Pharmakides, their chief leader, wrote an angry refutation: "The Synodical Tomos, or concerning Truth,"[1] and the only suggestions they would accept from the Tomos were that the Metropolitan of Athens should be ex-officio president of the Holy Synod, and that the chrism should be supplied by the Patriarch. After a great deal more quarrelling, at last the Phanar had to submit and to acknowledge one more sister in Christ, the Greek Holy Synod. Since then there has been no more question about the autonomy of the Church of Hellas, and in face of the common Slav danger, the Free Greeks and the Phanar have now forgotten their differences and have become firm allies. Since its original constitution the Greek Church has received two additions. In 1866 England ceded the Ionian Isles to Greece, and at once the Greek Government separated the dioceses of those islands from the Patriarchate and joined them to its own Church. Again the Phanar protested, and there was a rather angry correspondence between Constantinople and Athens, but by now the principle that political independence and political union must be exactly reflected in the Church was becoming more and more openly recognized by the Orthodox. So this union was made without much trouble. In 1881 Thessaly and part of Epirus were added to Greece, and again the ten dioceses of these lands were joined to the Greek Church. This time the Phanar did not even protest. The Church of Hellas has now thirty-two sees, of which the first is that of Athens. At present in Greece, as in most Orthodox lands, the majority of these bishops bear the quite meaningless title of Metropolitan, but the Holy Synod has decreed that as the present metropolitans die their successors shall be called simply Bishops, and that the only see with the Metropolitan title in future shall be Athens. There are to be no provinces nor graduated jurisdiction, all bishops shall be immediately and equally subject to the Holy Synod. Of that synod my Lord of Athens is president, four other bishops are chosen by rote to be members for one year, the Royal Commissioner must be present at every session, and without his signature no decree is valid. The Greek Holy Synod, then, is an exact copy of the Russian one, and under it
- ↑ ὁ συνοδικὸς τόμος, ἤ περὶ ἀληθείας, Athens, 1852.
