Dominicans most strenuously defended the opinion of their Thomas as being the only true opinion. The Jesuits, although they refused to adopt the sentiments of Molina as their own, yet felt that the reputation and the honour of their order required that Molina should be pronounced free from any gross error and untainted with Pelagianism. For it is common with all the monastic orders to regard any disgrace which threatens or befalls a member of the fraternity, as bringing a stigma upon the whole order, and they will therefore exert themselves to the utmost to screen him from it.' 42. Of the multitude of vain and useless ceremonies with which the Romish public worship abounded, the wisdom of the pontiffs would suffer no diminution; notwithstanding the best men wished to see the primitive simplicity of the church restored. On the other regulations and customs of the people and the priests, some of which were superstitious and others absurd, the bishops assembled at Trent seem to have wished to impose some restrictions; but the state of things, or rather I might say either the policy or the negligence of the Romish court and clergy, opposed their designs. Hence in those countries where nothing is to be feared from the heretics, as in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, such a mass of corrupt superstitions and customs, and of silly regulations, obscures the few and feeble rays of Christian truth yet remaining, that those who pass into them from the more improved countries feel as if they had got into midnight darkness. Nor are the other countries, which from the proximity of the heretics or their own good sense are somewhat more enlightened, free from a considerable share of corruptions and follies. If to these things we add the pious or rather the impious frauds by which the people in many places are deluded with impunity, the extreme ignorance of the mass of the people, the devout farces which are acted, and the insipidity and the puerilities of their public discourses, we must be sensible it is sheer impudence to affirm, that the Romish religion and ecclesiastical discipline have and apparently a candid account of the proceedings in these congregations.-Mur. On this Molinist controversy see Ranke's Popes of Rome, vol. ii. p. 303, &c.; Hallam's Introduction to the Liter. of Europe, vol. ii. p. 105.-R. 2 The French who travel in Italy often laugh heartily at the monstrous superstition of the Italians. And on the other hand, the Italians look upon the French who come among them as destitute of all religion. This may be clearly perceived, among others, from the French Dominican Labat's Travels in Spain and Italy; who neglects no opportunity of satirizing the religion of the Spaniards and Italians, nor does he conceal the fact that he and his countrymen were considered by them as very irreligious. been altogether corrected and reformed since the time of the council of Trent. CHAPTER II. HISTORY OF THE GREEK AND ORIENTAL CHURCH. 1. WHAT is commonly called the Oriental church is dispersed over Europe, Asia, and Africa, and may be distributed into three parts: (I.) That which is in communion with the Greek patriarch of Constantinople, and refuses the jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff: (II.) That which differs in opínions and in customs, both from the Latin and the Greek patriarchs, and has its own peculiar patriarchs: (III.) That which is subject to the authority of the Roman pontiff. 2. The church which is in communion with the Constantinopolitan patriarch is properly called the Greek church, though it calls itself the Oriental church. It is moreover divided into two parts; one of which bows to the sovereign power and jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constantinople, while the other, though it is in communion with him, yet will not admit his legates nor obey his decrees and commands, but is free and independent and has its own rulers who are subject to no foreign jurisdiction. 3. The church of which the Constantinopolitan patriarch is the head is divided, as it was anciently, into four great provinces, those of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem; over each of which is a prelate of the first rank called a patriarch, whom all the inferior bishops as well as the monks honour as a father. Yet the chief of all the patriarchs and the supreme pontiff of the whole church is the patriarch of Constantinople, by whom the other patriarchs at the present day, though still elected, are designated or nominated for election and approved; nor dare they project or attempt anything of great importance without his sanction and permission. These well-disposed men however, though bearing the splendid title of patriarchs, are not able to attempt anything great as things are now situated, on account of the feeble state and the slender revenues of the churches they govern. 4. The jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constantinople extends widely over European and Asiatic Greece, the Grecian Islands, Wallachia, Moldavia, and many other provinces in Asia and Europe now subject to the Turks. The patriarch of Alexandria at present generally resides at Cairo or Misra, and governs the Christian 3 5. The right of electing the patriarch of church in Egypt, Nubia, Libya, and a part | Constantinople belongs at this day to the Of the patriarchate and the patriarchs of Alexandria, the Jesuit Sollerius treats professedly in his Commentarius de Patriarchis Alexandrinis, prefixed to the fifth vol. of the Acta Sanctor. Mensis Junii, and Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, tom. ii. p. 329, &c. Respecting their office, authority, and election, see Renaudot, Diss. de Patriarcha Alexandrino, in the 1st vol. of his Liturgia Orientales, p. 365. The Greek patriarch [of Alexandria] at the present day has no bishops subject to him, but only chorepiscopi. All the bishops are obedient to the Monophysite patriarch who is the real patriarch of Alexandria. [A history of this time has been recently published by the Rev. J. M. Neale, forming the first portion of a more extended work which he entitles, A History of the Holy Eastern Church, Lond. 1847, 2 vols. 8vo. This is a useful work, carefully compiled from the best sources, but sadly disfigured by the Romanizing tendencies of its author, Patriarchate from the Evangelist Mark to the present apparently a minister of the English church.-R. and the religion of the Greeks); the second is of the Syrian Monophysites; the third is of the Maronites. For this last also claims to be the true and legitimate 3 See Blasius Tertius, Siria Sacra, lib. ii. p. 165. patriarch of Antioch.-Schl. Mosheim.-Mur. of their religion the holy Scriptures, toge6. The Greeks acknowledge as the basis ther with the first six general or oecumenical councils. Yet it is a received principle established by long usage, that no private ten in der Türckey, chap. iii. sec. vi. p. 54, &c.; Le See Elsner's Beschreibung der Griechischen Chris Quien, Oriens Christianus, tom. 1. p. 145, &c. 5 William Cupor, a Jesuit, not long since composed Historia Patriarcharum Constantinopolitanorum, which p. 1-257. Le Quien also in the whole first volume of is printed in the Acta Sanctor. Mensis Augusti, tom. i. his Oriens Christianus, treats very fully of the patriarchate and the patriarchs of Constantinople; and in vol. iii. p. 786, &c. he gives an account of the Latin patriarchs of Constantinople. [In the Turco-Græcia of Crusius, vol. ii. p. 105, &c. there is a history of the Constantinopolitan patriarchs from the year 1454 to 1578, written in modern Greek by Manuel Malaxi, with a translation and notes by Crusius. Schl. [See also a brief account of the power and revenues of the present patriarch, and of the names of the several sees under his spiritual jurisdiction, in Smith, De Ecclesiæ Græcæ Hodierno Statu, p. 48-59.-Macl. 7. This the Catholics have often experienced; and the Lutherans also found it so in this century, when they invited the Greeks to a religious union with them. First, Philip Melancthon sent a copy of the Augsburg Confession in a Greek translation by Paul Dolscius, accompanied with a letter to the Constantinopolitan patriarch, hoping that the naked and simple truth would find access to his heart. But he did not even obtain an answer. After this, between the years 1576 and 1581, the divines of Tubingen laboured to make impressions on the Greek patriarch Jeremiah II. both by letters and by sending him a second copy of the Augsburg Confession, together with Heerbrand's Compendium of Theology, translated from Latin into Greek by Martin Crusius. This attempt drew from Jeremiah person may presume to expound and interpret those sources of knowledge for himself, but all must regard as divine and unalterable whatever the patriarch and his assistants sanction. The substance of the religion professed by the modern Greeks is contained in the Orthodox Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Oriental Church, which was first composed by Peter Mogilaus, bishop of Kiow, in a council held at Kiow, and was afterwards translated from Russian into Greek, and then publicly approved and adopted by Parthenius the patriarch of Constantinople, and by all the patriarchs in the year 1643; and subse quently Panagiota, an opulent man and interpreter to the emperor of Turkey, caused it to be printed at his own expense in Greek and Latin, with a long recommendation by Nectarius patriarch of Jerusalem, some letters, written indeed in a kind and and gratuitously distributed among the Greeks. From this book it is manifest that the Greeks differ as much from the adherents to the Roman pontiff, whose tenets they often reject and condemn, as from other Christians; so that those are greatly deceived who think there are only slight impediments to a union of the Greeks with either the Romish or other Christians.2 1 Lawrence Normann caused this confession, accompanied with a Latin translation, to be printed at Leipsic, 1695, 8vo. In the preface, Nectarius is represented as its author. But this is refuted by Nectarius himself in his epistle subjoined to the preface. Equally false is the statement, both on the title-page and in the preface, that the book was now printed for the first time. For it had been previously printed in Holland in the year 1662, at the expense of Panagiota. A German translation of it was published by Frisch, Frankf. and Leipsic, 1727, 4to. Köcher treats directly and learnedly of this Confession in his Biblioth. Theologia Symbol. p. 45, &c. and also speaks with his usual accuracy of the other Confessions of the Grecks, ibid. p. 53. A new edition of the Orthodox Confession, with its history prefixed, was published by Hoffmann, primary professor of theology at Wittemberg, Breslaw, 1751, 8vo. Of Panagiota, to whom this confession is indebted for much of its credit, and who was a man of eminence and a great benefactor to the Greeks, Cantimir treats largely in his Histoire de l'Empire Ottoman, tome iii. p. 149, &c. [This Confession may also be found, in Greek and Latin, in Kimmel's Libri Symbolici Ecclesia Orientalis, Jena, 1843, p. 45-324. This compilation contains four pieces-namely, the Confession of Gennadius, that of Cyril Lucar, the Confession referred to in the text, and that of the Greek Synod at Jerusalem under Dositheus in 1672; not one of which can be truly called a symbolical book, that is, one approved and sanctioned by the Greek church. The editor acknowledges this fact in the very first sentence of his Prolegomena: "Non quidem ignoro, in Græca ecclesia libros symbolicos fuisse nullos, si eorum naturam et rationem ita circumscribimus ac definimus, quemadmodum ex nos træ potissimum ecclesime consuetudine soliti sumus."Yet though not strictly authoritative, these confessions are generally appealed to as satisfactory exponents of the faith of the Greek church.-R. A full and accurate catalogue of the writers from whom may be derived a knowledge both of the state and the doctrines of the Greek church is given by Fabricius, Bibliotheca Græca, vol. x. p: 441, &c. [To this list may now be added archbishop Platon's Present State of the Greek Church in Russia, or a Summary of Christian Divinity, &c. translated by Robt. Pinkerton, I gentlemanly style, yet of such a tenor as clearly indicated that to induce the Greeks to abandon the opinions and practices of their ancestors would be a very difficult thing, and could not be effected by human efforts in the present state of that people." with a preliminary memoir on the ecclesiastical estadissenters, Edin. 1814.-Mur. [Later intelligence, particularly on the state of the church in Greece, may be seen in Dean Waddington's Present Condition and Prospects of the Greek or Oriental Church, Lond. 1829.-R. blishment in Russia, and an Appendix on Russian 3 See Leo Allatius, De Perpetua Consensione Ecclesia Orient. et Occident. lib. iii. cap. viii. sec. ii. p. 1005, &c. [Joseph, the patriarch of Constantinople, sent a deacon of his church named Demetrius to Wittemberg, to procure correct information respecting the Reformation of which he had heard reports. Demetrius, after half a year's residence at Wittemberg, returned to Constantinople in the year 1559; and by him it was that Melancthon sent the confession and letter to the patriarch. The letter may be seen in Hottinger's Historia Eccles. [Pars v. seu] sæcul. xvi. sec. ii. p. 51; and in Crusius, Turco-Græcia, p. 557. See also Salig's Gesch. der Augsb. Confess. vol. i. p. 721, 723.-Schl. 4 All the Acts and papers relating to this celebrated correspondence were published in one volume, fol. Wittemb. 1584. See Pfaff's tract, De Actis et Scriptis Publicis Ecclesia Wittemberg. p. 50, &c.; Fabricius, Biblioth. Graca, vol. x. p. 517, &c. and others; Schelstrate, Acta Eccles. Orientalis contra Lutheri Hæresin, Rome, 1739, fol. Lami also has much to say on this subject while treating of the Greek patriarch Jeremiah II. in his Delicia Eruditorum, tom. viii. p. 176, &c.— [This correspondence with the patriarch was much facilitated by Stephen Gerlach, chaplain to David Ungnad, the imperial German ambassador at Constantinople. Its commencement however was not in 1576, but two years earlier. Indeed some private letters were sent as early as the year 1573; for in that year Crusius wrote to Jeremiah by Gerlach, who also carried a letter of introduction to the patriarch, dated April, 1573. The public or official correspondence was commenced by Ja. Andreas, chancellor of the university of Tübingen, in a letter to the patriarch, dated Sept. 15th, 1574. The patriarch expressly declared his agreement with many articles in the Augsburg Confession, but he also declared his dissent from many others; for example, in regard to the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son, justification, the worship of images, the number of the sacraments, &c. and he broke off the correspondence when the divines of Tübingen began to adduce Scriptural proofs respecting the disputed articles. See Schlegel's note here, and Schroeckh's Kirchengeschichte seit der Reform. vol. v. p. 386, &c.-Mur. 8. Ever since the greatest part of the Greeks fell under the hard bondage of the Turks, nearly all learning human and divino has become extinct among them. They are destitute of schools, and of all the means by which their minds might be improved and enlightened with scientific and religious knowledge. That moderate degree of learning which some of their teachers possess is either brought home with them from Sicily and Italy, to which they frequently resort and where some love of learning still exists, or it is drawn from the writings of the ancients and from the Summa Theologia of St. Thomas [Aquinas] which they have in a Greek translation. Hence not only the people, but also those called their watchmen, for the most part lead licentious and irreligious lives; and what is much to be deplored, they increase their wretchedness by their own contentions and quarrels. Nearly the whole of their religion consists in ceremonies, which are in general useless and irrational. Yet in guarding and maintaining these they are far more zealous than in defending the doctrines which they profess. Their condition however would be still more wretched, if individuals of their nation, who are employed in the emperor's court either as interpreters or as physicians, did not check their contentions and still the impending storms by their wealth and their influence. 1 Such is the opinion of all European Christians, both Catholics and others, respecting the knowledge and learning of the modern Greeks; and they support their opinion by the evidence of numerous facts and testimonies. But a number of the Greeks most strenuously repel the charge of ignorance and bar barism brought against their nation, and maintain that all branches of literature and learning are equally flourishing in modern as they were in ancient Greece. The most distinguished of these vindicators of the modern Greeks is Demetrius Cantimir, in his Histoire de l'Empire Ottoman, tome ii. p. 38, &c. To prove that it is a gross mistake to represent modern Greece as the seat of barbarism, he gives a catalogue of learned Greeks in the preceding century; and states that an academy had been founded at Constantinople by a Greek named Monolax, in which persons very learned in the ancient Greek teach with success and applauso all branches of philosophy, as well as the other arts and sciences. These things are undoubtedly true; but they only show that in this very widelyextended nation, and which embraces many ancient, noble, and opulent families, there is not an entire destitution of literary and scientific men. And this fact was never called in question; but it does not prove that the nation at large is rich in the liberal arts, and in secular and religious learning. For a people generally barbarous may still contain a small number of learned men. Moveover, this academy at Constantinople is unquestionably a recent institution, and therefore it confirms rather than confutes the opinion of the other Christians respecting the learning of the Greeks. [What is said above of the want of schools among the Greeks must undoubtedly be understood of colleges and higher schools, and not of the inferior and monastic schools. For that the Greeks of the sixteenth century had schools of the latter description, is clearly to be seen from Crusius' Turco- Gracia.Schl. 9. The Russians, the Georgians or Iberians, and the Colchians or Mingrelians, all embrace the doctrines and rites of the Greeks, yet are independent or not subject to the authority of the patriarch of Constantinople. The Russians indeed formerly received their chief prelate at the hand of the Constantinopolitan patriarch. But towards the close of this century, when the Constantinopolitan patriarch Jeremiah II. made a journey to Muscovy, in order to raise money there with which he might drive Metrophanes, his rival, from the see of Constantinople, the Muscovite monks, by direction undoubtedly of the grand-duke Theodore, son of John Basilides, beset him with entreaties and menaces to place over the whole Russian nation a patriarch, who should be independent or duronépanos as the Greeks express it. Jeremiah was obliged to consent; and in a council assembled at Moscow in the year 1589, he proclaimed Job, the archbishop of Rostow, first patriarch of the Russians; yet under these conditions, that in future every new patriarch should apply to the patriarch of Constantinople for his consent and suffrage, and at stated periods should pay to him five hundred Russian ducats. The transactions of the council of Moscow were afterwards, in the year 1593, confirmed in a council at Constantinople called by the same Jeremiah with the consent of the Turkish emperor.2 And a little past the middle of the next century, Dionysius being patriarch of Constantinople, all the four Oriental patriarchs again conceded to the grand-duke of Muscovy, that the patriarch of Moscow should be exonerated from the tribute, and from applying for the confirmation of his election and consecration.3 10. The Georgians and Mingrelians, or as they were anciently called, the Iberians and Colchians, are so fallen since the Mohammedans obtained dominion over those countries, that they can scarcely be numbered among the Christian nations. This is more true however of the Colchians, 2 See Possevin's Moscovia, near the beginning; Le Quien's Oriens Christianus, tom. i. p. 1292; and the Narrative of this transaction by the patriarch Jeremiah II. himself, published in the Catalogus Codic. MSS. Biblioth. Taurinensis, p. 433-469. 3 Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, tom. i. p. 155, &c.; Bergius, De Ecclesia Moscovitica, par. i. sec. i. cap. xviii. p. 164, &c. [For an account of the Russian Greek Church, see Mouravieff's History of the Church of Russia, translated from the Russian by the Rev. R. W. Blackmore, Oxford, 1842. This work contains an account of the introduction of the gospel into this vast empire, and brings the history down to the institution of the Synod as the supreme governing body of the church in lieu of the Patriarch, which took place in the year 1721.-R. 4 who inhabit the woods and the mountains | Monophysites are again divided into those almost in the manner of wild beasts, than of Asia and those of Africa. The head of it is of the Iberians, among whom there the Asiatic Monophysites is the patriarch are some slight remains of civilization and of Antioch, who resides generally in the piety. These nations have a patriarch monastery of St. Ananias, now called the whom they style a Catholicus, and also Zapharanensian monastery, not far from the bishops and priests; but these are ex- city of Marde; but sometimes at Amida, tremely ignorant, vicious, sordid, and Marde (which is properly his episcopal seat), worse almost than the common people, and Aleppo, or other cities in Syria. As he as they know not themselves what is to be cannot alone govern conveniently this very believed, they never think of instructing extensive community over which he presides, others. Hence it is rather to be conjec- he has an associate in the government to tured than positively known, that the whose care are entrusted the eastern churches Colchians and Iberians at the present day situated beyond the Tigris. This assistant is do not embrace either the sentiments of called the Maphrian or primate of the East; the Monophysites or of the Nestorians, and he formerly resided at Tagrit on the borbut rather hold the same doctrines with ders of Armenia, but now resides in the mothe Greeks. What little religion remains nastery of St. Matthew, near Mosul in Mesoamong them consists wholly in their feast-potamia. At this day all patriarchs of the days and their ceremonies; and even these Monophysites assume the name of Ignatius. are destitute of all gravity and decorum, 12. The African Monophysites are subso that it is hard to say whether their priests appear most solemn when eating and drinking and sleeping, or when administering baptism and the Lord's supper.' 11. The Christians of the East, who have renounced the communion of the Greeks and who differ from them both in doctrine and in rites, are of two kinds. The one contend that in our most holy Saviour there is but one nature, the other conceive that there are two persons in him. The former are called Monophysites and also Jacobites from Jacobus Baradæus, who resuscitated and regulated this sect in the sixth century when it was nearly extinct.2 The latter are called Nestorians, because they agree in sentiment with Nestorius, and also Chaldeans, from the country in which they principally reside. The See Galanus, Conciliatio Ecclesia Armenæ cum Romana, tom. i. p. 156, &c.; Chardin, Voyages en Perse et autres lieux de l'Orient, tome i. p. 67, &c. containing Zampi's Relation de la Colchide et Mingrellie. Add Archangel Lambert's Relation de la Colchide ou Mingrellie, which is in the Recueil des Voyages au Nord, tome vii. p. 160; Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, tom. i. p. 1333, 1339, &c. Yet consult also Simon's Histoire Critique des Dogmes et Cérémonies des Chrétiens Orientaux, chap. v. vi. p. 71, &c. who endeavours [and not unsuccessfully-Mur] to wipe off some of the infamy cast upon the Georgians and Mingrelians. The Catholici of Georgia and Mingrelia are at this day άuTоKépaλo or independent; yet they pay tribute to the patriarch of Constantinople. [Their priests read the whole baptismal service through, and then apply the water without repeating the words requisite. They consecrate the eucharist in wooden chalices, care not if crumbs fall on the ground, put the host into leather bags and tie them to their girdles, send it by laymen to the sick, and do not accompany it with wax candles, processions, &c. Such are the indecorums complained of by the popish writers.-Mur. 2 We commonly use the name Jacobites in a broad sense as including all the Monophysites except the Armenians; but it properly belongs only to those Asiatic Monophysites of whom Jacobus Baradæus was the head and father. See Simon's Histoire des Chrétiens Orientaur, chap. ix. p. 118, whose narrative however needs many corrections. ject to the patriarch of Alexandria, who commonly resides at Cairo, and are divisible into the Copts and the Abyssinians. The Copts are those Christians who inhabit Egypt, Nubia, and the adjacent regions. Being oppressed by the power and the insatiable avarice of the Turks, they have to contend with extreme poverty, and have not the means of supporting their patriarch and bishops; yet these obtain a scanty living from such Copts as are taken into the families of the principal men among the Mohammedans, on account of their skill in domestic affairs and other useful arts, of which the Turks are ignorant." The Abyssinians, though far superior to the Copts in numbers, power, and worldly circumstances, since their emperor is himself a Christian, yet reverence the patriarch of Alexandria as their spiritual father, and do not create their own chief bishop, but always allow a primate, styled by them Abuna, to be placed over them by the Alexandrine patriarch." 3 See Asseman's Dissertatio de Monophysitis, sec. viii. &c. in the second volume of his Bibliotheca Oriental. Vaticana; Nairon's Euoplia Fidei Catholicæ ex Syrorum Monumentis, par. i. p. 40, &c.; Le Quien's Oriens Christianus, tom. ii. p. 1343, &c. 4 Asseman's Diss. de Monophysitis, sec. viii. &c. 5 Renaudot published at Paris, 1713, in 4to, his very learned Historia Alexandrinorum Patriarcharum Jacobitarum. He also published Officium Ordinationis hujus Patriarchæ, with notes, in his Liturgia Oriental. tom. i. p. 467. The state and internal condition of the Alexandrine or Coptic church are described by Vansleb, in his Histoire de l'Eglise d' Alexandrie, que nous appellons celle des Jacobites-Coptes, Paris, 1667, 8vo. Add his Relation d'un Voyage en Egypte, p. 293, &c. where he treats expressly of the monks and monasteries of the Copts. Nouveaux Mémoires des Missions de la Compagnie de Jesus dans le Levant, tome ii. p. 9, &c. tome v. p. 122; Maillet's Description de l'Egypte, tome ii. p. 64, &c. 6 See Ludolf's Comment. in Historiam Ethiopicam, p. 451, 461, 466; Lobo's Voyage d' Abissinie, tome ii. p. 36; Nouveaux Mémoires des Missions dans le Levant, |