After the Fall of Constantinople.
The capture of Constantinople by the Mohammedan Turks (1453) and the overthrow of the
Byzantine empire put an end to all political schemes of reunion, but opened the way for papal
propagandism in the East. The division of the church facilitated that catastrophe which delivered
the fairest lands to the blasting influence of Islâm, and keeps it in power to this day, although it is
slowly waning. The Turk has no objection to fights among the despised Christians, provided they
only injure themselves and do not touch the Koran. He is tolerant from intolerance. The Greeks
hate the pope and the Filioque as much as they hate the false prophet of Mecca; while the pope
loves his own power more than the common cause of Christianity, and would rather see the Sultan
rule in the city of Constantine than a rival patriarch or the Czar of schismatic Russia.
During the nineteenth century the schism has been intensified by the creation of two new
dogmas,—the immaculate conception of Mary (1854) and the infallibility of the pope (1870). When
Pius IX. invited the Eastern patriarchs to attend the Vatican Council, they indignantly refused, and
renewed their old protest against the antichristian usurpation of the papacy and the heretical Filioque.
They could not submit to the Vatican decrees without stultifying their whole history and committing
moral suicide. Papal absolutism^325 and Eastern stagnation are insuperable barriers to the reunion
of the divided churches, which can only be brought about by great events and by the wonder-working
power of the Spirit of God.
CHAPTER VI.
MORALS AND RELIGION.
§ 73. Literature.
I. The chief and almost only sources for this chapter are the acts of Synods, the lives of saints and
missionaries, and the chronicles of monasteries. The Acta Sanctorum mix facts and legends in
inextricable confusion. The most important are the biographies of the Irish, Scotch, and
Anglo-Saxon missionaries, and the letters of Boniface. For the history, of France during the
sixth and seventh centuries we have the Historia Francorum by Gregory of Tours, the Herodotus
of France (d. 594), first printed in Paris, 1511, better by Ruinart, 1699; best by Giesebrecht (in
German), Berlin 1851, 9th ed. 1873, 2 vols.; and Gregorii Historiae Epitomata by his continuator,
Fredegar, a clergyman of Burgundy (d. about 660), ed. by Ruinart, Paris 1699, and by Abel (in
German), Berlin 1849. For the age of Charlemagne we have the Capitularies of the emperor,
and the historical works of Einhard or Eginard (d. 840). See Ouvres complètes d’ Eginard,
réunies pour la première fois et traduites en français, par A. Teulet, Paris 1840–’43, 2 vols. For
an estimate of these and other writers of our period comp. part of the first, and the second vol.
of Ad. Ebert’s Allgem. Gesch. der Lit. des Mittelalters im Abendlande, Leipz. 1874 and 1880.
II. Hefele: Conciliengesch. vols. III. and IV. (from a.d. 560–1073), revised ed. 1877 and 1879.
Neander: Denkwördigkeiten aus der Geschichte des christl. Lebens. 3d ed. Hamburg, 1845, ’46, 2
vols.
Aug. Thierry: Recits des temps merovingiens. Paris 1855 (based on Gregory of Tours).
Loebell: Gregor von Tours und seine Zeit. Leipz. 1839, second ed. 1868.
(^325) Or, as the modern Greeks call it, the papolatria of the Latins.