EASTERN
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EASTERN
the Vatican Council, a new schism has been formed
from it of about 30,000 people who are in communion
with neither the Catholics, nor the Jacobites, nor the
Nestorians, nor any one else at all. There are now
about 200,000 Malabar Uniats under three vicars
Apostolic (at Trichur, Changanacherry, and Ernacu-
1am).
7. The Unial Armenians are an important body numbering altogether about 130,000 souls (Silbernagl, 344). Like their Gregorian countrymen they are scattered about the Levant, and they have congrega- tions in Austria and Italy. There have been several more or less temporary reunions of the Armenian Church since the fourteenth century, but in each case a rival Gregorian party set up rival patriarchs and bish- ops. The head of the Catholic Armenians is the LTniat Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople (since 1830), in whom is joined the patriarchate of Cilicia. He al- ways takes the name Peter, and rules over three titu- lar archbishops and fourteen sees, of which one is Alexandria and one Ispahan in Persia (Werner, 151; Silbernagl, 340). After much dispute he is now recog- nized by the Porte as the head of a separate millet, and he also represents before the Government all other Uniat bodies that have as yet no political organization. There are also many LIniat Armenians in Austria- Hungary who are subject in Transylvania to the Latin bishops, but in Galicia to the Armenian Archbishop of Lemberg. In Russia there is an Armenian Uniat See of Artvin immediately subject to the pope. The Mechitarists (founded by Meehitar of Sebaste in 1711) are an important element of Armenian Catholicism. They are monks who follow the Rule of St. Benedict and have monasteries at San Lazzaro outside Venice, at Vienna, and in many towns in the Balkans, Ar- menia, and Russia. They have missions all over the Levant, schools, and presses that produce important liturgical, historical, and theological works. Since 1869 all Armenian Catholic priests must be celibate.
8. Lastly, the Maronite Church is entirely Uniat. There is much dispute as to its origin and the reason of its separation from the Syrian national Church. It is certain that it was formed around monasteries in the Lebanon founded by a certain John Maro in the fourth century. In spite of the indignant protests of all Maronites (Assemani, "Bibl. Orient.", II, 291 sq.; J. Debs, Maronite Bishop of Beirut, " Les Maronites du Liban, leur constante perseverance dans la Foi catho- lique" etc.), there is no doubt that they were separated from the old See of Antioch by the fact that they were Monotheletes. They were reunited to the Roman Church in the twelfth century, and then (after a period of wavering) since 121(3, when their patriarch, Jere- mias II, made his definite submission, they have been unswervingly faithful, alone among all Eastern Churches. As in other cases, the Maronites, too, are allowed to keep their old organization and titles. Their head is the Maronite "Patriarch of Antioch and all the East", successor to Monothelete rivals of the old line, who, therefore, in no way represents the ori- ginal patriarchate (Duchesne, "Origines du culte chrdtien", second ed., p. 05, note). He is also the civil head of his nation, although he has no herat from the sultan, and lives in a large palace at Bkerki in the Lebanon. He has under him nine sees and sev- eral titular bishops. There are many monasteries and convents. The present law of the Maronite Church was drawn up by the great national council held in 1736 at the monastery of Our Lady of the Almond Trees (Deir Saidat al-Luaize), in the Lebanon. There are about 300,000 Maronites in the Lebanon and scat- tered along the Syrian coast. They also have colon- ies in Egj'pt and Cyprus, and numbers of them have lately begun to emigrate to America. They have a national college at Rome.
This completes the list of all the Eastern Churches, whether schismatical or Uniat.
In considering their general characteristics we must
first of all again separate the Uniats from the others.
Uniats are Catholics, and have as much right to be so
treated as Latins. As far as faith and morals go they
must be numbered with us; as far as the idea of an
Eastern Church may now seem to connote schism or a
state of opposition to the Holy See, they repudiate it
as strongly as we do. Nevertheless, their position is
very important as being the result of relations between
Rome and the East, and as showing the terras on
which reunion between East and West is possible.
III. Characteristics of the Schismatical East- ern Churches. — Although these Churches have no communion among themselves, and although many of them are bitterly opposed to tlie others, there are cer- tain broad Unes in whicii they may be classed together and contrasted with the West.
The first of these is their national feeling. In all these groups the Church is the nation; the vehement and often intolerant ardour of what seems to be their religious conviction is always really national pride and national loyalty under the guise of theology. This strong national feeling is the natural result of their political circumstances. For centuries, since the first ages, various nations have lived side by side and have carried on bitter opposition against each other in the Levant. Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Balk- ans have never had one homogeneous population speaking one language. From the beginning, nation- ality in these parts has been a ciuestion not of the soil, but of a community held together by its language, striving for supremacy with other communities. The Roman contest accentuated this. Rome and then Constantinople was always a foreign tyranny to Syr- ians and Egyptians. And already in the fourth cen- tury of the Christian Era they began to accentuate their own nationalism, crushed in politics, by taking up an anti-imperial form of religion, by which they could express their hatred for the Government. Such an attitude has characterized these nations ever since. Under the Turk, too, the only possible separate organi- zation was and is an ecclesiastical one. The Turk even increased the confusion. He found a simple and convenient way of organizing the subject Christians by taking their religion as a basis. So the Porte recog- nizes each sect as an artificial nation {millet). The Orthodox Church became the " Roman nation " (Rum millet), inheriting the name of the old Empire. Then there were the "Armenian nation" (Ermeni millet), the "Coptic nation", and so on. Blood has nothing to do with it. Any subject of the Porte who joins the Orthodox Church becomes a Roman and is submitted politically to the oecumenical patriarch; a Jew who is converted by Armenians becomes an Armenian. True, the latest development of Turkish politics has modi- fied this artificial system, and there have been during the nineteenth century repeated attempts to set up one great Ottoman nation. But the effect of centuries is too deeply rooted, and the opposition between Islam and Christianity too great, to make this possible. A Mohammedan in Turkey, whether Turk, Arab, or negro, is simply a Moslem, and a Christian is a Roman, or Armenian, or Maronite, etc. Our Western idea of separating politics from religion, of being on the one hand loyal citizens of our country and on the other, as a quite distinct thing, members of some Church, is unknown in the East. The millet is what matters; and the millet is a religious body. So obvious does this identification seem to them that till quite lately they applied it to us. A Catholic was (and still is to the more remote and ignorant people) a " French Christian", a Protestant an "English Christian"; in speaking French or Italian, Levantines constantly use the word nation for religion. Hence it is, also, that there are practically no conversions from one religion to another. Theology, dogma, or any kind of relig- ious conviction counts for little or nothing, k man
