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.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.17.Russia.Greece, Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria and Syria.Other Orthodox Churches.The Orthodox, Eastern and Apostolic Church, which embraces a total of two hundred and fifty million souls in the world today, is not represented only by the four oldest Patriarchates and the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus.By the grace of God, it is also represented by various local and independent Churches; namely, the Churches of Russia, Greece, Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Poland and Georgia, together with the autonomous Churches of Finland, Czechoslovakia, Esthonia and America, and the Churches of the Dispersion in Europe.Nor must we forget the Orthodox Greeks of the Dodekanese and of Albania.It is impossible in the present work to dwell upon the history of all these Churches.Something must, however, be said about the first five, which are the most important of them.The Church of Russia in Modern Times.Whether it had its headquarters at Kiev, as at first, at Vladimir, whither it went in 1229, or at Moscow, as happened in 1328, the Church of Russia never ceased to consider as her spiritual head the Patriarchate of Constantinople, from whence she had received Christianity.It is, indeed, true that when in 1588 the Patriarch of Constantinople, Jeremiah II, visited Russia to beg for alms, he proclaimed this grown-up daughter of the Church independent, and recognized the Metropolitan of Moscow as the fifth Patriarch of the Eastern Church.But either because he thought that this office would concentrate a dangerous measure of power in the hands of its possessors, or for other more political reasons, Peter the Great quietly suppressed it in 1721; and with the co-operation of the great Russian theologian Procopovicius, set up the Permanent Administrative Synod, with its seat at Petrograd, communicating this change to the Patriarchs of the East, who all accepted it.Peter the Great also worked towards the improvement of the clergy by founding clerical schools and reforming the monasteries His example was followed by Catherine II and by the Tsars who succeeded her, in whose time the Russian Church rejoiced in the possession of four important Theological Academies and numerous seminaries, and succeeded not only in fulfilling her obligations towards her own members, but also in supporting flourishing missions among the Israelites, Tartars and Japanese.Unfortunately, since the recent great war, all these promising shoots have been uprooted by the Bolshevists, who, after overthrowing the Tsarist Throne, now delude themselves with the idea that they can overthrow the Throne of God.At the present time, atheism is the official cult of Soviet Russia.Christians are persecuted merely for being Christians.Magnificently built churches have been transformed into clubs, music-halls, cinemas and theatres.Icons of inimitable beauty, painted by Publioff or Stroganoff, who lived in the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively, are sold abroad or publicly burnt in the squares
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