GREEK CHURCH 



2610 



GREEK LANGUAGE 



GREEK CHURCH, the religious organization 

 formerly comprised in the Greek. Greco-Ro- 

 man, or Roman Empire and of countries evan- 

 gelized from it, which include Russia. Fre- 

 quently it is called the Eastern Church to 

 distinguish it from the Western, the Latin, or 

 the Roman Catholic Church. Its official title 

 is the Holy Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic 

 Church. The Greek Church comprises three 

 branches: the church in the Turkish. Empire, 

 the church in Greece and the Russo-Greek 

 Church of the Russian Empire. In point of 

 numbers and historic memories the Orthodox 

 Church in Turkey is the richest. It is ruled 

 by the patriarch of Constantinople, with the 

 subordinate patriarchs of Jerusalem, Antioch 

 and Alexandria, who are the highest officers of 

 the Church. The Greek National Church is 

 governed by a holy synod. There are branches 

 also of this Church in Rumania, Bulgaria and 

 Serbia. The joint Greek Church has a large 

 following in the Church in Russia and uses the 

 old Slavonian tongue in its ritual. 



History. The estrangement and separation 

 of the Greek and the Roman Catholic Churches 

 had its beginning in the political division of 

 the Roman Empire and the founding of Con- 

 stantinople; but it was not until the ninth 

 century that the "great schism," or splitting 

 of the Church into factions, began. Photius, 

 who succeeded Ignatius as patriarch, called a 

 synod in Constantinople in 867 and ruled that 

 the Bishop of Rome, by that time called the 

 Pope, should not be supreme, and denounced 

 as heresy the insertion in the Nicene Creed of 

 the word filioque, meaning and from the Son. 

 He also denounced the prohibition of priestly 

 marriage. After his death in 891 the churches 

 were reunited until the eleventh century. The 

 final division was that between Pope Leo IX 

 and the patriarch Cerularius in 1054, since 

 which time the Roman Catholics regard the 

 Greeks as outside the Roman Catholic Church, 

 while the Greeks maintain they have been 

 faithful to the usages and creed of the Roman 

 Church. 



Founding of Russian Church. The Russian 

 Church was founded in 1582-1589. when a patri- 

 archate of Moscow was instituted, and its inde- 

 pendence was completed by the permanent 

 holy synod. 



Church Constitution. While the higher 

 clergy consists of patriarchs, archbishops and 

 bishops, the recognized temporal head of the 

 Greek Church was the czar of Russia, prior to 

 the revolution of 1917 which dethroned him. 



The patriarch of Moscow succeeded him. The 

 seven rites of the Roman Church are admitted, 

 namely, Baptism by triple immersion. Con- 

 firmation, the Eucharist, Penance, Extreme 

 I'liction, Holy Orders and Matrimony, but 

 these vary largely in their observance. The 

 Cross is the only graven image permitted, but 

 the veneration of pictures is allowed. Celibacy 

 is obligatory for bishops, but priests and dea- 

 cons may marry once only. Singing is allowed 

 only by male voices in church services, and 

 the ceremonial is exceedingly formal. The 

 total membership of the Greek Church is about 

 119,300,000. See RELIGION, subhead Religion* 

 of the World. A.E.R. 



GREEK FIRE, a chemical compound which, 

 when touched by water, would burst into 

 flames almost impossible to extinguish, was 

 employed by the Byzantine Greeks of the Mid- 

 dle Ages to set fire to enemy fleets and to repel 

 the besiegers of Constantinople. It was forced 

 through tubes in a stream of living fire, thrown 

 from ladles or poured from caldrons. Its com- 

 position was a secret, and modern chemists can 

 only surmise what substances formed it. One 

 theory is that quicklime was added to some of 

 the incendiary compounds of which the princi- 

 pal ingredients had been known before the 

 Christian Era. Sulphur, pitch, charcoal, naph- 

 tha or petroleum, tallow, rosin and turpentine 

 were among the materials of the earlier mix- 

 tures, generally known as wildfire and errone- 

 ously called Greek fire by the Crusaders, though 

 lacking the qualities of the dreaded Byzantine 

 flame. Saltpeter was added to wildfire, and 

 perhaps to Greek fire, in the thirteenth century. 

 so that they differed only slightly from gun- 

 powder, then unknown. 



Liquid Fire, a German device in the War 

 of the Nations, resembling Greek fire mainly 

 in its effects, is described in its proper place in 

 these volumes. 



GREEK LANGUAGE, a branch of the. Indo- 

 European family of languages, akin to Sanskrit 

 and Latin and to the languages of the Teutonic 

 races. In its classic form it is considered to 

 have been the most beautiful and perfect lan- 

 guage ever spoken, not only by reason of its 

 musical character, but because the large num- 

 ber of word forms made possible a precision in 

 expression not to be had in any less inflected 

 speech. For instance, in the classic Greek a 

 fully conjugated verb possessed 507 different 

 forms. 



Ancient Greek. The geography of Greece 

 influenced not only the history of the country. 



