From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

by J. A. Zahm

Nestorian, Monophysite and Other Eastern Churches

Our arrival at Mosul was to us a cause of gratification for many reasons. Not the least of these was the very cordial reception tendered us by the good Sons of St. Dominic whose hospitality to wayfarers like ourselves has always been as proverbial as that of the Franciscans. Indeed, the friars of both these venerable religious orders seem, particularly in the Orient, to have made their own, the beautiful Armenian saying “A guest comes from God.”

As for myself, I was specially glad to be in this famous old city, for it is located on the Tigris which I was almost as eager to see as the Euphrates. The names of both of these celebrated rivers had ever been associated in my mind from my earliest youth and, seeing their tawny waters for the first time, they evoked many pleasant memories of boyhood days when I loved to picture to myself the remarkable peoples who dwelt in the fertile land bounded by these two great waterways, peoples whose marvelous achievements impressed me more then than did, in maturer years, the matchless deeds of those incomparable men who dwelt on the banks of the Nile and the Tiber.

But my chief reason for rejoicing on our arrival at Mosul was that I there had a rare opportunity to complete observations which, during the greater part of our journey, I had been making on the condition and influence of what are known as the Eastern Churches. I do not speak of an “Eastern Church,” about which so much has been written, for such an organization, as contradistinguished from a Western Church, is mere fiction.

The noted Venetian traveler, Marco Polo, in writing of the inhabitants of Mosul, declares:

There is a kind of people called Arabi and these worship Mohammed.[318] Then there is another description of people who are called Nestorian and Jacobite Christians. These have a Patriarch whom they call the Jatolic [he means Catholic] and this Patriarch creates Archbishops and Abbots and Prelates of all other degrees and sends them into every quarter, as to India, to Baudas [Bagdad] or to Cathay, just as the Pope of Rome does in Latin countries. For you must know that though there is a very great number of Christians in those countries, they are all Jacobites and Nestorians; Christians, indeed, but not in the fashion enjoined by the Pope of Rome, for they come short in several points of the faith.[319]

Nearly five and a half centuries after the illustrious Venetian traveler had dictated these lines, the erudite historian and Orientalist, von Hammer-Purgstall, referring to the inhabitants of the terraced city of Mardin, located between Edessa and Mosul, wrote: “There Sunnis and Shias, Catholic and Schismatic Armenians, Jacobites, Nestorians, Chaldæans, Sun, Fire, Calf and Devil worshipers dwell one over the head of the other.”[320]

These two quotations from writers who lived in such widely separated periods give one a fair idea of what has long been the religious affiliations of the greater part of the population of Mesopotamia and what, with slight changes, they are still to-day.

Dismissing the Moslems and Pagans just mentioned as without the purview of this chapter, a few pages on the different Christian bodies above-mentioned will aid the reader to form an intelligent estimate of the present condition of some of these Churches of the East and of their relations to one another.

We begin with the Nestorians as they constitute the oldest of the existing dissident Churches. The Arians, Novatians, Paulinists, and scores of other heretics who gave such trouble to the early Christian Church have long disappeared and only students of heresiology now know what doctrines they really professed.

The distinguishing tenet of Nestorianism, which owes its origin to Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople from 428 to 431, is the assertion that in Christ there are two persons—the human and the divine—and the denial that the Mother of Christ is the Mother of God. The Catholic doctrine, as defined by the third Œcumenical Council held at Ephesus in 431, is that in Christ there is but one person—the person of the Son of God—and that the Blessed Virgin Mary is the Mother of God—Θεοτόκος.

From its beginning Nestorianism has been essentially an eastern organization and was early adopted by the successors of the “Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and inhabitants of Mesopotamia,” who, on the first Pentecost, were so amazed to hear the Apostles in Jerusalem speaking in divers tongues the wonderful works of God.[321]

On account of political and other reasons, the Nestorians soon became separated from the rest of Christendom. Banished from Edessa in 489 by the Emperor Zeno, they fled to Nisibis which then belonged to Persia. The Persian King, learning that they did not profess the same creed as that held by the Byzantines, with whom he was always at war, took them under his protection. From that time the Nestorian Church, which eventually became almost forgotten west of Mesopotamia, had an extraordinary development in the East. For, although from his palace, in the twin city of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the Nestorian Katholicos sent missionaries to Arabia and Syria and Egypt, by far the larger number went to far-off India and China. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the Nestorian Church attained its greatest development, the jurisdiction of the Nestorian Katholicos rivaled in extent that of the greatest of the Byzantine Patriarchs. For then the supreme head of the Nestorians ruled over a vast number of bishops who were stationed at important points in Asia from Mosul to Malabar and from Jerusalem to Java and Peking.[322]

But from this period, the Nestorian Church, which had then reached the zenith of its greatness and power, began rapidly to decline. Its downfall was hastened by the Moslem hordes of Timur which then swept over the greater part of middle and western Asia and subjected to the fiercest persecution all who did not profess the religion of Mohammed. In addition to the disasters which followed in the footsteps of the Tartars from Delhi to Damascus and from the Aral Sea to the Persian Gulf, the Nestorians suffered greatly from schisms and internal quarrels. These, coupled with the devastations of the Tartars, from which they never recovered, eventually reduced what was the greatest Christian organization in Asia to a poor and insignificant community in the bleak region of Kurdistan on the frontier between Persia and Turkey.

The Nestorian Patriarch now lives at Kochanes between Lake Van and Lake Urmia and always assumes the title Mar Shimum—Lord Simon.[323] A striking peculiarity of the Patriarchy is that it has been hereditary since 1450 and passes from uncle to nephew. Realizing their miserable condition in the spiritual as well as in the material order, many of the Patriarchs during the last two centuries have sought reunion with Rome. Thanks to the untiring missionary labors of the Dominicans of Mosul the majority of the Nestorians, after fourteen centuries of separation, have returned to the faith of their forefathers. Sometimes the inhabitants of several villages returned together. All those in and around Mosul who formerly professed the faith of Nestorians are now members of what is known as the Chaldean Church, which is in communion with Rome. And according to the latest reports from the Dominican missionaries of Mosul, there is reason to believe that all the remaining Nestorians will soon—if they have not already done so—accept the teaching of the Council of Ephesus; and the schism, which for more than fourteen centuries has kept countless myriads outside the pale of the Mother Church, will, like many other schisms, be but a matter of history.

Those who may still cling to Nestorianism—if there yet be any—have long practically forgotten the great questions that so distracted the Church in the East in the days of Nestorius, Diodore of Tarsus, and Theodore of Mopsuestia. Few of them know why they have ever been separated from the Church of Rome, and, when questioned about it, are able to give no better reason than “Because we have always been separated.” With the exception of the heresy of Nestorius which was condemned at Ephesus, the faith of the Nestorians is virtually the same as that taught by the Church of Rome. Like other Eastern Churches, the Nestorian has its peculiar liturgy, rites, laws, customs, but these are so far from affecting the truths of faith, that converts from Nestorianism are allowed by Rome to retain all its peculiarities of worship and religious observance, except in the rare cases in which they actually conflict with Catholic dogma. This is evidenced in the rites and liturgy of the Chaldeans—the Uniates, or converted Nestorians—which are exactly the same as the schismatic Nestorians have used from time immemorial.

When in 1750 the Dominican missionaries took up their abode in Mosul, they found there but one Catholic family and that was one of the Chaldean rite. But so fruitful was their work of conversion that the Patriarch of Mesopotamia and Lower Kurdistan soon afterwards resigned his position and his nephew and successor Mar Yohannan applied for admission into the Church of Rome. He was followed almost immediately by five of his bishops and by the greater part of his people in and around Mosul.

This rapid movement Romeward of the Nestorian pastors and their flocks is partly explained by the fact that they saw no valid reason for remaining separated from a Church which taught the same doctrines as they themselves had always believed and which, during long centuries of persecution, they had preserved intact. But their reunion with Rome was hastened by the tact and zeal of the learned and sympathetic Dominicans whom all soon learned to revere and love. For these devoted priests not only aided these poor but earnest people in becoming reconciled with the Mother Church on the most lenient terms, but they also established for them schools and asylums and hospitals where both souls and bodies could receive much needed care.

In Mosul an up-to-date printing establishment was installed in which were printed the Scriptures and other books in Arabic, Syriac, and other languages. A seminary was founded for the benefit of Chaldean students destined for the priesthood. The education of girls was entrusted to the highly cultured Dominican Sisters of the Presentation of Tours, France. Not only did they assume charge of preparatory and normal schools but they also opened industrial schools for girls, especially for the working girls of the city. They also took charge of dispensaries where thousands of poor and sick people received free of charge the medicine and treatment which their condition required and which, before the arrival of these ministering angels of mercy, were not available.

In view of all these facts is there anything surprising in the final return of the followers of Nestorius to communion with Rome?[324]

The history of the Jacobites, of whom Marco Polo found many in Mosul—“Christians indeed, but not in the fashion enjoined by the Pope of Rome”—differs but little, except in one point of doctrine, from that of the Nestorians. This point of doctrine is in one respect the very opposite of the distinguishing dogma of the Nestorians. For, whereas the Nestorians divided Christ into two persons against the Catholic doctrine which maintained His unity, the Jacobites, contrary to Catholic teaching, asserted that there is in Christ but one nature and not two, the human and the divine, as decreed in 451, by the Œcumenical Council of Chalcedon.[325] It is because this heresy teaches the fusion of Our Lord’s humanity and divinity that it is called Monophysitism. And because, in its early stages, it was so ardently championed by Eutyches, an archimandrite of a monastery outside the walls of Constantinople, it is also known as Eutychianism. The Syrian Monophysites are usually called Jacobites, after Jacob Zanzalos, who was an early and zealous propagator of the heresy.

So far as statistics are available the number of Jacobites is somewhat larger than was that of the Nestorians when the Dominicans began to lead them back to obedience to Rome. They are scattered throughout Syria and Mesopotamia and Malabar. Their Patriarch, who always takes the name Ignatius with the title of Antioch, resides at Mardin or Diarbekir on the Upper Tigris to the northwest of Mosul. Although they all talk Arabic, the Jacobites use the Syrian liturgy of St. James.

In consequence of the missionary labors of the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Capuchins the majority of the Jacobites are again in communion with Rome under the name of Melchites or Syrian Uniates. Their Patriarch with the title of Antioch usually resides at Beirut. He has eight suffragans, most of whom live in Mesopotamia. From present indications the day does not seem distant when the Jacobites, like the Nestorians, shall once more be reunited with the See of Peter, from which they have so long been separated.

Another Eastern Church which has long been cut off from the rest of Christendom is that of the Armenians. Like the Jacobites, the Armenians early adopted Monophysitism, a doctrine which they still retain. Although many of them have returned to Rome, the majority, known as Gregorians from St. Gregory the Illuminator, the apostle of Armenia, are still Monophysites. They have on various occasions sought corporate reunion with the Church of their fathers, and, judging by their friendly attitude towards Catholics, this union may take place at any time.

A peculiarity about the Armenian Church is its intensely national character. It is indeed the most national church in the world, for its only members—whether Gregorians or Uniates—are Armenians. It is their religion which has held the Armenians together in spite of centuries of persecution by Persian satraps; in spite of the tyranny of Seljuk sultans; in spite of the pogroms of Russian autocrats. To no other people in the world, save only those of the real “Niobe of nations”—the long-suffering but invincible sons and daughters of Erin—has their religion served as a stronger bond of union than it has to the cruelly harassed and down-trodden Armenians. It has enabled them with unparalleled tenacity to preserve their language and literature and live ever in the hope that they may one day—God grant it may be soon!—achieve their national independence.

Statistics regarding the number of Armenians are very unsatisfactory. If one were to believe all the horrible tales circulated during the last few decades about wholesale massacres of Armenians by Turks and Kurds and Russians, one would have to conclude that the brave and patriotic race is now extinct. Fortunately we have positive evidence that these bloodcurdling reports have, for political and other un-altruistic motives, been greatly exaggerated and that there is reason to believe that the number of Armenians still living in what was once the Ottoman Empire is not far from three millions.

The Katholikos of the Gregorian Church, who is the successor of the old line of Armenian Patriarchs descended from St. Gregory the Illuminator, resides in the famous monastery of Etchimiadzin near Erivan in Russian Armenia. This monastery, which has been the seat of the Patriarchs for nearly five centuries, was formally ceded to Russia, after the Russo-Persian War, in 1828, and since that time the Katholikos has been subject to a Muscovite process of Russianization which has left him so little liberty of action that his patriarchate has been reduced to what is virtually only a primacy of honor.

In Turkey the Armenian Church is largely under the control of the government. For, as far back as 1461, the Sultan Mohammed II, in order to have the Primate of this Church under his direction, raised the bishop of Constantinople to the dignity of Patriarch. As a result of this arbitrary action of the Sultan the Patriarch of Constantinople and not the Katholikos of Etchimiadzin has ever since been the real primate of all the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

In addition to the two Patriarchs just named, the Armenian Church counts two others. For some centuries ago, as the result of schism and usurpation, it was forced to recognize the self-styled Patriarchs of Jerusalem, and Sis in Cilicia. But, although the schism has been healed, the Patriarchs are still tolerated. They are, however, only titular and have no jurisdiction as such.

Monophysitism was embraced not only by the Jacobites and Armenians but also by a large part of the people of Egypt. It was these Egyptian Monophysites who constituted what has since been known as the Coptic Church. Like the Jacobites and Armenians, the Copts,[326] since their schism has been out of communion with the rest of Christendom, have suffered all the persecutions and been involved in all the internal dissensions that have been the lot of the other schismatics of the East.

The Copts of Egypt now number about half a million souls. Their chief ecclesiastical ruler, who usually resides in Cairo, is the Patriarch of Alexandria. He pretends to be the direct successor of the Evangelist St. Mark, the first bishop of Alexandria, and claims jurisdiction not only over Egypt but over Abyssinia as well. Like the other Eastern Churches, that of the Copts has its own peculiar rites and customs. She uses old Coptic in her liturgy although it has for centuries been a dead language and is no longer understood by any of her priests. As is the case with most of the Nestorians and Jacobites, the language of the Copts is Arabic. And like the sparsely scattered schismatics of Syria and Mesopotamia, the great majority of the Copts and Abyssinians live in a state of extreme poverty and ignorance, although their more fortunate countrymen and coreligionists are now making efforts to elevate them in the social scale and give them some of the benefits of an elementary education.

In consequence of the missionary activities of Franciscans, Capuchins, Jesuits, and Lazarists there are now many Uniate Copts and Abyssinians and their number is gradually increasing. Like the Uniate Syrians, the Uniate Copts are called Melchites.[327] The Primate of the Melchites bears the title of “Patriarch of Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem and all the East.” On specially solemn occasions he is called “Father of Fathers, Shepherd of Shepherds, High Priest of High Priests and Thirteenth Apostle.” Although he spends some weeks annually at Jerusalem and Alexandria, where he administers the affairs of his flock through vicars, he resides during the greater part of the year in Damascus. The liturgy used by the Melchites is the Byzantine which is usually celebrated in the Arabic language. On certain very solemn occasions, however, the language of the liturgy is Greek.

Unique among all Eastern Churches is that of the Maronites. The members of this interesting and flourishing communion are all Catholics and it is their proud boast that their Church has never been tainted by heresy. It is certain, however, that they were once Monothelites and taught a doctrine which was but a veiled form of Monophysitism. But this heresy they abandoned at the time of the Crusades when their Patriarch made his submission to Rome. Since then, despite partial defections and centuries of oppression on the part of their schismatic and Mohammedan neighbors, their faith has been of practically uninterrupted orthodoxy.

The Maronites constitute almost the entire population of the Lebanon. There is besides a considerable number in Western Syria, Cyprus, Egypt, and Palestine. According to the most reliable estimates available their total number is about three hundred thousand.[328] The usual place of residence of their Patriarch is the great monastery of St. Mary of Kanobin in the Lebanon where for centuries the Maronite Patriarchs have found their last resting place. The title of the Maronite Patriarch is Patriarchus Antiochenus Maronitarum, but, curiously enough, this Antiochene title is shared with him by no fewer than five other Patriarchs, two of whom are schismatical and three Catholic. These are the schismatic Patriarchs of the Jacobite and Orthodox Churches and the Melchite, Syrian Catholic, and Latin Patriarchs, the last named of whom is only titular. And strange to say, not one of these six Patriarchs lives in Antioch. The language used in the Maronite liturgy is ordinarily Syriac. But to priests who are not sufficiently familiar with Syriac, permission is given to perform the liturgy in Arabic—but Arabic written Syriac characters.

But a word needs to be said about the so-called Church of St. Thomas in Malabar. Although Malabar Christians love to trace the origin of their Church to St. Thomas the Apostle, it seems more probable that it was founded by Nestorian missionaries when their activities extended over a great part of Asia. At any rate, they were once Nestorians. At a later period most of them became Monophysites. Now, however, the majority of them are in communion with Rome under the name “Uniates of Malabar,” with a peculiar rite of their own called the “Rite of Malabar.”

The different Churches which have engaged our attention in the preceding pages and which cannot fail to enlist the interest of the observant traveler in the Orient, suggest at least two questions which demand an answer. What was originally the real cause of these schismatic organizations which have no communion with one another? And how explain the tenacity with which each of them, during more than fourteen centuries, has clung to its peculiar rites and customs and liturgies, and despite all the vicissitudes of war and conquest, has preserved them intact to the present day?

In answer to the first part of the question it is usually asserted that the cause of each of the dissident Churches in question was some specific heresy. This is the truth but, as history proves, it is not the whole truth. Misunderstanding, deception, national jealousies and aspirations had probably as much—if not more—to do with the separation of these Churches from Rome as the particular heresies with which they are usually associated.

A striking proof of this assertion is the peculiar manner in which Monophysitism was introduced into Egypt. The people of the Nile Land readily embraced it because they were under the impression that it was the teaching of St. Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria. As the chief opponent of Nestorius and the valiant champion of Our Lady’s title of Mother of God at the Council of Ephesus, he was regarded by the Egyptians as their national hero and acclaimed their Christian Pharaoh. They were confirmed in this view because Dioscur, Cyril’s successor as Patriarch of Alexandria, was an avowed advocate of Monophysitism. When his teaching was condemned at the Council of Chalcedon and he was deposed from the office of bishop, the people of Egypt, who were always loyal to their ecclesiastical Pharaoh, rallied to his support. They did not stop to examine the merits of the case. The fact that the doctrine, for which their Patriarch was deposed, was known to be opposed to “the faith of the tyrant of the Bosphorus”—as the Byzantine Emperor was called—was an additional reason why it approved itself to the ever patriotic Egyptians. “Lurking under the dispute about one or two natures in Christ was the old national feeling, the old hatred of the Roman power.”[329] The decree of Chalcedon and the consequent deposition of their Patriarch gave occasion for a recrudescence of this hatred of Cæsar and Cæsar’s religion and for an anti-imperialistic outbreak in Alexandria such as this great city had never before witnessed. Thenceforth Monophysitism in its opposition to Byzantine imperialism was identified with Egyptian nationalism. And when the Mohammedans under Amru swept over Egypt, so great was the hatred of the Copts for the Melkites that they sided with the Arabs against the forces of Byzantium. But this with Monophysitism was the cause of their downfall. “The great days when the Christian Pharaoh was the chief bishop of the East have gone forever.”[330] And by a strange irony of fate it was Constantinople, Alexandria’s detested rival, that was eventually to hold the second place among the patriarchates of the Church—a position which, since the days of St. Mark, had been held by the world-famous metropolis of Egypt.

The events which attended the introduction of Monophysitism into Syria were almost a repetition of those which occurred on the entrance of this heresy into Egypt. And the causes which led to the introduction of Monophysitism into the two countries and favored its development there were practically the same. For Antioch, the capital of the Seleucids, as well as Alexandria, the capital of the Ptolemies, was a Greek city and each from the disruption of Alexander’s Empire had been a center of Greek civilization and culture. But neither the Syrians nor the Egyptians had ever become reconciled to the intrusion of the Macedonians or other Greek-speaking peoples into their native lands. Nor was their antagonism to foreign domination diminished when their countries became appanages of Rome and Byzantium. They clung as tenaciously as ever to the laws and customs and languages of their fathers and welcomed an opportunity of concealing under the guise of heresy their hatred of Cæsar’s religion as well as their ill-concealed disloyalty to Cæsar’s empire.

In spite of the repeated efforts of the Emperors of Constantinople to conciliate their disaffected subjects in Egypt and Syria and to suppress a heresy that was a constant menace to the State, all their endeavors proved abortive. And when the Moslems invaded Syria it was in Monophysitism that its inhabitants found an outlash of their long pent-up national and anti-imperial feelings which made the conquest of Islam as easy in the Levant as it had been in the Delta of the Nile. But the penalty paid by Syria for its disloyalty and schism was no less terrific than that which reduced Egypt from its high estate and degraded it to the rank of a dishonored province in the ever-extending dominion of the Saracens. For just as it was schism that led to the downfall of Alexandria—the seat of the greatest and most celebrated patriarchate in the East—so was it schism that heralded the inglorious collapse of her great rival—Antioch, the third city of the empire—Antioch, where the followers of the Crucified were first called Christians.

What has been said of Monophysitism as an outlet of national feeling in Egypt and Syria holds equally true of it in Armenia. Its introduction and rapid diffusion was in great measure due to jealousy of the Orthodox Church and hatred of the Byzantine government. But far more than in the case of other Eastern Churches, Monophysitism is the religious bond that during long centuries of oppression and persecution held the Armenians together as a nation and that, especially during recent times, has won for this long-suffering people the sympathy of the entire civilized world.

Only those who have traveled in the Near East and studied there the aspirations of its peoples can fully realize the intense national feeling of the Eastern Churches. Similarly only those who have carefully studied the history of these various ecclesiastical bodies can duly appreciate their present attitude toward the great Latin Church of the West and understand that remarkable conservatism which has ever been one of their most striking characteristics.

The truth is that in all the Eastern Churches—especially the Armenian—national loyalty and national pride count for more than religious conviction or dogmatic teaching. This, strange as it may appear, means that the nation comes before the Church; that politics takes precedence of theology.

To envisage the State as separated from the Church, politics as distinct from religion, as we do in the West, is as alien to a Syrian or an Armenian patriot as it is to a Persian mollah or an Ottoman grand vizier. For this reason the Eastern Churches, like the theocratic government of Islam to which they have so long been subject, have always attributed so paramount an importance to everything that specially bears on their national life and character. And they have been confirmed in this view by their age-long treatment by the Sublime Porte which, in organizing its Christian subjects, made religion the basis of their nationality. Thus the Armenian Church was made Ermeni Millet—the Armenian Nation; the Orthodox Church, regarded as inheriting the name of the Roman Empire, became Rum Millet—the Roman nation—while Catholics of the Latin rite are known as Latin Millet—the Latin Nation. And so it was with the Churches of Egypt, Syria, Mount Lebanon, and the various other Christian Churches in the vast dominions of the Ottoman Sultan.[331]

From the foregoing it is seen that among Eastern Christians it is not their particular church that counts so much as their millet. This, although quite an artificial nation, is as dear to them as our fatherland is to us, while in comparison all matters of dogma and theology are quite secondary. For this reason it is that there are rarely any conversions from one Eastern Church to another. And for this reason, too, it is that—as has well been observed—“for a Jacobite to turn Orthodox would be like a Frenchman turning German.”

This loyalty of the schismatic Christians in the East to the traditions and national spirit of their forebears explains the exceptional conservatism of the divers Churches to which they belong—the tenacity with which through the ages they have clung to their particular rites and customs and retained unchanged their special liturgies since schism first separated them from their mother Church. And it is this intense conservatism, this undying loyalty to their millet that constitutes the greatest barrier to the reunion of the Eastern Churches with the primatial Church of Rome.

Then, too, there is ever before them the terror-inspiring specter of Fragistan—Europe—which portends disasters innumerable. It is the horrid old phantom of the land of mists and shadows which has been haunting the East since the Trojan War—which reappeared with all its horrid accompaniments of rapine and death during the invasion of Alexander the Great and still again during the repeated and long-continued campaigns of the Crusaders. These days of unalterable woe have so seared the hearts and memories of the peoples of Western Asia that, like the Trojans who feared the Greeks even when bearing gifts, they have an inborn distrust of the Feringees,[332] of their Churches, their schools, their laws, their governments.

It is because the Holy See is so thoroughly cognizant of all the fears and jealousies and animosities of the divers Eastern Churches and because she fully realizes the importance which they severally attach to their millet that she has always been so prudent and considerate in her dealings with them and so disposed to conciliate them and remove everything that might excite suspicion or distrust. Always yearning for a return of the misguided children who so long ago left her fold, she is ever ready to make any reasonable concession, so long as it does not affect the deposit of faith of which she is the divinely appointed custodian. Hence it is that, in her eagerness to further the cause of the reunion for which she has always so ardently longed, she has, in her supreme wisdom, ever been ready to allow each Church and each millet to retain its own laws and customs, rites and liturgy, language and hierarchy. And it is because of this wise and benevolent policy that recent years have witnessed the return to Rome of so many thousands of Eastern schismatics—often whole dioceses at a time—to the venerable Mother Church from which they had been lured by heresy and schism in the long ago. So far, then, as the Eastern Churches mentioned are concerned, it would appear from the foregoing pages that the day is not very distant when, in great measure, heresy shall be adjured and schism healed.