§ 152.3. =Orthodox Constancy.=--The Russian Orthodox church, after its emancipation from Constantinople and the erection of an independent patriarchate at Moscow in A.D. 1589 (§ 73, 4), had decidedly the pre-eminence over the Greek Orthodox church, and the Russian czar took the place formerly occupied by the East Roman emperor as protector of the whole Orthodox church. The dangers to the Orthodox faith threatened by schemes of union with Catholics and Protestants induced the learned metropolitan, Peter Mogilas of Kiev, to compose a new confession in catechetical form, which, in A.D. 1643, was formally authorized by the Orthodox patriarchs as Ὀρθόδοξος ὁμολογία τῆς καθολικῆς καὶ ἀποστολικῆς ἐκκλησίας τῆς ἀνατολικῆς.--Thirty years later a controversy on the eucharist broke out between the Jansenists Nicole and Arnauld, on the one side, and the Calvinists Claude and Jurieu, on the other (§ 157, 1), in which both claimed to be in agreement with the Greek church. A synod was convened under =Dositheus of Jerusalem= in A.D. 1672, at the instigation of French diplomatists, where the questions raised by Cyril were again taken into consideration. Maintaining a friendly attitude toward the Romish church, it directed a violent polemic against Calvinism. In order to save the character of the Constantinopolitan chair for constant Orthodoxy, Cyril’s confession of A.D. 1629 was pronounced a spurious, heretical invention, and a confession composed by Dositheus, in which Cyril’s Calvinistic heresies were repudiated, was incorporated with the synod’s acts.
The Jesuit counter-reformation (§ 151) was eminently successful during the first decades of the century in Bohemia. The Westphalian Peace restrained its violence, but did not prevent secret machinations and the open exercise of all conceivable arts of seduction. Next to the conversion of Bohemia, the greatest triumph of the restoration was won in France in the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Besides such victories the Catholics were able to glory in the conversion of several Protestant princes. New endeavours at union were repeatedly made, but these in every case proved as fruitless as former attempts had done.
§ 153.1. =Conversions of Protestant Princes.=--The first reigning prince who became a convert to Romanism was the Margrave =James III. of Baden=. He went over in A.D. 1590 (§ 144, 4), but as his death occurred soon after, his conduct had little influence upon his people. Of greater consequence was the conversion, in A.D. 1614, of the Count-palatine Wolfgang William of Neuburg, as it prepared the way for the catholicizing of the whole Palatinate, which followed in A.D. 1685. Much was made of the passing over to the Catholic church of =Christina of Sweden=, the highly gifted but eccentric daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. As she had resigned the crown, the pope gained no political advantage from his new member, and Alexander VII. had even to contribute to her support. The Elector of Saxony, =Frederick Augustus II.=, passed over to the Roman Catholic church in A.D. 1697, in order to qualify himself for the Polish crown; but the rights of his Protestant subjects were carefully guarded. An awkwardness arose from the fact that the prince was pledged by the directory of the Regensburg Diet of A.D. 1653 to care for the interests of the evangelical church. Now that he had become a Catholic, he still formally promised to do so, but had his duties discharged by a commissioner. Subsequently this officer was ordered to take his directions from the evangelical council of Dresden.