Christianity in the Turkish empire was resolved on, and his successor,
like another Diocletian, issued his decree, for the purpose; it
ordained that all the Greeks, subject to the spiritual authority of
the patriarch, should conform to the religion of Mahomed. It was then
that an extraordinary trait in the Turkish character displayed itself.
The patriarch affirmed that he could not, consistently with his duty,
comply with the firman, without first stating his reasons before the
mufti and the divan. This was pronounced to be reasonable. A Turk,
in his fiercest determination, tries to preserve an appearance of
equity and justice; so the patriarch was allowed to appear before the
assembled divan. He there affirmed that “not only a compact was made
on the surrender of the city, that the Greeks should enjoy the free
exercise of their religion in half the churches, but that all the
gates should be thrown open at Easter for three days, in order that
those without may have an opportunity of going to them at this solemn
season.” The Turks admitted no evidence but living witnesses; so they
demanded if the patriarch had any such, to prove the fact. Aware of the
circumstance, he had provided them. Two very old and grey Janissaries,
who had been engaged for a large sum of money, were produced, who
testified that they were present when the compact was made, though it
was notorious it had happened before they were born. The divan was
satisfied with this impossible evidence. The mufti pronounced a fetva,
that the attestation of living witnesses could not be gainsaid, and the
extirpation of Christianity was for that time averted.
Again, when the Greeks, instigated by the intrigues of Russia,
endeavoured to throw off the Turkish yoke, and put themselves under
the protection of their fellow-Christians, it was resolved in the
divan that the whole population should be exterminated, and orders
were issued for that purpose. Their fate now seemed inevitable, and
the gospel was to be suppressed in Turkey by the extinction of all
its professors. The sagacity of one enlightened Turk saved them.
The Capitan Pasha, Gazi Hassan, was distinguished by his rough and
energetic, but humane character. “If,” said he to the ferocious divan,
“you extirpate the Greeks of the empire, who will remain to pay the
haratch?” The haratch is a capitation-tax, laid on the rayas, or
Christian subjects, which, when paid, ensures to them the permission
to wear their heads for another year. This tax had produced annually
49,000 purses, or about £542,000; so this appeal to the cupidity of the
Turks again saved the Christians.
After various similar menaces and perils, during which the Greeks
adhered to their religion with the most inflexible constancy, their
church has finally established itself, with some modifications, under
its own independent government, while that portion of it under the
Turks retains its old form. It is superintended by four patriarchs,
in Asia, Africa, and Europe; viz. Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and
Constantinople. They are elected by a body composed of the clergy and
laity forming a synod; but in reality the situation is a mere matter of
purchase from the Turkish government. Every patriarch, on his election,
pays a large sum to the Porte; on many occasions the demand has
amounted to 250,000 dollars. When the exigency of the state requires
such a sum, the existing patriarch is deposed or strangled, and his
successor pays it on his election. This causes a constant succession;
the tenure of a patriarchate seldom exceeds a year or two. On payment,
however, of the money required, a written diploma, called _Berat_, is
given, securing to the patriarch the full and free exercise of his
functions. This is strictly observed by the Turks, till they seek
occasion to depose him, and appoint another.
Under the Greek empire, the number of bishops was unsettled. They now
amount to 150, of whom 60 are suffragans, and three claim independence
of any superior ecclesiastical authority in their own sees. Both
patriarchs and bishops are judges in right of their office, not only
in matters of faith and discipline, in their church, but also in civil
and criminal cases. They are assisted by a synod composed of laics
and ecclesiastics, and administer justice in their courts with the
same formalities as Turkish functionaries, with attendants, formerly
Janissaries, who are bound to execute their decrees. The code of laws
by which they decide is that of Justinian, and they have the power
of condemning delinquents to prison or exile. Such is the reputation
of those courts, that Turks and Jews are known to appeal to them in
preference to their own tribunals.
As the office of patriarch is purchased from the Porte, that of prelate
is purchased from the patriarch; the amount paid is proportionate to
the value of the sees, and varies from 18,000 to 150,000 piasters.
This, with various other sums paid on different occasions, both by
clergy and laity, form a common chest, out of which all the expenses
of the Greek church are defrayed. This is managed by a κοινον, or
public community, composed of members taken from all classes; for,
notwithstanding the state of slavery and depression in which the
nation lives under their Turkish masters, they preserve a semblance of
freedom, and manage their own affairs by popular assemblies, like their
republican ancestors.
The clergy, as in the Western church, are divided into regular and
secular: the first are called Kaloyers, literally, “good old men,” the
latter Papas, or “fathers.” The kaloyers are generally men of better
education; they are not allowed to marry, and, as the dignitaries
of the church are all taken from this class, neither patriarch nor
bishop is permitted to have a wife. So rigidly is this regulation
enjoined, that from some convents cows, hens, and all females of
inferior animals, are excluded, as infringing on monastic discipline.
They inhabit numerous edifices, scattered all over the Turkish empire.
They are very strongly built, resembling fortresses, and in fact are
retreats to which people retire from the outrages of pirates and
robbers. They are seen the most conspicuous objects on hills and
islands by land and sea; the most remarkable are those of mount Athos
in Europe, and mount Sinai in Asia. The papa, or secular priest, is
generally a married man; he is allowed to take one wife, and not marry
another after her death; he has no fixed residence, is generally very
illiterate, poor, and humble, and but little respected.
The dress of the clergy under the Lower Empire was not remarkable; and
under the first year of the Ottoman sway, it retained its indistinct
simplicity; but in the reign of Soliman an alteration took place. A
deputation of the patriarch and his prelates issued from Adrianople, to
do him homage; and the Turks seeing this mass of people approaching,
and not recognizing them by any dress, supposed their intention
hostile, and prepared to attack them, when they discovered their
mistake. To prevent the recurrence of such a thing, the clergy were
ordered to assume a particular and conspicuous dress, by which they
could be recognized at a distance; they, therefore, adopted one on the
other extreme: bright hats of crimson velvet, adorned with glittering
crosses of gold. This is now laid aside, and one extremely humble, but
sufficiently distinctive, is substituted. That of the dignitaries was
adopted from the monks of mount Athos−-a black crape veil thrown over
a plain black cap, and falling down the shoulders. The dress of the
papas is a plain tunic of blue cotton, and a felt hat without a brim,
but broader on the top than below. When he is a married man, his state
is indicated by a narrow band of white muslin round his black cap. All
wear beards, which they cherish till they grow to a venerable length.
Their vestments, when performing service in their churches, are rich
and gaudy.
Our illustration represents the installation of a bishop in the
metropolitan church of Magnesia: the throne is before a screen which
separates the nave from the sanctuary, into which none are allowed to
enter but the clergy. This screen is profusely adorned with pictures of
saints,−-an essential part of the decorations of every Greek church.
Among the priests and elders who assist at the ceremony, is one who
holds a triple taper, to represent the Trinity; with this emblem,
patriarchs and bishops confer their blessing, waving it over the heads
of the congregation while they pronounce the benediction. During this,
one finger is carefully bent, so as to separate the little finger from
the first and second, to intimate that peculiar dogma of the Greek
church, “the procession of the Spirit from the Father only.”
Among the display of the Greek church are banners, borne on festival
days, representing favourite saints, to whose representation they
attribute extraordinary qualities. A remarkable superstition of
this kind prevails at Magnesia: St. George, the patron of England,
is in high esteem there, and at Easter his banner forms the most
distinguished object in the procession. It has the important property
of distinguishing and punishing a sinner; it is borne to church always
by a priest, who of course passes the ordeal uninjured and with credit;
but on returning, it is given to some unfortunate layman, who bears to
the grave the marks of the chastisements inflicted on him for his sins.
He is violently beaten by some persons appointed for the purpose, while
the blows are faithfully believed to proceed from the image of our
pugnacious saint.
[Illustration: T. Allom. S. Fisher.
THE RUINS OF HIERAPOLIS, FROM THE THEATRE.
ASIA MINOR.]
Nothing marks so strongly the genius and propensities of the ancient
Greeks, as their theatres. As these edifices were the most interesting
and most attractive, so they seemed to have engaged their greatest
attention, and to have called forth all their skill, to render them
the most permanent and beautiful of the buildings they erected. We
have already remarked, that every town, inhabited by Greeks, or the
descendants of Greeks, seems to have had one, as essential to its
well-being; and they were not erected with the fragile and perishable
materials with which the modern edifices of the same kind were
constructed. Their seats were not wooden benches enclosed with slight
walls and covered with slender roofs, or their decorations flimsy
painted paper and canvass; they were built with solid blocks of marble,
roofed with the canopy of heaven, adorned with statuary and sculptured
ornaments of imperishable materials; and their remains, at the present
day, are as durable as the rock on which they were generally erected.
When every other vestige of an ancient city is obliterated, its theatre
is the only building that remains, to determine its site; and when
ruins had concealed it, or the lapse of time had covered it with soil,
accident or design has detected it under the mass, as perfect in some
of its parts as when it was frequented by a crowded audience. The
beautiful theatre in the small and comparatively obscure Island of Milo
had disappeared for ages, till unexpectedly discovered by agricultural
labourers, in a solitary spot, where no other evidence existed but
itself, of the city to which it had belonged. Its materials were solid
blocks of beautifully sculptured marble; the angular mouldings seemed
as sharp, and the workmanship as recent, as when the chisel had first
struck them; and though probably not less than 2,000 years erected,
looked as fresh, said a traveller, “as if the masons had just gone home
to their dinner, and you expected them to return every moment, and put
the last hand to their work.”
As these characteristic structures form so prominent a feature in
ancient Greek cities, and at this day are generally the most striking
objects emerging from their ruins, a brief notice of their structure
will be the best accompaniment to our illustration. The inventor of
dramatic entertainments was Thespis, who lived about 550 years before
the Christian era. His theatre was as simple as his exhibition was
rude; it was an ambulatory machine, moving from place to place, like
the booth of an English fair. On the cart, a stage was erected; the
dramatic representation was confined to two performers, whose faces
were smeared with lees of wine, and who entertained the audience with a
dialogue of coarse and rustic humour. This movable edifice was improved
by being fixed, and the spectators accommodated with wooden benches,
raised one above the other; but the fondness of the Greeks for such
exhibitions was so great, and the throng so pressing, that frequent
accidents occurred from the breaking down of these frail structures,
and the loss of life was so serious, that it was necessary to
accommodate the people with more durable edifices. The name of Æschylus
is immortalized as well by his mechanical as his literary genius; he
not only fixed the drama by the composition of forty regular plays, in
which the characters were dressed in suitable costume, but he gave his
representations in a regular and permanent edifice, the arrangement of
which was the model on which all others were afterwards built.
The building was a semicircle whose extremities were limited by a
right line; this was divided into three parts, each having its own
appropriation. The theatre, properly so called, from whence the
spectators “saw” the exhibition, filled the semicircle, where the
people were accommodated with benches rising one above the other.
The upper were allocated to females. The seats were confined to a
particular number in each row, in all theatres they were eighteen
inches high and three feet broad, so that the people sat at their
ease, the feet of those above never incommoding those below. Behind
each row were galleries, formed in the walls, by which the spectators
entered from without, and, from the crowds that issued from them, they
were called “vomitories;” from them were passages through the seats in
a right line tending to a common centre, and, from the shape of the
enclosed spaces, broad above and narrow below, the portions into which
the benches were divided, were called “wedges.” As the actor’s voice
would be insufficient to fill the vast space enclosed by some theatres,
which contained 40,000 people, the sound was augmented, and rendered
distinct, by hollow vessels of copper, dispersed under the seats in
such a way as to reverberate the words distinctly to the ear of every
individual.
The right line, in front, was occupied by the orchestra, so called
because it was originally intended for the exhibition of “mimes and
dancers;” it afterwards admitted other exhibitions. In one of its
compartments, the chorus acted, which from its square form was called
thymele, or “the altar;” another received a band of music, and, from
its position at the bottom of the theatre, was named “hyposcene;”
behind this was the stage, divided also into three parts; the
largest, properly called the “scene,” extended across the theatre.
Here was suspended the large curtain, which fell, not rose, when the
exhibition commenced; the next was the proscene, or “pulpit,” where the
performance was carried on; and the last the parascene, or green room,
the place “behind the stage,” where the performers retired to dress,
and the machines were kept and prepared.
The bland and beautiful climate of the country inhabited by the Greeks,
require for the greater part of the year no shelter. The theatre,
therefore, had no roof, and all the exhibitions were in the open air;
when a passing shower required it, there were porticoes to which the
audience retired in winter; in summer, the rays of the sun were to
be guarded against in a warm climate, and machinery was provided, by
which canvass awnings were drawn across over the theatre. The degree
of sultriness which this caused among a crowd in confined air, was
mitigated by an artificial rain. Reservoirs of scented water were
formed above the porticoes, from whence it descended to the statues
and other sculptured ornaments, and was suffered to exude through
certain pores in the marble, and filled the covered space not only with
grateful coolness but fragrant exhalation.
The fondness of the Greeks in general, and of the Athenians in
particular, for such dramatic exhibitions, is not to be expressed; it
was not only the medium through which the music of their poetry, the
refinement of their sentiments, the display of their taste, and their
moral impressions, were conveyed, but it was the great channel of
their political opinions. Every sense and faculty was engaged in these
exhibitions: the eye, the ear, the imagination, the understanding,
were appealed to, and gratified; but what rendered it so deeply
interesting was, that it became the arena upon which the public affairs
were exhibited, the channel through which public sentiments were
conveyed; and the great interests and transactions of the republic,
in which every man felt a personal interest, were discussed in mimic
representations. When an event or character was introduced in the
drama, its parallel was immediately found, and its application was made
to some passing circumstance or person. When a passage in Æschylus
was uttered, that Amphiaraus “had rather be great and good, than seem
so,” it was instantly and simultaneously applied by the audience to
Aristides, and they rose up spontaneously to salute him. It was thus,
that not only in Athens, their vast theatre, capable of holding 30,000
people, was constantly crowded, but in every city inhabited by the
Greeks, either in the islands or on the continents of Asia and Europe,
theatres were erected among their first public edifices; and there is
scarcely a town, however obscure or little noticed, where one is not
found at this day among the most perfect part of the ruins.
The theatre of Hieropolis, given in our illustration, is the least
dilapidated among its existing remains; it is an extensive and
sumptuous structure, even in its present ruinous state; it retains
perfectly its semicircular form, and part of the proscene is still
standing in good preservation; the wedge-form rows of benches still
afford seats to the traveller; and the arched vomitories, opening
upon the passages to admit spectators, are still perfect; but the
centre is filled up with heaps of broken cornices, fragments of fluted
shafts, and almost perfect capitals of pillars, tumbled from their
elevation, and indicating, by their number and the excellency of their
workmanship, the skill and labour bestowed upon the theatre of this
provincial town. On a low semicircular screen, dividing the seats,
is still legible an inscription in which “Apollo the Archegetes,”
or manager of the theatre, is entreated to be “propitious to the
performers;” and on another is a panegyric on the city of Hieropolis,
in which it is called “the city of gold.” The perspective in the
background exhibits the remains of stadia, baths, and other edifices
before mentioned.
The circumstance which most strongly impresses a traveller in visiting
these ancient theatres, is the dismal contrast presented by their first
and present state. These crowded scenes of life and enjoyment are now
the most dismal and desolate spots among the ruins; they seem to be the
place to which every thing that is foul and venomous repair, attracted
perhaps by the shelter and concealment their more perfect state
affords. “The busy hum of men” is exchanged for the serpent’s hiss and
the eagle’s scream−-the crowded seats
“Are now the raven’s bleak abode,
Are now the apartment of the toad.”
Snakes are everywhere seen gliding through the rubbish, or rustling
among the thicket of shrubs that grow among them. Their exuviæ are
found deposited in every crevice, and the alarmed traveller starts
back, supposing that to be a living reptile, which he finds is only the
spotted skin from which the renovated serpent had extricated itself,
and just left behind. Jackals and wolves drag here their prey, as to
a congenial spot, to devour them; and vultures, “scenting their murky
quarry from afar,” are heard screaming in the air, and seen hovering
over the carcase, ready to alight, and snatch it from their rapacious
rivals. Such is the almost universal aspect that every ancient theatre
we have visited presents to the traveller.
[Illustration: T. Allom. J. Sands.
THE PRINCESS’ ISLANDS.
FROM MONASTERY OF THE TRINITY/PRINKIPO IN THE MIDDLE DISTANCE.]
The two straits by which Constantinople is approached, are marked
at their entrance by clusters of islands. The traveller, before he
enters the Dardanelles, passes through the Cyclades; as he approaches
the Bosphorus, he finds himself among a similar group, forming an
Archipelago in the Propontis, if not so extensive, yet still more
lovely than that in the Egean.
The Cyclades of the Propontis was anciently called Demonesca, or the
“islands of spirits;” but under the Lower Empire they assumed another
denomination. Irené, the widow of Fl. Leo, had put out the eyes of
her son, in order that she herself might reign in his place; for this
she was banished by his successor, to these islands; and, having
built a monastery on one of them, to atone for her guilt, and erected
edifices where females of the imperial family were educated, the group
was called, therefore, after her, the “Princes’ Islands.” They are
nine in number, of different sizes, and are distinguished by Greek
names, indicating some peculiarity of each.[5] The four smaller are
uninhabited; they lie between the European and Asiatic coasts, about 10
miles from each, and the same distance from the mouth of the Bosphorus;
and to the houses of the streets built on the eminences, both of Pera
and Constantinople, exhibit a picturesque and striking prospect.
The water which flows round them is not less pure than the air is
balmy; they seem to float in a sea of singular transparency, so clear
and lucid that objects are distinctly seen at the greatest depths;
and the caïque which glides over it seems supported by a fluid less
dense than water, and nearly as invisible and transparent as air.
From various circumstances, it is conjectured that the islands were
originally one mass, and torn asunder by some convulsion of nature;
abrupt promontories in the one correspond with bays and indentations
in the opposite, and the space between is so deep, that the large
ships of Admiral Duckworth’s fleet anchored everywhere among them with
perfect safety, when they passed into the Propontis, to menace the
capital. Fish of many kinds abound in the streights, and their capture
is one of the employments and amusements of the residents. The fishing
carried on by night is very picturesque. The boats proceed with blazing
faggots lighted in braziers of iron projecting from their bow and
stern; and at certain times the shores are illuminated every night, by
innumerable moving lights floating round them.
The islands labour under two disadvantages; one is, the want of water:
there are no streams, and the springs found are impregnated with
mineral ingredients, everywhere mixed up with the soil, particularly in
the island of Chalki. To remedy this, the houses, and particularly the
convents, have deep excavations, forming reservoirs into which the rain
is received; so sacred is this deposit, that the wells are covered with
iron stopples, carefully locked, and only opened with great caution at
stated times. On the smaller deserted islands, deep cisterns of former
times exist, where passing ships and boats at this day draw up water.
The next is, the sudden hurricanes to which they are subject in the
most calm and beautiful weather. The air seems to stagnate, and a
death-like stillness succeeds; then a dark lurid spot appears near
the horizon, which suddenly bursts, as it were, and an explosion of
wind issues from it, which sweeps everything before it. The doors and
windows of the houses are instantly burst open, and every thing on land
seems splitting to pieces; the sea is raised into mountains of white
foam; and the only hope of safety for ships is to drive before it. The
boats of the islands are sometimes overtaken thus in their passage
to the capital: the boatmen at once lose all power of managing their
caïques, and throw themselves on their faces in despair, crying out
“For our sins, for our sins!” In this state the vessel turns over, and
goes down with all her passengers. Accidents of this kind happen every
year.