of non-interference between any foreign people and their Sovereign.

4. That the position of the Pope differed from that of other Sovereigns, as he was elected by the College of Cardinals, a body neither national in its constitution nor in its membership.

5. That the Pope ought to give his subjects securities for good government.

6. That for that object a separation should be made between the spiritual authority and the temporal powers and institutions of the State.

7. That an armed intervention to assist the Pope in retaining a bad government would be unjustifiable (j).

(j) Correspondence between Viscount Palmerston, the Marquis of Normanby, and Prince Castelcicala, laid before Parliament, June 15, 1849; and see Correspondence affecting the affairs of Rome, presented to Parliament April 14, 1851, and 1870–71.

CHAPTER XI.

THE INTERNATIONAL STATUS OF THE PATRIARCHATE

OF CONSTANTINOPLE (a). THE CHURCH IN THE KING

DOM OF GREECE-RELATIONS BETWEEN THE GREEK AND ANGLICAN CHURCHES.

CCCCXLI. IN the time of Pope Gregory the Great (b) (A.D. 595), and while Maurice was Emperor of Constantinople, John, the Patriarch of Constantinople, openly assumed the title of Universal Bishop, claiming thereby apparently a spiritual supremacy over the whole Christian world (c). The letters written by Gregory to the Emperor, to the Patriarch, and to certain Bishops, are among the most valuable monuments of Ecclesiastical History, and, indeed, of Ecclesiastical International Law.

These letters of this illustrious (d) prelate, in which he denies the right of any Patriarch or Bishop to arrogate to himself the title of Universal Bishop, and denounces the usurper of this foolish, offensive, and unchristian appellation as the precursor of Antichrist (e), will well repay the perusal

(a) Walter's Kirchenrecht, ss. 163–173. Verfassung der Morgenländischen Kirche." Geschichte der kirchlichen Trennung zwischen dem Orient und Occident. Von den ersten Anfängen bis zur jüngsten Gegenwart.”— Von Dr. A. Pichler (München, 1864), a work, in two volumes, of great erudition and research.

(b) His Pontificate lasted from A.D. 590 to A.D. 604.

(c) Vide ante, pp. 358-59.

(d) The blot upon his character is his adulatory letter to the wretch Phocas; but even Gibbon says that "Gregory might justly be styled the Father of his Country."-Decline and Fall, vol. viii. p. 176 (ed. Milman).

(e) L. vii. ep. xxxiii.: "Eundem vero fratrem et coepiscopum meum studiose admonere curavi, ut si habere pacem omnium concordia mque desiderat ab stulti vocabuli se appellatione compescat."

"Ego

of all who take an interest in those events, which combine some of the most remarkable features of civil and ecclesiastical history (f).

CCCCXLII. More than a century passes away between the Pontificate of Gregory I. (the Great) and that of Gregory II. (g). But both Popes were brought into especial contact with the Patriarchate of Constantinople. According to the opinion of Gibbon, certainly important on this point, the Patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople were at this time nearly equal in ecclesiastical rank and jurisdiction (h). But the Greek Patriarch was under the immediate yoke of a tyrannical Prince, which the distant Roman Patriarch had been long striving to shake off.

When the imperial iconoclast, Leo, was making that assault upon the devotional use of images, which-trifling as it seems to the infidel historian-was fraught with serious consequences to the future peace of Christendom, he received from Gregory II. a letter, which contains a passage bearing upon the present subject: "Are you ignorant" (Gregory writes)" that the Popes are the bond of union, the mediators

autem fidenter dico, quia quisquis se Universalem Sacerdotem vocat, vel vocari desiderat, in elatione sua antichristum præcurrit, quia superbiendo se cæteris præponit."

Ep. xxxi.: "Ut verbum superbiæ, per quod grave scandalum in Ecclesiis generatur, auferre festinetis."

Some expressions of the kind occur in most of the ten letters. (ƒ) The reader is referred to :—

Lib. v. ep. xviii. (Ad Johannem Episcopum.)

Ep. xix. (Ad Sabinianum Diaconum.)

Ep. xx. (Ad Mauricium Augustum.)

Ep. xxi. (Ad Constantinam Augustam.)

Ep. xliii. (Ad Eulogium et Anastasium Episcopos.)

Lib. vii. ep. xxvii. (Ad Anastasium Episcopum.)

Ep. xxxi. (Ad Cyriacum Episcopum.)

Lib. viii. ep. xxxiii. (Ad Mauricium Augustum.)

Lib. viii. ep. xxx. (Ad Eulogium Episcopum Alexandrinum.)

Lib. xiii. ep. xl. (Ad Cyriacum Patriarcham Constantinopol.)

Sancti Gregorii Papæ I. Cognomento Magni Opera Omnia, t.ii. (Parisiis, Sumptibus Claudii Rigaud, 1705.)

(g) Extended from A.D. 715 to 731. (h) Decline and Fall, vol. ix. p. 131.

"of peace between the East and West?" (i). When the iconoclast had ceased to reign, the power of the Byzantine Emperor in Italy had dwindled into the Exarchate of Ravenna, and was practically confined within the walls of that city.

The restoration of the Western Empire by Charlemagne, which has been mentioned in the preceding pages (j), was followed by the separation of the Latin and Greek Churches. In what degree a difference of religious opinion upon the most inscrutable of mysteries, national animosity, and arrogance on the part of Rome contributed to produce that schism, which the lapse of ten centuries finds unhealed, it is not within the compass of this work to consider.

In the turbulent period between A.D. 857-886, Pope Nicholas I. and the Patriarch Photius had mutually denounced and deposed each other. But it was not until A.D. 1054 that the Pope sent his legates to excommunicate formally the Church of Greece and the Patriarch of Constantinople in his own metropolis, and to deposit the Latin anathema on the altar of Saint Sophia. The failure of the attempt to reunite the two Churches at the Council of Florence (A.D. 1039) has been previously noticed (k).

The conquest of Constantinople by the Turks (A.D. 1443) was followed by that long and cruel oppression of the Greek Church, from which she has been, during the last few years, in great measure relieved.

The Patriarch of the East has not renewed that claim to

(1) Gibbon, vol. ix. p. 136. At p. 134 he has this note: "The two epistles of Gregory II. have been preserved in the Acts of the Nicene Council, t. viii. pp. 651-674. They are without date, which is fixed by Baronius in 726; by Muratori (Annal. d' Italia, vi. p. 120) in 720; by Pagi in 730."

(j) Vide ante, pp. 360–363.

(k) Vide ante, p. 403.

Pichler, i. 390-398, ss. 68-73.

Gibbon, c. 46, p. 95, &c.; c. 47, p. 145.

Sguropulus, Vera Historia Unionis non veræ inter Græcos et Latinos.

Popoff, Hist. of Council of Florence, translated by Neale.

the title of Universal Bishop which drew down upon him the just rebuke of the Patriarch of the West.

CCCCXLIII. The relations of the Church in the Kingdom of Greece to the Patriarch and Holy Synod of Constantinople form a subject of great interest to the churchman and theologian, and are not without interest to the International jurist.

Previously (1) to the establishment of Greece as an independent kingdom, the Patriarch and the Holy Synod of Constantinople exercised supreme authority over those countries or states which now compose that kingdom. During the war with Turkey which preceded the establishment of this kingdom, this authority ceased de facto. The Greeks refused to acknowledge even a spiritual power the holder of which resided in the territory of their enemy and oppressor. But in 1828 the Patriarch and the Synod invited Greece to renew her spiritual and ecclesiastical relations with the Patriarchal Throne. Greece, in her reply and in the first article of her declaration of August 4 (July 23), 1833 (m), asserted her ecclesiastical independence.

This declaration of independence, confirmed by the Greck Constitution of 1843, caused the Greek Church to remain for seventeen years unrecognised by the ancient Church, represented by the Patriarch and Synod of Constantinople. But the people of Greece, whatever certain theologians and statesmen might maintain, were uneasy at and distressed by this condition of isolation, and in 1850 the Greek Government opened negotiations with the Patriarch. The result was that the Patriarch, with certain not unimportant reservations, conceded the ecclesiastical independence of the Greek Church.

The Concordat or Treaty--if an unilateral act can so be designated-bore the name of Touós, equivalent to a Bull, and was signed at Constantinople, June 17 (29), 1850 (n).

(1) Recueil de Traités, Samwer, t. ii. p. 421.

(m) De Martens (N.R.) xii. p. 568.

(n) Samwer, t. 2, p. 425. Ann. des D. M. 1851-52, p. 965.