GREEK
761
GREEK
dowments authorized otherwise, the regular number
was to be 525, viz., 80 priests, 150 deacons, 40 deacon-
esses, 70 subdeacons, ICO lectors, 25 cantors, besides
75 doorkeepers, 2 syncelli, 12 chancellors, and 40 no-
taries. The little church of Blacherna; had a per-
sonnel at this period of 75 members, viz., 12 priests, 18
tleacons, 6 deaconesses, 8 subdeacons, 20 lectors, 4
cantors, and 7 doorkeepers. From these two exam-
ples we may infer what the other smaller or larger
churches must have required.
Benevolent institutions claimed a proportionate number of functionaries and titles; in Christian an- tiquity few social bodies were as nuich concerned with the diminution of .social ills as was that of Constanti- nople. There were special charitable institutions to succour every form of physical and moral suffering ; from the emperor to the humblest citizen all were interested in their maintenance. Hospices and shelters were found everywhere ; there were also xenodochia, or hos- telries for strangers; gerontocomia, or homes for the aged ; ptochotrophia , or asylums for the poor ; nosocomia, or hospitals for the sick; orphanotrophia, or foundling hospitals; brephotrophia, or creches; and even lobo- Irnpliin. or homes for lepers. These institutions were iiiiistly conducted by monks, which fact brings us to a consiileration of the monastic system.
If we consider their rules, the monks may be divided into two clas.ses: solitaries and cenobites. The soli- taries had various names, according to their habita- tions or the exercises which they practised. They were known as hermits or recluses if they provided their own necessities of life or accepted them from strangers; slylUes or (lemlrites, if they chose a pillar or a tree as the scene of their mortifications; lauriotes or kelliotes, if they lived together in a laura. These last belong rather to the Eastern world properly so called (Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia) than to the (Ireek, or Byzantine, world. On the other hand, the Greek Christian world was famous for its cenobites, who always and everywhere followed a community life. Solitary and cenobite had each a special dress, the names and uses of which are well known. The hmrw, and convents, had each its own superior, some- times called archimandrite, and sometimes hegu- inenos, terms .synonymous in the beginning, but soon differentiated. Gradually archimandrite came to mean the head of all the monasteries of a city or of a diocese. Below him came the deutereuon or prior, at least until the si.xth century; after that the place was taken by the a;conomos, or bursar. In the ninth cen- tury every diocese (presumably the cenobites of every diocese) or district formed a sort of federation under the presidency of a hegumenos known as the exarch or archimandrite. In the Archdiocese of Jerusalem this presidency over the laurites and hermits devolved on the Hegumenos of St. Sabas, and that of the cenobites on the Hegumenos of St. Theodosius. In the archdio- cese of Constantinople the superior of the convent, or monastery, of Dalmatia exercised this function. As soon as peace was definitively granted to the Church, and especially after the reign of Theodosius I (378-95), the religious life had its period of greatest splendour. Emperors, empresses, consuls, patricians, senators, patriarchs, bishops, private individuals vied in build- ing conventual homes for " tho.se who had put on the robe of the angels "and who had become " citizens of heaven". As early as 518, we find a petition to Pope Hormisdas signed by fifty-four superiors of monastic houses for men in Constantinople; in 5.36 no fewer than sixty-eight superiors of monasteries from the same city assisted at the council which deposed the patriarch Anthimos, while the neighbouring Diocese of Chalcedon alone sent forty more. In Palestine the Archdiocese of Jerusalem had at least 100 monasteries. And it must not be imagined that the number of their inmates was small. The laura of St. Sabas had 150 inmates; the convent of St. Theodosius, 400; the
New Laura more than 000. It is true that all of the
monasteries were not so populous, but if we place the
average number of monks for each monastery at 50
we .shall not be far from the truth. Let it not be for-
gotten that 10,000 monks of Palestine assembled at
Jerusalem in 516 to demand that the Council of
Chalcedon be observed. It is worth noting that there
never existed a religious congregation, properly speak-
ing, in the Greek world; this Western form of mo-
nasticism was unknown to the East. There every
convent was independent of its neighbour, and where
many convents had the same founder their union
rarely lasted beyond his lifetime. Again, in spite of a
still prevalent Western belief, the fireek monks never
had a religious rule, in the canonical sense of the
word. Even the Rules of St. Basil, St. Anthony, and
St. Pachomius were not canonical rules. The monks
obeyed a whole series of precepts, or monastic regula-
tions, either written or, more often, preserved by oral
tradition, which were the same everywhere. But if
they had no rule properly so called, they had an infin-
ity of lypica or regulations. In the liturgical offices
the customs of St. Sabas at Jeru.salem, i. e. the Pales-
tine customs, were combined with those of the Stu-
divun at Constantinople or some other monastery, and
thus all desired variations were obtaineil. For the
monastic life itself the " Typica ", i. e. original charters
or constitutions of the monastery, were the guide. The
most ancient of these "Typica" known to us is that
of St. Athanasius the Athonite (or of Mount At hos),
which dates from 969. In matters of jurisdiction all
Greek monasteries were subject to the bishop or to the
patriarch ; the latter known as stum-oj)eyiac, because
the patriarch asserted his rights over the monastery by
placing a wooden cross (<TTavp6s) behind the altar. It
was in the cloister almost exclusively that the more
eminent ecclesiastics of all ranks were trained, and to
it dethroned emperors and disgraced courtiers fled for
refuge. The monks were the historians, the theolo-
gians, the poets of that time ; the leaders of all heresies
and their opponents were monks; councils were con-
vened or prevented as the monks thought gooil. They
assisted the bishops by their learning and disturbed
the empire by their quarrels. In short, they held the
wiiole foreground of the ecclesiastical stage, and ab-
sorbed all the intellectual and religious life of the
Greek Church. And while their extensive posses-
sions, exempt from taxes, drained the finances of the
empire, the thousands upon thousands of yoiuig men
who flocked to their monasteries robbed the land of its
agricultural class and the army of its recruits. As it
existed in the Greek world, the monastic life caused
perhaps more evil than good, and it is undoubtedly to
it we owe that narrow pietism, that formalism and
ritualism in devotion, consisting altogether in the
externals of religion, which is even now so character-
istic of the East.
I.EQUIEN, Oriens Chriatianus in IV patriarchatus diaeslvs (3 vols,. Paris, 1740); Pargoire, L'Eglise hiiznnline ,U n-27 a 847 (Paris, 1905); Macaire. Histoire de C EhI i . , '1 '■ , , ,/, (Cairo, 1894): Rose, Die byz. Kirchenpolitik I'!'!' K l / fasius I
(Wohlau, 1888); KrC'ger, Monophu^i' ;l;iilen im
Zusammenhanqe mil der Reichspolitik ',,i<iii, |nm] ■ Pfann- mueller, Die kirchliche Gcsetzqebung J/islini'irts (lierlin, 1902); Knecht. Die Religionspolitik K. Justinians (Berlin,, 1902); DrEHL, Justinien et la civilization byzantine iParis, 1901); DuCHES.VE, Vigile el Pelage in Rev. rfcs giieslions hist. (Paris, 1884); DlEKAMP, Die origenisli.'schen Slreiligkeiten im VI Jahr- hundert (MUnster, 1899); Drapeyron, Iliraclius (Paris. 1869); Pernice, L'imperatore Eraclio (Florence. 1905): Schwarz- LosE, Der Bilderstreit (Gotha. LSilOi; liKJinER. Ln num-lh- ,/ra
images (Paris, 1904); l.iiMnM,i., ( .-. ' ',„ I I'm . imiij,;
ScKLOSSER, GescAic^fe '/' ' y\ ■ ,-
schen Reiches (Fra.nkfoFl . 1^1. M\ ; / ' , ,-
(!nnp(<- (Paris, 1897): run;* ,/,, /.:,. ,;, ,„,„„,',,, ,,
Biizanci- (li'ir.leaux, 1896); Geizek. Dit SIrnI iiber ilni Tilel <!,': ■■h:inrinxrlirn Patriarchen in Jahrbuch fur prot. Theolngie, Xlll, .I't; \'ailhe. Le litre de patriarche acumenique aidant ,S.i ,„l Cnauire le Grand, and SainI d'ny.iirr I,- Grand et le litre de patriarche a:cummique in Echos ,/'(),, , ,' , I'nis ,(;,-,-69; 161-171; Tern'cskij, L* Egliae grecque ti !'■ /- ,/,.s- acumi-niquea
(a Russian article, Kiev. ISSii'; < > i i i), Ksquisses pour I'histoire de la civilisation hyzaulu:^ i i;n iin, .St. Petersburg,
