The Greek church comprised within its ancient limits, anterior to the Mohammedan conquest, Greece properly so called, the Peloponnesus, Eastern Illyricum, the Islands, and Asia Minor. as also Syria and Palestine, Arabia, Egypt. and parts of 3Iesopotamia and Persia. But with the first triumph of the Koran, the church of Constantinople by degrees lost almost all her territory in Asia and Africa ; and since the conquest of the Turks, it has sunk into the condition of a weak and oppressed dependent. By the separation of the Russian branch, partially in the 17th, and finally in the beginning of the 18th c., and by that of the new kingdom of Greece, on occasion of the revolution, its importance has been still more diminished. Each of the three divisions into which it has separated possesses a distinct organization; but as the faith and practice of all are substantially identical, we shall first give a brief account of the doctrines of the Greek church. especially in their relations to the Christian communions of the west, and to the con troversies by which they are separated from each other.
In general, it may be inferred from the fact that the Greek church receives the first seven councils, that on all the controversies regarding the trinity and incarnation the Greeks are agreed with the Western Catholics, with the sole exception of the double procession of the Holy Ghost, in which they are at issue not only with Catholics, lint it may be said with the entire body of western Trinitarians. While they reject the papal claim to supremacy and doctrinal authority, they agree with Catholics in accepting as the rule of faith not alone the Bible. including the Deuterocanonical books (see Synod of Jerusalem in Harduin's Coll. Cana, xi. col. 258), but also the traditions of the church, that is, what are believed to be the unwritten revelations of our Lord and of the apostles, preserved by the testimony of the fathers, among whom they regard with special venera tion Basil, Gregory of Nazianzum, and Chrysostom. They admit the seven sacraments as received by the Roman church—viz.. baptism, confirmation, eucharist, penance, extreme unction, holy orders, and matrimony; but in the rites used by them in the administration ofitheavierainents there are considerable discrepancies from the Latin rite. They administer baptism by a triple immersion; confirmation is administered in immediate connection with baptism,, even in the case of infants, and it is administered by priests, and not, as among the Latins, by bishops exclusively. As to the eucharist, the Greeks admit the real presence of Christ, the transubstantiation of the elements, the propitiatory sacrifice, and (although this has been denied by Protestants) the adoration of the host (see Renaudot, Liturg. Media, i. pp. 22, 23). But they differ from Catholics in the use of leavened bread, in administering the communion in both kinds, and in administering it in this form even to children. In the sacrament of penance, they recog nize, like the western Catholics, auricular confession, priestly absolution, and peniten tial works; and although they differ from the Latins as to the use of indulgences, they admit the principle upon winch their use is founded. and even their applicability to the dead. The peculiarities .a their use of extreme unction have been already detailed.
See EXTREME UNCTION. In the sacrament of holy orders, they have ninny peculiar observances. See ORDERS, lloinc. The most striking point of difference regards clerical celibacy. The Greek church recognizes the excellence of virginity, and the fitness of its observance by those engaged in the ministry, so far as to prohibit marriage altogether to bishops (who are always chosen, in consequence, from the monastic, and not the secular clergy); to forbid priests or deacons to contract marriage after ordina tion; to forbid to all, without exception, a second marriage, or marriage with a ividow; and to require of married priests that they shall live separate from their wives during the time when they are actually engaged in church services. But they not only permit married candidates to be advanced to deaconship aud priesthood, but even require, as a general rule, that they shall be actually married before they can be admitted to orders. While admitting marriage to be a sacrament, they hold it to be dissoluble in case of adultery, and they regard fourth marriages as utterly unlawful. On the condition of souls after death, they do not admit with western Catholics a purgatorial fire, but they admit the principle of the intermediate state of purgation, and of the practice of prayer for the dead. They also admit the intercession of saints, and the lawfulness of invoking them, especially the Holy Virgin Mary, and of honoring their shrines and relics. They do not permit the use of graven images, with the exception of that of the cross; but they freely receive and pray before pictures, which they hold in high honor, and on which they lavish the most costly ornaments of gold, jewels, and other precious things. In their belief of the merit of good works, and especially of fasting, they go even further than Roman Catholics. Besides four yearly fasts—the forty days of Lent, from Pentecost to the feast of saints Peter and Paul, the fifteen days before Assumption day, and the six weeks before Christmas—they obserVe the Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year as fasts. Their liturgy shall be described hereafter (see Lrrunol); for the present, it will be enough to say that, in splendor of ceremonial, they are not inferior to the westerns. Instrumental music, it is true, is forbidden in the churches, but singing is universally in use. In public prayer the kneeling posture is used only at pentecost; at ordinary times they stand, the body being turned towards the cast. The use of the sign of the cross is habitual among them. The monastic institute has subsisted in the Greek church from the earliest times, and numerous convents of both sexes are dispersed over the east, which follow almost exclusively the rule of St. Basil. The abbot is called Hegumenos, the abbess, Hegumeoe; if several convents be subject to a single abbot, he is called Archimandrite. Both monks and nuns are bound by vows of celibacy. With both, the duty of manual labor is a leading observance; the nuns, like their western sisters, apply themselves to the care of the sick, aud to the education of young females.