the languages, they spread or contract under
various influences, mainly political. The folk may change their
language as they may change their creed; and, what is more remarkable,
they may even change their race. According to the book I have just
quoted, the Ottoman Government classes all its subject population into
religious communities. Whatever be a man's race or language, if he
professes Islam, he is called a Mohammedan; if he is of the orthodox
Greek Church at Constantinople, he is Greek or Rumi, for Stambul was
the capital of the Roman empire; or else he is Katholik, Armenian, or
Jew, according to his creed, not according to his birthplace or his
blood. So the official designations are religious, while the popular
usage is various, sometimes following race, sometimes creed, and it is
still constantly shifting, as I shall presently try to explain.

And here it may be interesting to mention a peculiarity of the growth
and constitution of the Eastern or Greek Church, in contrast with the
Western Church of Rome. The Roman Church has always claimed
universality--it has ignored and attempted to trample down all
political and national divisions; it demands of all Roman Catholics,
whoever they may be, submission to the supreme spiritual dictation of
the Roman pontiff, and those who accept any other authority are
outside the pale. From the beginning the Roman Catholic Church has
made incessant war upon every kind of heresy or dissent, transforming
the old rites and worships where they could not be exterminated. It
proclaims independence of the State, it has no local centres or
national branches. The Pope at Rome claims spiritual authority over
all Roman Catholics everywhere. But the historical fact that the
Eastern or Greek Church was always under the control of the Byzantine
empire at Constantinople, has kept this Church much more closely
allied to the temporal power; and the result has been that throughout
its development it has remained closely connected with the State. So
that wherever a fresh State has been formed, the Greek Church has
become national, and the spiritual authority, adapting itself to
political changes, has become a separate institution. The most signal
example of this is to be seen in Russia, where the Greek Church, being
cut off from Constantinople, had its own independent Patriarch up to
the time of Peter the Great; and very lately, when Bulgaria became a
State, it set up its own head of the Church,