The Croat peasants were in a much worse condition than the Slovenes,
and the nobles who might have assisted them in building schools had
recently been ruined by the Austrian agrarian policy, for when in 1853
the Austrians put into execution what the Diet of Croatia had resolved
to do in 1848 and freed the peasants from their serfdom, the indemnity
they gave the landlords was in Austrian State papers, which the
landlords had to take at the face value, though this was far above
what they were worth. The owners of the so-called _latifundia_, mostly
German or Hungarian noblemen, lost very little; for their wide domains
were cultivated mostly by hired labour, not by peasants settled on the
land. But these big landlords were not eager to build schools for
peasants. It is said these should have been provided by the Church.
The Croatian clergy in the villages would stand in a much better light
if they had, irrespective of the higher clergy, made more vigorous
attempts to bring down the illiteracy figures which to-day are said to
be, for Croatia and Slavonia, 65 per cent. The higher clergy worked,
with very few exceptions, hand in hand with Austria's Government,
which Government was, after the Concordat of 1855, the close ally of
Rome. If it was the Government's desire to build no schools, the
higher clergy for the most part acquiesced. It surely is a function of
a Government to occupy itself with education and to turn away from the
great landlords who are frightened that a peasantry more educated will
be troublesome. But those who have to bear a good part of the
criticism are the village clergy; it is human not to criticize them
half so much for what they left undone as for some aspects of their
private life. The usual old stories circulate to the effect that they
refuse to exercise their office till the peasant who is asking them to
baptize or to marry or to bury some one brings a suitable amount of
produce, eggs or fowls or something else, in lieu of money; but what
is a more serious matter is the question of women. Three-and-twenty
priests in the diocese of Zagreb passed a resolution a year or two ago
that they were in favour of a married clergy. A Yugoslav bishop told
me that most, if not all, of these gentlemen had anticipated the Papal
consent; but that in his diocese only 3 per cent. of the clergy lived
in sin [hostile critics say he should have added the word "openly"],
whereas in two other Yugoslav dioceses, which he named, such clergy
might amount to 50 per cent. An examination of this question, which
exists in other countries, would be unprofitable, were it not that in
Croatia, with a Roman Catholic and Orthodox population living very
often side by side, the circumstances are peculiar. The people do not
take up any narrow attitude towards the Church of which they are not
members: a Roman Catholic will go to an Orthodox and an Orthodox to a
Roman Catholic church if they have none of their own. They intermarry;
and since their sacred days, such as Christmas, are not celebrated at
the same time the non-celebrating congregation cease to work, out of
sympathy. Even with the alteration of the Orthodox calendar there will
be days which one community will keep as workless days, so that it may
go visiting the others and congratulating them. But this bland
behaviour of the people is unfortunately not maintained when they
discuss their priests. And in the Lika, where the population leads a
rough, laborious life, they are not satisfied to have an academical
discussion. They hold that if a man is celibate he is not manly, and
scenes have taken place which Hogarth might refuse to draw.