CHURCH. As the Gospel spread in the first ages both east and west, the first Christian churches were so denominated. From the languages respectively used in their devotions, they were also called the Greek and Latin or Roman churches. For the first seven centuries these churches preserved a friendly communion with each other, notwithstanding they disagreed as to the time of keeping Easter, and some other points. But about the middle of the eighth century, disputes arose, which terminated in a schism, that continues to this day. It arose out of a controversy respecting the use of images in the churches. It happened that at this time both churches were under prelates equally dogmatical and ambitious. The patriarch of Constantinople insisted on putting down the use of all images and pictures, not only in his own church, but at Rome also, which the pope resented with equal violence and asperity. They mutually excommunicated each other; and the pope of Rome excommunicated not only the patriarch of Constantinople, but the emperor also. The controversy respecting images engendered another, no less bitter, respecting the procession of the Holy Ghost both from the Father and the Son, which the Greeks flatly denied, and charged the Romans with interpolating the word _filioque_ into the ancient creeds. These controversies occupied the eighth and ninth centuries, after which some intervals of partial peace occurred; but in the eleventh century, the flame broke out afresh, and a total separation took place. At that time, the Patriarch Michael Cerularius, who was desirous to free himself from the papal authority, published an invective against the Latin church, and accused its members of maintaining various errors. Pope Leo retorted the charge, and sent legates from Rome to Constantinople. The Greek patriarch refused to see them; upon which they excommunicated him and his adherents, publicly, in the church of St. Sophia, A. D. 1054. The Greek patriarch excommunicated those legates, with all their adherents and followers, in a public council; and procured an order of the emperor for burning the act of excommunication which they had pronounced against the Greeks. Thus the separation was completed, and at this day a very considerable part of the world profess the religion of the Greek or eastern church. The Nicene and Athanasian creeds, with the exception of the words above-mentioned, are the symbols of their faith.

A variety of solutions has been given to the question, why the New Testament was written in Greek. The true reason is, that it was the language most generally understood both by writers and readers; being spoken and written, read and understood, throughout the Roman empire, and particularly in the eastern provinces. To the universality of the Greek language, Cicero, Seneca, and Juvenal bear ample testimony: and the circumstances of the Jews having long had political, civil, and commercial relations with the Greeks, and being dispersed through various parts of the Roman empire, as well as their having cultivated the philosophy of the Greeks, of which we have evidence in the New Testament, all sufficiently account for their being acquainted with the Greek language. And if the eminent Jewish writers, Philo and Josephus, had motives for preferring to write in Greek, there is no reason, at least there is no general presumption, why the first publishers of the Gospel might not use the Greek language. It is indeed probable, that many of the common people were acquainted with it; though it is also certain the Christian churches being in many countries composed chiefly of that class of persons, some did not understand Greek. But in every church, says Macknight, there were persons endowed with the gift of tongues, and of the interpretation of tongues, who could readily turn the Apostles’ Greek epistles into the language of the church to which they were sent. In particular, the president or the spiritual man, who read the Apostle’s Greek letter to the Hebrews in their public assemblies, could without any hesitation render it into the Hebrew language, for the edification of those who did not understand Greek. And with respect to the Jews in the provinces, Greek being the native language of most of them, this epistle was much better calculated for their use, written in the Greek language, than if it had been written in the Hebrew, which few of them understood. Farther, it was proper that all the apostolical epistles should be written in the Greek language, because the different doctrines of the Gospel being delivered and explained in them, the explanation of these doctrines could with more advantage be compared so as to be better understood, being expressed in one language, than if, in the different epistles, they had been expressed in the language of the churches and persons to whom they were sent. Now what should that one language be, in which it was proper to write the Christian revelation, but the Greek, which was then generally understood, and in which there were many books extant; that treated of all kinds of literature, and on that account were likely to be preserved, and by the reading of which Christians, in after ages, would be enabled to understand the Greek of the New Testament? This advantage none of the provincial dialects used in the Apostles’ days could pretend to. Being limited to particular countries, they were soon to be disused; and few (if any) books being written in them which merited to be preserved, the meaning of such of the Apostles’ letters as were composed in the provincial languages could not easily have been ascertained.

The principal points which distinguish the Greek church from the Latin, are as follows: they maintain that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father only, and not from the Father and Son. They disown the authority of the pope, and deny that the church of Rome is the only true catholic church. They do not affect the character of infallibility, and utterly disallow works of supererogation, and indulgences. They admit of prayers and services for the dead, as an ancient and pious custom; but they will not admit the doctrine of purgatory, nor determine any thing dogmatically concerning the state of departed souls. In baptism they practise triune immersion, or dip three times; but some, as the Georgians, defer the baptism of their children till they are three, four, or more years of age. The chrism, or baptismal unction, immediately follows baptism. This chrism, solemnly consecrated on Maunday Thursday, is called the unction with ointment, and is a mystery peculiar to the Greek communion, holding the place of confirmation in that of the Roman: it is styled, “the seal of the gift of the Holy Ghost.” They administer the Lord’s Supper in both kinds, dipping the bread in the cup of wine, in which a small portion of warm water is also inserted. They give it both to the clergy and laity, and to children after baptism. They exclude confirmation and extreme unction out of the number of sacraments; but they use the holy oil, which is not confined to persons in the close of life, like extreme unction, but is administered, if required, to all sick persons. Three priests, at least, are required to administer this sacrament, each priest, in his turn, anointing the sick person, and praying for his recovery. They deny auricular confession to be a divine command; but practise confession attended with absolution, and sometimes penance. Though they believe in transubstantiation, or rather consubstantiation, they do not worship the elements. They pay a secondary kind of adoration to the virgin and other saints. They do not admit of images or figures in bas-relief, or embossed work; but use paintings and silver shrines. They admit matrimony to be a sacrament, and celebrate it with great formality. Their secular clergy, under the rank of bishops, are allowed to marry once, and laymen twice; but fourth marriages they hold in abomination. They observe a great number of holy days, and keep four fasts in the year more solemn than the rest, of which Good Friday is the chief.

The service of the Greek church is too long and complicated to be particularly described in this work; the greater part consists in psalms and hymns. Five orders of priesthood belong to the Greek church; namely, bishops, priests, deacons, sub-deacons, and readers; which last includes singers, &c. The episcopal order is distinguished by the titles of metropolitan, archbishops, and bishops. The head of the Greek church, the patriarch of Constantinople, is elected by twelve bishops, who reside nearest that famous capital. This prelate calls councils by his own authority to govern the church. The other patriarchs are those of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria, all nominated by the patriarch of Constantinople, who enjoys a most extensive jurisdiction. For the administration of ecclesiastical affairs, a synod, convened monthly, is composed of the heads of the church resident in Constantinople. In this assembly, the patriarch of Constantinople presides, with those of Antioch and Jerusalem, and twelve archbishops. In regard to discipline and worship, the Greek church has the same division of the clergy into regular and secular, the same spiritual jurisdiction of bishops and their officials, the same distinction of ranks and offices, with the church of Rome.

The Greek church comprehends a considerable part of Greece, the Grecian isles, Wallachia, Moldavia, Egypt, Abyssinia, Nubia, Lybia, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Cilicia, and Palestine; Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem; the whole of the Russian empire in Europe; great part of Siberia in Asia, Astrachan, Casan, and Georgia.

The Greek Church, like the Roman, soon spread out far beyond the imperial dioceses which at first fixed its boundaries, but,unlike the Roman, it did not keep for Christianity all the lands it had once laid hold of. What Rome Christianized, with the exception of Africa, remained Christian. The old empire was overrun by the barbarians, but the conquered empire imposed its law and its religion upon its conquerors, and pagan and heretic became in the end Catholic Christians. In the East it was otherwise. The empire naintained itself long and died hard; but its decline and fall meant not merely the overthrow of the supremacy of the emperors of the East, it meant also the destruction of civilization and the submergence of Christianity. In the West, German and Saxon, and Goth and Lombard, became Christian law-abiding peoples. In the E⅛st Arab and Kurd, the Seljuk and Ottoman Turk, remained what they were before they swarmed over the Eastern empire, and could never be taught either law or gospel. It is true that the Eastern Church more than made up for her losses by her missionary enterprise, but she never conquered her conquerors, and the historian is too apt to speak of her past glories and forget her present strength. The same reason also makes it difficult to describe, with any accuracy, the extent of the Greek Church She has shifted her position so often that to describe her extent at any one period must be misleading. The church never at any one period occupied all the territories she has possessed.

The patriarchate of Constantinople included the imperial dioceses of Pontus, Asia, Thrace, and Eastern Illyricum— i.e., speaking roughly, the greater part of Asia Minor, European Turkey, and Greece, with a small portion of Austria. The imperial diocese of Pontus was governed by the exarch of Caesarea, who ruled over thirteen metropolitans with more than 100 suffragans; now there are nine metropolitans (Kaisariéh, Nisi, Angouri, Niksar, Amasia, Isinid, Kadi-kiov, Broussa, Iznik), and one archbishopric (Trebizond), but the suffragans seem to have disappeared. Asia was governed by the exarch of Ephesus, who ruled over twelve metropolitans with more than 350 suffragan bishops. Of these there remain Ephesus, with its suffragans Aidene and Chisme, Smyrna, Artaki, Marmora, Allah Shehr, Rhodes, Samos, Khio, Cos, Paronaxia, Santorina, Andro, Milo, Lero, Scarpanto, Sephanto, Imbro, Lemno, Metelini, Molivo, Myra, and Konieh. In Asia Minor the church maintains but a small remnant of her former greatness; in Europe it is otherwise. The old outlines, however, are effaced wherever the Christian races have emancipated themselves from the Turkish rule, and the national churches of Greece, Servia, and Roumania have reorganized themselves on a new basis. Where the Turkish rule still prevails the church retains her old organization, but greatly impaired. The national churches of Russia, Georgia, and Armenia are offshoots from the patriarchate of Constantinople, but quite independent of its jurisdiction.

The patriarchate of Antioch has undergone most changes in extent of jurisdiction, arising from the transfer of sees to Jerusalem, from the progress of the schismatic churches of the East, and from the conquests of the Mahometans. At the height of his power the patriarch of Antioch ruled over 12 metropolitans and 250 suffragan bishops. Tn the time of the first crusade 153 still survived; now there are scarcely 20. Most of those that remain are called either metropolitan or archiépiscopal sees, but they have few or no suffragans. In Syria there are still Antioch, Aleppo, Laodicea, and Arcadia; in Phoenicia, Tyre and Sidon, Beyrout, Tripolis, Emesa, and Heliopolis; in Cilicia, Adana; in Syria, Epiphania; in Isauria, Seleucia; in Cyprus, Famagosta, with Piscopa, Baffo, Neapolis, Limasol, and Nicosia as suffragan sees. Cyprus has been independent of Antioch, however, since the council of Ephesus. Antioch also had jurisdiction beyond the bounds of the empire over Chaldaea and India, and the missionaries of Antioch seem to have preached Christianity in the borders of China. The Chaldaean Church now, however, is almost entirely Nestorian. The Thomas Christians of India do not belong to the Orthodox Greek Church. In Syria the Jacobites are more numerous than the Orthodox; while the Maronites of Lebanon have become subject to Rome.

In the earlier period of the church, ecclesiastical followed civil divisions so closely that Jerusalem, in spite of the sacred associations connected with it, was merely an ordinary bishopric dependent on the metropolitan of Caesarea, Ambitious prelates had from time to time endeavoured to advance the pretensions of their see, but it was not until the council of Chalcedon, in 451, that Jerusalem was made a patriarchate with jurisdiction over Palestine. From this time on to the inroad of the Saracens, the patriarchate of Jerusalem was highly prosperous. It ruled over three metro-> politans with eighty suffragans. The modern patriarch has seven suffragans, all of whom enjoy the titles of metropolitan or archbishop,—Caesarea, Scythopolis (Bethshan), Petra, Ptolemais, Sinai, Nablous, Samaria. The patriarchs, however, are non-resident (they live in Constantinople), and the primate of Palestine is the metropolitan of Caesarea.

The patriarch of Alexandria in ancient times possessed much more power than the others, and the church ruled by him was much more centralized. He had no metropolitans. His hundred suffragans were ordinary bishops. This perhaps in part accounts for the decay of the Orthodox church in Egypt; at present there is no bishop but the patriarch, The Christians in Egypt are for the most part Monophysites. The church of Nubia has been blotted out. The church of Aethiopia or Abyssinia is Monophysite, and acknowledges the Jacobite patriarch of Cairo.

History.— Controversies and Schisms.— To describe the controversies of the Greek Church is to write the history of the church of the first five centuries; in a short sketch like this all that can be done is to mention those causes of division which led (1) to the formation of the schismatic churches of the East, and (2) to the open rupture with Latin Christianity.

The great dogmatic work of the Greek Church was the definition of that portion of the creed of Christendom which concerns theology proper,— the doctrines of the essential nature of the Godhead, and the doctrine of the Godhead in relation with manhood in the incarnation, while it fell to the Latin Church to define anthropology, or the doctrine of man’s nature and needs. The controversies which concern us are all about the person of Christ, the Theanthropos, for they alone are represented in the schismatic churches of the East. These controversies are most easily described, at least for our purpose, by reference to the oecumenical councils Df the ancient and undivided church.

Pise of Sects.— All the churches of the East, schismatic as well as orthodox, accept unreservedly the decrees of the first two councils. The schismatic churches protest against the additions made to the creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople by succeeding councils. The Nicaeo-Constantinopolitan creed declared that Christ was consubstantial (fμοονσιοs) with the Father, and that He had become man (⅛ανθρω7rησας). Disputes arose when theologians tried to explain the latter phrase. These differences took two separate and extreme types, the one of which forcibly separated the two natures so as to deny anything like a real union, while the other insisted upon a mixture of the two, or an absorption of the human in the divine. The former was the creed of Chaldaea and the latter the creed of Egypt; Chaldaea was the home of Nestorianism, Egypt the land of Monophysitism. The Nestorians accept the decisions of the first two councils, and reject the decrees of all the rest as unwarranted alterations of the creed of Nicaea. The Monophysite3 accept the first three councils, but reject the decree of Chalcedon and all that come after it.

The council of Ephesus, the third oecumenical, had insisted upon applying the term Theotokos to the Virgin Mary, and this was repeated in the symbol of Chalcedon, which says that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, “according to the manhood.” The same symbolalso declares that Christ is “to be acknowledged in two natures, . . . indivisibly and inseparably.” Hence the Nestorians, who insisted upon the duality of the natures to such a degree as to lose sight of the unity of the person, and who rejected the term Theotokos, repudiated the decrees both of Ephesus and of Chalcedon, and upon the promulgation of the decrees of Chalcedon formally separated from the church. Nestorianism had sprung from an exaggeration of the theology of the school of Antioch, and the schism weakened that patriarchate and its dependencies. It took root in Chaldaea, and became very powerful. No small part of the literature and science of the Mahometan Arabs came from Nestorian teachers, and Nestorian Christianity spread widely. “It was successfully preached to the Bactrians, th⅛ Huns, the Persians, the Indians, the Persarmenians, the Medes, the Elamites. The barbaric churches from the Gulf of Persia to the Caspian Sea were almost infinite. . . . The Malabar coast and the Isles of the Ocean, Zocotra and Ceylon, were peopled with an increasing number of Christians. The missionaries of Balkh and Samarcand pursued without fear the footsteps of the roving Tartar, and insinuated themselves into the valleys of the Imaus and the banks of the Selinga.” Their principal bishop took the title of patriarch of Babylon. His seat was later removed to Baghdad and then to Mosul; it is now at Julamerik in Kurdistan. In the 11th century he ruled over twenty-five metropolitans, and his jurisdiction extended from the Tigris to China, from Lake Baikal to South India. Persecutions weakened the church, Timur almost extirpated it. In the 16th century a schism occurred; many of the Nestorians yielded obedience to Rome. The Roman Nestorians are usually called Chaldaeans, though all lay claim to the title. At present the patriarch rules over two metropolitans and sixteen suffragan bishops. The Nestorians dwell principally in Kurdistan, though many are found in Mesopotamia and in India. In the latter country they are numerous on the Malabar coast, and are called Thomas Christians.

The council of Chalcedon, the fourth oecumenical, declared that Christis to be acknowledged “in two natures— unconfusedly, unchangeably,” and therefore decided against the opinions of all who either believed that the divinity is the sole nature of Christ, or who, rejecting this, taught only one composite nature of Christ (one nature and one person, instead of two natures and one person). The advocates of the one nature theory were called Monophysites, and they gave rise to numerous sects, and to at least three separate national churches—the Jacobites of Syria, the Copts of Egypt, and the Abyssinian Church.

The term “Jacobite” (from Jacobus Baradaeus, a Syrian theologian) is properly confined to the Syrian Monophysites, but is sometimes used to denote all the various divisions of this heresy, The Jacobites therefore accept the first three councils and reject those that follow. The Armenian Church does the same, and it is common to class the Armenians with the Jacobites, while some theologians have made them more heretical than the Jacobites of Syria and Egypt (Neale, Holy Eastern Church, Patriarchate of Alexandria, pp. 8-10). This, however, seems a wrong opinion, and the Armenians ought to be reckoned as Orthodox (see Armenian Church). Apart, however, from theological criticism, the Jacobites are arranged under three patriarchates—Antioch, Alexandria, and Armenia. Antioch and Alexandria have intercommunion, but Armenia, in spite of times of reconciliation, stands apart. Under the patriarch of Alexandria is the metran or metropolitan of Abyssinia, and under the patriarch of Antioch the maphrian or primate of the East. The Jacobites or Copts of Egypt greatly outnumber the members of the Orthodox Greek Church there. The patriarch assumes jurisdiction over Egypt, Jerusalem, Nubia, Abyssinia, and the Pentapolis. He now resides in Cairo, and is chosen by lot in a council of all the bishops from a number of monks recommended by four convents to whom belongs this privilege. He has for suffragans the bishops of Menouf, Sherkeyeh, Behnese, Fayoum, Miniyeh, Senabau, Manfalout, Siout, Abuteg, Aschumin, Esne, Kauss and Nekada, and Khartoum. He has besides jurisdiction over twenty-six monasteries, and rules nominally over the Church of Abyssinia.

The Syrian Jacobites also form a patriarchate—the patriarchate of Antioch. While Antioch belonged to the empire the persecution of the state drove the Jacobite patriarch from the city. He settled at Amida, now called Caramit, which is still the ecclesiastical centre. The second dignitary is the maphrian (fruitbearer) of the East, who was originally a missionary bishop to the regions east of the Tigris. He is now settled at Mosul. The Syrian Jacobites could at one time boast 20 metropolitans and 103 bishops; now there are only 5 metropolitans (Caramit, Mosul, Maadan, Aleppo, and Jerusalem) without suffragans.

The decisions of Chalcedon, which were the occasion of the formation of all these sects outside, did not put an end to Christological controversy inside the Orthodox Greek Church. The most prominent question which emerged in attempting to define further the person of Christ was whether the will belonged to the nature or the person, or, as it came to be stated, whether Christ had two wills or only one. The church in the sixth oecumenical council at Constantinople declared that Christ had two wills. The Monotheletes refused to submit, and the result was the formation of another schismatic church—the Maronite Church of the Lebanon range. The Maronites, however, in the 12 th century were reconciled to Rome, and cannot now be said to belong to the Greek Church.

Confli t with Rome.— The relation of the Greek Church to the Roman may be described a3 one of growing estrangement from the 5th to the 11th century, and a series of abortive attempts at reconciliation since the latter date. The estrangement and final rupture may be traced to the overweening pretensions of the Roman bishops and to Western innovation in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, accompanied by an alteration of creed. In the early church three bishops stood forth prominently, principally from the political eminence of the cities in which they ruled—the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. The transfer of the seit of empire from Rome to Constantinople gave the bishops of Rome a possible rival in the patriarch of Constantinople, but the absence of an overawing court and meddling statesmen did more than recoup the loss to the head of the Roman Church. The theological calmness of the West, amid the violent theological disputes which troubled the Eastern patriarchates, and the statesmanlike wisdom of Rome’s greater bishops, combined to give a unique position to the pope, which councils in vain strove to shake, and which in time of difficulty the Eastern patriarchs were fain to acknowledge and make use of, however they might protest against it and the conclusions deduced from it But this pre-eminence, or rather the Roman idea of what was involved in it, was never acknowledged in the East; to prese it upon the Eastern patriarchs was to prepare the way for separation, to insist upon it in times of irritation was to cause a schism. The theological genius of the East wa3 different from that of the West. The Greek theology had its roots in Greek philosophy, while a great deal of Western theology was based on Roman law. The Greek fathers succeeded the Sophists, the Latin theologians succeeded the Roman advocates (Stanley’s East. Ch., ch. i.). This gave rise to misunderstandings, and at last led to two widely separate ways of regarding and defining one important doctrine—the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father or from the Father and the Son. Political jealousies and interests intensified the disputes, and at last, after many premonitory symptoms, the final break came in 1054, when Leo. IX. smote Michael Cerularius and the whole of the Eastern Church with an excommunication. There had been mutual excommunications before, but they had not resulted in permanent schisms. “It was scarce two centuries since anathemas had been exchanged between Adrian I. and Photius, between Photius and Nicholas I. The sixth council had formally anathematized Honorius I. by name. There had been great violence of language in the 6th century between Gregory I. and John the Faster, and not many years before that the name of Vigilius had been deliberately erased from every one of the diptychs of the Eastern Church’’ (Ffoulkes’s Christendom's Divisions, i. § 17). Now, however, the separation was final, and the ostensible cause of its finality was the introduction by the Latins of two words filioque into the creed. It is this addition which was and which still remains the permanent cause of separation. Ffoulkes has pointed out in his second volume (ch. 1-3) that there was a resumption of intercourse more than once between Rome and Constantinople after 1054, and that the overbearing character of the Norman crusaders, and finally the horrors of the sack of Constantinople in the fourth crusade, were the real causes of the permanent estrangement. It is undeniable, however, that the filioque question has always come up to bar the way in any subsequent attempts at intercommunion. The theological question involved is a very small one, but it brings out clearly the opposing characteristics of Eastern and Western theology, and so has acquired an importance far beyond its own worth. The question is really one about the relations subsisting between the persons of the Trinity and their hypostatical properties. The Western Church affirms that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from” the Father and from the Son. It believes that the Spirit of the Father must be the Spirit of the Son also. Such a theory seems alone able to satisfy the practical instincts of the West, which did not concern itself with the metaphysical aspect of the Trinity, but with Godhead in its relation to redeemed humanity. The Eastern Church affirms that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father only. The Eastern theologian thinks that the Western double procession degrades the Deity and destroys the perfection of the Trinity. The double procession, in his eyes, means two active principles (αiτιαι) in the Deity, and it means also that there is a confusion between the hypostatical properties; a property possessed by the Father and distinctive of the First Person is attributed also to the Second. This is the theological, and there is conjoined with it an historical and moral dispute. The Greeks allege that the addition of the words filioque was...

For further details see Receplα varia de ρrceρaratiοηe ignis Groeci, Sloane MS. 282; also Arundel MS. 164; Beckmann, Gcsch. der Erfindungen ; Dufresne, Esprit des Croissades, Amsterdam, 1780; Gibbon; Grose, Mil. Antiq.∙, Hoefer, Hist, de la Chimie·, Joinville, Memoirs, 1807; Libri, Hist, des sciences math, en Italie ; Mechanics' Magazine, 18th August 1844; Napoleon III., Études sur . . . . V Artillerie ∙, Poggendorff, Gesch. d. Physik, 1879; Roy. Instit. Quart. Journ., xiv.; Scotfern, Projectile Weapons, 1858; and the writings of the Byzantine historians.