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Church History
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CONTENTS
Introduction Abreviations
Patriarchal Church:
Melkite Greek Church
Major Archiepiscopal Church :
Ukrainian Church
Metropolitan Churches:
Romanian Church
Ruthenian (Byzantine) Church
Other Churches :Eparchies :
Hungarian Church
Italo-Albanian Church
Byzantine Church of Križevci
Slovak Church
Apostolic Exarchates :
Bulgarian Church
Greek (Hellenic) Church
Macedonian Church
Apostolic Administration :
Albanian Church
Churches deprived of a hierarchy of their own :
Belorussian Church
Russian Church
Ordinariat for the faithful of Byzantine tradition:
Austria
Geographical Index
Statistics
The Melkite Greek Catholic Church
Origin of the word "Melkite"
Melkite Greek Catholics were to be found, at the beginning, in the three great Eastern Patriarchates of Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem.
The word “Melkite” comes from the Arabic malaki meaning “royal” or “imperial;” as a soubriquet given for the first time in 460, in Egypt, by the Monophysites to the Orthodox, who had sided with the legitimate Patriarch, Timothy II, backed by the Roman (Byzantine) Emperor, Leo I. So it was at that period synonymous with politico-religious loyalism. From Egypt, this nickname travelled rapidly into Syria.
Today, common usage keeps this name for Catholics of Byzantine (Greek) or Arabic language in the afore-mentioned patriarchates and in the emigration. As for non-Catholics belonging to these same patriarchates, they are called in Arabic R?m, meaning Eastern Greek, while Catholic Melkites are also called R?m Katholik. Catholicism is so characteristic of Melkite Greek Catholics that, for the man in the street, especially in Syria, the term Katholik, without any other indication, always means Melkite Greek Catholic.
Today, all Melkites are Arabic speakers. Formerly, particularly from the sixth to the twelfth centuries, there were Melkites of Byzantine origin who still spoke Greek, while other native people spoke Syriac and yet others of Arab stock, who had converted to Christianity as early as the fifth century, well before the advent of Islam, spoke Arabic. This ethnic and linguistic plurality occurred also among the Monophysites of the period, most of whom spoke Syriac, however.
Melkites today, both Catholic and Orthodox, represent therefore the trunks of the two big trees arising from the great ecclesiastical districts already recognized at the Council of Nicea (325) and which had their centres respectively in Alexandria (for the territories corresponding to the Roman civil “diocese” of Egypt) and Antioch (for the “diocese” of the East.)
Melkites from the fifth to the seventeenth centuries
The Patriarchate of Alexandria, recognized as such, in confirmation of what had been decided at Nicea, by the Second Ecumenical Council (Constantinople, 381), was divided by the schism consequent upon the spread of Monophysitism into two branches: one Orthodox or Melkite, the other Copt (Copts, for partly political reasons, had adhered to Monophysitism.)
It was only in recent times, in the eighteenth century, that each of these two branches split again. So we find today, for Alexandria, an Orthodox Patriarchate of Byzantine rite, with faithful who are, in Egypt, mostly Greek immigrants of more or less recent standing, and an Arabic speaking minority (there are also, since fairly recent times, faithful belonging to the Patriarchate in various French- and English-speaking African countries), a Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchate (of the same rite, but entirely Arabophone, with faithful originating from Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan and linked to the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch), a Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate (Monophysite) and a Coptic Catholic Patriarchate.
The other Eastern Catholic Churches all have communities in Egypt, whose ecclesiastical organisation depends on their respective Patriarchs, living in Lebanon (Armenian, Maronite and Syrian) or in Iraq (Chaldean.)
The successive divisions of the Patriarchate of Antioch
The Patriarchate of Antioch, as it was in 416, has given birth since then to several other Churches, which are her “emancipated” daughters:
1- In 416, the already independent island of Cyprus received from Pope Saint Innocent I (401-41) a conditional autonomy for its Church; that autonomy became autocephaly at the Council of Ephesus (431), practically established in 488 in the reign of Emperor Zeno. Led into Michael Cerularius’ schism (1054), the Orthodox Church of Cyprus is currently still autocephalous; there are on the island some 10,000 Catholics, mostly Maronite, with a Latin minority.
2-The Church of Persia traces its roots back to the Metropolia of Edessa, which depended on Antioch, although it never had a very firm hierarchical link with the capital of the Roman East; it proclaimed its independence in 424 (from it comes the present Chaldean Church, Catholic since the sixteenth century.)
3-In 451, at the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon, Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, won the amplification of the honorific prerogatives accorded to his see by the Council of Nicea, with jurisdiction over the three provinces of Palestine. The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem was governed from 1543 onwards by an exclusively Greek hierarchy (with rare exceptions), with Patriarchs and Metropolitans belonging to the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre and originating from Greece or Cyprus, while the faithful are largely Arab.
The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, created at the time of the Crusades, in 1099, became purely titular after 1191, then residential again in 1847, with jurisdiction over the Latin faithful of Palestine, Israel, Jordan and Cyprus, in part recent immigrant, in part native Catholics of long standing, or converted in the nineteenth century (at a time when the Melkite Greek Catholic clergy, too few in those territories, were not up to welcoming them into the Church which should have been theirs.)
4-From the Patriarchate of Jerusalem there detached itself, in 1575, the little Archbishopric of Sinai, whose jurisdiction is limited to the famous Greek monastery of Saint Catherine, (whose Archbishop is higumen) and to a few Arab villages in its neighbourhood. It is autonomous, but its Archbishop always receives episcopal cheirotonia from the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem.
5-Towards 470, Georgia, converted to Christianity especially by missionaries coming from the Patriarchates of Antioch and Constantinople, formed a Catholicate which, around the middle of the eighth century, obtained almost complete autonomy, and with which the Patriarchate of Antioch communicated through the intermediary of the Melkite metropolitan see of Theodosipolis (Erzurum), in Armenia; these relations continued, rather sporadically, until the seventeenth century: in 1736, a Melkite Greek Catholic Archbishop of Tiflis was nominated, but he had to go into exile thereafter and had no successor.
6-The most significant schism was in 543-544, which was due to Monophysitism; as there was created, in opposition to the Orthodox Hierarchy, another Patriarchate of Antioch (whose Patriarch was almost never resident in Antioch.) Of the four million inhabitants that Syria then had, about two million adhered to Monophysitism, under the jurisdiction of this new Patriarchate.
7-The (Orthodox) Patriarchate of Antioch having been vacant from 701 to 742, because of a wave of persecutions, the monks of the great monastery of Saint Maron, in Syria, near the source of the Orontes, who shared with the Melkites the defence of the Chalcedonian faith against the Monophysites, took advantage of the long vacancy of the patriarchal see to give themselves their own Patriarch, in circumstances that are rather obscure. In 742, Caliph Hisham allowed the election of Patriarch Stephen III, but his successor, Theophylact Bar Qambara, protected by Caliph Marwan III, resorted to violence to stop this double jurisdiction, after which the monks of Saint Maron and their Patriarch, supported by a certain number of faithful and priests linked to their community, resisted on the spot, then took refuge in Lebanon, almost independent at the time, where they formed a new Church, first gathering a small number of faithful, then increasing due to a high birth-rate and forming today the Maronite Church.
Weakened by all these losses, the Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch could only number, at the time of the
Crusades, around half a million faithful. The Byzantines had reclaimed Antioch in 969 and kept the city until the arrival of the Crusaders in 1098: Prince Bohemond, despite the promises made to the Byzantine Emperor Alexis Comnenus,
kept it for himself and obliged the Melkite Patriarch John V, to abandon the city. It is at that time that the Melkite Patriarchs of Antioch (all Greek during that period) went to live at Constantinople, until the reconquest of Antioch in 1268 by the Mameluke Sultan of Egypt, Baybars.
Evolution
The domination of the Byzantines had a primary consequence of a liturgical nature: until then, the Patriarchate of Antioch, even in its Orthodox (Chalcedonian) branch, had observed the Antiochian rite, very influenced by that of Jerusalem, and which is now still followed by the Syrian Orthodox Church and (with various modifications) by the Syrian Catholic and the Maronite Churches. Progressively the Melkites adopted the form that the liturgy (of Antiochian origin) had taken at Constantinople, a form that became fixed towards the end of the thirteenth century; it was the same at Jerusalem and Alexandria. As a good portion of the people spoke Syriac, Byzantine literature was translated into that language (the libraries of Europe have more than two hundred Melkite manuscripts in Syriac of that period, the most recent dating from the middle of the seventeenth century.) But the progress of Arabic as a language spoken by the majority of the people resulted in the introduction of Arabic into the liturgy. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Metropolitan of Aleppo, Meletios Karameh, revised the Arabic translations of liturgical texts and gave them the form that they have kept until today, with some improvements.
The second consequence of the sojourn of the Melkite Patriarchs of Antioch at Constantinople, from 1098 to 1268, was the introduction of the schism of Michael Cerularius, despite the well-known resistance of the Patriarch of Antioch, Peter III. The installation of a Latin Patriarch in Antioch after the departure of John V, the antagonism of Bohemond and the Byzantine Emperor, the enforced subordination of the Eastern hierarchy to the Latin hierarchy, were all factors in inciting Melkite opposition. As for the precise timing of the separation, which was more political than religious in nature, it is not possible to give it an exact date.
From 1268 onwards, Patriarchs were once more almost all native inhabitants; but relations with the West were severely restricted by the Sultans of Egypt, to whom Syria was then subject; besides, the Melkite Patriarch was much more closely under surveillance than the Maronite Patriarch, more independent in his Lebanese mountains. Nevertheless, it is evident that union with Rome occurred in 1098, in 1242 and during subsequent years and from 1274 to 1283; union was re-established at the Council of Florence (1439) and lasted up to about 1443, was again restored in 1457 by the Patriarchate of Antioch and in 1460 by the Patriarchates of Alexandria and Jerusalem by means of a delegation led by Moses Giblet, who visited Pope Pius II in Sienna. This union seems to have lasted until the conquest of Syria by the Ottomans in 1517.
From 1517 onwards, relations with Rome became again practically impossible; the influence of the Greeks of Constantinople grew and the Union fell into oblivion.
In the other two Patriarchates, Cerularius’ schism was not immediately accepted. In the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which had been without a resident holder of the office since the city was taken by the Crusaders (1098), the Melkite Greek hierarchy was subordinate to the Latin Patriarchate, according to a progressively established modus vivendi. After the conquest of the Holy City by Saladin in 1187, the Greek Patriarch regained his throne, and the relations with the Latins ceased, if only due to political necessity. In the Patriarchate of Alexandria, it was very difficult to find out the name of the reigning Pope of Rome. The historian Yahya ibn Saïd (eleventh century), who was a Melkite from Antioch, reports, at the beginning of his work, how, from 685 to the year one thousand, in Egypt, they always commemorated Pope Saint Benedict II (684-685) because they did not know the names of his successors, right up until John XVIII (1003-1009), and the author apologises for not giving the names of the Popes which were missing for that reason. However, still in the first half of the fourteenth century, the official diploma given by the Fatimid Caliphs of Cairo to the Melkite Patriarch of Alexandria made explicit mention of his obedience to the Pope of Rome, whilst still forbidding him to have any kind of relationship with the West.
After its destruction by Baybars in 1268, Antioch lost its importance, and Patriarch Pacomius I transferred his residence to Damascus between 1375 and 1386. Therefore, little by little, Damascus stopped having its own metropolitan and became a patriarchal eparchy.
The Melkites since the eighteenth century
The (Latin) titular Bishop of Sidon, Leonardo Abel, a Maltese, sent to the East by Pope Gregory XIII, some time between 1583 and 1587 won over to the Catholic faith the old Emeritus Patriarch of Antioch, Michael VII, who had retired in 1582 to Aleppo. It is most probable that the forming of a little nucleus of Catholics at Aleppo goes back to that Bishop’s mission. After that its numbers would have grown gradually when Jesuits and Capuchins (1625), then Carmelites (1626) opened their residences in Aleppo.
In 1634, Patriarch Euthymios II (Karmeh) sent his profession of Catholic faith to Rome, but died before receiving papal confirmation. In 1653, Catholics in Damascus numbered some 7,000. In 1664, Macarios III (Zaim), Patriarch of Antioch from 1637 to 1672, imitated the example of Euthymios II, but without declaring himself in public, and without interrupting his relationship with the other Orthodox Patriarchs. In 1687, Athanasios III (Dabbas), competitor of Cyril V (Zaim), did the same, then withdrew to Aleppo, a city that had become the stronghold of Catholicism in Syria. In 1701, the Metropolitan of Beirut and the Bishop of Baalbek formally joined the Catholic faith. Those who were in communion with Rome had become sufficiently numerous for the Congregation for the Propagation of Faith (de Propaganda Fide) to nominate openly, in 1684, as metropolitan of Tyre and Saida, Euthymios Saïfi (a disciple of the Jesuits and Catholic at heart for a long time), as Apostolic Administrator of the Melkite Catholics scattered throughout the Patriarchate of Antioch; this metropolitan, founder of the Salvatorian Basilian Order of the Holy Saviour, was a great propagator of Catholicism in Syria beyond Damascus and Aleppo.
In 1716, Patriarch Cyril V, up until then against Rome, having been won over by his friend Poullard, consul of France at Saida, sent his profession of Catholic faith to Rome at the same time as the Bishop of Saidnaya, Gerasimos, and then died in 1720, leaving the Patriarchate to Athanasios III. The latter, although apparently favourable to Catholics during his retirement in Aleppo, then behaved differently. When he died in 1724, the Catholic side, which had become powerful, quickly chose as Patriarch, instead of Metropolitan Euthymios Saïfi (who had died in 1723), his nephew Seraphim Tanas, who took the name of Cyril VI. The Constantinopolitan Greeks immediately put forward instead the Cypriot Sylvester, and a desperate struggle broke out for possession of the Patriarchate.
Driven out of Damascus, Cyril VI found refuge in Lebanon, at that time semi-independent. The union with Rome was able to spread easily in Lebanon whilst remaining firm in Aleppo and Damascus, despite the sometimes violent persecutions; throughout the remainder of Syria, the opposition of the Orthodox hierarchy paralysed its efforts. Whilst the successors of Cyril VI were all native Melkites, those of the Greek Sylvester were all Greek until 1899, the year in which the indigenous side, supported by Russia, managed to exclude them.
In the Patriarchates of Alexandria and Jerusalem, the Melkite Catholics, scattered and few in number, were entrusted to the care of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. On 19 May 1772, Rome confided them to the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of Antioch, in his capacity as Apostolic Administrator, then resident in Lebanon. In 1832, the Egyptians seized Damascus and all Syria, keeping it until 1841. Taking advantage of that, Patriarch Maximos III (Mazloum), elected in 1833, came back to Damascus by 1834; until his death in 1855, he spent a good part of his time as Patriarch in preparing, then in getting enforced, not without keen struggles, civic emancipation that he obtained for his Church from the Sublime Porte in 1848. In 1838, he had obtained from Pope Gregory XVI the personal privilege of bearing, besides the title of Patriarch of Antioch, the titles of Patriarch of Alexandria and of Jerusalem. In 1894, Pope Leo XIII extended the jurisdiction of the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch beyond the borders of the three Patriarchates, to his faithful living in the rest of the Ottoman Empire.
The over-hasty introduction of the Gregorian Calendar by Patriarch Clement I (Bahouth), in 1857, was the pretext for a little schism really caused for other reasons, and quickly absorbed by the wise, prudent and energetic management (1864-1897) of Patriarch Gregorios II (Youssef-Sayyour), under whom the Melkite Greek Catholic community made great strides, particularly in the districts of Tripoli of Lebanon and Jdeidet Marjayoun; under his successors, from Peter IV (Geraigiry) to Cyril IX (Moghabghab), this progress extended particularly to Galilee, in Transjordan and to the Homs region, making up for the serious losses caused by famine during the First World War and subsequent emigration. At the same time, those Patriarchs had to face up to the consequences throughout the Middle East of the breakdown of the Ottoman Empire and of the two World Wars of 1914-1918 and of 1939-1945.
Maximos IV (Sayegh), Patriarch from 1947 to 1967, is specially remembered for the eminent role that he had, with the support of the whole Melkite Greek Catholic Episcopate, at the Second Vatican Council, a role recognized and appreciated by all, especially by Popes John XXIII and Paul VI; it was the precursor of several initiatives and developments contained in the documents of the Council, especially concerning the place of Eastern Churches in the Catholic Church, ecumenism, liturgy, etc.
His successor Maximos V (Hakim), from 1967 to 2000, a great builder, made it his business to respond to the new challenges facing the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, particularly in the fields of pastoral assistance to the faithful in the diaspora, from this time on more numerous than those in the Middle East, and of dialogue with the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch.
Lastly, Patriarch Gregorios III (Laham), elected on 29 November 2000, intends to continue the work of his predecessors, with special insistence on the place of Christians in Arab society and the need to check emigration, the dialogue with Islam, ecumenism, diligent work on the liturgy (president of the patriarchal liturgical commission since the time when he was Patriarchal Vicar in Jerusalem: renewal and publication of the liturgical books, texts and annotated Psalter), as well as the clarification of the relations of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church with the Holy See of Rome.
(Compiled 1 April 2008) Translation from the French: V. Chamberlain
Bibliography
Chaker Batlouni, Beirut, 1884. ãÎÊÕÑ ÊÇÑíÎ ØÇÆÝÉ ÇáÑæã Çáãáßííä ÇáßËæáíßííä
Cyrille Charon-Korolevsky, Histoire des Patriarcats Melkites, volume II, Rome, 1910.
Cyrille Charon-Korolevsky, article "Antioche", in Dictionnaire d'Histoire et de Géographie Ecclésiastiques, volume III (pages 563-706), Paris, 1924.
Joseph Nasrallah, "L'Eglise Melchite des origines à nos jours", in Le Lien (March-April 1982, pages 17-22).
The Melkite Greek Catholic Church
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Historical Introduction:
Unlike the other Oriental churches, Catholic or Orthodox, the Melkite Church is not a national Church. In the canonical acceptation of the word it is a particular Church, spread throughout the Arab Middle East and throughout a diaspora of ever increasing extent. It is the legitimate heir of the three Apostolic sees of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. Its origins are inextricably bound up with the preaching of the Gospel in the Graeco-Roman world of the Eastern Mediterranean and with the extension of Christianity beyond the limits of the Empire. The setting up of the patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, the first two at the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) and the third at Chalcedon (451 A.D.), gave it its form and made of it a territorial and juridical entity.
The Melkite Church owes its character as a particular Church to two loyalties, one to the Empire of Byzantium and the other to the first seven Ecumenical Councils. However, it was only towards the end of the fifth century that it took the name of Melkite. This appellation, which was invented by its Monophysite detractors to stigmatize its fidelity to Marcian the Emperor (malka in Syriac) and to the Council which he had called at Chalcedon, is the distinguishing label marking its orthodoxy in relation to the catholicity.
In our day, sociologically speaking the Melkite Church offers an astonishing ethnic homogeneity; its Patriarch, its episcopate, its clergy both regular and secular, its faithful, are all Arabic speaking.
With the Arabo-Islamic conquest of the seventh century, the world of the Melkite Patriarchates passed under non-Christian domination. Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem were part of the Islamic world up to and including the Ottoman domination, which started in 1516. With rare exceptions during the Mameluke rule, the Christians did not undergo persecuting so much as a regime of vexation and subjection; they were now dhimmis or protected people. They assumed with resignation and courage their new role as witness to Christ in the territory of Islam. As they were no longer able to play a political role, the Melkites, like the Jacobites and Nestorians, turned towards the liberal professions, especially medicine, and were the artisans of the translation into Arabic of the philosophical, medical and scientific heritage of ancient Greece.
The Byzantine reconquest of Antioch lasted no more than a century, from 960 to 1085 A.D.; it had as consequences the Byzantinization of the liturgy of the three Patriarchates, and the adaptation of the liturgical usage and customs of the imperial city was more or less accomplished at Antioch by the end of the halo surrounding the Ecumenical Throne of Constantinople had been able to do, and that was the dragging of the Melkite Church into schism; now, however, the Crusaders prepared the way for it. What happened was that Latin patriarchs and bishops replaced the Melkite hierarchy everywhere except at Alexandria. The local Church was forced to submit to a foreign Church. A kind of estrangement grew up between the two, without the former however actually breaking off its relations with Rome.
The reign of the Mamelukes from 1250 to 1516 not only put an end to the existence of Frankish possessions in the East, but was itself a crucial period for the Christian communities; persecutions, destruction and massacres were their almost daily lot. It was during the reign of these slaves invested with authority that the number of Christians went sharply down, with whole regions either Islamized or emptied of their population. However, the faithful few held on to their mission, which took on more and more a character of witness and of fidelity to Christ. Confessors and martyrs were not lacking.
The Ottoman domination (1516 to 1918) was no more clement, at least until the seventeenth century. For a long time now, Christians had no longer been considered as "protected" persons but were viewed as no better than infidels. The Pashas were under no restraint in their dealings with this category under their administration, a category which had no legal means of protest.
Now the entire East was under one authority alone, that of the Sultan, who knew how to get the most out of the situation. Constantinople became not only the political capital of an immense empire, but also the religious capital of the East in the same way as Rome was of the West. The Ecumenical Patriarch was now given complete authority over the members of the Melkite hierarchy. Their confirmation and sometimes even their election depended on the Phanar. The hierarchies of Alexandria and Jerusalem were in consequence completely Hellenized, and from 1534 down to the present day their Episcopal charges have been given to Greeks. So it was that the two patriarchates cut themselves off from the catholicity to embrace schism.
Hellenism had no hold on Antioch, whose patriarchs were chosen from among the native clergy, and for the most part maintained some links with Rome. Basically, the Patriarchate never faltered in its belief, even when one or other of its chief hierarchs happened to be more favorable to Constantinople than to Rome. A Church is formed of more than its head; it is composed also of bishops, clergy and people. The faithful bear within themselves a sense of the truth, a sure instinct which allows them to recognize it. Simply because Pope Honorius leaned towards monothelitism, has anyone ever seriously deduced that the Church of the West actually embraced this heresy?
The failure of the Union attempted at Florence served as a lesson for Rome. The establishment of formal communion with an Oriental Church would have to be brought about by work at the base and not at the summit. During an early stage, various missionaries, including Jesuits, Capuchins, Carmelites and Franciscans, put themselves at the disposition of the local hierarchy and worked in co-operation with it. Pastors who were not in formal communion with Rome encouraged their flocks to turn to the missionaries. The people felt the need for a deeper understanding of the traditional faith which they followed despite one thousand years of repression. They hoped to gain this from a clergy more instructed than their own. On both sides, the feeling was that there was one and the same faith which they shared. However, there was a fraction of the population which felt drawn by the high reputation of Western culture and took over the Latin contribution in its entirety.
So it was that after some decades there appeared a new way of conceiving the traditional faith. The behavior of these new "Catholics" was viewed as treason by the group of those attached to their past and as a deformation of their ancestral law. Consequently, communion in one faith with the catholicity, which had never ceased to flourish in the Patriarchate of Antioch, was called into question and two different conceptions of it made their appearance. The Antiochean identity became lost. One fraction of the faithful leaned towards Byzantium and became more Constantinopolitan than Antiochean, while the other fraction tended towards Rome, with a relationship that was Roman rather than faithful to the belief of the local Church. The result was that at the death of Patriarch Athanasius in 1724, a double lineage of Patriarchs came into existence, one Orthodox and the other Catholic. Both lines have lasted down to the present day.
1724 was indeed a fateful year; from now on there were two parallel hierarchies, two sister communities, riven apart under the complacent eye of the Turks, who granted the Patriarchal and Episcopal sees to those who offered them the most. Both sides had their martyrs and confessors.
Henceforth, the two Churches, Catholic and Orthodox, followed two divergent ways and two different destinies.
The first one, the one which we are to talk about, namely the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, pushed on with its own internal organization. New monastic orders were founded and a clergy educated in Rome taught in the newly founded schools. A seminary was opened in Ain Traz in 1811. Despite of the difficulties of the period of growth, which lasted until the end of the eighteenth century, due above all to antagonisms between the new monastic congregations,, the Melkite Church could stand on its own feet, local Church Synods endowed it with a solid organization and so it extended and developed. Then in the nineteenth century, Providence provided it with two great patriarchs, Maximos Mazloum (1833 till 1855), and Gregory Youssef Sayour (1864 till 1897).
Three years after his election, Mazloum put the finishing touches to the canonical legislation of his Church, confirmed at the Synods of Ain Traz in 1835 and of Jerusalem in 1849. He extended his care to the Patriarchate of Alexandria, for in their efforts to flee persecution at the hands of the Orthodox, many Catholics from Syria and Lebanon had emigrated to Egypt. Mazloum consecrated a bishop for them, sent them priests and provided the new parishes with churches and charitable foundations, and did as much for the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. But Mazloum is above all famous for having obtained from the Sultan recognition of the complete independence of his Church from both the civil and ecclesiastical points of view, in the year 1848.
The long patriarchal reign of Gregory II was both glorious and fertile. For thirty-three years, balancing his actions against their possible consequences on the capital work of the union of the Churches, he strove for the application of his great plan for the restoration of his Church. He wished for this to be done according to the pure Oriental tradition and this explains his opposition to Vatican I for its declaration of the dogmas of the Primacy and Infallibility of the Pope in the meaning given them by the majority of the Fathers present, as he considered declaration of these dogmas to be inopportune. He struggled against Protestantism, which was penetrating the area in force, by founding the patriarchal colleges of Beirut in 1865 and of Damascus in 1875. In 1866 he re-opened the seminary of Ain Traz, but most important of all it was he who was behind the founding of the seminary of St Anne of Jerusalem in 1882. He took a most important part in the Eucharistic Congress of Jerusalem in 1893. His suggestions had in addition an important influence on the elaboration of the encyclical Orientalium Dignitas, a veritable charter for the Oriental Churches by which Pope Leo XIII ordered the strictest respect for the rights of the Patriarchs and for the Oriental discipline, correcting on several points the spirit of the majority of the Latin missionaries.
We all remember the outstanding personality of Maximos IV (1947-1967) and his action at Vatican II. It has been truly said of him that he was one of the Fathers who made the Council, to which he imparted many of the orientations that it took. Perhaps, when one considers the small number of the faithful of his Church, his audacity may appear to have bordered on temerity. But he was speaking on behalf of the "absent brother", the great Orthodox Church. He drew his force and his effectiveness from the conception which he had of his Church as a bridge between Rome and Orthodoxy. Since that time, the late Patriarch Maximos V Hakim and His Beatitude Gregorios III Laham, the present head of the Church, has firmly followed the way traced by their predecessors, while paying particular attention to the problem of the Diaspora of his Church; for in fact most of its members live outside the limits imposed on our Patriarchate.
LES ÉGLISES CATHOLIQUES
DE TRADITION BYZANTINE
THE CATHOLIC CHURCHES
OF BYZANTINE TRADITION
DIE KATHOLISCHEN KIRCHEN
BYZANTINISCHER ÜBERLIEFERUNG
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Schématisme hiérarchique/Hierarchical schematism/Schematimus der Hierarchie
Éditeur/Editor/Herausgeber
GREGORIOS III
Patriarche d’Antioche et de tout l’Orient – Patriarch of Antioch and All the East– Patriarch von Antiochien und dem Ganzen Orient
En collaboration avec/In Collaboration with/In Zusammenarbeit mit
J. MADEY
Introduction
C’est la deuxième fois que nous entreprenons la publication d’un schématisme des Églises catholiques orientales de tradition byzantine. Depuis la promulgation du Code des Canons des Églises Orientales, ces Églises appelées dans le décret Orientalium Ecclesiarum « Églises particulières » sont définies comme « Églises sui iuris » (c. 27), parce que d’autres documents du Vatican II appellent de telle façon les éparchies.
Parmi les Églises sui iuris, l’Église patriarcale jouit de la plus haute dignité. Elle est gouvernée par le Patriarche qui est un évêque ayant le pouvoir sur tous les évêques, les métropolites non exclus, et tous les autres fidèles chrétiens de l’Église qu’il préside (c. 56). Le Patriarche en tant que « Père et Chef » d’une Église sui iuris est suivi dans le rang par l’Archevêque majeur qui est un métropolite d’un siège déterminé dont l’autorité est quasi-patriarcale (c. 151). Cela veut dire que lui aussi il préside une Église sui iuris entière.
Selon l’Annuario Pontificio on compte treize Églises sui iuris de tradition BYZANTINE qui sont répandues maintenant dans le monde entier, aussi dans des territoires traditionnellement attribués à l’Église catholique romaine (« latine »).
Il y a une ÉGLISE PATRIARCALE, l’Église grecque(rūm)-melkite, quatre ÉGLISES ARCHIEPISCOPALES MAJEURS, l’Église ukrainienne..., une ÉGLISE METROPOLITAINE, ne constituant qu’une seule province ecclésiasti-que, l’Église ruthène (« byzantine ») aux Etats-Unis. Les AUTRES ÉGLISES sont gouvernées soit par un évêque éparchial, soit par un exarque apostolique (les Églises bulgare, hellénique), soit par un administrateur apostolique (Albanie méridionale). L’Église biélorusse est sous la juridiction immédiate du Préfet de la Congrégation pour les Églises orientales, qui se fait représenter par un visiteur délégué.
Nous suivons cet ordre dans notre présentation.
Introduction
For the second time, we undertake the publication of a schematism of the Catholic Eastern Churches of Byzantine tradition.
Since the promulgation of the Code of Canons of the Oriental Churches, these Churches called “particular Churches” by the decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum are defined as “Churches sui iuris” (c. 27).
Among the Churches sui iuris, the Patriarchal Church enjoys the highest dignity. It is governed by the Patriarch who is a bishop “who enjoys power over all bishops including metropolitans and other Christian faithful of the Church over which he presides” (c. 56). As “Father and Head“ of a Church sui iuris, the Patriarch is followed in rank by the Major Archbishop, the metropolitan of a see determined or recognised by the Supreme Authority of the Church enjoying quasi-patriarchal authority (c. 151). This means that he also is presiding over an entire Church sui iuris.
According to the Annuario Pontificio there are thirteen Churches sui iuris following the Byzantine tradition which are at present spread throughout the whole word, also in territories traditionally attributed to the Roman Catholic (“Latin”) Church.
Only one Church is a PATRIARCHAL CHURCH, namely the Melkite Greek (Rūm) Church. There are four MAJOR ARCHIEPISCOPAL CHURCHES, the Ukrainian Church,... and one METROPOLITAN CHURCH WHICH consist of only one ecclesiastical province, the Ruthenian (“Byzantine”) Church in the United States. The OTHER CHURCHES sui iuris are governed either by an eparchial bishop or by an Apostolic Exarch (Bulgarian Church, Hellenic Church...) or simply by an Apostolic Administrator (Albanian Church). The Belarussian Church is under the immediate jurisdiction of the Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches represented by a Delegate Visitor.
In the presentation of our survey we are following this order.
Einführung
Zum zweitenmal wird hier der Versuch unternommen, einen Sche-matismus der katholischen Ostkirchen byzantinischer Überlieferung vorzulegen. Seit der Promulgierung des Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium, des allgemeinen Gesetzbuches der katholischen Ost-kirchen, bezeichnet man die orientalischen Kirchen, die im Dekret Orientalium Ecclesiarum „Teilkirchen“ genannt werden, „Kirchen sui iuris“ (c. 27). Unter den Kirchen sui iuris erfreut sich die Patriarchalkirche der höchsten Würde. Sie wird vom Patriarchen geleitet. Dieser besitzt die Vollmacht über alle Bischöfe, die Metro-politen nicht ausgenommen, und über die übrigen Christgläubigen der Kirche, der er vorsteht (c. 56). Dem Patriarchen als „Vater und Haupt“ (c. 55) einer Kirche sui iuris folgt dem Rang nach der Großerzbischof, der der Metropolit eines bestimmten Stuhls ist und quasi-patriarchale Vollmacht besitzt (c. 151). Das bedeutet, dass auch er einer ganzen Kirche sui iuris vorsteht. Gemäß dem Annuario Pontificio gibt es dreizehn Kirchen sui iuris, die der byzantinischen Überlieferung verpflichtet und die heute über die ganze Welt verbreitet sind, auch in solchen Gebieten, die man überlieferungsgemäß der römisch-katholischen („lateinischen“) Kirche zuschreibt.
Es bestehen eine PATRIARCHALKIRCHE, die melkitische griechisch(rūm)-katholische Kirche, eine GROSSERZBISCHÖFLICHE KIRCHE, die ukrainische Kirche, sowie zwei METROPOLITANKIRCHEN, die aus nur je einer Kirchenprovinz bestehen, die rumänische Kirche und die ruthenische („byzantinische“) Kirche in den Vereinigten Staaten. Die ANDEREN KIRCHEN werden von einem Eparchialbischof oder von einem Apostolischen Exarchen (die Bulgarische Kirche und die hellenische Kirche Griechenlands) oder einem Apostolischen Administrator (Südalbanien) gelenkt. Die weißrussische Kirche untersteht der unmittelbaren Jurisdiktion des Präfekten der Kongregation für die Ostkirchen, der sich durch einen Apostolischen Visitator vertreten lässt.
