such people as this naturally the first duty is to justify their schism, to defend themselves against papal aggression; Rome is the greatest, the most untiring, the most dangerous enemy. They dare not try to convert Turks; Protestants have not inferfered with them very much on the whole (though there has been trouble on this side too, see p. 254), the unorthodox Eastern Churches are quite harmless—no one ever thinks of changing from Orthodox to Jacobite or Copt—so the great question of all, here as all over the Christian world, is that of the enormous united communion that may be hated but cannot be ignored. Still from any point of view the fact that they have done hardly anything but discuss us all this time is a disadvantage. Controversy is never the highest kind of theological literature, and certainly one reason why Orthodox theology is so very far behind ours is that while Catholics during the last four centuries have written on every branch of theology, and have elaborated their system from every conceivable point of view, the others have been doing scarcely anything but fussing over and over again about the Filioque and the Primacy, and repeating the feeble accusations they always ferret out against our rites and customs. Another difference that is very clearly marked is between the rigid consistency of Catholic theology and the really amazing confusion of their ideas. We noticed the germ of this difference long ago (p. 110), and we shall come back to some startling examples of it later (p. 384 seq.).
In the 15th century the only Orthodox theologian was Maximos Peloponnesios (Maximos III of Constantinople, 1476–1482). He opens the tradition of the whole school by writing against the Council of Florence and a "Refutation of the Seven Chapters which were written by one of the Western Frati."[1] It is not known who his Western Frate was.
In the 16th century the chief writer is Meletios Pegas (Μελέτιος ὁ Πηγᾶς, 1535–1603).[2] He was a Cretan who studied at
