communion with both the Pope of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople. They knew, of course, that these two were now quarrelling, but, presumably, they thought that this quarrel was no business of theirs. They, no doubt, hoped that it would be made up in time; meanwhile they intended to keep out of it and to remain in communion with both. It is true that eventually the nearness of Constantinople, the unhappy and degrading dependence that these other Patriarchs had learned to accept under the Emperor's Patriarch dragged them, too, with him into schism; but it would be most difficult to define exactly when this happened. In their case it was always the participation in the guilt of another rather than any spontaneous movement of their own. And, as they went into schism only dragged by Constantinople, so ever since there have been times and periods when, it would seem, they renewed relations with Rome and were not in schism at all. For one thing, we must remember that, even as far as Constantinople itself, the home of the schism, was concerned, the excommunication of Cerularius was not the last step. Since then there have been the reunions of Lyons in 1274 and of Florence in 1439. These applied to the other Patriarchates too. If they were in schism after Cerularius they came back to union in 1274; if again they glided into schism after that, they came back in 1439.
But the curious thing is that besides these two famous cases there have been many relations between the other Eastern Patriarchs and Rome. They never seem to have forgotten that, in theory, they should be in communion with the chief Patriarch of all, in the West. Communications were difficult; yet, even so, there are a number of cases in which a Patriarch of Antioch, or of Alexandria or Jerusalem, succeeded in renewing relations with the Pope, and so must be counted as a Catholic. Often, no doubt, when they could not do so, being then under the heel of the Turk, they believed all the Catholic faith, and intended to be in communion with the Pope. So we must look upon the present distinction between the Orthodox and the Melkites in Syria and Egypt as the result of a gradual, a very gradual, parting of the ways. The Melkites represent the tendency, never quite extinct, towards union with Rome, now crystallized in one Church; the Orthodox represent the other tendency towards Constantinople crystallized in another.
The late Melkite Patriarch, Peter IV (Giraigīrī, p. 222), said that between Nicholas I of Antioch (847-869) and Cyril VI (Tānās), under whom the final reunion took place
