The same thing might be said about the missionary zeal of the Orthodox Church, which European historians consider as nonexistent. I do not allude to the Russian Orthodox missions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to Siberia, China and Japan, which reflect great credit on the Orthodox Church. I will not even go so far as to say that the dawning civilization of the Turks owes not a little to their long contact with the Orthodox, and the latter's silent influence upon them. But I refer especially to those Greek bishops and clerics of all ranks who in the darkest days visited the Christian provinces, and, at peril of their lives, built churches, founded schools, and saved the faith that was threatened with extinction. One of these, Cosmas the Aetolian, succeeded in founding two hundred and ten schools in Epirus, Macedonia and Greece, before his head fell at last, under the sword of the Turkish executioner, while his lips murmured the words of the Psalmist: “We went through fire and through water, but Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place” (66:12). We admire the missionaries who preach Christ among savage peoples, and suffer martyrdom for the Christian faith. But were the Turks of those days less savage than Hottentots and Kaffirs, and did but few of the Orthodox suffer martyrdom in Turkey for the sake of Jesus Christ and His Gospel? The modern martyrs of the East are legion, and their long procession stretches from the fall of Constantinople, when Mohammed the Conqueror slaughtered the children of Notaras one by one before the eyes of their dying father, who cried as each head fell: “Righteous art Thou, O Lord, and upright are Thy judgments!” (Psalm 119:137), until the last Metropolitan of Smyrna, Chrysostom, whom in 1922, Nuredin Pasha, after steeping Smyrna in Christian blood, handed over to the frenzied Turkish mob to be torn to pieces.

The Holy Mountain.

   Monastic life still continued to flourish during later centuries, and provided the harassed Church with a constant supply of zealous and fearless clerics. Its chief center remains to this day the Holy Mountain (“Hagion Oros”) as Mount Athos is habitually called, which is the home of about 5,000 monks, mostly Greeks, but with a certain number of Russians, Rumanians, Serbs, Bulgarians and Georgians, or Iberians. They are distributed among twenty monasteries, twelve sketae, two hundred and four cells, and various other lonely hermitages; and are governed as a confederation by a “Community” of twenty members, each of whom also represents one of the twenty monasteries. The Community also recognizes the Patriarchate of Constantinople as its supreme head, and accepts its decisions. As early as 1749, the “Athonias School” was founded for the education of the Hagiorite monks, and was staffed by such excellent teachers as Neophytos Kausokalybetes and Eugenius Bulgaris. Today, however, it lies almost idle; for, with a few exceptions, both past and present, the monks have unfortunately no love of learning, and confine their activities to prayer, agriculture and light handwork.

Other Monastic Centers.

   Another and smaller center of monastic life than Athos is that upon Mount Sinai, whose monastery dates from as far back as the sixth century, when it was founded by Justinian the Great. This brotherhood is ruled by an abbot who is also an autonomous Archbishop, and only owes his ordination to the Patriarch of Jerusalem. The Patriarchate of Jerusalem may itself be considered as a center of monastic life; for the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulcher, which controls it, is nothing but a body of monks, living in communal life and acknowledging the Patriarch as their abbot. Other monasteries, notable for their perseverance in the faith, their richly-stocked libraries, or their struggles on behalf of national independence, were, during the past centuries, and in some cases continue to be, those of Meteora in Thessaly, of Eikosiphoenissa in Macedonia, of Sumela in Pontus, of the Theologos in Patmos, of the Holy Trinity in Halki, where the Theological Academy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate is functioning, and of the Holy Virgin, also in Halki, in which the School of Greek Merchants used to be established, and many others. And as in Greek-speaking localities, so in Rumanian and Slavonic regions many convents and monasteries similarly flourished, or are still flourishing, extending hospitality to all, and offering a safe haven to many of life's castaways. But the secular powers do not look favorably on this mode of life, and have gradually but steadily pursued the course of closing the monasteries and confiscating their property. This practice was begun by the Greek Government as early as 1833, and has severely curtailed the list of 250 monasteries which then existed in Greece. The Rumanian Government did the same, when in 1862, through Couza, it seized the property owned by the Holy Land and other Sacred Institutions in Rumania; and a similar policy was adopted by the government of Tsarist Russia, which in 1876 laid hands on the property, which Greek monasteries owned in the Caucasus and elsewhere in Russia. It must be admitted, however, that in spite of all its services during the past, the monasticism of the Eastern Church is now an out-of-date phenomenon, and calls for reform along more practical and social lines.

Ecclesiastical Art.

   If any progress has been achieved in ecclesiastical art during recent centuries, it is in the powerful Russian Empire of the Tsars that we must seek it. It was mainly in Russia that magnificent churches continued to be built, still on the basis of the styles transplanted from Byzantium, but influenced by elements from Italian, Polish, Georgian and Persian art. Belfries topped by a crown, and peculiar vaulted towers decorated these churches, which were adorned within by icons, many of them lying concealed under precious metals, but many revealing their art naked and full of the expression of a mystic passion. Within them, too, the singing of the choirs rang out in rich, complex and moving harmonies, combining the old Byzantine airs with the polyphonic music of modern Europe. But in the enslaved East, the opposite was the case. There the Mohammedan conqueror would not allow the building of important churches, and for a long time even forbade the repairing of the old. He refused to let the Cross appear on their roof, and would not suffer bell-ringing and public choir-singing to take place. The Christians of the East in no wise differed from those who, in the first centuries of Christianity, used to worship their Savior in caves and catacombs. Only at the beginning of the nineteenth century did some slight impulse begin to stir in the ecclesiastical arts of the Balkans. Cathedrals are being built by native architects; iconography is cultivated by the Brotherhood of Josaphaei on Athos, and others; and the more polyphonic music of Chaviaras and Spathes is beginning to be introduced through the Greek communities in Europe. All these, however, are but tentative efforts, and have as yet produced no perfect results.

The Word of God.

   We may welcome as signs of good omen the religious fraternities, Catechetical Schools and Christian Associations of Young Men and Young Women, all of which have as their aim a revival of the religious spirit through study and the practical application of God's Word to daily life. The official Church steadily encourages these movements, although they are as yet but slight and spasmodic. And since the study of the Scriptures is the object of such movements, the Church has more than once contributed towards their publication in recent years. Thus, in 1843, with the assistance of the Bible Society of England, she published the Old Testament according to the Septuagint text; later she gave her blessing to the purely Greek edition, prepared by Martinus; in 1904, at the expense of the reigning Ecumenical Patriarch, Constantine Valiades, and under the supervision of Professor Basil Antoniades, the first critical edition of the New Testament appeared from the press of the Patriarchate; and in 1928 and 1929 that splendid society in Athens, known as ΖΩΗ (“Life”), which forms a kind of missionary body for work at home, put into circulation a new, careful, handy and inexpensive edition of the Old and New Testaments. But Greek editions of the Bible always confine themselves to the official text in the Alexandrian tongue, which differs only slightly from Greek as it is written today. Translations of the Scriptures are opposed neither by dogmatical nor by scientific reason, and are therefore accepted by the Russians and by others. They are not, however, considered without reluctance by the Greeks; — firstly, because they are reminiscent of the surreptitious efforts at conversion made by the Protestant missionaries; secondly, because the Greeks are proud of possessing the Scriptures either in the original text, as is the case with the New Testament, or in the first translation, made from a text centuries older than the Massoretico-Hebrew of today, as is the case with the Old Testament; and thirdly, because a valid translation into Modern Greek by men with both the literary and the theological equipment necessary for the task, has never yet been made. The last modern Greek translation of the Gospels was the work of a merchant living in England, who chose this means for propagating his theories on the vulgarization of the written Greek language.