This investiture of the patriarch by the sultan is a sign that the destruction of the empire was not the destruction of the Church. That calamity to the State might even have been the salvation of the Church. During the first three centuries persecution had proved a wholesome discipline preserving the vigour of primitive Christianity. With Constantine the Great's patronage of the Church, worldliness invaded the whole body and degeneration followed. Now the fatal alliance was severed, and once again the Church was set apart from the State and made liable to persecution. But she could not recover her pristine vigour; she felt the east wind of adversity to be blighting, rather than bracing.
One of the most serious evils occasioned by the fall of Constantinople was the heavy blow that this disaster gave to Oriental learning. Many of the Greek scholars fled to Europe and there assisted the Renaissance. But contemporary with the revival of learning in the West was its decay in the East. The priesthood sank into insignificance and lost influence for lack of culture; preaching disappeared; the Church became intellectually stagnant. Still, there were not wanting proofs of fidelity to conscience. It has been said that the Church that can produce no martyrs is doomed. There have been martyrs in the Greek Church under Turkish dominance all down the centuries. Treated as rayahs, as mere cattle, with no civil rights, the Christians have always suffered from disabilities and the infliction of unchecked wrongs. Yet they have remained true to their faith; and thus their conduct has testified continuously to a fidelity for which their brethren in the West, who have not had to endure their age-long trials, have been too slow to give them credit.
