GHEECE. 



GREEK CHURCH. 



869 



Tlioroupon Commandant Deraitraka- 

 n oi-ilcivtl the fi.'irrison to fire upon the 

 town. 'I'll.- \olloy killed and wounded a nura- 

 I) r .if persona, auion^ tin- former being the 

 f Mr. Milijirossi, a medical gentleman, 

 and an Kiu'lish groom. The foreign consuls 

 the matter up, but made no impre^iou 

 on the commandant, who vauntingly declared 

 that it was ho who had given the order to tire 

 on tli,- people. These brutal acts so exasper- 

 ated public feeling against the garrison, that 

 the townspeople threatened to pull down the 

 Creek flag and hoist the English standard, 

 e\vu if they had to storm the citadel; and it 

 'va-i with great difficulty, and only on the no- 

 march promising that the garrison should im- 

 mediately be sent away from Corfu, that the 

 i-rnent was allayed. This pledge was 

 confirmed by the Government at Athens, and 

 within four days from the affair not one of 

 the garrison was left, their place being taken 

 by troops hurriedly picked up at Patras and 

 other stations by dispatch-boats sent to con- 

 vey them. Several arrests of townspeople 

 were subsequently made, particularly of those 

 who raised the cry " Hurrah for the English! " 

 and attempted to make political capital out of 

 the broil. The election at Corfu had to be 

 postponed for several weeks, when seven op- 

 ponents and two adherents of the Government 

 were chosen. 



The Chamber met on August 6th, and, as 

 several weeks passed without a quorum being 

 present, they were adjourned to October. 

 After the reassembling, the Chamber, as usual, 

 wasted a great deal of time in the verification 

 of the elections, after which it elected Zarkos, 

 an adherent of the ministry, as president. 



On December 12th the Chamber approved 

 the budget for 1874. A few days later the 

 Opposition demanded that the resolution be 

 reversed, because 96 members had not been 

 present. When this motion was rejected by 

 80 against 61 votes, the entire Opposition left 

 the hall and presented to the King a remon- 

 strance signed by 58 deputies. As only 90 

 deputies remained in their seats, the Chamber 

 was again left without a quorum. 



The election by the Holy Synod, toward the 

 close of 1873, of the Archbishop of Corfu as 

 Metropolitan of Attica and President of the 

 Holy Synod, was not ratified by the Govern- 

 ment, which suspected the archbishop of a 

 leaning toward Russia. At a new election 

 the Archbishop of Messania, Procopioa, was 

 chosen. The new head of the Church of 

 Greece has the reputation of being one of the 

 most learned men of the Greek Church. He 

 declined to accept the election, but finally 

 yielded to the personal entreaties of the 

 King. 



The compulsory transfer of the Laurion 



mines* from the Franco-Italian Society, which 



had rediscovered them, to a Greek company, 



did not prove as profitable as the Greek poli- 



See AKNUAL CYCLOPEDIA for 1872 and 1873. 



ticians had expected. Mr. Anskctt, an Eng- 

 lish expert, who was consulted by the Council 

 <>t' Administration on the prospects of the 

 company, stated that, unless the Government 

 rc'lueod by about one-half (from 61 por cent. 

 to 80 por cent.) the tax imposed upon the 

 company, the latter would bo unable to pay a 

 dividend of 6 per cent. 



GREEK CHURCH. The population con- 

 nected with the Oriental Greek Church of 

 Russia was, in 1871, according to the "Statis- 

 tical Year-book of the Russian Empire " (vol. 

 ii., 1871), about 58,000,000, divided as follows: 

 European Russia, 53,139,000; Poland, 80,000; 

 Caucasia, 1,930,000; Siberia, 2,875,000; Cen- 

 tral Asia, 131,000; Finland, 84,000. Turkey 

 numbers about 12,000,000 inhabitants belong- 

 ing to the Greek Church, of whom 4,275,000 

 belong to Roumania, and 1,295,000 to Servia; 

 Austria, according to the census of 1871, 

 3,050,000; the kingdom of Greece, 1,440,000; 

 Montenegro, 125,000; Germany, about 3,000. 

 The number of Rascolniks, or sectarians, in 

 Russia, which acknowledge the doctrinal basis 

 of the Greek Church, but reject the liturgy of 

 the Russian Church as corrected by Patriarch 

 Nicon (1654), is given in the " Statistical Year- 

 book of the Russian Empire " as 922,079 in Eu- 

 ropean Russia, 4,552 in Poland, 58,876 in Cau- 

 casia, 65,505 in Siberia, and 42,443 in Central 

 Asia. But this number embraces only those 

 who publicly profess themselves as Rascolniks ; 

 the number of those who secretly belong to 

 the sects is much larger. They are variously 

 estimated at from 5,000,000 to 15,000,000. 

 Lengenfeldt, in his recent work on Russia 

 (" Russland im 19. Jahrhundert," Berlin, 1875), 

 assumes their number to be about 11,000,000; 

 while Hepworth Dixon, in his work on Russia, 

 claims to have heard from a Russian minister 

 that they count fully 17,000,000. 



The sentiments of the Church of Russia on 

 the question of closer relations between the 

 Eastern and Anglican Communions is set forth 

 in the following reply from Isidore, the Presi- 

 dent of the Holy Synod of Russia, to the Com- 

 mittee of the House of Bishops of the Protes- 

 tant Episcopal Church in the United States : 



To the Well-Beloved in Christ, and the Right Rever- 

 end Committee of the HOUM of Bishop of the Prot- 

 estant Episcopal Church in the Untied States of 

 America: 



Your letter addressed to His Excellency the Pro- 

 curator General Count Tolstoy, having been pre- 

 sented by him to the consideration of the Most Holy 

 Governing Synod of Russia, together with the re- 

 port and the concurrence of the House of Bishops, 

 approved by the House of Clerical nnd Lay Depu- 

 ties, in reference to the establishment upon a true 

 Catholic basis of a spiritual fraternity between the 

 American and o'thodox churches, especially in the 

 Territory of Alaska, was received by the Most Holy 

 Synod of all the Russias with the utmost pleasure, 

 as a now proof of respect shown by the representa- 

 tives of tne Episcopal Church, ana of their estima- 

 ble purpose concerning the union of the churches. 

 The Most Holy Synod, on their part, will make it 

 an object of their constant care that a spirit of Chris- 

 tian tolerance and fraternal love and esteem, in ac- 



