecclesiastic and
a great statesman, correcting abuses in the Church and
helping to establish the unity and power of the nation.
He has been called the Eussian Thomas a Becket,1 a com
parison that does not do justice to his merits.
1 Leroy Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, part iii. p. 154.

CHAPTER V
PETER THE GREAT AND THE HOLY SYNOD
Morfill ; Rambaud ; Leroy Beaulieu ; Nicolas Polevoy, History of
Peter the Great ; Torudin, The Roman Pope and the Eastern Popes ;
Schuler, Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia, New York, 1884 ;
Merejkowski, Peter and Alexis (a well-informed historical
novel).
Alexis died in the year 1676 at the age of forty-seven,
and was succeeded by his eldest son Feodor, a young man of
weak health, who reigned without distinction for six years,
and died without an heir. Sophia, the daughter of Alexis,
a handsome, clever woman, then contrived to have herself
proclaimed regent for her imbecile brother Ivan and her
young half-brother Peter, a child of Alexis by a second
wife, born in the year 1672, and therefore four years of
age when his father died. Peter was an intelligent, keenly
observant child. But by the cruel policy of Sophia and
the able but unpopular minister Basil Golitsin, who was as
her right hand, his education was deliberately neglected.
The object of this cruel injustice was to keep him per
manently unfit to administer the government of the State,
so that they might continue to share it between them. It
was a diabolically subtle policy. But it failed utterly. At
the age of seventeen Peter seized the reins and sent his
unnatural sister off to a convent, where she died after
seventeen years' imprisonment. Much of the brutality and
coarseness of the great tsar's subsequent conduct must be
set down to the account of his deliberately neglected
youth. His life-story would have been very different in
many respects if it had not been for the iniquitous dis-
420

PETER THE GREAT AND THE HOLY SYNOD 421
advantages with which he set out. If it is a crime to steal
the bread from a child's mouth, it is scarcely less a crime
to deprive him of the education that is his natural right ;
and this is the charge that must be laid to the account of
the ambitious regent and her unscrupulous minister.
With the commencement of the reign of Peter the Great
we enter on the modern history of Eussia. The events
noticed in the immediately preceding chapters will have
disproved the popular notion that Eussia was ever entirely
isolated and dissevered from the comity of European
nations, excepting during the dismal three centuries of the
Mongol possession. Previous to that time she had been
in close contact with Constantinople. Both in Church
and in State at the great centres of Kiev and Novgorod
Eussian civilisation had been in line with the civilisation
of Eastern Europe. In some respects it was even more
advanced than that of Western Europe at the break-up of
the Eoman Empire and during the wars of the barons. The
Mongol invasion had swept much of this culture away,
checked the course of national development, shut off the
Sclavonic population from Greek and Teutonic Europe, and
turned Eussia into a semi- Asiatic country. It took many
generations for her people to recover from so huge and
crushing a calamity. The vastness of the territory of
Eussia, the thinness of its widely scattered populations, and
the remoteness of most of them from the centres of
enhghtenment, have always resulted and must still result in
great differences in the social conditions of the people.
Necessarily the mass of the outlying peasants are only
indirectly affected, if at all influenced, by the advance of
culture in the towns. Beligiously as well as socially, most
of Eussia is still in the Middle Ages, that is to say, in the
period before the Eenaissance.
But in Moscow, Eostoff, Novgorod, and other great
towns there was a consciousness of the larger world long
before Peter came on the scene. Ivan the Terrible
took decided steps towards bringing Western culture into
Eussia. The Eomanoff dynasty followed on similar lines.

422 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
The gentle Alexis was anxious to import education and
enlightened manners into his empire. Still, when all
that was done in this way has received due recognition,
it remains true that Peter the Great achieved the huge
twofold task of restoring Eussia to Europe and introducing
Europe to Eussia. His clear ideas and his vigorous pursuit
of them went far beyond anything accomplished or even at
tempted or conceived by his predecessors in these directions.
He aimed at modernising Eussia by bringing her into
contact with the progressive nations of the West, and in a
considerable degree he succeeded, though by no means to
the extent that external appearances would suggest. We
might compare Eussia in the time of Peter with Japan in
our own day. In both cases we have a long-stagnant
people suddenly stirred and roused by a rush of life from
the progressive West. But the immediate effect is much
greater in Japan than it was in Eussia. Whether the
permanent results will be equally to the advantage of the
yellow race remains to be seen.
Peter was always fond of mechanical contrivances, and
it was quite congenial to him to work side by side with
the artisans in the dockyard at Deptford when he came
over to England to learn shipbuilding. Neither his educa
tion nor his manners were beyond the standard of an
English working-man of his day. But he had a great
intellect and an indomitable will, and it was much to
him that neither were warped or prejudiced by the con
ventions of the schools. Even more than Napoleon, Peter,
though the son of an emperor, was really a self-made man.
His European travels and the mechanical labour that so
scandalised his courtiers had their place in his dehberate
pohcy. Peter visited dockyards to learn shipbuilding,
because he saw that Eussia needed a navy if she was to
hold her own on the Baltic. For the same reason he
founded his new capital close to this sea (a.d. 1703). But
he had greater ideas and wider projects than those of naval
defence or offence. Moscow was buried deep in the heart
of Eussia. Before the age of railways this metropohs was

PETER THE GREAT AND THE HOLY SYNOD 423
quite out of touch with foreign countries. Now it was the
design of Peter the Great to bring his country into vital
contact with the rest of Europe. The founding of
St. Petersburg was one important step in this direction.
With herculean energy he did all that one man could do
by his own action to introduce the ideas and arts of the
advancing nations to his benighted subjects. Many
influences from the West flowed into Eussia when Peter
opened the door. Englishmen and Germans especially
came in great numbers, spreading commerce and scientific
education among the people of the towns.
These novelties were not brought about without opposi
tion. While Peter was on his travels he heard of a
dangerous revolt of the Streltsi, the choicest imperial
troops, the Eussian " praetorian guard." The tsar hurried
back, suppressed the insurrection, and punished the rebels
with savage cruelty. The old Nationalist party called
Peter " the foreign tsar," and his followers " the Germans."
Nevertheless he did not swerve from his purpose. He was
convinced that this was for the good of his people. Paternal
government is of the essence of tsardom, and since Peter
was by far the ablest man in the country, head and
shoulders above his people, he felt justified in treating
them as children. So we have the paradox of an uneducated
man spreading new ideas and laying the foundations of
civihsation and culture in a great nation. In all this
Peter was thoroughly patriotic. There was no ground for
any suspicion like that which sprang up in England when
Queen Mary wished to introduce Philip's Spaniards to high
places in the Church. The English, the Germans, the
Dutch might come as teachers and traders to bring know
ledge and wealth to Eussia; but none of them were
appointed to posts of honour. Peter's ministers and
officials in high positions were all born Eussians.
The great tsar thoroughly reorganised his empire in
military, social, and religious affairs. He dissolved the
mutinous Streltsi, and raised a regular army of over 200,000
men. Thus he strengthened the autocracy by increasing

424 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
its military power. This had an influence on all depart
ments of State. Peter's idea was the establishment of an
elaborate, unified organisation. Everybody was to serve
the State — some in the army, others in the Church, the
rest by payment of taxes. He introduced important
changes into the social order. No doubt these were not
all improvements. In place of the old custom of equal
inheritance, Peter initiated the German law of primogeniture;
and the peasants lost power and rights by becoming parts
of a great territorial system. But in one important matter
Peter brought about a great reform. This was in the
emancipation of woman. Hitherto the women of Eussia
had been kept in Oriental seclusion and subjection, partly
owing to old Byzantine influences, partly also owing to the
effect of the long Mongolian dominance. The tsar had
seen the very different position of woman in the West, and
he aimed at giving similar freedom and similar rights to
the women of his empire. He ordered that betrothal
should take place six weeks before marriage, with a right
to break the contract during the interval. Parents and
guardians were compelled to swear that they were not
making their young people marry against their will, and
masters to do the same in the marriage of their slaves.
Midwives were forbidden to make away with illegitimate
children. Then there were reforms in other directions.
Thus the praviozli, or public flogging of debtors, was
stopped. Peter allowed domestic serfs to enter the army
even without the consent of their masters, and he permitted
those who had gained some money by trade to enrol
themselves as citizens of the towns where they lived
— also without their masters' consent. He ordered the
Senate to prohibit the sale of peasants apart from the
land.1 One of Peter's changes brought Eussia into line with
the rest of Europe in a very significant way. The old
Eussian calendar had been dated from " the creation of the
world," and the old Eussian year had begun in September.
1 Morfill, p. 343.

PETER THE GREAT AND THE HOLY SYNOD 425
Peter reckoned by the Christian era; the year was to
begin in January, as with us.1
But some of Peter's imitations of the West were
beyond the manners of his people. He introduced the
" assembly," in which European costume was to be worn ;
but it was " only a parody of Versailles." 2 Visitors from
the West observed that men smoked in the presence of
ladies, and that frequently noble cavaliers had to be taken
out drunk. Peter also introduced reforms into the government of
the Church. The most important of these innovations was
the substitution of the Holy Synod for the patriarchate.
The patriarch Adrien, who had shown little sympathy with
the new ideas imported from the West, died in the year
1700. Peter did not appoint any successor. He con
ferred on Stephen Javorski the title of " custodian of the
patriarchal throne," while he was arranging for a new form
of ecclesiastical government.
Later on he organised the Holy Synod3 for the
supreme government of the Eussian Church. The synod
takes the place of the patriarch. It consists of bishops
and priests nominated by the tsar and presided over by a
State official, called the " High Procurator," a layman, whom
Peter preferred to be a military officer, representing the
tsar. The procurator is popularly known as " the eye of
the tsar." Formerly the inferior clergy were in a majority ;
but now they are outnumbered by the bishops. The synod
sits at St. Petersburg ; it has delegates in Moscow and
elsewhere. It is sometimes said that the tsar is the head
of the Eussian Church. This is true enough in fact, for
the autocracy comprehends the Church as well as the
State. But it is not allowed in theory, nor is it recog
nised in the forms of ecclesiastical order. The Oriental
1 This must not be confounded with the question of " Old Style." The
"Old Style" (i.e. the Julian year) still continued uncorrected in Russia,
and is now twelve days behind the corrected year of Europe.
2 Eambaud, p. 386.
8 Its full title is "The Most Holy Governing Synod."

426 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Church protests against the Eoman papacy ; it cannot set
up a papacy of its own, which in one respect would be
even more scandalous, since the pope is a bishop, but the
tsar a layman. The Eussian Church is not built on the
theory invented by Henry VIII., and thoroughly lived up
to by the imperious Elizabeth — that the king is the real
head of the Church and as such master of the bishops.
It agrees with thoroughgoing Protestantism in maintain
ing that only Christ is the Head of the Church, and it
does not allow that He has any earthly vicar. Under
Christ the synod is supposed to rule independently. This
is the decent fiction.
The establishment of the Holy Synod was justified by
Peter on the precedent of the ancient Church councils. He
maintained that he was reverting to precedent in having
his Church governed by a council. But of course the
mere revival of archaeology was the very last thing the
daring, innovating tsar was likely to promote. Peter
issued an ecclesiastical code which was wholly utilitarian
in character. He rode rough-shod over customs and pre
cedents that did not favour his aims. With the tsar
theories counted for nothing ; practical considerations were
all he thought of. He argued that government by a
council was better than autocratic authority, because it
obviated the danger of tyranny — wilfully blind to the
application of the same principle to his own position as
autocrat. But he could not endure the rivalry of a
patriarch. He had the warning example of Nicon before
his eyes. Peter would give no second Nicon his chance.1
Therefore, while the abolition of the patriarch was ostensibly
an action in favour of liberty, it was really one that crippled
1 In his preamble to the order establishing the synod, Peter says : " The
collegiate organisation would not bring on the country the troubles and
seditions which could survive where there is one man only who is found
at the head of the Church. . . . The people would not see the differ
ence between the spiritual and the temporal powers. . . . Struck with the
virtue and splendour of the pastor of the supreme Church, they imagine
that he is a second sovereign, equal in power to the autocrat and even
superior." See Rambaud, p. 39'J.

PETER THE GREAT AND THE HOLY SYNOD 427
the independence of the Church and brought it into sub
jection to the State. The masterful tsar would not allow a
Church which was as a second state within the State;
therefore he made the Church a department of his State.
Peter's high-handed dealings with the Church were only
submitted to by his bishops with bitter resentment. The
new system was endorsed by the patriarchs of the other
parts of the orthodox Church. But we must not forget
that these dignitaries were in the miserable condition of
subjects of the Turkish Empire among a poverty-stricken
people, largely dependent on the bounty of the tsar for the
supply of their necessities.
Peter accused his bishops of pride, and bade them
conduct themselves more humbly. He ordered them to
have schools in which the children of the popes were to
be educated. Any who were not thus educated were to
be drafted into the army. It was compulsory education
under penalty of conscription. The sons of the nobles
were also to attend the bishops' schools. The tsar was
anxious to spread popular education; he had schools
established for this purpose in every province of his
empire, the masters of which were furnished from his
mathematical school at St. Petersburg. He'also estabhshed
Bpecial naval and engineering colleges. But the people
were not ripe for these improvements, and even Peter's
herculean efforts left Eussia as a whole still far behind
the rest of Europe.
Such wholesale innovations forced upon a conservative
people by authority could not but arouse opposition,
which would look for. an opportunity to express itself.
The priests were obstinate opponents of the whole move
ment. No doubt Peter's knowledge that they would take
up this attitude was one of the motives leading him to
suppress the patriarchate and bring the Church more
effectually under his own power. But that in turn
provoked resentment and led to counter-plots. It is in
the light of this condition of affairs that we must regard
the saddest scene in the life of the tsar, the execution of

428 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
his son Alexis. This unhappy prince had incurred the
displeasure of his father by giving way to dissolute habits
Then he had followed the not uncommon example of an
heir-apparent, and sided with the opposition. He had
even done much worse. He had intrigued with Sweden
against his father's government, though as he believed in
the true interest of his country. In his opposition to the
new methods of government he was aided by his mother
Eudoxia, Peter's first wife, whom the tsar had treated
with heartless brutality and sent to a convent. She
had converted the convent into a court, where she wel
comed the disaffected, for Eudoxia was the patroness of
the priests' party. Alexis is reported to have said,
" I will whisper a word to the bishops. They will pass
it on to the priests ; who will repeat it to the people,
and everything will be as it was before."1
The treason was intolerable and unpardonable.
Eudoxia was sent to another convent, where she was kept
in strict confinement, and the tsarevitch was tried, con
demned, flogged, and executed — probably by the knout.
Peter was certainly responsible for the torture and death
of his son Alexis. It was an act of deliberate policy. As
such it is not comparable with Ivan the Terrible's dreadful
deed when he struck his son dead with his own hand in
a fit of mad rage. But the whole story is a mournful
tragedy. Weak and dissolute as he was, Alexis was led
to believe that his father's policy was ruinous to the State
and impious with regard to the Church. On the other
hand, Peter saw in his son, the heir to his throne, a
wretched opponent of the reforms to which he was
devoting his titanic energies. The great tsar believed in
those reforms with all his heart as necessary for the
well-being of his country. Then how could he permit
them to be thus traitorously checked and thwarted, with
the certainty that when he died they would all be swept
away? We may pity Peter as much as we pity poor
Alexis. 1 Leroy Beaulieu, part iii. p. 158.

PETER THE GREAT AND THE HOLY SYNOD 429
Peter felt the monks to be the worst enemies of
his reforms, and he saw the institution of monasticism
to be socially harmful in two ways: the monasteries
held a large part of the land of Eussia, and the monks
were rich in the midst of the poverty of the peasants.
Eussia was suffering, as the Eoman Empire had suffered
in its later days, by the withdrawal of so many able-
bodied men from the service of their country. The tsar
did not venture to deal directly with the first of these
evils. He did not dare to confiscate Church land. But he
made some attempt to lessen the second by not permitting
anybody to become a monk under the age of thirty. Then
he crippled the power of the monasteries by restricting
their literary influence. He forbade monks to have ink
or pens in their cells. Men were not to shut themselves
up to write ; they were to work at trades. On the other
hand, Peter encouraged the literary activity of bishops,
and in his reign Dmitri Touptalo, the metropolitan of
Eostoff, re-edited the Menologium (the Lives of the Saints)
and wrote theological works of Ms own. Other writers
of less account also flourished in the hothouse atmosphere
of an exotic culture which Peter had introduced into
Eussia. It must not be supposed that Peter's masterfulness led
him into narrow intolerance. The raison d'itre of his
policy was rationalistic liberalism. He was in constant
opposition to the prevalent inert conservatism of Eussian
hfe and rehgion. Accordingly we may be prepared to see
in him a certain amount of indifference to varieties of
religious belief, and this was the case. He did not inter
fere with the greater part of the sect of the Easkolniks,1
who lived in the remote forests. He would protect the
peaceable schismatics from popular persecution. " God
has given the tsars power over the nations," he said, " but
Christ alone has power over the conscience of men." 2
But he imposed on those members of the sect who lived
at Moscow a double capitation tax, and required them to
1 See pp. 441 S. 2 Rambaud, p. 394.

430 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
wear distinctive clothing. They must pay for the liberty
of nonconformity ; they must live as marked men. Peter
did not disguise his opinion that their position was an
error, and he treated it as such. He prohibited them
from propagating their views with threats of a penalty.
Attendance at church every Sunday and at the Easter
communion was made obligatory.
The tsar protected the Capuchins at Astrakan, because,
as Voltaire remarked, these monks were of no consequence ;
but in the year 1718 he expelled the Jesuits from Eussia
as dangerous pohticians. Although he was particularly
friendly with the Dutch and the English, he persecuted
his own Protestants. For instance, a Eussian Protestant
lady, Natasia Zima, was conducted with her husband and
six other converts to " the terrible chancelry " and there
cruelly tortured.1
Peter the Great died in the year 1725 at the age of fifty-
three. He had compressed an enormous amount of work
into his comparatively short life. He found Eussia remote
from the world's progress, sunk in mediaeval barbarism,
more Oriental than Western in life and manners. Solely
owing to his own energy, against the wishes and feelings
of most of his people, before his death he had the satis
faction of seeing his country in vital relations with the
rest of Europe and on the road to progress. His schools
and colleges, libraries and museums, galleries of painting
and sculpture, only touched the few; his canals and his
ships brought fresh life and new energy to a larger
number of his subjects. Peter cared nothing for pomp
and state, had no personal dignity, no manners. He was
tyrannous, cruel, coarse, gluttonous. His practical jokes
were those of a rude schoolboy. On the other hand, his
scorn of old-fashioned proprieties had its good points.
Quite indifferent to the opinion of the orthodox, he would
freely visit heretics and stand godfather to their children.
Perhaps his chief claim to honour, next to the throwing
open of his country to Europe, is his zeal for education,
1 Rambaud, p. 394.

PETER THE GREAT AND THE HOLY SYNOD 431
This is seen especially in ecclesiastical matters. Peter
aimed at giving some culture to the grossly ignorant
parish clergy. But his autocratic dealings with the Church
paralysed its energy. From this time onwards there is
little to chronicle in Eussian ecclesiastical affairs. The
sects will become active and interesting, but the orthodox
Church ever more and more somnolent. " The Church,"
writes M. Leroy Beaulieu, " has come to be considered a
sort of adjunct to the police, and the rehgious practices
as pohce regulations."1 Therefore in thinking of the
Church in Eussia as it has settled down subsequently to
the establishment of the Holy Synod by Peter the Great,
with the virtual absorption of its official life into that of
the bureaucracy, we must entirely dismiss from our minds
the ideas of the relations of pastor and people seen in
England and America, or that of the French cure" or
the Irish priest and his flock. The village pope is
miserably poor, and he has to maintain a bare livelihood
by taking his dues from the peasants, who resent his
visits as the calls of a tax-gatherer. They do not look
up to him as a rehgious leader. He is a functionary who
has to perform certain rites. He rarely preaches, and he
must never do so until he has submitted his sermon to the
judgment of an ecclesiastical superior. Nobody expects
him to be a model of higher living than is customary
among his neighbours. We have seen that while the
bishops are celibates and are found in the monasteries, the
parish priests or popes must be married men. A priest
must marry before he can be ordained. If his wife
dies he may not marry again. But neither should he
continue in office as a widower. He should resign at
once, and retire to a monastery. Eecently, however, this
requirement has been relaxed, and there are now some
widowed priests in Eussia. As a rule, it appears, his
bishop finds a wife for the young postulant of priesthood.
This curious custom has sprung out of the bishop's
responsibility for his priests and their families. The
1 The Empire of the Tsars, part iii. p. 139.

432 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
salary of a village pope allows him no means for saving.
But when he dies his wife and family are not to be left
destitute, and the bishop has them on his hands. The
easiest way to provide for them is to pass them on to
the deceased man's successor by giving him one of the
daughters for his wife.1 The result is that the priests
have become a caste. The office is hereditary in a sort of
Levitical tribe. The position of a country pope is very
anomalous and most unsatisfactory. He feels himself
above the peasants, and his wife affects the dress of
Western Europe ; but he is not received into society, and
in this respect he is very differently situated from the
English clergyman. " I know he gets drunk once in a
while," said a peasant of his pope, " but he is a good
Christian, and he is never drunk on Saturday night or
Sunday morning." 2
It must be allowed that not only is the orthodox
Church in Eussia intellectually inert ; it is a hindrance
rather than a help to the national development. Its
functions are ceremonial, not spiritual. The people attend
the liturgy as by law required ; but they do not under
stand the old Sclavonic dialect of the service books.
There is no idea in the Eussian Church corresponding to
that of the Eoman Church where the priest says mass
regardless of the attendance of the laity. The hturgy is
supposed to be congregational ; the laity must be present.
Yet the people who stand through the weary hours of the
lengthy ritual do not know the meaning of the words
chanted in their hearing. This is a result of the pedantry
of archaism that has fossilised the Church, for the Greek
liturgies of St. Basil and St. Chrysostom were originally
translated into Sclavonic for the express purpose of being
understood by the congregations who took part in them.
With the ignorant peasant, bowing to icons is the chief
religious performance. Icons are in every house, in every
room of every house. On entering a room a Eussian looks
1 See Wallace, Russia (new and enlarged edit.), vol. i. pp. 64-89.
* Leroy Beaulieu, part iii. p. 246.

PETER THE GREAT AND THE HOLY SYNOD 433
at the icon hung in the corner facing him, and bows to it.
That is his primary religious duty.
As in Ireland, commercial and educational progress is
hindered in Eussia by the multitude of saints' days. The
dies nefas, when work is tabooed, becomes a serious handicap
in the race of modern hfe. These saints' days together
with the Sundays rob the Eussian of nearly one-third of
his time, for they leave him only about 250 days for
work. He would sooner work on a Sunday than on a
saint's day.
Pilgrimages assume enormous proportions in the Church
hfe of Eussia. Kiev is now the chief centre of pilgrimages
in the world. It has been calculated that in the year
1886 at least a milhon pilgrims, each contributing a candle
and a coin, visited this city, the shrine of primitive Eussian
Christianity.1 Sometimes the atmosphere in a church
becomes positively stifling, and the people are nearly choked
by the fumes of the pilgrims' innumerable candles. Eehcs
and miracle-working icons are the special objects visited
in these huge pilgrimages. In many convents the monks'
occupation seems to consist simply in keeping relics and
icons and collecting alms.2
1 Leroy Beaulieu, part iii. p. 212. a Ibid. p. 216.

a8

CHAPTER VI
THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN MODERN RUSSIA
Morrill ; Rambaud ; Leroy Beaulieu ; Heard, The Russian Church
and Russian Dissent, 1887 ; Wallace, Russia, new edit., 1905,
vol. i. ; Cambridge Modern History, vol. x., chap. xiii. For
Catherine n., Me'moires of Princess Dashkoff, published by Mrs. W.
Bradford, 1840 ; and for Alexander I., Me'moires du Prince Adorn
Czartoryski, et sa Correspondence avec I'Empereur Alexander I.,
dating from 1795 ; Sutherland Edwards, The Romanoffs, 1890 j
Bain, Pupils of Peter the Great, 1897.
After the death of Peter the Great (a.d. 1725) Eussia was
disturbed by contending factions. The great tsar's widow
Catherine succeeded to the throne, but only survived him
for two years. Peter, the son of the ill-fated Alexis,
followed, and soon died. Next came the uneventful reign
of Anne, who died in the year 1740. A series of changes
in the government now rapidly supervened, till Ehzabeth,
the only surviving child of Peter the Great, was seated on
the throne. Her father had introduced civilians into the
body that managed the Church estates. Ehzabeth reverted
to the old custom and gave these estates back entirely into
the hands of ecclesiastics. It was a time of reaction in
favour of the Church. The empress showed herself very
energetic in church-building, the promotion of pilgrimages,
and the persecution of dissenters.
Peter in., Elizabeth's nephew and successor, meditated
a great measure of reform. This was nothing less than
the appropriation of the Church lands. He was not
strong enough to carry out so stupendous an enterprise.
But this task was accomplished by his consort and suc
cessor, Catherine n. (a.d. 1762-1796). She was an

THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN MODERN RUSSIA 435
sovereign, of German birth and education, and therefore
more enlightened than her predecessors, but of scandalous
morals, who ousted her feeble husband and usurped his
authority. Although Peter the Great acquired large practical
knowledge in the West and set a high value on European
science, he was always a barbarian at heart, and he mocked
the civilisation he mimicked. But Catherine, also deservedly
called " the Great," really understood it and endeavoured to
introduce genuine reforms on modern lines. The specific
reform which Peter m. dreamed of and which Catherine
effected was urgently needed. The Church had become a
parasite on the State, a vampire sucking its life-blood,
showing no life itself, but able to drain the life of the
nation, fattening on the starvation of the people. An
English contemporary writer says of the monasteries,
"They have wrought that if any part of the realm be
better and sweeter than other, there standeth a friary or
monastery dedicated to some saint." x The number of serfs
belonging to the monks now amounted to nearly a million.
Catherine appointed a mixed lay and ecclesiastical commis
sion to arrange the transference both of the land and of its
human property, the serfs. The one became crown land,
and the other, remaining still in slavery, passed over to
State ownership. In return it was ordered that a fixed
revenue drawn from the public funds should be paid to the
archimandrites for the support of their monks. Monasteries
could now no longer acquire land without the sanction of
the government. With the loss of their property the
monks declined in independence and prestige. They also
rapidly declined in numbers, although the number of the
nuns is said to have been growing. There was a constant
rivalry between the black clergy (the monks), and the
white clergy (the parish popes), the black clergy trying to
exercise authority over the white, who in turn endeavoured
to evade their interference.
Napoleon's ill-fated attack on Eussia distracted attention
for a time from internal affairs, both civil and ecclesiastical.
1 Quoted by Morfill, p. 221.

436 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
But its successful repulse with immense loss to the invader
and his final overthrow were followed by a corresponding
expansion and strengthening of the power of Eussia, which
may be said to have been now at her zenith. Alexander I.
(a.d. 1801—1825) showed himself at first to be progressive
and reforming in several directions. During his reign,
several universities, including that of St. Petersburg, were
founded. But the administration of the whole empire was
rotten. " Everything was corrupt, everything unjust, every
thing dishonest," writes the official Eussian historian when
describing the last ten years of Alexander's reign.1 The
tsar now became distinctly reactionary. He allowed the
censorship of the press to be made more rigid — a sure sign
that discontent was rising, and that attempts to meet its
demands were slackening.
At this time there were 110,000 white clergy, 5,700
black clergy, and 5,300 nuns; 27,000 churches, including
450 cathedrals (sobors) and about 500 chapels, 377 monas
teries and 99 nunneries. The annual expenditure of the
Church was about 900,000 roubles.2 A contest now arose
between the Holy Synod and the government. The Church
authority was desirous of making itself independent of
control by the State. In this movement the synod was led
by Seraphim, archbishop of Tver, afterwards of Moscow,
and later of St. Petersburg, where he became also president
of the Holy Synod. He was a narrow-minded bigot, but
astute, and he induced an excitable young ascetic, the
archimandrite Photius, religious teacher of the school of
cadets, to further his projects. A man of a finer type was
Philaret, archbishop of Yaroslaff, and afterwards of Moscow,
whom Photius denounced as a "freemason," and whom
Seraphim accused of being " unorthodox " and of having
" Lutheran " tendencies. In his early reforming period
Alexander endeavoured to improve the wretched condition
of the white clergy, by placing them on a fixed salary paid
by the State, and raising the character of the whole body.
It was with the tsar's assistance that a Bible Society was
? See Cambridge Modern History, vol. *.. p. 420. 2 Ibid. p. 422.

THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN MODERN RUSSIA 437
formed in Eussia after the model of the " British and Foreign
Bible Society." During the first nine years of its existence
this society printed 129 editions of the Bible and as many
as 675,000 copies. In the year 1817 Alexander reorgan
ised the synod and put it under the authority of the
Minister of Education, who, according to the terms of his
appointment, " was henceforth to occupy the same leading
position with respect to the synod, as the Minister of Justice
with respect to the Senate." The tsar manifested some
sympathy with mysticism ; he also came to an agreement
with the pope for the establishment of an archbishopric at
Warsaw, and a harmonious arrangement between the two
Churches in that city. He may have been meditating the
age-long question of the " union," so dear to the hearts of
successive popes of Eome, and opening at times so promis
ing a prospect for much-harassed emperors. But this
arrangement was nothing so ambitious. The two religions
existed side by side in Poland. It was well that they should
be at peace, each enjoying its rights and liberties.
But all this was most objectionable to the Holy Synod,
for it seemed to threaten the foundations of the authority
of the hierarchy. A few years later (a.d. 1822), Seraphim,
taking the lead in the opposition, used Photius as his
instrument to influence the tsar. That strange personage,
half-mediseval saint, half-Jesuit in character, so completely
won over Alexander that the tsar fell at his feet, kissed his
hands, and seemed to yield entirely to his hypnotic influ
ence. Photius made the best of his opportunity, denouncing'
Gahtzin, the Minister of Education, the Catholics, the
Lutherans, the mystics, the secret societies, the Bible
Society — everything that made for freedom of thought, as
enemies both to the throne and to the Church. Alexander
wavered; he would not yield at once, for he was of a
suspicious nature. Two years passed, and then Seraphim
himself denounced Galitzin to the tsar as the enemy of
orthodoxy. Alexander, who was well meaning, but dreamy
and vacillating, still resisted for a time ; but Seraphim
was firm and uncompromising, and he had supporters. In

438 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the end the tsar yielded. Galitzin was dismissed, and was
succeeded by a reactionary, Shishkoff ; the independence of
the sacred synod was restored; and the Bible Society's
activity was checked, though not actually suppressed till
after Alexander's death.
Nicholas I. (1825-1855) favoured the orthodox Church
and the reactionaries, and persecution of nonconformists
was now revived. Nevertheless the Uniats once again
tried to bring the Eussian Church into the Eoman com
munion. This most recent attempt was no more successful
than its predecessors. In the year 1839 the Eussian
Uniat bishops met at Polosk, and issued a memorial to the
tsar expressing their willingness to return to the orthodox
fold. The consequence was that a million and a half Uniats
were forcibly brought into the Eussian Church and more
than 2,000 churches taken over. The effect of this act of
tyranny on Poland was most disastrous. Nicholas I. was
a stern despot who drove the synod with a tight rein.
Alexander n. (1855—1881) is deservedly famous for
his great act of humanity in the emancipation of the serfs.
In earlier ages the country people had consisted of three
classes — independent peasant farmers, free hired labourers
who could move at will from place to place, and slaves. But
in course of time all three had become serfs, and the serfs
were really nothing but slaves. Their lot was much worse
than that of the villeins of f eudalism in the West. In Eussia
there was no idea of mutual obligations subsisting between
the lord and his people, no family bond. Serfs were bought
and sold Eke cattle. The same advertisement would offer
cows and horses, capable working-men and handsome young
women for sale. This marketing was quite regardless of
relationship. A family might be broken up and its several
members sold to different masters.1 The serfs were flogged
and tortured and outraged with impunity. When extra
vagance and bad pubhc finance were bringing many of the
aristocracy to the verge of ruin, the serfs had to work
the harder. This slavery of white men and women in
1 Wallace, Russia, new edit. vol. ii. pp. 114 ff.

THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN MODERN RUSSIA 439
Eussia was as bad as the worst form of negro slavery
in America. Nicholas had meditated putting a stop to the dreadful
social condition of his empire that serfdom involved ; but it
was left for his son to carry out the great reform. This
was done in the year 1861. The landowners received an
indemnity from the State, and the serfs were set free from
all bondage to them; at the same time the land of the
village commune was made the actual property of the

Three years later (a.d. 1864), Alexander released the
clergy from their caste bondage. The Church was now
thrown open to all classes. Nevertheless, as there were no
parsonages and glebes attached to the parishes, and since
each pope's house and the land he cultivated was his own
property, it still remained necessary for a newly appointed
priest to marry his predecessor's daughter — unless his own
father was a priest whom he might succeed — in order to
have a house to Eve in and a field to Eve by.
Some other slight changes have since been effected in
the social life of the people. Count Dmitri Tolstoi, when
both High Procurator and Minister of the Interior, multi
plied the parish schools and put them under the direction
of the local clergy. In the reign of Alexander II. there
were as many as 20,000 such schools — on paper. Subse
quently the Zemstvos established secular schools, before
which the church schools shrank up and withered away.
One of the reactionary measures of the notorious Pobi§-
donostsef was the restoration of the church schools. In
1884 he stated to the Holy Synod that the parish schools
were especially intended to strengthen the people in the
foundations of the faith ! These schools were then placed
under the direction of the Holy Synod.1
There is tragic irony in the fate of the tsar who
conferred the greatest boons on his people. Alexander had
found his people really no nation, divided by a gulf of social
cleavage, the workers mere bondsmen to the lords. At one
1 Leroy Beaulieu, part iii. p. 265.

440 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
stroke he had granted freedom, if not social equahty. His
reward was assassination by agents of one of the secret
societies formed in the interests of liberty. Nothing could
demonstrate more clearly the deep-rooted disease of the body
politic. And yet improvements were still going forward.

CHAPTER VII
RUSSIAN SECTS
Books named in Chap. II. ; also Wallace, Russia, new edit., 1905,
vol. i. ; W. H. Dixon, Free Russia, 1870; Heard, The Russian
Church and Russian Dissent, 1887 ; Le Raskol, Essai sur les Sectes
religieuses en Russie, 1878 ; Elkington, The Doukhobors, 1903 ;
Dalton, Der Stundismus in Russland, 1896.
Nonconformity is as important a feature of the history
of religion in Eussia as it is in England. But, except in
the case of the more recent sects which owe their origin
to Western Protestant influences, Eussian dissent is very
different from English dissent. The typical English non
conformist is an opponent of ritualism and a champion of
liberalism. He represents the Puritan of the seventeenth
century. But the typical Eussian nonconformist is a
martyr to a rigorously conservative ritual. Although
there are now in Eussia sects of an opposite character,
the " Old Dissent " arose as a protest against the supposed
innovations in the ritual of the Church introduced by
Nicon's revision of the service books. It is known as the
Baskbl (a Eussian word meaning " division " or " schism ") ;
and its adherents are called Baskolniks ("schismatics").
The movement, which originated in the seventeenth century,
soon assumed vast proportions. It numbers 1,500,000
persons in the columns of the census; but many more
belong to it who do not make this open profession for
fear of persecution, and it is estimated to contain really
some twelve or fifteen million members. These consist
almost entirely of peasants, or persons who have sprung
from the peasant classes. None are found among the

442 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
upper classes, who look down on the Easkolniks with
contempt. But not a few of them are rich men. They
engage in trade, especially in money-lending. Sober,
honest, industrious, thrifty, they are able to surpass the
orthodox Eussians in the competition of life. They are
regarded by the peasants with the respect due to their
character as the more religious people of the land. It
is said that if you come upon an especially clean, well-
kept cabin in Eussia, the proprietor will turn out to
be an old dissenter. The Easkolnik people have been
credited with " erudite ignorance."
But the movement did not spring from any new
spiritual awakening, anything like a revival, such as we
see to have been the source of most of our English and
American separate Christian denominations. It started
purely in protest against new phrases and rubric directions,
and these were not innovations on sacred originals, but
corrections of verbal corruptions and changed usages which
Nicon and the scholars who helped him regarded as marks
of degeneration. Thus the supposed novelties were really
reversions to antiquity. But this was not admitted by
the ignorant peasants, and just as Jerome's Vulgate, which
was a corrected Latin version of the Bible that Pope
Damasus had ordered because the various popular versions
were very corrupt, was nevertheless received with suspicion
and hatred by the mutitude ; and, as the English Eevised
Version has also been regarded by most ignorant Bible
readers with dislike, so Nicon's correction of the service book
was treated as an irreverent meddling with holy words and
customs. The protest was pressed to the smallest minutiae.
Thus one writer says, " In such a year wiseacres commenced
to say, ' 0 Lord have mercy on us,' instead of ' Lord have
mercy on us.'" The Easkolniks were most insistent in
holding to the incorrect spelling of our Lord's name as
"Issus," instead of accepting Nicon's correction of it to
"Iissus."1 But perhaps the most hated innovation, or
rather reversion to antiquity, was the substitution of the
1 The second " i" is pronounced soft like the -n in 'Itjoout.

RUSSIAN SECTS 443
sign of the cross with three fingers for the sign of the
cross with two fingers. To accept this meant that children
would have to unlearn a practice that had been taught
them at their mother's knee. Such an unsettling of
domestic religion was not to be thought of. On these
and other grounds of the same nature, of which of course
they found an abundance in a corrected version of the
service books, the Easkolniks broke off from the ancient
Church of Eussia. It is their opponents who call them
by the name that brands them with the sin of schism.
The title that they take for themselves is Staro-vUry, which
means " Old Believers " ; they are the people who cling to
the faith of their fathers. Yet deep as is the gulf of division
thus caused, and bitter as were the mutual recrimina
tions formerly hurled across it, there is no difference of
theological ideas separating the two parties. Both hold to
the only two standards of faith required by the orthodox
Church — the Bible and the Nicene Creed ; nor do they
differ at all in their interpretations of Scripture or creed.
These old dissenters therefore have nothing in common
with Protestantism. Their origin is in no way comparable
with the contemporary rise of various sects in Western
Europe. They are Eussian of the Eussians.
In course of time various influences led to remark
able developments among the " Old Believers " in very
different directions. One thing, however, they shared in
common : they were all regarded as schismatics, and there
fore they were all not only denounced by the Church but
regarded with disfavour by the government. It was not
forgotten that the corrections, or innovations, were intro
duced by order of the tsar and forced on the Church by
imperial authority. Here then was a State violation of the
customary order of the Church. The Easkolniks resented
the innovations themselves, and they were indignant at the
arbitrary and tyrannical manner in which they were made
compulsory. It was natural enough that people should deem
it a sacrilegious outrage for government officials to march
into the churches, seize the venerated service books, deposit

444 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
others in place of them, and by order of the tsar command
the town and village popes to use the novel rubrics. Later
on, when Peter the Great abolished the patriarchate and
substituted for that semi-independent office his own nomi
nated Holy Synod, and when the orthodox Church in
Eussia passed more than ever under the control of the
State and its bureaucratic government, the dissenters who
stood outside these movements came to represent to some
extent the Eree Church idea. They were not attached to
the State ; their services were not regulated by a government
department. The Easkol obtained new vigour from another source —
popular resistance to Peter the Great's Western inno
vations. Here it was on solid ground. The European
customs were novel to Eussia, and many now ralhed to the
Old Behevers. At first the movement had been confined
to Moscow ; now it spread all over Eussia. Its flames were
fanned by a breeze of prejudiced patriotism. Thus the
Old Believers stood for Old Eussia and Old Eussian ways.
They regarded Peter's novelties as portents of the approach
ing end of the world and advent of Antichrist.1 This idea
of Antichrist bulks largely in the Easkol. Some perhaps
identify him with the tsar; but to the majority who
believe in his presence he is a mysterious personage existing
somewhere in the world, to whose malignant machinations
the corruptions of the Church and the troubles of the
nation are due. Formerly some maintained that the true
Peter, " the white Tsar," had perished at sea, and that a
Jew, a son of Satan married to a German wife, had usurped
his place. Hence this German invasion !
Old Believers were found objecting to everything in
the way of European innovations. They objected to the
change of the calendar; they objected to the change of
dress — Peter's substitution of European costume for the
Oriental gowns formerly worn by Eussians ; they objected
to the practice of shaving. This latter novelty was
regarded as distinctly heretical, disfiguring man who was
1 Leroy Beaulieu, part iii. p. 299.

RUSSIAN SECTS 445
created in the image of God and " likening him even unto
cats and dogs." 1 So serious was the objection felt to be,
that Peter got Dmitri of Eostoff to write a treatise on
"The Image and Likeness of God in Man," showing its
spiritual character. It had httle or no effect on the Old
Believers. "The image of God is the beard, and the
likeness the moustache," wrote one of these fanatics as late
as the year 1836. There have been martyrs to the beard.
In the year 1874 a recruit was punished with seven years'
imprisonment for mutiny because he refused to be shaved.
This is the Nemesis of image worship. The image
worshipper can only conceive of God in the form of a con
ventional icon ; and that form, with the bearded aspect
of the representation of the First Person in the Trinity,
becomes itself sacred in a man.
The old dissenters divided into two parties soon after
the origin of the schism. The cause of this division was
the extraordinary situation produced by a lack of bishops.
In the days of Nicon only one priest stood for the old books
— Paul of Kol6mna. This man was imprisoned for his
contumacy, and when he died in prison there was nobody
in all the Easkol who was competent to administer the
sacraments. The difficulty which now stared the Old
Behevers in the face was entirely novel, quite without
parallel. Other schisms in the Church which did not deny
episcopacy had carried off bishops with them. Thus there
were Marcionite bishops in the early Church who were
able to build up a Marcionite hierarcy. On the other hand,
the Montanists owed their very existence in great part to
a protest against the root idea of an authoritative priest
hood, and in this they were followed by the Protestant
bodies on the continent, Lutheran as well as Eeformed.
The controversies that have been fought on the question
of the consecration of Archbishop Parker may enable
Anghcan High Churchmen to sympathise with the perplexity
of the Eussian Old Believers. But the Eussian dissidents
had nobody that they could attempt to put forward on any
1 Ibid. p. 305.

446 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
pretext as a bishop in the apostolical succession. And yet
they were extreme rituahsts, with whom the validity of
the sacraments depended absolutely on consecration by an
episcopally ordained priest. Here was a dilemma of vital con
sequence to the life of the Easkol. How was it to be met ?
Two answers of opposite character were given to the ques
tion thus suddenly raised and urgently demanding immediate
settlement. One was that priests must be obtained, and
this course was found more or less practicable in course of
time by renegades from orthodoxy deserting to the Easkol.
But the more uncompromising Old Believers refused to
admit the vahdity of the priestly grace of men who had
been in the degenerate Church, and who were tainted by
their usage of the corrected service books. These people
came to the appalling conclusion that there was no true
apostolic succession left in the world, no valid priesthood
at all. The holy fire on the altar was extinguished ; and
there was nobody left capable of rekindling it. The two
groups were known respectively as the Popbftsky, or " priest
people," and the Bef-popbftsky or " no - priest people."
Subdivisions followed, so that the Easkol cannot be
regarded as a sect or denomination ; it is an amorphous
mass . of very divergent sects that are out of communion
with the State Church.
The Popbftsky long laboured under the disadvantage of
depending for its ministry on the precarious chance of
desertions from the orthodox Church. At length this
humiliating and harassing condition has been superseded by
the establishment of an independent episcopacy, and the
Old Behevers of the priest party now have their own
ordained popes. In the year 1846 they obtained a metro
politan in the person of a Greek, Ambrose, formerly a
bishop in Bosnia, who had been deposed by the patriarch of
Constantinople. This man joined the Old Believers and
was accepted by them as their ecclesiastical head. Unable
to live -in Eussia, owing to the attitude of the government
towards the Easkol, he settled at a place called "White
Fountain," in Austria, near the Eussian border. The

RUSSIAN SECTS 447
course was now clear for a complete organisation of the sect.
Ambrose at once proceeded to create an entire hierarchy.
But this was not accepted without demur by all the com
munity. They stood for Eussian isolation, Eussia for the
Eussian. But here was a Greek living in Austria administer
ing the affairs of the Old Believers. If there were war
between Austria and Eussia, what would happen ? The
position was most objectionable. Accordingly in the year
1868 a council of this branch of the Easkol was held
at White Fountain ; but it only led to an accentuation of
the differences and left matters worse than before. The
stiffer members of the priestly party refused to accept the
newly imported priesthood, and preferred to go on as before
relying on their chance to obtain deserters from among the
priests of the orthodox Church in Eussia. They could have
no respect for priests of this character. Among the Old
Behevers the priests have a lower place even than that of
the village popes in the orthodox Church. They are treated
as mere hirelings, as men of no importance on their own
account, only used to give efficacy to sacraments.
The Bef-popbftsy, the " no-priest " party, took very
different lines. They organised a church without sacra
ments — excepting the sacrament of baptism, which could
be administered by laymen. They met this anomalous
situation in various ways. Some simply bowed to the
inevitable, accepted the deprivation as a judgment of
heaven, and waited for better times. They were like a
Western people suffering from a papal interdict. This was
the most obvious and sensible position to take up. It
exactly agreed with the logic of the situation. But fanatics
caricatured it ridiculously. Thus there were the " Gapers,"
who would stand on Holy Thursday with their months
open waiting for the angels to feed them.
The most serious question which rose out of this
anomalous situation was concerned with the sacrament of
marriage. If all sacraments were now in abeyance owing
to the absence of true priests to administer them, marriage
was impossible, for this too was a sacrament. The recent

448 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
contrivance of civil marriage was not then in existence, and
if it had been, rigorous sacramentarians who were inclined
to regard the government as Antichrist would not have
submitted to it. Accordingly all marriage was forbidden
by the no-priest party. Some understood this requirement
of celibacy in a pure, ascetic sense, and anticipated the end
of the world by the cessation of births. Others accepted it
as an excuse for illicit connections, which, though they
admitted them to be sins, they regarded as lesser sins than
marriage by a priest tainted with the corruption of the
orthodox Church. To some the monstrous position thus
brought about became a horror which should be put an end
to at any cost. There were child-killers, who sent young
infants straight to heaven in order to save them from hfe
in a world now subject to Antichrist. People, known as
" clubbers," battered old men and women to death, quoting
our Lord's saying, " The kingdom of heaven suffereth
violence, and the violent take it by force." One sect,
known as the Philippoftsky, sought redemption by suicide.
Whole families, whole villages, put themselves to death.
The mania was propagated by prophets, who stood by to see
that none shrank back in weakness from the universal
self-immolation. Some of these people practised "fiery
baptism," in plain words incendiarism and death by burn
ing. A family shuts itself up in its cottage ; brushwood
is heaped about it; the prophet sets fire to the fuel;
and the house and all within it are burnt. Then there
were the Lskaleli Khristd — "Christ seekers," who went
about seeking Christ and sometimes beheved they had
found Him in a prince, or perhaps a peasant. One of the
most curious forms that the association of the idea of Anti
christ with the tsar's government took is said to have been
the veneration of the image of Napoleon secretly treasured
in the home. There are to be found in Eussia pictures
representing the French emperor ascending to heaven
surrounded by his marshals. It was rumoured that he
was not dead, that he had escaped from St. Helena, and that
he was in Siberia by Lake Baikal.

RUSSIAN SECTS 449
Others, taking a more moderate course, but influenced
by the same principles, fled from the contaminated haunts of
civilisation and buried themselves in deep recesses of the
forests. In 1850 Nicolas I. had the cells of the forest
dissenters destroyed. The Stranniki, or " Eunners," refused
to have any fixed abode in this world of Antichrist. They
were pilgrims and strangers, constantly running from place
to place. Fortunately there were lay brothers living in
the towns and villages and working at trades, from the
proceeds of which the elite were supported during their
peripatetic life. The Theodosians would not eat or drink
with the profane. Another sect, the Pomortsky, were more
hberal. They would not pray for the " imperator," for that
would be to make the tsar Antichrist. But they would pray
for the " tsar " under this more modest title. In the present
day many of the Old Behevers of the " no-priest " party
are less rigid than formerly. They will permit marriage
as a civil bond ; but, since it is not a sacrament, they hold
that its continuance is subject to mutual consent.
Too much importance has been given to the vagaries
of the more extravagant sects which are not reckoned as
part of the Easkol. Similar phenomena have appeared in
America, and yet we do not regard them as characteristic
of American religion. The same must be said of those
who went into the opposite direction to the ascetics, and
practised free love " on principle." The Shakouni or
"Jumpers," the dervishes of Christendom, cannot be re
garded as Christian at all if they are guilty of the practices
with which they are charged. The performance from
which they derive their name may be childishly innocent,
although it borders on insanity and has no real religion in
it. They stand in circles, men and women facing one
another, and jump, panting, sobbing, shouting, screaming
they jump higher and higher, each one striving to be the
highest jumper ; when the excitement is most intense they
break up and take their own courses, some whirling madly
round, others standing transfixed as in catalepsy. The com
mon belief is that an indescribably shameless scene follows.
29

450 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
The most amazing sect is that of the Khlysty, the
members of which are said to have invented a horrible
ritual for the Eucharist, from which in its normal form
they are excluded by then Easkol tenets. They are said
to hail an unmarried woman in their orgiastic dance as
Bogorbdista, " mother of God," and to address her with
the words, " Thou art blessed among women. Thou shalt
give birth to a Saviour." If the young woman becomes a
mother and her child is a girl, the infant is brought up to
succeed as a new Bogorodista ; if it is a boy it is regarded
as Christ. This Christ child is said to be killed at the
altar and its flesh and blood eaten for the Eucharist.
M. Leroy Beauheu quotes several Eussian authorities- in
support of these charges, which lead him to the conclusion
that " there is much to show that these stories are not pure
inventions."1 But we must remember that exactly the
same things were said about the early Christian Agape
by pagan adversaries, and everybody knows that the
libels were absolutely baseless. Not long ago there were
riots in Austria, in which Jews were murdered on the
ground that they had killed and eaten a Christian child at
the Passover. Again and again in the course of history
similar charges have been brought against obnoxious sects.
On the other hand, not only has a grave mass of testimony
been brought against the Khlysty ; but it must be acknow
ledged that in many parts of Eussia the peasantry are
extremely ignorant and little removed from barbarism. If
these awful things are done even in the present day, they
must be regarded as survivals of the dark vices of paganism
among people who were never truly Christianised or who
have relapsed from Christianity to practical heathenism.
The Church cannot afford to hold up her hands in holy
horror at these abominations; for it is the neglect of
preaching and teaching, and the conduct of her services
purely as ceremonies apart from spiritual thought and life,
that have left the poor people to become the prey of evil
influences. Nevertheless it is probable that the vilest of
1 Opus cit. p. 420.

RUSSIAN SECTS 451
these practices, if carried on at all, are very rare indeed,
and that some of those communities in which they were
once found are now quite clear of them.
There is one sect, however, the nature of whose doings
cannot be doubted. This consists of the Skopsty, the
" Eunuchs," the members of which may be recognised by
their pallid faces, thin voices, and unmanly bearing. Ee-
garding marriage as impossible owing to the failure of
sacramental grace, they aim at removing all difficulties in
that direction by mutilating themselves. This is not done
to them in childhood, but after attaining to manhood, when
the operation is very serious. Some of them have children
first, for the propagation of the sect. But they are found
in two grades. There are some to whom marriage is
allowed ; and others, the elect, become eunuchs. The elect
are credited with direct inspiration from God with the
gift of prophecy, which issues in ecstasy. But in daily
life they are the mildest and simplest of men.
None of these extravagant sects can be called Chris
tian. They have attracted much attention on account of
their eccentricities and owing to the sensational descrip
tions of them that have appeared in popular books. But
they are not symptomatic of the Easkol or of religion in
Eussia. Of an entirely different character are the movements
carried on among earnest Christian people of high character,
the very salt of the land. The most important of these
Eussian dissenters are the Molokans1 and the Doukhobors
(" Spirit - wrestlers "). These two bodies have much in
common, and their members pass freely from one to the
other. They not only stand outside the State Church like
the Easkol, but they entirely repudiate the hierarchical and
sacerdotal system of the orthodox communion. They reject
'Said to be so named as "milk-drinkers" from their habit of taking
milk and food prepared from milk on the fast days when it is prohibited by
the orthodox Church, but more probably so called after the name Molot-
chnaya, a river in the south of Russia, in the neighbourhood of which they
once flourished.

452 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
episcopacy and sacramentarianism, and they are altogether
opposed to rites and ceremonies. Their aim is to promote
spiritual religion by spiritual means. Both of them rely
upon the Bible ; but while the Molokans do so exclusively,
the Doukhobors also appeal to the inward testimony of
the Spirit. We may compare the one party with the
Presbyterians and the other with the Society of Friends.
They both call themselves Istinie Khristiane ("True" or
" Spiritual Christians "). In their rejection of sacrament
arianism they are the direct opposite of the Easkolniks,
who are fanatics of ritual. "The Easkolnik," they say,
" will die a martyr for the right to make the sign of the
cross with two fingers ; we do not cross ourselves at all,
either with two or with three fingers ; we strive to attain
a better knowledge of God." x These people reject all the
characteristic forms of Eussian worship, not only the
repeated crossing of themselves by the worshippers, but
the genuflections and prostrations (pokloni) which are so
prominent in the religious observances of Eussia. They
will have nothing to do with icons. " God is a Spirit,"
they say, "and images are but idols. A picture is not
Christ ; it is but a bit of painted board. We believe in
Christ, not a Christ of brass, nor of silver, nor of gold, the
work of men's hands, but in Christ, the Son of God, Saviour
of the world." 2
It is difficult to trace the origin of these sects. In the
year 1689, Kullmann, a disciple of Jacob Boehm, was burnt
at Moscow ; in 1710 Procopius Lupin was condemned for
asserting that the Church had lost the true spirit of
Christianity ; and in 1714 Dmitri Tvaritenev was convicted
by a synod of spreading Calvinistic ideas. It is reasonable
to suppose that Eussian Protestantism had some connection
with the Protestantism of Germany and Switzerland, which
it resembles to a great extent ; but this connection has
not been definitely traced out.8
The Molokans ascribe the origin of their movement to
1 Heard, Russian Church and Russian Dissent, p. 274.
' Ibid. p. 275. 8 Ibid. pp. 276-7.

RUSSIAN SECTS 453
the visit of an Enghsh physician to Moscow in the reign of
Ivan the Terrible, who introduced the reading and study
of the Bible. It would appear that it is more owing to
this Bible study by Eussians themselves than to any direct
Protestant evangelisation that they came to adopt scriptural
ideas of Christianity. And yet the thorough protestantism
of the confession of faith they presented to the government
shows that the same ideas were in them that were working
in the continental Calvinists and Enghsh Puritans. This
confession concludes with the following statement : " Besides
the holy sacraments, we accept the Word of God and
inward faith as our guides. We do not consider ourselves
as not sinful, nor as holy, but work out our own salvation
with fear and trembling, in the hope of attaining it
solely, and alone, through belief in Jesus Christ, the only
begotten Son of God, and the fulfilment of the commands
of the Lord ; we have no power of ourselves to effect this,
but obtain it only through living faith in our intercessor
and redeemer, Jesus Christ."1 Nothing could be more
completely evangelical than that. Even the reference to
the sacraments refers only to their symbolical character.
Mr. Wallace gives us an interesting account of the
Molokans drawn up from personal enquiries among mem
bers of the sect. The results of the enquiries agree in
the main with what we learn from other sources. They
show that these people take for their model the early
Apostolic Church as depicted in the New Testament, and
reject all later authorities. They have no hierarchy and no
paid clergy. Each congregation chooses one presbyter and
two assistants, who must be men of exemplary hfe well
acquainted with the Scriptures, and whose duty it is to take
pastoral oversight of the rehgious and moral welfare of the
flock. They meet on Sundays in private houses — church-
building by heretics being forbidden — and spend two or
three hours in singing, prayer, reading of Scripture, and
conference on rehgious topics. A member will state some
1 Haxthausen, The Russian Empire (trans, by R. Farie, 1856), quoted by
Heard, p. 276.

454 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
religious difficulty. The brethren then discuss the ques
tion and decide it by appeal to Scripture, which they know
well and can quote freely. The moral discipline of this
Church is very strict. It has been disturbed from time to
time by the appearance of fanatical prophets, but its
members have had the good sense to see through them
and not to be led astray. Its numbers are considerable,
perhaps amounting to several hundred thousand.1
In the year 1814 one of the leading Molokans
among the colony by the Molotchnaya was arrested for
proselytising and thrown into prison. For the most part
the Eussian government has foUowed the example of
the broad-minded Eoman Empire in leaving each rehgious
community undisturbed so long as it remained quiet and
self-contained. Even the Church in Eussia, with all the
rigour of its boasted orthodoxy, does not trouble to follow
the example of the Eoman Catholic Inquisition and enquire
into the private opinions of people, if those opinions are
kept private. This nonchalance with regard to heresy is
a natural consequence of an exclusive regard for ritual.
Where religion is almost wholly an external affair, it
logically follows that ideas count for httle or nothing.
But the case is altered immediately a heretic bestirs him
self to spread his notions abroad, because the result may
be not only to poison the minds of the orthodox, but
even to lead them to break from the Church and its
usages. In course of time the colony at Molotchnaya became
very much disorganised. Twenty years later (a.d. 1834)
a government enquiry was said to have resulted in con
victing them of abominable practices. But this must
not be accepted as any real proof of guilt. There is no
doubt that the Molokans generally are people of most
worthy character. Still, Nicholas I. took advantage of the
finding of the enquiry to order all people of both sects,
the Doukhobors as well as the Molokans, to return to the
orthodox Church on pain of exile. As they would not
1 Russia, new edit. vol. i. chap. xvii.

RUSSIAN SECTS 455
yield, he ordered them to be transported to the Caucasus
(a.d. 1840). There the Molokans have built villages and
become prosperous in their industry and thrift.
The Doukhobors have more mystical tendencies.
Possibly they inherit ideas and influences from the
Bogomiles, and so continue that tradition of Protestantism
in the Eastern Church which was long cherished by the
Paulicians in Armenia. As " champions of the Spirit " the
Doukhobors are less bound to the letter of Scripture than
the Molokans. Their doctrine of the indwelling Christ, so
rich and fruitful when spiritually accepted, has been taken
too literally by some of their people. Kapoustine, a dis
tinguished leader of the body, gave prominence to the idea
that Christ is born again in every behever, while he taught
the immanence of God in all mankind. His theology was
Adoptionist. God descended into Jesus and made Him Christ
because He was the purest and most perfect of mankind.
From generation to generation, however, this incarnation
has been repeated. " Thus," Kapoustine said, " Sylvan
Kohsnisk, of whom the older among you know, was Jesus ;
but now, as truly as the heaven is above me and the earth
under my feet, I am the true Jesus Christ your Lord ! " He
was taken at his word and adored, for the Eussian peasant
is credulous. Such an aberration, however, is not charac
teristic of the community as a whole. It is merely a
fanatical perversion of its central principle — a principle
which it shares with the soberest of Quakers. The Doukh
obors are abstainers from alcohol, non-smokers, and for
the most part vegetarians. Communism is with them a
rehgious principle.1
The first known apostle of the doctrine of the Doukh
obors was a returned soldier, or a German prisoner, who
appeared at a village in Ukraina about the year 1740.
Therefore the sect is more recent than the kindred body of
the Molokans. They are said to have issued a confession
of faith in the year 1791. By the end of the eighteenth
century they had spread from Moscow to the Volga.
1 Elkington, The Doukhobors, p. 147.

456 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Persecuted by the Tsar Paul on political grounds, many
were exiled to Siberia.
In the year 1797 the Doukhobors were savagely
persecuted with the knout, the slitting of their noses,
imprisonment in small cells, and hard labour. The ground
of this persecution was a charge of attempting to convert
the orthodox to their heresy. Senator Laputkin wrote in
1806, "No sect has up to this time been so cruelly
persecuted as the Doukhobortsi ; and this is certainly not
because they are the most harmful." 1 Alexander I., being
more tolerant of dissent than his predecessors, granted
these people land near the Sea of Azoff. Unhappily a
division took place among them in the year 1886, followed
by a lawsuit, which resulted in the banishment of the
defeated party to Siberia. A more unhappy episode in
the history of a persecuted church has rarely been recorded
in history. They had not profited spiritually by Alex
ander's clemency. But to their credit it should be added
that the appeal to the law was made by quite a minority
of the sect ; the majority suffered for no fault of their own.
Soon after this they experienced a religious revival. In
recent days they have been persecuted — if that word may
still be used — by the government for refusing military
service. But in justice to the tsars it should be admitted
that where conscription exists it must be enforced. The
fault is in the odious system. This has led to the emigra
tion of Doukhobors and the establishment of a colony of
them in Canada.
The one Eussian sect that is certainly an offshoot of
Western Protestantism is the sect of the Stundists. It
originated in the direct influence of a colony of German
settlers near Odessa. Among these colonists were some
who called themselves " Friends of God," and met for the
reading of the Bible during their leisure hours 2 under a
leader named Michael Eatuzny. Their principles were
those of a simple evangelical faith together with the special
1 Elkington, The Doukhobors, p. 243.
' Hence the name "Stundist" from Stunden, hours.

RUSSIAN SECTS 457
tenets of the Baptist. In a word, they were German
Baptists. These Teutonic emigrants were essentially mis
sionaries in spirit, because they were genuine Christians.
At first they only attempted to influence their neighbours
morally and spiritually, without making any effort to
detach them from the orthodox Church. But as Eussian
converts began to gather about them, these followers felt it
necessary of their own accord to break away from the national
Church and found independent communities. Thus the
movement spread. From Odessa and the government of
Kherson it passed on to the neighbouring provinces of
Ekaterinoslaff and Kiev. The Stundists are a sober, frugal,
industrious, intelhgent, peaceable people, obedient to the
laws, and exact in the payment of the taxes. They are
said to advocate an equal division of the land, and they
may have socialistic tendencies. But they have not tried
to put these views in force by revolutionary methods. If
the Eussian autocracy had been broad-minded and far-
seeing it would have welcomed the appearance of such
a people as the best harbinger of the regeneration of
the country. Instead of this the government has dealt
with them harshly, breaking up their communities and
scattering the individual members. This policy, the aim
of which is to destroy the heresy, has had the very
opposite effect. It has sown the seed broadcast. Every
exiled Stundist is a missionary of evangelical truth in the
district to which he is sent. Stundism is the only religious
novelty that has appeared in the south of Eussia. All the
other schisms and heresies arose at Moscow or farther north
or west. But, thanks to the policy of the government,
this promising awakening of rehgious hfe is now to be
met with in widely separated parts of the empire. It is
spreading rapidly in the neighbourhood of St. Petersburg.
Amidst the terrible troubles with which the realm of the
tsar is oppressed, some see the greatest hope in this
remarkable growth of an earnest religious life of a Pro
testant type.
A study of religion in Eussia would be incomplete

458 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
without some reference to Count Tolstoi (Leo Nicolayvitch),
whose ideas are well known throughout the world. They
are based on a literal insistence on the words of Christ as
the law of the Christian life. This involves not only
non-resistance, but the denial of any government by force,
and the unlimited application of our Lord's direction
to give to all who ask for help ; the abolition of war,
oaths, law courts, prisons and punishment, wealth and
luxury ; and the practice of universal brotherhood in peace
and charity.

DIVISION IV
THE SYEIAN AND AEMENIAN CHUECHES
CHAPTER I
EARLY SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY
(a) Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. i. 13 ; Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. iii. 16 ;
Ephraim the Syrian ; The Homilies of Aphraates (Wright,
1869) ; The Doctrine of Addai (Cureton's " Ancient Syriac
Documents," 1864).
(6) Harnack, Expansion of Christianity, Book iv. Chap. in. iii. 5 ;
Tixeront, Les Origines de lYglise d'Edesse, 1888 ; Texte u.
Unters. ix. 1 ; Duval, La Litterature Syriaque (2nd edit.,
1900) ; Burkitt, Early Eastern Christianity, 1904, and Intro
duction to Evangelion da Mepharreshe, 1904.
Four influences have combined to keep the extreme
Eastern portion of Christendom apart from the main body
of the Greek Church. These may be described respectively
as geographical, political, linguistic, and doctrinal.
Geographically the churches of the Euphrates valley
aud those which were planted farther east were separated
from the churches to the west of them by the Syrian
desert, the crossing of which was an expedition, as Zerub-
babel, Ezra, and Nehemiah had found in ancient times.
Politically the region in which they were situated
when not independent was only connected with the Eoman
Empire at intervals, and was more continuously subject to
Parthian and Persian sovereigns. At the time of the intro
duction of Christianity it was governed by its local rulers,
whose names indicate an Arabian origin.
No doubt these two factors helped to establish the
459

460 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHDRCHES
third In their isolation the Christians retained their own
language, which was a branch of the Aramaic that had
once been prevalent over all the region between the
Euphrates and the Mediterranean, but which had subse
quently given place to Greek in the parts subject to the
Eoman Empire. This will account for the difference be
tween the Aramaic of the Targums and some parts of the
Old Testament and the Christian Syriac represented by
versions of the Bible and those patristic writings that
arose in Mesopotamia. The Palestinian Aramaic probably
used by our Lord and His disciples, and in which perhaps
St. Matthew wrote his Logia — unless he employed the
classic Hebrew — was very soon superseded in the Church
by Greek, the lingua franca of all the civilised races round
the Mediterranean. It may have been the dialect of the
" Gospel according to the Hebrews " and of the Ebionite
Gospel ; but it was not the language of the churches of
Antioch and Western Syria. When, therefore, Christianity
appeared in the distant region of the Euphrates, where a
shghtly different dialect was used, it came in a Greek
form, and in the first instance its promoters had to provide
translations of the Gospels and other Christian writings,
since the people of the land did not understand Greek.
These translations and the original Christian writings
which sprang up in the same district in the local dialect
came to be designated Syriac. In other words, Syriac is
now the name of the language employed in the Christian
literature of Eastern Syria, as distinguished from Aramaic,
which was the slightly different and older language of
Palestine, afterwards superseded by Greek. A church
using the Syriac language and producing its own hterature
in that language inevitably tended to a certain individuality.
But these three influences — the geographical, the
political, and the linguistic — were far outweighed in im
portance by the fourth, the doctrinal. This counted for
much more than all the others put together. Deserts can
be crossed, governments defied, languages translated ; but
heresy remains separated from orthodoxy by an impassable

EARLY SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY 461
chasm. The Eastern Syrian Christians were early sus
pected of heresy imbibed from Tatian and Barsedanes.
But the slight irregularities which might have been de
tected then were soon overcome. It is later that we see
the great schisms produced first by Nestorian and then by
the Monophysite heresies resulting in the establishment of
the Nestorian and Jacobite Churches, both of them anathe
matised by the orthodox Church.
In the first place, then, we must understand that
Syrian Christianity — in the early stages of its development
— is the Christianity of the people speaking Syriac and
living so far to the east that we scarcely think of their
home as Syria at all. Meanwhile the Greek-speaking
Syrians in the west, with their headquarters at Antioch, are
a different body of Christians, and form an integral portion
of the Greek Church till they too are cut off, first by
heresy, and then by Islam. The headquarters of Syrian
Christianity, and at first apparently its only centre, was
the city of Edessa, known in the vernacular as Urhai,
and now represented by Urfa, the capital of the district
which the Greeks named Osrhoene, situated to the east of
the Euphrates. While it is uncertain at what time and
by what means the city was evangelised, there can be no
doubt that this was not later than the second half of the
second century of the Christian era ; possibly the new
hght began to dawn in this far-off Eastern capital even
before the middle of that century. The legend of Addai
and King Abgar, which would carry it back to the times of
Christ's life on earth, is manifestly unhistorical. Eusebius
repeats it without any question as to its genuineness ; 1
and it is contained in a Syriac form in the Doctrine of
Addai, an apocryphal book of " acts " written at the end
of the third century or the beginning of the fourth.
Apart from the absence of earlier testimony and the
inherent improbability of the story, it is condemned by
obvious anachronisms.2
1 Hist. Eccl. i. 13.
sThus it refers to Eleutheropolis in Palestine, a name that was firs^

462 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Nevertheless, the legend is important both on account
of its popularity and because it contains hints of actual
facts, for evidently it comes from earlier times than the
age of the written records in which it is preserved.
According to this legend, King Abgar, who is suffering
from a terrible disease, having heard of the cures our Lord
is working, sends for Jesus to come and heal him. Jesus,
while not coming in person, writes him a letter in which
He promises to send one of His disciples who will cure
the king's disease. Although we have no ground for
admitting this letter to be genuine, it has become a historic
composition because of its wide acceptance and the im
mense veneration with which it has been regarded. It
was found in the year 1900, preceded by the king's letter
to Jesus, inscribed in Greek characters of about the age of
Eusebius on a lintel at Ephesus. At the time of the
Heptarchy our Anglo-Saxon ancestors copied the letter out
and wore it as a charm " against lightning and hail and perils
by sea and land, by day and night and in dark places." 1
Thus its subsequent history has given it a factitious value
that makes it worth being quoted in full. The letter is
addressed to the notary Hanan, who has found Jesus at the
house of Gamahel, the chief of the Jews. It runs as
foUows : " Go and say to thy Lord that sent thee unto me,
Happy art thou, that though thou hast not seen me, thou
hast believed in me ; for it is written of me that they
which see me will not believe in me, and they which see
me not, — they will beheve in me. Now as to what thou
attached to the place by Septimius Severus in a.d. 200. Moreover, the
legend can be accounted for in some measure by the discovery of the actual
fact that was the germ out of which it grew through the very natural
confusion of two persons of the same name ; and to account for a legend in
this way is always the clinching argument that demolishes its claim. Abgar
IX., a later king of Edessa, paid a visit to Rome during the bishopric of Zephy-
rinus (a.d. 202-218), and the name of Zephyrinus is also connected with
Edessa through Serapion of Antioch. This Abgar may well have sent an
embassy to Eleutheropolig. His earlier namesake could not possibly have
done so nearly two centuries before the name of the place existed.
1 Dom Kuyper's Book of Cerne, p. 205, cited by Burkitt, Early Eastern
Christianity, p. 15,

EARLY SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY 463
hast written to me, that I should come unto thee, — that
for which I was sent hither hath now come to an end, and
I go up unto my Father that sent me ; but when I have
gone up unto Him, I will send thee one of my disciples,
that whatever disease thou hast he may heal and cure.
And all that are with thee he shall turn to life eternal,
and thy town shall be blessed and no enemy shall have
dominion over it for ever and ever." x The reader must
be struck with the antique tone of this document. In
particular, the antithetical sentence, " They which see me
will not beheve in me, and they which see me not,- —
they will believe in me," is exactly in the style of the
Oxyrhynchus Logia.2
Still following the legend, we see Addai, one of the
" Seventy," despatched by Thomas to Edessa after the
resurrection of Christ, with the result that the king is
immediately healed ; whereupon he and a great number of
his people are converted to Christianity. Addai is said
to have laboured at Edessa to the end of his life, and to
have died a natural death. He is succeeded by Aggai,
who suffers martyrdom under Ma'nu, a heathen son of
Abgar, his legs being broken while he is sitting at church.
Aggai having no time to ordain his successor Palut, the
latter goes to Antioch and there receives ordination from
Serapion. Here we come out of the mist of legend into
the hght of history. But Serapion did not become bishop
of Antioch till ad. 190. Evidently then Palut cannot be
1 Burkitt, pp. 13, 14.
2 A seeming proof of great antiquity may be found in the last sentence,
which promises Abgar that no enemy shall have dominion over his town for
ever and ever. This sentence, which is contained in the Ephesian inscrip
tion as well as in the Doctrine of Addai, is discreetly omitted by Eusebius,
who thus shows that he is aware of the sack of Edessa by Lucius Quietus,
under Trajan. And yet, to place it at a more ancient date than that is
to set back the origin of Christianity too early for all the other evidence.
Therefore we seem driven to reverse the argument, and to see in this state
ment a reason for dating the letter considerably later, when the disaster was
not in niiud. At all events, one thing is certain : it could not have been
written in the earlier decades of the first century when that horror was in
the memories of the Syrian Christians.

464 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
brought so near to one of our Lord's personal disciples as
the story suggests. But he is important in another way,
as we shall see later on. Palut represents the advent of
Antiochene influence over the far-off Syrian Church be
yond the desert and the river. Hitherto the Christianity
of Edessa had been developing independently ; and a very
interesting course it was then taking. One could have
wished, for the sake of freedom and variety, that it had
been let alone altogether, so that we might have witnessed
the profoundly instrucive spectacle of a Syrian Church,
having its discipline and doctrine all to itself, working
out its problems apart from the admixture of Greek
philosophy and Eoman methods of government which
came in so early to modify primitive Christianity and
translate it into the amalgam known as Cathohcism. We
cannot forget that the gospel had its origin in Syria;
that it was first taught in Aramaic ; that it began as an
Oriental, Semitic faith. What should we have seen if it
had been allowed to develop at least in one spot as
still an Oriental, Semitic faith, without any admixture of
Western civilisation ?
In point of fact no such independent development was
possible even in very early ages. Before the time of Palut,
Greek influences had penetrated to Edessa, for the church
in this city was in communication with its brethren farther
west. Tatian's Harmony affords a proof of this statement,
and at the same time a clear indication of the comparative
separateness of the most ancient Syrian Christianity. In his
Address to the Greeks x Tatian says that he was " born in the
land of the Assyrians," but instructed in Greek doctrines and
afterwards in those that he there undertakes to proclaim.
Thus, like Justin Martyr, of whom he was a friend and
disciple, Tatian came to Christianity after studying Greek
philosophy. His writings cannot be dated later than about
a.d. 175.* Now his Address to the Greeks and the titles of
1 Chap. xiii.
2 Lightfoot— a.d. 155-170; Westcott— a.d. 150-175; Harnack — the
Address to the Greeks, a.d. 152-153.

EARLY SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY 46 5
all his books are in Greek — including that of his Harmony,
which he calls Diatessaron.1 There is therefore a certain
amount of probability that he compiled this in Greek, out
of the original Greek text of the Gospels, and then translated
it into Syriac. Against this conclusion, however, is the
fact that its text is of the same type as that of the oldest
separate Syriac versions of the Gospels,2 which of course
could not have been dependent on the Harmony. There
is then also some probability that this was made from a
previously existing Syriac version of the Gospels. But that
supposition is confronted with a serious difficulty. No such
version was known at Edessa, the one centre of the Syriac-
speaking Christians, for it seems certain that Tatian's
Harmony was the only form in which the Gospels were
first read in the Church. Previously the Syrian Christians
had been satisfied with preaching and oral traditions
about Christ. It was Tatian who introduced the written
gospel record to Edessa, and he did this in the form of
a harmony of all four Gospels, as a method which com
mended itself to his own private judgment. Here was a
convenient way of presenting the whole gospel story at
once instead of confusing people by offering them four
parallel and more or less divergent narratives. Tatian's
influence at Edessa must have been considerable ; for he
succeeded in getting his book read in the church at that
city. Thus, while the other churches were using the
four Gospels in their services, the Edessene Church was
using Tatian's Harmony. Here was a curious distinction
bearing witness to the aloofness of the Christians of Meso
potamia. After Justin suffered martyrdom at Eome, it would
appear that Tatian became his successor as a teacher
of Christianity in the imperial city. If so, it is probable
that his unorthodox views had not yet been developed, or
1 ^.lareaaipiav, i.e. " Harmony" — with an allusion to the four principal
notes of music, not, as was formerly supposed, to the four Gospels out of
which it is constructed. Cf- the word "Diapason."
2 The Curetonian and the Sinaitic.
30

466 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
at all events not detected.1 But in the year 172 he was
excommunicated. Then he went to live in Syria, not far
from Antioch, and later perhaps at his old home Edessa,
where he is said to have died. All we know of his
" heresy " is associated with the Eoman period of his life.
The omission of the genealogies of Jesus from his Harmony
is an indication that his divergence from accepted doctrines
had at least begun when he compiled that work. Accord
ing to Irenaeus,2 he was a leader of the Encratites, or
" Abstainers," people who repudiated marriage, meat, and
wine. Irenaeus also associated him with the Gnostics as
inventing a doctrine of invisible aeons, hke the foUowers of
Valentinus, while in his asceticism he resembled Marcion.
Origen attributes to him a doctrine of the demiurge,
saying that he understood the words " Let there be hght "
as a prayer of the creating god of this world to the
supreme God. These statements are not supported by
evidence, and they are not confirmed by Tatian's extant
writings. His omission of the genealogies from the
Diatessaron may indicate his agreement with Marcion's
Docetism, but that is all ; we have no trace here or else
where in his extant writings of any nearer approach to
Valentinian Gnosticism. It may well be that, leaving
Eome under a cloud, Tatian carried with him to the East
some notions that were unpopular with the ecclesiastical
authorities in the West. But when he found himself
again among his simple - minded fellow - countrymen in
distant Edessa, he was not suspected of heresy, or his
Harmony would not have been acceptable there; nor
is there any reason to suppose that he spread very
peculiar ideas or founded a school of heterodox teach
ing. Certainly these Syrian Christians did not become
Encratites. A little later the Church at Edessa obtained a notable
convert in the person of Bardaisan, who was born in the year
1 Irenaeus states that he did not express any of his objectionable views
till after Justin's martyrdom, Adv. Hazr. i. 28.
2 Ibid.

EARLY SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY 467
154 and died in 222.1 He was a man of scientific culture,
but his mixture of astrological notions led to his expulsion
from the Church, and he has come to be reckoned as one
of the leaders of Syrian Gnosticism. Unlike Tatian, he
was not ascetic. He did not join the Encratites ; neither
did he agree with Marcion in rejecting the Old Testament,
or assigning the creation of the cosmos to a demiurge, a
secondary god. According to the reports of his teaching,
for which we are dependent on his opponents, his chief
characteristic is the immense importance he attached to
the power of evil, which he attributed in the first instance
to Satan and then to the inherent malignity of matter, the
origin of which he ascribed to Satan. Thus in the act of
creation God formed the world out of pre-existent matter.
It might be " the best of all possible worlds," but in a
more limited sense than that in which Leibnitz used the
phrase. The architect of the cosmos could only make
the best of very objectionable material. In this way we
are to account for the imperfections of nature and the
evils of society. Here we have a combination of Persian
and Greek conceptions. The important role assigned to a
spiritual principle of evil is Zoroastrian ; but the notion of
a pre-existent matter out of which the Divine architect
shapes the cosmos is Platonic. Now all this is more than
doubtful. It has been gathered together from assertions
and hints in Ephraim the Syrian and Western writers,
some of which are but conjecturally connected with
Bardaisan. So many of the Fathers accuse him of Gnos
ticism that it is probable there is some ground for their
statements. Yet it seems as though his departures from
conventional ideas have been greatly magnified. No trace
of the Valentinian aeons can be found even in his enemies'
accounts of his tenets. We only possess one book which
represents his views from his own side, and this contains
nothing seriously unorthodox. It is the work commonly
1 According to the account of him in Michael the Syrian, who lived as
late as the end of the twelfth century, but who seems to have had ancient
authorities to work upon. See Chabot, Michel le Syrien.

468 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
known as the dialogue " On Fate," but the actual title of
which is The Book of the Laws of Countries. Dr. Cureton
found and published a Syriac copy of it. The book pur
ports to be written by a disciple of Bardaisan, but Mr.
Burkitt considers this to be a literary device, and holds
that Bardaisan himself was its author. Be that as it
may, this book is our one ancient friendly account of
the teaching of Bardaisan. The dialogue is a defence
of free will against the astrological notion of a fate de
termined by the stars. It would seem to allow the
influence of the stars in controlhng physical phenomena.
This notion is supported by a far-away perception of our
modern scientific truth of the unity of nature and the
interaction of all its parts. On the other hand, the
argument goes to show that in the mind man possesses
freedom ; that his will is free ; and that consequently
his actions cannot be predicted by a study of the stars.
Under the same stars different men act differently. This
defence of free will is emphatically anti- Gnostic ; Gnos
ticism, especially Valentinian Gnosticism, being rigorously
necessarian. Tatian and Bardaisan were the two men of brains in
the early Syrian Church. It is unfortunate for the history
of that Church that they both lie under suspicions of
heresy, the one having been condemned in the West, the
other in his own country. Had there been vigour of in
tellect enough at Edessa to have won over Bardaisan to
the views of his fellow-Christians, or charity enough to have
found room for him in spite of his peculiarities, he would
have been a brilliant light in the Church. He was the
one Syrian who made a serious attempt to lift
"The burden of the mystery,
. . . the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world."
But the mediaeval chronicler from whom we learn the chief
facts of his career concludes with the anathema, " May his
name be accursed."

EARLY SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY 469
After a period of persecution, during which they were
cut off from contact with their brethren on the western side
of the desert, the Syrian Christians of Edessa came for a time
under the influence of the Greek Church at Antioch. This
was owing to the Eoman reconquest of their country and
temporary absorption of it into the empire in the year 210.
On the restoration of communication with Antioch which
followed, Serapion, then the bishop of that city, feeling some
concern for the isolation of the Syrians and some fear lest
they should drift away from the main current of Catholic
life, its customs and its beliefs, ordained them a bishop in
full sympathy with the Greek Church of Antioch, in the
person of Palut — previously mentioned in connection with
the early legends — who proceeded to Edessa and took up
the succession of the episcopate, which seems to have been
interrupted by the persecution. His followers were called
"Palutians," a significant fact which indicated a division
in the Church, and points to the fact that this interference
on the part of Antioch was not at first welcomed by the
Syrians. But while the followers of Bardaisan necessarily
stood aloof, as did the Marcionites who were also to be found
in Mesopotamia now or later, the main body of the Church
was soon reconciled. The Palutians, who represented the
orthodox Greek Church at Edessa, came to be fused with
the rest of the Church, and thus the connection with
Antioch generally recognised.
There is no evidence that Serapion had any fault to
find with the doctrine taught in this church. He disliked
the use of Tatian's Harmony in the public worship, not
however because he held it to be a heretical perversion of
the Gospels, nor because it came from the hand of a heretic,
but simply because it was a compilation, and not the
Gospels in their original form as these were used in other
churches. Hitherto this was all the people of Edessa
knew of the New Testament. They had the Old Testa
ment in Syriac, probably the version of the Old Testament
now contained in the Peshitta, which seems to have been
a Jewish translation made prior to the founding of a

470 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Christian Church in Mesopotamia; and they had the
Diatessaron. That was their Bible. But now Palut
brought them a New Testament consisting of the four
Gospels, Acts, and the fourteen epistles ascribed to St.
Paul, together with a revised edition of the Old Testament.
Palut's Syrian Gospels — possibly his own translation, as
Mr. Burkitt supposes — appear to be those known to us in
the Curetonian and Siniatic manuscripts. They received
the title of Evangelion da Mepharreshe.1
You cannot make a horse drink by taking him to the
water, nor can you make a church adopt a new version of
Scripture by introducing it to that version, as we have seen
in the case of our Eevised Version. The Diatessaron was
the old Church lesson book of the Syrians; it contained
the gospel story on which they had been brought up from
their childhood. Palut was quite unable to induce them
to give it up in favour of the four Gospels that he had
brought them. It continued to be used in Edessa and the
other churches of Eastern Syria for more than two
centuries after this. Indeed, its popularity grew, and it
penetrated farther north as Christianity slowly spread in
that direction.
Palut was succeeded by 'Abshelama, and he by
Barsamya, who suffered martyrdom under Decius or Valerian
(a.d. 250—260). Edessa also suffered from the persecu
tions under Diocletian and Licinius, when there were
at least three martyrs, Shamona, Guria, and Habbib, whose
story has been preserved. Then came peace, and for
a time there is little to record in the obscure history of
the Syrian Church. Three Syriac compositions in par
ticular assigned to the fourth century call for some notice.
These are the Doctrine of Addai, the Homilies of Aphraates,
and the Writings of St. Ephraim; but the last-named
1 i.e. "The gospel of the separate ones." See Burkitt, Evangelion da
Mepharreshe. This is much nearer to the Diatessaron than to the later
Peshitta, and yet it differs in some respects from the former work, which
bears traces of Tatian's Roman residence, in its more or less Western text,
agreeing with Codex Bezse and the old Latin version.

EARLY SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY 471
works are the only Syrian patristic writings that have
taken a prominent place in ecclesiastical literature. The
Doctrine of Addai contains the legend of Abgar, the
missionary work of Addai, that is to say, the apostle
Thaddseus, and the labours of his disciple and successor,
the martyr Aggai. Although it is manifestly apocryphal
and unreliable, it contains much ancient material ; but this
has been worked over so that in its present form the book
cannot be ascribed to an earlier date than the fourth
century. Its theology is post-Nicene. The Homilies of
Aphraates are twenty-two in number, ten of which are
asssigned to the year 337, and twelve to the year 344.
A separate homily, On the Cluster, is assigned to the year
following. Aphraates, or Afrahat, was a monk and a
bishop said by tradition to be the head of the convent of
St. Matthew near Mosul. The Homihes constitute one
work which is a systematic exposition of the Christian
faith, arranged as an acrostic, each homily beginning with
one of the twenty-two letters of the alphabet in order.
The work, however, does not consist of speculative theology ;
it deals chiefly with the relation of faith to the Christian
life and to moral conduct, especially emphasising the in
dwelling of the Spirit of Christ in men, who thus become
temples of God.
The Holy Spirit is referred to in the feminine gender, as
in the Gospel according to the Hebrews, and probably for the
same reason ; while the Greek word for Spirit is neuter,1 the
Syriac is feminine.2 But innocent as was the cause of it,
this custom easily lends itself to the Gnostic idea of couples.
Aphraates holds firmly to the Divinity of Christ ; but he
defends it in a way that shows how little he is influenced
by contemporary discussions among the Greek theologians.
Following the remarkable argument of Christ in the Fourth
Gospel,3 he supports the doctrine by appealing to in
stances of the name of Divinity being given to men. He
also uses the argumentum ad hominem, urging that it
1 trvevpa. 2 £, j ' John x. 33-36.

472 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
is better to worship Jesus than to worship kings and
emperors. He adds that Christ has called us sons, making
us His brothers. This is altogether aside from the
Homoousian doctrine ; it indicates a free handling of the
problem untrammelled by the phrases of fixed creeds or
the pronouncements of authoritative counsels. And yet, as
Mr. Burkitt points out, " on the one hand, he was wholly
penetrated by the Monotheism of the Catholic rehgion;
on the other, his loyalty and devotion to his Lord assured
him that no title or homage was too exalted for Christians
to give to Jesus Christ, through whom they had union
with the Divine nature."1 Nevertheless there is one
point at which Aphraates is not only freer and therefore
fresher than the standard orthodoxy of the Greeks, but
glaringly at variance with Cathohc usage and doctrine.
This is in his treatment of marriage in relation to baptism.
He will only allow celibates to be baptised. He does
not regard marriage as a sacrament, nor does it appear
that he permits any religious sanction for it. Thus with
Aphraates, only virgins, widows, and widowers, or husbands
and wives who have separated from one another, may be
admitted to the full privilege of the Church, since only
the baptised are allowed to come to the communion.
Married people then must remain in the outer court of
the catechumens, as mere "adherents." He has two
grades of Christians ; but only the upper grade is really
in the Church. This is just like the position taken up by
the Marcionites, and later that of the Manichseans. Mr.
Burkitt even puts forth the startling theory that at this
time it was held by the Church of Edessa as a whole.
But we know too little about that church to take its
silence as an evidence of its agreement with Aphraates.
On the other hand, the silence of Antioch on the subject
affords a powerful argument against the hypothesis. Surely
the Edessene Christians would have been denounced in no
1 Burkitt, Early Eastern Christianity, to which book, and also its author's
Emav4j"lion da Mepharreshe, this sketeh of sarlier Syrian literature is largely
indebted.

EARLY SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY. 473
measured terms by the orthodox Greeks if they had agreed
with the Marcionites in this matter.
The last and by far the best known of these Syrian
writers is St. Ephraim, commonly called "Ephraim the
Syrian." He was a child of Christian parents,1 born about
the year 308 in Mesopotamia, probably at Nisibis. He
died at Edessa in the year 373. All sorts of marvels are
attributed to him in his youth, and he is credited by his bio
grapher with singular precocity. There is no doubt that he
was drawn by the fame of St. Basil to visit that great man
at Caesarea, by whom he was powerfully influenced. The
rumour of an invasion of heresy at Edessa sent him back
to his native land, where he became a champion of the
orthodox faith, but living as an anchorite in his cell.
Ephraim's name has obtained prominence in Church history
somewhat disproportionate to his ability and achievements.
Perhaps this is partly due to the fact that his works have
been preserved and that they bulk largely in theological
hbraries. Still, as a commentator he shows real wisdom,
coming between the literalism of Antioch and the allegorising
of Alexandria, in endeavouring to bring out the true
spiritual significance of Scripture. But he was more
popular in his own day as a hymn- writer — why, it is difficult
to say, since his hymns are obscure, allusive, prolix, and
dreary. He threw his doctrinal teaching into the form of
verse, and taught choirs to chant orthodoxy, as Arius had
taught his followers to chant heresy. His Carmina Nisibena
have a more mundane character, for they treat of the
struggle between Sapor and the Eomans for the possession of
Nisibis. The work of Ephraim best known in subsequent
times is his Sermo de Domino, a treatise on the Incarnation,
in which he teaches that the taking of manhood into God
was in order that men might receive the Divine nature.
Thus he accepts the thoroughly Greek notion of salvation
1 This is what he says himself, and it must be accepted in opposition to
the assertion of his Acta, that his father was a priest at a heathen idol
temple. See Opp. Syr. ii. 499, cited in Smith's Diet, of Chr. Biog. vol. ii.
p. 137a.

474 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
by the Incarnation. At the same time he agrees with
the mystical idea of salvation resulting from union with
Christ as consisting in the redeemed man becoming a
dwelhng-place for God. He holds a peculiar doctrine of
the Charismata, according to which the privileges of Israel
are gathered up in Christ and then distributed by Him,
so that the ancient grace of the priesthood is thus trans
mitted to the Christian Church.
A curious Syrian work of an entirely different character
written about this time is the Acts of Judas Thomas1
which tells how the apostle went to India and built a
palace for the king in heaven. This is a popular religious
story, which Dr. Eendel Harris has shown to be blended
with the classic myth of the Dioscuri. The strange notion
underlying this story is that Judas, " not Iscariot," but
the other apostle Judas, who is named " Thomas," a word
which means " twin," 2 was the twin-brother of Jesus.3
The book has been regarded as heretical ; and it agrees with
Aphraates in requiring celibacy in the baptised. Evidently,
then, there was a strong tendency in that direction at
Edessa, although it cannot be proved that this entirely
dominated the Church in that city even during its free
and independent age. The novel contains some mystical
elements in the prayers attributed to St. Thomas, indicating
that hke Aphraates its author was not fettered by the
phraseology of Catholic orthodoxy, simply because he was
a member of a church that was developing on its
own lines without interference from the main body of
Christendom. With the Acts of Thomas is associated a Syrian
Christian poem known as the Hymn of the Soul, originally
a separate composition but now incorporated in the story.
It is not really a hymn at all, but an allegory in verse
telling of the adventures of the soul which has come from
1 Wright's Apocryphal Acts, pp. 159-165.
2 Oa/ias '= Dinro. So we read three times in the Fourth Gospel, Qap&s
b \eybnevos AiSv/ios, John xi. 16, xx. 24, xxi. 2.
8 See Rendel Harris, The Dioscuri in the Christian Legends.

EARLY SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY 475
its heavenly home to earth and is performing tasks assigned
to it as the way for its return. This idea is worked out
in the form of the pilgrimage of a prince to Egypt in quest
of the serpent-guarded pearl.
Thus far, then, we have seen the Syrian Church at
Edessa going its own way and working out its own ideas
of Christian truth and life, no doubt with the " mediocrity "
of abihty which, as Eenan says, characterises everything
Syriac, and certainly without producing any really great
men, but still with a certain freedom, originality, and variety
that interest us in contrast with the growing uniformity
of Catholic standards in the main body of the Church.
Early in the fourth century this isolation was disturbed,
and for the second time the Eastern Syrian Church was
brought more into line with the orthodox Greek Church
at Antioch. This was the work of the great ecclesiastic
Eabbulas, a native of Chalcis (Quinnesrin, i.e., " Eagle's
Nest ") in Syria, who had a heathen priest for his father
but a Christian mother. Having come to personal
decision for his mother's religion, he went to Jerusalem
and then down to the Jordan to be baptised. On his
return he renounced his wife and his property, sent his
children to convent schools, and went first to the monastery
of St. Abraham at Chalcis, and, since that was not severe
enough for him, afterwards to a cave in the desert, where
he hved the life of a hermit. Thus he won fame in the
Church, and in the year 411 he had his reward. He was
then appointed bishop of Edessa by a synod at Antioch.
Eabbulas proved to be an energetic disciplinarian, especially
aiming at correcting the irregularities, that is to say, the
national or local peculiarities, of his diocese, by bringing his
flock into line with the Greek-speaking Church. With
this end in view he made a dead set against the Diatessaron,
ordering it to be removed from all the churches, and
commanding the four separate Gospels to be substituted for
it. But he did not circulate the old Syriac gospels of
Palut ; his gospels were in a text more nearly agreeing
with the Syrian Greek text used at Antioch in his day.

476 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
This was the text of the Peshitta, which does not appear
in earher Syrian writings, but which henceforth becomes
the text of Syrian Christian literature. It is reasonable,
therefore, to infer that it was Eabbulas who introduced
the Peshitta New Testament, which was to be used
as the recognised version of the Church, as the Syrian
" Vulgate."

CHAPTER II
THE SYRIAN NESTORIANS
Zachariah of Mitylene, Chronicle (Eng. trans, in " Byzantine Texts,"
1899) ; Asseman, Biblioth. Oriental, tome iv. ; Gibbon, Decline
and Fall, chap, xlvii. ; Badger, Nestorians and their Ritual, 1862 ;
The Book of Governors ; The Historia Monastica of Thomas, bishop
of Marga, a.d. 840, edited from Syrian manuscripts, etc., by
G. Wallis Budge, 1893 ; Etheridge, Syrian Churches, 1846 ;
Noldeke Geschichte der Persen.
The rise and progress of the Nestorians offers us one of
the greatest surprises in history. By condemning them as
heretics the council of Ephesus (A.D. 431) unwittingly gave
them their opportunity. Church councils have succeeded
in crushing movements which had not obtained much
popular support. But no decree of a council has ever
destroyed a powerful heresy. The great days of Arianism
came after it had been anathematised by the Nicene Council.
The case of Nestorianism is even more significant. The
triumph of the Arians was due to imperial patronage; but
the Nestorians were not favoured with that encouragement.
Cast out of the empire, they brought fresh hfe to the Syrian
Church beyond its borders, and stimulated an enthusiastic
missionary movement which rapidly spread eastward hke a
prairie fire, covering wide areas of Central Asia.
Cyril of Alexandria had snatched a victory at Ephesus
by a stroke of smart tactics ; x but he was too astute a
politician to deceive himself with the supposition that this
had ended his difficulties. Having secured the condemna
tion of Nestorius, he was not unwilling to conciliate the
1 See p. 96.
477

478 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
arch-heretic's friends and supporters, the most important of
whom was John, the patriarch of Antioch, whom he had
affronted by hurrying through the council's discussions
before the arrival of that important personage. But the
negotiations began on the Nestorian side under the influence
of an august power to which all parties paid deference.
The emperor interfered as peacemaker, and at his com
mand Paul of Emesa, who had belonged hitherto to the
Nestorian party, visited Cyril at Alexandria (a.d. 432),
and explained the Syrian view in such a way as to allow
of the uniting of the two natures in Christ while each
retained its individuality pure and unmixed. A compact
was now made, according to which Cyril assented to this
statement, while John and his party were to acquiesce in
the condemnation of Nestorius — the Jonah cast out to end
the storm. His disciples were called Simonians, his books
burned, and the heretic himself driven away first to Petra,
then to the Fayum oasis.
After this the centre of Nestorianism passes over to
Edessa. Ibas, a presbyter in that church, and according
to some accounts the head of the theological school, now
an important seat of learning, had been present at the
council of Ephesus as a supporter of Nestorius. Eabbulas,
his bishop, had also been there, and at first friendly to the
Nestorian position; but he had subsequently gone over
decidedly to the other side. In making this change,
however, he did not carry his people with him, and Ibas, as
leader of the Nestorian party at Edessa, had the great
majority of the church with him. Ibas then wrote a
letter, of which much was made later, to Maris, then or
later bishop of Hardaschir in Persia, in which he gave a
graphic account of the council of Ephesus and also defined
his position — on the one hand condemning Nestorius for
approaching the Unitarianism of Paul of Samosata, and on
the other hand condemning Cyril for Apolhnarianism ; both
inaccurate charges. Eabbulas died in the year 435 (or
436), and Ibas was then carried to the bishopric by the
voice of the popular party which he represented. The

THE SYRIAN NESTORIANS 479
case was now serious, for although he had repudiated
Nestorius, the newly appointed bishop of Edessa was the
leading living supporter of essential Nestorianism. He
had translated the works of Theodore of Mopsuestia, the
real author of the heresy. Thus that system came to have
its headquarters at Edessa under the patronage of the chief
ecclesiastic of the Eastern Syrian Church. Four disaffected
presbyters now headed a party in opposition, and compelled
Domnus, who had succeeded his uncle John in the patri
archate of Antioch, and was friendly to Ibas, reluctantly
to summon a synod for hearing the charges against him.
Some of them were trivial, as that he used inferior wine at
the Eucharist, but among them was the grave accusation of
Nestorianism. However, nothing was decided, and the case
was postponed. The presbyters then resorted to Constanti
nople and appealed to the emperor, who ordered a trial by
an imperial commission of bishops at Tyre — of course quite
contrary to ecclesiastical rules and rights. These com
missioners endeavoured to effect a reconcihation. But
the peace they secured on the spot did not last. The
Eutychian party was now rising in power. When Ibas
returned home he found the minds of his flock poisoned
with adverse notions. Under orders from Constantinople,
Chsereas, the civil governor of Osrhoene, arrested him on
the charges the presbyters had urged against him. Monks
and nuns of the opposing party joined in the hue and cry,
eager to hound him to death. He was a " second Judas " ;
an " enemy of Christ " ; an " offshoot of Pharaoh." " To
the fire with him and all his race ! " they cried. Ibas
was removed by the emperor's soldiers, but as only a
synod could depose him, this was subsequently done by
" the robber council " at Ephesus, where he was again de
nounced by the fierce monks as a " second Judas " and
" veritable Satan." Subsequently, at the council of Chal
cedon (a.d. 451), under the new emperor, Marcian, he
was pardoned on condition that he anathematised both
Nestorius and Eutyches, and accepted the Tome of Leo.
Nevertheless he had not changed his views, and his people

480 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
knew it. To this day he is anathematised as a Nestorian
by the Jacobites in their profession of faith.
Meanwhile the Nestorian movement was spreading
farther north and east. Eabbulas had expelled a scholar
Barsumas, who was connected with the theological school
at Edessa, and who then went to Nisibis in Persian territory,
where he became bishop (a.d. 435). There he established
a theological school which was essentially Nestorian in
character. The original Syrian school at the capital was
never purged of Nestorianism. Thus there were now two
seats of learning from which the obnoxious tenets were
disseminated, till the Edessa school was finally suppressed
by the emperor in the year 489 on account of its heresy.
Like the Huguenots after the revocation of the edict of
Nantes, who brought the silk trade to England, hke the
Pilgrim Fathers who carried the best of Puritan energy
out of England to found a new world, the Nestorians came
to Mesopotamia with the arts and crafts of life. Carpenters,
smiths, weavers, the best of the artisan class, they came to
start industries and lay the foundations of manufacturing
prosperity in the land of their adoption. Then the expul
sion of Nestorians from the great school at Edessa — " the
Athens of Syria," as Gibbon calls it — led to the propaga
tion of their teaching in the remote regions of their travels.
They did not go merely as exiles. As in the story of
the Jerusalem Christians driven from their homes by the
persecution of Herod, their very troubles converted them
into missionaries. At home they were denounced as heretics ;
abroad, where no rumours of miserable doctrinal disputes
were heard, they simply journeyed as enthusiastic mission
aries of the gospel. And they were wonderfully successful,
winning converts in one district after another as they
penetrated further and yet further into the unknown lands
of Asia. In the first place this influx of Nestorians gave a great
impulse to Christianity in Persia. Two influences combined
to make that successful. The mere increase in numbers,
the infusion of fresh blood, and the zeal and devotion of

THE SYRIAN NESTORIANS 481
men who were exiles for their faith, stimulated the churches
which they found beyond the Euphrates into vigour, and
led to the planting of new churches. Then, further,
their advent changed the policy of the Persian government
towards the Christians. In former times this had been
adverse, sometimes to the extent of carrying on devastating
persecutions.1 The Magi had roused opposition to the
Christians on rehgious grounds, in the interest of Zoro-
astrianism, and the kings had been ready to resort to
violence because they had regarded the Church in Persia as
an ally of their standing enemy the Eoman Empire. But
now the case was different. It is true that at first the re
newed vigour of Persian Christianity produced by the advent
of the Nestorians provoked a fresh outbreak of persecution
under King Firuz or Peroz (a.d. 465). But since it was
directed against the Catholics it went on the old lines of
oppressing the clients and suspected alhes of the orthodox
Byzantine Church, which was closely associated with the
Byzantine government. Before long, however, the original
Christians joined hands with the Nestorians, and the new
comers, fusing themselves into the ancient Church, effectually
leavened it with their doctrine, so that the Persian Church
became Nestorian. By yielding so completely to the influ
ence of the immigrants, the Christians of Persia came under
the ecclesiastical ban of excommunication which had been
pronounced by the Cathohc Church at Ephesus and reiterated
at Chalcedon. They were all heretics out of communion
with Eome, and also with Constantinople, Antioch, and
Alexandria. Accordingly they ceased altogether to be in
any way politically dangerous to Persia as friends and allies
of the empire. On the contrary, the Persian government
and the Nestorian Church saw a common enemy in the
Byzantine Empire. It was to their interest to draw
together in mutual self-defence against attacks from the
dreaded foe. The Magian opposition, which rested on
other grounds, would not be affected by this change in
the pohtical kaleidoscope. But a spirit of concihation
1 See p. 299.
3>

482 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
leading to mutual concessions softened the antagonism here
also. Perhaps under the influence of Zoroastrianism,
which recognised only good in nature and considered the
source of evil to be a spiritual power, the Nestorians
abandoned the rigour of Cathohc asceticism. At a synod
held in the year 499, presided over by Babseus, the
metropohtan of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, they abohshed
all clerical celibacy, even permitting bishops to marry. It
was reported of them by the orthodox as a great scandal
that some of them married repeatedly. Second marriages
were always looked upon with disfavour in the orthodox
Church ; though permitted to the laity, they were absolutely
forbidden to the clergy. In the Greek Church the
bishops were cehbate, while the parish popes were required
to be married, but only once. But now among the
Nestorians not only were the bishops permitted to marry,
but if they lost a first wife, to marry again, and thus to
have a licence in the matter not even permitted to the
lower clergy in the main body of the Eastern Church. The
situation was regarded with professional horror among the
orthodox bishops. The arrangement seems to have worked
well in the Persian Church, for that Church continued to
flourish and expand. It was virtually identical with the
Syrian Church at Edessa, although not always under the same
civil government. Now we saw that Aphraates advocated
celibacy as a condition of baptism.1 How far this view
had been adopted by the main body of the Eastern Syrian
Christians cannot be determined from the scanty informa
tion at our disposal. But at all events it seems clear that
a great change must have come over that church when
under Nestorian influences for it to have acquiesced in, and
apparently adopted, the daring innovation of the complete
abohtion not only of baptismal cehbacy, but even of clerical
celibacy.2 This hberty has since been abohshed in the
Nestorian Church, which has assimilated its custom to
that of the Greek Church, in requiring its bishops to be
1 See p. 472.
2 See Lea, Clerical Celibacy, vol. i. pp. 98, 99.

THE SYRIAN NESTORIANS 483
without wives. The precise time when marriage was
prohibited to the higher clergy has not been ascertained.
The catholicos Mar Abd Yeshua, writing in the seventh
century, has a chapter on marriage and virginity, in which
no restriction is assigned to clerical marriage. A work
called Bebboreetha, by Schlemon, the metropohtan of Bosra,
refers to several wives of patriarchs. Another work states
that the metropohtan of Nisibis about the twelfth century,
himself a married man, convened a synod which decreed
that bishops should be allowed to marry.1 This shows that
there were opponents of episcopal marriage in the Syrian
Church at that time, although they proved only to be a
rninority who could be thwarted by a synod.
The Nestorian Church in Eastern Syria and Persia
was organised under an archbishop usually known as the
catholicos; and in the year 498 the catholicos assumed
the title of " Patriarch of the East." He was fully justified
in wearing this proud title. As a Nestorian heretic he was
entirely free from the patriarchate of Antioch, which from
time to time had claimed to exercise jurisdiction over
Mesopotamia, but which had now cut off and anathematised
all his Church. On the other hand, the wide and con
tinuous extension of Christianity in the Far East as a
result of the labours of the Nestorian missionaries was
giving him an immense extent of patriarchal territory, for
aU the converts in the new districts were taught to look
to the catholicos as their ecclesiastical head. The seat of
the patriarchate was at the twin-cities of Seleucia and
Ctesiphon, one of which was on the western and the other
on the eastern bank of the Tigris. These cities together
formed the centre of trade and travel between Europe and
Western Asia on one side, and India and China on the
other. Caravans with Oriental products destined to minister
to the luxury of more prosperous nations, came back from
visits to the industrious populations of those mysterious
distant empires of which as yet Europe knew little, and
displayed their wares in the bazaars of this great emporium.
1 Badger, vol. ii pp. 180, 181.

484 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
It was a magnificent centre for the missionary Church that
was now beginning to enter on its great task of carrying
the gospel to the Far East.
At first the reinvigorated Syrian Christians repudiated
the name Nestorian. This was not because they were
unwilling to accept the doctrines taught by Nestorius, but
simply because they had no connection with the deposed
patriarch of Alexandria. They had learnt the scheme of
Christology with which his name was associated more from
the writings of Theodore, its real founder and Nestorius's
teacher, and from others of the same school. But they
were not willing to have their position represented even in
this way. They did not regard themselves as persons won
over to a new doctrine. They maintained that the ideas
now anathematised by the Greek Church were genuine,
original Christian truths. Accordingly the cathohcos
Ebed-Jesu declared that it might rather be said that
Nestorius followed them than that they were led by him.1
We must not suppose that the Nestorian tide of
immigration entirely swept away the ascetic ideal, which
had been so very marked as to be almost Marcionite in
some quarters, at all events during the earlier days of the
Church of Edessa. We have a remarkable testimony to
the contrary in the chronicle of a Nestorian monk now
available for the English reader. This is the Book of
Governors, written by Thomas, bishop of Marga, and dated
in the year 840, which Dr. Wallis Budge has edited in the
Syriac, translated into English, and published. Thomas has
here done for the Syrian monks what Palladius did for the
Egyptian monks. His work is worthy of a place by the
side of the Paradise 2 for its first-hand account of ancient
1 Etheridge, The Syrian Churches, p. 72. Etheridge states that even
to-day they object to the title "Nestorian." But Badger cites instances of
the use of it in more modern times. For example, in the year 1609 Mar Abd
Yeshua drew up " the orthodox creed of the Nestorians," stating that he did
so " in the blessed city of Khlat in the church of the blessed Nestorians"
(The Nestorians and their Ritual, vol. i. p. 178). Layard states that the
name was first given by the Roman Catholic missionaries (Nineveh and its
Remains, vol. i. p. 259) ; but Badger shows that it had been used earlier.
a See p. 153.

THE SYRIAN NESTORIANS 485
monasticism. It gives us valuable information about an
important part of the Nestorian Church at the most obscure
period of its history. In reading the book we are brought
right back into the atmosphere of this old Syrian monas
ticism, and are able to see the real, human, distinctive figures
of a large number of its representative men, and to examine
the manners and customs of their communities with much
detail1 Syrian monasticism originated in Egyptian monasticism
— the scene and centre of the earliest ascetic hfe in the
Church. It appears to have begun with Awgin, who
sprang from an Egyptian family residing on an island near
the spot where Suez now stands, and who was originally a
pearl fisher. This man became a disciple of Pachomius.
He subsequently settled at Nisibis, and there gathered
about him a number of ascetics. The date of his death is
1 The first question that rises on the perusal of such a book — so new to
most English-speaking students of Church history — is that of its genuineness
and freedom from interpolations. It abounds in miracles ; but that was
only to be expected. No monkish chronicle of the ninth century could
have been free from miracle, and any non-miraculous chronicle of this
period would be ipso facto spurious. It is somewhat disconcerting, however
to find that the four MSS. out of which Dr. Budge has constructed his
text are all modern. These MSS. are (a) British Museum, Oriental, 2,316,
probably written in the early part of the seventeenth century ; (b and e)
MS. in Dr. Budge's possession, both written in 1888 ; (d) Vat., in the
Vatican library, No. clxv., written A.r. 1663. We see then that of the
four MSS. on which Dr. Budge relies, the two oldest were written in
the seventeenth century, and the other two in the year 1888. Dr. Budge
does not indicate in any way the sources of the latter, though surely it
should be possible to discover what these were. In addition, he mentions
three other MSS., now in Europe, which he does not date and which
apparently he has not collated. Dr. Budge is satisfied that the text has
not been tampered with, because his four MSS. agree — except for ordinary
various readings. But that fact is no proof that they might not all be
derived from a common source which was not sound. A better ground
of assurance in the substantial genuineness of the documents is their
internal characteristics. (1) The narrative fits into the circumstances of the
times. (2) The writer does not hesitate to record what is discreditable to
his monks — a point in favour of an early date. A later Syrian writer would
be likely to suppress discreditable incidents. On the whole, therefore,
probably we may accept this book as Thomas's genuine record. If anybody
would take the trouble to apply the principles of the Higher Criticism
to it, he might lead us to a more conclusive verdict.

486 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
given as a.d. 363. The one monastery founded by Awgin
is credited with having sent out no less than seventy-two
missionaries. We may regard him as the St. Columba
of Syrian monasticism.
Two other monasteries are known to have been
instituted in Mesopotamia before the end of the fourth
century. Therefore by the time of Thomas this Eastern
Syrian monasticism was already more than four hundred
years old. Meanwhile it had been absorbed in the great
Nestorian movement that had taken over the Church in
Mesopotamia. So Thomas was a Nestorian and the
monks about whom he wrote were Nestorians, although it
would be difficult to discover the fact from his book, which
is far removed from theological controversies.
Thomas tells us that he came to the monastery of Beth
'Abhe when a young man, in the year A.D. 832; and his
book is concerned with the monks and chiefly the governors
of thisjnpnastery. It has since disappeared and the exact
site of it has not been recovered, though it is known to
have been situated somewhere among the mountains not
far from the Upper or Great Zab, on its right bank, in a
bleak region where fruit trees, could not be cultivated
According to Thomas, the monastery was founded by
Eabban Jacob, originally a monk of Mount Izla (A.D. 595
or 596); but inasmuch as this man found some monks
there, we must conclude that it was a more ancient centre
for a group of ascetics' huts or caves. Under Jacob and
his successors it grew into a very important monastery.
It would seem that its inmates were men of high social
position, and that they cultivated learning as well as
asceticism. Many of them belonged to noble Persian and
Arab families. The library contained a large collection of
books, among which was Thomas's favourite work, the
Paradise of Palladius, translated in the seventh century
by Anan Isho, a monk of the great monastery of Izla, near
Nisibis, who had made a pilgrimage to the Scetic desert,
the home of ancient asceticism. The daily services were
seven in number — just before sunset, at dusk, at midnight,

THE SYRIAN NESTORIANS 487
at daybreak, and through the day; and at these services
lessons from the Old and New Testaments were read,
collects said, and hymns, anthems, and responses sung.
This was the general custom in Nestorian monasteries,
which followed in the main the usual monastic routine
observed in other branches of the Eastern Church. There
was no set and recognised scheme of music. Each
monastery or church had its own tunes. The monastery
was supported partly by endowments and partly by the
labour of its monks. Soon after the time of Thomas
it began to dechne, owing to oppressive Mohammedan
taxation and also through the violent aggression of the
Arabs, who seized neighbouring land and villages. Thomas
obtained his information through being secretary to Mar
Abraham, the governor of the monastery in his day.
Subsequently he became bishop of Marga — from which
fact he comes to be known as " Thomas of Marga " ; and
later still he was honoured with the title of " Metropolitan
of Beth Garmai."
After his apology and introduction, Thomas begins his
narrative with an account of the monastery of Mount
Izla and the unfortunate happenings there which led to
Jacob's removal to Beth 'Abhe. This story is important
both on its own account and for the light it throws
on the circumstances of the times. The monks were
allowed to live in scattered cells and more or less widely
separated villages, although under the common rule of
the governor. Even then the lack of communication is
remarkable. It was found that the monks in one of these
outlying villages were married. According to one account,
a visitor saw the children playing about in the street. The
domestic life was carried on without fear or reproach, and
this comfortable arrangement continued for a number of
years without any attempt at stopping it. At length the
scandal was discovered by a monk named Elijah, a fierce,
uncompromising ascetic, who determined to have what he
described as " the gangrene " cut away. So the story
stands in Thomas's book. But it is scarcely possible to

488 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
believe that the village had been so completely hidden
that no rumour of its doings had got abroad The
reasonable explanation is that this was known and was
connived at by the governor all along.
That such a condition of things could have been going
on quite openly, unmolested and unrebuked for years, in
connection with a monastery, must strike the reader who
has only been accustomed to monasticism in the Eoman
Cathohc and orthodox Churches as simply amazing. It
was not so remarkable in Mesopotamia, for it was quite
in line with the Nestorian disregard of asceticism which
allowed the marriage of bishops. But. now comes this
stern censor denouncing the married monks with the spirit
of a Hildebrand, or like a Nehemiah commanding the
Israelites to send away their foreign wives. He ex
postulates with the governor for not having stopped the
scandal, " while in this Divine inheritance Sodom is being
raised to hfe again, and Geba rebuilt."1 The upshot is
that the offending monks with their wives and children
were expelled and their huts burned. But this was not
all. Not so far away there lived the holy Eabban Mar
Jacob, whom Thomas characterises as " the most meek and
humble of all men, who knew not that any sin besides his
own existed in creation, whose eye was pure, and who
never perceived wickedness in his neighbour."2 Was
there ever a more lovely description of a Christian soul
than this account of the seventh century Nestorian monk
among the mountains of Eastern Syria? He was as
different as possible from the fierce Elijah, and that
self-elected reformer charged Jacob with conniving at
the abomination. Although the good man had known
nothing of it, according to Thomas, or had never suspected
harm in it, as we may more probably conclude, he was
driven from the monastery almost broken-hearted. After
wandering about for a time Jacob came to Beth 'Abhe\
But this expulsion of a perfectly innocent man was not to
be taken lightly. The monks made a great commotion at
1 Book of Governors, Book i. chap. x. ' Ibid. chap. xii.

THE SYRIAN NESTORIANS 489
the injustice of it, and many of them left in indignation
to become the founders of various other monasteries at
Nineveh, Erzerum, and the country lying between the
upper and lower Zab rivers, till, as Thomas says, " they
filled the country of the East with monasteries, and
convents, and habitations of monks, and Satan who had
rejoiced at their discomfiture was put to shame." x
The second abbot of Beth eAbh6 was John, an author of
some repute, who left a chronicle, rules for novices, maxims,
etc. He was succeeded by Paul, who lived through a good
part of the troublous times of King Khusrau's wars with the
Greeks and witnessed a persecution of the Christians. In
the year 647 Isho-yahbh became catholicos, and he greatly
enriched the monastery, building a splendid church and
adding other accessories. A second Hyppolytus, he was
the author of a " Eefutation of Heretical Opinions." Some
of the monks were rigid ascetics in spite of the laxity of
Nestorianism. Thomas tells us that Cyriacus the eighteenth
abbot used to stand all night with one knee " bent like a
camel," and fastened with a leather strap. It is more
edifying to learn how earnestly the necessity of labour was
insisted on. Thus in Canon i. of Mar Abraham we read,
" Quietness then is preserved by these two causes, namely,
constant reading and prayer, or by the labour of the hands
and meditation " ; and he adds, " Let us flee from idleness,
which is a thing that causeth loss, being firmly persuaded
that, if we allow it to remain it will be impossible for us
either to bear leaves or to yield fruit, if indeed it happen
not that we be altogether cut off from the life of the fear
of God."2 Thomas narrates how the catholicos Isho - yahbh,
accompanied by some of his bishops, was sent by the
Persian King Sheroe 3 to endeavour to bring about peace
1 Ibid. chap. xiv. 2 Ibid. vol. i. Introd. p. cxxv.
3 Thomas calls him "the good King Sheroe." In point of fact, although
overtures of peace had been made to Heraclius by Sheroe, it was the Queen
Boran, daughter of Khusrau Parwey who despatched the embassy. See
Budge, The Book of Governors, vol. ii. p. 125, note 2.

490 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
with the Byzantine Greeks. In connection with this
embassy he tells a story which reflects as little credit on his
own sense of honesty as on that of the head of his Church.
While " these holy men," passing through the city of
Antioch, were resting in one of the churches, the catholicos
observed a white casket marked with the sign of the cross,
which contained bones and portions of the bodies of the
blessed apostles. Observing what mighty deeds were
wrought by these relics, Isho-yahbh prayed earnestly that
he might have the treasure to take to his own country.
Having vexed and tortured himself with all manner of
schemes to get hold of it and not being able to succeed,
notwithstanding his Oriental subtlety, he put the matter in
the hands of God to protect him while he did his best to
secure the coveted casket. Then he stole it and carried
it back with him to Persia. Thomas does not express the
least disapproval of this transaction. On the contrary,
he tells his story with gusto, evidently ascribing it to the
honour of the catholicos that his trust in God enabled him
to accomplish the theft.
The monastery of Beth cAbhe" was subsequently dis
turbed by the Euchites. The branch of these people, the
" praying monks," in Syria, there called Messalians, cherished
a severe doctrine of original sin together with little faith in
the efficacy of sacraments. Everybody was born with a demon
united to his soul, which prompted him to evil and which
was not exorcised by baptism, that rite only clipping off the
offence of actual transgressions " as with shears while the
root of the evil still remained behind." x The remedy was
prayer, constant, uninterrupted prayer. The consequence
was that the Euchites abandoned labour, ceased to work
for their bread like other monks, lived by begging, lay
about in the streets, and spent much of their time in
sleep. Women mixed with men in the wandering companies
of the Euchites, and charges of immorality amounting to
promiscuous intercourse were brought against them on that
account, but apparently on no other evidence.2 Neander
1 Timotheus, De recept. hoer. i. 2. * See Epiphanius, Hozr. 80.

THE SYRIAN NESTORIANS 491
calls them " the first mendicant Friars." x They are said to
have beheved that prayer drove out the demons as spittle,
mucus from the nose, or in the form of a serpent or a sow
with a htter of pigs. But probably these absurdities resulted
from taking their metaphors literally. A more dangerous
and not improbable error was the perfectionism to which
they inclined. And yet, like Wesley's doctrine of Christian
perfection, this may have been a stimulating ideal rather
than a vain boast. The first leader of the party was a
layman of Mesopotamia named Adelphius. Flavian, the
patriarch of Antioch, induced him when an old man to
make a confidant of an aged bishop who was really a spy.
The Euchite doctrine being thus meanly extracted, Adelphius
and his foUowers were beaten, excommunicated, and banished.
From Syria they went to Pamphylia. Condemned over and
over again by various local synods, they persisted, and
nourished in spite of scorn and hatred. The council of
Ephesus confirmed the synod's condemnation of the party,
and anathematised a Messahan book called Asceticus.
Subsequently the Euchites had a leader named Lampetus,
after whom they were sometimes called Lampetians ; later
still they were called Marcianists, after a leader of the party
in the sixth century named Marcian. They hngered on
till they mingled with the Bogomiles.2 In the fourteenth
century there was a revival of Euchite ideas and practices
among the monks of Mount Athos.
H the charge of immorality — so common in the case of
heretics and so generally baseless — was a cruel libel, the
only serious objection to these Euchites in the eyes of the
modern world would be their idleness. But their slighting
the sacraments, to which is to be added the fact that they
objected to the choral services of the Church, would be
quite enough to account for their condemnation by their
contemporaries. We may regard them, however, as simple
pietists, in some way allied to Puritanism, in some respects
anticipating Quaker views, in some degree approaching the
modern devotees of what has been called " the higher hfe."
1 Church Hist. vol. iii. section iv. i. 2 See p. 225.

492 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Somewhat similar to the Euchites were the Eustathians,
followers of Eustathius, bishop of Sebaste in Armenia,
who broke. up homes, and induced husbands, wives, children,
and servants to go off with the wandering bands. They
would partake of no sacrament administered by a married
priest. For the same reason they would not meet for
worship in the house of a married man.

CHAPTER III
THE LATER NESTORIANS, THE CHALDEANS, AND
THE JACOBITES
(a) Thomas of Marga, Historia Monastica (edited by Budge, 1893) ;
John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History (trans, by Payne
Smith) ; Zachariah, Syriac Chronicle, Eng. trans., 1899 ;
Asseman, Biblioth. Oriental, tomes ii. and iv.
(ft) Etheridge, Syrian Churches, 1846 ; Badger, Nestorians and their
Ritual, 1862. The Nestokians.
During the earlier part of its history the Nestorian Church
in the Persian Empire went through the trying experience
of alternate patronage and persecution. It is difficult to
say which was the more hurtful to it. The patronage was
continuous over long periods of time ; the persecution
took the form of sudden outbreaks of massacre. When the
monarch smiled on the Church he took good care to keep
it well in hand, appointing his own nominee as catholicos
and deposing him if he did not give satisfaction. The
Persian Nestorians being at feud with the orthodox Greeks
in the Byzantine Empire, it was profitable to the king of
Persia for the quarrel between the two Churches to come to
the assistance of the antagonism between the two empires.
But while this might suit the purposes of the sovereign, it
was by no means pleasing to the Magi, who saw in the
Church their deadly rival. Therefore whenever the Magian
influence got the upper hand the Christians had to suffer.
In consequence of one of these persecutions, which began in
the year 608, the office of catholicos was vacant for twenty
493

494 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
years, at the end of which time of gloom and desolation it
was restored in the person of Jesu-Jabus,1 who lived to see
the fall of the royal house of the Sassanidse (a.d. 651).
During the patriarchate of Jesu-Jabus, Persia was over
whelmed by the Mohammedan tide of conquest, the con
sequence of which was oppression under a more anti-
Christian tyranny than that of the Zoroastrian rulers it
superseded. But this has not always been equally severe.
The catholicos obtained from the caliph an assurance of
protection for the Christians, with a right to practise their
religion on the usual condition of paying tribute. He even
got better terms from Omar at a later time, having the
tribute remitted. The next caliph, Ibn Abi Taleb, con
firmed these privileges in a charter which expressed polite
esteem for the Christianity of the Nestorians. No doubt,
like his predecessors the Persian kings, he was astute enough
to perceive the wisdom of favouring the heretics, both for
the sake of weakening the Christian cause by means of
divisions, and on account of the close alliance between the
orthodox Church, which repudiated them, and the Byzantine
Empire. In the year 762, under the enlightened caliphate
of Bagdad, the Nestorian catholicos removed to that city,
then a centre of learning and science, and there the Christian
prelate lived on good terms with the Mussulman despot.2
During the next five hundred years the Nestorian Church
was allowed to go its own way, sometimes with kindly
recognition from liberal caliphs, sometimes harassed by
harsh tyrants, but still all the time a recognised institution
within the territory of Islam. Then came the terrible
barbaric invasions, which threatened to sweep civilisation
away in the regions of the Greek Empire, and which
brought a night of three centuries on the opening day of
Eussian Christianity. Their influence on the Mohammedan
countries has not been noted with so much concern, and yet
it would have been tremendous if these conquering heathen
hordes had not been rapidly absorbed into Islam, with the
ultimate result that the Turkish superseded the Arab rule
1 Asseman, tome iv. p. 87. 2 Ibid. iv. pp. 94 ff.

LATER NESTORIANS, CHALD JEANS, AND JACOBITES 4P5
over the lands that Mohammed and his successors had won
by the sword. In the year 1258, Hulaku Khan, the
nephew of Genghis Khan, took Bagdad, and put an end to
the caliphate in that city. He was the son of a Christian
mother and he had a Christian wife. Indeed, he entered
into negotiations with the pope and with the kings of
France and England with a view to an alliance against
the Saracens. Several of his successors publicly professed
themselves as Christians; others stood for Islam. Their
power rapidly declined. Meanwhile, although the Nes
torians were now very numerous, their moral influence was
weakened and their church hfe degenerated. This unsatis
factory state of affairs continued for nearly a hundred and
fifty years. We are now at the end of the fourteenth
century — a time of overwhelming calamities. Another wave
of invasion from the steppes of Asia next appeared, led by the
dreadful Timour, who seized and sacked Bagdad, Aleppo,
and Damascus about the year 1400. He presented him
self as a champion of Islam with a policy very different
from the Tartar khans of Bagdad ; for Timour savagely
attacked the Syrian Christians, many of whom he captured,
while those who succeeded in escaping fled to the inacces
sible mountains of Kurdistan. It was the break-up of the
ancient Syrian Church that had had so large a share in
the history of Mesopotamia and wide areas farther north
and east for a thousand years. The Nestorians still lingered
on ; they have remained to the present day ; but they have
never recovered their ancient power and prestige.1
A curious account of the Nestorians is given by
Albiruni, a Mohammedan writer who lived at Khiva be
tween a.d. 973 and 1048. He contrasts them with the
Cathohc party on account of their superior intellectual
activity, saying, "Nestorius instigated people to examine
for themselves, and to use the instruments of logic
and analogy in meeting their opponents." 2 This author
1 See Asseman, tome iv. p. 138 ff.
2 Chronology of Ancient Nations, translated by E. Sachau (Oriental
Translation Fund, 1879), p. 306.

496 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
states that they agree with the Melchites x in the observ
ance of Lent, Christmas, and Epiphany, but differ from
them as to all other feasts and fasts. At the feast of
Ma'aVtha2 he tells us, " They wander from the nave of their
churches up to the roof in memory of the return of the
Israehtes to Jerusalem," an indication of Jewish associations
on the part of the Nestorians. Albiruni declared that the
majority of the inhabitants of Syria, Irak, and Khurasan
were Nestorians.
The lot of the Nestorians in modern times is pitiable.
In the year 1843 four thousand of them were massacred
by the Kurds. Layard describes his visit to a ghastly
scene of skeletons, skulls, scattered bones, rotting garments
on rocks and bushes and ledges of a precipice over which
men, women, and children had been hurled. Everywhere
he found villages devastated and churches in ruins, or, if in
some cases they were roughly rebuilt, the people afraid to
use them, because the patriarch was in prison and unable
to reconsecrate the desecrated houses of worship.
The wonder is that these oppressed people, excom
municated by the Greek Church and persecuted by their
Mussulman neighbours, still retain their loyalty to what
they believe to be the faith once delivered to the saints,
even to the extent of martyrdom. They have very little
to encourage them in what Protestants would call "the
means of grace." Their liturgies are in old Syriac, which
is unintelligible to the people of the present day — except
where, as Layard says, it is translated into the vernacular.
They hear no preaching. Their chief religious functions
are fasts, of which there are 153 in the year. One con
sequence of their isolation is that, while they have sunk
into ignorance, they have not degenerated in doctrine and
ritual to the same extent as more active churchea They
have no doctrine of transubstantiation, no purgatory;
they do not sanction Mariolatry or image worship ; nor
1 The orthodox, as the party of the "king," i.e. the Byzantine emperor,
a title applied to them in contrast to Nestorians.
* Ingressus.

LATER NESTORIANS, CHALDEANS, AND JACOBITES 497
will they even allow icons to be exhibited in their churches.
Men and women take the communion in both kinds. All
five orders of clergy below the bishops are permitted to
marry. Dr. Layard could not find any convents either for
men or for women.
Thus in many respects the modern Nestorians are
nearer to European Protestantism than to Eoman Catholi
cism. While those who have succumbed to the Jesuit
missions are bound to accept the full Western doctrine
— if they really know what that is — the sturdy resist
ance of the old Nestorians to the papal pretensions
throws them into an attitude which is essentially pro
testant. But they are neither Lutheran nor Calvinistic.
They have any essential Western Protestantism in their
constitution. Such ideas of Luther as the priesthood of all
Christians and justification by faith are quite unknown to
these scattered communities of the primitive Syrian Church.
In their daily life the Syrian and Persian Nestorians
have the reputation of being superior to their Mohammedan
neighbours. They are honest, thrifty, perhaps even par
simonious. Such people are well worthy of the sympathy
and assistance of their more fortunate and more enlightened
fellow-Christians. The first necessity is to protect them
from oppression and outrage. What they need is educa
tion, not ecclesiastical proselytising. They are said not
to know the elements of the gospel. Then the best
action of friendly English or American churches would be
to evangelise them by teaching them the contents of their
own Scriptures. Some good work of this kind is already
going on under the American missionaries.
One cause of the weakening of this ancient Syrian
Church may be found in its divisions. In particular there
are the Chaldseans and the Jacobites.

The Chaldeans.
The sect known as the " Chaldaeans " is of recent origin,
having originated in the year 1681, when the Nestorian
32

498 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
patriarch of Diarbekir, having quarrelled with the catholicos,
turned to the pope, who consecrated him " patriarch of the
Chaldaeans," thus creating the new office on his own
authority. This movement was the result of a Jesuit
mission in the East, and the Chaldaeans are a sect spring
ing out of the influence of that mission.1 The Crusades
raised hopes on the part of the papacy that if the stub
born Greek Church could not be induced to bow the neck
to the pope, the Nestorians who were anathematised by that
church might join hands with the Latin Church. Their very
antagonism to the Byzantines might induce them to have
friendly feelings towards the rival communion. Accordingly
efforts were made to win over the Nestorians in the year
1247, and again some forty years later ; but though Eastern
courtesy or suppleness at first deceived the papal mis
sionaries with hopes of success, these were doomed to dis
appointment. Nothing more was done for more than three
hundred years. Then, in the year 1552, a large secession
from the Nestorian Church took place on the question of
the election of a catholicos. The office had long been
hereditary; but at length a considerable body of clergy
objected to this unhealthy arrangement, and on the death
of a patriarch in the year 1551 they passed by his nephew
and elevated to the vacant post a more popular candidate,
Sind (or Sulaka). Now it was held to be requisite that
three metropolitans should take part in the appointment of
a patriarch. But there were not three to be found siding
with the schism. The difficulty was got over by an
appeal to Eome, and the Chaldsean catholicos was conse
crated by Pope Julius in. At the same time a priest
named Moses brought the Peshitta to Europe, and thus
prepared for the study of Syrian Christianity by Western
scholars. 1 Etheridge says that the Chaldaeans came from both sections of Eastern
Syrian Christians— the Nestorians and the Jacobites, and claims in support
of this view the authority of Smith and Dwight, "Researches in Armenia,"
in Grant's Nestorians or Lost Tribes, p. 170. But according to Badger
they are simply a branch of the Nestorians.

LATER NESTORIANS, CHALDAEANS, AND JACOBITES 499
It is not to be supposed, however, that the mere question
of arranging a consecration was the only motive for so im
portant a step as this union. With some we may see in it
the outcome of the repeated efforts of the Latin Church
to absorb the Nestorians. The connection once established
was continued, and the successors of Sind also obtained their
consecration from Eome. Thus the Chaldaeans are the
Nestorians who have submitted to the papacy, and we may
regard them as the fruits of the Jesuit missions in Syria.
They are called by the Syrian Christians who have success
fully resisted the papal aggression, the Maghlobeen, that is,
" the Conquered." The Chaldaeans are now chiefly found
in rural districts east of the Tigris, and they are com
paratively numerous at Elkoosh, where they have a large
monastery bearing the name of Eabban Hormuz ; they have
a catholicos at Bagdad.
Abortive attempts at union with Eome have been made
from time to time in other quarters. Thus Elias ii., bishop
of Mosul, sent two deputations to Pope Paul iv., the first in
the year 1607 and the second three years later. In a letter
which accompanied his messengers he expressed a desire
for a reconciliation between the Nestorians and the Latin
Church. Again, in the year 1657, another approach from
the Nestorian side was attempted, when Elias ill. addressed
a letter to the congregation De Propaganda Fide, expressing
his readiness to join the Church of Eome on two conditions
— (1) that the pope would allow the Nestorians to have a
church of their own in the city of Eome ; (2) that they
should not be required to alter their doctrine or discipline.
Sancta simplicitas ! Nothing could come of that. Subse
quently the Nestorian bishops of Ormus, who all bore
the name of Simeon, more than once proposed plans of
reconciliation with Eome, and one of them sent a confes
sion of faith to the pontiff to demonstrate their orthodoxy.
But it all came to nothing. The main body of the
Nestorians has remained in neglected isolation and poverty.
Meanwhile the Eoman Catholic propaganda never ceases
its efforts to gather these far-off wandering sheep into its

500 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
fold.1 In the eighteenth century it won over a small body
of Nestorians at Diabeker. But for the most part these
attempts have been fruitless. The Jacobites.
The Jacobites are the representatives of Monophysitism
in the Syrian Church, and therefore they are at the antipodes
of the Nestorians in regard to divergence from the Greek
Church. They are named after Jacob surnamed Al Bardai,
either from Bardaa, a city in Armenia, or, as is generally
assumed, from a sort of felt which the Arabs call " barda,"
used for saddle-cloths, which he wore in a ragged condition,
so that he went about, it was said, looking like a beggar.
Born at Tela, a place also called Constantina, fifty-five miles
east of Edessa, towards the close of the fifth century, he
was brought up in a monastery, where he was educated in
Monophysite theology and Greek and Syriac literature, and
disciplined with severe asceticism, and whence his fame as
a monk miracle-worker rapidly spread. When it reached
the Empress Theodora she summoned him to Constantinople,
reckoning him to be a valuable asset for the cause that
she was intriguing to help forward. He came reluctantly,
having no ambition for the honours that the empress heaped
upon him. Detesting the luxury and worldly glamour of
the court, he retired to a monastery near the city, where he
remained for fifteen years, living the life of a complete
recluse. But his work was yet before him. In spite of
his long-practised habit of retirement, he was destined to a
career of great activity. His call came from the desperate
needs of his party. The weak Justinian, who had wavered
for some time under the influence of his masterful consort,
was brought at length to take vigorous measures for the
enforcement of the Chalcedonian decrees. Bishops and
inferior clergy who refused to accept them were re-
1 A Nestorian priest at Amadieh deplored to the American missionary,
Dr. Grant, that his own father had been bastinadoed in order to compel him
to become a Roman Catholic. See Etheridge, pp. 127, 128.

LATER NESTORIANS, CHALDEANS, AND JACOBITES 501
moved from their posts and punished with exile and im
prisonment. The consequence was that over a very wide
area where the Monophysite doctrine prevailed, the people
were deprived of any ministry according to their own views,
and therefore left, as Gibbon sneeringly remarks, to the
choice of being " famished or poisoned." Then Harith the
Magnificent, a sheikh of the Christian Arabs, brought the
case of these unhappy people before their patroness
Theodora, and so induced her to drag Jacob out of his cell
and persuade him to return to Eastern Syria for the help
of his fellow-rehgionists.
Jacob was now launched on a perilous and exacting
undertaking; for his mission was to be followed out in
defiance of the emperor's orders, and it demanded immense
energy as well as heroic courage. The brave man rose to
the occasion. He changed his manner of hfe. From
being a shrinking recluse and letting the years ghde
by unmarked in the even course of the monastic life, he
suddenly plunged into a sea of affairs, and undertook long
journeys sometimes on foot, at other times on a fleet
dromedary lent him by the sheikh. He traversed Asia
Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia, as far as Persia. Wherever
he went he ordained bishops and priests, exhorted the
people to fidelity to their creed, and encouraged them
amid persecutions and disappointments. His enthusiasm
was infectious, and his indefatigable labours were rewarded
with brilliant success. Jacob was credited with having
ordained a fabulous number of clergy.1 Thus the fire
which Justinian thought he had stamped out had burst
into flame again. The orthodox bishops were enraged.
The emperor was indignant. He would have seized the
obnoxious disturber of his happy settlement if only he
could have done so. Orders were issued for the arrest of
Jacob ; rewards were offered to any who could catch him.
It was all in vain. Jacob seemed to be ubiquitous. He
had friends among the Arabs who hid him whenever danger
'According to John of Asia 100.000, including eighty-nine bishops
and two patriarchs. See Laud, Anecdot. Syr. ii. 251.

502 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
threatened. So, while many an obscure Monophysite
bishop was languishing in a dungeon, this chief offender
not only remained at large, but continued his labours
among the people in promoting the cause to which he
was devoted, at the risk of his liberty, perhaps his life.
This is the bright page of the story. The sequel is
very disappointing. Like many another enthusiast, Jacob
failed in administration. His very simplicity, preserved
for so many years in the seclusion of his cell, unfitted him
for dealing with designing men. Unhappily there were
some of this kind about him who played the unsuspecting
saint for their own purposes, and all unconsciously he
became a tool in their hands. The consequence was that
the Monophysite party was split into miserable factions,
which sometimes came to blows and even murder. The
most important and wide-reaching of these disturbances
was occasioned by the conduct of Paul, whom Jacob had
ordained " Patriarch of Antioch." During the persecution
Paul and three other leading bishops of his party were
summoned to Constantinople, where they were harshly
treated, till one after another all yielded to the combined
pressure of government authority and popular disfavour.
It was purely an act of weakness, and Paul immediately
shrank away into retirement, taking refuge in Arabia
with Moudir, Harith's successor. As soon as Jacob heard
of the defection of the patriarch whom he had himself
nominated, he indignantly excommunicated the unhappy
man. But Paul was heartily ashamed of his conduct,
and after three years Jacob acknowledged his penitence
and consented to receive him into communion again
after a synod of Monophysites had sanctioned this
proposal. That, however, did not end the trouble. It
only transferred it to the Monophysites at Alexandria,
who appear to have had other and earlier grounds
of complaint against the culprit, previously well known
in their city. Peter the Monophysite patriarch pro
nounced his deposition — a distinct breach of canon law,
for Alexandria had no jurisdiction over Antioch ; the two

LATER NESTORIANS, CHALDEANS, AND JACOBITES 503
patriarchs were of equal rank and mutually independent.
Jacob went to Alexandria to endeavour to settle the
matter. But he was not the man for delicate negotiations.
The party of Peter won him over to signing his assent to
the deposition of Paul, though not to the excommunication
of him. The result was a schism beginning in the year
576, which, as John of Asia says, "spread hke an ulcer."1
The misfortune was that both parties were Monophysite,
both therefore under the ban of the Chalcedonian party
and the imperial government. All other attempts at a
settlement having failed, Jacob set out a second time for
Alexandria in the vain hope of making terms of peace.
He was now an old man, wearied and vexed with the
constant strife in the midst of which his lot was cast, so
utterly against his will and nature, since he would have
infinitely preferred the quiet seclusion of his cell from
which he had been dragged against his will. He never
reached his destination. His party was stricken with a
serious illness at the monastery of Cassianus on the borders
of Egypt, and Jacob and, three members of the company
died there (July ad. 578). Of course there were rumours
of foul play. But no evidence was brought forward to
confirm them. It was perhaps a happy ending to a life
which at its zenith had shone with brilhant success, but
the later half of which had been overcast with gloom and
failure. Jacob was a good, unambitious man, an enthusiastic
evangehst, an indefatigable peace-maker; but the larger
hah of the Church denounced his evangel, and his old friends
whom he desired to reconcile would not have his peace.
Meanwhile the persecution of the Syrian Monophysites,
like that of the Nestorians at an earlier date, was driving
them into the hands of the Persians. Then divisions of a
doctrinal character appeared among them. There were
the Niobites, led by Niobes, a teacher who maintained the
perfect unity of Christ as distinguished from the more
moderate Monophysites, among whom some distinction
between the Divinity and the humanity was allowed.
1 John of Asia (trans, by Payne Smith), p. 282.

504 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Then there were the Tritheites, who appeared in the reign
of Justin n. under the leadership of John Askunages
(" Bottle-shoes ") who, according to Bar Hebrseus stated his
views thus : " I confess one nature of Christ, the Incarnate
Word ; but in the Trinity I reckon the natures and sub
stances and godheads according to the number of the per
sons." There was a clearness and logical consistency in the
views of these people not attained by less daring thinkers.
If the humanity of Christ is so absorbed and transmuted
as to be entirely lost in His Divinity, either you muBt have
a Patripassion or at least a Sabellian Monarchianism, or
you must find His distinctive individuality in His Divine
nature. In the latter case, if as God He is a distinct
individual by the side of the Father, you have two Gods,
and as the same is said of the Holy Ghost, the consequence
is Tritheism. Later there appeared people known as
Tetratheists, in consequence of the teaching of Damianus,
a Syrian, the Severian or Monophysite patriarch of Alex
andria — Peter's successor — at the end of the sixth century.
He recognised first the essential personality of the one
substance, God in Himself, and then a separate individu
ality for each of the Three Persons of the Trinity. His
opponent, Peter of Calinicus, would make him push his
argument further, and so come to have a separate divinity
for each property of God, a perfect pantheon, if he would
be consistent with his root principle. But John of Asia
describes him as an untrustworthy and inconsistent man.1
Other divisions of the Monophysites are more closely
associated with Alexandria and the Coptic Church than
with the Syrian. But they have lingered on in Syria
down to the present day. The Jacobites are now mostly
found in Mesopotamia, especially at Mosul and Mardeen.
There aie scarcely any left in Palestine and few in
Damascus. But they have a monastery at Jerusalem,
and some of them are to be found at Hamah and Aleppo.
Etheridge calculates that apart from the colony at Malabar
the total number of Jacobites is now probably not more
1 John of Asia, p. 306.

LATER NESTORIANS, CHALDAEANS, AND JACOBITES 505
than ISO.OOO.1 They claim to be descended from the
original Hebrew Christians and designate themselves " B'ne
Israel." In their church government they are very hier
archical, although their orders are under suspicion since
they are derived from Jacob Al Bardai, whose own ordina
tion to the episcopate has been questioned, for some have
maintained that he was only ordained as a presbyter.
In conclusion it is to be observed that the Syrian
Church has made no inconsiderable contributions to litera
ture, although Eenan's generalised verdict of mediocrity
must be applied to the mass of it. First we have the
Peshitta, the standard Syriac Bible, the Vulgate of the
East. Then there are several versions and successive
revisions made by Jacobite scholars in the interest of the
Monophysite doctrine. The first of these was produced
by Aksenaya, or Philoxenus, bishop of Mabbogh, with the
assistance of his chorepiscopus Polycarp, which appeared in
the year 508, and became popular among the Jacobites ; it
was superseded by later revisions, especially that of Thomas
of Heraclea, bishop of the same city of Mabbogh early in
the seventh century. A hundred years later a final attempt
at revision of the Old Testament was made by Jacob of
Edessa, but his work does not seem to have met with
acceptance, and he did not proceed to revise the New Testa
ment. The Melchite or Greek Church of Palestine had its
own revision in the local Aramaic dialect, a dialect corre
sponding to the Jewish Targums, and probably more nearly
approaching that spoken by our Lord than that of any
other version. Meanwhile the Nestorians held to the old
Peshitta, and opposed stohd indifference to the only attempt
ever made to give them a more accurate version, when
Mar Abha I., a catholicos in the middle of the sixth
century, having studied Greek under a teacher at Edessa
named Thomas, with his assistance made a new translation
into Syriac of all the Old Testament and perhaps also the
New. The story of Syriac literature properly begins with
1 Syrian Churches, p. 149, note.

506 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Tatian's Diatessaron. Next comes the scholar Bardaisan,
whom the Church failed to retain and who has been
called " the last of the Gnostics." While his authorship
of the important work De Fato, already briefly described,1
is doubtful, he is stated to have written a History
of Armenia and a book called Hypomnemata Indica,
compiled out of information he obtained from Indian
ambassadors on their way through Edessa to the Eoman
court. Jacob of Nisibis is a famous Syrian writer of the
fourth century ; but the Homilies once ascribed to him are
now said to have been written by Aphraates, who was
followed towards the end of the century by Ephraim,2 and
the poets Balai or Balseus, who has given his name to the
pentasyllabic metre, and Cyrillona, who composed a poem
" on the locusts, and on Divine chastisements, and on the
Huns." The present form of the famous " Doctrine of
Addai" — the work in which the legend of Abgar is enshrined,
and where we have the narrative of the early evangelising
of Edessa and the first bishops and martyrs — cannot be
earlier than the fourth century. Only fragments of the
works of Eabbulas have been found. Previous to elevation
to the episcopate, his successor Ibas had been one of the
translators of Theodore's works. The Monophysites claimed
Simeon the Stylite as sharing their views, and an eighth
century manuscript contains a letter ascribed to him and
addressed to the Emperor Leo, and another manuscript of
the same period contains three letters credited with the
same authorship; all of which documents, if genuine, go
to show that he did not accept the decision of Chalcedon.
At the end of the fifth century we come upon Jacob of
Serugh, who was described as " the flute of the Holy Spirit
and the harp of the believing Church." He left a mass
of poems. According to the historian Bar Hebrseus, he
had seventy amanuenses to copy out his 760 metrical
homihes, as well as his commentaries and letters, odes and
hymns. The most famous Syrian writer of the sixth
century is John of Asia, whose Ecclesiastical History is
1 See p. 466. 2 See p. 473.

LATER NESTORIANS, CHALDAEANS, AND JACOBITES 507
our chief source of information for the period covered by
the third part of it — which is all we possess in a complete
form. John was a missionary among the heathen of
Asia, Lydia, Caria, and Phrygia, and he was remarkably
successful in winning converts from paganism to Chris
tianity. Yet he was a Monophysite. From these facts
we may draw two instructive inferences. First, if there
was something peculiarly stimulating to missionary enthusi
asm and promising for its fruitfulness in Nestorianism —
as we saw may have been the case,1 — its extreme opposite
was not excluded from the evangelistic mission. Second,
while both Nestorianism on the one hand and Mono
physitism on the other were anathematised by the orthodox
Church, and the leading supporters of both heresies ex
communicated, the mighty spirit of the gospel, which is
larger than all sects and creeds, was working through them
for the extension of the kingdom of God. If we may
apply to these two bodies the great test " by their fruits
ye shall know them," we shall come to the delightful con
clusion that " the root of the matter " was in both of them,
although the good men who led the dominant Church were
unhappily not enlightened or hberal enough to perceive it.
When John returned from his missionary activities, which
had been honoured so highly in their success, he was made
Monophysite bishop of Ephesus. He suffered imprison
ment during the persecution under Justin in the year 571.
There will be a peculiar interest in reading his narrative
when we consider his statement that " most of these his
tories were written at the very time when the persecutions
were going on." . . . He says, " it was even necessary
that friends should remove the leaves on which these
chapters are inscribed, and every other particle of writing,
and conceal them in various places, where they sometimes
remained for two or three years." 2 Passing over a number
of obscure writers, we come to Jacob of Edessa, the most
famous Monophysite writer at the end of the seventh
century. Dr. Wright says, " In the literature of his country
1 See p. 480. * Hist. Eccl. (trans, by Payne Smith), p. 168.

508 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Jacob holds much the same place as Jerome among the
Latin Fathers. He was, for his time, a man of great
culture and wide reading, being familiar with Greek
and with older Syriac writers."1 His writings comprise
commentaries, liturgical compositions, history, philosophy,
grammar. Unfortunately Jacob's chronicle, which would
have been of great value as a continuation of Eusebius down
to his own time, has been lost. In his Syriac grammar he
used a device he had invented, consisting of vowel signs to
be written on a line with and between the consonants, after
the European pattern of writing.
Thus far Syrian literature has chiefly flourished among
the Jacobites. The seventh and eighth century saw
more Nestorian writers — Babhai the elder, a prolific
writer credited with the authorship of eighty-three or
eighty-four works, including a commentary on the whole
Bible; Isho-yabh of Gedhala, author of commentaries,
histories, and homilies ; Sahdona, who wrote two volumes
on the monastic life ; and many others, among the most
famous of whom was Abraham the Lame, who wrote a book
of exhortations, discourses on repentance, etc. In the
ninth century the products of Syrian literature are more
scarce, though some of them are historically important.
One of the most valuable was Dionysius of Tell Mahre's
great work, his Annals, while Thomas of Marga, whose
acquaintance we have already made,2 belongs to this
period The eleventh century is meagrely represented by
Syrian literature ; but in the twelfth we reach the famous
Jacobite writer, Dionysius Bar Salibi, created bishop of
Mar 'ash in 1145. He left commentaries on the Old and
New Testaments, giving a material or hteral, and a spiritual
or mystical explanation of each book ; a compendium of
theology ; and many other works. In the next century we
come to the learned historian Bar Hebraeus, who was born
in the year 1226. During his youth he had studied Greek,
Arabic, rhetoric, and medicine. In 1253 he became bishop
of Aleppo; he died in the year 1286. His Ecclesiastical
1 Hist. Syr. Literature, p. 143. 3 See p. 484.

LATER NESTORIANS, CHALDAEANS, AND JACOBITES 509
Chronicle, written in the simple style of a man of culture,
which contrasts pleasantly with the swollen verbosity of
so many Oriental writers of the later period, is a valuable
source of information for the historical writer in the
present day. Bar Hebraeus was a Jacobite. The most
prominent Nestorian writer of the same period is Abdh-
isho bar Berikha, who died in the year 1318. His chief
work is a theological treatise called Marganitha (i.e.
" The Pearl "), written in the year 1298. The author him
self translated it into Arabic. Mai has edited it with a
Latin translation, and Badger has given an English trans
lation in his work on the Nestorians.1 Abdh-isho pro
duced a number of other works, among which is his
Paradise of Eden, a collection of fifty theological poems.
1 The Nestorians, ii. p. 380 ff.

CHAPTER IV
THE NESTORIANS OF THE FAR EAST
Asseman, Biblioth. Orient, tome iv. ; Geddes, History of the Church of
Malabar, 1694 ; Hough, History of Christianity in India, vol. i.,
1839 ; Rae, The Syrian Church in India, 1892.
The remarkable enterprise of the Syrian missions promoted
by the impulse of the Nestorian movement is registered in
the scattering of metropolitan sees over a vast area of
Central and Eastern Asia. Impelled by two forces, the
persecution of the orthodox Church in combination with
the Byzantine Empire which drove them into exile, and the
zeal for spreading the gospel which converted their banish
ment into a benediction, the Nestorians went much further
than was necessary merely to secure immunity from
molestation ; and wherever they went they planted the
standard of the cross. So we find metropohtan bishoprics
in Syria, Armenia, and Arabia ; at Elam, Nisibis, Bethgerma,
and Carach in Persia ; at Halavan or Halach on the confines
of Media; at Mara in Korassan; at Hara in Camboya; at Eaja
and Tarbistan on the Caspian ; at Dailen, Samarcand, and
Mavaralnabar ; at Tauket or Taugut — a country of Great
Tartary; in Casgar, in Turkistan, in India, in China.
From many of these centres all traces of ancient Chris
tianity have long since disappeared, swept away in the
deluge of Mongolian invasions, stamped out by Moham
medan tyranny, or, if spared for a time, generally only left to
perish in crass ignorance and spiritual inanition. But in
some few places it still lives on among numerous adherents.
The most important of the old Syrian churches existing
in our own day is the community of ancient Christians
510

THE NESTORIANS OF THE PAR EAST 511
consisting of 400,000 people inhabiting the mountain
slopes and valleys and coast of Malabar, the most enlight
ened of whom live at Travaneore. Local tradition assigns
the origin of this Indian Church to St. Thomas the Apostle,
who is said to have " landed at Malankara, an island in the
lagoon near Crangamore, preached to the natives and
baptised many converts." x According to the legends of the
land, he planted seven churches and ordained two priests
in this district, converted the king and all the people of
Mailapore, went on to China and was there equally success
ful, and returned to Mailapore, where he roused the jealousy
of the Brahmins, who excited the people to stone him,
after which one of them pierced him with a lance. When
these parts were discovered to Europe by Portuguese
adventurers in the year 1517, among other ruins and relics
the remains of a chapel were seen, digging beneath which
the travellers found some bones, which they identified as
undoubtedly the relics of the apostle on account of their
superior whiteness.
Turning from local legend, the late origin of which
must be admitted since we have no traces of its antiquity,
and it can be accounted for apart from tradition, as we
shall see in proceeding with the story, when we come to
the literary records. Here we have the earliest account of
St. Thomas's mission to India in the Acts of Judas Thomas,
previously referred to,2 which belongs to the third, or even
the fourth century, written by a man named Leucius, the
author of several apocryphal " Acts." This work tells us
that in the division of districts among the apostles India
fell to the lot of Thomas. He was unwilling to go so far
on so hazardous a mission. Then Christ appeared to him in
a vision, encouraging him with a promise to be with him.
Thomas remaining obstinate and even growing angry, Christ
sold him to an Indian merchant as a slave carpenter.
Arriving in India after fantastic scenes by the way, Thomas
was introduced to the King Gundaphorus. When this king
learnt what his trade was, he gave him money with which
1 Rae, The Syrian Church in India, p. 15. s P. 474.

512 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
to build a palace. Several times the apostle sent for
more money, describing to the king the progress of his
work from walls to roof; but he was spending all the
money he got on widows and orphans and other needy
folk. So when Gundaphorus came to take possession of
his palace no palace was to be seen. Thomas's friends told
him of the Apostle's charities and of the ascetic living of the
holy man. " The king having heard this, stroked his face
with his hands, shaking his head for a long time." He
was about to kill both Thomas and the merchant, flaying
and burning them, when his brother died and went to
heaven, where he saw a palace, which he was told by
the angels Thomas had built for the king. Coming back
to life while his body was being put in the burial robe, the
prince informed the astonished monarch of what he had
learnt in the world above. The result was the conversion
of king and people. After the fourth century the con
nection of Thomas with India was widely accepted both in
the Eastern and in the Western Churches.1
We have here a double confusion, first in the person of
the missionary and then in the country. There are two
Thomases and several Indias. Centuries later, a Nestorian
missionary named Thomas went to India, and his mission
has been transferred to the credit of the apostle ; then the
word "India" was used in early times very vaguely for
the countries about the south of the Eed Sea and the
Persian Gulf — Abyssinia, Southern Arabia, perhaps also
Southern Persia.2 The orthodox tradition of the life of
Thomas assigns Parthia as his district.8 According to
1 e.g. Jerome, Epis. 70.
8 Harnack holds that the reference in the Acts of Thomas is to " the
North-West Territory of our modern India " (Expansion of Christianity,
vol. ii. p. 299).
8 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iii. 1 ; cf. Clementine Recognitions, ix. 29, and
Socrates, Hist. Eccl. i. 19. According to Rufinus, Hist. Eccl. ii. 6, and
Socrates, Hist. Eccl. iv. 8, he was buried at Edessa. The Roman Martyr
ology reconciles the two stories in a measure by bringing the apostle's bones
from India to Edessa, whence they are conveyed by Crusaders to Ortona in
Italy. According to Clement of Alexandria, he died a natural death, Strom.
iv. 9, 73. See Hastings' Diet. Bible, article "Thomas."

THE NESTORIANS OF THE PAR EAST 513
Eusebius, another apostle, Bartholomew, had preached to the
Indians.1 But it seems not unlikely that the historian was
misled by the name of the Sindians in the region of the
Bosphorus, over whom kings of the house of Ptolemy
ruled, because Bartholomew's traditional field of labour was
the district of the Bosphorus.
We have more definite information about Pantaenus,
the head of the theological school at Alexandria, who gave
up his pleasant work in that centre of culture and luxury
to go as a missionary to " India." 2 Eusebius identifies this
"India" with the scene of Bartholomew's activity. That,
however, is most improbable, if the locahty assigned to the
apostle is correct. Since there can be no doubt that the
name is " India " in this case, there is here no possibility
of confusion with the Sindians. But the question is what
" India " ? Eusebius tells us that Pantasnus found a copy
of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which he calls " the
Gospel according to Matthew," written "in the Hebrew
language." Therefore there must have been Christians
in the place before him, and in all probability these
were Jewish Christians. The Jews travelled far in their
trading journeys, and it is quite possible that this distant
Christian movement was in the country we now know as
India. On the other hand, we have no definite trace of
Christianity there before the arrival of the Nestorians. It
is therefore more probable Pantaenus's " India " was one
of those parts nearer to Egypt to which the name was
sometimes given.
It is also conceivable that natives of India learnt about
Christianity through their own visits to Alexandria,
and carried the gospel back to their country on their
return home. Among the many nationalities represented
in that cosmopolitan centre of trade much earlier than this
were people who bore the name " Indian." Dion Cassius,
whose date is about a.d. 100, writes of Ethiopians, Arabians,
Bactrians, Scythians, Persians, and Indians flocking to
1 Hist. Eccl. v. 10.
2 Ibid. ; also Jerome, De vir. ill. 36.
33

514 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Alexandria.1 The order in which these names stand
suggests that the Indians who come last were from the
most remotely eastern of all the nationahties mentioned,
and since they follow the Persians we should infer that
their country was farther off than Persia. If we could be
sure of Jerome's information and accuracy, we should have
a clear proof that India proper was the country to which
Pantaenus went, for he says in his letter to Magnus, an
orator at Eome, " Pantaenus, a philosopher of the Stoic
school," — he had been a Stoic previous to his conversion to
Christianity, — " was on account of his great reputation for
learning sent by Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, to India
to preach Christ to the Brahmins and philosophers there."2
It would be very interesting to think that a man who had
passed from Greek philosophy to Christianity had been
selected as a missionary to the Indian Brahmins and had
actually attempted the conversion of the caste which our
missionaries find almost unapproachable, though appar
ently without satisfactory results, or he would hardly have
abandoned the work to resume his chair at the Alexandrian
theological school. But unfortunately Jerome is notoriously
inaccurate, being often proved guilty of rushing at con
clusions on insufficient evidence, and filling in the lacuna?
of information with the creations of imagination, though
no doubt these are shaped with regard to certain degrees
of verisimilitude. We must not attach much weight to
his assertions when they go beyond Eusebius and other
earlier writers. It would be enough that Jerome knew that
Pantaenus had been sent to some place called " India," for him
to conclude as a matter of course that the Stoic had gone
to evangelise the Brahmins. His assertion may be taken,
however, as valuable to a certain extent. It shows that
early in the fifth century it was believable to a scholarly
man with large knowledge of the world, that India itself
might have been visited by a Christian missionary before
the end of the second century. Therefore in Jerome's
1 Smith, Diet. Christ. Biog. vol. iv. p. 182a, note a.
2 Epist. lxx.

THE NESTORIANS OF THE FAR EAST 515
day at latest our India was known and not inaccessible.
This is probable on other grounds. Moreover, Indian in
fluences are to be traced in Alexandrian philosophy and in
Christian Gnosticism. There is no insuperable difficulty
in believing that the gospel may have reached the country
before the end of the second century. Still, even if we
could settle this question in the affirmative, the answer
would not be of much value. We can see no signs of any
results of the early mission ; even if this did exist it would
appear to have been abortive. Pantaenus's return and
resumption of his old work, as already indicated, point to
an unsatisfactory ending to the ambitious project. A
mission projected in this spasmodic way is not likely to be
successful. It is heroic to attack the most impregnable
fortress if the attempt is adequate to the aim ; otherwise
it is Quixotic.
Over against Jerome's authority in favour of India
proper — so unreliable in itself — we have not only to set
the loose way in which the name was commonly used,,
but also the absence of all real evidence in the land
itself previous to the Nestorian period. The local tradition
goes back to St. Thomas, passing over Pantaenus in silence.
That may be explicable on the ground that the passion for
an apostohc foundation was common in the churches, while
the visit of an unsuccessful missionary might be mercifully
forgotten. Still, we have no evidence to point to the
existence of any Christian Church in India at this early
period, and that is the real question with which we are
concerned, whatever may have been the objective of the
Alexandrian scholar's expedition. Even Dion Chrysostom's
Indians may have been the people just to the east of
Persia, in the country since known as Beluchistan- — very
far from the Indian Christians discovered in later times,
whose home is in the south ; if Pantaenus did go to that
country, north of the Arabian Sea, he would have had
nothing to do with the founding of the Church in
Travancore. Among the signatories at the Nicene Council we have

516 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the name of " John of Persia in all Persia and great India.''
The vastness of the area here assigned to John is such that
he could not have exercised supervision over it, and
we must take the vague phrase to mean that whatever
Christians there were in these parts of the East were
supposed to be under his authority. This does not carry
the assertion that there were Christians at the time in
India, much less that it was our India, although the word
"great," which does not seem to have had a definite
geographical meaning when applied to India, suggests an
indefinitely large region.
Towards the end of the fourth century we have the
remarkable story of Frumentius recorded by Eufinus, who
associates it with " India " ; 1 but there is no doubt that he
means Abyssinia. To this therefore we must return later
on, meanwhile dismissing it as having no connection with
Indian Christianity.
About the same time we come to " Theophilus the
Indian." According to Philostorgius, he was an Arian who
went to India to spread the doctrine of his party there.
But the Arian historian obliges us by adding " that these
Indians are now called Homeritae, instead of their old name
of Sabseans, which they received from the city of Saba, the
chief city of the whole natron." 2 A httle further on he
says that " Constantius sent ambassadors to those who were
formerly called Sabaeans, but are now known as Homeritae,
a tribe which is descended from Abraham by Keturah."
He adds that the territory which they inhabit is called by
the Greeks "Arabia Magna" and "Arabia Felix."3 He
identifies Saba with the Sheba whose queen came to see
Solomon. Here then we have the clearest possible evidence
that the name " India " was used for South Arabia. How
ever, while this plainly shows that Theophilus had nothing
to do with our India, his story is not devoid of interest on
its own account.
Thus, when we examine the various successive references
1 Eccl. Hist. ii. 9-14. » Philostorgius, Hist. Eccl. ii. 6.
8 Ibid. iii. 4.

THE NESTORIANS OF THE FAR EAST 517
to early Christian associations with India, they all melt into
vagueness, or indicate some other region than that of the
present Christians of St. Thomas. We have here six
persons who are apparently carrying on Christian work in
India, and yet to none of them can we assign our present
India as the scene of their labours. Thomas, Bartholomew,
Pantaenus, John of the large episcopate, Frumentius, Theo
philus — all of these men, when their Indian claims are
examined, seem to be associated with other regions. South
Arabia, Abyssinia, the neighbourhood of the Bosphorus, the
country immediately east of Persia, all these parts have
borne the name or have been mistaken for India, and it is
among them that the work of the early missionaries is
distributed. Of course it cannot be denied that Christianity
may have reached India proper, or at all events the South
India of the later Church, at an earlier time than we
know. That is another matter. We have no evidence to
indicate that it was so, and all our available evidence
points in other directions. There we must leave the
question. We come out of these mists of legend into clear
daylight in the Nestorian period. There is no doubt that
the great wave of missionary enthusiasm that swept over
so large a part of Central Asia poured down into Southern
India, or, more probably, came direct across the sea to the
region of Travancore, then passed over to Ceylon, and
ultimately reached China. The ancient Christian com
munity in India is known as the " Syrian Church " of India.
This name should not lead us to suppose that it is composed
of Syrian colonists. Its members consist of the native
people of their province. But the name reminds us that
their Christianity sprang from the activity of the Syrian
Church in these parts. The consequences of its origin are
seen in many customs, notably in the use of the Syrian
liturgies. Its theology is Nestorian, after the pattern of
Syrian Nestorianism.
The earliest distinct witness to the existence of the
Syrian Christian in India is afforded by the Alexandrian

518 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
merchant Cosmas, who was surnamed Indicopleustes on
account of the fame of his voyage in the Indian seas early
in the sixth century. He wrote a curious book, full of
strange fancies, entitled Universal Christian Topography.
In this work Cosmas states that he found a church with
clergy and a congregation in Ceylon, and also Christians
" in the land called Malabar, where the pepper grows." At
Caliana — the coast country south of Bombay — there was
a bishop who held his appointment from Persia. Eeturning
to Ceylon, Cosmas adds, " The island hath also a church of
Persian Christians who have settled there from Persia, and
a deacon, and all the apparatus of public worship." 1 If
this is correct, we must regard the Malabar Church as in
the first place consisting of refugees from persecution in
Persia, hke the Huguenots in England and the Pilgrim
Fathers in America. But the Ceylon refugees never
appear to have associated with the natives, and conse
quently their Church melted away and in course of
time disappeared. Cosmas was himself a Nestorian
and a friend of the catholicos in Persia. He would
therefore look on the co-religionists whom he had dis
covered to his surprise in these remote parts with peculiar
interest. The Persian navigators who came into com
munication with the Malabar coast travelled further
and carried the gospel to the Coromandel coast, and so
were brought into contact with the great empire of the
Pallavas. While satisfactory documentary evidence of the origin
of Christianity in these parts is lacking, this is partly
made up for by the irrefragable testimony of monuments.
In the year 1547 a cross with an inscription in Pahlavi,
the language of the Persian Empire at the time of the
Sassanian dynasty, was found on the hill now known as
St. Thomas's Mount at Mailapore, the chief town of this
district. The date assigned to it is the seventh or at
latest the eighth century. There is a similar cross with
the same inscription in a church at Cottayam in North
1 Quoted in Rae's The Syrian Church in India, p. 115.

THE NESTORIANS OF THE FAR EAST 519
Travancore. A translation of the inscription is as
follows : —
" In punishment by the cross (was) the suffering of this One ;
He who is the true Christ, and God alone, and Guide ever pure." 1
This inscription is doubly important. In the first place,
the use of the Pahlavi language in which it is composed is
an unmistakable testimony to the antiquity of Christianity
in the places where the crosses are set up, helping us to
fix an approximate date for them. In the second place,
the singular wording of the inscription contains an apparent
statement of Nestorian doctrine. The second line seems
to refer to the Trinity. The . order in which the Three
Persons occur is not so very surprising when we consider
that it is the order of St. Paul's doxology. But the couplet
appears to identify all Three Persons of the Trinity as
present in the Incarnation and as therefore present also at
the crucifixion. The same idea is found in later Nestorian
documents ; it was expressly condemned in the synod
of Diamper (a.d. 1599). The doctrine thus expressed
comes very near to Patripassianism ; but then it must be
remembered that, as held by Nestorians, who made a sharp
distinction between the two natures in Christ, it did not
involve the suffering of the Divine Persons in the way in
which the union of the natures would imply. It was the
human nature that was tortured on the cross and that
died. With this view it was possible to think of the
Divine nature in Christ as consisting of the whole Godhead,
and yet not be Patripassian.
There is a second cross in the old church at Cotta
yam — with a modification of the curious inscription
— making three of these crosses in all ; but this is
assigned to the tenth century. A panel in the same
slab of stone, similar in shape and decoration to that
1 The Indian Antiquary, vol. iii., 1874, pp. 308-316, article by A. C.
Burnell, Ph.D., of the Madras Civil Service, on "Some Pahlavi Inscriptions
in South India," quoted by Rae in notes to chapter ix. p. 370. But there
is some doubt as to the correctness of this translation.

520 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
containing the cross, has on each side of it the figure of a
peacock. Here we first meet with the mysterious symbol
associated with St. Thomas in the later times of the Syrian
Church in India. Various fantastic legends given by
successive travellers — by Marco Polo, by John de Marig-
nolli, and lastly by Duarte Barbosa as late as the sixteenth
century — bring peacocks in some way into the story of
the apostle. Evidently the symbolism has been borrowed
from the mythology of the neighbouring Hindu temple,
the Purana of which tells how Siva's wife appeared to her
lord in the form of a peafowl, the name of which in
Sanscrit is mayil. This is given as an explanation of the
name Mailapore, Mayil-a-pur — " Peacock-town."
While this church at Mailapore declined and died out,
the church at Malabar continued to flourish, assimilating
the native population, and obtaining pohtical status and
recognised rights of self-government. These are registered
in two copperplate charters, one of the date A.D. 774,
recording a grant by King Vira Eaghava Chakravarti to
Irair Corthan of Crangamore as the representative of the
Christian community, making him sovereign merchant of
Kerala ; the other granted to the Syrians of St. Thomas,
about the year 824, with the sanction of King Sthanu's
palace-major, confirming a gift of land to Muruvan Sapor
Iso and the Tarasa Church. Further intercommunication
between State and Church and confirmation of the Church's
rights followed. In the year 745, according to the local
tradition, Knaye Thomas, or Thomas of Cana, came with
a fresh band of emigrants from Bagdad, Nineveh, and
Jerusalem. Some have attributed the name "Christians
of St. Thomas " to a confusion of this leader of the more
recent additions to the Church with the Apostle Thomas.
These new-comers appear to have settled to the south of
the original Syrian community. The Christian Church
in India is thus divided into two portions, a northern
and a southern. The latter consists of people of fairer
complexion than their brethren to the north. Yet another
body of refugees appeared in the year 822 led by two

THE NESTORIANS OF THE FAR EAST 521
Nestorian Persians, Mar Sapor and Mar Perog, the former
of whom has been identified with the Sapor to whom the
grant of land was made as recorded in the copperplate.
The Syrian Christians were now important people in
Malabar, both socially and politically. But before long
their Church dechned in missionary fervour and religious
vitahty. It has never developed any intellectual energy
or made any contribution to theology.
When Cheraman Perumal, the last emperor of Kerala,
became a Mohammedan and died while on a visit to Arabia,
the country came under Mussulman rule. We now reach
an almost blank period of five hundred years in the history
of the Syrian Church in India, during which, however,
the Christians were so powerful that at one time they had
their own kings. Subsequently they came under the
government of Cochin. By this time the Church had
become spiritually torpid. The ceremonies were duly
performed. As far as we can see, they were the chief
functions of religion. Meanwhile the Christians lived as a
superior close caste, so completely had their old missionary
zeal died out. They even came to imitate the Hindoos in
caste regulations of diet and avoidance of pollution.
The next period in the history of Christianity in India
is that of the Eoman Cathohc missions which resulted from
the great rehgious revival in the Western Church during
the thirteenth century, and were carried on by those
wonderful democratic missionary bodies, the Franciscans and
the Dominicans. During the years 1321 to 1323, Jordanus,
a Frenchman of the Dominican order, the author of the
Mirabilia, was in Malabar. Thence he wrote a circular letter
to his brethren of the two orders of Friars, commending
India as a sphere for missionary activity. Nothing is more
interesting in this story than the combination abroad of
the orders the members of which were rivals at home.
Jordanus the Dominican was accompanied by four Francis
cans when he embarked for Quilon. A storm drove them
on the island of Salsette, near Tana, where they were
kindly received by the Nestorian Christians. Describing

522 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
his experiences in his second letter, Jordanus says that
while he was away from his four companions in this place,
on a journey to Baroch, they were arrested and killed by
the Saracens. This is very significant. For the time
being, the Nestorians are living in the same place in peace
and safety, because they keep themselves to themselves.
But these Franks, these new-comers who are busy
in trying to make converts, cannot be endured. So the
missionaries are killed, while the Church is not molested.
Can we have a plainer proof of the mournful fact that this
Church had entirely lost the evangehstic zeal that had
been the glory of her founders ?
In his Mirabilia Jordanus describes his mission as
being very successful in spite of trying persecutions and
perilous adventures. His story reads like St. Paul's
chapter of autobiography in the Second Epistle to the
Corinthians. Four times he was cast into prison by the
Saracens ; how many times he had his hair plucked out,
was scourged, was stoned, " God Himself knoweth," he writes.
In the year 1330, Pope John xxn. issued a bull to the
Christians of Quilon, nominating Jordanus bishop of that
place, and inviting the Nestorians to enter " the Christian
Church." No doubt this earnest, active man left some
lasting fruits of his heroic work. John de Marignolh found
a " Church of St. George " of the Latin communion in the
year 1347. But the greatest activity of the Latin Church
in India did not begin till a century later. This was of a
very different spirit from Jordanus's Christ-like missionary
enterprise. It was a Jesuit mission armed with the cruel
weapons of the Inquisition.

CHAPTER V
LATER EASTERN CHRISTIANITY
Marco Polo (trans, by Yule, 2nd edit.) ; Asseman, tome iv. ; Mosheim,
Ecclesiastical History, vols. ii. and v. ; Coleridge, Life and Letters
of St. Francis Xavier, 1902 ; Rae, Syrian Churches in India,
1892 ; BrinMey, China (" Oriental Series," 1902) ; Broomhall,
The Chinese Empire, 1907.
When Vasco de Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope,
he enlarged the world of the Latin race and religion in
a way almost comparable with the influences of Columbus's
discovery of America on the Teutonic peoples and the
scope of Protestantism. The rediscovery of the Old World
was only second in importance to the discovery of the New
World. In the fifteenth century the Turkish despotism
sprawling over the wreck of the Byzantine Empire became
a huge barrier between Asia and Europe, which shut off
the West from intercourse with the East by the old
overland road. What was then needed was the reverse
of the pohcy of later Europe in its construction of the
Suez Canal — a route to India that would avoid the
Ottoman territory. Columbus had set out to find this
route by circumnavigating the globe, when he stumbled on
a new continent half-way round, and so surprised every
body by making a much more important discovery. Vasco
de Gama attained the Genoese enthusiast's object in another
and more effective way. He reached Asia by sailing round
Africa. The immediate result was the establishment of
the Portuguese dominions in India.
The Portuguese on their arrival in India found a
Christian Church oppressed by Mussulman tyranny, which
523

524 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
at once welcomed the advent of a Christian power, in the
hope of securing its protection. Although the Syrian
Church in India was Nestorian and the European new
comers were Eoman Catholics, for the moment no ecclesi
astical or doctrinal differences were noticed. It was
enough that both were Christian for the two parties to
draw together in presence of their common foe, the infidel.
The friendship was mutual. The Portuguese were glad to
find friends in a strange land, and the Syrian Christians
were grateful for the prospect of shelter from the persecu
tion they were enduring under the Mohammedan rule.
In the year 1502 they presented a petition to Vasco de
Gama begging him to put them under the protection of
the King of Portugal, to whom, in sign of subjection, they
sent the old sceptre of their former Christian kings,
a silver-mounted rod with three little bells, and at
the same time handed over the copper plates containing
their charters to the Portuguese authorities. It was not
a conquest ; it was a voluntary, eager, grateful action hke
that of the Jews welcoming Cyrus. These simple people
httle dreamed that what they took for an asylum was
really a prison, that their dehverers were to become their
gaolers. At first the wisdom of their course seemed to
be amply justified. The most complete friendliness was
established between the old inhabitants and the colonists.
The Portuguese were freely admitted to the Syrian
churches, and they attended amicably. It was only by
degrees that the divergencies from Eoman belief and
practice were noted and commented on. When a change
of attitude on the part of the Portuguese was brought
about, this was owing to the importation of the worst
product of Spanish cruelty — the Inquisition, and that was
due to the presence of the Jesuits.
Nevertheless the Jesuits did not come in the first
instance as inquisitors. Their expedition to India was
undertaken with a positive and constructive end in view
— not correction of error, repression, persecution; but
evangelisation, the spread of the Christian gospel among

LATER EASTERN CHRISTIANITY 525
Mussulman and heathen people, the extension of the Church
in the East to make up for the large slice of territory of
which the Eeformation had robbed her in the West. It
was borne on a great wave of enthusiasm. Its leader was
one of the most gifted, devoted, energetic, and successful
missionaries the world has ever seen — Francis Xavier, the
story of whose hfe belongs to the annals of the true saints.
Francis Xavier was born in the year 1506, the
youngest son of a nobleman high in the employ of the
King of Aragon. While teaching philosophy at the
university of Paris he met Ignatius Loyola, then in his
early dreams of the counter-revolution, who gradually
wrought the spell of his fascinating personality over a
reluctant scholar, till at last Xavier yielded to it and became
one of the seven who in the year 1534 took the first
Jesuit vow. The company intended to go to Palestine in
order to convert the Saracens, and they left Paris and
travelled as far as Venice with that end in view. Their
further journey being delayed, Ignatius set Xavier to work in
hospital nursing. Then a war that broke out between the
Venetian Eepubhc and the Ottoman Empire compelled
the Jesuits to abandon their design of attempting work in
the Holy Land, and Xavier was now ordered to join Eodri-
quez in an Indian mission. He reached Goa in May 1542,
and there commenced his famous missionary career. Xavier
found the Syrian Christians so dead to the evangelistic voca
tion of the Church, so absolutely exclusive and self-contained
as a religious caste, keeping scrupulously aloof from their
Mohammedan neighbours, that they regarded his efforts to
convert these people with disapproval. For instance, he
says that on one occasion, when he was about to baptise
the child of a Mussulman, " the people of Socotra began to
cry out that Mussulmans were unworthy of so great a
blessing; that they would not let them be baptised,
however much they deserved it, and that they would not
permit any Mussulman to become a Christian." " Such,"
he adds, " is their hatred of Mussulmans." 1
1 Coleridge, Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, vol. i. p. 119.

526 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Xavier's letters reveal the character of a man of
sanguine temperament and affectionate nature, a Christian
of deep, fervid devotion, true humility, and passionate
earnestness for the winning of souls. His biographers
surround his career with a halo of miracles ; yet in
his letters he lays claim to no such performances,
a silence which admirers ascribe to modesty. In the
breviary office for his festival he is said to have en
joyed the miraculous gift of tongues ; but his letters
show that he had to resort to an interpreter for com
municating with the native population. These letters
bring us close to the real man, and help us to form a vivid
picture of his labours. Xavier would go about through
the streets ringing a bell and inviting the people — men,
women, and children — to come and hear him preach. The
following is his own account of his method : " I used to
preach to the people promiscuously," he says, "in the
morning, on Sundays, and on holy days. In the afternoon
I expounded the articles of the creed to the natives, and
the crowd of hearers was so great that the church could
hardly contain them. I afterwards taught them the
Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary, the Apostles' Creed, and
the Ten Commandments of the law of God. On Sundays
I used to say mass for the lepers, whose hospital is close
to the city, heard their confessions, etc."1 Xavier
established a college at Goa to hold five hundred students,
which was partly supported by the government. After
his first five months in Goa he set out with three students
on a missionary journey, of which he gives a full description
in his letters to the Society at home. Travelling bare
footed, with a torn cassock and wearing a black stuff
hat on his head, he visited the Paravas, a poverty-stricken
people of low caste, with whom he spent fifteen months.
Like our modern missionary he had found the Brahmin
almost hopeless. Next he went to Travancore, which was
partly heathen and partly Mohammedan ; yet there he
tells us that village after village received him with joy.
1 Coleridge, Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, vol. i. p. 120.

LATER EASTERN CHRISTIANITY 527
Subsequently his tours extended to Ceylon — to Malacca 
to the Molucca group — to Japan. At Kagoshuma, the
most southerly small island of Japan, his converts were
threatened with death. Moving on to the north he met
with a better reception, though he found his ascetic ideal
not so acceptable here as it had been in India. Still
thirsting for more worlds to conquer for Christ and His
Church, he projected a visit to China, and collected large
sums of money for an extensive mission in the Celestial
Empire, when he was stricken down with fever while
on his way thither. He died at Sanchan, in the forty-
seventh year of his age (a.d. 1552). The extraordinary
amount of work accomphshed by Xavier during so short
a lifetime, and the passionate enthusiasm that was the
inspiration of it, have enshrined his name in the hero-roll
of the Church Universal. The story of his fruitful travel
from country to country reads like an echo of the account
of St. Paul's journeyings in the Acts of the Apostles. On
the other hand, we must accept his glowing reports of his
successes with caution. What, for instance, are we to
think when we find him writing in one of his letters,
" In the space of four months I made Christians of more
than 10,000 " ? 1 Either this is gross exaggeration, or the
Christianity was very superficial, or we have a miracle
that throws Pentecost into the shade.
Now it was the great missionary Xavier who intro
duced the Inquisition into India. He did this in the
burning earnestness of his zeal, not because he imagined
that he could convert it into an engine for forcing the
heathen into the Church — any such object was not in its
province ; but because he desired to have certain impedi
ments to the growth and what he deemed the health of
the Church removed out of its way. This institution was
not invoked to plough up fallow ground ; it was demanded
in order to remove rocks of offence. In a letter written
towards the end of the year 1545, Xavier begged the
King of Portugal to establish the Inquisition in order to
1 Ibid. p. 280.

528 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
check " the Jewish wickedness " that was spreading through
his Eastern dominions. Fifteen years passed before the
eager missionary's wish was granted. Xavier had died
eight years before the terrible persecuting Spanish invention
appeared on the field of his labours. Therefore he was
not called upon to take part in its cruelty, and he must
not be held responsible for the awful consequences of his
mistake. In the year 1560 one of the four branches of
the Inquisition was established at Goa. All the inquisitors
were nominated by the King of Portugal, and their
appointment was confirmed by the pope. Aiming primarily
at the correction of Christians, it was also used against
Jews, Mohammedans, and even heathen people. For,
while the former were executed for heresy, many of the
latter were punished for sorcery. The Inquisition at Goa
was kept up till the year 1812, when it was abolished by
a decree from the prince regent, Don Jose\ at Eio Janeiro.
Long before this it had done its worst in ruining the
Portuguese Indian possessions.
The attitude of the Church of Eome towards heresy
was bound to have grave effects on the Syrian Church in
India. In the year 1546 the Franciscans had set up a
college at Crangamore with the purpose of training priests
of the Eoman Catholic faith to become clergy in the
Syrian Church. But it never came sufficiently into touch
with the population. The Jesuits did better with their
college at Vaipicotta, erected more than forty years later.
Still, the Syrians held to their beliefs and customs. Mar
Abraham, the catholicos, was accused on various charges
by Aleixo Menezes, the papal "archbishop of Goa and
primate of all the Indies." But he declined to submit to
this alien authority. When he died, in the year 1597,
his archdeacon, George, was appointed his successor in
spite of the pope's prohibition. This man had informed
Menezes that the Syrian Church had no connection with
the pope of Eome. Here was material for a pretty quarrel.
But the races of South India could not be expected to
emulate Teutonic independence. The Syrian opposition to

LATER EASTERN CHRISTIANITY 529
Eome was crushed by the synod of Diamper which met
two years later (a.d. 1599). The differences between the
two bodies were brought to a climax at this synod, which
was convened " for the increase of the Catholic faith among
the Syrians in Malabar," together with the extirpation of
heresy and the establishment of union under the papacy.
The papal party assumed that previous to the Nestorian
schism in the fifth century the Syrian Church had been
subject to Eome. The synod was to put an end to a
separation which had lasted for more than a thousand years.
Although the Syrians were invited, the synod was domi
nated by Eoman Cathohc ecclesiastics, to whose decisions
the native Christians were required to submit. It began
by denouncing Nestorius and saluting Mary as the " mother
of God." Then it substituted the Eoman saints' days for
the Nestorian calendar, anathematised the catholicos of
Babylon, established the authority of the pope, ordered
moral reforms in the Church, licensed the Jesuits to preach
in the Syrian churches, commanded the celibacy of the
clergy, and required married priests to dismiss their wives.
One further consequence of the synod's decrees was the
destruction of the old service books where these were not
altered beyond recognition. Every book containing here
tical doctrine that could be found was burnt. In fact, no
efforts were spared to bring this ancient Church into hne
with Eome and under the absolute authority of the pope.
And the Syrian Christians submitted. One hundred and
fifty-three priests and six hundred and sixty lay procurators
signed the decrees of the synod.
It was submission, but forced submission. For more
than half a century the fires of discontent smouldered, and
in the year 1653 they broke into open flames. A man
named Atalla (i.e. Theodore), then ordained bishop by the
catholicos of Babylon, and appointed by that supreme ecclesi
astic of the Syrian Church, had no sooner landed at Maila
pore than he was arrested by the Portuguese authorities, sent
to Goa, and there dehvered over to the Inquisition. This
treatment of their new bishop roused the Syrians to a
34

530 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
white heat of indignation. They gathered together in
thousands round the Coonen cross in a village near Cochin,
and took an oath renouncing the Portuguese bishops.
Since their own Syrian bishop was a prisoner in the hands
of the enemy, these people elected a substitute, Mar
Thomas I., for the temporary government of the province.
But the result was a spht of the Syrian Church, one party
adhering to the Papal Church as Eomo-Syrians, while the
more daring spirits reverted to the Syrian usages. It is
estimated that the former, known as Puthencoor, or the
new community, now number about 110,000, while the
latter, the Palayacoor, or old community, amount to about
330,000. Ten years later the Dutch obtained possession of
Cochin. These new masters ordered foreign Eoman
Catholic ecclesiastics out of their territory, and the Syrians
continued to obtain their bishops from the catholicos of
Babylon. But in the year 1665, Gregorius, the Jacobite
metropohtan of Jerusalem, appeared among the Syrian
Christians at Malabar. These people were at the time
without a consecrated bishop, the communication with the
catholicos having broken down. For twelve years they
had been served by Mar Thomas, the bishop whom they
had elected, but who had not received episcopal ordination.
Gregorius now duly consecrated Thomas to his office, at
the request of his flock, in spite of the fact that the metro
politan was a member of another communion which
stood in relations of mutual excommunication to his
Church. Gregorius remained in the country administering
the affairs of the Church conjointly with Thomas. In this
way the Nestorian Church in India passed under Jacobite
rule — voluntarily, and apparently without any conscious
ness of the irregularity of its action. We could not
have a plainer proof of the condition of indifference to
theological dogmas to which it had arrived. So things
went on till the end of the century, apparently giving rise to
no confusion of teaching or clash of customs. The Church
was ruled by a succession of Jacobite prelates, some of

LATER EASTERN CHRISTIANITY 531
whom attempted practical reforms, but apparently never
exciting any theological interest in their own peculiar
tenets. Evidently theology was dead in the Church, and
the vitahty of the Church itself was not very vigorous.
But a silent current was flowing towards the Jacobite
position. This is proved by what happened early in the
eighteenth century, when Mar Gabriel, a Nestorian bishop,
came to Malabar. Neither the metran (metropolitan) nor
his people would acknowledge him or permit him to preach
in the churches. But this inhibition may have been more
due to his polemical airs than to any local objection to his
heresy, for he was described as an implacable enemy of
the Jacobites. He was able to detach a small following of
Syrians whom he brought back to their old Nestorianism.
In the year 1751 the Jacobite patriarch of Antioch sent
out a number of copies of Jacobite liturgies, but only on
one occasion, in the year 1770, was the metran ordained
by the Jacobite patriarch. Thus those who are much
concerned with the question of orders have grave doubts
concerning the status of the priesthood of the Syrian
Church in India. It would appear that in many cases, to
say the least, ordination has been irregular.
A new chapter in the history of this old Church opens
with the introduction of English influences under the
auspices of the Church Missionary Society. It was rightly
seen that what the Nestorian Church most needed in the
first instance was education, for the Syrian Christians, clergy
as well as laity, were found to be sunk in gross ignorance.
Accordingly in the year 1813a college was opened. The
English missionaries were disposed to hope that if the
Eoman corruptions coidd be removed the Syrian Church
would return to its pristine simplicity. But longer experi
ence showed them that their task of restoring evangelical
Christianity would require a more radical reformation. At
first the native metrans welcomed the co-operation of the
missionaries ; but later on a hostile spirit was manifested
towards the foreign intruders. A mistake was made by
Bishop Heber at Bombay in highly honouring the

532 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
bishop, who had been sent to Malabar by the Jacobite
patriarch of Antioch to supersede the native metran, but
who turned out to be a very undesirable personage. In
the year 1835, Bishop Wilson held a conference with the
Syrian clergy, and gave them some excellent advice on the
need of ministerial training, the establishment of schools,
the use of the vernacular in the prayers, instruction in the
Gospels, and other improvements, in which they appeared
to acquiesce, but which they entirely repudiated as soon as
he had left them, even sending him back the 1,000 rupees
he had given them. Perhaps something may be said for
the Syrian side of the case. Excellent as was the good
bishop's advice, he had come on a tour of inspection aB
the first " Metropolitan of British India." We can under
stand with what feelings the leaders of an ancient Church,
proud of a history they dated back to the Apostolic Age,
would regard a visit from this English clergyman with his
high-sounding title, especially if we allow that Bishop
Wilson was — as it is asserted — not deficient in British
masterfulness. After this the Syrian Church broke off relations with the
Church Missionary Society. A little later, Mar Athanasius
Mathew, a native of Malabar, became metran. This good
man worked for years for the reform of his Church, in spite
of local opposition and rivalry. His position was rather
ambiguous, because, after priding himself on having been
consecrated by the patriarch of Antioch, he denied that
prelate's authority to depose him. After his death the
question of the succession to the bishopric came into the
law courts and gave rise to ten years of litigation. This
question turned mainly on the right of the Jacobite
patriarch of Antioch to supremacy over the Syrian Church
in India. In point of fact, he had only ordained one metran
accepted by that Church, Mar Athanasius, during the whole
Jacobite period. The opposing party based their claim
for independence on the earlier history of the Church when
it was in communion with the Nestorian catholicos at Baby
lon and derived its orders from him, as well as on its own

LATER EASTERN CHRISTIANITY 533
habitual autonomy. But the judicial decision handed the
see over to the Jacobite nominee, Mar Dionysius Joseph.
While there is little sign of progress in the Syrian Church
as an organisation, many young men from this communion go
to study at Madras University. Therefore, perhaps, these
educated Christians of St. Thomas will come in time to
insist on the introduction of more enlightened methods in
the conduct of their Church, such as the extension of
education and the higher training of the clergy ; but that
will only be the case if they remain loyal to the faith and
Church of their fathers after passing through the mill of
Western culture.
The Syrian churches which may be seen in South
India to-day are constructed with Saracenic arches, sloping
roofs, and buttressed walls. For the most part they are
red in hue, and are built of stones squared and polished in
the quarries. They have bells cast in native founderies.
The traveller off the lines of modern missions may be
startled to hear the sound of church bells among the hills,
indicating the neighbourhood of some old church of the
Syrian Christians.
Lastly, we have traces of Syrian Christianity in China.
Its origin has not been discovered, and some have doubted its
ever having existed. But there is clear evidence that the
early Nestorian missionaries or their successors penetrated
into the interior of the Celestial Empire. In the year
1625 the Jesuits found a marble tablet, 7 $ ft. high and
nearly 4 ft. broad, buried under some ruins at Singanfu,
a large city on the Yellow Eiver, formerly the capital of
the empire. This tablet is entitled " A monument com
memorating the introduction and propagation of the noble
law of Ta t'sin in the middle kingdom." In the upper
part there is an incised cross, beneath which is an inscrip
tion in Syriac and Chinese, first setting forth a vague
abstract of Christian doctrine, and then recording the chief
events of a Syrian mission in China. It tells how a mis
sionary named Olopan came from Judaea to China in the
year 636, having escaped great dangers by sea and land,

534 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
and was met by an official of the emperor and lodged in
the imperial palace, where his law was examined, with the
result that its truth was acknowledged. Thereupon, accord
ing to the inscription, the emperor issued an edict in favour
of Christianity, ordered a church to be built, and nominated
twenty-one persons to serve it. So much for the begin
nings. Then follows a chronicle of the mission from the
year 636 to the year 780 (in the inscription 1092 of the
Greek era). At first there was success, and the Christians
prospered unmolested. This went on for two generations.
In the year 699 there came a change, and the Church
was persecuted ; a second persecution broke out fourteen
years later, after which the Christian again entered on a
happy time. This was under the Emperor Hinem-cum.
At a later time a second mission appeared, in consequence
of which many churches were built, and Christianity was
patronised by a succession of emperors. The tablet also
contains a list of clergy.1
The antiquity and genuineness of this tablet are not
altogether above suspicion. It might be expected that
if so great progress had been made in early times, more
indications of it would be apparent in the present day.
The account of the notice taken of this mission by the
emperors and their active patronage and assistance is
certainly remarkable ; it calls for confirmation that is not
forthcoming. Accordingly some have held that the whole
thing is an impudent fraud of the Jesuits.2 That, however,
is highly improbable. What motive would these zealous
proselytes of the papal party have had for producing false
evidence in favour of the venerable antiquity and former
high status of the Syrian Church?3 Besides, we have
other evidence of the existence of Christianity in China
not far from the times of the tablet.
The canon of Theodore, bishop of Edessa in the year
1 There is a facsimile of this tablet in Yule's Marco Polo, vol. i. p. 21.
3 Renan was very dubious about it. Pee Hist. Lang. Semit. p. 202.
3 See Mosheim, Church Hist. vol. ii. pp. 151, 152, notes a, b, for a
learned discussion of this question.

LATER EASTERN CHRISTIANITY 535
800, refers to " Metropolitans of China, India, and Persia,
of the Merozites of Siam, of the Eaziches, of the Harinos, of
Samarcand, which are distant and which by reason of the
infested mountains and turbulent sea are prevented from
attending the four yearly convocations with the catholicos,
and who therefore are to send their reports every six
years." In the year 845 the Emperor Wu Tsung condemned
4,600 Buddhist monasteries to be destroyed, and at the same
time ordered three hundred foreign priests " to return to
the secular life, that the customs of the empire might be
uniform." x
Further, two Arab travellers of the same century have
left accounts of their discoveries of Christianity in China.
One of them, Ebn Wahab, describes his conversation with
the emperor about the contents of the Old and New Testa
ment. Another indication of ancient Syrian Christianity
in China is to be seen in the discovery in the year 1725
of a Syrian manuscript containing large portions of the
Old Testament and a collection of hymns which was in the
possession of a Chinaman.2
In the tenth century — so dark in Western Europe —
the Nestorians introduced Christianity into Tartary proper.
Three centuries later (a.d. 1274), Marco Polo says
that he has seen two churches in the city of Cingianfu
built by Nestorians. He states that " the Great Khan sent
a baron of his whose name was Mar Sarghis [ ? Sergius], a
Nestorian Christian, to be governor of this city for three
years. The two churches were built during that time." 3
A httle further on Marco Polo tells us of some people
called Alans who were Christians, but who lost a city they
had captured by their drunkenness.4
The legend of Prester John, so widespread and so long
enduring in the East, wild and fantastic as it has become,
is based on the idea of the conversion of a Mongol
1 Du Halde, China, vol. i. p. 518, quoted in Broomhall, The Chinese
~ pire, p. 6.
1 Ibid. » Yule's Marco Polo, vol. ii. p. 162. * Ibid. p. 163.

536 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
tribe called Karith, living on the confines of China. The
hero of the legend is said to have been the king of this
people, and to have hved at Kara-Korum, a city on the
Orchar about six hundred miles west of Pekin. His original
name and title were Ung or Avenk Khan ; but coming
under the Christian influences of the Syrians he was
converted, and then he received his baptismal name and
title, Malek Juchana, i.e. King John. His niece, who also
became a Christian, was said to have been married to Tub,
the son of Genghis Khan. If the story is correct, hke
Bertha of Canterbury, she introduced the faith of Christ to
her pagan husband's court, with the result that a succession
of kings of the tribe of Karith professed Christianity.1
In the year 1145 the Syrian bishop of Gabala (Jibal,
in Laodicea of Syria), coming to Europe to lay his griev
ances before Pope Eugenius ni., reported that not long
before, a certain John, living in the Far East, a king and
Nestorian priest, claiming descent from the three wise
kings, had made war on the Samiard king of the Medes
and Persians, and had taken Ecbatana their capital Pro
ceeding to deliver Jerusalem, he was stopped by the Tigris
and by the sickness of his army.2 The probability is that
this story refers to a raid by some Armenian prince. The
Crusading project of rescuing Jerusalem and the stoppage of
it at the Tigris do not point to China.
Great as was the fame of the mysterious John, possibly
attached to more than one real or mythical person in
more than one locality, it was not undisputed. For
example, Friar William of Eubruch, who preceded Marco
Polo by a few years, and travelled in these Eastern parts
during the years 1253 to 125 5, when referring to a famous
Mongolian chieftain, says, "The NestorianB used to call
him King John, and to say of him ten times more than
was true, for this is the way of the Nestorians who come
from these parts. Out of nothing they will make a great
story, and so great reports went out concerning this King
1 See Asseman, tome iv. p. 494 ; Marco Polo, vol. i. p. 234 ff.
2 Yule's Marco Polo, vol. i. p. 228, note ff.

LATER EASTERN CHRISTIANITY 537
John ; though when I went through his pasture lands no
one knew anything of him save a few Nestorians." x
Friar William's unkind remarks about the Nestorians
are not quite fair. It was not they who invented the
legend. The true origin of it is to be found in the West,
where it grew up out of vague reports of distant Oriental
travel, and whence it was transported to the region inhabited
by the Nestorians, who no doubt were glad to welcome so
flattering a story and not reluctant to make the most of it.
Eoman Cathohcism was introduced into Tartary and
China in the thirteenth century, when Pope Nicholas IV.
sent John de Monte Corvino to the court of Kublai Khan, the
founder of the Yuen or Mongol dynasty in China. Cut off
from communication with Europe, this missionary laboured
till his death at the age of seventy-eight (a.d. 1307), and left
behind him a translation of the whole New Testament and the
Psalter in the language of the Tartars. There are existing
letters in which — if they are genuine — Kublai Khan requests
the pope to send one hundred missionaries to his country.
Troubles in the papacy at home put a stop to the promising
missionary enterprise. In the sixteenth century the
Jesuit mission to China projected by Xavier was carried
out by Father Eicci, who established himself at Shaoking
and cleverly worked his way on to Pekin, founding missions
by the way at Nauchang Fu, Suchow Fu, and Nanking Fu.
He died in 1610. In 1631 Dominican and Franciscan
missionaries arrived in China, and a bitter controversy
with the Jesuits was the consequence. Trouble also came
from the break-up of the Ming dynasty and the rise of
the present Manchu power.
By the year 1637, the Jesuits had published 340
treatises on rehgion, philosophy, and mathematics in the
Chinese language. These energetic servants of the Church
and the papacy have been accused of being remarkably
accommodating in adapting the beliefs and requirements
of Christianity to Chinese ideas and customs. They even
succeeded in winning over Chung-chi, who became the
1 Hakluyt Soc, Second Series, iv., 1900.

538 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
first Christian emperor of the Mongolian race. On his
death the mandarins, holding the reins of government
during the youth of his son, turned against the Jesuits, of
whose privileges they had become very jealous, and com
menced a persecution (a.d. 1664). The chief of the
Jesuits, John Adam Schaal, then an old man, who had
held an honourable place at court, was flung into prison
and ultimately executed, while the other missionaries were
driven into exile. About five years later, the young heir,
Kang-hsi, assumed the government and at once reversed
this policy of the regency, and recalled the Jesuits. The
new emperor proved to be a man of noble and generous
spirit. He valued the Jesuits so greatly that he sent to
Europe for more of the order, and set these men in the
highest positions in the State. Thus the awakening of
China under the influence of Europe which we are witness
ing to-day seemed to be promised more than two hundred
years ago.
The famous Emperor Kang-hsi continued to favour the
Jesuits during the whole of his long reign of sixty years,
and built them their magnificent church at Pekin. At
the death of this emperor in the year 1722, the imperial
favour ceased, and the Jesuit influence dechned. But the
Eoman Catholics have ever since claimed a pohtical status
in the empire.
Protestant missions in China were begun in the year
1807 by Dr. Morrison. In the year 1907 there were
3,719 Protestant missionaries in the empire, with 9,998
native helpers, 154,142 communicants, 706 stations and
3,794 out-stations, 366 hospitals and dispensaries, 2,139
day schools, 42,738 pupils, 255 boarding and higher schools,
containing 10,227 pupils.1 1 Broom hall, p. 40.

CHAPTER VI
THE ARMENIAN CHURCH
(a) Langlois, Collection des Historiens Anciens et Modernes de
I'Armenie, including Agathangelos, Moses of Chorene, " the
Herodotus of Armenia " (5th century), etc. ; Vartabet
Matthew, Life of St. Gregory the Illuminator (trans, by Malan) ;
The Divine Liturgy of the Armenian Church (trans, by Malan) ;
VU03 Sanctorum Calendarii Armeniaici (12 vols. pub. Venice,
1814) ; Asseman n. ; Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, vol. i.
(6) Fortescue, The Armenian Church, 1872 ; Issaverdenz, Armenia
and the Armenians (2nd edit., 1875-78) ; Tozer, Turkish
Armenia, 1881 ; Bryce, Transcaucasia and Ararat (4th edit.,
1896) ; Lepsius, Armenia and Europe, 1897 ; Lynch, Armenia,
1901.
ARMENIA is a name used for a country of indefinite and vary
ing extent, centred at the southern slopes of the Caucasus
and the high table-land which is a western projection of
the plain of Iram, and which culminates in Mount Ararat.
At the time of the Eomans it was divided into Armenia
Minor, west of the Euphrates, and Armenia Major, east of
that river. Situated at the meeting point of vast and am
bitious empires, Armenia has been tossed to and fro between
them as the repeated victim of their shifting fortunes.
After having been conquered by Alexander the Great and
then placed under Macedonian supremacy, Armenia obtained
a partial independence from the Eomans, who set up
a kingdom there, not attempting to incorporate it in their
empire. But Parthia and Persia in turn seized hold of the
country, which came to be divided between the Byzantine
and Persian powers, with different degrees of autonomy in
successive ages, until the Mongohan invasions swept over

540 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
it and at last the Mohammedan conquests brought the
greater part of it under the sway of Islam. The Armenians,
who are now largely scattered over Asia Minor and con
siderably represented at Constantinople, are an ancient,
distinct race of the Indo-Germanic family with marked
characteristics, among which is a keen business abihty, that
has enabled them to attain to wealth where it has been
possible for them to do so, in face of oppression and
persecution. They were neither Hellenised under the
Byzantine Empire nor Latinised under the Eoman. They
have retained their own language and national character
istics in spite of the terrible series of destructive tyrannies
to which they have been subject. In this respect, and in the
hatred their commercial .superiority has aroused, we may
compare them to the Jews, whom they thus resemble
more than any other race.
It is usual to divide the history of the Armenian
Church into three periods — (1) a.d. 34-302, begin
ning with the legendary mission of Thaddseus to King
Abgar, together with supposed visits of Bartholomew,
Simon, and Jude;1 (2) a.d. 302-491, from the mission of
Gregory the Illuminator to the breach with the orthodox
Church owing to rejection of the decrees of Chalcedon;
(3) a.d. 491 to the present time, when the Church of
Armenia has been entirely independent of Constantinople
and doctrinally severed from the Greek Church. But the
first of these periods is mythical ; we have no clear evidence
of any Christianity existing in Armenia previous to the
fourth century, when Gregory Illuminator, the apostle of
the Armenians, introduced the gospel to these people.
Gregory, who is surnamed " The Illuminator," because
" Illumination " is the technical Armenian word for
conversion, was born about the year 257, at Valarshabad
(now represented by Etchmiadzin), the capital of the
province of Ararat in Armenia. At the instigation of the
Sassanid Sapor I. his father assassinated Chosroes I., the King
of Armenia, for which act the dying king ordered the whole
1 See Lynch, Armenia, vol. i. p. 277, note 2.

THE ARMENIAN CHURCH 541
family to be slain ; but Gregory, then a young infant, was
saved and carried off to Caesarea in Cappadocia, where he
was brought up as a Christian. Subsequently he became
an attendant of Tiridates Hi., the King of Armenia, who
raised him to the rank of a noble. But, being true to his
Christian faith, he angered his royal master by refusing to
take part in a heathen sacrifice. "The twelve tortures
of St. Gregory " are a series of torments with which the
saint is said to have been punished for his disobedience.
Unfortunately his contemporary biography has been so
embroidered with legendary decorations that it is im
possible to disentangle it from these later materials. We
see Tiridates transformed into a wild boar for murder
ing a nun who is a member of a religious community
that has taken refuge in Armenia in order to escape the
Diocletian persecution, and who has refused his advances
and got away from his palace after having been carried off
for the royal harem. It is revealed to the king's sister
that he can be restored if Gregory is brought up from the
pit where he has been confined. This is done ; whereupon
Gregory brings back Tiridates to his human form, and cures
the people who have been smitten with the plague. The
saint is now encouraged to preach the gospel to the delighted
king and nation, and he does so with very great effect.1
After this we are compelled to be doubtful as to other
details in the story, such as the statement of the large
number of churches that Gregory built. Still, there is no
question that the Illuminator was a successful missionary
in Armenia, nor that from his time Christianity was the
recognised rehgion of the State. This was before Constan
tine had ' adopted Christianity. Thus Armenia was the
first country to receive and acknowledge Christianity as its
national rehgion.
Gregory was consecrated bishop of Armenia by Leontius,
the bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. Taking the year of
his release from the pit as a.d. 300, Mr. Malan assigns his
consecration to the year 302. But as the earliest notice
1 Agathangelos, 89.

542 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
of Leontius as bishop of Caesarea is in the year 314 when
he signed the canons of the councils of Ancyra and Neo-
caesarea, this may be a little too early. The connection
between Armenia and the Cappadocian Caesarea was kept
up for a hundred years, after which it was broken by the
Persian advance. St. Gregory is said to have exercised
the functions of bishop for about thirty years, and then to
have retired to a solitary life among the caves of Manyea,
where he only lived for a twelvemonth, and died in the year
332. The tradition of his visit to Constantine with his
sovereign, which subsequently grew into a splendid journey
to Eome and reception by Pope Sylvester, is purely
legendary and evidently false.1 Gregory was succeeded in
turn by his two sons, Eostaces and Bartanes, after whom
in succession came two sons of Eostaces. Thus we see
Gregory's personal and family influence long dominating
the Church of which he was the founder. It must have
been about the time of the last of these descendants
of Gregory the Illuminator that Juhan, when about to set
out on his ill-fated Persian expedition, sent an insulting
letier to Arsacius, King of Armenia, claiming his alliance
and co-operation, and warning him that unless he acted
according to the emperor's directions, his God in whom he
trusted would not be able to deliver him from the
vengeance of Eome.2
Towards the end of the fourth century Armenia had a
famous bishop, or rather catholicos, as the head of the
Armenian Church was now called, who was in office for
thirty -four years. This was Norseses I. He too was
related to Gregory the Illuminator. Norseses was present
at the council of Constantinople (a.d. 381); he was put
to death by Pharme, the King of Armenia.3
The original Armenian version of the Bible was made
about the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth
centuries by Mesrob, a scholar from Edessa, with the help
of a Greek scribe named Hrofanos — whom Scrivener
1 Niceph. Callist. H. E. viii. 35 ; Moses of Chorene, 89.
Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. vi. 1. » Le Quien, vol. i. 1375.

THE ARMENIAN CHURCH 543
supposes to have been Eufinus — and two pupils named
John and Joseph ; it was based on the Greek text, and began
with the Book of Proverbs. Near about the same time
the Bible, or part of it, was also translated by St. Sahak,
i.e. Isaac, who, however, only worked on a Syriac text. The
present Armenian version appears to be a recension made
shortly after the council of Ephesus.1 There can be no
doubt that the early possession of the Scriptures in the
vernacular helped to enlighten and consolidate the Armenian
Church and to fortify it for the trials it was called upon to
endure. After the murder of Norseses, the metropolitan of
Caesarea refused to allow his three successors to ordain.
Isaac, the translator of the Bible, was the first to be em
powered to resume this function, and he held office for
forty years, during which time the native dynasty was
overthrown by the Persians. The Armenian hturgy dates
from the time of Isaac, which may be regarded as the
golden age of Armenian literature. Then a cloud of
troubles burst on the Church. In the year 440, Isaac was
deposed by the Persians, who set a succession of their own
nominees in his place.
We now approach the events that severed the
Armenians from the main body of the Church in the
East. They refused to accept the decrees of the council
of Chalcedon (ad. 451). Dr. Neale maintains that this
was not because they sympathised with the Eutychian
doctrine, but because they misunderstood the council's
position and supposed it to favour Nestorianism. That
may have been the case at the time, but it will not serve
as a defence of Armenian orthodoxy in perpetuity. Nine
years later, the archimandrite Barsumas, the leader of the
turbulent band of monks who had violently attacked the
opponents of Eutyches at the " Eobber Council," and a
staunch supporter of Eutychianism, sent his disciple Samuel
into Armenia to confirm the Church of that country in its
1 Scrivener, Introduction to the Criticism of the New Test., 4th edit.
pp. 148-154.

o

544 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
rejection of the council of Chalcedon. Thus Samuel
became the propagandist of Monophysitism in the Armenian
Church, and therefore, even if its attitude in disapproving of
the fourth oecumenical council may have been at first due to
a misapprehension, from the time of Barsumas's interference
it was definitely drilled into the Monophysite doctrine. No
doubt it was at a disadvantage in only having the views
of the two extremists. The Armenians saw Nestorianism
among their Syrian neighbours and rejected it ; they were
offered Monophysitism as its distinct opposite ; but, unlike
the Greek and Latin Churches, they did not have the via
media of Catholic doctrine presented to them in its antagon
ism to both extremes. Under such circumstances it would
have been a miracle if they had not become Monophysites.
Still, forty years passed before there was any breach with
the orthodox Church. This took place in the year 491,
when the Armenian National Council assembled at Vagar-
shiabad formally anathematised the council of Chalcedon.
From that time onwards the national Church of Armenia
— now known as the Gregorian Church, after the name of
its famous founder — has stood apart from the Greek
Church, remaining in isolation down to the present day, in
spite of repeated attempts at reunion.
In the year 535 there was held the famous council
of Tiben, which anathematised the orthodox Church of
Jerusalem and added the Monophysite clause, "who was
crucified for us," to the Trisagion, at the same time
confirming the union of the feasts of the Nativity and
Epiphany (or baptism of Christ) in opposition to Catholic
usage. So important has this council been reckoned in
Armenia, that the national calendar has been dated from
it — though starting with a wrong year — A.D. 531, four
years too early.1
Towards the end of the sixth century there was a
temporary schism resulting from an attempt on the part of
the Eoman Emperor Maurice to bring back the Armenians
to the orthodox fold. The Armenian monarch, Chosroes n.,
1 Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, vol. i. 1383.

THE ARMENIAN CHURCH 545
owed his throne to Maurice, who thus acquired para
mount influence in Armenia. Chosroes even gave him the
province which had been under the Persian dominion.
In this way Tiben, where the cathohcos then resided,
was transferred to the Eoman Empire. It was natural
therefore, that an orthodox emperor, accustomed to rule
over the Church in his dominions, should expect the
Armenians to come into line with the rest of his subjects.
But Moses II., who was Armenian patriarch at the time,
declined to change his creed at the bidding of a Greek
despot, and refused to communicate with those bishops of
the transferred province of Taron who had given in their
submission after a conference at Constantinople. Then
Maurice appointed a rival catholicos, John of Cocosta. On
the death of Moses, his successor, Abraham of Arastune,
summoned a council of bishops, presbyters, and archiman
drites, which decreed that all who refused to anathematise
the council of Chalcedon should be banished from the
country. This led to a formal secession from the Church
by John and his party.
In the year 632 the Emperor Heraclius assembled a
council of Greeks and Armenians at Carana (the modern
Erzeroum), which after a month's discussion came to an
agreement in anathematising the decisions of Tiben and
accepting the Chalcedonian position. The one champion of
Armenian orthodoxy was John Maracumensis, who was a
candidate for the post of catholicos. He was condemned at
this council to banishment, condemned again at a second
council, branded on the forehead with the figure of a fox
by the praetor of Eoman Armenia, and driven away to
Mount Caucasus. But he had his disciples who cherished
the seed of the old Armenian faith, and who eventually
succeeded in restoring it in the national Church. Then
came the Mohammedan conquest. But again the country
was forced to a nominal acceptance of Greek orthodoxy,
when Justinian H. temporarily recovered Armenia to
Christendom, and the catholicos Isaac in. and his bishops
were summoned to Constantinople, where they were induced
35

546 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
to give in their adherence to the creed of Chalcedon (a.d.
689). On then return home this act of weakness was repudi
ated by their Church, and the reconquest of Armenia by the
Saracens enabled the National Church to revert to its old
position. This was confirmed in a famous synod summoned
by the command of the General Omar at Manaschiertum on
the confines of Hyrcania in the year 715. It was politic for
the Saracens to promote an ecclesiastical schism that divided
their Christian subjects from the Byzantine Empire. At
this synod there were six Jacobite Syrian bishops ; and it
resulted in the fusion of the two communions on the basis
of the Monophysite doctrine, except that the Julianists,1
who were well represented in Armenia, held aloof. After
this the affairs of the Armenian Church pass into obscurity.
Even in spite of the rejection of the decrees of Chalcedon
the severance of the Armenian from the Greek Church was
gradual, fluctuating, and long indefinite. This is proved by
the fact that there were Armenian bishops at the three
succeeding oecumenical councils — II. Constantinople (a.d.
553); III. Constantinople (a.d. 680); and even II. Nicaea
(a.d. 788) — and that the decrees of those councils were
acknowledged in Armenia. As late as the year 1166
the catholicos Narses, writing to the Emperor Manuel
Comnenus, distinctly repudiated the Eutychian heresy.
But then he did not accept the Chalcedonian definition.
The position assumed by his Church all along when not
disturbed by foreign influences was that its doctrine, was
ancient primitive Christianity, not Eutychian nor any other
peculiar theology, and that the council of Chalcedon had
been false to that teaching in leaning towards Nestorianism.
During the mediaeval period the Armenians were
not represented by any conspicuous ecclesiastic or theo
logian, and yet the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh
centuries all contributed some works to Armenian litera
ture. Turks and Byzantines now made Armenia their
battlefield, and the miserable people suffered only less from
the latter than from the former. For three centuries the
1 See p. 120.

THE ARMENIAN CHURCH 547
country was swept by nomadic tribes, and can scarcely be
said to have had a national existence. The devastating
rush of Timour came with fatal force over Armenia. The
peasants were driven from the plains, and the whole
population reduced to the depths of poverty and misery.
Many hid in the mountains. Not a few in despair
accepted Islam and intermarried with Kurds. Others
escaped to Cilicia and Cappadocia, and there became the
nucleus of the Christian kingdom of Lesser Armenia, which
contrived to exist in independence, though ringed round with
Moslem provinces and not in alliance with the Byzantine
Empire. These Western Armenians joined hands with the
Crusaders, and when communications with Europe were
reopened began to develop the remarkable commercial
genius for which the race has been famous all around the
Mediterranean down to our own day. Unfortunately this
same facility of communication with Europe opened the
way for papal aggressiveness. In the year 1335 there
was formed an Armenian Uniat Society, which accepted
the Eoman Cathohc form of Christianity. At the council
of Florence (a.d. 1439) this body was designated "the
United Armenian Church." Subsequently it suffered some
persecution from the national Church of Armenia and its
patriarch. The well known monastery of the Mechitaristes on the
island of St. Lazaar near Venice belongs to the Uniat
Armenian Church. It is named after its founder Mechitar,
who was born at Sebaste in Asia Minor in the year 1676,
and who entered an Armenian convent at Erzeroum in
1691, but afterwards obtained permission to study at
Etchmiadzin. Finding that he could learn httle there, he
got further permission to go to Eome ; but owing to illness
was only able to proceed as far as Constantinople, where
he fell in with some able Eoman Catholic ecclesiastics,
under whose influence he joined their Church. Subse
quently he founded an order of Armenian monks under
a modified Benedictine rule, which was sanctioned by Pope
Clement xi., who made Mechitar the head of the order

548 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
with the title of abbot. This was at Modan in the Morea,
then under Venetian rule. The conquest of the peninsula
by the Turks led Mechitar and his monks to migrate in the
year 1715 to Venice, where the Senate granted them the
island of St. Lazaar. This monastery became an important
centre of scholarship, and the monks devoted themselves to
the spread of Armenian literature and education. The
Coenobite Armenian monks of the national Church follow a
form of the rule of St. Basil ; those who live a hermit life
belong to an order of St. Anthony.
When Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks
(a.d. 1453), the Armenian bishop of Brusa was appointed
patriarch by Mohammed II., and put under the patronage and
control of the Ottoman government in a similar way to
that in which the Greek patriarch was treated. He became
the pohtical head of his nation, and through his bishops he
was made responsible for the government of his people,
with authority in civil as well as in religious matters.
For this purpose the Christian population was divided into
communities called millets. The patriarch was supported
by a council of bishops and clergy, and each bishop was set
over his own province. The result was the same as among
the Greeks. The Church was degraded by being made
subject to chief clergy who were also officials of the Turkish
government, and slavish sycophancy prevailed among these
officials themselves. Still, the Armenians gained something
in having a legal constitution under guardians of their own
nationality. At first this only applied to the Western
Armenians, who had been involved in the fall of the
Byzantine Empire; but in the year 1514 the Osmanli
Turks under Selim I. conquered Armenia proper, and Idris
the historian, a Kurd from Biltis, was then entrusted with
the task of organising the province. In order to hold the
district effectually, he transplanted into it a number of
people of his own nationahty. Thus from this time
onwards the population of Armenia has been mixed, con
sisting mainly of the two races — Armenians and Kurds.
Therefore, while on the one hand many Armenians have

THE ARMENIAN CHURCH 549
left their country because of its successive troubles and
settled in Asia Minor, Constantinople, and other Western
places, after the manner of the Jewish " dispersion," in the
present day the land is largely stocked with a rude, alien,
Mohammedan race, inferior to the original inhabitants both
in civilisation and in morals. The two races have never
coalesced. Eeligious more than racial differences have kept
them apart. This fact should be borne in mind when we
consider the Armenian problem. Armenia is no longer a
geographical term in any national sense ; it represents a
persecuted people, almost living as outlaws both in their
own original land and in many other places, chiefly Turkish,
Eussian, and Persian.
In the year 1603 the catholicos Melchizedic called in
the aid of the Persian Shah Abbas to deliver his people
. from Turkish oppression ; but after over-running the land
the shah transported many of the Armenians by force into
his own country, where he concentrated them in a colony
near Ispahan. For two centuries after this Armenia was
trampled on alternately by contending Turkish and Persian
armies. The Church was . also suffering degradation from
the sale of the office of catholicos. There was a dispute
between the Armenian patriarchs at Constantinople and
Jerusalem and the catholicos as to the supremacy of
the latter. In the year 1655, Philip, an able man, only
second to St. Isaac of the patristic period as a great
ecclesiastic, consolidated the Church by inducing the two
patriarchs to submit to him as catholicos of all the
Armenian Christians. But now the Armenians were dis
turbed by Jesuit missionaries, and the office of catholicos
again fell into unworthy hands, so that during the first
half of the eighteenth century the Church was in a
deplorable condition. This was the time of the catholicos
Lazar, who left behind him an ill name. But in the time
of Simon, who came into office in the year 1763, things
began to improve under Eussian influences.
Eussia acquired Georgia in the year 1801; and in
1828 she took possession of part of Armenia, including the

550 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
ecclesiastical capital, Etchmiadzin, with the result that the
catholicos of the Armenian Church became a Eussian
citizen. Henceforth that ecclesiastic was responsible to
the tsar, though still elected by his own bishops. His
powers were now limited by a synod, after the Eussian
pattern. Protestant and evangelistic work was commenced in
Armenia in the year 1831 by American missionaries. In
1846 the catholicos anathematised all Armenians who
accepted Protestant notions, with the result that a separate
Protestant Church was founded as the " Evangelical Church
of the Armenians." In spite of opposition from France
and Eussia, the British ambassador succeeded in getting
this recognised officially as a millet. The American
missionaries founded Armenian colleges on the Bosphorus,
at Kharput, Marsivan, and Aintab.
Meanwhile the greater part of the Armenian nation
still remaining under the Ottoman government suffered
continuously from its ruinous extortion and recurrent acts
of violence. Consular reports have poured in an unbroken
stream of information as to the outrages perpetrated by
the Kurds at the instigation of the Ottoman rulers. By
the treaty of San Stephano, Turkey promised Eussia to
carry out reforms "in the provinces inhabited by the
Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the
Kurds and the Circassians." But on the insistence of Lord
Beaconsfield the treaty of Berlin (1878) abrogated the
Eussian protectorate of the Armenian Christians, and
conferred it on the six signatory powers, to whom Turkey
gave the pledge of reforms in Armenia. In the same year,
by the Cyprus Convention, the sultan promised Great
Britain to introduce necessary reforms " for the protection
of the Christians and other subjects of the Porte " in the
Turkish Asiatic territories. Thus first the protection of
the Armenians was granted to and accepted by Eussia;
then it was taken from Eussia and assumed by Europe,
but with an additional responsibility assumed by England
in obtaining her own special pledge from the sultan. All

THE ARMENIAN CHURCH 551
this has been a dead letter. No reforms have been carried
out. No compulsion has been put on the Turks to have
the sultan's pledges fulfilled. It is true that in 1880
identical notes were presented to the Porte by the powers,
and that in 1881 the British ministry sent a circular note
to the five other signatory powers in the Berlin Treaty :
but these powers, especially Germany and Eussia, were
disinclined to act, and it was only fleets and armies that
could move Turkey. Thus the nominal " Concert of Europe"
came to an end. Since then successive British ministries
have called the attention of the sultan to his failure to
keep his promises pledged in the Berlin Treaty. These
communications have only been replied to with polite
evasions.1 In the year 1895 the world was appalled by the
awful news of the Armenian Massacres. Information
came through by degrees, till at length the total was
summed up at figures growing from 20,000 to 25,000,
50,000, and even 120,000, besides 5,000 to 6,000
massacred at Constantinople. Men, women, and children
had been done to death amid scenes of unspeakable horror
and outrage. It seems clear that the Ottoman government
had been alarmed by reports of a revolutionary movement,
to which the more daring of this long-enduring nation
had been goaded by the unchecked irritation of Turkish
misrule. But the mass of the people had not taken any
steps towards rebellion. How could they have done so
with any hope of success, since weapons were forbidden
to Christians, while Kurds and Turks went about fully
armed ? Moreover, the massacre overwhelmed the innocent.
There was no attempt to select the suspected revolutionists.
Yet there was a species of very careful discrimination which
pointed to orders from headquarters, and disposed of the
excuse for Turkey which her champions would urge, that
1 While this chapter is in the press the newspapers are recording the
rejoicings of Turkey in the establishment of a constitution with freedom for
all on the sworn promise of the sultan. The reader will know with what
results.

552 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
all this was but an outbreak of Kurdish savagery. The
slaughter was confined to two classes of Armenians — the
Gregorians of the national Church, and the Protestants.
Uniats were spared as under the protection of France, and
members of the Greek Church for fear of Eussia.

DIVISION V
THE COPTIC AND ABYSSINIAN CHUECHES

CHAPTER I
ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF THE
COPTIC CHURCH
(a) Eusebius ; Socrates ; Sozomen ; Theodoret ; Evagrius ; John
of Ephesus ; Cosmas Indicopleustes, Typographic Chretienne
(6th century); John of Nikiou, Chronicle (7th century),
French trans., 1883 ; Malan, Documents of the Coptic Church,
Eng. trans.
(6) Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap, xlvii. ; Neale, Patriarchate of
Alexandria ; Hefele, History of the Councils, Eng. trans.,
vols, iii., iv. ; Vlieger, Origin and Early History of the Coptic
Church, 1900 ; Domer, Doctrine of the Person of Christ, Eng.
trans., Div. n. vol. i. ; Leipoldt, Schenute von Atripe, 1903.
The Coptic Church is the ancient national Church of
Egypt, which was separated from the Greek Church in
the fifth century because it did not accept the decision of
the council of Chalcedon, just as the Syrian Church had
been cut off by its refusal to admit the verdict of the
council of Ephesus. While the Syrians adhered to Nestori
anism, the Copts maintained its extreme opposite • —
Monophysitism. It is not correct to call them " Jacobites "
— the title of the Syrian Christians who hold the same
doctrine, because their position is independent of the more
Eastern movement, and dates back to an earlier period.
The few Egyptian Christians in communion with Constanti-
553

554 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
nople and the Greek Church are known as " Melchites," the
followers of the imperial policy. The name " Copt " is an
adaptation of the Greek Aiguptos, originally used for the
Nile and then for the I and of the Nile, which is a Hellenised
form of the old Egyptian title, Ha-ka-Ptah — "Houses of
Ptah," the and where Ptah dwells. The Arabs call the
Copts Qubti. Thus the name simply means Egyptian.1
It has come to have an ecclesiastical significance, be
cause most of the Copts are of the Monophysite Church
in Egypt, while the Mohammedans are known as Arabs,
although in the mixture of races now occupying Egypt
Berber and Nubian blood is mingled with that of the con
querors from Arabia as well as such of the native Egyptian
stock as went over to the Muslim faith. In the towns the
true Egyptians are mainly Christians ; but the Fellaheen
of the country, evidently constituting the original indi
genous peasant race, as their resemblance to the ancient
monuments testifies, have been absorbed to a great extent
into Islam.
The Egyptian Church is undoubtedly one of the most
ancient churches in the world, dating back almost if not
quite to apostolic times, although, like the Eastern Syrian,
and even the Eoman churches, it can furnish no historical
record of its origin. The commonly accepted tradition
that it was founded by St. Mark cannot be traced with
certainty earlier than the fourth century;2 and the fact
that this tradition is not to be found in Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, or any other writer of the second and
third centuries, raises our doubts about its historicity. On
1 Vlieger, Origin and Early History of the Coptic Church, p. 7. This
etymology is now almost universally accepted. Others, now rejected, are the
derivation from the town Coptos, and worse than that, the derivation from
the Greek kSwtw, indicating either (1) schism, or (2) circumcision.
2 It is found in the apocryphal Acts of Barnabas, which may perhaps be
as early as the third century. The first reference to it in history is by
Eusebius, who only makes it in the form of an allusion to a tradition that
he does not undertake to authenticate : "and they say that this Mark was the
first that was sent to Egypt, and that he proclaimed the gospel which he had
written, and first established churches in Alexandria " (Hist. Eccl. ii. 16).
Eusebius says that Mark was succeeded by Annianus " when Nero was in the

ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF COPTIC CHURCH 555
the other hand, the personal obscurity of St. Mark — apart
from his authorship of the Second Gospel — is in its favour.
Great ancient churches were eager to trace their origin to
apostles. When Antioch, Alexandria's rival, claimed St.
Peter for its founder and first bishop, it is not likely
that the Egyptian patriarchate would voluntarily accept
a second place by putting in a claim for no more
important a person than that very apostle's secretary,
unless some undeniable testimony had determined the
matter. On this account, therefore, we may admit a
shadowy probability that tradition is right here, and that
St. Mark really did found the Church of Alexandria.
In Egypt it is usual to refer the Babylon from which
the First Epistle of St. Peter is dated to the place of that
name on the Nile, near where Cairo now stands, and the
seat of an important bishopric in early Christian times.
But if the apostle himself as well as his secretary had
been living there, how shall we account for the absolute
silence of antiquity as to St. Peter's residence in Egypt
and its attributing the origin of the Church there only to
St. Mark ?
Although among the Nile villages Christianity has
been suppressed by the Mohammedan tyranny, this
melancholy fact should not blind us to the recollection
that in early times it found a very fertile field in Upper
Egypt. While Alexandria was largely Hellenised, the
country parts farther south remained thoroughly Egyptian.
The consequence was that the philosophic metamorphosis
of the ancient cult, that gave it a new lease of life in the
educated Greek area of Egypt, was never accepted or
understood among the simpler folk of the rural districts.
But conservative as these southern people were, they
failed to hold to their old gods when they saw them trans-
eighth year of his reign" (ii. 24), i.e. in a.d. 62. If he means that Mark
had died then, apparently a martyr to the Neronian persecution, this is not
consistent with the tradition that Mark wrote Ms gospel at Rome under the
influence of Peter, or, as our best authority Irenseus says, after Peter's death.
After Eusebius, later references to Mark in Egypt— in Epiphanius, Jerome,
Nicephorus, etc. — cannot be cited as affording adilitionn] testimony.

556 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
formed out of recognition by the Hellenic movement.
Thus they had been flung into a state of bewilderment before
Christianity appeared as a new claimant for their faith, with
the result that the gospel won its way among them with the
more ease. Meanwhile, in the Hellenised north Christianity
was adopted and adapted by the specific culture of the
age, and, whether in heretical Gnosticism or more orthodox
Origenism, it there appeared with peculiarities that were
never appreciated up the Nile. The consequence was a
difference between the purely Coptic churches of the south
and the Grseco-Egyptian Church of Alexandria. At a later
time we shall see this distinction emphasised by doctrinal
divisions when the Byzantine party obtains influence at
Alexandria and makes that city the seat of the Melchites,
while the Copts hold their own position in the south. It
is in the churches of the Nile valley that we have the real
root and spring of the genuine old Coptic Church. These
Copts cared little for the enlightened Alexandrian theology.
Their literature consisted of the Bible and tales of saints
and martyrs.
The Church in Egypt has the terrible but heroic
distinction of being the most repeatedly and continuously
persecuted body of Christians all down the ages of his
tory, from the second century almost to our own day.
These much tried people endured at least their full
share of persecution under the Eomans during the two
or three centuries when Christianity was always illegal
and at intervals fiercely assailed. Neale says that the
Dominitian persecution does not appear to have reached
Egypt, but that possibly there was some persecution
there under Trajan. But the first persecution of which
we have any information is that under Septimius Severus,
which was concentrated with exceptional severity in this
province, when Leonidas, the father of Origen, suffered
martyrdom, a persecution to which the romantic story of
Potamiaena belongs. Till this period the history of the
Church is a blank. The Decian, which was the first of the
really great persecutions deliberately designed to destroy

ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF COPTIC CHURCH 557
Christianity on lines of seriously planned State policy, fell
with exceptional force on the Christians of Egypt. Then
many fled to the desert, only to be seized as slaves by the
Arabs. The Diocletian persecution was also severely felt in
Egypt. In the year 311, Peter the bishop of Alexandria was
beheaded without a trial by order of Maximin. So effectually
were the horror and the heroism of this persecution branded
into the memory of the Church that the Copts named the new
era of Diocletian " the era of martyrs." ) Of course Egypt.
shared in the quiet of the breathing time under Galienus's
edict of toleration, and in the peace , of the Church that
came in with the edict of Milan. But this peace proved
to be disappointing and delusive. Persecution soon revived
in new forms, now claiming Christianity itself as an excuse
for harshness to Christians. The Arian heresy first appeared
in Alexandria, and the worst of the consequent troubles
were felt in that city, under the infamous rule of George
the Cappadocian, whom Constantius forced on the Church,
ordained, as the impartial pagan historian Ammianus says,
" against his own and the public interest." x Athanasius
tells us that " virgins were thrown into prison ; bishops
were led away in chains by soldiers ; the houses of orphans
and widows were plundered," etc.2 According to Sozo
men, George " imprisoned and maimed many men and
women," and was "accounted a tyrant and became an
object of universal hatred."3 It is difficult to be very
severe on the murderers of such a tyrant. They were
pagans — not Athanasian Christians, as the Arians tried to
show. Arianism was suppressed ; but new heresies disturbing
the peace of the Church brought their train of troubles
to Egypt. After the severance of the Monophysite
party from the Greek Church, the imperial displeasure
made hfe so hard for the Copts that they were ready to
welcome the Arab invasion as a relief. But it was not
long before they became the victims of Mohammedan
1 Amm. Marc. xxii. 11. * De Fuga, 6.
' Hist. Eccl. iv. 10.

558 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
persecution. With every change of masters they have
hoped for better times ; but whether under Arab, Kurd, or
Turk, the Christians have always been the sufferers from
each new invasion and fresh conquest of Egypt, in additional
exactions, restrictions, wrongs, and insults. This went on
until modern Europe interfered with Egyptian affairs, and,
last of all, England brought equal justice to all classes and
freedom in religion for all faiths.
Turning to the internal characteristics of the Egyptian
Church, we may observe how in patristic times Alex
andria and the Delta, the cultivated north, were marked
by liberalism both in polity and in doctrine. The sacer
dotal and episcopal claims of Catholicism were slower
to make themselves felt here than in any other Church.
Eutychius, a patriarch of Alexandria in the tenth century,
records a very significant tradition throwing light on
primitive times. He states that " St. Mark along with
Ananias " — who is reckoned St. Mark's successor in the
" episcopate " — " ordained twelve presbyters to remain
with the patriarch; so that when the patriarchate should
become vacant they might elect one out of the twelve, on
whose head the other eleven should lay their hands, and
give him benediction and constitute him patriarch." 1 After
citing this statement, Neale adds that "so monstrous a
story " would lead us to think the author a fabricator but
for St. Jerome, who says that " at Alexandria till the middle
of the third century the presbyters nominated and elected
from among themselves to the higher dignity of bishop," 2
He attempts to save the situation by advancing the alter
native explanations, that either this was only an election
by the presbyters, not a consecration, or the twelve must
have constitued an "episcopal college."3 Both of these
hypotheses are purely conjectural. They imply a regularity
of episcopal ordination that was not enforced in early times.
Bishop Wordsworth has shown that presbyterian ordination
1 Annates in Migne, tome iii. p. 982.
2Eput. 146.
8 Opun cit. p. 11.

ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF COPTIC CHURCH 559
was not unknown.1 It would appear that a presbyterian
government was maintained in Egypt after it had been
superseded by episcopal government in other provinces, and
that even after the recognition of the three orders, the
second order, the presbyterate, remained here more important
for a long time. There were fewer bishops in proportion
to the Christian population; the presbyters in the local
churches over which they presided as individual pastors
were more independent ; and the personal prominence of
conspicuous elders was more marked in Egypt than else
where. Nothing is more striking in the clerical develop
ment of the Catholic Church, than the disappearance of
the elder from an active part in affairs. He seems to be
squeezed out between the bishop and the deacon. He has
his seat in the apse at the communion ; but when we
come to movements that excite public attention he is lost
to sight, and we have only the bishop and his attendant
deacon in view. But this picture does not represent the
situation in Egypt, where we often meet with important
elders. Two famihar examples spring into our minds
immediately we reflect on the Alexandrian position. Origen
was a presbyter — though ordained at Caesarea and therefore
not reckoned as such by his bishop Demetrius ; Arius, too, was
a presbyter. Further, Professor Harnack has shown that
" unless all signs deceive us, we find that in Egypt generally,
and especially at Alexandria, the institution of teachers
survived longest in juxtaposition with the episcopal organisa
tion of the churches, though their right to speak at services
of worship had expired." 2
1 The Ministry of Grace, p. 140, where the 13th canon of Ancyra is cited,
namely, " Country bishops (xwpeirlo-Koiroi) are not permitted to ordain (x«/>°-
rovetv) presbyters or deacons, nor even is it permitted to city presbyters to do so
except with the licence (x^p's rod itrirpatrTJvai) in writing of the bishop in each
diocese. " Here we see the city presbyter (1) reckoned above the country bishop,
and (2) permitted to ordain presbyters and deacons, the only restriction on his
liberty in this matter being the requirement of a written licence from his bishop.
' Expansion cf Christianity, Eng. trans., vol. i. p. 451. Dionysius of
Alexandria, in the latter part of the third century, referring to his visits to
Egyptian villages, says, "I called together the presbyters and teachers of the
brethren in the villages " (Eus. Hist. Eccl. vii. 24).

560 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
In the second place, when making a general survey of
the early history of the Church in Egypt, we are struck
with its intellectual energy and freedom. It had every
advantage in these respects to start with. Alexandria
was the centre of an old school of learning, where the
grammarians pursued the study of the classics, and the
rhetoricians preached from texts in Homer, the most
venerable of those classics. It was also a seat of philo
sophical speculation, and here Neo-Platonism grew up side
by side with Christian theology. The Jewish scholarship
represented by the Book of Wisdom and the teachings of
Philo taught people who used the Septuagint to combine
its sacred authority with Platonic and Stoic speculations.
As a great centre of commerce, Alexandria came under the
influences of Eome and Athens, and combined these with
Persian and even Indian ideas. The most cosmopolitan
of all the great seats of scholarship, this city, when it
received Christianity, was prepared to give the new
doctrine the freest and most varied treatment. Here it
was that the gospel came into contact with the widest,
fullest, most energetic thought of the age. The faith that
had first appeared among the valleys of Galilee was now
launched on the ocean of the world's intellectual life.
The inevitable consequences followed. Sometimes it was
perverted out of all recognition ; at other times, while
retaining its essential features, it was enriched by a noble,
reverent development of its vital truths. The danger in
both cases was that it should become little else than a gnosis,
an intellectual system, a Christian theodicy, explaining the
universe in terms of God as revealed in Christ. From
this fate it was saved in early times by persecution. The
dungeon, the torture chamber, and the executioner's sword
taught men to take their religion seriously as a matter of
life and death.
Egypt was the birthplace of speculative theology, which
may be said to have begun with the Gnostics in the first half
of the second century. There was Syrian Gnosticism and
Asiatic Gnosticism, but neither of these would bear compari-

ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF COPTIC CHURCH 561
son for a moment in regard to intellectual vigour or influence
on the Church's thought with the Gnosticism of Alexandria.
Irenaeus and Hippolytus discussed and condemned a great
variety of Gnostic systems ; but all the while they had in
mind the one system of Valentinus as the most serious
rival of Cathohc orthodoxy, winning its converts in the
cultivated and fashionable Christian society at Eome
as well as in many parts of the empire — and probably
Valentinus was an Alexandrian.
Then it was in Alexandria that speculative Christian
theology sprang up in opposition to the dangerous dis
integrating Gnosticism of the heretics as itself a true
gnosis. Clement calls the enlightened Christian a Gnostic.
In his De Principiis Origen gives us the earliest treatise
on systematic theology in the Church. These scholars of
Alexandria wrote in Greek ; they belonged to the northern
Hellenised community of Christians ; but we must not
forget that this was on the Delta and by the Nile. Origen,
the greatest of them all, was a Copt. Thus the most
daring thinker in the early Church was not of the Hellenic
stock, where we look first for the budding of the speculative
intellect; he was of the race of men who built the
Pyramids and Karnak, and wrote " the Book of the Dead,"
and gave the world the myth of Osiris.
Coming down a little later, we see Arianism — the
heresy that most seriously divided the Church for two
generations, the only heresy that ever had the upper hand
in Christendom — first promulgated and first condemned in
Egypt. But it is a remarkable fact that this system, while
it arose at Alexandria, found more real support in Con
stantinople and other cities away from Egypt. That
is one of the facts to be borne in mind when we find
Origen and his school charged with the parentage of
Arianism. A full enquiry brings out results in which
two such very different scholars as Cardinal Newman
and Professor Harnack are found for once to be agree
ing. It is not to Alexandria, but to Antioch ; not to
Origen, but to Lucian, that we are to trace the seeds
36

562 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
and . sources of Arianism.1 Arius was condemned in his
own Church at Alexandria quite early in the develop
ment of his teaching, and the place was soon made too
hot for him, so that he had to escape. After that it is
not likely that anything more would have been heard of
Arianism if he had not made a convert of the influential
Eusebius of Nicomedia, court chaplain to Constantine, a
vigorous, astute, unscrupulous ecclesiastical politician. Sub
sequently, whenever the heresy is dominant in Alex
andria, that is only owing to the forcible intrusion of an
alien bishop, who obtains and holds the patriarchal
chair by the aid of the imperial troops. In this way
Arianism in Egypt came to be synonymous with tyranny
and oppression, and its supremacy involved the Coptic
Church in persecution.
It was not here, therefore, that the Copts were in
clined to fall out of line with the Catholic Church. Their
tendency drove them in quite the opposite direction. It
pointed to the accentuation of the idea of the Divinity of
Christ to the neglect of His humanity. Alexandria took
the lead in opposition to Nestorianism. Here, as so often
in other connections, the rivalry between Alexandria and
Constantinople embittered the controversy, degrading it with
political intrigue and the heat of offensive personalities.
Cyril has been canonised and his writings are accounted
standards of orthodoxy. But the unprejudiced reader
must admit that they go a long way to prepare for the
heresy that was to be condemned at the next oecumenical
council, the denial of the two natures in Christ by the
virtual suppresion of the human.
Eutyches followed on similar lines, and yet his develop
ment of the same trend of thought did not meet with the
approval of the Church, and came under condemnation as
a heresy. Now it is true that this heresy first appeared
at Constantinople. Its advocate Eutyches was the archi
mandrite of a large monastery near that city. But he
was a friend of Cyril, from whom he had received a copy
1 See p. 43.

ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF COPTIC CHURCH 563
of the Acts of the council of Ephesus, and he had
vigorously seconded the patriarch of Alexandria during
the Nestorian controversy, behaving as a fiery opponent
of Nestorianism. Moreover, Cyril's immediate successor
Dioscurus was the champion of Eutyches and the author
of the type of thought less crude than that the old
archimandrite had expounded, which went by the name of
the Monophysite heresy. The disgraceful proceedings of the
"Eobber Synod" were chiefly due to the conduct of Dioscurus
and his monks — unworthy representatives of the Egyptian
Church. Again and again we see the turbulent Coptic monks
leading the mob in some act of violence. At the storming
of the Serapeum, in the murder of Hypathia, during the
Monophysite disputes, when the worst deeds of violence
were done, if this was not by the soldiery, it was by the
monks who poured in from the Nitrian desert or some
other distant retreat, crowding the streets of Alexandria,
and stirring up the dregs of the populace to criminal
outbreaks. We must remember that monasticism had
first appeared in Egypt. Following the example of the
Therapeutse, first as solitaries in their huts and caves,
then, in the second stage, founding the Coenobite life, the
Egyptian monks laid the foundation of the vast system
that spread over Syria and Asia Minor, and finally took
possession of the whole Church, to the extent of jsecuring
the position that though a man might be a monk without
becoming a saint, he could not be a saint unless he had
been first a monkT) Now it is not to be denied that there"*
were genuine saints among the monks. The ascetic life
had a fatal attraction for the strongest natures ; it seemed
to present the loftiest ideal to them. Such a monk as
Father Jeremiah, the hermit whom the Emperor Anastasius
had known in his early days, and whom he highly honoured
when he reached the imperial throne, appears to have
been a really good man, unselfish and unworldly. No
doubt there were many such, whose names have never
been preserved in history. C But herein lies the fatal evil

564 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
of the whole system as it was developed in Egypt. There
were monks who behaved like savages — ignorant, super
stitious, ferocious men. Some were guilty of nameless
vice. But these degenerates were not the causes of the
worst evil of monasticism. The worst mischief was wrought
by the withdrawal of the best people from civic and
domestic life. Thus the population of Egypt was checked
in those very circles that should have dominated it if the
character of the people was to attain a high standard, and
the most serviceable men were withdrawn from the service
of mankind. This was felt all over the empire. Eventually
it became one of the causes of the fall of Eome. But
nowhere did it have more serious consequences than in
Egypt, the scene of the origin of monasticism and always
that of its greatest popularity. Mrs. Butcher describes
this rush to the monasteries as " the suicide of a nation."
One of the most famous of the Egyptian monks was
Senuti, who hved during the second half of the fourth
century and the first half of the fifth. The son of an
Egyptian farmer, and brought up as a shepherd lad, he
entered the monastery of Panopolis, near Athrebi, in Upper
Egypt, and became a venerated monk, credited with super
natural powers, and known as the prophet. Cyril took him
to the council of Ephesus, where he had a prominent place
as a vehement, and if we are to believe his disciple and suc
cessor Besa, a violent part. According to this admirer of
the venerated monk, Nestorius entered the council with
great pomp, and, seeing the roll of the Gospels on the lofty
throne in the centre of the hall, flung it down and seated
himself there ; whereupon Senuti picked up the volume
and hurled it at Nestorius. Naturally the proud patriarch
was indignant, especially when he learned that his assailant
was of no ecclesiastical rank. Cyril quickly remedied that
defect by creating his vahant henchman an archimandrite
on the spot. How far this story is to be believed depends
on what we think of its author in the sequel. He goes
on to say that, when Cyril had started back for Egypt at
the conclusion of the council without Senuti, the monk was

ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF COPTIC CHURCH 565
*
wafted across on a cloud. So highly venerated was he,
that Maximus, the Eoman commander, before setting out
on an expedition against those obscure people called the
Blemmys, sought him out in the desert for his blessing,
much to the saint's annoyance at the interruption. The
idea that he joined the extreme party of Dioscurus after
the council of Chalcedon may be an error.1 Be that as it
may, undoubtedly he was a bitter leader in the persecution
of Nestorius till the death of that unhappy ecclesiastic.
Senuti is said to have lived to the wonderful age of 118,
and to have died when Timothy iElurus was patriarch. The
remains of his writings are gathered up among the frag
ments of early Coptic literature. It is a singular fact that
Senuti is never mentioned by any Greek or Latin author.
Prominent as his friend Besa suggests his position at the
council of Ephesus to have been, none of our other accounts
of that council make the least reference to him. This
silence rather favours the view that he did overstep the
narrow line of orthodoxy in his unflagging opposition to
Nestorianism. If that were the case, we can well under
stand why the friends and admirers of Cyril would observe
a discreet silence with regard to a man who, though of
dubious orthodoxy, had nevertheless been that great
patriarch's chief trusted assistant. Among the Copts no
saint could be more highly venerated ; but the Copts are
heretics. The circumstances that led to the final severance of
the Coptic Church have already been traced in earlier
chapters.2 The decree of Chalcedon deposing Dioscurus
was the direct cause. The thirteen bishops who had
accompanied him were in a terrible dilemma. Hieracles,
their spokesman, pointed to a canon of Nicaea, declaring
that the whole of Egypt should follow the bishop of
Alexandria and do nothing without him. It was of no
1 This is asserted as a positive fact by Salmon in Smith's Die. of Chr.
Biog. vol. iv. p. 612*, but Leipoldt in his work, Schenute von Atripe, main
tains that there is no evidence whatever of his having supported Dioscurus.
a Part i. chaps, v. vi.

566 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
avail. The papal legate who ruled the council treated
their plea with contempt. " Have pity on us ; have pity
on us ! " cried the feeble old men. No pity was shown
them. They were forced to sign the deposition of their
patriarch, and then packed off to Alexandria to see to the
election of his successor. There they were met with a
storm of indignation. Proterius, who had been serving as
locum tenens for Dioscurus during his absence, and who
therefore was presumed to be one of his supporters, now
turned round to accept ordination on the lines of Chalcedon.
This raised the passions of the populace to fever heat. We
cannot be surprised that the excited people, hating the
renegade for his treason to their banished patriarch, and
taking advantage of the temporary weakness of the govern
ment at the death of Marcian,rose in a mad riot,and murdered
the man they regarded as a Judas. Thus another red stain
was added to the annals of the Coptic Church. When, on
the death of the banished patriarch Dioscurus, Timothy
iElurus was elected his successor at Alexandria, the rivalry
of the two parties in the city was revived. This was before
the murder of Proterius ; but that crime did not end the
quarrel. The new Emperor Leo banished iElurus, and a
really good man, Timothy Surus or Salofaciolus, was elected
to the patriarchate on the basis of Chalcedon. So highly
respected was he that people would greet him in the street,
saying, " Even if we do not communicate with thee, yet we
love thee." Efforts were now made by moderate men to
bring about a settlement that should unite the two parties.
But the cleavage was too deep. It was racial as well as
theological. The party of Chalcedon, the Melchites, were
Greek ; the Copts were Monophysite almost to a man.
This is the secret of the obstinate continuance of the
schism. It was a national movement, and the intrusion
of patriarchs of the Greek persuasion was resented as an
outrage on the rights of the national Church. The new
Coptic patriarch, John Talai, who seems to have acted weakly
if not dishonourably in accepting the vacant post on the
death of the good Timothy (a.d. 482), when the emperor had

ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF COPTIC CHURCH 567
commissioned him only to try to bring about a reconcilia
tion between the two parties, was really the representative
of the national Church as against the Greeks, and of
Christian rights and liberties generally as against imperial
interference. It was the same even with that unworthy
man Peter Mongus, whose election the emperor encouraged
in place of John, since the patriarch's double-dealing had
given great offence at Court.
Evagrius states that, as a result of Zeno's Henoticon —
which simply silenced controversy without settling it,
"when this had been read, all the Alexandrians united
themselves to the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church."1
That, however, is not correct. Evagrius is a fair-minded
historian, but always too anxious to make as little as possible
of ecclesiastical divisions — a rare fault in his age and venial.
In point of fact, when Peter Mongus signed the Henotinm,
the extreme Monophysites broke off from communion with
him, and so earned the title of the Acephali. Still, there
was outward peace ; and this was maintained iu Egypt
under Zeno's successor, the amiable Anastasius, whose
reign saw the quarrel transferred to Constantinople on
account of the favour shown by the emperor to the
Monophysites. On his death and the accession of Justin
to the throne (a.d. 518), the temporary Monophysite
triumph was ended, the Henoticon cancelled, and all the
Church required to agree to the decision of Chalcedon,
with the inevitable consequence that the temporary reunion
of Egypt with the orthodox Church was ended. Thus the
Copts were again cut off as a heretical body.
Then came the controversy on " The Three Chapters "
under Justinian. The weak emperor had been persuaded
to condemn Theodoret, Ibas, and Theodore of Mopsuestia
as guilty of Nestorianism. It was suggested that the real
objection to the council of Chalcedon lay in its approval of
these three theologians, rather than in its doctrinal state
ments. Thus it was hoped that by making scapegoats of the
dead men, who could not defend their case, all parties might
1 Hist. Eccl. iii. 14.

568 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
be satisfied. The second council of Constantinople (a.d. 553)
took a middle course, and, while anathematising " The Three
Chapters " in which their supposed errors were set forth,
exonerated two of them, Theodoret and Ibas, and only
condemned the third, Theodore of Mopsuestia, who no
doubt was the actual originator of Nestorianism. Thus
this council leaned towards the Monophysite position.
But the Egyptian Church took no notice of its decisions.
Then came Jacob al Bardai and his vigorous campaign in Syria
under the patronage of the Empress Theodora, the result
of which was the separation of the Syrian Jacobite Church
from the Nestorians and a great addition to the Monophysite
strength in the East. Such a triumphant proselytising in
favour of their theology could not but be very encouraging
to the Copts. Unfortunately the new controversy with
the Julianists on the incorruptibility of our Lord's body —
which Julian of Halicarnassus had maintained — brought
fresh trouble to the Church of Alexandria. It was a
great pity that the Monophysites should now begin to
quarrel among themselves just when they were becoming
most powerful. But it was the same with the Protestants
in the later days of Luther and Zwingli, and with the
Methodists in the separation between Wesley and
Whitfield. Expediency counts for nothing when men's
convictions are at stake. The Julianist division at
Alexandria facilitated the appointment of an orthodox
patriarch — one of the Greek persuasion — who of course
was acceptable to neither body of Monophysites. It is
like the case in an English election when a Conservative
is returned for a Liberal constituency because there is a
split in the Liberal camp. In this case, however, the
appointment of a Melchite meant the victory of the
imperial over the popular party. Syria and in a measure
Armenia, as well as Egypt and Abyssinia, were now of the
Monophysite persuasion.
The Monothelete proposal was the last attempt at
reunion with the lost provinces on doctrinal grounds.
The case was desperate. The lopping off of these limbs

ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF COPTIC CHURCH 569
from the orthodox Church was a very serious matter
when regarded from the Cathohc standpoint. But another
consideration gave urgency to the situation. First Persia,
the age-long rival of the Eoman Empire of the East,
had become aggressive, and had carried its victories even
into Egypt. Then a new terror had risen in the South,
where it was least expected, and Arabia threatened ruin
both to Church and empire- in the sudden rise and
triumphant march of Islam. Thus there was a strong
political as well as a grave religious motive for uniting
the divided Church and empire. Although proposed by
the patriarch of Constantinople, the Monothelete idea was
really put forth on lines of imperial policy. It was offered
to the Church by the government ; and it made some
headway under the influence of authority. Cyrus the
bishop of Phasis, on condition of accepting the novel
doctrine, was made patriarch of Alexandria by the Emperor
Heraclius (a.d. 630); and he won over some of the Mono
physites. But he could not make much headway, and
meanwhile Sophronius, the champion of orthodoxy, was
successfully resisting the spread of the new heresy in the
Greek Church. The Ecthesis which the Emperor Heraclius
issued as an authoritative edict of religious doctrine (a.d.
638), plainly leaning towards the Monothelete idea, though
approved by councils at Constantinople and Alexandria,
never made any progress towards securing real conviction
among the people of either party. The whole idea of this
latest refinement of Christology was inept and futile.
It deserved no better fate, for it was founded on policy,
not on conviction ; and it was promoted by State authority,
not by religious reasoning. Equally political, equally
resting on government influence, was the Type, which
the Emperor Constans put forth in the year 648, and
which, without pretending to favour either side, forbade
any further controversy and threatened severe penalties
against all who should dare to break the rule of silence.
About thirty years later the heresy was condemned by the
third council of Constantinople (a.d. 680-681).

570 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
None of these attempts at reconciliation, compromise,
and suppression had succeeded in bringing back the
Egyptian national Church into union with the Greek
Church. It has ever since remained in separation. With
the exception of some 6,000 Melchites, mostly Greeks,
nearly all the Christians in Egypt at the present day are
Monophysites. The national Church of Egypt, the Coptic
Church, is of the same faith as the Jacobite Church in
Syria. Eeturning for a little to the internal condition of the
Coptic Church during this period, we see that for sixty
years after the banishment of John Talai there had been
no Melchite patriarch in Egypt. Then Justinian forced a
man named Paul into the vacant post (a.d. 541). No
Copt would recognise him. But a cruel injustice was done
to the national Church in transferring its revenues to the
Melchite patriarch, who enjoyed them in his sinecure office,
while the patriarch who was actually working at the head
of the Church in Egypt was left dependent on the freewill
offerings of his people. It was the same with the clergy under
him. The ecclesiastical endowments and official revenues
were confiscated for the little handful of Melchites. The
situation is parallel to that of the United Free Church in
Scotland in our own day; and that without any parliament to
secure a tolerable equity. Thus the Coptic Church was not
only anathematised by the orthodox Church ; it was disestab
lished and disendowed by the State. Yet it was not crushed;
nor did the small favoured community gain anything but the
sordid profit of revenue by the unfair transaction. With
all its endowments it never flourished, never grew. It has
remained to this day a phantom Church with offices, but
without functions, and in all respects an alien in the land
on which it was forced many centuries ago. After the
Mohammedan invasion, this Melchite organisation lost its
privileges and its dues.
Meanwhile the real Church of Egypt became more
national. The hturgies were now translated into the Coptic
language. Early in the reign of the Emperor Maurice

ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF COPTIC CHURCH 571
(a.d. 582) there was a revolt in North Egypt, headed by
three brothers — Abaskiron, Mena, and James — against the
blue, or imperiahst party, which for a time succeeded in
wresting almost the whole of the Delta from the govern
ment. Other revolts followed. How plainly we can see
in this seething discontent the undermining of the Byzantine
power in Egypt. It fell for a time under the Persian
invasion, which could not have been altogether unwel
come to the Copts. It was temporarily restored by the
victories of that great military genius, the Emperor
Heraclius. But the situation was such that the empire
could not expect to find loyal defence in Egypt against
the dread Mohammedan invasion, when the Arab army
was on the wing hke a swarm of locusts. And yet
defence now meant nothing less than protection of
Christendom from imminent total ruin.

CHAPTER II
THE PERSIAN AND ARAB CONQUESTS
(a) The Arabian authors previously named : Patrologia Orientalis,
i. 4, Peter I. to Benjamin I., Arabic text and Eng. trans. ;
Theophanes, Chronographia ; John of Nikiou, Chronicle,
French trans. ; Malan, Documents of the Coptic Church,
especially Makrizi, Hist, of Copts ; Renaudot, Historia
Patriarcharum Alexandrinorum Jacobitarum (18th cent.).
(6) Gibbon, chaps, xlvii. and li. ; Neale, Patriarchate of Alex
andria ; Mrs. Butcher, History of the Church in Egypt, 1897 ;
Butler, Arab Conquest of Egypt, 1902 ; Lane Poole, Hist, of
¦ Egypt in, the Middle Ages, 1907.
Thb position of the Copts at the time of the Persian and
Arab conquests of Egypt is without parallel in history.
Two successive invasions swept over their country with
but a short interval between them. This interval wit
nessed the brilliant exploits of Heraclius, who rescued
the Byzantine Empire when it seemed likely to break
down utterly and finally, and gave it a new lease of hfe,
though not any approach to its former splendour. Now
the question is, What was the attitude of the Copts during
these three kaleidoscopic changes of the map of Empire ?
They were the persecuted native Christians of Egypt who
had been robbed of their ecclesiastical revenues and finest
churches, and who saw the alien Greek Melchites, them
selves but the shadow of a church, enjoying these ancient
endowments and possessions. They could have felt no
sense of loyalty towards their great oppressor, the Byzan
tine government. Nevertheless it is certain that they
did not help or encourage the Persian invaders. This is
proved by the cruel treatment they received. There were no
672

THE PERSIAN AND ARAB CONQUESTS 573
less than six hundred monasteries in the neighbourhood of
Alexandria.1 These monasteries were walled and fortified,
and the inmates endeavoured to hold out against the
Persians. They were all besieged, captured, and destroyed ;
and the monks were put to the sword, with great slaughter.
The same cruel warfare was carried up the Nile as far as
Syene, and many monks were slain all along the line of
conquest. The Persian King Chosroes allowed Andronicus,
the Coptic patriarch, to remain in Alexandria as he had
allowed the patriarch Modestus to remain at Jerusalem.
No doubt he had reasons of state for these conspicuous
acts of leniency. It was well to mark the difference
between the national patriarchs and the Byzantine
officials. On the other hand, the Copts were less inclined to
join the enemies of the Byzantine Empire just now than
at any other time. The Emperor Phocus had made him
self hated by all his subjects — Greeks as well as Egyptians
and Syrians. Accordingly, when Heraclius led the revolt
against the brutal tyrant, the whole empire had been ready
to rally to the standard of the great general and assist
him in a course of ambition which promised to make for
the common weal. After that the Copts were not likely
to side with the enemies of the man whom they had helped
to set on the throne. The notion that they had done so
is a pure fabrication of their Melchite caluminators. Their
own grievous sufferings from the sword should have saved
them from this false charge.
After Heraclius had repelled the Persian invasion, he
was still regarded in a more friendly way by the Copts
than had been the case with other Byzantine emperors ;
and at first he took some pains to cultivate pleasant relations
with them. He did not go so far as to refuse to appoint
a Melchite patriarch. That would have been to give
mortal offence to his Greek subjects all over the empire.
1 "Six hundred glorious monasteries like dove-cotes," says the ancient
writer of the "History of the Coptic Patriarchs of Alexandria," in
Patrologia Orientalis, tome i. fasc. 4, p. 465.

574 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
But he was careful to select for the office a man whose
life and character were in high repute even among the
national Christians. This was John, who came to be sur-
named " the Almoner." The immensity of his charities
is some evidence of the wealth of the sinecure post that he
held as nominal patriarch of Alexandria, and it may help
to explain the bitterness felt by the impoverished national
Church that had been robbed in order to endow this alien
and generally useless office. The Church had a large
share in the enormous grain trade which passed between
Alexandria and Constantinople, and all the profit of this
now went into the coffers of the Melchite patriarch. John
did the best thing that seemed possible for him under the
circumstances. He did not renounce the wealth which only
came to him in his official capacity, and of which he regarded
himself as a trustee ; but he gave it away with more than
princely generosity. He distributed daily relief among
7,500 poor people in Alexandria. After the sack of
Jerusalem by the Persians, he sent to that city of many
woes gifts of money, food, and clothing, with a modest
letter in which he said, " Pardon me that I can send
nothing worthy the temples of Christ. Would that I
could come myself and work with my own hands at the
Church of the Eesurrection."
Here we may see one good result of the Persian
invasion. It was the indirect means of drawing the Syrian
and Egyptian Churches together in bonds of real Christian
sympathy. John the Almoner was treading in the foot
steps of St. Paul when he sent aid to the " brethren at
Jerusalem." In the autumn of the year 615, while John's
caravans were crossing the desert, the Jacobite patriarch
of Antioch, Athanasius, paid a visit to Anastasias, the Coptic
patriarch of Alexandria, meeting him at the Ennanton
Monastery on the seacoast west of Alexandria, where some
Syrian monks were already staying for a time in order to
revise the Syriac Bible by collation with the Greek text,
while others had come as refugees from the Persian in
vasion. This meeting brought about a result which the

THE PERSIAN AND ARAB CONQUESTS 575
Melchite John's charities could not effect. It issued in a
union between the Syrian and the Coptic Churches, both
of which were of the Monophysite creed.
The deplorable surprise of the reign of Heraclius
appeared only too soon. The man who had the genius to
save the empire had not the common sense to govern it.
Heraclius was one of the greatest generals the world has
ever seen ; he proved to be one of the most incompetent,
blundering rulers who ever mismanaged a great empire.
We do not expect a soldier to be a theologian, and Heraclius
maybe forgiven for leaving the subtleties of Christology to his
professional adviser, Sergius, the patriarch of Constantinople.
But he cannot be excused for the inconsiderate way in
which he forced what he intended to be an olive branch
on to the people whom he desired to reconcile with ortho
doxy. He did not even consult Benjamin, the patriarch
of the national Church of Egypt at the time. Cyrus, his
nominee for the Melchite patriarchate of Alexandria (in
the year 630), was the very worst man to select as a
conciliator. Cyrus took his appointment as an excuse
for forcing his alien Melchite authority on the national
Church of Egypt. His cruel policy was anticipated from
the first. Benjamin the Coptic patriarch fled into hiding
directly Cyrus landed (a.d. 631). He knew what this
mission meant. The Coptic monks were now worse off
than the British monks of Bangor, when Augustine, less
than thirty years before this very time, had approached
with orders to compel them to submit to Eome. They
fled in all directions. So did many of the clergy of
the national Church. All were seized with terror. And
their fears were justified. Those who resisted Cyrus
were severely dealt with — imprisoned, tortured, killed.
Many, however, submitted, even among the bishops. There
are few more pitiable passages in the history of the Church
than this. Here we have a brief interlude between one
non-Christian invasion and another — between the pagan
Persian and the Mohammedan Arab invasion. During
this short interval a Christian power is ruling in Egypt.

576 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Yet it proves to be a time of misery for the national
Church. The dominant party of Christians spend it in
brutally persecuting their fellow-Christians.
Cyrus's violent measures went on for ten years. After
seven, or eight years of this persecution, Heraclius made
his last attempt at securing the peace of the Church by
the issue of the Ecthesis,1 advocating the newly invented
Monothelete idea. It is probable that outside Alexandria
the monks never heard of the existence of this document.
No extant Coptic writing betrays any knowledge of it. To
the Copts their old friend Heraclius appeared to have been
changed into a persecutor, trying to force them back to the
hated Chalcedonian heresy. This was a double mistake.
The Ecthesis was a departure from Chalcedon, and as such
was destined ultimately to be anathematised by an oecu
menical council, and the emperor was no persecutor, but
a peacemaker — in intention. Meanwhile, from the first
Cyrus was exceeding his master's orders and directly con
tradicting the spirit of them. In being vested with
supreme authority over Egypt he was able to oppress the
Copts, who do not seem to have dreamed of going behind
him to appeal to Heraclius, as though they had had any
doubt of his approval of Cyrus. It must be admitted that
although his original intention had been pacific, Heraclius,
hke Constantine three centuries earlier, was driven by force
of circumstances into at least an acquiescence in persecu
tion. This is the inevitable destiny of the autocrat who
desires to force comprehension by the mutual reconciliation
of all differences on his reluctant subjects. Heraclius
must have known of Cyrus's persecution. Unless he was
too weak to interfere, he must have acquiesced in it. No
doubt in the latter part of the ten cruel years he was
bitterly disappointed with his pet device for settling ecclesi
astical differences. His Ecthesis was a last attempt at
conciliation, and, in spite of. some temporary success, in
the end it proved to be a failure, partly because it was
entrusted to the wrong hands.
1 See p. 129.

THE PERSIAN AND ARAB CONQUESTS 577
The sequel to Heraclius's magnificent feat in hurlino-
back the Persians from Egypt and Syria and re-establishing
the crumbling power of the Byzantine Empire is one
of the greatest disappointments in history. For the
moment it looked as though the glorious days of, Con
stantine or Theodosius were returning. Then rose the
thunder-cloud from the Arabian desert, and the hosts of
Islam swept over province after province, till at length,
after centuries of Titanic wrestling, the remnant of the
Eoman Empire in the East was finally subdued, and the
Crescent gleamed on the central dome of St. Sophia, there
to remain till the present day.
Now we have to see the relation of this triumphant
march of Islam in its early days to the Copts and their
Church. Mohammed never entered Egypt. The prophet
died in the year 632. It was seven years later that
the Moslems invaded Egypt. Omar was then caliph. A
letter he had despatched to Amr', who was on the way to
Egypt, recalling the general to Medina, had reached its
destination, but Amr' did not open it, and marched on in
spite of what he suspected to be its orders. His sub
sequent victories condoned the act of insubordination.
There can be no doubt that these victories were won partly
by aid rendered in Egypt itself. But there is some con
fusion in reference to the source and manner of this
assistance. It has been attributed to the Copts. If that
were correct, we could hardly regard them as traitors, since
they were already the subjects of a foreign master in the
Byzantine emperor, who represented the alien Church that
had appropriated their ecclesiastical property. It was but
a question of a change of masters. Still, the Byzantine
Empire, though viewed by the Copts as heretical in its
acceptance of the decrees of Chalcedon, was a Christian
power, and the admission of the Moslem conqueror was an
encouragement to Islam as a rival religion which threatened
to stamp out the faith of Christ. The persecution of
Christians by their fellow-Christians is never more con
vincingly futile as a defence of the faith than when it
37

578 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
drives the victims into the arms of the infideL But il
is not proved against the Copts that they rendered any
practical assistance to the Arab invaders. They were
crushed and scattered by the Melchite persecution that had
followed the issue of the Ecthesis and its enforcement by
Cyrus. Benjamin their patriarch was in exile ; his flock
was in no condition to seriously influence public affairs.
The action that was taken to' smooth the way for the
invader came from another source, and that a source the
circumstances of which made it far more treasonable in
character. A mysterious personage, known to the Arab
writers as " the Mukaukas," described aB " the chief ruler
of Egypt," has been accused as the chief traitor to Chris
tianity at this juncture. Mr. Stanley 'Lane Poole suggests
that the mystery of his personality may be explained on
the hypothesis that two distinct persons are involved
under the same name. He accepts the view that the title
Mukaukas, as a form of a Greek word meaning "most
glorious,"1 appears to have been used for any Byzantine
official. Now, in the year 628, a certain Egyptian official
of the empire named George, and bearing this title, sent
two slave girls, a white mule, and a pot of Benha honey as
presents to Mohammed, and one of the slave girls, known
as " Mary the Copt," became a concubine of the prophet.
Twelve years later we meet a Byzantine official with the
same name and title as Mohammed's friendly Mukaukas ;
possibly, however, it is suggested, he is not the same man,
but perhaps a son. This George rendered the Arabs some
assistance in taking Misr. In return he got these terms —
(1) A moderate poll tax for the Christians, consisting of
two dinars (about £1, Is. Od.) per head, a land tax, and
the requirement of giving three days' hospitality to soldiers.
(2) No peace with the Eomans till they were all made
slaves. (3) A promise that when George died he should be
buried in the church of St. John at Alexandria.
If this view were adopted, we could not reckon the
Mukaukas to be a very important person, and the difficulty
1 Meyavxt/jS.

THE PERSIAN AND ARAB CONQUESTS 57 9
would be to account for so much fuss being made about him
and his treachery. But another theory is advocated by Mr.
Butler, which, if it is adopted, will throw a very different
fight on the story. This is that the official with the
barbarous name in the Arab chronicles is no one else than
the well-known Cyrus, the Melchite patriarch of Alexandria.
So astounding a conception is enough to take away our
breath when it comes upon us for the first time.
The reader must be referred to Mr. Butler's exhaustive
examination of the whole case for an adequate appreciation
of the evidence, which is cumulative.1 The theory appears
to have been originated by the Portuguese scholar Pereira.
It starts from a statement of Severus of Ushmunaim, that
"Cyrus was appointed by Heraclius after the recovery of
Egypt from the Persians to be both patriarch and governor
of Alexandria.2 This is very significant. It points to a
double office, and suggests the idea that the man who was
at the same time at the head both of the civil and of the
ecclesiastical establishments at Alexandria could really
dominate Egypt. We can well understand the Arabian
view of him. Then it is suggested that the strange title
Mukaukas, that has given rise to so many conjectures, is
derived from the word kaukasios,s and indicates Cyrus, who
came from Phasis in the Caucasus as a native of that
district.4 It is certain that Cyrus entered into early
negotiations with the Mohammedan General Amr', pro
mising him an annual tribute and the emperor's daughter
Eudocia for his harem if he would withdraw his troops.
Herachus was in a rage when he heard of his official's
daring proposal, and summoned him to Constantinople,
1 The Arab Conquest of Egypt, Appendix o.
2 See also Patrologia Orientalis, tomei. fasc. 4, "Hist, of Pat." : " Whf n
Heraclius obtained possession of the land, he appointed governors in every
place, and he sent a governor to the land of Egypt named Cyrus, to be prefect
and patriarch at the same time " (p. 489).
' KavKatrios.
1 Other suggested derivations are from KaiKov, a supposed copper coin, and
Kavxlov, a little bowl; or perhaps the term is a dark allusion to vicious
practices.

580 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
where we should have expected his immediate execution.
But the terror of the Arabian invasion was so great that
the emperor sent Cyrus back to arrange terms. When
the Mukaukas was at Babylon, the ancient Coptic capital,
he had carried on secret negotiations for surrender. But
his pohcy had then been frustrated. Alexandria, open to
the sea and strongly fortified by land, should have stood
a long siege. It was surrendered without a blow.1 This
apparently needless action of the defenders is attributed
to the treachery of the Mukaukas. It may have been
owing to a wise pohcy for the protection of the city, its
treasures, and its citizens. Subsequently Alexandria was
recovered by the Byzantine ; and after that the Arabs
took it by assault. It is difficult to see what Cyrus had
to gain by treachery. But there is no doubt that he
negotiated terms of surrender with the Arabs. The fact is
confirmed by John of Nikiou, who states, however, that
Cyrus was not alone in desiring peace, the inhabitants
generally also wishing for it.2 On the other hand, he
states that Amr' fought for twelve years against the Chris
tians of North Egypt before he succeeded in conquering
that province — the very district where Cyrus had most
influence.3 When Alexandria was taken the stern Amr'
forbade pillage.
The famous story of the destruction of the library is
now discredited. According to the statement of Abu-
1-Farag, Amr' consulted Omar as to what he should
do with the books, and the caliph replied, " If these
writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God,
they are useless and need not be preserved ; if they
disagree, they are pernicious and ought to be de
stroyed." So, we are told, they were distributed among
the 4,000 baths of the city, and even then it took six
months to burn them all. Gibbon follows Eenaudot in
throwing doubt on this picturesque story, and later critics
have confirmed their scepticism. It is not to be met with
1 John of Nikiou,. Chronicle, cxvii a Ibid. cxx.
8 Ibid. cxv.

THE PERSIAN AND ARAB CONQUESTS 581
till the thirteenth century, six hundred years later.1 Besides,
it is in itself unlikely. It is very doubtful whether there
was a library of any considerable size in Alexandria at
the time. Ptolemy's famous hbrary appears to have been
destroyed by Caesar. A few years later the hbrary of the
kings of Pergamum was lodged at the Serapeum ; but when
the Serapeum was destroyed by the mob in the fourth
century, this library must have been burnt or scattered.
Then John Philoponus, who, according to the late Arab
story, had asked Amr' for the books, could not have been
living in the year 642, because he is known to have been
writing more than a century before this date. Moreover,
the Arabs did not enter Alexandria for eleven months after
the city had capitulated, and during all that time the
inhabitants were free to carry off their treasures. When
the entry was made, Amr' prohibited destruction of pro
perty. Lastly, there is the inherent improbability — as Mr.
Butler points out — that books, many of them of parch
ment, would be used for lighting 4,000 bath fires. It
would have paid the bathmen better to have sold them to
scholars, many of whom would have come forward as eager
purchasers. Putting all these facts together — the destruc
tion of Ptolemy's library by the Eomans in the first century
b.c. ; the destruction of the Serapeum, which contained the
library from Pergamum in the third century ad. ; the evident
impossibility of that part of the story that introduces the
name of Philoponus ; the ample opportunity for saving the
books given to the Alexandrians; Amr's rigorous pro
hibition of deeds of violence ; and the general impro
bability of the whole narrative — we have ample reasons
for rejecting the tradition as not true.
After the Arab conquest of Egypt, the centre of govern
ment was removed from Alexandria to Fustat (" the tent "),
near what is now known as " Old Cairo." This place was
more easily reached from Medina and at the same time
out of the Byzantine influences of Alexandria. Here the
government was carried on for two hundred and fifty years.
1 In 'Abd-el-Latif and Abfi-1-Farag.

b82 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
As regards the two parties of Christians, the tables
were turned. The orthodox, being the party of the
Byzantine Empire, were in disfavour, and they were robbed
of their swollen possessions, some part of which reverted to
its rightful owners, the Copts. At first these people were
leniently treated. Amr' received a deputation of monks
begging for a charter of rights and the restoration of their
patriarch Benjamin after an exile of thirteen years.1 In
reply he graciously granted the charter and invited the
patriarch to return. His decree ran as follows : " Let every
place, wherein Benjamin the patriarch of the Coptic
Christians may be, possess full security, peace and trust
from God : let him come with safety and fearlessness, and
freely administer the affairs of his Church and people." 2 A
little later the Copts were allowed to build a church
behind the bridge at Fustat. Altogether the national
Church in Egypt was at first much freer and happier under
the rule of the unbeliever than it had been under that of
the orthodox emperor. Benjamin was now able to conduct
a thorough visitation of his churches unmolested. On the
other hand, Amr' would allow no retaliation on the Melch
ites. The two Churches were to hve together side by
side. For the time being there was peace in Egypt. This
is one of the few interludes between the many severe per
secutions and the long weary ages of ill-treatment to which
the Christian inhabitants have been subject.
Nevertheless, it is only by comparison with the more
harsh government of later times that we can regard this
early Arab period as pacific and lenient. In England or
America we should think the tyranny of Islam even at its
best simply intolerable. In accordance with the universal
1 John of Nikiou, cxxi.
a Severus in Eenaudot, pp. 163, 164. In the ' ' Hist, of the Patriarchs " the
decree is given as follows : " Amr' wrote to the provinces of Egypt — ' There
is protection and security for the place where Benjamin the patriarch of the
Coptic Christians is, and peace from the governor. Therefore let him come
forth secure and tranquil, and administer the affairs of his Church and the
government of his nation,' " Patrologia Orientalis, tome i. fasc. 4, pp. 495,
496.

THE PERSIAN AND ARAB CONQUESTS 583
rule — the choice being Islam, tribute, or the sword — the
Christians were heavily taxed, while the Mohammedans paid
no taxes. Thus they, together with the Jews, bore all
the financial burden of the State, paid the expenses of the
government and the army, and supported the luxuries of the
harems. Over and above this, their lives were spared and
their freedom of worship was allowed only on the following
conditions : —
1. The Koran must not be reviled nor copies of it burnt.
2. The Prophet must not be spoken of disrespectfully.
3. Islam must not be condemned or reviled.
4. No Christian may marry a Mohammedan woman.
5. No attempt may be made to convert or injure a
Mohammedan. 6. The enemies of Islam are not to be assisted.
To these general regulations there were added certain
humiliating restrictions, as that houses of the Christians
must not overtop houses of Mohammedans ; the ringing of
church bells must not be forced on the ears of Moham
medans ; crosses must not be displayed in public ; Christians
must not ride on thoroughbred horses ; certain burial
ordinances must be observed, etc.
Gradually the Christians were made to feel that, though
within the limits imposed upon them they could enjoy a
considerable measure of personal liberty, they were in a state
of social bondage. The extraordinary democratic nature of
Islam gave to Egyptian converts equal privileges with the
invaders from Arabia, except in some military matters.
Accordingly, it was not like the case of the invasion of
England by William the Conqueror, after which the
Normans as conquerors lorded it over the defeated English.
In Egypt the native people could share the privileges of
the victorious Arabs if they would adopt the religion of
their masters.
Viewed from a distance and in the abstract, this policy
may appear to be large-minded, noble, generous. Eeligion
is exalted above race, and the victor is willing to share
the spoils of war with the vanquished, on conditions that

584 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
do not make for his own material advantage. Thus, though
a religion of the sword, Islam maintains its character
as essentially, by its creed and constitution, a missionary
religion. On the other hand, this very characteristic of the
Mohammedan government added to its pressure of tyranny
on those people who adhered to another faith. It was all
the worse for the Christian Copt to see his fellow-Egyptian
passing over to the rival faith and so increasing the forces
of the oppressor. For an oppressor the Mussulman ruler
must be, as regards the Christians, even when his methods
are the mildest. Bribery was resorted to as an additional
means of detaching the weak from the Church and winning
them to Islam. If these things were done in the green
tree, what was to be expected in the dry? Although
the Arab rule in Egypt began so moderately that the
Copts were ready to rejoice in it for the relief it
afforded from the Melchite tyranny, they were soon to have
reasons for repenting of the welcome they had given it.
It was not long before their disadvantages were increased,
and from time to time in the subsequent centuries they
were harassed with savage outbreaks of persecution. The
Christians never enjoy full liberty under Islam ; they are
always treated as inferiors, if not as outlaws ; and they are
often subject to great cruelty without hope of redress.
Egypt has proved to be no exception to this melancholy
generalisation.

CHAPTER III
THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE
(a) The Arabian authors ; John of Nikiou, Chronicle ; Makrizi ;
Eutychius ; Amelineau, Etude sur le Christianisme au Hgypte
au Septiime Siecle (containing translation of Life of Abbot
Pisentius) ; Renaudot, Historia Patriarcharum Alexandrin-
orum ; Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, 1741 ; Abu Salik, The
Churches and Monasteries of Eyypt (died a.d. 900 ; Eng. trans.
1895).
(J) Gibbon, chap. Ii. ; Neale, Patriarchate of Alexandria, vol.- ii. ;
Mrs. Butcher, History of the Church in Egypt, 1897 ; Lane
Poole, Hist, of Egypt in the Middle Ages, 1907.
The Coptic monks of this period, first harried by the
Persians, next persecuted by the Melchites, and then
oppressed by the Arabs, were now at their highest stage
of culture. The mission of scholars from Syria to an
Egyptian monastery for the revision of their own Scriptures
is one sign of this fact. It seems clear that the Melchites
studied the Greek classics as well as the Church Fathers.
This is shown by classical allusions in their writings. How
far these studies were shared by the Copts, however, is not
quite evident. But under the hberal rule of John the
Almoner there was more friendly communication between
the two churches than at any other time either before or
after. Sophronius, the orthodox opponent of the Ecthesis,
came from Alexandria, and he composed an elegy on the
Holy Places in Anacreontic verse, — but of course he was a
Melchite. A friend of John the Almoner and Sophronius,
John Moschus, gives an account of his visits to Egyptian
monasteries in a famous book, entitled Spiritual Pastures.1
1 Aei/xwp TrvevpMTiKbs. 686

586 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
These two men afford considerable information regarding the
manners and customs of the churches and monasteries of
Egypt in their day, and show how full of intellectual hfe
they were. For instance, in his account of a monk whom
he calls " Cosmas the Student," John Moschus says, " We
shall write nothing from hearsay — only what we have seen
with our own eyes. He was a simple - minded man,
abstemious and clean living: he was easy tempered and
sociable, given to hospitality, a friend of the poor. He
rendered us the very greatest service, not only by his specu
lation and his teaching, but because he possessed the finest
private library in Alexandria, and freely lent his books to all
readers. He was very poor, and the whole of his house, which
was full of books, contained no furniture but a bed and a
table. His library was open to all comers. Every reader
could ask for the book he wanted and there read it. Day
by day I visited Cosmas, and it is a mere fact that I never
once entered his house without finding him engaged either
in reading or in writing against the Jews. He was very
reluctant to leave his library, so that he often sent me out
to argue with some of the Jews from the manuscript he
had written." Cosmos told John that he had hved there
for thirty-three years. When asked what he had learnt
during all this long time of study, he answered that the
three principal things were " not to laugh, not to swear,
and not to he."1
The monks were diligent students and copyists of
books. Coptic illuminated manuscripts, some of which
are dated as early as this period, are reckoned as among
the treasures of art on their own account, and also because
their decorative work set an example for the mediaeval
monks. The church architecture of the Copts had
attained to real splendour, and was developing germs of an
originality that was destined to have a remarkable effect
on Saracenic and Gothic building. Instead of the uniform
classic capital, a new foliation now appeared. Mosaic
work in brilliant coloured glass, which we think of as
1 John Mosohus, quoted by Butler, Arab Conquest of Egypt, pp. 99, 100.

THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE 587
essentiaUy Byzantine, was also developed by the Copts.
About this time also they began to produce the highly
wrought marble carving known as Opus Alexandrinum.
Mr. Lethaby has recently pointed out the remarkable
resemblance between the Coptic textiles of the fifth and
sixth centuries, in which knotted and plaited work is used
freely, and old Saxon ornamentation. Not only may Coptic
vestments devised in this style have found their way to
Britain, but the flight of the monks, first before the Persians
and later before the Arabs, may have resulted in some of
them coming themselves as far west. Mr. Lethaby remarks :
" Such a theory would account for a sudden appearance of
this type over a wide field. The fact that the earliest
examples of Arabic silks made in Egypt (seventh and eighth
centuries) are ornamented with bands of braided patterns
which are obviously a continuation of the Coptic designs,
goes to show how powerful the tradition was. The time of
Theodore, the eastern Archbishop of Canterbury (669-690),
would be particularly favourable for the migration of monks
and artists from the Orient. Only a few years after the
death of Theodore, the Lindisfarne book was written and
decorated, and about the same time knot-work first appears
in Italian stone carving." 1
At the later period when Saracenic architecture began
to develop as a new order astounding the world with its
delicate beauty, the actual work was primarily dependent
on Greek and Coptic designing and handicraft. Mosques
were planned by Greek architects, and their fine decorative
work executed by Coptic craftsmen. The Arabs were
warriors and rulers ; they were not builders and artists.
Their natural home was the desert tent, and when they
indulged in the luxury of cities they were dependent on
the skill of the conquered peoples whom they forced into
their service. At first pillars were torn from Christian
churches to be used in the construction of Moslem mosques.
1 The Origin of Knotted Ornamentation, " Burlington Magazine," January
1907, with references to Le Monastere . . . de Ba6ait, "Memoires d'Arch^-
ologie," etc., vol. xii., Cairo, 1906.

588 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
When the Mohammedans began to make the shafts of
pillars, they crowned them with stolen Christian capitals,
and when they had entirely new work done this was
executed by men of the Christian stock, although in many
cases these men conformed to Islam. All along North
Africa and even in Spain the Arabesque designs are
largely of Coptic and almost entirely of Christian origin.
Being adopted by Mohammedans, they are adapted to
the principles of the Koran. The Alhambra may have
reminiscences of the Bedouin tent in its domestic arrange
ments, but its architectural style is a direct descendant and
development of the Alexandrian.
Cyrus died soon after the Arab conquest of Egypt.
He was nominally succeeded by a Melchite patriarch
named Peter, who found it convenient to retire to Con
stantinople, where he persuaded the Emperor Constans
to substitute the Type for the Ecthesis.1 After his death
there was no Melchite patriarch of Alexandria for more
than seventy years (a.d. 654—727). Such priests of the
orthodox Church as still came to minister to its few Greek
adherents in Egypt then obtained their ordination in Syria.
Meanwhile the national Church, which had enjoyed a
measure of favour under Amr', was not long in discovering
the real significance of the rule of Islam. Benjamin was
succeeded in the patriarchate by Agatho (A.D. 659), who
had to confine himself in his own house for a time to
escape from the demands of a priest of the orthodox
communion named Theodosius. This man had succeeded
in obtaining from the Caliph Yezid a grant of contribu
tions from the Coptic patriarchate. When Agatho died,
Theodosius boldly took possession of the patriarch's
residence and affixed his seal to all that it contained.
This was going too far. Abdel-Aziz, the governor of
Egypt, interfered, and the impudent priest was forced to
beat a hasty retreat. The new Coptic patriarch was John
Semnudaeus, who took advantage of the temporary favour
of the government to advance the interests of the Copts.
1 See p. 129.

THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE 589
This was perhaps the most flourishing time of the
Coptic Church. The Mohammedan government was
friendly, the Melchites were unable to annoy, and the
miUs and oil presses of the patriarchate were bringing
in good revenue, which the patriarch used to relieve
distress throughout the whole country during a time of
famine. So John Semnudaeus was a second Joseph.
But he was not permitted to end his days in peace. John
attempted to act as mediator between the Emperor of
Ethiopia and the King of Nubia, who were at war. Abdel-
Aziz was induced to treat this action as a political intrigue
for the overthrow of the power of Islam, and he condemned
the patriarch to be beheaded. Happily the governor
was persuaded to spare John's life, and he contented
himself with ending' the incident by ordering certain
sentences affirming the Mussulman faith to be written on
the church doors.1
Something more nearly approaching real persecution
was practised by the emir's eldest son, Asabah, who was
influenced by an apostate Copt named Benjamin. He
laid a capitation tax of a gold piece on every monk
and a tax of a thousand pieces of gold on every
bishop, and he forbade anybody for the future to take
monastic vows. The father and the son died near the
same time; but this did not mend matters. The Caliph
Abdel-Melech appointed his son Abdallah to be governor of
Egypt (ad. 705). He proved to be a savage tyrant after
the fashion of one of the monsters of cruelty in the Arabian
Nights. For instance, he would order a guest's head to
be taken off while sitting with him at table. When the
patriarch Alexander ventured to enter the palace to do
homage to the new emir, Abdallah flung him into prison
and demanded 3,000 pieces of gold as the price of his
freedom. This governor of a province of the Mussulman
Empire was acting just like a brigand from the mountains.
The patriarch had no means for raising his ransom till
George his deacon obtained leave for his hberation to
1 Neale calls this the " First Persecution under Abdel-Aziz. '

590 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
go round the towns and villages collecting the money,
promising to bring him back at the end of two months.
From being the distributor of bounty to the poor of the land
the patriarch of Egypt was now reduced to the humiliating
necessity of tramping from place to place among his flock
in order to save his life and liberty. By this means the
money was obtained. But that did not satisfy the rapacious
emir. He had churches despoiled of their treasures, and
Christians who had not registered in his census — which
was only an expedient for extortion — branded on their
forehead or hands. At last he pressed his extortions by
torture. This provoked a rising in Upper Egypt,, which
was quickly quelled, with the inevitable result that the
persecution became more severe.
On the death of the Caliph Abdel-Melech, and the
succession of his son Walid, Abdallah was superseded by
Korah-ben-Serik aB Emir of Egypt. For the unhappy
Christians every change was only a change for the worse.
When Alexander presented himself before Korah to offer
the expected homage of the patriarch to the governor, he
was met with the same demand that Abdallah had made,
and showing he had no means of paying, set off to Upper
Egypt to collect the money. After two years' wandering
he was only able to obtain a third of the amount re
quired. The emir was suspicious, and believing a report
that Alexander had a private mint, sent for it to his
residence, where, since no trace of it could be found, the
patriarch and his attendants were savagely scourged. The
persecution was continued under the next emir, Amasa, with
much cruelty. The repeated exactions of money, which
were among its chief characteristics, give it a wretchedly
sordid appearance. The motive was so evidently selfish
greed rather than high pohcy of state.
At length the Melchites ventured in electing a patriarch
to the post that had been vacant so long, and their choice
fell on a needle-maker, Cosmas, who could neither read nor
write, but who justified their wisdom in appointing him by
his able management of a pecuharly difficult position He

THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE 591
took a journey to Damascus and there had an audience with
the caliph, whom he succeeded in convincing that he was
in the true line of the ancient patriarchate of Alexandria,
and so got several of the churches taken from the Copts
and given up to him. It was a most unhappy revival of
the old intrusion of the Greek Church in Egypt, and
one more trouble for the much afflicted native Church.
After this the Copts had great difficulty in electing a
patriarch for their own communion. When they had suc
ceeded in coming to an agreement on Chail I., the governor
loaded them with fresh money exactions, in order to pay
which some sold their cattle, and some even their children.
Many bishops fled and hid in the monasteries.
In the year 748 a new governor, Hassan, was appointed,
and for a time he was friendly towards the Christians. It
is pitiable to see that one consequence was that both parties
— the Melchites and the Copts — appealed to the govern
ment in a dispute about the possession of a church — St.
Mennas in the Mareotis. This appears to be the first case
in which two bodies of Christians have brought their
quarrel into a Mohammedan court of law. The emir gave
his decision in favour of the national Church. The glint
of favour was but transient. A httle later the emir threw
Chail into a dungeon, together with three hundred Christians
of both sexes. The patriarch was only liberated in order to
undertake the weary work of collecting money for their
ransom in Upper Egypt.
The emir became so tyrannical that he drove the
Copts in Upper Egypt to another rebellion. Both the
patriarchs, Cosmas the Melchite and Chail the Copt, were
taken prisoners ; the former was let off on payment of
a ransom, and the latter was employed to use his influence
with his flock in bringing them to submission. The war
was complicated by the quarrels now going on among
the Mohammedans, and the Christians joined the faction
of the Abbasidae. Their success brought immediate rehef
to the Church.
A curious sidelight is thrown on the status of the

592 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Coptic Christians in the eighth century by the Mohammedan
historian Makrizi. Under the favour of the new line of
caliphs and their emirs in Egypt, they now entered on a
temporary era of prosperity, which was viewed with jealousy
by their Mussulman fellow-subjects. According to Makrizi,
they assumed a proud bearing and flaunting airs. "It
came to this," he says, " that one of the Christian secretaries
passed before the Mosque el Azher in el Kahira (Cairo)
riding in boots with spurs, and white bands round his head
after the fashion of Alexandria, with footmen going before
him to drive away the people lest they should throng him,
and behind him a number of slaves in costly apparel on
prancing steeds. A lot of Mussulmans then present ill-
brooked this; so they rose up against him," etc.1 The
result was a disturbance in which the proud Copt was
roughly handled. This passage is very significant. In the
first place it indicates the prosperity of the Copts who had
succeeded in making their way into official positions. Then,
as in the present day, it would seem that their special aptitude
for clerkships and secretaryships gave them an advantage
over the Arabs in regard to these offices. The pride of a
member of a persecuted community during a short interval
of immunity may seem surprising. But such a man as we
see here is hfted out of the common rut by his official rank.
The reference to Alexandria is peculiarly interesting. Cairo
was a Mohammedan city from its foundation ; but Alexandria
was the old Christian capital. Alexandrian manners would
seem to have retained a flavour of the old Eoman imperial
temper. But anything of the kind was certainly out of
place in Cairo under a Mussulman emir. We are not
surprised to learn that Christians who made any assumption
of self-importance were roughly treated by the Cairene
mob. There were times when it was not safe for any
Christians to show themselves in the streets, when they
were compelled to stay indoors for their lives. Makrizi
goes on to tell how after this the Christians were forbidden
to enter the public service even if they embraced Islam,
'Malan, pp. 106 ff.

THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE 593
and ordered to attend five prayers and the Friday assembly
at the mosques and other places of gathering for prayer.1
In the course of the civil war that broke out after the
death of the famous Caliph Aaron-al-Easchid, the Spanish
Arabs of the bouse of the Ommiadae, which had been
superseded by the Abbasidae, invaded Egypt and made
slaves of their prisoners of war. Mark the Coptic
patriarch offered to buy all these slaves, and his offer was
gladly welcomed, so that 6,000 prisoners were liberated
in this way.2 Alexandria was captured, but while the
besiegers were resting off their guard the Arabs rose and
commenced an indiscriminate slaughter of Jews and
Christians as well as Spanish troops. Mark escaped to
the desert, where he remained in hiding for five years.
Much of the Coptic history of this period consists of
little else than stories of the successive patriarchs, few of
whom seem to have been men of any power or importance.
The patriarch Jacob, who was at the head of the Coptic
Church early in the ninth century, attained to some fame,
which induced his brother patriarch at Antioch, Dionysius,
the author of the Chronicle from the beginning of the World
to his own times, to pay him a visit. Yucab, who became
Coptic patriarch in or near the year 837,3 consecrated
bishops for the more remote parts of his diocese, especially
by the borders of the Eed Sea. He also cultivated an
intimate friendship with the Melchite patriarch Sophronius.
But though for the time being this may have softened the
acerbity of sectarian animosity between the two parties, it
did not lead to any steps towards bringing them together.
Yucab died in the year 850, and was succeeded by Chail,
the second Coptic patriarch of that name. Almost
immediately after this the peace which the Church had
enjoyed, broken only by temporary outbreaks, for nearly
1 Malan, p. 108.
2 Neale, who always writes as a strong partisan of the Melchites, remarks
on this noble deed, " Heresy probably thus reaped a harvest of converts,"
Patriarchate of Alexandria, vol. ii. p. 139.
* According to Makrizi, in 842.
38

594 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
fifty years, came to an end, and the old trouble caused by
the rapacity of the emirs was vexing it again. The
patriarch even had to sell the sacred vessels of his church
to meet the demands of the civil governor. The Caliph
Mutawekkil now lays down many vexatious regulations for
the Christians. They are to wear honey-coloured cloth, or
a distinguishing patch on their garments ; the men are to
have a girdle after the style of women ; they are to put
up a wooden image of a devil, an ape, or a dog over their
doors ; no crosses may be shown ; neither may they have
processions through the streets with lights ; they may not
ride on horses ; nothing must be set up on their graves to
mark them. Still annoying and insulting as all this is, it
cannot be compared with the violent persecutions of earher
and of later periods. After the year 856 most of the
emirs were Turks, since men of this race were now coming
more and more to the front in the army and government
of the caliphate, while the old vigour of the desert warriors
was deserting the Arab families amid the luxury and
sensuality of their life in cities. The Turkish emirs of
Egypt were able men, and some of them mild and merciful
rulers. During the patriarchate of Chenouda, a man of great
influence in the Coptic Church, the governor Abdallah
doubled or trebled the taxation of the Christians. His
difficulty was with the monks, who owned no property,
and he put a tax on their fruit and vegetables. Chenouda
retired into seclusion for a time, but subsequently he came
out and presented himself before the emir, who then came
to terms with him. It was the same perpetual question of
how much money could be squeezed out of the Christians
which had so long disgraced the story of the emirs in
Egypt. In this agreement between Abdallah and Chenouda
it was settled that the Church of Alexandria should pay
an annual tribute of 2,000 and the monasteries of 2,300
pieces of gold.
The greatest of the Turkish emirs was Ibn Tulun, who
has left his name on a famous mosque at Cairo. This
man was originally a Turkish slave. He married the

THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE 595
daughter of the Emir Bargug, who gave him a free hand,
so that at the age of thirty-three he became really the
governor of Egypt (a.d. 868). Then he began to live
in kingly state. Tulun was no friend to the Christians.
He ruthlessly levelled the Christian graves for a new
town between Fustat and the Mokattam hills. In the
year 878 he renounced allegiance to the caliph, took
Damascus, captured and sacked Antioch. This was the
first mutiny in Egypt since the Arab conquest. Although
Tulun was a fierce and ruthless destroyer when on the
warpath, he revived the power of Egypt in the East, and
beautified Cairo with some of the finest work of Saracenic
architecture. He died of the fatigues of his tremendous
life when on his travels, in the year 884, before he was
fifty years of age.
These were dark times for the Copts. The Melchite
party had come into temporary favour and the national
Church was under a cloud, when a deacon, maintaining that
he had been wrongly treated by Chenouda, appealed to the
governor Ahmed, who thereupon summoned all the Coptic
bishops to his presence. Chenouda had gone into hiding,
but he was discovered and dragged out. The bishops were
stripped of their episcopal robes, and, clad as simple
monks, led through the streets on the backs of asses
without saddles amidst the jeers of the mob. The
patriarch was flung into a dungeon and kept there for
thirty days, in the hope that he would pay a handsome
ransom, which, however, was not forthcoming. This
incident ended strangely. The accusing deacon professed
penitence, and Chenouda granted him absolution ; but the
penitent soon proved his insincerity by bringing various
false accusations against Christians. When his villainy
was discovered the emir had him scourged almost to death.
Chenouda died in or about the year 881, after a patri
archate full of trouble and vexation. Great as was his
influence among his own people, he seems to have been a
weak, timorous man, unsuited to the rough times in which
his lot was cast. But Egypt was not the soil to bring

596 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
forth a Hildebrand or a Thomas a Becket, and even if one
of those heroes of ecclesiasticism had appeared under the
rule of Islam, it is difficult to see how he could have
developed his powers.
Chenouda's successor, Chail hi., had as troublesome a
time as that of the unhappy patriarch whom he was called
to follow. His misfortunes sprang from what occurred
during his visit to Xois, in the diocese of Saca, for the
consecration of a new church. The service was unaccount
ably delayed by the absence of the bishop, till it
was discovered that he was entertaining his friends at
a preliminary banquet which was unduly protracted.
On learning this, the indignant patriarch commenced the
service. When the bishop came in and saw what was
happening he flew into a rage, seized the bread of the
Eucharist and flung it on the ground. The next day
Chail and the othe.r assembled bishops met and excom
municated the offender. This man then went to the
Emir Tulun, and informed him that the patriarch had
enough wealth to pay for his projected military expedition.
Chail was summoned, and ordered to give up everything
belonging to the Christian worship except the vestments.
Eefusing to do this, he was sent to prison and kept
there for a twelvemonth. Then he was let out on
the condition that he should procure 20,000 pieces of
gold, one-half in a month, the rest in four months. Chail
took refuge in a Melchite church, and apparently did
nothing towards accomplishing his really impossible task,
till it was pointed out to him that there were ten vacant
bishoprics, by charging fees for the appointment to which
he might raise money. By this and other disgraceful
means he got a considerable amount, but not nearly half
what was required. As a last resource he went to Alexandria
and bargained with the clergy for their church ornaments
in return for a pledge to pay the Alexandrian Church a
thousand pieces of gold every year in perpetuity. Even
then he had only half the huge sum demanded of him by
the emir, who, however, died before taking measures to

THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE 597
force the wretched patriarch to make still further efforts
at obtaining the rest of the money.
The practice of taking money for appointments to
bishoprics invented by Chail m. was often adopted by
subsequent patriarchs. The Alexandrian tribute and the
exactions of the government were the excuses for a custom
that the Church has always condemned as simoniacal.
The money was not taken for the personal advantage of
the vendors. It was requisitioned as an absolute necessity
for the payment of obligatory dues. Still, the practice
was owned to be a scandalous evil, and the better
patriarchs endeavoured to break it off. Chail himself
ended his days as a penitent mourning for his double
offence of violating the canons and alienating the property
of the Church.
The condition of Egypt under the Mohammedan rule
was now going from bad to worse. The caliphs endeavoured
to retain their power over it by a frequent change of emirs,
so that no one governor should have time to establish
himself in independence. Emirs would bribe the cahphs
for appointment and reappointment, and, of course, wring
the money for this backshish from their miserable subjects,
the Christians always being the greatest sufferers. But, on
the occasion of one of these emirs imposing a new tribute
on bishops and monks, a deputation of Christians went to
Bagdad to represent to the caliph the intolerable condition
of affairs, and succeeded in obtaining an order that nothing
beyond the usual tax should be exacted from them. While
they were being bled the Christians were also being starved.
One emir ordered that neither Christians nor Jews should
be employed in any other way than as physicians and
tradesmen. Eutychius, commonly known as Said, the chronicler of
this period of Coptic history, was a Melchite patriarch early
in the ninth century. He was a man of some culture,
who had studied and practised medicine and written a
treatise on that subject. He was also the author of a
disputation between a Christian and a heretic, and a

598 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
work on the history of Sicily after the invasion.
But his best known work is his annals of Alexandrian
history, entitled Contexture of Gems, a dreary book reveal
ing a credulous mind on the part of its author. During
Said's patriarchate the petty Melchite community was dis
turbed by internal quarrels, which led to the interference of
the emir, who took occasion to seize the Church treasures
— said by the Copts to be very great — and transport them
to his palace at Misr. He only allowed them to be
redeemed on payment of 5,000 pieces of gold. The
caliphate had now declined to a state of miserable
weakness. In fact it was a mere shadow, and each emir
ruled in his own province. Thus Mohammed Akchid,
the emir in Egypt at this time, became an independent
governor. It was useless to appeal against him to the
caliph as the Copts of an earlier period had appealed to
the caliph of their day. Therefore the independence of
Egypt only meant more misery for the Egyptians, and
that without hope of redress.
Theophanius, a Coptic patriarch who began his rule
in the .year 954, added to the troubles of the times by
developing madness. He was taken by water to Misr for
medical treatment ; but one night during the voyage his
delirious screams so alarmed his fellow-passengers, that one
of the bishops descended to the hold and killed him — by
suffocation or, as some said, by poison.
On the death of Akchid, who seems to have been a
strong ruler, Mazzin of the Fatimite family — the rivals of
the feeble remnant of the Abbasidae line — succeeded in
taking Egypt. Thus there was established the Fatimite
caliphate in Egypt. They settled their headquarters
at Cairo in the year 970. This dynasty lasted for two
' centuries. At first promising reform under a strenuous
government, it rapidly degenerated, most of the sovereigns
being absorbed in their own pleasures and displaying no
great ideas and no ambitions.1 w|t for the Christians
much of this period afforded a b|^hing space between
1 See S. Lane Poole, Hist, of-wmpt, p. 116.

THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE 599
their long harassing persecutions. Just as in the old
Roman times the strong and good emperors persecuted
the Church, and the weak and bad emperors let it
alone, so under the Mohammedan rule, while the fierce
fanatics of Islam bore hardly on the "infidels," the
negligent, sensual Fatimites treated them with easy
toleranace. The best of the Fatimite caliphs was El-Aziz (a.d.
975-996). He had a Christian wife, one of whose two
brothers was appointed by the caliph as Melchite patriarch
of Alexandria, and the other as Melchite patriarch of
Jerusalem. The Christians were never so well treated
under Mohammedan rule in Egypt as during this reign.1
Although the caliph had married a Melchite, this sect
was not selected for exclusive favour. The Coptic patri
arch Ephraim was highly honoured at court, and he
obtained leave to rebuild the ruined church of St. Mercurius.
The cahph encouraged Severus, the bishop of Ushmuneyu,
to discuss questions of theology with Mussulman scholars
in his presence. Severus is chiefly known to us by
his history, on which Eenaudot based much of his
narrative. Like all the literature of the time, it is
credulous and tedious. Severus was a voluminous writer,
composing an exposition of the faith, a treatise against
Eutychius, an explanation of the mystery of the
Incarnation, a commentary on the Gospels, and other
works. The liberal-minded Caliph El- Aziz even refused to
punish a Mohammedan who had turned Christian — a
capital offence according to the law of Islam. On the
other hand, he appointed Christian Copts to high offices
under his government. This course of action excited the
jealousy of the Mohammedans, who obtained the removal
of some of these officials. But in course of time the
caliph restored them to their posts. Meanwhile El-Aziz
was living in luxury and splendour; so that for this
brief interval the members of the much persecuted Coptic
1 See S. Lane Poole, Hist, of Egypt, p. 119.

600 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
Church were able to enjoy the good things of the world,
and to look back on the dark days of their fathers as a
horror of the past.
Too often when the sunshine of worldly prosperity
has shone on the Church, this has been almost fatal
to her spiritual life and character. This appears
to have been the case under the Fatimite complacent
rule. Thus the patriarch Philotheus is charged with
the sin of simony, of which we hear so much in the
annals of the Church in Egypt, but without the excuse
of his predecessors in the old hard times : for he is
said to have lived in luxury, and to have devoted himself
to the pleasures of the table and the bath like any effete
Oriental, ignoring the duties of his office and neglecting
his flock.
This time of unusual good fortune for the Church
in material affairs was followed by the very reverse, a
more terrible persecution than any from which it had
hitherto suffered under the yoke of Islam — the violent
outbreak of the mad Caliph Hakim, to which attention
was directed in an earlier part of this volume.1 Egypt
came in for her full share of suffering. Unhappily the
Church was in a deplorable condition at the time, owing
to quarrels among the clergy. One of these quarrels
brought about the interference of the government, and so
precipitated the persecution. John, a priest of Abunefer,
a village near the monastery of St. Macarius, who had
already paid for his ambition when he was seeking a
bishopric, by being thrown into a pit by an angry prelate,
had extracted a promise from the patriarch Zacharias
that he should receive appointment to another bishopric.
Furious at the non-fulfilment of this promise, he appealed
to El-Hakim. The caliph was only too glad to have an
excuse for attacking the head of the Church in Egypt.
He had Zacharias arrested, and, — as the story which the
Arab historian Makrizi accepted, runs, — thrown into a
den of hons, who were miraculously restrained from
1 P. 244.

THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE 601
hurting him.1 In the later years of Hakim, when his
fanaticism of self-deification was ripe, his persecution of
the Copts was very severe. All Christian services were
silenced, except in the remoter monasteries ; there was a
wholesale destruction of churches ; Christians were ordered
to wear heavy crosses and were subjected to various
humiliations. A little while before he was assassinated,
Hakim changed his policy towards the Christians,
and ordered the rebuilding of their churches, and
the removal of the worst of their restrictions. This is
attributed to the favourable impression he had received
when visiting Zacharias in prison, and observing the
deference that was shown to the little old man in shabby
clothes. Zacharias died about the year 1012. He was suc
ceeded by Chenouda, a monk of St. Macarius, whose simony
in the sale of bishoprics was worse than that of any of his
predecessors. The patriarch acted on the theory that on the
death of a bishop his personal property passed over to the
Church. Since Hakim's decree of toleration and restitution
the Copts had enjoyed rest from persecution by the govern
ment ; but now they were pillaged by their own patriarch,
who practised both extortion and bribery, disgracing the
free and peaceful times with corrupt Church government.
Some mitigation of the evil was accomplished by a noble
man named Bekr. This generous reformer worked for the
rehef of the bishops. To that end he promised to pay to
Alexandria the customary dues of the clergy2 — which
were made up out of the bishops' fines on appointment
— if the bishops in turn would undertake to give up their
exactions. The bishops demurred, and Chenouda after sign
ing tore up the document on which the terms of this offer
were set forth. A scene of confusion followed. In the end
Chenouda ordered Bekr to be arrested and publicly beaten.
This disgraceful patriarch dying in the year 1047 was
1 Neale magnanimously believes the story, although the miracle was for
the benefit of a heretic, Patriarchate of Alexandria, vol. ii. p. 204.
8 See p. 597.

602 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
succeeded by a reforming patriarch, Christobulus, who built
new churches, conducted ordinations of many bishops, laid
down and exacted rules of discipline, — mostly concerning
the rubric, — and travelled to and fro settling the affairs of
the Church. He much reduced the sale of offices, but
could not abohsh the scandalous practice. A fresh outbreak
of persecution took place in the time of Christobulus,
and orders went forth for the destruction of churches and
the seizure of their treasures. But these orders were only
partially executed. The Fatimite caliphs were now very
weak, and the government fell more and more into the
hands of their viziers. The situation was an Oriental
counterpart of that of France under the Merovingian
kings, when the affairs of the State were administered by
the mayors of the palace. There was a quarrel between
the Turks and the negro slaves, during which the rioters
behaved as genuine barbarians, ravaging the country,
scattering and destroying books and works of art. Many
of these treasures from palaces and monasteries fell into
the hands of the Berbers, who tore off the bindings of
books to make slippers out of them. In desperation the
caliph sent for the victorious General Bedr-el-Jamal and
made him dictator in order to restore order. This one
capable man of his time, though of course a Mussulman,
even settled a quarrel in the Church.

CHAPTER IV
THE TURKISH PERIOD AND MODERN EGYPT
(o) Abu Salih, Churches of Egypt (13th century) ; Makrizi, History
of the Copts (14th century) ; Shamse-en-din, Historic d'lUgypte
(16th century) ; Me'moires de M. de Maillet (17th century) ;
Renaudot, Historia Patriarcharum Alexandrinorum (18th
century).
(6) Lane, Modern Egyptians, 5th edit., 1871 ; De la Jonguiere,
Hist, de PEmpire Ottoman, 2nd edit., 1877; Butler, Coptic
Churches of Egypt, 1884 ; Sir W. Muir, The Mameluke or
Slave Dynasty of Egypt, 1896 ; Butcher, History of the Church
m Egypt, 1897 ; Kyriakos, Geschichte, vol. iii., Ger. trans.,
1898; Neale, Patriarchate of Alexandria; Lane Poole,
Egypt in the Middle Ages, 1901 ; Fortesque, The Orthodox
Eastern Church, 1907.
The rise of the Turkish power brought trouble to the
Copts in common with Eastern Christians of other races.
At first the Turks appeared as mercenaries of the Arabs,
serving under Arabian caliphs. But gradually their genius
for war carried them to the front, till at length Turkish
sultans usurped the authority of the caliphate. As early
as the eleventh century a band of rebel Turks robbed
the monasteries of the Thebaid and murdered many of
the monks. The power of the Fatimite dynasty was now
nearly extinct, and the Egyptian governors were appointed
by the soldiers without any reference to the caliph. When
the Seleucid Turks were supreme over the East, the ill-
treatment of the pilgrims at Jerusalem led to the interfer
ence of Western Europe, and so provoked the Crusades.
The result, while in many respects disappointing, brought
some relief to the Greek and Syrian Christians. The
608

604 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
progress of the Turks was arrested ; the doom of
Constantinople was postponed; Jerusalem was ruled by
a Christian king for nearly a century, and Syria by
Christian princes more or less for two hundred years. But
all this brought no advantage to the Copts. In regard to
the pilgrimages they were even worse off than before.
Hitherto, while they had to take their chance of rough
treatment equally with other Christians, the Copts
had also free access to the holy sites, since Islam was
scornfully indifferent to the rivalry of the Christian sects.
But when Jerusalem was in the hands of the Latins,
although the masters of the city were graciously willing to
admit a comparative orthodoxy in the creed of the Greek
Church, in common with that Church they treated the
Monophysite Copts as heretics, and forbade them access to
the Holy City. Thus " Jerusalem delivered " was barred
against the national Church of Egypt by the Christian
powers of Europe. The Copts had to wait for the recovery
of Palestine by the Saracens before they could renew their
pilgrimages to the tomb of Christ.
The Coptic patriarch at the time of the first Crusade
was Chail iv., who had signed a document promising to
abolish simony and renounce certain irksome claims of his
predecessors, as a condition of his appointment when a
monk in a convent near Sinjara. N/o sooner was he in
power than he repudiated his pledge, threatening excom
munication on any one who should bring it up against him.
He even procured a synod's sentence of excommunication
against Chenouda, the bishop of Misr, who had taken the
lead in the simony question. It cannot but strike us as
deplorable that, when the Crusades were beginning in a
passion of religious enthusiasm, and when the Christians of
the West were opening up long- closed communications
with the East, the Coptic Church in Egypt should be
represented by so unworthy a patriarch as this Chail.
The policy of the Crusaders revived for a time the
nickering flame of the Melchite patriarchate, which was
then held by Cyril, a prelate who was celebrated both as a

THE TURKISH PERIOD AND MODERN EGYPT 605
physician and as an author. This ecclesiastic hoped great
things from the victories of the Crusaders; but he was
grievously disappointed. Unlike the neighbouring province
of Syria, Egypt was never wrested from the Saracen power.
The Fatimite caliphs were no friends to the Turkish rule, and
when they heard of the approach of the first Crusade they
tried to make terms with the invaders from the West. But
the situation was complicated by the fact that in a period
of temporary weakness among the Turks, after the reign of
the three strong sultans who had established the Seleucid
dynasty, the Fatimites had recovered Jerusalem. When
they perceived that the Crusaders were enemies of all
Islam, and not only foes of the Turks, they were unable to
proceed with their negotiations. They, too, were put on the
defensive, and the faU of Jerusalem was a great blow to
them, while it brought no relief to their Christian subjects
in Egypt. At the same time Cyril was alarmed for his
ecclesiastical prestige, on learning that Baldwin had obtained
a papal bull granting all new conquests from the infidels
to the patriarchate of Jerusalem — now a schismatic Latin
patriarchate. Since Egypt was never conquered by the
Crusaders, however, this act of Eoman usurpation did not
really affect him. Meanwhile, although there were inva
sions of Egypt by the Crusaders, since they were not able
to conquer the country, the native Christians gained nothing
by them. The feeble Fatimite dynasty, which had recovered its
power temporarily at the end of the tenth century, declined
in the second half of the next century. Aded, the
last caliph of this hne, saw his dominions ravaged,
both by the Turks and by the Kurds under Shawer,
who burnt Babylon — with what consequences to the
Christians we do not know (ad. 1168), and overrun
more than once by Amaric, the Christian King of Jeru
salem. On the death of Aded in the year 1171, the
famous Saladin succeeded to the government of Egypt,
with the title of sultan, which he held under the caliph
of Bagdad, and no Fatimite caliph was appointed. But

606 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
a shadowy caliphate of the Abbasidae line was now restored
for the sake of appearances.
About this time the Coptic Church was disturbed by a
controversy concerning the confessional, a glance at which
throws some light on its customs and life, and so affords
a relief from the dreary succession of quarrels concern
ing episcopal appointments and fines and exactions that
occupies too much of the history. There had grown up
a strange custom of confessing to a censer. The censer that
used to be swung in connection with the pronunciation of
absolution had been taken by itself and placed in the corner
of a room, for the penitent to make his confession before it in
private without the aid of any priest. There are two ways
of regarding this curious practice. It may be looked upon
as a protest against the confessional, an effort to get free of
the priestly interference with the liberty of the laity of
which that institution is the most powerful instrument.
Here was an expedient by means of which the penitent
could dispense with the priest. Considered in this way
the irregularity was indicative of a revolt against sacer
dotalism, an anticipation of the great Protestant idea that
Luther expounds in his tractate on Christian Liberty —
" the priesthood of all Christians." But, in view of the
stagnation and superstition of the times in the' Eastern
Churches, we cannot press this point. The presence of the
censer is too suspiciously indicative of a magical element
in religion, as though this material object with its ascending
smoke were credited with performing the high office of
priestly intercession. One grave reason offered for the
practice was the notoriously bad character of many of the
priests. Meanwhile there was this basis for the supersti
tion of the censer, that in the regular services the incense
burnt at the commencement of the liturgy was supposed to
be in some mysterious way connected with the remission of
sins of the congregation through their private confession.
The practice was opposed by Mark the son of Kunbar, a
priest who preached earnestly against it. His opponents
got him excommunicated on a charge of having dismissed

THE TURKISH PERIOD AND MODERN EGYPT 607
his wife and induced some one else to marry her. Still
he preached, however, insisting on the necessity of con
fessing to a priest in order to obtain absolution. The people
flocked to him in crowds, both to hear his sermons and to
confess to him. The matter became so serious that a synod,
said to have consisted of sixty bishops, met and pronounced
against him. He was deposed, and then he appealed to
the Moslem power, with a memorial stating that he had
preached nothing contrary to canonical authority or the
teaching of the Fathers, and demanding a fair trial accord
ing to the rules of the Church. Such a reference to the
government is most significant, since it shows that in spite
of so much that was oppressive, the Christians recognised
in it the centre of law and order. The sequel confirms
the reasonableness of this view. The civil authorities
commanded the patriarch to institute a trial; but he
refused, for the authorities of the Church as represented
by the episcopate were on his side. Michael of Damietta
took the lead in supporting the novel custom, writing a
short treatise on it which is still in existence. The next
stage was an appeal to Michael I., the Jacobite patriarch of
Antioch, who wavered in his treatment of the question.
At first he inclined to the view of the bishops, and was
induced to regard Mark as a heretic ; but on learning
more about the case he swung round to the opposite view,
and supported the practice of confession to the priest.
Both this patriarch and the learned writer Bar Salibi
wrote on the necessity of that practice. Mark, however,
found httle comfort in his own Church, since the bishops
were still opposed to him. He joined the Greek Church,
returned to the Coptic, went over to the Greek communion
again, and yet again sought to be readmitted to his own
old Church. It is not surprising that the Coptic patriarch
refused to have any more to do with him.
It is curious to find Neale championing Mark as
"the Enghsh Chillingworth." The outstanding feature
of the whole story is the fact that the bishops were
supporting the novel practice, which, however materialistic

608 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
and superstitious we may hold it to be, was nevertheless
partially Protestant in its opposition to sacerdotalism,
while on this occasion the protestor stood for the rights
and powers of the priests. Such a situation is unique in
history. It is tantalising to know too little of the motives
of the chief actors in it for adequate judgment of its true
inwardness. When bishops champion the rights of the
laity against the priestly claims of presbyters, the inference
is that since some of them are men of culture and reading,
while the lower clergy are steeped in ignorance, the reason
is disciplinary rather than doctrinal. The ignorant priests
were not fit to be trusted with the machinery of the
confessional. Some of them were men of no character.
Discerning bishops might well discourage confession to
such men, because they saw that it was safer for simple
souls to confess to the smoking censer, which, if it could
not give ghostly advice, was at least free from any
corrupting influence.
In the earlier part of his reign Saladin removed
the Christians from public offices and laid upon them
many vexatious restrictions, such as the prohibition of
bell-ringing, crosses on churches, procession on Palm
Sundays, chanting of services in a loud voice. He
directed the churches to be painted black. Nevertheless,
he was a large-minded, strong ruler, who secured good
order in his dominions. If the Christians were shut out of
office they were also spared the fines that his mean prede
cessors had too often attached to public functions, so that
it really seemed that the posts were allotted for the sake
of the backshish. In his later days Saladin readmitted
Christians to the government service. It is not surprising
that under these circumstances there were some Christians
who apostasised to Mohammedanism, favour drawing them
where persecution had failed to drive. But when a certain
monk who had joined Islam returned to his monastery, a
soldier was sent with orders to put him to death unless he
came back to the religion of the Prophet. This was quite
in accordance with Mussulman law. A Christian might

THE TURKISH PERIOD AND MODERN EGYPT 609
remain a Christian, but when once he had become a
Mohammedan he came under the stern rule of Islam.
which exacts the death penalty on all who forsake the
creed of the Prophet. The miserable waverer not only
yielded to the threat of death, but he even lodged with
the government information of treasure which he said the
monastery that had given him an asylum contained. Very
httle was found there, and that httle was returned when
the whole story was known.
The later Crusades had hardly any more effect on the
Church in Egypt than had been the case with the
earlier expeditions from Europe for the recovery of the
Holy Land. The siege of Damietta (a.d. 1218) and the
ill-fated expedition of St. Louis (a.d. 1248-1250) were
wholly affairs of the Latin Church with which the Copts
had no concern. Had these wars been successful in the
end, they would have been free from the yoke of Islam
only to face the demand of submission to Eome. Mean
while the Saracen rule of Egypt was more just and
enhghtened than any form of government that the Copts
had ever known before. There was therefore little tempta
tion for them to give much material aid to the Crusaders.
Unhappily their own internal history at this time does
not furnish us with an edifying record. Quarrels on the
election of patriarchs, and charges of simony against
patriarchs when in power, are the chief items that break
the monotony of the narrative. The Sultan Kamel
refused an offer of heavy bribes to favour the election of
a candidate for the patriarchate. He was so pleased with
a visit he paid to the monastery of St. Macarius that he
richly endowed it and granted its monks several privileges.
On the other hand, the patriarch Cyril, who was appointed
during his reign and very affably received by the sultan,
turned out to be a cause of great trouble in the Church.
He was guilty of outrageous simony — the typical offence
of the Eygptian patriarchs of which we hear again and
again in successive ages. There had been a gap in the
patriarchate which had resulted in many vacancies in the
39

610 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
bishoprics. Cyril ordained forty bishops, and accumulated
a very considerable sum of money by means of the large
fees he exacted from them. At length he was arrested on
charges of malversation of funds and sent to Cairo. The
bishops now proposed terms to him. He should give up
the practice of simony, and have his authority limited in
several directions ; but he was liberated by favour of the
sultan without agreeing to these terms. Subsequently, since
fresh complaints were brought forward, fourteen bishops of
Lower Egypt met at Cairo and induced him to consent to
a number of reforms, among which was the requirement
that the consecration of bishops and priests should be
performed free of charge. But the quarrel went on.
Cyril was repeatedly accused to the sultan and repeatedly
fined. Yet so great was the influence of his office that he
was able to raise all the funds requisite to satisfy the
government. He held the control of the mighty engine of
ordination. If he refused to ordain bishops the episcopate
would die out, and with it the priesthood, and with
that the Church itself.. The sacerdotal system derived
all its authority primarily from the patriarch. When
religion depends on the sacraments, the sacraments on the
priests, the priests on the bishops, and the bishops on the
patriarch — without whose concurrence their ordination is
uncanonical, this supreme prelate holds the key of the situa
tion. He can exact his own terms before consenting to
ordain. Thus he can obtain sufficient money to bribe the
civil authority when that authority, the only power above
him, is invoked to interfere with his tyrannical practices. In
this way Cyril was able to continue his disgraceful practices
till his death reheved the Copts of the incubus of his
patriarchal rule (a.d. 1243).
The subsequent story of the Coptic Church becomes
less and less interesting, except at one or two points, where
its monotony is broken by the emergence of a striking per
sonality or by the occurrence of events in the outer world.
The original sources for the history are here very meagre,
so that we have not materials from which to come

THE TURKISH PERIOD AND MODERN EGYPT 611
to an adequate knowledge of the succession of events.
But what is preserved is enough to show that we do not
lose much for lack of fuller information. We are now
approaching the age of the Mamelukes. These were at
first barbarous slaves who pushed to the front and seized
the power of government. Their rule began in the
year 1260, and it came as an improvement on the
government of the degenerate sultans and cahphs. They
elevated two successive nominal caliphs of the Abbasidae
line, who were mere shadows. After the year 1382
a Circassian dynasty of Mamelukes ruled, without that
pretence of respect for antiquarianism. The Mamelukes
have been described as "jealous, cruel, suspicious, avari
cious."1 But they lightened taxes and executed some
pubhc works. These rulers of an alien race held them
selves aloof both from the Arabs and from the Copts.
They remained in power till the year 1517. It was
really an oligarchical government with nominal boy sultans,
carried on in the midst of plots and assassinations. Mean
while great events were being transacted in Eastern Europe.
But the establishment of the Ottoman rule and the fall of
Constantinople had no appreciable effect on the fortunes of
the Copts. They had been long under the yoke of Islam,
and the change of masters from one dynasty to another,
and even from race to race, made little difference to their
subject condition. Just and merciful governors left them
at peace with their guaranteed rights ; vicious and ini
quitous rulers preyed upon them and persecuted them.
The variations of treatment depended more on the personnel
of the authorities than on the name and source of the
government. Within the Church itself the movement of the times
brought two successive influences from without to bear on
it. These were the Uniat propaganda associated with the
council of Florence and the Protestant ideas that Cyril
Lucar introduced after his travels in the West.
The Coptic Church had but- little active concern with
1 Sir W. Muir, The Mamelukes, etc., p. 66.

612 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the efforts of men in the East to come to terms with the
Western Church. The origin and motives of these efforts
were not religious or even ecclesiastical ; they were purely
political. John Palaeologus and other emperors saw the
desperate need of a European alliance if the onward march
of the Turks was to be stayed and the last remnants of the
Byzantine Empire preserved. What interest had that
policy for the Copts, already subject to Islam and not of
the Greek communion ? Nevertheless the Coptic patriarch,
John xi., sent John the abbot of St. Antony as a delegate
to Florence. He did not arrive till after the Greeks had
left. This will account for the fact that the council
decreed union with the Coptic Church. But it had
previously effected a nominal union with the Greek
Church. And yet these two Churches mutually anathemat
ised one another. The consequences would have been
interesting if there had been any reality in the acts of
union. But since, in point of fact, they were never
accepted by either of the Eastern Churches, they can
only be regarded as pious pronouncements in the region
of idea. Metrophanes, the metropolitan of Cyzicum,
whom the emperor made patriarch of Constantinople
on account of his staunch support of the union of the
Greeks and Latins, was denounced by the three other Greek
patriarchs as a "matricide" — for kilhng his "mother
Church." The union with the Jacobites was no more
real, and the Copts still remained in separation from the
Latin as well as from the Greek Churches.
The story of Cyril Lucar belongs to the Greek
Church, and therefore it has been given earlier in this
volume.1 We are accustomed to think of him as the
patriarch of Alexandria before he was translated to the
patriarchate of Constantinople. But he was the Melchite
patriarch, the representative of the alien Greek communion
with its few adherents in Alexandria and its neighbour
hood. Still it is a fact of significance in regard to
Christianity in Egypt, that although not a member of the
1 See pp. 309 ff.

THE TURKISH PERIOD AND MODERN EGYPT 61:3
national Church, Cyril introduced the new learning into
that country. He appeared as a vigorous opponent of
Eome, and many who had no notion of what Protestantism
was saying and doing in the West were ready to welcome
a man who shared the general aversion to union with the
papacy that was felt by the Greek Church in Egypt.
There can be no doubt, however, that he was strongly
imbued with Protestantism. A modern Eoman Catholic
historian says of him, "He was a Protestant who
formed a party of Calvinists in his Church, and his
opinions were afterwards condemned by four councils." 1
Cyril influenced a group of men in Alexandria of his own
Church in the direction of Protestantism. But the time
was peculiarly unpropitious for the spread of similar
influences among the Copts, because they were still in a
measure compromised by the nominal union with Eome
that had been pronounced at Florence.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century the national
Church in Egypt was in a feeble condition, at the very
ebb of its fortunes; and the Melchite Church was even
lower, being reduced to little else than a nominal patri
archate. Then came Peter vn., a good man who was
anxious to improve matters. In the year 1833, Curzon
visited Egypt in search of manuscripts that he hoped to
find among the monasteries. He was followed by Arch
deacon Tattam, who roused some interest in England by
his accounts of the ignorant and depressed condition of
the Coptic Christians, the first consequence of which Was
an issue of an Arabic version of the four Gospels by the
British and Foreign Bible Society. In the year 1840 the
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge produced an
Arabic translation of old Egyptian commentaries. About
the same time Grimshaw, an English clergyman, went to
Egypt and helped to start a school that was conduced by
a Mr. Lieder for the training of priests. This schqji met
with httle encouragement. Peter died in the year 1854,
and was succeeded by Cyril, at first an active reformer of
1 Fortescue, The Orthodox Eastern Church, p. 264.

614 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the Coptic Church. This enlightened patriarch established
schools for girls as well as for boys, rebuilt the cathedral,
destroyed pictures as idols, gathered a new council to
help him, and established a college at Cairo in charge
of Philotheus, an able, learned man. Unfortunately the
patriarch would not give the principal a free hand, and,
being dissatisfied with his teaching, broke the college up.
In the year 1890 a society of young laymen was
constituted for reforming the Coptic Church, and it issued
pamphlets in Arabic. Then Cyril got up a rival society
called " the Orthodox." A public meeting was called to
meet Cyril, which so alarmed the patriarch that he put
himself under the protection of the police. His next step
was to call a synod, at which he gave the bishops a state
ment requiring them to sign it and read it in their
churches. He would reform the Church ; but this must
be in his own way. Of course there was great dissatisfac
tion at such high-handed proceedings, and the Khedive
Tewfic intervened. But Cyril would not listen to persuasion.
A new council was elected, in which Athanasius of Sanabu,
a bishop of the young reform party, was a member. Cyril
excommunicated him. Such conduct was unbearable, and
the reformers got Cyril banished to Nitria. Meanwhile
every effort was made to induce him to withdraw the
excommunication of Athanasius, but in vain. At last
Athanasius and his supporters simply ignored it. Then
came a reaction from the older people ; Cyril was recalled,
and his return was a triumph, although he had proved
himself an obstinate, tyrannical prelate. Still there was
progress in spite of these difficulties. The stagnation of
the Coptic Church has been largely due to the ignorance
of the priests. There is now some progress towards an
education of candidates for the ministry, and therefore
hope ^better times to come. The Copts look to England
for syipathy, and rejoice in the English rule of Egypt.
They know that if England had not stepped in to suppress
the rebelhon of Arabi Pasha they would have been massacred
wholesale.

CHAPTER V
ABYSSINIAN CHRISTIANITY
(a) Rufinus; Socrates; Sozomen; Theodoret; Nicephorus; Zonaras;
Cedrenus ; John of Ephesus ; Arabian authorities ; Alvarez
(trans, by Lord Stanley of Alderley) ; Tellez, Historia
de Ethiopia, 1660 ; Ludolphus, History of Ethiopia, 1684 ;
Geddes, Church History of Ethiopia, 1696 ; Le Quien, Oriens.
Christ, ii., 1741 ; Bruce, Travels, 1768-73.
(6) Reynolds in Smith's Diet, of Christian Biography, art. " Ethiopian
Church " ; "Wright, Christianity in Arabia, 1855 ; Hotten,
Abyssinia Described, 1868 ; Portal, My Mission to Abyssinia,
1892; Duchesne, Les Missions Chre'tiens au sud de I'empire
Romain, 1896 ; Lauribar, Douee ans en Abysinnie, 1898.
Abyssinian Christianity is a Judaistic, Monophysite form
of rehgion which has been corrupted in the course of ages
during its long severance from the influences of the rest
of Christendom. It is naturally most nearly associated
with the Coptic Church, because it derived its origin from
Egypt, agreed with the Copts in following Dioscurus in his
opposition to the decrees of Chalcedon, formerly owned
allegiance to the patriarch of Alexandria, and for a long
while kept in touch with the Christians of Egypt. Between
Abyssinia, known as Ethiopia in early times, and Egypt was
Nubia, for long an independent Christian nation. When
that country was conquered by the Arabs and its Chris
tianity simply wiped out, Abyssinia was cut off from all
direct relations with Egypt. There was still the Eed Sea
route, the route by which the gospel reached Abyssinia
in the first instance. But when Egypt was subject to the
Mussulman rule the Copts had neither the heart nor the
power to use it in order to keep in touch with a remote
615

616 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
nation in the south with which they were no longer
directly connected.
Like the name " India," the word " Ethiopia " is used
in the vaguest way by ancient writers. There can be no
doubt that these two names sometimes overlap. The land
on both sides of the Eed Sea to the south was known as
Ethiopia. The Queen of Sheba may have come either
from Asia or from Africa. But the Ethiopia of which we
know in Christian times was undoubtedly in Africa. The
extent of land to which the name is given is never defined,
but we may understand it as roughly corresponding to
our modern Abyssinia, a country the limits of which
are not determined in the present day. Abyssinia is a
form of the name given by the Arabs (Habe'sh, meaning
" mixture," " confusion," because of the mixed character of
the peoples inhabiting it) ; but the Abyssinians still call
themselves " Ethiopians " (Itiopyavan) and their country
"Ethiopia" (Ltiopia). The Jewish character of some of
the customs of the Abyssinians has given rise to the con
jecture that these people were influenced by the Jews
before they became Christian ; but the fact that some of
those customs, such as circumcision, distinctions of clean
and unclean food, and the levirate marriage, are much more
widespread, being found more or less in Arabia and in
other parts of Africa, tends to destroy the grounds of this
hypothesis. Dr. Eeynolds suggested that the observance of
the seventh-day Sabbath in Abyssinia may be traced to
Judaic influences in ancient Christianity.1 Still, the number
of coincidences creates a cumulative argument in favour of
the spread of early Jewish ideas. There can be no doubt
that the diaspora was immensely influential for two or
three centuries. Its missionary activity has been unfairly
disregarded because thrown into the shade by the greater
activity of the Christian evangelism that both absorbed
and superseded it. The story of the Ethiopian eunuch in
Acts points to the early introduction of Christianity into
Africa. But the name " Candace " which is there given to
1 Smith, Die. Christ. Biog. vol. ii. p. 234*.

ABYSSINIAN CHRISTIANITY 617
the queen is not found in Ethiopia proper. It is known to
have been the title of a succession of queens at Meroe on
the Upper Nile (half-way between Berber and Kartoum) ;
so that the Ethiopian eunuch would be a Nubian from
the Soudan. Christianity could reach Ethiopia more
easily from the coast ; and that it did so in early times is
implied by a remark of Origen : " We are not told that the
gospel has been preached among all the Ethiopians." x
We come to the fourth century for the effective intro
duction of Christianity into Ethiopia. Seeing that Eufinus,
who is our earhest authority, tells us that he obtained his
information direct from one of the two young men whose
story he gives, we may consider that we have here come
upon an unusually good historical source.2 The story is
repeated with some variations by the Greek historians.3
It is as follows : Meropius, a philosopher from Tyre, took
two young relations — perhaps sons — named Frumentius
and iEdesius on a voyage of exploration in the direction of
" India." On the way they put into a port by the African
side of the Eed Sea for water. The people of these parts
had recently revolted from Eome, and they murdered
Meropius and the whole of the ship's crew, but spared
the two young men, touched with pity for them when they
discovered them apart from their companions quietly seated
reading under a tree. They sent them to their king, who
made ^Edesius his cupbearer and Frumentius the keeper of
his rolls. On the death of the king the young men were
set at liberty ; but at the request of the queen, who was now
regent, they consented to remain and help in the administra
tion of the government during the minority of her son.
Frumentius, who was the abler and more energetic of the
two, now sought out the Christians among the Eoman
merchants in the country, and gave them authority and
advice for building churches. As yet this was only a
movement among the foreign residents. But here was
1 Origen, Comment, on Matfe xxiv. 9.
» Rufinus, Hist. Eccl. i. 9.
* Socrates, i. 19 ; Sozomen ii. 24 ; Theodoret, i. 28.

618 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
the seed of the great missionary work that was destined
to make the name of Frumentius famous in Christian
history. In spite of the queen's entreaties, the two
brothers left the country when the young prince was
old enough to undertake the responsibilities of government.
They must both have been of an earnest religious character,
for iEdesius became a presbyter at Tyre, where Eufinus
received the story from his own lips, while Frumentius
went to Alexandria in order to urge its bishop, who was
no other than the great Athanasius, to appoint a bishop
for undertaking missionary work in Ethiopia. Athanasius
brought the matter before a synod, and there addressing
Frumentius, said, " What- other man shall we find such as
thou art, in whom is the spirit of God, as He is in thee,
who will be able to discharge these duties ? " Accordingly
Frumentius was ordained bishop of Auxume in Ethiopia.
He was called Abba Salama (" Father of Peace "), a title
borne by his successors down to the present day. This
story is confirmed and added to by the literature of the
Ethiopian Church — its annals, hturgy, and poetry.
Subsequently Constantius wrote to the King of Ethiopia
urging him to replace Frumentius by Theophilus; an Arian,
who was under George, the Arian bishop imposed on the
Church of Alexandria; but his letter does not appear to
have had any effect, and Arianism did not penetrate into
the Ethiopian Church. After this we know httle of the
history of that Church for a long time. But a number of
saints are celebrated in Ethiopian poetry, among whom is
Aragawi,- who is confused with the archangel Michael, the
patrdn of the Church and the kingdom, to whom the twelfth
day in every month is consecrated.
There is another story of the conversion of Ethiopia,
told by Nicephorus, corresponding to which is the account
in John of Ephesus. According to this story, the Emperor
of Ethiopia vowed that if he conquered the Homerites of
the Eed Sea coast he would embrace Christianity, and that
having obtained the victory he appealed to Justinian for
help in carrying out his vow, when the Eoman emperor

ABYSSINIAN CHRISTIANITY 619
responded by sending him bishops. The Monophysite
character of Ethiopian Christianity is enough to contra
dict this story, and there are other improbabilities con
nected with it. We must always associate Abyssinian
Christianity with the Coptic, not with the Byzantine type
About this time there was a persecution of Christians in
South Arabia under Dunaan, a Jewish usurper, and among
the martyrs was Aretas, who had come from Auzume as
governor of the province. He and his wife and a
number of other Christians were cruelly martyred in a
pit of fire.
Monasticism was introduced into Ethiopia in the fifth
century, and it has remained as one of the institutions
of Abyssinian Christianity down to the present day. There
is a large number of monks and nuns in the country,
as well as married priests after the manner of the Oriental
Churches generally. The Ethiopic canon of Scriptures
is of curious interest. It contains several books not in
cluded in the canons of the Eastern and Western Catholic
Churches. The Old Testament has all the Septuagint
books except Maccabees, together with the Books of Enoch,
Jubilees, iv. Ezra, and other apocryphal writings, and the
New Testament books are reckoned at thirty-five — eight
books of the Canon Law (called Sinodos) being added to
the usual twenty-seven.
After the sixth century Abyssinia was almost entirely
lost to view for nearly a thousand years — a section of
Christendom cut off from the main body of the Church by
the intruding Mohammedan power. For a long time, how
ever, it contrived to get its metropolitan from Egypt,
and so acknowledged its ecclesiastical relationship to the
Coptic patriarchate of Alexandria. The canon required
twelve bishops for the consecration of a metropolitan ;
but there were only seven in Abyssinia. In the twelfth
century the king requested that more might be appointed,
and the Mohammedan government approved of the request ;
but the patriarch Gabriel refused it — an impolitic action
which resulted in Abyssinia taking things into its own

620 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
hands and electing its own metropolitan. After that,
although the patriarchate of Alexandria might be'
nominally allowed to extend to Abyssinia, the Abyssinians
really had an independent Church.
In the meantime we witness the sad spectacle of the
utter vanishing of Christianity from Nubia, where once it
had been strong and flourishing. For many years this
region of the Soudan had existed as a Christian kingdom,
which refused to admit the Arab suzerainty. Ahmed, the son
of Solaim, who went to Nubia as an ambassador from the
Moslem ruler, tells how he " passed through nearly thirty
towns with fine houses, monasteries, numberless palm
groves, vineyards, gardens and wide-spreading fields,
besides herds of camels of great beauty and breeding"1
Kartoum was then adorned with magnificent buildings
and great houses. Its churches were enriched with
gold, and the whole city was beautified with gardens.8
The King of Nubia used to invite the bishops to join his
wise men in discussing with him the affairs of the
kingdom ; in fact, he had a sort of House of Lords,
consisting of peers temporal and spiritual. Ahmed him
self was courteously received by King George, who, he
says, took the Moslems with him in a procession on a
festival day. But in course of time this happy relation
ship, which could only exist so long as the Egyptian
government was not strong enough to break it up, came
to an end. The King of Nubia had always declined to admit
the suzerainty of the sultan. He persistently refused the
tribute of slaves which the Mohammedan power demanded
from him. When that power was sufficiently established,
it punished the independence of Nubia by completely over
running and conquering the country and effectually stamp
ing out Christianity. The result is seen to-day in the
barbarous Mohammedanism of the tribes of the Soudan,
whose ancestors had constituted a highly civihsed Christian
kingdom. Quatremere in Butcher, Hist, of Church in Egypt, voL ii. p. 3.
* Ibid. p. 4.

ABYSSINIAN CHRISTIANITY 621
The destruction of the Christian kingdom of Nubia
was the chief cause of the isolation of Abyssinia for many
centuries. That country only comes to light again in the
sixteenth century, owing to the enterprising spirit of
the Portuguese. It would have been infinitely better for
the unhappy land if it had been left to its isolation and
obscurity. The Portuguese brought in their train bigoted
emissaries of the Church of Eome, who, in accordance with
the custom of the times, resorted to violence and cruelty in
attempting to force a nation that they regarded as heretical
into the papal mould. But the first interchange of com
munications was civil and friendly. Prince Henry of
Portugal, having heard semi-fabulous tales of Prester John
in a mysterious " India," sent two ambassadors, Pedro de
Corvilhaa and Alphonso de Payva, to the Christian sovereign
of Abyssinia. Alphonso died; but Pedro was adopted
by the Abyssinian nation, highly honoured by the king,
and married into a high Abyssinian family. Still he kept
up communications with Portugal. Early in the sixteenth
century the Queen Helena, who was then regent for her
son, a child of eleven years, sent Matthew, an Armenian
merchant of abihty and trustworthiness, on an embassy to
the King of Portugal, asking him to enter into an alliance
with her in order to resist the Turks, and proposing an
intermarriage between the two royal families. Matthew
went first to Goa in India and thence round by the Cape
to Portugal, encountering many difficulties and discourage
ments on his journey. There he gained his end so far as
to secure a Portuguese embassy to return with him to
Abyssinia. The chaplain of this embassy was Alvarez,
who has left us a graphic account of his own experiences
and observations concerning the country and people to which
he was sent. His narrative is held by some critics not
to be entirely reliable ; but, after making allowance for
inaccuracies, we still have here a mass of information
about Abyssinia, including what is especially valuable
for our present purposes, light on the practices of the
Church. Thus at length the curtain is raised, and again

622 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
after centuries of obscurity we are able to contemplate
Abyssinian Christianity.1
Alvarez bears witness to the lingering of Jewish
customs among the Abyssinians. Thus he says that the
monks rest for eight days after Easter — a custom which
we may regard as parallel to the passover holiday ; they
partially observe the Saturday Sabbath, and they con
tinued to practise circumcision ; but the latter custom, we
have seen, was too widespread to be attributed to the
influence of Judaism. The travellers saw a great number
of monasteries and churches. Like the temple of Osiris
at Abu-Simbel, some of the churches are entirely hewn out
of the rock. One of these is as large as a cathedral, with
well-wrought nave and aisles, vaulted-shaped roof, and
square columns — all cut out of the solid rock. The
monastery of Bisa has six other monasteries, each with a
David at its head under the presiding Abba, and is very
rich. It is said to number 3,000 monks, but Alvarez only
saw 300. The monasteries are generally set on rocks and
hilltops surrounded by woods. The churches all appear
to be vaulted ; but they have straw roofs. There is only
one altar in each church, in the chancel. Bells, or rather
long, thin stone clappers, are in use. The services are
conducted with chanting to no particular tune. There
are prayers and psalms and one lesson, all shouted rather
than intoned or merely read. The mass begins with a
shout of Hallelujah, and concludes with a procession
of four or five crosses, to an accompaniment of drums,
cymbals, and incense, carried round the church quite
thirty times. While the mass is proceeding, lighted
candles are held up by those round the officiating priest.
The shouting and singing are taken up by the people outside
the church as well as by the congregation within. The
communion is received by the laity as well as by the
clergy in both kinds, the communicants after receiv-
1 See Narrative of Portuguese Embassy to Abyssinia during the Years
1520-1527, by Father Francisco Alvarez (trans, by Lord Stanley of Alderley,
Hakluyt Society).

ABYSSINIAN CHRISTIANITY 623
ing the cup washing out their mouths with holy
water and drinking it. Bread is blessed and dis
tributed at all the monasteries and churches on the Satur
day Sabbaths, on Sundays, and on feast days. The
monks carry crosses before them when they walk abroad,
and laymen have crosses on their backs. Alvarez says of
the monks, " being thin and dry like wood, they appear to
be men of a holy life. . . . The clothes which they wear
are old yellow cotton stuffs, and they go barefooted."1
The practice of polygamy, though not frequent, and though
condemned by the Church to the extent of exclusion
from the communion, was not otherwise prohibited. At
one place, Barua, Alvarez found men with two and even
with three wives. Here were two churches, that of
St. Michael for men, and that of St. Peter and St. Paul
for women. The same priests ministered to both churches.
As in the East generally, the priests were not celibate, but
if a priest lost his wife he might not marry a second time.
The priesthood was mainly recruited from the families of
the priests, who thus became virtually a caste. There
were no schools or masters to prepare the candidates for
orders, and the clergy taught the little that they knew
themselves to their sons.2
At this time the Abyssinians were engaged in wars
with the Turks, who invaded their country slaughtering
many people, and destroying churches and monasteries.
Ultimately the Portuguese came to the assistance of their
fellow-Christians ; but it was long before the Turkish
intrusion was effectually repelled. Then troubles broke
out between the two Churches that were now represented
in the country. King David prevailed on the catholicos
of Abyssinia, Abuna Mark, who had become too old and infirm
to administer the affairs of the Church, to consecrate a
Portuguese, Joao Bermudez, in his place. In this way the
Eoman Catholicism, to which the king was favourable, was
represented in the head of Abyssinian Christianity. But
this did not result in the surrender of the national Church
1 Ibid. p. 16. s Ibid. p. 57.

624 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
to the papacy. The pope made an attempt to secure that
result through the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria. But
this too failed. In the year 1600, an able Jesuit, Pedro
Piaz, came as a Eoman missionary to Abyssinia. A few
years later the King Socinios embraced the Catholic faith
of the Two Natures after a public disputation on the
subject in his presence. This was the first step towards
submission to Eome. On the other hand, the Abuna Simon
published a sentence of excommunication against all who
affirmed that there were two natures in our Lord Jesus
Christ. Thus the old Monophysite quarrel that had
slumbered for centuries was rekindled in Abyssinia with
regard to the ecclesiastical question of the supremacy of
the pope. This led to civil war, in which the Abuna was
killed — it is said screaming curses against his sovereign.
The king issued a manifesto denouncing both the heretical
tenets and the corrupt morals of his national Church.
When the news of his submission to Eome reached Lisbon,
Alphonso Menez was there consecrated patriarch of
Ethiopia. He was welcomed by Socinios in February
1626. The long then issued a proclamation commanding
submission to the Eoman Catholic faith on pain of death.
Churches were reconsecrated, clergy re-ordained, converts
re-baptised, and the abohtion of circumcision and polygamy
commanded. Again there was rebellion, followed by dis
order and bloodshed. But when resigning his throne to
his son, Socinios issued a proclamation tolerating both the
ancient and the new faiths.1
The most complete English account of the history of
Abyssinia is to be found in Bruce's five fine quarto volumes
on his travels in search of the sources of the Nile. From his
own observation he is able to give us a detailed description of
the country in the eighteenth century. " There is no country
in the world," he says, " where there are so many churches
as Abyssinia " ; 2 and he adds that every great man who
dies thinks to atone for his misdeeds by building a church.
1 See Bruce, Travels, vol. ii. pp. 265 ff.
* Ibid. vol. iii. p. 318.

ABYSSINIAN CHRISTIANITY 625
The king builds many. The churches are near running
water for the sake of rites of purification, and they are
planted round with trees, so that " there is nothing adds
so much to the beauty of the country as these churches
and the plantations about them."1 They have thatched
roofs, and they are surrounded by colonnades, the pillars con
sisting of trunks of cedar trees. In form they are round.
and in the circular interior is a railed-off square, within
which is a " holy of holies," only entered by the priests.
The monks, according to Bruce, do not live in convents,
but they occupy separate houses grouped round the
churches. Bruce gives us little information as to the
internal hfe of the Church in Abyssinia ; but he mentions
a priest who told him he never believed that the elements
in the Eucharist were converted by consecration into the
real body and blood of Christ. This priest thought that to
be the Eoman Cathohc faith in contradistinction to the tenets
of his own Church.2 In the Abyssinian Church, pictures,
but not statues, are used as in other Eastern Churches.
Many saints are venerated, and in some cases worshipped
with extravagant adoration.
In more recent years the country has been distracted
by tribal wars and the contentions of rival claimants to
the supreme power claimed by the Nigus Negasti (king of
kings), but only exercised by the stronger and more
masterful of these suzerain lords. In the year 1829,
missionaries went out from the Enghsh Church Missionary
Society and were well received. Other missionaries followed,
but, owing to the opposition of the priests, they were all
obliged to leave the country in less than ten years.
Still, the prospect is not unhopeful. English and Ameri
can missionary and educational work is spreading over
Egypt and extending up the Valley of the Nile through
Nubia. In course of time this may be expected to penetrate
the Soudan till it joins hands with other missionary efforts
in the interior of Africa. Then Abyssinia will be in closer
touch with the modern movement, which is part of a
1 Bruce, Travels, vol. iii. p. 314. 2 Ibid. p. 339.
40

626 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
general endeavour to extend spiritual and intelligent
Christianity. If this continues and is enlarged and
becomes fruitful, we may yet hope to see the peoples
of the ancient seats of Christianity reawakened and
perhaps even enjoying some return of the vitality of their
famous past

INDEX

Abba Salama, 618.
Abda, 344.
Abgar, 295, 462 ff.
Abraham, Mar, 489.
Abu Bekr, 164 ff.
Abyssinia, 296, 615 ff.
Acacians, 70.
Acephali, 113, 567.
Acameti, 213.
Adamantius Korais, 331.
Addai, Doctrine of, 461.
Adoptionism, 218.
jEdesius, 617.
Agallianos, 195.
Aggai, 463.
Albigenses, 228.
Alexander of Alexandria, 42 ff.
Alexander I., Tsar, 436.
„ II., Tsar, 438 ff.
Alexandria, 58 ff., 87, 577 ff.
Alexis, 413 ff.
Alexins, 247.
Alexius Angelus, 253.
Alvarez, 621.
Amphilochius, 280.
Amphilochius of Side, 107.
Anchoritism, 148.
Anna Comnenus, 281.
Anne of Russia, 434.
Anomoeans, 70.
Anthony, St., 154.
Anthropomorphists, 90.
Antichrist, 444.
Antioch, 14, 89.
Aphraates, Homilies, 470, 482.
Apollinarians, 79, 82, 110, 127.
Apostles, traditional spheres,
note 2.
Apostolical constitutions, 53,149,
Arabia, 166 ff.
Arcadius, 88.
Architecture, Byzantine, 175 ff.
„ Saracenic, 587.

16,
179.

Ariadne, 110.
Arianism, 41 ff., 58 ff., 68, 307, 561.
Armenia, 217, 296.
Armenian Church, 297, 540 ff.
„ Massacres, 551.
„ Versions, 542 f.
Arsenius, 261, 324.
Art, Byzantine, 174 ff.
„ Gothic, 177 ff.
Artavasdos, 198.
Asceticism, 148.
Asceticus, 491.
Atalla, 529.
Athanaric, 302.
Athanasius, 45 ff., 618.
„ Canons of, 133.
„ Coptic patriarch, 614.
„ Mar, 532.
„ of Constantinople, 264 f.
Athenagoras, 21, 284.
Athos, Mount, 286 if., 334.
Augustus, 9.
Aurelian, 178.
Auxentius, 304.
Awgin, 485.
Axumitric kingdom. See Abyssinia.
Azymites, 269.
Babylon in Egypt, 555.
Bagdad, 170. ¦
Bakar, 344.
Baldwin, 250, 254, 258.
Bar Cochbar, 21.
Bardaisan, 466 ff.
Bardas, Caesar, 234.
Barlaam and Josapliat, 282 ff.
Barnabas, Epistle of, 7.
Bar Salibi, 508.
Basil, 71 ff., 158, ?2i.
Basil I., Emperor, 223.
Basilicas, 181 ff.
Basiliscus, 108 ff.
Basilius the Paulician, 227

627

628

INDEX

Beard, the image of God, 445.
Bef-popqftsky, 447.
Benediction, Position of fingers in,
416.
Benjamin, Coptic patriarch, 575.
Berlin, Treaty of, 351.
Bernard of Clairvaux, 251.
„ of Tarsus, 257 f.
Beth 'Abhe, 486.
Bible in Greek vernacular, 329.
Bible Society, 338.
Bielo-ozero monastery, 382.
Bishops, privileges and duties of,
135.
Bogislav, Stephen, 351.
Bogomiles, 225 ff.
Bohemond, 249.
Book of Governors. 484 ff.
Boris Godunov, 379.
Bosnia, 353.
Britain, 13.
Brace's travels, 624.
Bryennios, 342.
Bulgaria, 348 ff.
Bulgarian atrocities, 350.
Burkitt, 468.
Bury, 193.
Byzantine Empire, Fall of, 256 ff.
,, forces defeated, 169.
Cabasilas, 281.
Caliphate, 170, 585 ff.
Calvinism, 319.
Camel, Sultan, 254.
Canons of Chalcedon, 135.
„ Sardican, 134.
Cantacuzenus, 265.
Cappadocians, the, 71 ff.
Capuchins at Astrakan, 430.
Carbeas, 222.
Caroline Books, 240.
Cassian, 148.
Catherine the Great, 434.
Celestius, 96.
Censer confession, 606.
Ceylon, 527.
Chail i., 591.
„ II., 593.
„ Hi., 596.
„ IV., 604.
Chalcedon, Canons, 135.
„ Council, 99 ff.
Chaldaja, 167.
Chaldeans, 497 ff.
Charles the Great, 233, 294,
Chenouda I., 594.
„ II., 601.
China, 527, 533 ff.
Chosroes, I7i

Christ, Body of, 120.
,, Byzantiue, 105.
„ Divinity of, 54, 105, 503 ff.
„ Nature of, 93 ff., 101,
503 ff.
Christianity outside the Empire
294 ff.
Christobulus, 602.
Christological controversies, Later.
117 ff.
Chrysanthus, 324.
Chrysocheir, 223.
Chrysostom, 83 ff.
Church organisation, 132 ff.
Clement of Alexandria, 7.
Cochin, 538.
Codex Argenteus, 307.
,, Carolinus, 307.
Coenobitism, 148.
Commodus, 22.
Communion office, 277.
Confessional, 606.
Constantine the Great, 10, 27 ff.
IV., 129.
„ v., "Copronicus,"197ff.,341.
,, VI., Porphyrogenitus,
202, 212.
,, of Nacolia, 192.
„ Pognatus, 130.
Constantinople, founded, 29, 137.
,, Disturbances at, 114.
„ captured by Latins,
253.
„ recovered by Palaeolo
gus, 260.
,, taken by Turks, 270 ff.
,, I. Council, 82 ff.
„ II. Council, 119,
157.
„ III. Council, 125.
„ Creed of, 83.
„ Patriarchate, 137 ff.,
336.
„ Prerogatives of, 137.
Constantius, 59 ff. , 305.
Conybeare, 152, 216.
Coonen cross, 530.
Copts, 93, 138, 172, 293, 553 ff.
Corinth pillaged, 329.
Cosmas, 518.
Cosmas the Student, 586.
Council, (Ecumenical, 1st, Nicaea,
50 ff.
„ 2nd, Constantinople,
82 ff., 137.
„ 3rd, Ephesus, 96 ff.
„ 4th, Chalcedon, 99 ff.,
543 ff., 565 ff.

INDEX

629

Council, (Ecumenical, 5th, II. Con
stantinople, 119 f.
„ 6th, III. Constanti
nople, 130 f., 569.
„ 7th, II. Nicaea, 192,
204.
8th, 237.
Creed, Apostles', 53.
„ Nicene, 53, 83.
„ of Constantinople, 83.
Crimea, 303.
Crosses at Travancore, 518 ff.
Crusades, 242 ff., 609.
Crusius, Martin, 314.
Cydonius, Demetrius, 282.
Cyprus, Church of, 339 ff.
Cyril Lucar, 309 ff., 411, 611.
„ of Alexandria, 96 ff.
„ of Jerusalem, 83.
„ of Kiev, 386.
„ of Phasis, 125 ff.
Cyrus, Melchite patriarch, 575.
Dacia, 302.
Dagobert, 251, 258.
Dalmatia, 329.
Damascus, 169, 329.
Dandolo, 252, 291.
Daniel the Stylite, 111.
Decius, 24.
De Fide Orthodoxa, 210.
Demetrius, deacon, 313.
Diabekir, 498.
Diatessaron, The, 465 f.
Didache; The, 16.
Diocletian, 25 ff.
Dionysius the Areopagite, 126,
215.
Dioscurus, 98, 104.
Dmitri, 409.
Docetism, 120.
"Doctor, (Ecumenical," 195.
Domitian, 19.
Doukhobors, The, 451 ff.
Ecthesis, the, 129, 569, 576.
Egypt, 87, 99, 137, 552 ff.
Modern, 610 ff.
Mohammedan rule in, 577 ff.
Monophysite, 117, 565 ff.
Persian conquest, 572 ff.
Turkish period, 603 ff.
El Aziz, 599.
El Hakim, 244, 600.
Elizabeth of Russia, 434.
Encratites, 466.
Ephraim the Syrian, 473 f.
Epiphanius, 83, 341.
Ermanaric, 302.

Ethiopia, 297, 616 ff.
Ethiopio Canon, 619.
Eucarpus, 157.
Eucharist, 141 ff.
Euchites, 225, 490 ff.
Eudoxia, 428.
Eugene, Prince, 329.
Eugenios, Bulgares, 331.
Eugenius, Pope, 265.
Eusebius of Caesarea, 50, 53.
„ of Nicomedia, 46.
Eustathians, 492.
Eustathius, 281.
Euthymius, 225.
Eutyches, 97 ff., 103, 562.
Eutychianism, 94, 102, 479, 546,
563.
Evangelion da Mepharresche, 470.
Extension of Christianity, 13 ff., 25 f.
Fausta, murder of, 34.
Figuratists, 81.
Filioque clause, 237 ff., 266, 294.
Firuz, 481.
Flavian of Antioch, 89.
„ of Constantinople, 98 ff.
Frithigern, 302 f.
Frumentius, 516.
Fulco of Neuilly, 252.
Fustat, 581.
Gabriel, Mar, 531,
Galerius, 25.
Callus, 24.
Gangra, 100.
Garamsea, 297.
Gaul, 13.
Gegnoesius, 220.
Genghis Khan, 269.
Gennadius, 269, 282.
George of Cappadocia, 62.
,, Scholarius. See Gennadius.
Georgia, Church of, 344 ff.
Gerasimus, 389.
Germanus, 192 ff.
Goa, 525 ff.
Godfrey of Bouillon, 249.
Golitsin, Basil, 420.
Goths, 122, 301 ff.
Gratian, 85.
"Great Mother," The, 10.
Greek Church, outlying branches,
369 ff.
,, under Turks, 325 ff.
Gregorius, Jacobite patriarch, 530.
Gregory Nazianzen, 75 ff.
„ of Nyssa, 78 ff., 93, 143 ff.
„ the Great, 140 ff.
„ Hi., 197.

630

INDEX

Gregory vn., Hildebrand, 248, 362.
„ IX., 254.
„ the Illuminator, 297, 540 ff.
Gundaphorus, King, 511.
Gwatkin, Professor, 43.
Hackett, 339 ff.
Hadrian, Emperor, 20.
„ Pope, 203.
Harith, 502.
Harnack, 43.
Harris, Rendel, 474.
Heber, Bishop, 531.
Hebrews, Gospel, 296, 471, 513.
Henoticon, 112, 117, 567.
Heraclius, 125 ff., 137, 573, 577.
Herzegovina, 353.
Hesychasts, 288,
Hieracles, 565.
Hillary of Poitiers, 241.
Holy Synod, Greek, 336.
,, Russian, 425 ff.
Homeritse, 516.
Homoeans, 70, 805.
Homoiousios, 68 f.
Homoousios, 52, 75.
Honorius, Emperor, 88.
„ Pope, 128.
Hosius, 2, 49, 50.
Hugh of Vermandois, 249.
Huns, 106, 223.
Hymns, Greek, 288 ff.
m, 74.

Ibas, 118, 567.
Iberians. See Georgia.
Ibn Tulun, 594.
Iconoclastic reforms, 187 ff.
Ignatius of Antioch, 20 ff.
„ Patriarch, 209, 234.
Image worship, Restoration of, 201 ff.
Incarnation, 105.
India, 512 ff.
Innocent in., 252, 287.
Irene the Athenian, 203 ff.
Isaac, Emperor, 253.
Isho-yahbh, 489.
Isidore, 389 ff.
Isyaslaff, 372.
Jacob al Bardai, 500 ff., 568.
„ of Edessa, 507 ff.
Jacobites, 93,172, 500 ff.
James of Nisibis, 300.
Janissaries, 310 ff.
Jassy, 412.
Jerome, 148.
Jerusalem, Kingdom of, 251 ff.
Jesu-Jabus, 494.

Jesuits, 430, 533, 624.
Job, Patriarch, 406.
John, Catamerus, 258.
„ Chrysostom, 89 ff.
„ Chrysostom, Liturgy, 276.
,, Maracumensis, 545.
„ Moschus, 585.
„ v., Pope, 265.
,, of Antioch, 257.
,, of Asia, or Ephesus, 503, 506 f.
,, of Damascus, 211, 284.
„ of Persia, 49, 516.
„ Prester, 535 ff., 621.
,, Semnudaeus, 588.
„ Talai, 570.
„ the Almoner, 574.
„ the Faster, 140.
,, the Grammarian, 207 ff.
Jordanus, 521.
Joseph, Patriarch, 262, 266.
Jovian, Emperor, 65.
Julian, Emperor, 61 ff.
„ of Halicarnassus, 120, 568.
" Jumpers," The, 499 ff.
Justin, Emperor, 117.
Justinian, Emperor, 117ff., 139, 181.
Justinian II., 220, 341.
Kalmata, Thanksgiving, 332.
Kenosis, 97, 103.
Key of Truth, 216 ff.
Khalid, 164, 168.
Kiev, 358, 364.
Klysty, The, 450.
Kufa, 171. ^
Kullman, 452.
Ldbarum, The, 10, 35 f., 65.
Laplanders, 383.
Latin Empire at Constantinople, 254.
Latrocinialis. See "Robber Council."
Law, Roman, 29, 123.
Layard, 496.
Lazarus, the Painter, 208.
Learning and literature, 279.
Legislation, Effect of Christianity
on, 40.
Leo I., Emperor, 107.
„ n., Emperor, 110.
,, in., Emperor, the Isaurian,
189 ff.
,, IV., the Armenian, 204 ff.
„ I., Pope, 99 ff., Ill, 284.
,, III., Pope, 294.
,, ix., Pope, 240.
„ Stypiota, Patriarch, 228.
Libanius, 72.
Licinius, 84.
Lithuania, 373, 388.

INDEX

631

Liturgies, 276.
Logos, The, 7.
Lombards, 233.
Louis IX. (Saint), 255 ff., 609.
Loyola, Ignatius, 525.
Lutheranism, 313.
Macarius, 157.
,, Monastery, 609.
Macedonia, 82, 351.
Macedonius, 82.
Maghlobeen, 499.
Magi, 299 ff.
Malabar, 532.
Malacca, 527.
Mamelukes, 611 ff.
Manuel, 251, 274.
Marcellus, 43, 82.
Marcian, 99, 106.
Marcion, 149.
Marco Polo, 520 ff.
Marcus Aurelius, 11, 21.
Mariolatry, 195.
Maris, 119.
Mark, St., 15, 554.
„ Coptic patriarch, 593.
„ of Ephesus, 268.
„ Son of Kunbar, 606.
Maronites, 131.
Martin, 130, 264.
Mary, The Virgin, 96, 105.
Maxentius, 33 f.
Maximus, 130.
Melchitaristes, 547.
Meletius of Antioch, 82.
„ of Pega, 314.
Mennas, 123.
Menologvam, The, 429.
Mentaxa, Nicodemus, 318.
Mesrob, 542.
Messenia, Senate of, 332.
Methodius, 358.
Metrophanes, 612.
Metropolitans, 135 f.
Michael I., 206.
„ II., the Stammerer, 208.
„ in., the Drunkard, 209.
„ Antorianus, 258 ff.
„ Cerularius, 240.
„ the Syrian, 364.
„ Tsar, 410.
Milan, Edict of, 36 f.
Milvian Bridge, 33.
Mirabilia, 522.
Missionary Society, Church, 531.
Mithra, 10, 87.
Mobidakh, 345.
Mcesia Superior, 351.
Mogila, Peter, 322, 411.

Mohammed, 162 ff.
n.,270ff.
Mohammedan conditions for Chris
tians, 583.
Mohammedanism, 93, 160.
Molokans, The, 451 ff.
Monasticism, 147 ff., 619.
Monastir, 351.
Mongolian invasion, 371 ff.
Monophysites, 102ff., 120 ff., 293,
500 ff., 544, 565 ff.
Monothelete controversy,124ff.,568ff.
Montanists, 22, 118, 149.
Montenegro, 348.
Montferrat, Marquis of, 253.
Morea, 326, 332 ff.
Morosini, 254, 328.
Moscow Patriarchate, 404 ff.
Mtykhetha, 345.
Muir, Sir W., 163.
"Mukaukas," The, 578 ff.
Mutilation, 290.
Najran, 171.
Napoleon, Image of, 448.
Neale, 115.
Nectarius, 90.
Neo-Platonists, 117.
Nestor, 356, 576.
Nestorianism, 94, 102.
„ in Far East, 510 ff.
„ in India, 517 ff.
„ in Persia, 480.
„ Later, 493 ff.
,, Syrian, 476, 567.
Nicaea, 50 ff., 192, 204.
Nicephorus, Caesar, 203 ff.
,, Emperor, 205.
,, historian, 204.
Nicholas, Pope, 209, 235.
„ Tsar, 438.
,, of Moth one, 281.
Nicolo Barbara, 270.
Nicomedia, 28.
Nicon, 413 ff.
Niobites, 503.
Niphont, 373 ff.
Nonjurors, 324,
Nonna, 344.
Norseses, 542.
Novgorod Metropolitan, 406.
Nubia, 620.
Nunia, 297.
" fficumenical Bishop," 238 ff.
,, Council. See Council.
" Old Believers," 443.
Olga, Princess, 358 ff.
Olopan, 533.

632

INDEX

Omar, 164 ff.
Oiigenism, 7, 83, 90.
Osrhoene, 461, 479.
Oxyrhynchus papyri, 6.
Pachomius, 156, 485.
Paganism, Suppression of, 62.
Pahlavi, 518.
Palaeologus, 254, 259, 612.
Palladius, 145, 153.
Palut, 463.
Palutians, 469.
Pantaenus, 296, 513.
Parthenon shattered, 328.
Parthia, 296, 512.
Paschal Controversy, 54.
Passarovitz, Treaty of, 329.
Patriarchate, The, 137 ff.
Paul of Alexandria, 130.
,, of Samosata, 52.
,, the Armenian, 220.
Paulicians, 207, 216 ff.
Pechersky Monastery, 411.
"Peculiars," The, 399.
Persia, 97, 122, 293.
,, origin of Christianity in,
297 ff.
Persian Christians, 102, 480 ff.
Peshitta, 476, 498, 505.
Peter Mongus, 113.
„ the Fuller, 109 f., 341.
„ the Great, 324, 420 ff.
„ the Hermit, 248 f.
Petronas, 222.
Phanariots, 325 ff.
Philaret Romanoff, 409.
Philike Hetairia, 332.
Philippoftsky, The, 448.
Philippopolis, 224.
Philippus, 131.
Philo, 7.
Phoeas Nicephorus, 342.
Photinus, 43, 82.
Photius of Constantinople, 209, 235 ff. ,
279 f.
,, the Russian, 437.
Pictures, 184.
Pilgrimages, 433.
Pirates, 328.
Pliny's correspondence, 19 f., 284.
PobiMonostscf, 439.
Polycarp, 439.
Pomortsky, The, 449.
Pontus, 99.
Pope, Village, 431, 435.
Popoftshy, The, 446.
Portuguese in India, 523 ff.
„ in Abyssinia, 621.
Presbyters, 558 ff.

Proclus, 281.
Procopius, 117.
Procurator, High, 425.
Proterius, 106 ff.
Protestantism, 318.
Psellus, Michael, 280.
Ptolemais, 97.
Pulcheria, 99.
Pulleni, 251.
Pyrrhus, 129.
Rabbulas, 475, 478.
Ramsay, Professor, 17.
Raskolniks, 441 ff.
Ravenna, Exarch of, 232.
Relics, 278.
Richard I., 252.
"Robber Council," 99, 543.
Robert, Count of Flanders, 245.
,, of Normandy, 249.
Romanus, Diogenes, 244.
Eunners, 449.
Rurik, 358.
Russia, champion of Eastern Chris
tianity, 329.
,, church lands appropriated,
434.
,, dioceses, 366.
„ Little, 417.
„ modern, 434 ff.
„ Mongolian invasion, 371 ff.
,, name and people, 356.
,, negotiations for union, 385.
,, Origin of Christianity in,
355 ff.
,, possessions in Armenia, 549.
,, protection of Georgia, 347.
„ Revival of, 385 ff.
,, Western culture in, 421.
Russian calendar, 424.
,, sects, 441 ff.
Russkaya Pravada, 367, 398.
Sabellianism, 42, 74,
Saccudio, 212.
Sacraments, 142, 274 f.
Sacrificing, Laws against, 86.
Said, 597.
Saladin, 252, 608.
San Stephano, Treaty of, 351.
Sapor, 299 ff.
Saracens, 223.
Sardica, Council of, 60, 344 f.
Satanael, 226.
Schism, The great, 229 ff.
Scholarship in Greece, 337.
Scythia, 357.
Sects, Russian, 441 ff.
Seljuk, 244.

INDEX

633

Semi-Arians, 55, 68 ff.
Senuti, 564 ff.
Separation, Causes of, 291 ff.
Serapeum, 87.
Seraphim, 437.
Serapion, 463.
Serenus of Marseilles, 191.
Serfs, Emancipation of, 438.
Sergius of Constantinople, 125 ff.,
167.
„ the Paulician, 221.
Servia, 851 ff.
Severus of Antioch, 115.
Siberia, 411.
SUentinm, 196.
Silvanus, the Paulician, 219.
Simeon of Thessalonica, 282.
„ the Stylite, 155 f.
Simony, 597, 609 ff.
Singanfu tablet, 534 f.
Skopsty, The, 451.
Skreejdl, The, 417.
Slonjebuik, The, 417.
Societies for Biblical Study, 337 f.
, , for Circulation of Scriptures,
338.
Solovetsky Monastery, 383.
Sophia, St., 181 ff.
Sophronius, 126, 170, 585.
Soudan, The, 620.
Spiritual Pastures, 585.
Stanley, Dean, 174.
Staro-Obriadsti. See Raskolniks.
,, -miry. See Raskolniks.
Stephen of Chartres, 249.
„ ofDore, 128.
„ the younger, 199.
Stoglat, The, 399.
Streltsi, Revolt of, 423.
Studium, 212.
Stundists, 456 ff.
Stylites, 153.
Sudebuik, The, 398.
Symmachus, 87.
Synod, Lateran, 130, 143.
„ of Aix la Chapelle, 82.
„ of Antioch, 240.
„ of Babaeus, 482.
„ of Basle, 266.
„ of Bethlehem, 321.
„ of Carana, 545.
„ of Clermont, 248.
„ of Constantinople, 82, 119,
198.
„ of Diamper, 519, 529.
„ of Florence, 266 ff., 390,
611.
„ of Jassy, 321, 412.
„ of Manaschiertum, 546.

Synod of Moscow, 406.
of Philippopolis, 60.
of Rimini, 82.
of Sardica, 60, 344 ff.
of Sirmium, 82.
of the Oak, 91.
of Tiben, 544.
of Toledo, 239.
of Tyre, 239.
the Holy, 419 ff.
Syria, 99.
Syrian Christianity, 459 ff.
,, Christianity in India, 297,
517 ff.
Syropulus, 266.
" Tall Brothers," 91.
Tancred, 249.
Tarasius, 203.
Tartary, 535.
Tatian, 149, 464.
Thaddaeus, 293.
Theocristus, 285.
Theodora, 118 ff., 500.
Theodore Graptus, 209.
,, of Mopsuestia, 94, 118
479.
„ of Studium, 209 ff.
Theodoret, 118, 567.
Theodorio, 307.
Theodosians, 449.
Theodosius the Great, 77, 85.
ii., 96.
Theodota, 205.
Theodotus Mellisenus, 208.
Theophanes, 196, 279, 284.
Theophilus and the Goths, 304.
,, Arian, 618.
„ of Alexandria, 91.
,, of Scythia, 49.
„ the Indian, 516.
Theophylact, 281.
"Theotokos,"The, 10, 96, 105.
Therapeutse, 152.
Thomas, 295.Acts of, 297, 474, 511
540 ff.
„ of Marga, 484 ff.
Thouraki, 217.
"Three Chapters," 118, 567.
Tiben, 545.
Timothy jElurus, 106 ff., 566.
„ Salofaciolus, 108, 566.
Timour, 269.
Togrul, 244.
Tolstoi, Count, 458.
"Tome," Leo's, 100 f., 112, 232.
Tonsure, Deathbed, 370.
Travancore, 515 ff.

634

INDEX

Trebuik, 411.
Trinity, 68, 74, 110, 274, 604.
Trisagion, The, 110, 114.
Tritheites, 604.
Turks, 244 ff.
Type, The, 129, 569.
Ulfilas, 301 ff.
Uniats, 315, 408.
Union, Efforts towards, 268, 265,
268 f., 407, 528 ff., 544, 611,
624.
"Universal Bishop," 141.
Valens, 66 f., 85.
Valentinian, 66.

Veccus, 263.
Venetian conquests, 326.
Vladimir, 359 ff.
Wade, Archbishop, 324.
Xavier, Francis, 526 ff.
Yasolaf, 367.
Yucab, 593.
Zaras, 252.
Zeno, 108, 341.
Zoe, 290.
Zoroastrianism, 10.
Zosimus, Metropolitan, 396.

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The International Critical Commentary
On the Holy Scriptures of the Old and
New Testaments

EDITORS' PREFACE
THERE are now before the public many Commentaries,
written by British and American divines, of a popular
or homiletical character. The Cambridge Bible for
Schools, the Handbooks for Bible Classes and Private Students,
The Speaker's Commentary, The Popular Commentary (Schaff),
The Expositor's Bible, and other similar series, have their
special place and importance. But they do not enter into the
field of Critical Biblical scholarship occupied by such series of
Commentaries as the Kurzgefasstes exegetisch.es Handbuch zum
A. T. ; De Wette's Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zum
N. T. ; Meyer's Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar ; Keil and
Delitzsch's Biblischer Commentar iiber das A. T. ; Lange's
Theologisch-homiletisches Bibelwerk ; Nowack's Handkommentar
zum A. T. ; Holtzmann's Handkommentar zum N. T. Several
of these have been translated, edited, and in some cases enlarged
and adapted, for the English-speaking public ; others are in
process of translation. But no corresponding series by British
or American divines has hitherto been produced. The way has
been prepared by special Commentaries by Cheyne, Ellicott,
Kalisch, Lightfoot, Perowne, Westcott, and others; and the
time has come, in the judgment of the projectors of this enter
prise, when it is practicable to combine British and American
scholars in the production of a critical, comprehensive
Commentary that will be abreast of modern biblical scholarship,
and in a measure lead its van.

The International Critical Commentary

Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons of New York, and Messrs.
T. & T. Clark of Edinburgh, propose to publish such a series
of Commentaries on the Old and New Testaments, under the
editorship of Prof. C. A. Briggs, D.D., D.Litt., in America, and
of Prof. S. R. Driver, D.D., D.Litt., for the Old Testament, and
the Rev. Alfred Plummer, D.D., for the New Testament, in
Great Britain.
The Commentaries will be international and inter-confessional,
and will be free from polemical and ecclesiastical bias. They
will be based upon a thorough critical study of the original texts
of the Bible, and upon critical methods of interpretation. They
are designed chiefly for students and clergymen, and will be
written in a compact style. Each book will be preceded by an
Introduction, stating the results of criticism upon it, and discuss
ing impartially the questions still remaining open. The details
of criticism will appear in their proper place in the body of the
Commentary. Each section of the Text will be introduced
with a paraphrase, or summary of contents. Technical details
of textual and philological criticism will, as a rule, be kept
distinct from matter of a more general character ; and in the
Old Testament the exegetical notes will be arranged, as far as
possible, so as to be serviceable to students not acquainted with
Hebrew. The History of Interpretation of the Books will be
dealt with, when necessary, in the Introductions, with critical
notices of the most important literature of the subject. Historical
and Archaeological questions, as well as questions of Biblical
Theology, are included in the plan of the Commentaries, but
not Practical or Homiletical Exegesis. The Volumes will con
stitute a uniform series.

The International Critical Commentary

ARRANGEMENT OF VOLUMES AND AUTHORS
THE OLD TESTAMENT
GENESIS. The Rev. John Skinner, D.D., Principal and Professor of
Old Testament Language and Literature, College of Presbyterian Church
of England, Cambridge, England.
EXODUS. The Rev. A. R. S. Kennedy, D.D., Professor of Hebrew,
University of Edinburgh.
LEVITICUS. J. F. Stenning, M.A., Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford.
NUMBERS. The Rev. G. Buchanan Gray, D.D., Professor of Hebrew,
Mansfield College, Oxford. {Now Ready.
DEUTERONOMY. The Rev. S. R. Driver, D.D., D.Litt., Regius Pro
fessor of Hebrew, Oxford. [Now Ready.
JOSHUA. The Rev. George Adam Smith, D.D., LL.D., Professor of
Hebrew, United Free Church College, Glasgow.
JUDGES. The Rev. George Moore, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Theol
ogy, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. [Now Ready.
SAMUEL. The Rev. H. P. Smith, D.D., Professor of Old Testament
Literature and History of Religion, Meadville, Pa. [Now Ready.
KINGS. The Rev. Francis Brown, D.D., D.Litt, LL.D., President
and Professor of Hebrew and Cognate Languages, Union Theological
Seminary, New York City.
CHRONICLES. The Rev. Edward L. Curtis, D.D., Professor of
Hebrew, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
EZRA AND NEHEMIAH. The Rev. L.W. BATTEN, Ph.D., D.D., Rector
of St. Mark's Church, New York City, sometime Professor of Hebrew,
P. E. Divinity School, Philadelphia.
PSALMS. The Rev. Chas. A. Briggs, D.D., D.Litt., Graduate Pro-
fessor of Theological EncyclopEedia and Symbolics, Union Theological
Seminary, New York. [2 vols. Now Read«
PROVERBS. The Rev. C. H. Toy, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Hebrew,
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. [Now Ready.
JOB. The Rev. S. R. Driver, D.D., D.Litt., Regius Professor of He
brew, Oxford.

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ISAIAH. Chaps. 1-XXXIX. The Rev. G. Buchanan Gray, D.D.,
Professor of Hebrew, Mansfield College, Oxford.
ISAIAH. Chaps. XL-LXVI. The Rev. A. S. Peake, M.A., D.D., Dean
of the Theological Faculty of the Victoria University and Professor of
Biblical Exegesis in the University of Manchester, England.
JEREMIAH. The Rev. A. F. Kirkpatrick, D.D., Dean of Ely, sometime
Regius Professor of Hebrew, Cambridge, England.
EZEKIEL. The Rev. G. A. Cooke, M.A., Oriel Professor of the Inter
pretation of Holy Scripture, University of Oxford, and the Rev. Charles F.
Burney, D. Litt., Fellow and Lecturer in Hebrew, St. John's College, Oxford.
DANIEL. The Rev. John P. Peters, Ph.D., D.D., sometime Professor
of Hebrew, P. E. Divinity School, Philadelphia, now Rector of St.
Michael's Church, New York City.
AMOS AND HOSEA. W. R. Harper, Ph.D., LL.D., sometime Presi-
dent of the University of Chicago, Illinois. [Now Ready.
MICAH TO HAGGAI. Prof. John P. Smith, University of Chicago;
Prof. Charles P. Fagnani, D.D., Union Theological Seminary, New
York; W. Hayes Ward, D.D., LL.D., Editor of The Independent, New
York ; Prof. Julius A. Bewer, Union Theological Seminary, New York,
and Prof. H. G. Mitchell, D.D., Boston University.
ZECHARIAH TO JONAH. Prof. H. G. Mitchell, D.D., Prof. John
P. Smith and Prof. J. A. Bewer.
ESTHER. The Rev. L. B. Paton, Ph.D., Professor of Hebrew, Hart
ford Theological Seminary. [.Now Ready.
ECCLESIASTES. Prof. George A. Barton, Ph.D., Professor of Bibli
cal Literature, Bryn Mawr College, Pa. {Now Ready.
RUTH, SONG OF SONGS AND LAMENTATIONS. Rev. CHARLES A.
Briggs, D.D., D.Litt., Professor of Theological Encyclopaedia and Sym
bolics, Union Theological Seminary, New York.

THE NEW TESTAMENT
ST. MATTHEW. The Rev. Willoughby C. Allen, M.A., Fellow and
Lecturer in Theology and Hebrew, Exeter College, Oxford. [Now Ready.
ST. MARK. Rev. E. P. GOULD, D.D., sometime Professor of New Testa
ment Literature, P. E. Divinity School, Philadelphia. [Now Ready.
ST. LUKE. The Rev. Alfred Plummer, D.D., sometime Master of
University College, Durham. [Now Ready.

The International Critical Commentary

ST. JOHN. The Very Rev. John Henry Bernard, D.D., Dean of St.
Patrick's and Lecturer in Divinity, University of Dublin.
HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS. The Rev. William SANDAY, D.D.,
LL.D., Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Oxford, ana the Rev. Wil-
loughby C. Allen, M.A., Fellow and Lecturer in Divinity and Hebrew,
Exeter College, Oxford.
ACTS. The Rev. C. H. Turner, D.D., Fellow of Magdalen College,
Oxford, and the Rev. H. N. Bate, M.A., Examining Chaplain to the
Bishop of London.
ROMANS. The Rev. William Sanday, D.D., LL.D., Lady Margaret
Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, and the Rev.
A. C. Headlam, M.A., D.D., Principal of King's College, London. [Now Ready.
CORINTHIANS. The Right Rev. Arch. Robertson, D.D., LL.D., Lord
Bishop of Exeter, the Rev. Alfred Plummer, D.D., and Dawson Walker,
D.D., Theological Tutor in the University of Durham.
GALATIANS. The Rev. Ernest D. Burton, D.D., Professor of New
Testament Literature, University of Chicago.
EPHESIANS AND COLOSSIANS. The Rev. T. K. Abbott, B.D.,
D.Litt., sometime Professor of Biblical Greek, Trinity College, Dublin, now
Librarian of the same. [Now Ready.
PHILIPPIANS AND PHILEMON. The Rev. Marvin R. Vincent,
D. D., Professor of Biblical Literature, Union Theological Seminary, New
York City. [Now Ready.
THESSALONIANS. The Rev. James E. Frame, M.A., Professor of
Biblical Theology, Union Theological Seminary, New York.
THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. The Rev. Walter Lock, D.D., Warden
of Keble College and Professor of Exegesis, Oxford.
HEBREWS. The Rev. A. Nairne, M.A., Professor of Hebrew in King's
College, London.
ST. JAMES. The Rev. James H. Ropes, D. D. , Bussey Professor of New
Testament Criticism in Harvard University.
PETER AND JUDE. The Rev. Charles Bigg, D.D. , sometime Regius
Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford.
[Now Ready.
THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN. The Rev. E. A. Brooke, B.D., Fellow
and Divinity Lecturer in King's College, Cambridge.
REVELATION. The Rev. Robert H. Charles, M.A., D.D., sometime
Professor of Biblical Greek in the University of Dublin.

The
International Critical Commentary

VOLUMES NOW READY
Numbers. By the Rev. G. Buchanan Gray, D.D., Professor of Hebrew,
Mansfield College, Oxford.
"Most Bible readers have the impression that 'Numbers' is a dull
book only relieved by the brilliancy of the Balaam chapters and some
snatches of old Hebrew songs, but, as Prof. Gray shows with admirable
skill and insight, its historical and religious value is not that which lies
on the surface. Prof. Gray's Commentary is distinguished by fine
scholarship and sanity of judgment; it is impossible to commend it too
warmly." — Saturday Review (London). Crown 8vo. $3.00 net.
DeUterOnOmy. By the Rev. S. R. Driver, D.D., D.Litt., Regius
Professor of Hebrew, and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford.
" It is a pleasure to see at last a really critical Old Testament com
mentary in English upon a portion of the Pentateuch, and especially
one of such merit. This I find superior to any other Commentary in
any language upon Deuteronomy." Professor E. L. Curtis, of Yale University.
Crown 8vo. $3.00 net.
Judges. By Rev. George Foot Moore, D.D., LL.D., Professor of
Theology in Harvard University.
"The work is done in an atmosphere of scholarly interest and in
difference to dogmatism and controversy, which is at least refreshing.
... It is a noble introduction to the moral forces, ideas and influences
that controlled the period of the Judges, and a model of what a
historical commentary, with a practical end in view, should be."
— The Independent.
Crown 8vo. $3.00 net.
The Books of Samuel. By Rev. henry preserved smith, d.d.,
Professor of Old Testament Literature and History of Religion, Meadville, Pa.
" Professor Smith's Commentary will for some time be the standard
work on Samuel, and we heartily congratulate him on scholarly work
so faithfully accomplished." — The Athenaum. Crown 8vo. $3.00 net.

The International Critical Commentary

VOLUMES NOW READY
The Book Of Psalms. By Charles Augustus Briggs, D.D.,
D.Litt., Graduate Professor of Theological Encyclopaedia and Symbolics,
Union Theological Seminary, New York, and Emilie Grace Briggs, B.D.
" Christian scholarship seems here to have reached the highest level yet
attained in study of the book which in religious importance stands next
to the Gospels. His work upon it is not likely to be excelled in learning,
both massive and minute, by any volume of the International Series, to
which it belongs." — The Outlook.
2 Volumes. Crown 8vo. Price, $3-°° each net.

PrOVerbS. By the Rev. Craweord H. Toy, D.D., LL.D., Professor of
Hebrew in Harvard University.
" This volume has the same characteristics of thoroughness and pains
taking scholarship as the preceding issues of the series. In the critical
treatment of the text, in noting the various readings and the force of
the words in the original Hebrew, it leaves nothing to be desired.
Crown 8vo. $3.00 net.
AmOS and HoSea. By William Rainey Harper, Ph.D., LL.D.,
late Professor of Semitic Languages and Literature and President of the
University of Chicago.
" He has gone, with characteristic minuteness, not only into the analysis
and discussion of each point, endeavoring in every case to be thoroughly
exhaustive, but also into the history of exegesis and discussion. Nothing
at all worthy of consideration has been passed by. The consequence is
that when one carefully studies what has been brought together in this
volume, either upon some passage of the two prophets treated, or upon
some question of critical or antiquarian importance in the introductory
portion of the volume, one feels that he has obtained an adequately
exhaustive view of the subject." — The Interior. Crown 8vo. $3.00 net.
Esther. By L. B. Paton, Ph.D., Professor of Hebrew, Hartford
Theological Seminary.
This scholarly and critical commentary on the Book of Esther presents
in full the remarkable additions to the Massoretic text and the varia
tions in the various versions beginning with the Greek translation and
continuing through the Vulgate and Peshitto down to the Talmud and
Targums. These are not given in full in any other commentary, yet
they are very important both for the history of the text and the history
of the exegesis. Crown 8vo. $2.25 net (Postage additional).

The International Critical Commentary

VOLUMES NOW READY
ECCleSiaSteS. By George A. Barton, Ph.D., Professor of Biblical
Literature, Bryn Mawr College, Pa.
" It is a relief to find a commentator on Ecclesiastes who is not en
deavoring to defend some new theory. This volume, in the International
Commentary series, treats the book in a scholarly and sensible fashion,
presenting the conclusions of earlier scholars together with the author's
own, and providing thus all the information that any student needs."
— Tlie Congregationalist.
Crown 8vo. $2.25 net (Postage additional).
St. Matthew. By the Rev. Whxoughby C. Allen, M.A., Fellow
of Exeter College, Oxford.
"As a microscopic and practically exhaustive study and itemized stats-
ment of the probable or possible sources of the Synoptic Gospels and
of their relations, one to another, this work has not been surpassed.
I doubt if it has been equaled. And the author is not by any means
lacking in spiritual insight." — The Methodist Review (Nashville).
Crown 8vo. $3.00 net.
St. Mark. By the Rev. E. P. Gould, D.D., sometime Professor of New
Testament Exegesis, P. E. Divinity School, Philadelphia.
" The whole make-up is that of a thoroughly helpful, instructive critical
study of the Word, surpassing anything of the kind ever attempted in
the English language, and to students and clergymen knowing the
proper use of a commentary it will prove an invaluable aid."
— The Lutheran Quarterly.
Crown 8vo. $2.50 net.
St. Luke. By the Rev. Alfred Plummer, D.D., sometime Master of
University College, Durham.
" We are pleased with the thoroughness and scientific accuracy of the
interpretations. ... It seems to us that the prevailing characteristic of
the book is common sense, fortified by learning and piety."
— The Herald and Presbyter.
Crown 8vo. $3.00 net.
Romans. By the Rev. William Sanday, D.D., LL.D., Lady Margaret
Professor of Divinity, and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, and the Rev.
A. C. Headlam, M.A., D.D., Principal of Kings College, London.
" We do not hesitate to commend this as the best commentary on Romans
yet written in English. It will do much to popularize this admirable
and much needed series, by showing that it is possible to be critical and
scholarly and at the same time devout and spiritual, and intelligible to
plain Bible readers." — The Church Standard. Crown 8vo. $3.00 net.

The International Critical Commentary

VOLUMES NOW READY
Ephesians and Colossians. By the Rev. t. k. Abbott, d.d.,
D.Litt., formerly Professor of Biblical Greek, now of Hebrew, Trinity Col
lege, Dublin.
"An able and independent piece of exegesis, and one that none of us can
afford to be without. It is the work of a man who has made himself
master of this theme. His exegetical perceptions are keen, and we are
especially grateful for his strong defense of the integrity and apostolicity
of these two great monuments of Pauline teaching." — The Expositor.
Crown 8vo. $2.50 net.
Philippians and Philemon. By Rev. Marvin r. Vincent, d.d.,
Professor of Biblical Literature in Union Theological Seminary, New York.
" Professor Vincent's Commentary appears to me not less admirable for
its literary merit than for its scholarship and its clear and discriminating
discussions of the contents of these Epistles." — Dr. George P. Fisher.
Crown 8vo. $2.00 net.

St. Peter and St. Jude. By the Rev. Charles Bigg, D.D.,
sometime Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University,
New York.
" The careful and thorough student will find here a vast amount of in
formation most helpful to him in his studies and researches. The inter
national Critical Commentary, to which it belongs, will prove a great
boon to students and ministers." — The Canadian Congregationalism
Crown 8vo. $2.50 net.

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