AN APOSTATE BY PROXY
Boris Tirnovski, heir to the throne of Bulgaria, was christened in the
Roman Catholic faith, according to the terms of the wedding contract,
which had necessitated an amendment of the Bulgarian Constitution. But
the ceremony gave a fresh offence to Russia, the nation which is
champion of the Orthodox Church, and which was at that time the Power
from which Ferdinand had most to hope.
Even when this christening took place he had in his mind an act which
would be even a more effective conciliation to Russia than the original
christening of his heir in the Orthodox faith would have been. He
determined to make the child renounce the faith of his fathers, and
embrace the official religion of Bulgaria.
The way to this apostasy was smoothed by a mission to Petrograd,
undertaken by the ex-Metropolitan Clement, whom Stambuloff put in gaol
for refusing allegiance to Ferdinand. That Catholic Prince gave the
rebellious prelate strong encouragement in his mission, and received
him on his return with the honours usually accorded to a victorious
general. Then followed the important step of re-amending the
Constitution.
In a letter to the Czar Ferdinand announced his intention of
re-baptizing little Boris in the Orthodox faith, and the Czar, having
negotiated the matter through Clement, graciously consented to be the
godfather of the infant apostate. “For the Czar’s condescension the
Prince will submit to any humiliation,” said Stambuloff once, and this
event proved how rightly he had estimated the Prince whom he had
created.
In a proclamation to the Bulgarian people, that is terrible in its
terms of slavery, he announced that the Czar had not only graciously
consented to become the godfather to the heir, but that he had
“manifested his goodwill to our nation by renewing with it the
political relations that had been interrupted.” Then he organized a
great national raree-show at Tirnovo, the ancient capital of Bulgaria,
where the re-christening took place on February 26.
Tirnovo was crowded with Russians of all degrees for the occasion, and
for their benefit were organized the throngs of Bulgarian peasants in
national costume who paraded the streets singing the old Bulgarian
folk-songs, and displaying the entwined banners of the two countries.
These good folk danced the old Bulgarian dances, which they had just
learned with an immensity of labour, in the market-place of the ancient
city, and then sang the Russian National Anthem in conjunction with
their own.
The ceremony in Tirnovo Cathedral was a pitiful business. The poor
little heir to the throne, not yet three years of age, was torn from
the arms of his mother, who protested with all the force of which her
character was capable, and dressed all in white for the baptism. He
stood all alone at the altar, a pathetic, uncomprehending little
figure, and was made to renounce the faith in which he had been
christened.
So Ferdinand committed apostasy by proxy. The official representative
of the Czar-godfather, who was accorded royal honours in Tirnovo that
day, afterwards described the ceremony as “a blasphemous mockery and an
exhibition of political legerdemain.” But Ferdinand cared little for
what was said of him. The Sobranje voted to the heir to the throne a
sum of £20,000, and the old accusation that he was leading the nation
from Orthodoxy to Catholicism was for ever stilled.
Having appeased Russia and confirmed the ancient religion of his
subjects in the person of the heir to the throne, Ferdinand was to reap
the benefit of his perjury by receiving the long-awaited recognition of
his sovereign Lord Abdul the Damned. The Red Sultan issued a firman,
recognizing him as Prince of Bulgaria, with the title of Royal
Highness, and as Governor-General of Eastern Rumelia.
Meantime the young mother had fled, taking her second son with her. She
made her way, almost dead with grief, to her ancestral home, where she
claimed the protection of her father. Enraged by Ferdinand’s open
violation of the wedding contract, the Duke of Parma espoused her cause
with all the vigour of which he was capable, and received the full
support of the Church.
Ferdinand was most anxious to end the scandal, and to coax the Princess
back to Sofia. With that end in view he obeyed a summons issued by Pope
Leo XIII, which, as a good Catholic, he would have had some difficulty
in ignoring. Strong in the virtue of his princely rank, and in the
dignity of a recent interview with the Sultan of Turkey, a Pagan
potentate, in which Ferdinand sported the red fez of vassaldom,
Ferdinand made his way to Rome with a quiet confidence in his own
rectitude and his mother’s influence.
He entered the Vatican for his interview with every appearance of
smirking self-satisfaction. The interview was but a short one; it
lasted only a few minutes, but much can happen in a few minutes. No
other man was present, and there is no record of what took place at the
meeting.
But when Ferdinand sneaked out of the presence, abashed and humiliated,
and fled from Rome with no word; when months passed before he entirely
recovered the jauntiness of his demeanour, it needs no great quality of
imagination to guess that he received a notable rebuke. For some years
he endured the stern displeasure of Rome, and the ban, almost amounting
to excommunication was only lifted many years later at the strongly
expressed wish of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian
throne, whose assassination was the signal for the great world conflict
in which we are still engaged.
The Princess never recovered from that blow. In course of time she was
induced to return to her husband, bringing with her the child Cyril.
But now she was a drooping flower, with no hope of ever reviving. She
walked through the weary round of her Court duties, and bore two
daughters to the father who had made of his son and heir an apostate.
She only lived one day after the birth of the second girl, when this
gentle woman died of her wrongs.
But Ferdinand was satisfied. He had made his peace with Russia, and the
Red Sultan called him Royal Highness. He was now on the side of the
clerical plotters of his kingdom, and wore the hall-mark of Bulgarian
ecclesiasticism. He even talked of giving his own open adherence to the
Orthodox Church, though this has never been done.
In the meantime he had provided an Orthodox heir to the throne, and by
the act had mitigated the dread of assassination that had for so long
hag-ridden him. For assassination was ever the terror that haunted
Ferdinand’s mind. He lived for ever with the dread spectre at his
elbow, and he had reason for his dread. For, as we shall now see,
assassination was a familiar political weapon in Bulgaria before the
arrival of Ferdinand, who can claim credit for remarkable improvements
upon the crude methods in vogue before his era of subsidized slaughter.
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THE BUTCHERED “BISMARCK”
“_If any ordinary citizen of any State had been so incriminated as
Prince Ferdinand has been, the man would have been arrested._”
—“VOSSISCHE ZEITUNG.”
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