In the year 1690 there happened the vast exodus of 30,000 Serbian
families who migrated across the Danube and the Save under the
leadership of the Patriarch of Pe['c], Arsenius [vC]arnoevi['c]. An
oleograph of a picture illustrating this event is found in almost
every Serbian house, be it private house or Government building. These
refugees settled in Syrmia, Slavonia, the Banat and Ba[vc]ka, and
received from the Emperor certain rights, such as that of electing
their voivoda (duke), of owning land, and so forth; their privileges
were not always respected, but the Serbian immigrants remained
faithful to Austria.... The land of Pe['c], from which the Patriarch
fled, with the neighbouring Djakovica and Prizren, became Muhammedan
Albanian territories.
[Mr. Brailsford[30] in 1903 found that in these parts the Albanian was
overwhelmingly predominant, and that he refused to tolerate the claims
of the Serbian minority. Saying that his race, descended from the
Illyrians, was the most ancient in the Peninsula, he objected to this
particular region being called Old Serbia simply because it was once
upon a time conquered by Du[vs]an. In 1903 the Serbs of the district
of Prizren and Pe['c] numbered 5000 householders against 20,000 to
25,000 Albanians. As for the towns: "In Prizren," said an Albanian,
"there are two European families, while the soil of Djakovica is still
clean."[31] The life which these people led was one of misery--tribute
in some form or other had to be given to an Albanian bravo, who made
himself that family's protector, and, in spite of that, the holding of
any property, house or land or chattels, seems to have depended on
Albanian caprice, and the physical state of the Serbs was wretched,
through lack of nourishment and disease. Various efforts had been made
to render the land more endurable for those who were not Muhammedan
Albanians; for example, a Christian _gendarmerie_ was introduced, but
as they were not allowed to carry arms they spent their useless days
in the police stations. They filled the Albanians with scorn, and made
them shout more vociferously their cry of "Albania for the Albanian
tribes!" Under these conditions it says much for the stamina of the
Serbs that they persisted in their old faith; a certain number--Mr.
Brailsford came across some of them in the district of Gora, near
Prizren--have been converted to Islam, but in secret observe their old
religion.]
A Serbian historian, Mr. Tomi['c] of the Belgrade National Library,
has now discovered that these uncompromising Muhammedan Albanians are
not--as previous Serbian and other historians have written--descended
from Albanians who flowed into the country because of its evacuation
by the Patriarch Arsenius and his flock. When the Austrian armies
penetrated to this region in the winter of 1689-1690, the Imperialists
were on good terms both with the Serbian Orthodox people whom they
found there and with the Albanian Catholics; but after the death of
Piccolomini on the 8th of December (which was followed by that of the
Catholic Archbishop), his successor, the Duke of Holstein, alienated
the people, and when they would not obey his commands he set fire to
their villages, this alienating them completely. The fortune of war
then turned against the Austrians, who were compelled to retreat, and
the Serbian Patriarch, with his treasury and a number of priests and
monks, fled with them. They hoped that this exodus was to be of a
temporary character, but in 1690 the Imperialists had to continue
their retreat, taking with them across the Save and the Danube not
only the Serbs who had, like Arsenius, sought refuge in Serbia, but a
far more numerous body whose domicile had always been Serbia itself.
What tells against the theory of the 30,000 families from Pe['c] and
Old Serbia is the fact that the Turkish troops followed so closely on
the heels of the Austrians that the Patriarch and his clergy had great
trouble in escaping themselves, and in addition to the Turk there was
the difficulty of those mountain roads in the middle of winter. Thus
it seems likely that most of the Serbian population of what is called
Old Serbia remained there. The previous historians, who say that such
a vast number followed the Patriarch and his priests, have based
themselves, it appears, on the notes and chronicles of those priests.
And the people, deprived of the guidance of their priests--who were
then the spiritual and lay and military leaders--found it difficult to
stand out against conversion. Half a century before this a great many
Catholic and Orthodox Serbs of those parts had embraced Islam, in
order to escape the financial and military burdens which were laid on
Christian men; the women and girls would continue to profess
Christianity. This phenomenon is described by many travellers, such as
Gregory Massarechi, a Catholic missionary for Prizren and the
neighbourhood, who says in his report of 1651 that in the village of
Suha Reka on the left bank of the White Drin there used to be one
hundred and fifty Christian houses, but that he only found thirty-six
or thirty-seven Christian women, the men having all gone over to
Islam. People were wont to come secretly to him for confession and to
communicate; he tells how these converted men would marry Christian
women, but would leave them Christian all their lives, and only on his
deathbed would a man ask his wife to be converted also.
The Prophet had also found his way into many households of Montenegro,
where the clans, with neither civil nor military government, had been
compelled, for their protection, to live in a patriarchal fashion: the
people--that is, the chiefs of the clans--elected a bishop and
gathered round him as the champion of their religion against Islam.
Until the time of Danilo (1697-1737) there had been fourteen bishops.
During his reign the problem of Turkish penetration was taken in hand.
It was intolerable that Montenegrin families should stand well with
the Sultan because one of their members had gone over to Islam. The
small, untidy village of Virpazar, by the Lake of Scutari, has got a
certain fame, because the chosen men who were to purge the country of
this evil started out from there on Christmas Eve in 1703. Those who
participated in the "Montenegrin Vespers" were not likely to forget
the incidents of that impressive ceremony. The Bishop celebrated Mass,
and from the consecrated tapers in his hand the people lit their own.
Every man was armed. They knelt--their tapers hardly trembling--and
they kissed the sacred image which the Bishop held. Then he blessed
their weapons and they sallied forth, running round the lake and
climbing up the rough, long road to Cetinje. Every house was visited
in which there was a Moslem, and the choice was given of repudiation
or of death. With such missionaries and with subjects such as these to
work upon, you could not hope that the negotiations would be quite
pacific. Many of the Moslem, young and old, were slaughtered, and when
Mass was sung on Christmas morning in the rugged, little monastery of
Cetinje, many of the chosen men assembled, weary but content, and gave
whole-hearted thanks to God that Montenegro had been liberated from
the scourge.
As for those who came under the influence of Islam in Old Serbia, they
were left after 1737 even more to their own resources, as the zone
which united them to the main body of Serbs was depleted by another
great exodus, under Patriarch Arsenius IV., [vS]akabenta. But,
although these men of Serbian origin preserve sometimes this or that
peculiarly Serbian custom, yet, as Mr. Tomi['c] says:[32] "Living
together with the Muhammedan Albanians, they have assumed the Albanian
type and become the most savage foes of the Orthodox religion and of
the people from which they are sprung. The popular saying," he adds,
"is right which asserts that: 'A Christian become a Turk is worse than
a real Turk.'" Of course, in order to make it appear that he was a
real Albanian, there was always a tendency for an Albanized Serb to be
preternaturally oppressive. And up to a short time ago it was very
cold comfort for the Serbs to learn that many of these people are of
Serbian ancestry. But, as we shall see further on, the old, mediaeval
friendship between the Serbian and Albanian rulers is extending to the
people, and this--provided that a sinister external pressure can be
warded off--will bear good fruit.
On behalf of the afore-mentioned 30,000 families the Patriarch
negotiated with the Habsburgs and obtained very far-reaching rights,
which permitted the Serbian people to form in Hungary a _corpus
separatum_. A point which to Serbian eyes had extreme importance was
the institution of a National Congress, to sit at Karlovci on the
Danube in Syrmia, and, amongst other functions, to designate the
Patriarch, whose seat was to be (and remains to this day) Karlovci,
where a friendly white village on the rising ground, which anyhow
would make it famous for the red wine and plum brandy, has received in
its midst the marble palace of the Patriarch, a gorgeous church and
various magnificent red and white buildings which look like so many
Government offices but are, in fact, devoted to Church affairs, the
training of theological students and so forth. Their Patriarchate at
Karlovci appeared to the Serbs as the rock of their nationality
outside Serbia. The Constitution granted to them did not make them
precisely a State within a State, but at least it set up a
political-religious unity--for the privileges included those of having
a chief, the voivoda, and of having a certain territory with
autonomous internal organization and exemption from all taxes. Here
the Serbs, forming a separate and distinct group, with their own
religion, calendar and alphabet, and with their own aspirations, would
be able to stretch out their hands--prudently, of course--to their
scattered brothers. So the Serbs began to whisper to the Croats of the
ancient days; the Croats heard them gladly, but they could not stop
another voice from whispering as well. They had lived for so long with
another religion, another civilization, their eyes had been turned in
other directions, their hearts been filled with other hopes. And now
it was as if the modern voice was being interrupted by the ancient
voice. The Croats were inclined to ask the interrupter to be silent,
but they found they could not live without him.