RELIGIOUS COLOURING
ANOTHER striking feature in the life of Constantinople is the extent to
which life here has a religious colouring. The Turkish State is a
theocracy. Its supreme law is a code reputed to be Divine. Citizenship
is secured by the profession of a particular religion. Obedience to the
law of the land is obedience to the will of God. The defence of the
State is the defence of a faith. Patriotism is piety. To die in battle
is to belong to the noble army of martyrs. The cemetery on the hill
above Roumeli Hissar is known as "The Field of the Witnesses" (Martyrs),
because the resting-place of soldiers who died while Mehemet the
Conqueror was building, in 1452, the castle which should command the
passage of the straits, and cut the communications of the city with the
lands around the Black Sea during the forthcoming siege, "when the bud
would open into flower." The picturesque cemetery, shaded by oaks, on
the hill above the Genoese Castle, overlooking the entrance to the Black
Sea, a view that Darius I. and Herodotus came to admire, is also named
"The Field of Witnesses," because there, it is supposed, Saracen
soldiers who fell in an attack upon the castle were buried. Such
cemeteries are holy ground, and sepulture in them is regarded as a great
honour. The attendance of the Sultan at the midday public prayers on
Fridays is the official act of the Caliph of the Mohammedan world. He
ascends the throne after girding his sword at the grave of the first
standard-bearer of the Prophet, in the Mosque of Eyoub. The mantle of
the Prophet, his green standard, his staff, sword, bow, are enshrined in
the Seraglio as the sovereign's regalia, and are annually visited by the
Sultan as a great State function. Around that standard all true Moslems
must rally when Islam is in peril. No great act of Government may be
performed until the chief doctor of the Sacred Law, the Sheik-ul-Islam,
has been consulted, and sanctions the act, as in accordance with the
supreme authority of faith and righteousness. Sultan Abdul Azis and his
nephew, Sultan Murad, were deposed only after such sanction had been
obtained.
[Illustration: ROUMELI HISSAR
One of the towers of the old Turkish castle built by Mehemet II. ("The
Conqueror"). The distant hills seen across the Bosporus are on the
Asiatic coast. The Judas tree in full bloom is a prominent feature in
the spring.]
Upon this theocratic conception of the State, the exclusion of the
Christian subjects of the Empire from the army is based. For, how can
aliens in religion be enlisted under the banner of the Faith? Hence the
institution of the janissaries in the early history of the Ottoman
Power, whereby children of Christian parentage were taken from their
homes and brought up as Moslems, to furnish recruits for the army. It
was an ingenious device to maintain the religious character of the
military force of the Empire, and yet to prevent the burden of filling
the ranks from resting exclusively upon the faithful. The abolition of
the child-tax, however fortunate to others, proved a great injury to
Turkey. It not only deprived the Sultans of their finest troops, but has
been one of the principal causes of the great decrease in the Moslem
population of the country; as that class of the community alone has
since been called to sustain the losses involved in military service.
The mortality among the soldiers of the Turkish army from disease and
war is so great that the Moslem population is rapidly dying out, and
well-informed medical experts are heard to say, "The Eastern Question
will be solved by the disappearance of the Turks in the natural course
of things."
The theocratic character of a Moslem State facilitates, indeed, the
incorporation of different races in the same social and political
system, seeing that all distinctions between men are obliterated by
community in the faith of Islam. And it is impressive to see how closely
the Mohammedan world, though not free from sects, is knit together by
religious principle, and how strongly it cherishes the brotherhood of
believers. In it, not in theory only but also in practice, the black man
and the white man are fellow-citizens and of the same household. But on
the other hand, because of its theocratic constitution, it is impossible
for a Moslem State to accept reforms which seek to secure equality of
rights among its subjects, on the ground of a common humanity. Nothing
is more opposed to the deepest convictions of a genuine Moslem than the
idea that men of a different faith from his own can be his equals. There
is no one who can be more polite than a Turk; no one who can treat you
in a more friendly and flattering manner than he. Yet persons who have
known him well, nay, who have loved him, testify that even in the
relation of private friendship they have never felt that a Turk had
given them his whole self, but was a friend with reservations that might
lead him to act toward you in the most unfriendly manner. His religion
confers on him an inaccessible superiority, from which he cannot descend
without becoming a faithless son of Islam. His interests are superior to
those of an infidel. He is a religious aristocrat, and no patrician of
old or of modern days has resisted the demands of plebeians or commoners
for equality more obstinately or strenuously than a Moslem opposes the
pretensions of unbelievers to be placed on a parity with him. In the
case of the patrician, it was a matter of pride; with the Moslem, it is
a case of conscience. Though it may seem a small matter, it is a
significant fact that a Turk can wish the salutation of peace only to a
fellow-Moslem, and that in the exchange of courtesies with persons not
of his faith he expects to be saluted first. Rather than admit equality
in any real and absolute sense, it would seem as if the wreck of the
Empire were preferred--"faithful unto death."
The outward forms of Mohammedanism are exceedingly impressive. The
muezzin's call to prayer--at dawn, at noon, in the afternoon, at sunset,
and three hours later at night--floats through the air like a voice
from the upper world. No music of bells evokes such a sense of the
Divine Majesty as his proclamation, "God is Great, there is no God but
God." However grand or however humble a mosque may be, whether
frequented by the most intelligent or the most ignorant of the people,
it contains nothing that tells of superstition, nothing that belittles
or lowers the conception of the Most High. One can understand why, when
Islam and Christianity confronted each other in the Byzantine Empire,
there were emperors who, for upwards of a century, strove to banish
pictures and statues from the worship of the Church. And where is the
reverence of the human soul before God expressed so utterly, as when the
Moslem worshipper, washed clean, with shoes off his feet, stands, bows,
kneels, prostrates himself before his Maker, in silent prayer? There is
no more impressive religious service in the world than that celebrated,
under the dome of S. Sophia, on "The Night of Power," in the season of
Ramazan. Under the dim light of hundreds of small, hanging lamps, fed
with oil, as in days past, ten thousand men are then gathered upon the
floor of the mosque for evening worship, their hearts stirred by the
associations of the sacred season. It is essentially a service of silent
prayer. The silence is made only the more impressive by the brief
chant or vehement ejaculation that occasionally breaks the stillness, to
afford pent feelings some relief. But though dumb with awe, the
multitude cannot rest. The emotion is too strong for complete
suppression, and the vast congregation heaves to and fro, rises and
falls. It stands upon its feet, bends low, sinks to the floor, kneels,
prostrates the head to the very earth, filling the great church with a
sound as of distant thunder, or the sea breaking upon the shore. It is a
scene of intense humility and veneration. And yet it is so grave, so
quiet, so controlled, that the dignity of the worshippers is never lost.
It is the homage of the great to the Greatest. It is a remarkable
combination of reverence and of self-respect. Except in the practices of
certain orders of dervishes, the Howling Dervishes for instance, nothing
in the attitude of a Moslem at his devotions betrays an overpowering
feeling due to the weakness of human nature. The consciousness of
belonging to the _élite_ of the religious world, the sense that the
worship is paid to the One, True, Great Allah, beside whom there is no
other God, and that it is offered in a form worthy of the Divine nature,
inspire an elevation of soul like the pride of great nobles in the
presence of a mighty over-lord. A devout Moslem is an aristocrat to the
tips of his fingers.
[Illustration: A HOWLING DERVISH ("LA ILÂH ILLA 'LLAH")
The howling dervishes perform their devotions by standing in a row and
repeating the confession of faith, "La ilâh illa 'llah," rocking
themselves backwards and forwards meantime; beginning slowly, they
gradually quicken the time and work themselves into a frenzy of
religious excitement.]
Partly because of the natural reserve of Moslems in speaking with
Christians on religious matters, and partly on account of the influence
of the social institutions, which Moslems have inherited from an
inferior stage of civilisation, it is exceedingly difficult to determine
the ethical power of Islam in the inner life of its adherents. Perhaps
the following remark, made by an intelligent Mohammedan to a Christian
friend, gives a glimpse into the spirit of the system. "Christianity is
perhaps the best religion, but it is too high for frail human beings.
Therefore God, in His mercy, has given us another religion, Islam,
which, if not so lofty as yours, is more easy of attainment and
practice." Certainly, the distinction of Islam is the force with which
it insists upon the unity, spirituality, and greatness of God. A dogma,
not a moral ideal, is its chief concern. Nevertheless, although the
system does not develop the loftiest character, it does secure a
demeanour that commands respect. The submission to the Divine will,
which it inculcates, may have its defects; but it has likewise its
merits. If it saps energy, it fosters seriousness, calmness of spirit
amid life's vicissitudes, and a dignified acceptance of the
inevitable. If Islam fails to inculcate disinterested virtue, or to
inspire goodness on a grand scale, it urges the performance of many
beautiful deeds of kindness.
[Illustration: WHIRLING DERVISH
Member of a religious order whose particular act of devotion consists in
whirling round on the toes until completely exhausted, the object being
to produce a trance-like condition, during which the mind is entirely
withdrawn from material surroundings.]
Almsgiving is one of the great duties incumbent upon a Moslem. During
Ramazan and the two festival seasons of Bairam, tables are set in the
houses of the wealthy classes, to which poor neighbours are made
welcome. Groups of beggars gather then about the houses of the rich to
receive liberal portions of pilaf, and meat stewed with vegetables,
besides a present of money or some article of dress. Connected with the
principal mosques of the city, there are endowed soup-kitchens
(Imarets), at which, along with the softas and imaums of the mosque, the
poor of the district can obtain soup every morning, and once a week
pilaf and zerdé (sweetened rice, coloured yellow with saffron). During
Ramazan, pilaf and zerdé are supplied every evening. The lame, the
blind, the halt, are usually allowed to cross the bridges over the
Golden Horn without paying toll, and to travel by the steamers on the
Bosporus free of charge. The regard of Turks for animals is well known.
If, again, the legal and ascetic prohibition of the use of intoxicants
by Mahomet is not the noblest method of educating free agents in
self-control, the sober habits of a Moslem community and the rarity of
violent crimes in it, when uncontaminated by foreign influence, are
advantages not to be despised. A distinctive feature of a Turkish
quarter in town or village is the absence of a wine-shop. On the other
hand, the segregation of the sexes, while it diminishes the "social
evil," fosters a sensual tone of thought and feeling in Mohammedan
society, that contrast most unfavourably with the chivalrous sentiments
entertained towards womanhood in Western civilisation. The martial
spirit congenial to Islam has its admirable side, but, by the
unfortunate sanction of the use of the sword for the suppression of
unbelievers, unspeakable atrocities have been committed under the mantle
of religion; as, indeed, wherever a similar sanction has been allowed.
Opinions differ as to the lengths to which this spirit would go, if
Turkish Power were, under certain circumstances, driven to despair and
brought to bay. Will the part of Samson Agonistes be repeated
then?--"The edifice, where all were met to see him, upon their heads and
on his own he pulled." There are some who think so. But much may be said
in favour of the contrary opinion. The Turk is a brave man, but he can
be cowed by superior strength, firmly applied. A Turkish maxim says:
"The hand you cannot cut, kiss, and press to your forehead." This is not
like Samson.
It is not, however, only the Turkish community that presents a religious
colour. The same is true of the other communities of the country. With
them, also, the nation has come to be the Church. This is due, in part,
to circumstances anterior to the Turkish Conquest. The theological
disputes between Christians in the earlier centuries of the history of
the Church, even if purely religious and philosophical at first, erelong
assumed a national character, and became respectively the banners around
which racial distinctions and political antagonisms rallied, and
acquired a consistence which endures to this day. How deeply ingrained
in the Christian population of the country, to-day, is the spirit to see
things under a religious colour appears, sometimes, in small but
significant ways. A poor Greek woman, anxious to find a husband for her
daughter, who was neither young nor beautiful, was informed that a
worthy boatman was prepared to marry the girl. He had everything to
recommend him, but he was an Armenian. "What!" exclaimed the mother,
turning indignantly to the friend who recommended the man; "What! do
you wish me to give my daughter to an Arian? No; let her rather die."
Evidently the woman was not an expert in the use of theological terms,
for the Armenians are not Arians. But her reply shows that old
theological disputes, which one might suppose had been forgotten, have
left their impress upon the popular mind, and are associated with
national distinctions. The division between Eastern and Western
Christendom is not merely a religious schism. The organisations known as
the Coptic Church, the Nestorian Church, the Armenian Church, are not
simply different ecclesiastical denominations, or various schools of
thought. They are as much, if not more, the assertion of national
peculiarities. They have maintained, so far as the times allowed, a
people's independence; preserved the ties which bound a people to its
past; and continued the use of its ancestral speech at home, in the
affairs of social life, and in the worship of God. With the Turkish
Conquest, this fusion of national and religious sentiments became, if
possible, more complete. The new rule, involving the loss of political
freedom, and the ascendency of an alien faith, made the Church dearer,
and left her to be the only sphere of anything approaching national
life and independence. The distinction between Church and Nationality
consequently passed out of sight. And nowhere is the idea that to change
one's religious profession is to be false to one's people, and that to
be a faithful churchman is to be a patriot, more strongly entrenched
than among the adherents of the Christian communities in Turkey. On the
other hand, the new rulers could not hope, and did not desire, to
assimilate the Christian populations of the country, or to incorporate
them in one political body. What with the differences of race, creed,
language, civilisation, a gulf was fixed between the conquerors and the
conquered. The two parties could be nothing else but distinct and alien
communities. Under these circumstances, policy and necessity led the
conquerors to maintain the different organisations in which they found
the subjugated peoples already arranged. To divide and conquer may not
be the highest statesmanship, but it was a principle that, in the
condition of the country, could be quickly applied. For one thing, by
that process the power of the conquered to rise would be crushed.
Furthermore, to leave the different churches of the land to their own
ways was, after all, the only solution of the problem how to govern
people who, because of their religious beliefs, and their social
institutions, could not be brought under the operation of the Sacred
Code of Islam. It would, so far, please the conquered. It would accord
with that regard for use and wont, for what he calls _Adet_, which the
Turk cherishes. It was practical, and in harmony with the theocratic
conception of society familiar to the Moslem mind. Hence the Turkish
Government has been accustomed to classify the various peoples of the
Empire according to their respective creeds, and has granted them a
considerable measure of self-government, in such matters as marriage,
inheritance, education, the management of charitable institutions, and
jurisdiction over the clergy. As these bodies were ecclesiastical
corporations, their ecclesiastical chiefs became at once their rulers,
both in religious and in civil affairs, and their representatives in all
transactions with the Ottoman authorities. In fact, these communities
have enjoyed privileges that give them, in some respects, a status
similar to that conferred upon foreigners by the Capitulations. On the
principle of religious classification, Greeks, Roumanians, Bulgarians,
Servians, were considered members of the same civil community, because
members of the same Church. And, on the same principle, if an Armenian
left his National Church to join the Roman Catholic or the Protestant
communion, he passed beyond the authority of his former ecclesiastical
superiors not only in matters spiritual but also in matters secular,
acquiring with his new beliefs a new legal standing, as a "Latin" or an
"Evangelical." In this new character, he came under the protection of
another chief, was placed under new regulations, and made amenable to a
different court. It is because of this intimate union of the religious
and the civil, that converts from the National Churches in the Empire
have been compelled to form themselves into distinct civil communities,
and to incur the odium of, apparently, deserting their own people. But
only thus could they escape the pains which their original
ecclesiastical authorities had the power to inflict upon dissident
subjects; only thus could the Turkish Government grant the converts a
legal independent status in religious life.
This method of dealing with the Christian subjects of the Empire worked,
on the whole, smoothly, until the idea of nationality, which has been
such a powerful factor in the recent history of Europe, spread also
among the various peoples of Turkey, inspiring them to assert their
distinctness from one another, and to seek liberation from the rule of
the dominant race. Then great searching of hearts arose. For the new
idea was subversive of a system based upon the principle that the
fundamental bond of unity between men is community of faith. Hence, when
the Bulgarians demanded to be organised into a community distinct from
the Greek community, though one in doctrine with it, and to have bishops
and an ecclesiastical head of their own nationality, the request proved
a source of considerable difficulty. The chiefs of the Greek Church,
under whose authority the Bulgarians had been placed since 1767, as
fellow-believers, naturally opposed the demand, taking ground upon the
principle that, "In Jesus Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew,
circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free"; a
principle which Moslems could appreciate. Turkish statesmen opposed the
demand as unconstitutional, and contrary to custom; at the same time,
suspecting it to be a step towards ultimate political independence.
[Illustration: TOMB IN SCUTARI]
Under these circumstances various expedients were suggested, whereby the
desired result might be secured in harmony with the law of the land.
By some of their friends, the Bulgarians were advised to separate from
the Greek Church on some unimportant point of doctrine or ritual, and so
acquire the right before Turkish law to form a distinct community.
Another proposal was to declare themselves Protestants, and thus not
only escape from the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople,
but gain the support of Protestant nations. Yet another plan was to join
the Roman Catholic Church, with the advantage of receiving the
protection of France. The movement in favour of the last course went so
far that a Bulgarian priest was consecrated a Roman Catholic bishop; but
the scheme was abruptly terminated by the spiriting away of that
personage to Odessa, with all the paraphernalia of his office.
Eventually, under Russian pressure, the demand was granted, and the
Bulgarians became a distinct civil and religious community on the ground
of difference of nationality. They were, however, a religious
corporation before the eye of the law, and in view of the large
Bulgarian population still under Turkish rule, especially in Macedonia,
the Exarch of the Bulgarian Church must reside in Constantinople to have
his authority over that class of the community recognised by the
Turkish Government. As though to add more religious colour to the
arrangement, the Patriarch of Constantinople, in 1872, laid the
Bulgarian Church under the sentence of excommunication as schismatic.
The form in which the Bulgarian question was settled has furnished a
precedent which other nationalities, in furtherance of their political
aims, have not been slow to appeal to, and which the Turkish Government,
with the object of weakening their Christian subjects by sub-divisions,
has been, of late, disposed to follow. In the province of Macedonia the
system is carried out to perfection. There Bulgarians, Greeks, Servians,
and Kutzo-Wlachs, all adherents of the Greek Orthodox Church, have had
the fires of their national rivalries fanned into fiercer flame by being
organised into different religious communities, under different
ecclesiastical superiors, with the result that a situation exists in
that province than which nothing more complicated can be imagined.
Before leaving the subject, it is only just to remark that, perhaps, the
world has not sufficiently admired the tenacity with which the various
Christian peoples of the Near East have adhered to their faith and
nationality, in the face of hardships and temptations to which some of
their members succumbed. If their life has been stagnant, it is not
altogether their fault. Their circumstances have been exceedingly
adverse to growth. But they have kept the treasure, although the vessel
which has contained it may be earthen. However much the identification,
or confusion, of political and religious issues has wrought mischief
among these peoples, however much it has quenched their spirit of
brotherly love, it is to their churches that they are mainly indebted
for the preservation of their national consciousness and aspirations.
Amid the darkness, the churches kept the lamp of hope ever burning. They
consecrated patriotism by associating it with loyalty to God. They made
faith firmer by uniting it with the love of fatherland. And their
peoples have lived to see the light of a new day. There is something
pathetic in the fact that all this was rendered possible by the degree
of self-government in civil and religious matters granted them by their
conqueror. There is something tragic in seeing the policy which a
conqueror adopted as the only method to establish his rule--nurse the
life of his foes, and forge the instruments of his ruin. But men are not
always masters of their fate.