if the torch of freedom, the light of Hellenic tradition, the lamp of
Christianity which had for so many centuries brightened the life of
Oriental women, had been extinguished forever. But all during the dark
age of Turkish oppression, the Christian Church kept alive the nobler
aspirations of the Greek race. Women have always been the chief
exponents of religious faith, and Greek women handed on from generation
to generation the traditions of religion and liberty and intellectual
culture. Many of the women of Greek lands were forced to spend their
lives within the narrow walls of a Turkish harem; many saw their
children taken from them and carried to Constantinople to be brought up
as Mussulmans for the service of the Sultan; many had to undergo
ignominy and insults at the hands of petty officials. But the Church
found a constant and enthusiastic ally in Greek womanhood in preserving
the language, the spirit, the love of liberty, of the ancient Greeks.
Hence, when in the early decades of the nineteenth century the fulness
of time had come for a portion of the Greek race to rid itself of
Turkish domination, the women showed an intense love of country which
enabled them not only to inspire their brothers in the fight for
freedom, but they also frequently shared with them the toils and
privations of actual conflict. We read in the histories of the Greek War
of Independence how women at times accompanied the Greek soldiers on
their forages, carrying arms and ammunition and frequently fighting
themselves; how they kept the standard of military honor high, and were
unsparing critics of the mettle of their husbands.
There is no more inspiring folk tale in the records of history than the
legend of the Suliote women in the struggle of their people against Ali,
the cruel and rapacious tyrant of Janina. Bred in the mountains of
Chamouri, they refused to submit to his yoke, and the valiant people had
to see the gradual extermination of their race. They had ventured to
defy the rising star of Ali, and all that force or treachery could
accomplish was inflicted upon them. Tzavellas was one of their leaders,
and the valor of Moscho, his wife, has been commemorated in popular
verse, as typical of Greek womanhood in their struggle for independence:
"This is the famous Suli, is Suli the renowned,
Where the little children march to war, the women and the children:
Where the wife of Tzavellas combats, her sabre in her hand,
Her babe upon one arm, her gun upon the other, and her apron filled
with cartridges."
The final incident of the unequal struggle which shows the desperate
determination and courage of these Greek women, who suckled these
_klephts_ of the mountains and kept alive that spirit of liberty which
finally won independence from Turkish misrule, has been thus described:
"Some sixty of these Suliote women, with their children, were assembled
on a ledge of rock overhanging a sheer precipice, and, having witnessed
the gradual extermination of their defenders, they resolved to die by
their own act rather than fall into the hands of the grisly tyrant of
Janina. The position which they occupied suggested an easy form of
death, and the manner in which they sought it was tragically weird and
grim. First, each mother took her child, embraced it, and, turning her
head away from the pitiful scene, pushed it over the edge of the abyss.
Then these sixty women linked their hands together, and, singing the
familiar daring song of Suli above the rattle of the musketry, danced
the old surtos measure round and round the ledge of rock, having each
her back to the void as the winding chain approached the brink. And
every time the chain wound round, one dancer, the last in the line,
unlinked her hand, took one step back, and fell down into annihilation.
One by one, without haste, without pause, singing the dancing song, they
followed each other down that leap of death, until the last sprung over
alone, consecrating the mountain with their blood an altar of liberty,
from which, ere long, a flame arose that fired those ancient ranges from
sea to sea."
Such was the spirit of Greek womanhood in the trying year of the Greek
War of Independence; and it was this spirit which enabled the Greeks to
struggle on, without resources and allies, amid discouragements and
misrepresentations, till finally the nations of Europe came to their
rescue and established the modern Greek kingdom on a sure basis.
Athens was finally chosen as the seat of the new Greek government; and
in 1837 the Bavarian king Otho and his lovely bride, the princess
Amalia, entered Athens in triumph, and the kingdom of Hellas was fairly
launched. Within the memory of living men the dynasty of Otho fell, and
a scion of the royal house of Denmark, King George, with his Russian
consort, Queen Olga, now holds sway in Athens.
The modern Greek woman of the higher classes has become so thoroughly
cosmopolitan in her culture that she has lost in large measure her
distinctive traits. Her sympathy is rather with Parisian life than with
English, though her deportment is marked by a sobriety of manner
partaking rather of Greek repose than of French effusion. Many faces
seen in Greek lands exhibit, in profile especially, the Greek type of
beauty.
The women of the lower classes, no doubt, preserve many of the
characteristics of the race in all ages, in spite of the intermingling
with foreign peoples and the results of centuries of Turkish oppression,
which time alone can eradicate. Domestic fidelity, maternal affection,
devotion to religious observances, the cheerful discharge of the duties
and responsibilities of wedded life, are nowhere more beautifully
illustrated than among the Greek women of to-day.
It is the Christian religion which makes the life of Greek women under
King George superior to that of their sisters under the dominion of the
Sultan, and we may hope that in the fulness of time the Greek women of
Europe and Asia outside of the Hellenic kingdom may enjoy, untrammelled
by Turkish authority, the rights and privileges of that religion which
has elevated the sex, and that the Greek woman of the future may combine
the personal graces of her sister in antiquity with the cultivation of
the soul and the enlargement of spirit which comes to women with the
inculcation of Christianity.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PREFACE
PART FIRST
I WOMEN OF THE GOSPEL NARRATIVE
II WOMEN OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE
III THE ERA OF PERSECUTION
IV SAINT HELENA AND THE TIME OF CONSTANTINE
V POST-NICENE MOTHERS
VI THE NUNS OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH
VII WOMEN WHO WITNESSED THE FALL OF ROME
VIII WOMEN OF THE FRANKISH CHURCH
PART SECOND
IX THE EMPRESS EUDOXIA
X THE RIVAL EMPRESSES--PULCHERIA AND EUDOCIA
XI THE EMPRESS THEODORA
XII OTHER SELF-ASSERTING AUGUSTÆ--VERINA, ARIADNE.
SOPHIA, MARTINA. IRENE
XIII BYZANTINE EMPRESSES--THEODORA II. THEOPHANO.
ZOE. THEODORA III.
XIV THE PRINCESSES OF THE COMNENI
XV WOMANHOOD OF THE BYZANTINE DECADENCE
List of Illustrations
SUBJECT ARTIST
Seeking shelter _Luc Oliver Merson_
Christ and the daughter of Jairus _Albert Keller_
Christians in the arena _L.P.de Laubadère_
Famine and pestilence _A. Hirschl_
The legend of the roses _J. Nogales_
Byzantine interior, ninth century _S. Baron_