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1912] KING FERDINAND’S REASONS 119
And how would the Holy See look on such a solution
of the question ? But to this Ferdinand had an answer
ready, formulated during long years of meditation.
The Bulgarians, throughout the course of their history,
have represented one of the feeblest supports of Greek
Orthodoxy; sometimes they fell under the influence of
Rome; sometimes the heresies of the Paulicians and
Albigenses triumphed all over the kingdom ; and not
so very long ago, at the very first awakening of
the Bulgarian national conscience in the forties, this
awakening was already partly exploited by Roman
propaganda. The first preachers of Bulgarian liberty
did not issue only from the universities and seminaries
of Moscow and Kieff. Several of the striking
personalities of the future Bulgaria had received their education
either at Montpellier or in Constantinople under the
vigilant eye of the Lazarists and of the brothers of the
Christian Faith, until the English Robert College and
the Protestant work of American missions competed
against these. Given these precedents Ferdinand did
not think it would be so very difficult to guide his
people into the path of a reconciliation with Rome, a
path traced nearly four centuries ago by Ignatius Pocej
in Western Russia.
In imagination Ferdinand already drew the picture
of this reconciliation—under his aegis—of the Western
Church with the Church of the East; the solemn Mass
in St. Sophia’s, celebrated strictly in accordance with
the Oriental ritual (Ferdinand had made a deep study of
this ritual), but during the course of which the name of
the successor to St. Peter would be mentioned before
and above that of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Then
only would they understand in Rome that by consenting
to his son’s conversion to the Greek Church, Ferdinand
had rendered one of the greatest services to Roman
Catholicism. And then not only would his
excommunication be rescinded, but also his name would be
blessed and quoted side by side with those of the great
isapostolic monarchs.
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