GREEK CHURCH, The, or more properly the Eastern Church, is both the source and background of the Western. Christianity arose in the East, and Greek was the language of the Scriptures and early services of the church, but when Latin Christianity established itself in Europe and Africa, and when the old Roman empire fell in two, and the eastern half became separate in government, interests, and ideas from the western, the term Greek or Eastern Church acquired gradually a fixed meaning. It denoted the church which included the patriarchates of Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, and their dependencies. The ecclesiastical division of the early church, at least within the empire, was based upon the civil. Constantine introduced a new partition of the empire into dioceses, and the church adopted a similar division. The bishop of the chief city in each diocese naturally rose to a pre-eminence, and was commonly called exarch — a title borrowed from the civil jurisdiction. In process of time the common title patriarch was restricted to the most eminent of these exarchs, and councils decided who were worthy of the dignity. The council of Nicaea recognized three patriarchs — the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. To these were afterwards added the bishops of Constantinople and Jerusalem. When the empire was divided, there was one patriarch in the West, the bishop of Rome, while in the East there were at first two, then four, and latterly five. This geographical fact has had a great deal to do in determining the character of the Eastern Church. It is not a despotic monarchy governed from one centre and by a monarch in whom plenitude of power resides. It is an oligarchy of patriarchs. It is based, of course, on the great body of bishops; but episcopal rule, through the various grades of metropolitan, primate, exarch, attains to sovereignty only in the five patriarchal thrones. Each patriarch is, within his diocese, what the Galliean theory makes the pope in the universal church. He is supreme, and not amenable to any of his brother patriarchs, but is within the jurisdiction of an œcumenical synod. This makes the Greek Church quite distinct in government and traditions of polity from the Western. It has ever been the policy of Rome to efface national distinctions, but under the shadow of the Eastern Church national churches have grown and flourished. Revolts against Rome have always implied a repudiation of the ruling principles of Ultramontanism; but the schismatic churches of the East have always reproduced the ecclesiastical polity of the church which they have deserted.
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 maintained 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 East 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 conqueror, 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 (Kaisarieh, Nisi, Angouri, Niksar, Amasia, Isinid, Kadikiov, 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, Audro, 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. In the time of the first crusade 153 still survived; now there are scarcely 20. Most of those that remain are called either metropolitan or archiepiscopal 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 Chaldæa and India, and the missionaries of Antioch seem to have preached Christianity in the borders of China. The Chaldæaean 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 Casarea. 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 metropolitans with eighty suffragans. The modern patriarch has seven suffragans, all of whom enjoy the titles of metropolitan or archbishop, Cæsarea, 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 Cæsarea.
