Genre:

News-Commentary

Subjects:

Telegraphy, Electricity, Religious Authority, Superstition, Progress

    The writer reports that he has received, by electric telegraph, the news that the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Anthimos VI, has excommunicated the Bulgarian Patriarch, anathematised two Bulgarian bishops, and inflicted 'eternal pains of hell' on another bishop. Thinks this news 'smacks of the pre-scientific ages', when electricity was considered a 'supernatural phenomenon', and when 'Patriarchs and Popes were commonly believed to be supernaturally endowed by fulminating powers'. Thinks such fulminations, 'anachronistically reported by the lightning wire', are out of date.