EASTERN CHURCH.
I. Names, Extent and Branches.
II. History.
General Characterisation (§ 1).
Three Periods (§ 2).
Intolerance and Persecution (§ 3).
The Schism between East and West (§ 4).
Points of Difference (§ 5).
Relations to Protestant Churches (§ 6).
III. Doctrine, Polity, and Liturgy, CreedCreed (§ 1).
Theology (§ 2).
Government (§ 3).
Worship and Ritual (§ 4).
Liturgy of the Lord's Supper (§ 5).
Saints, Relics and Images. Language of Worship (§ 6).
Monks and Clergy (§ 7).
Religious Life (§ 8).
The Greek Canon (§ 9).
Missions (§ 10).
IV. The Eastern Church in America.
I. Names, Extent, and Branches: Various names are used to designate the great division of Christendom which is considered in this article. The full official title is "the Holy Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Eastern Church"
The Roman Church claims all these titles, except "Oriental," for which it substitutes "Roman," and claims them exclusively. The name "Eastern (or Oriental) Church" designates its origin and geographical territory. The "Orthodox Church" expresses its close adherence to the ecumenical system of doctrine and discipline as settled by the seven ecumenical councils before the separation from the Western or Latin Church. On this title the chief stress is laid, and it is celebrated on a special day called "Orthodoxy Sunday," in the beginning of Lent, when a dramatic representation of the old ecumenical councils is given in the churches, and anathemas are pronounced on all heresies. The common designation "Greek Church" is not strictly correct, but indicates the national origin of the church and the language in which most of its creeds, liturgies, canons, and theological and ascetic literature are composed, and its worship mainly conducted.
The Eastern Church embraces the Greek, and the Russian and other Slavonic nationalities. It has its seat in Eastern Europe--chiefly in Turkey, Servia, Rumania, Greece, Russia, and some parts of Austria--and in Western Asia. Bulgaria was long a bone of contention between Constantinople and Rome and one of the causes of separation, but is now an independent branch of the "Orthodox" Church, ruled by an exarch (see BULGARIA; BULGARIANS, CONVERSION OF THE). In Western Europe and America there are congregations of merchants and immigrants or connected with embassies (for America, see below, IV.). The total number of adherents of the Eastern Church is about 100,000,000, of whom 85,000,000 belong to the Russian Church. The Eastern Church thus ranks third among the three great divisions of Christendom, the Roman Catholic Church being credited with 230,000,000 adherents, and the Protestant Churches with 140,000,000.
The Eastern Church is divided into at least fifteen branches or parts, each independent of the other. The first rank is held by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople (see CONSTANTINOPLE; PATRIARCH). Then follow (2) Alexandria (see ALEXANDRIA, PATRIARCHATE OF); (3) Antioch; (4) Jerusalem (see JERUSALEM, PATRIARCHATE OF); (5) Cyprus (which was recognized as a bishopric by the Council of Ephesus in 431 and includes 160,000 Greek Catholics), (6) Russia (q.v.), (7) Karlowitz (the metropolitan see of the Hungarian Servians); (8) Montenegro (q.v.), (9) the archbishopric of Sinai (independent since 1782); (10) Greece (independent of Constantinople since 1852; see GREECE); (11) the metropolitan see of Hermannstadt (for the Rumanians in Hungary); (12) the exarchate of Bulgaria (since 1870; see BULGARIA) (13) the metropolitan see of Czernowitz (for Buk wins and Dalmatia, including the Ruthenian an other Cisleithanians); (14) Servia (since 1879; SERVIA); (15) Rumania (since 1885; see RUMANIA). The Georgian Church has been absorbed by the Russian. The Church of Bosnia and Herzegovi (q.v.), with three independent metropolitans, has loose relation to the ecumenical patriarch. Constantinople, the city of the first Christian emperor is still the natural center of the whole Eastern Church and may again become, in Christian hands for the Eastern world what Gregory Nazianzen described it to be in the fourth century, "the eye of the world, the strongest by sea and land, the bond of union between East and West, to whit the most distant extremes from all sides come together, and to which they look up as to a common center and emporium of the faith."
II. History:
1. General Characterization. The Eastern Church has no continuous history like the Roman Catholic and the Protestant. It has long periods of monotony and stagnation, and is isolated from the main current of progressive Christendom. Yet the Church represents the oldest tradition in Christendom, and for several centuries was the chief bearer of our religion. It still occupies the sacred territory of primitive Christianity, and claims most of the Apostolic sees, as Jerusalem, Antioch, and the churches founded by Paul and John in Asia Minor and Greece. All the Apostles, with the exception of Peter and Paul, labored and died in th East. From the old Greeks the Church inherited; the language and certain national traits of character, while it incorporated also much of Jewish and Oriental piety. It produced the first Christian literature, apologies of the Christian faith, refutations of heresies, commentaries on the Bible, sermons, homilies, and ascetic treatises. The great majority of the early Fathers, and at least some of the Apostles, used the Greek language. Polycarp, Ignatius, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Cyril of Alexandria, the first Christian emperors beginning with Constantine the Great, together with a host of martyrs and confessors, belong to the Greek communion. It elaborated the ecumenical dogmas of the Trinity and Christology, and ruled the first seven ecumenical councils, which were all held in Constantinople or its immediate neighborhood (Nicæa, Chalcedon, Ephesus). The palmy period of the Eastern Church during the first five centuries Will ever claim the grateful respect of the whole Christian world; and its great teachers still live in their writings far beyond the confines, nay, even more outside of its communion, as the books of Moses and the Prophets are more studied and better understood among Christians than among Jews, for whom they wrote. But the Church has never materially progressed beyond the standpoint occupied in the fifth and sixth centuries. It has no proper middle age, and no Reformation, like Western Christendom. It influences the Churches of the West to-day chiefly through the Nicene and other creeds, its hymns made known by J. M. Neale and others, and the writings and examples of its great theologians, preachers, commentators, and historic of the first five centuries.
2. Three Periods. Three periods may be distinguished in the history of the Eastern Church: (1) The Classical or Productive period, the first five or six centuries, has just been characterized. The last great theologian of the East is John of Damascus (d. before 754), who summed up the scattered results of the labors of the preceding Fathers into a tolerably complete system of theology; but he is an isolated phenomenon. The process of degeneracy and stagnation had already set in; and the former life and vigor gave way to idle speculations, distracting controversies, dead formalism, and traditionalism. (2) The Byzantine period, corresponding to the Middle Ages of the Latin Church, extends from the rise of Mohammedanism to the fall of Constantinople (650-1453). Here are found the gradual separation from the West and from all progressive movements; dependence on the imperial court at Constantinople; continuation of a certain literary activity; philological and Biblical studies in slavish dependence on the Fathers; commentaries of Œcumenius (c. 990), Theophylact (d. after 1107), Euthymius Zigabenus (d. after 1118); large literary collections, classical and Christian, of Photius (c. 890), Balsamon, Zonaras, Suidas, and Simeon Metaphrastes; the liturgical works of Maximus, Sophronius, Simeon of Thessalonica; the Byzantine historians; the iconoclastic controversy (726-842; see IMAGES AND IMAGE WORSHIP, II); inroads and conquests of Mohammedanism (from 630) in Syria, Persia, Egypt, North Africa; temporary suspension of the patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem; finally, the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, and the extinction of the Greek Empire (1453), which led to the immigration of Greek scholars (Chalcondylas, Chrysoloras, Gemistos Plethen, Michael Apostolius, Theodore Gaza, George of Trebizond, and others) to the West, the revival of letters, the study of the Greek Testament, and prepared the way for the Reformation. During this period of decline in its original home, the Greek Church made a great conquest in the conversion of the Slavonians (the Bulgarians and Russians) in the ninth and tenth centuries, while the Latin Church was converting the Celtic and Teutonic races. (3) The Modern period may be dated from the downfall of the Greek Empire (1453). It presents in Asia stagnation and slavery under the rule of the Turks but great tenacity and independence as to all internal affairs; in Europe, rapid external growth through the rising power of Russia, with some reforms in manners and customs and the introduction of Western culture, protests against Romanizing and evangelical movements, the orthodox confession of Petrus Mogilas (1642), the Synod of Jerusalem (1672), the Russian Church, the patriarchate of Moscow, the reforms of Patriarch Nikon (d. 1681) and of the Czar Peter the Great (d. 1725), the reaction of the Old Believers (Raskolniki), the Holy Synod of St. Petersburg (since 1721), the New Greek Church in Hellas (since 1833), with prospects for the future, depending chiefly on Russia.
3. Intolerance and Persecution. In the history of the Eastern Church there have been no organized bloody tribunals of orthodoxy like the Spanish Inquisition, no systematic and long-continued persecutions like the crusades against the Waldenses, Albigenses, and Huguenots, and no massacre of St. Bartholomew. But the Greek Church of old mercilessly expelled and exiled Arian, Nestorian, Eutychian, and other heretics, and persecuted the Paulicians (835). For centuries none of the Oriental Churches except the Russian has been in a position to exercise jurisdiction over heretics and dissenters, being themselves only tolerated by the Turkish or Egyptian governments. Modern Russia has enforced severe measures against the Stundists and other dissenting bodies and has withheld from Lutherans in the Baltic provinces certain privileges (such as exemption from military service) sacredly promised by the Czar. Secession from the national orthodox Church is rigidly prohibited. No one can be converted in Russia from one religion or sect to another, except to the national orthodox Church; and all the children of mixed marriages, where one parent belongs to it must be baptized and educated in it. The spirit of fanatical intolerance has manifested itself recently in the atrocious persecution of the Jews as it did earlier in 1881; but it would be unfair to hold the Eastern Church responsible for these excesses.
4. The Schism between East and West. No two Churches are so much alike in their creed, polity and cultus, as the Greek and Roman; and yet no two are such irreconcilable rivals, perhaps for the very reason of their affinity. They agree much more than either agrees with any Protestant Church. They were never organically united. They differed from the beginning in nationality, language, and genius, as the ancient Greeks differed from the Romans; yet they grew up together, and stood shoulder to shoulder in the ancient conflict with paganism and heresy. They cooperated in the early ecumenical councils, and adopted their doctrinal and ritual decisions. But the removal of the seat of empire from Rome to Constantinople by Diocletian and Constantine, the development of the papal monarchy in the West, and the establishment of a Western empire in connection with it, laid the foundation of a schism which has never been healed. The controversy culminated in the rivalry between the patriarch of Constantinople and the pope of Rome. The bishop of Constantinople was recognized by the Council of Constantinople in 381 and a place was given him by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 "next after" the bishop of Rome. Leo I. (440-461) protested against the growing assumption of power by the Constantinopolitan bishop, who as early as 500 used the title "ecumenical patriarch." From 484 to 519 the relations between the two bishops were much strained over the Henoticon of Zeno, which sought to soften the Caledonian Christological formula (see MONOPHYSITES). The controversy over their relative authority reached an acute stage under Photius and Nicholas I. (qq.v.) who each excommunicated the other (869 and 879). When Ignatius was deposed from the patriarchate of Constantinople and the layman Photius put in his place (857), the latter appealed to Rome for a decision against the Ignatian party. Nicholas sent a commission to investigate and refused to recognize Photius, who then retorted in a famous encyclical letter charging the Roman Church with heresy for the unauthorized insertion of the filioque into the Nicene Creed (see FILIOQUE CONTROVERSY) and with various corrupt practises. In 1054 the controversy was renewed under the patriarch Michael Cærularius (q.v.), whom Pope Leο IX. excommunicated as guilty of nine heresies, and it became irreparable through the Venetian conquest of Constantinople (1204) and the establishment of a Latin empire there (1204-61), a Latin patriarch of Constantinople and rival Latin bishops in other Eastern sees by Innocent III. and other popes. Vain attempts at reunion were made from time to time, especially at Lyons (1274) and Florence (1439). The latter was attended by the patriarch and the Byzantine emperor, but its compromise formula was rejected in the East as treason to the orthodox faith (see FERRARA-FLORENCE, CΟUNCIL. OF). With the fall of Constantinople (1453) the political motive for seeking a union with the West ceased. In 1870 the Vatican Council intensified the chief cause of separation by declaring papal absolutism and papal infallibility an article of faith. Leo XIII in the bull Præclara gratulationis of June 20, 1894, directed " to all princes and peoples," expressed the hope of a reunion of Christendom (cf. A. Harnack, Reden und Aufsätze, ii., Giessen, 1906, 295 sqq.). The patriarch Anthimos II. replied, Oct. 11, 1895, charging the Roman Church with innovations, such as the filioque, the doctrines of the immaculate conception and papal infallibility, baptism by sprinkling, purgatory, etc.
5. Points of Difference. The points in which the Greek Church differs from the Roman are the following: the single procession of the Holy Sprit (against the filioque), which is as far as the Council of Constantinople in 381 went; the equality of the five patriarchs, and the rejection of the papacy as an antichristian innovation and usurpation; the right of the lower clergy (priests and deacons) tomarry (though only once); communion in both kinds; trine immersion the only valid form of baptism; the use of the vernacular languages in worship; a number of minor ceremonies, as the use of common or leavened bread in the Eucharist, infant communion, the repetition of holy unction in sickness, etc.
6. Relations to Protestant Churches. On the fruitless negotiations for union between the Lutheran and the Greek Church, and the Anglican and the Greek and Russian Churches, cf. Schaff, Creeds, i. 50 sqq. and 74 sqq. The Reformation of the sixteenth century had no effect upon the Oriental Church. The reform movement of Cyril Lucar (q.v.) who, as patriarch of Constantinople, attempted to ingraft Calvinism upon the old trunk, failed completely: he was strangled to death, and his body thrown into the Bosphorus (1638); and his doctrines were condemned by synods in 1638, 1643, and 1672 (cf. Schaff, Creeds, i. 54 sqq.). In recent times, however, German universities are often frequented by Russian and Greek students; and the works of German scholars have exerted some modifying influence. The Old Catholic movement was followed with interest; and the Old Catholic conferences in Bonn (1874 and 1875) were attended by several dignitaries from Greece and Russia. There has been also considerable intercourse between Greek and Anglican bishops. The Greek Church is not so strongly committed against Protestantism as the Roman, and may therefore learn something from it. [Yet converts to Protestantism from the Roman Catholic Church have been far more numerous than from the Greek Church, and the thought of Roman Catholicism has been influenced by Protestantism far more than the thought of Greek Catholicism.
A. H. N.]
III. Doctrine, Polity, and Liturgy:
1. Creed. The Eastern Church holds fast to the decrees and canons of the seven ecumenical councils (see COUNCILS AND SYNODS, § 3). Its proper creed is that adopted at Nicæa in 325, enlarged at Constantinople 381, and indorsed at Chalcedon 451, without the Latin filioque (see CONSTANTINOPOLITAN CREED).This creed is the basis of all Greek catechisms and systems of theology, and a regular part of worship. The Greeks have never acknowledged in form the Apostles' Creed, which is of Western origin, nor the Athanasian Creed, which teaches the double procession, and is likewise of Western origin. Besides this ecumenical creed, the Eastern Church acknowledges three subordinate confessions, which define her position against Romanism and Protestantism, namely: (1) The "Orthodox Confession" of Petrus Mogilas (q.v.), metropolitan of Kief (1643), a catechetical exposition of the Nicene Creed, the Lord's Prayer and the beatitudes, and the decalogue; (2) the "Confession of Dositheos or Eighteen Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem" (1672); and (3) the "Longer Catechism" of Philaret, metropolitan of Moscow, adopted by the Holy Synod of St. Petersburg in 1839 and published in all the languages of Russia. (For text of these creeds and confessions, cf. Schaff, Creeds, ii. 273-542; and J. Michalceseu, see bibliography below.) [Mention should also be made of the work of Gennadius II. of Constantinople and of Metrophanes Kritopulus (qq.v.), the former of whom wrote a brief document in twenty articles, and the latter a confession in twenty-three chapters (given in full by Michalcescu).
A. H. N.]
2. Theology. The doctrinal system of the Eastern Church is, upon the whole, more simple and less developed than that of the Roman, though in some respects more subtle and metaphysical. The only serious doctrinal difference is that on the procession of the Holy Sprit (see FILIOQUE CONTROVERSY). The Greek Church holds to the leading principles, but rejects many of the consequences or results of Roman Catholicism. It adheres to the theologyof the Greek Fathers down to John of Damascus, and ignores the succeeding scholastic theology of the schoolmen, who completed the Roman system. The Eastern theology remains rigidly in the fragmentary state of the old councils. The resistance to the Western filioque implied a protest against further progress both in truth and in error, and meant stagnation, as well as faithful adherence to the venerable Nicene symbol. The Greek theology is most full on the doctrine of God and of Christ, but very defective on the doctrine of man and the order of salvation. The East went into all sorts of theological and Christological subtleties, especially during the long and tedious Monophysite controversies, which found little or no response in the West; but it ignored the Pelagian controversies, the development of the Augustinan and later evangelical theology. It took the most intense interest in the difference between ousia and hypostasis, the homoousion and homoiousion, the relations of the persons in the Trinity, the agennēsia of the Father, the eternal gennēsia of the Son, the eternal ekporeusis or "procession" of the Spirit, the perichōrēsis, the relation of the two natures in Christ, the Nestorian, Eutychian, Monophysite, and Monothelite heresies, but was never seriously troubled with questions about predestination, vicarious atonement, justification and imputation, conversion and regeneration, faith and good works, merit and demerit, vital union with Christ, and cognate doctrines, which absorbed the attention of Western Christendom. The cause for this difference must be sought in the prevailing metaphysical, rhetorical, and objective character of the Eastern Church, --inherited partly from Asia, partly from Greece--as distinct from the practical, logical, and subjective tendency of the Western Churches, which is derived from the Roman and the Teutonic nationalities. The difference is illustrated as early as the Nicene Creed, with its metaphysical terms about the Son, as compared with the more simple and popular Apostles' Creed, which originated in the West, and is very little used in the East.
3. Government. The Greek Church is a patriarchal oligarchy, in distinction from the papal monarchy. The episcopal hierarchy is retained, the papacy rejected. Centralization is unknown in the East. The patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, are equal in rights, though the first has a primacy of honor. The czar of Russia, however, exercises a sort of general protectorate, and may be regarded as a rival to the pope of Rome, but has no authority in matters of doctrine, and can make no organic changes. The Eastern hierarchy resembles the Jewish type. The Greek priest within the veil of the sanctuary is concealed from the eyes of the people; but in social respects he is nearer the people than the Roman priest. He is allowed, and even compelled, to marry once, but forbidden to marry twice. Celibacy is confined to bishops and monks. Absolution is given only in the form of a prayer, "May the Lord absolve thee," instead of the positive form, "I absolve thee." The confessional exists, but in a milder form, with less influence and abuse, than in Romanism. The laity are more independent; and the Russian czar, like the Byzantine emperor of old, is the head of the Church in his dominion. The unction of confirmation is made to symbolize the royal priesthood of every believer. The monastic orders, though including many clergy, are not clerical institutions as the Latin orders have been since the thirteenth century. The community of Athos (q.v.) is a lay corporation with chaplains. The administration of the churches as developed in the Byzantine Empire is most complicated, and involves, besides the regular clergy, an army of higher and lower ecclesiastical officers, from the first administrator of the church property
the superintendent of the sacristy
the chancellor or keeper of ecclesiastical archives
down to the cleaners of the lamps
and the bearer of the images of saints
These half-clerical officers are divided into two groups,--one on the right, the other on the left: each is subdivided into three classes, and each class has again five persons. Leo Allatius and Heineccius enumerate fifteen officials of the right group, and even more of the left. But many of these offices have either ceased altogether, or retain only a nominal existence.
4. Worship and Ritual. In worship and ritual the Eastern Church is much like the Roman Catholic, with the celebration of the sacrifice of the mass as its center, with an equal and even greater neglect of the sermon, and is addressed more to the senses and imagination than to the intellect and the heart. It is strongly Oriental, unintelligibly symbolical and mystical, and excessively ritualistic. The Greeks reject organs, musical instruments, and sculpture, and make less use of the fine arts in their churches than the Roman Catholics; but they have even a more complicated system of ceremonies, with gorgeous display, semibarbaric pomp, and endless changes of sacerdotal dress, crossings, gestures, genuflexions, prostrations, washings, processions, which so absorb the attention of the senses, that there is little room left for the intellectual and spiritual worship. They use the liturgy of St. Chrysostom, which is an abridgment of that of St. Basil, yet very lengthy, and contains, with many old and venerable prayers (one of the finest is incorporated in the Anglican liturgy under the name of Chrysostom), later additions from different sources to an excess of liturgical refinement.
The most characteristic features of Greek worship, as distinct from the Roman, are the threefold immersion in baptism, with the repudiation of any other mode as essentially invalid; the simultaneous performance of the act of confirmation and the act of baptism which in the West have been separated; the anointing with oil in cases of dangerous illness, which Rome has changed into extreme unction of the dying; infant communion, which the Latin Church has not only abandoned, but forbidden; the communion in two kinds; the use of leavened bread in the Eucharist; the standing and eastward posture in prayer; the stricter separation of the sexes; the use of the screen or veil before the altar; and the withdrawal of the performance of the mysteries (sacraments) from the eyes of the people.
5. Liturgy of the Lord’s Supper. The form which the Greek Church developed for the celebration of the Lord's Supper is entirely different from that developed by the Roman Catholic Church. It is symbolical throughout. Not only does one of the antiphonal choirs which perform during the act represent in some mystical way the cherubim, but the whole act is, in its every feature, a symbolical representation of the passion. Five loaves are laid on the altar, each stamped with the sign of the cross and the inscription, "Jesus Christ conquers." The officiating priest selects one of them for the sacrificial lamb; and with a symbolical reference to the soldier who pierced the side of Jesus with a spear, so that blood and water flowed from the wound, he cuts the loaf, by thrusting the holy lance--a knife in the form of a lance--into it, while at the same time the deacon pours the wine and the water into the cup. Under somber dirges the elements are then carried in a solemn procession, headed with many lighted candles and much incense-burning, through the whole church, and back again to the altar, where they are deposited, like the body of Christ in the tomb. A curtain is lowered before the altar; and, unseen by the congregation, the elements are consecrated while the choir is chanting the Lord's Prayer. When the curtain is drawn, the altar represents the tomb from which Christ has risen; and, while the choir sings a hymn of praise, the elements are presented to the communicants without any special formula of distribution. The consecrated bread is broken into the consecrated wine and both elements are given together in a spoon. Greek writers on liturgy claim that this custom (known as intinction) dates back to the time of Chrysostom. It never gained foothold in the Western Church, and was forbidden as unscriptural by Pope Julius I. (337-352).
6. Saints, Relics, and Images. Language of Worship. The worship of saints, relics, flat images, and the cross is carried as far as, or even farther than, in the Roman Church; but statues, bas-reliefs, and crucifixes are forbidden. In Russia especially the veneration for pictures of the Virgin Mary and the saints is carried to the utmost extent, and takes the place of the Protestant veneration for the Bible. The holy picture (icon) with the lamp burning before it is found and worshiped in the corner (the sacred place) of every room, in the street, over gateways, in offices, taverns, steamers, railway and telegraph stations, and is carried in the knapsack of every soldier, not as a work of art, but as an emblem, a means of instruction, an aid to devotion. The vernacular languages are used in worship--the Greek in Turkey and Greece, the Slavonic in Russia; but they have to a considerable extent become unintelligible to the people. The old Slavonic differs from the modern Russian about as much as Chaucer's English from our English. The Oriental sects hold to their native dialects,--the Syriac, Armenian, etc. The old Greek calendar, which is thirteen days behind the new style introduced by Gregory XIII., is still retained.
7. Monks and Clergy. Christian life has the same general features as in the Roman Catholic Church. The mass of the people are contented with an ordinary morality, while the monks aim at a higher degree of ascetic piety. The monastic system has not developed into great orders, as in the West. There are three classes of monks, the cenobites
who live together in a monastery ruled by an archimandrite who is often a bishop
the anchorets
who live in a cell apart from the other monks, or among the laity; and the ascetes
or hermits. The monks usually follow the rule of St. Basil; some, the rule of St. Anthony. The bishops are taken from the monks. Important monasteries are at Jerusalem, Mount Athos (q.v.), Mount Sinai (where the celebrated Sinaitic manuscript of the Bible was kept for centuries), and Mar Saba near the Dead Sea. The Greek monks as a rule are more ignorant and superstitious than the Roman Catholic, and the same may be said of the clergy, many of whom are merely mechanical functionaries.
8. Religious Life. Religious life is supposed to originate in baptismal regeneration, and to be nourished chiefly by the sacraments. Prayer, fasting, and charitable deeds are the principal manifestations of piety. The observance of the Ten Commandments is strictly enjoined in all the catechisms. The Greeks and Russians are very religious in outward observances and devotions, but know little of what Protestants mean by subjective experiential piety, and personal direct communion of the soul with the Savior. The Greek Christians surpass their Mohammedan neighbors in chastity, but are behind them in honesty. What St. Paul says of the Cretans (Titus i. 12) is still characteristic of the race, of course with honorable exceptions. In Russia there is the same divorce between religion and morality. The towns are adorned with churches and convents. Every public event is celebrated by the building of a church. Every house has an altar and sacred pictures; every child his guardian angel and baptismal cross. A Russian fasts every Wednesday and Friday, prays early and late, regularly attends mass, confesses his sins, pays devout respect to sacred places and things, makes pilgrimages to the tombs and shrines of saints, and has the phrase Slavs Boga! ("Glory to God!") continually on his lips.
9. The Greek Canon. Concerning the extent of the canon of the Scriptures, the Eastern Church is not quite consistent, and stands midway between the Roman and the Protestant view concerning the Jewish Apocrypha. The Septuagint is used, which includes the Apocrypha. The Orthodox Confession repeatedly quotes the Apocrypha as authority and the Synod of Jerusalem (1672) mentions several Apocryphal books (The Wisdom of Solomon, Judith, Tobit, the History of Bel and the Dragon, the History of Susanna, the Maccabees, and the Wisdom of Sirach) as parts of the Holy Scriptures. On the other hand, Metrophanes enumerates only twenty-two books of the Old Testament (according to the division of Josephus; see CANON OF SCRIPTURE, I, 4, § 3), and eleven books of the New Testament (counting fourteen Epistles of Paul, the two Epistles of Peter, and the three of John as each one book), and then speaks of the Jewish Apocrypha as not being received by the Church among the canonical and authentic books, and hence not to be used in proof of dogmas. The "Longer Catechism" of Philaret likewise enumerates only twenty-two books of the Old Testament, but twenty-seven books of the New, and says that "the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach and certain other books" are ignored in the list of the books of the Old Testament, "because they do not exist in the Hebrew." The use of the Apocryphal books is justified because "they have been appointed by the Fathers to be read by proselytes who are preparing for admission into the Church."
The circulation of the Scriptures among the laity is not encouraged, and certain portions, especially of the Old Testament, are declared to be unfit for general use. But the Greek Church has never prohibited the reading of the Bible in the vulgar tongue; and the Orthodox Church of Russia has always had a popular version of the Bible, first in the old Slavic, and now in modern Russian. The printing and circulating of the Bible in the Russian language and within the Orthodox Greek Church is under the exclusive control of the Holy Synod of St. Petersburg. See BIBLE VERSIONS, XVI.
10. Missions. The Eastern Church has spread, through Russian influence, in Siberia, the Aleutian Islands, and wherever the civil and military power of the Czar has prepared the way; but, apart from the aid of government, it has little or no missionary spirit, and is content to keep its own. Its greatest mission-work was the conversion of Russia; and this was effected, not so much by preaching as by the marriage of a Byzantine princess and the despotic order of the ruler Vladimir (see Russia). In the midst of the Mohammedan East the Greek populations remain like islands in the barren sea; and the Bedouin tribes have wandered for twelve centuries round the Greek convent of Mount Sinai, probably without one instance of conversion to the creed of men whom they yet acknowledge with almost religious veneration as beings from a higher world.
(PHILIP SCHAFF†) D. S. SCHAFF.
IV. The Eastern Church in America: The Greek Orthodox Church in present United States territory dates from 1794, when nine Russian missionaries arrived at St. Paul on Kadiak Island, Alaska, led by Archimandrite Joasaph Bogoloff. There the first Russian church and school in America were erected. In 1796 an Episcopal see was founded and Joasaph was consecrated at Irkutsk in Siberia to be the first bishop of Kadiak, Kamchatka, and America. In 1840 four churches and eight chapels in Russian America were consolidated into an independent diocese and Ivan Veniaminof, who had labored in Alaska as missionary and priest with self-sacrificing zeal and marked success since 1823, was made bishop with the name of Innocent. He provided an Aleutian alphabet and grammar, translated the Gospels, a catechism, and other religious literature into the Aleutian tongue and the language of the Koloshes, living in the vicinity of Sitka, built the cathedral in Sitka, and established a seminary there, where many of the priests and readers now officiating in Alaska have received their education. His influence with the natives was great. In 1855 he removed to Siberia and became archbishop of Kamchatka in 1858. He was made metropolitan of Moscow after the death of Philaret (1867), and died, greatly revered throughout Russia, in 1879. Yakof Netzvetof, a half-breed priest, translated Veniaminof's version of the Gospels and catechism into the Atkha language. After the cession of Russian America to the United States, the bishop of Alaska undertook the oversight of all Slav Orthodox communities in the country, and in 1872 under Bishop John, the Episcopal residence was transferred from Sitka to San Francisco. After the death of Bishop Nestor, who was drowned while traveling in performance of his Episcopal duties in 1882, the mission of the Russian Church was governed by the ecclesiastical Consistory of San Francisco until 1888, when Bishop Vladimir arrived from Russia. His successors have been Nicholas (1891-98), Tikhon (1898-1907), and the present Archbishop Platon.
The increase of Greek Orthodox communities in the United States has been particularly great since 1888 owing to the immigration of Austrian Slavonians. There are at present 152 churches and chapels in the United States, Alaska, and Canada under the jurisdiction of the Synod of Russia, with one archbishop (since 1905) residing in New York, two bishops--one for Alaska residing at Sitka, the other (since 1904) for Orthodox Syrians residing in Brooklyn,--and an administrator for the Servians. There are seventy-five priests, a seminary at Minneapolis, and 46,000 registered parishioners. An official organ is published in New York in Russian and English. A religious paper formerly published in Chicago in Servian has been discontinued. The Russian cathedral in New York City was dedicated in 1902. In 1906 Archbishop Tikhon introduced Sunday evening services in English in this church. Bishop Innocent of Alaska also favors the substitution of English for the Slavonic service for the Orthodox natives of his jurisdiction.
Orthodox congregations in the United States for those of Syrian nationality date from 1895, when the Russian Bishop Nicholas brought with him the Very Rev. Archimandrite Raphael Hawaweeny and founded a church for Orthodox Syrians in New York City. In 1899 the congregation acquired permanent quarters in Brooklyn. In 1904 the patriarch of Antioch elevated Raphael to the rank of bishop and he was consecrated by the Russian bishops Tikhon and Innocent, his consecration being the first in the United States of a bishop of the Eastern Church. There are ten churches under his jurisdiction and the member ship of his flock is about 45,000.
The first Orthodox church for those of Greek nationality was founded in New Orleans, where many Greek merchants were engaged in the cotton trade. The second was founded in Chicago in 1872, when Greeks and Slavs united in calling a Greek priest from Russia. This church, after an interval, was reestablished in 1891, and in the same year another was opened in New York City, and a fourth in Boston with a priest of Syrian nationality. The Church of Lowell, Mass., a city having a large Greek population, dates from 1895. The total number of Orthodox churches for those of Greek descent, under the jurisdiction either of the Synod of Greece or of the Greek patriarch at Constantinople at present exceeds thirty. A religious paper is published in Greek at Milwaukee. In 1905 and again in 1907 a bill was introduced in the Greek parliament at Athens for the despatch of one of the prelates of Greece as a resident bishop for the Greeks in the United States. The bill, however, failed to pass, perhaps because the existence in the United States of bishops of the Greek Church owing allegiance to two different autonomous synods--those of Russia and Greece--would be anticanonical. It has been suggested that, besides the Russian and Syrian bishops, a Greek and a Servian bishop be appointed; an independent synod for the United States and Canada can then be formed and the bishops can elect their own metropolitan.
The total number of Greek Orthodox inhabitants of the United States, Alaska, and Canada is believed to exceed 300,000. The growth of the churches has been due in no small degree to a tendency on the part of Austrian and Hungarian Uniates who have emigrated to America to separate from Rome and return to the Eastern Orthodox confession. One reason for this tendency is the effort of the Roman Church to deprive the Uniates in America of their married priests.
A. A. STAMOULI.
Bibliography: The chief sources for the earlier history are the first seven councils, the writings of the Greek Fathers, especially of Athanasius, Chrysostom, John of Damascus, and Photius. For a conspectus of the literature of the Church, consult Krumbacher, Geschichte. on the general history consult: J. M. Neale, Hist. of the Holy Eastern Church, London, 1850; J. M. Heineccius, Abbildung den alten und neuen griechischen Kirche, 3 vols., Leipsic, 1711; M. Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, 3 vols., Paris, 1740; A. P. Stanley, Lectures on the Eastern Church, London, 1861, new issue, 1908; A. Leroy-Beaulieu, L'Empire den tams et lea Russes, vol, iii., La Religion, Ραrίs, 1889; A. H. Hone, Eighteen Centuries of the Orthodox Greek Church, London, 1899; idem, Student's Hist. of the Greek Chuτch, ib. 1902; K. Beth, Die orientalische Christenheit den Mittelmeerländer, Berlin, 1902; J. Pargoίre, L'Église Byzantine, 527-847, Paris, 1905; A. Fortescue, The Orthodox Eastern Church, London, 1905 (by a Roman Catholic); F. G. Cole, Mother of All Churches; a brief and comprehensive Handbook of the Holy Eastern Orthodox Chuτch, gib. 1908; the histories of the Councils by Harduin, Mansi, and Hefele; the Church Histories of Hergenröther-Kirsch, Funk, Hefele-Knöppfler, and K. Müller.
On the great schism and the attempts to heal it consult: G. B. Howard, The Schism between the Oriental and Western Churches, London, 1892; Leo Allatius, De ecclesiæ occidentalis et orientalis perpetua consensione, Cologne, 1648; C. Will, Acta et scripta de controversiis ecclessiæ Graecae et Latin, Marburg, 1861; A. Pichler, Geschichte der kirchlichen Trennung zwischen dem Orient und Occident, 2 vols., Munch, 1864-65; J. Hergenröther, Photius, 3 vols., Regensburg, 1867-69; R. Baxmann, Die Politik der Päpste, 2 vols., Elberfeld, 1868-69; L. Duchesne, Autonomes ecclésiastiques; églises séparées, Paris, l896; Eng, transl., Churches Separated from Rome, New York, 1908; L. Brehier, Le Schtisme oriental du xi.. siècle, gib. 1899; W. Norden, Dos Papsttum und Byzanz, Berlin, 1903.
For the formalized symbolics of the Church consult: Schaff, Creeds, vols. i.-ii.; E. J. Kimmel, Monumenta fidel ecclesiæ orientalis, 2 vols., Jena, 1850; J. B. Pigs, Juris ecclesiastici Grreconum histσria et monuments, 2 vols., Rome,1864-65; W. Gass, Symbolik des griechischen Kirche, Berlin, 1872; E Kartenbusch, Lehrbuch der vergleichenden Confessionskunde, vol. i., Freiburg, 1892; E. F. K. Müller, Symbolik, pp. 195-242, Leipsic, l896; N. Milas, Das Kirchenrecht der morgenländischen Kirche, Zara, 1897; Orthodox Confession of the Eastern Church Eng. transl. by P. Lodvill, London, 1898; Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672, Eng. transl. by J. N. W. B. Robertson, London, 1899; F. Loofs, Symbolik, i. 2, pp. 109-169, Tübingen, 1902; J. Michalcescu, Die Bekennh niese und die wichtigsten Glauben.azeugnisse der griecháschorientalischen Kirche, Leipsic, 1904 (contains the statements of the first seven councils, and the confessions of Genradius, Mogilas, Dositheus ate.). The Longer Catechism of Philaret, issued by authority of the Holy Synod of St. Petersburg, 1839, is used in the churches and schools of the Russian empire, and is the best modern exposition of the doctrine of the Eastern Chuτch.
On the liturgies consult: H. A. Daniel, Codex liturgicus ecclesiæ universalis, vol. iv., Leipsic, 1853; J. Goar, Euchologium sive Rituale Grecism, Paris, 1647; E. Renaudot, Liturgiarum orientalium collectio, 2 vols., Paris, l716, Eng. transl., Collection of the Principal Liturgies . . . Used by the Greeks of the Oriental Church, Dublin, 1822; J. King, Rites and Ceremonies of the Greek Church in Russia, London, 1872; The Offices of the Oriental Chuτch, with Historical Introduction, ed. N. Bjerring, New York, 1884; Synopsis, or Spiritual Collection of the Daily Prayers, Liturgy, ... of the Greek Orthodox Church of the East, transl. and ed. Katherine Lady Lachmars, London (1890); C. E. Hammond, Liturgies Eastern and Western, ed. F. E. Brightman, vol. i., Oxford, 1896; A. Staerk, Des Taufritus in der griechisch-russtischen Kirche, Freiburg, 1903.
On the more modern history and that of the different branches much material is found in the Revue de l'orient chrétien, vols. i. sqq., 1896 sqq.; in Echos d'orient, vols. i.-vi.; and in the Revue internationale de théologie, vols. iii: w., Bern, 1895-96. Consult further: J. J. I. von Döllinger, Kirche und Kirchen, pp. 158 sqq., Munich, 1861; Eng. transl., The Church and the Churches, London, 1862; idem, Ueber die Wiedereinigunq der christlichcn Kirche, ib. 1888; L. Boissard, L'Église de Rissafe, 2 vols., Paris, 1867; A, d;Avril, La Bulgaria chrétienne, Paris, 1892; idem, Les Eglises autanomes et autocéphales, ib. 1895; idem, La Serbia chréttienne, ib. 1897; H. Geher, Geistliches und Weltliches aus dem türkischen Orient, Leipsic 1900; O. Hübner, Statistische Tabelle aller Länder, Funk fort, 1901; D. Kyriakos, Geschichte der orientalischen Kirchen, 1453-1898, Leipsic, 1902; M. G. Dampier, Hist. of the Orthodox Chuτch in Austria-Hungary, London, 1905. Material of value will be found also in D. M. Wallace, Russia, New York, 1905.
Special topics are treated in: A. de Stourdza, Considérations sur la doctrine et l'esprit de l'église orthodoxe, Paris, 1816; K P. Pobedonoszew, Streitfragen der Gegenwart, Berlin, 1897; K. Boll, Enthusiasmus und Bussgewalt beim griechischen Mönchthum, Leipsic, 1898; P, Meyer, Die theologásche Litteratur der griechischen Kirche im 16. Jahrhundert ib. 1899; A. Schmidtke, Dαs Klosterland des Athos, ib. 1903; B, Pick, Hymns and Poetry of the Eastern Chuτch, New York, 1908.