The Patriarchate of Jerusalem, whose seat is, and always has been, at Jerusalem, has the distinctive characteristic of having always constituted a monastic Brotherhood, with the Patriarch as its abbot, and with the special vocation of tending and guarding the Sacred Shrines of the Holy Land. The Patriarch is assisted in his work by the Holy Synod, consisting of twelve titular bishops and seven Archimandrites. The life of this Patriarchate has been an incessant struggle for the maintenance of its privileged position against more powerful and more numerous rivals. The Brotherhood of Jerusalem can trace its rights over the Sacred Shrines right back to the time of Constantine the Great, when the Shrines were first established; and it can also claim as further proof the recognition and confirmation of these rights by the Caliph Omar in the seventh century. But from the times of the Crusades onwards, the Roman Church, too, began to lay claim to rights over the Shrines; and in the of Sultan Selim I (1512-1520) both she and others contrived, by means of large payments to the Turks and the support of powerful protectors, surreptitiously to acquire certain privileges, although our Church still remains in possession of the greatest number. As though foreign enemies were not enough, there appeared in 1885 the Russian Palestinian Society, with the ostensible aim of founding churches, schools, hostels and bishops' palaces, and thus raising the position and reputation of Orthodoxy, but with the secret intention of accomplishing the Russianisation of Palestine. But the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre continued nevertheless to perform its duties and to retain its coveted position. The maintenance and adornment of the Sacred Shrines for centuries; the regular distribution of alms to the indigent natives; the upkeep of schools, hospitals, hostels and printing presses; the rebuilding in 1810 of the Church of the Resurrection which had been burnt down; the maintenance of the excellent “Theological School of the Cross” during its long years of valuable service; — all this, and many other unavoidable expenses burdened the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulcher with almost overwhelming debts, although the Greek people never failed to send its contributions of money on behalf of the Holy Sepulcher. Lately, however, a certain measure of order has been restored to the financial affairs of the Church of Jerusalem, foreshadowing also a closer attention to spiritual matters.

The Church of Cyprus.

   The Church of Cyprus, like the four eldest Patriarchates, can also boast of great antiquity. Founded in the year 45 by the Apostles Paul and Barnabas, and numbering among her members saints such as Spiridon and Epiphanius, she was granted the privilege of autonomy by the Third Ecumenical Synod, which forbade the Archbishop of Antioch to interfere in the affairs of Cyprus. Unfortunately, in 1191, Richard Coeur de Lion took possession of the island, and sold it to the Knights Templar; and thenceforward the unfortunate Cypriotes, under the yoke of the fanatical Roman Catholic Lusignans, underwent every km of suffering for the sake of their national and religious independence. Not only did the Templar intruder transform the majority of them into serfs, but the Pope imposed on them a Roman Archbishop, to whom the Orthodox bishops were obliged to swear the oath of allegiance. In 1231, in the presence of the Portuguese Pelagius, the representative of Pope Honorius III, the Thirteen Holy Fathers were martyred, having been condemned as heretics for not accepting the innovations of the Roman Church. They were first tied to the tails of horses and dragged over stones, then burnt together with animals, so that it should be impossible to collect their bones. The Venetian occupation of the island in 1489 was merely the substitution of anew tyranny for the old; and the only redeeming feature of the Turkish conquest which followed in 1571 was that it drove away from the island all the Roman intruders. The crowning act of Turkish ferocity was the strangling at Nicosia of the Archbishop of Cyprus, Cyprianus, the Metropolitans of Paphos, Kition and Kyrenia, and other Cypriot notables, by the blood-thirsty Turkish Governor, Kuchuk Mechmet, during the first year of the Greek Revolution (1821). In 1878, Cyprus was taken over by Great Britain, whence had come her first conqueror, Richard Coeur de Lion. But the two hundred and fifty thousand Orthodox Greeks of this martyred island, who constitute four-fifths of its whole population, will never turn their thoughts to higher things until they are freed from foreign domination, and return once more to the care of their natural mother-land.