THE GREEKS.
Fidelity of the Oriental Churches--The Apostle Andrew--Concessions
by Mohammed II--Gennadios II--Suffering and Misery--Greek
Revolution--Growth of National Spirit--Hellenes or
Romaioi--Bulgarians in their Relation to the Greek Church.
Too much honor cannot be paid to those Christians of the East, whatever
their church connection, who have adhered unswervingly to their faith.
The endurance of the Covenanters and Huguenots and Waldenses casts a
halo, not only upon themselves, but upon the human family. It ennobles
the race that any members of it were capable of such devotion. The
sufferings of the Eastern Christians have been continuous, and may be
traced back by a chain, wherein there are no missing links, to the day
when their remote progenitors were first compelled to bow their necks
under the foot of a Moslem conqueror.
Bondage, inferiority, contempt, are hard and demoralizing teachers.
Rapacity, which renders labor fruitless, and insolent terrorism, which
multiplies devices to make its victims cringe, are not favorable to
the development of the higher, manlier traits, either in an individual
or a community. Ignorant, superstitious, untrustworthy, the Eastern
Christians too often are. Nevertheless, in view of the ceaseless,
wearing ordeal which they have undergone, their steadfastness and the
many other virtues they do possess are all the more memorable and
praiseworthy. Would we, children of the Pilgrim, of the Cavalier, of
the Maryland Catholic and the Pennsylvania Quaker, have endured a like
trial any better? Dare we assert that we should have borne it as well?
In that group of churches the most venerable and the most pathetic
figure of all is the Eastern Orthodox, or, as it is commonly called
in foreign countries, Greek Church. According to a tradition, so
attested as to seem authentic history, the Apostle Andrew preached
Christianity upon the Bosporus within three years of the crucifixion.
Weaving into the Sacred story “the golden woof-thread of romance,”
the Byzantine Christians loved to tell that the Bosporus reminded the
Apostle of his native Galilee, and that the first company which met to
hear him was made up of fishermen like himself. Here he remained two
years and organized a church and consecrated Stachys, the “beloved”
of St. Paul, first Bishop of Byzantium. When Constantine transformed
Byzantium into Nova Roma, and made her, in place of the older Rome,
capital of the world, Metrophanes I, twentieth in Episcopal line from
Stachys, exchanged his humbler title of bishop for the more resounding
appellation of Archbishop of Constantinople, or Ecumenical Patriarch.
The Sees of Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem, though reckoned
Apostolic, seemed to the ordinary eye less exalted than the
ecclesiastical thrones on the Bosporus and the Tiber. Between these
two pre-eminent arose unchurchly rivalries and factional dissensions.
Antagonism of East and West, more than subtle differences of creed,
were to tear them asunder. Alternately separated and reunited, in
1053 the definite, final division came. Then was rent in twain what a
Greek historian calls “the hitherto seamless garment of the undivided
church.” The cleavage line was as old as history and by a meridian of
longitude accentuated the alienation. The Latins and the Teutons were
in one party: the Greeks and almost all the Slavs in the other.
Around the Ecumenical Patriarch were grouped his Oriental brethren of
the three Apostolic Sees. Second only to the Orthodox Byzantine Emperor
in power and prominence, and by his spiritual functions even more
exalted than his sovereign, the Patriarch was the most awe-inspiring
personage in the state.
In 1453 the gradual overthrow of the empire was consummated by the
fall of Constantinople under the resistless attack of Sultan Mohammed
II. The childless, wifeless Constantine XIII was killed while leading
the defense. The Patriarch Athanasios II, a faithful, feeble old man,
disappeared and his after fate is a mystery. The former inhabitants
of the city had either been slain in battle or reduced to slavery, or
were endeavoring to save themselves by flight. The Sultan was not only
a mighty warrior, but a sagacious statesman. He realized the necessity
of reassuring the vanquished and calling back the fugitives and
re-populating the deserted town, if his new capital was to be anything
more than a soldier’s camp. So he endeavored to allay the terrors of
the Greeks and to treat with the only national organization which
remained. The empire had been destroyed, but the church still lived.
He ordered the few surviving bishops to at once choose a new patriarch
with all old-time formalities and without change in the manner of
election. The vacant post was as arduous and dangerous as it was
eminent. Doubtless there was no desire on the part of any of the
prelates to be chosen. The suffrages fell upon the austere monk George,
surnamed the Scholarios. The Sultan wished the same ceremonial of
investiture should be observed as in happier days under the emperors.
When Scholarios was sought for, he could nowhere be found. Up to the
conclusion of the siege he had been a familiar figure, always fiercely
declaiming against the Roman Church and inspiring whoever heard him
with his own unyielding fanaticism. Several months of constant search
passed away, during which the church continued without a visible
head. At last he was discovered on the farm of a wealthy Ottoman at
Adrianople. Taken prisoner at the capture, he had been sold and sent
there as a slave. Released and informed of his nomination, the change
in his condition could have appeared to him only as a change in the
form of his slavery. A tradition asserts that the Scholarios in his
youth had been ambitious of church promotion and had always aspired
to the primacy of the East. Now that it was thrust upon him by a
sanguinary and suspicious conqueror, even his stout heart may well have
shrunk from the obligation.
Proceeding to Constantinople, he was received with kindness and honor
by the Sultan. The Cathedral Church of Sancta Sophia had closed its
more than a thousand years of Christian history and been made a mosque.
The church of the Holy Apostles, the Saint Denis of the capital,
where the emperors from the time of Constantine the Great had found a
mausoleum, was left in the possession of the Christians and had been
selected as their chief sanctuary. There the Scholarios was consecrated
with solemn, imposing, but melancholy pomp as Patriarch Gennadios II.
After his enthronement he was entertained by Mohammed II at a
magnificent banquet. The Sultan bestowed on him a richly jewelled
sabre, promised him his protection and friendship and on his departure
accompanied him to the outer door. Riding on one of the Sultan’s
war-horses, wearing one of the Sultan’s robes, attended by the highest
of the Sultan’s officers, he proceeded in state across the city to take
possession of his ecclesiastical residence. To the few Greeks along the
way, who cast furtive glances at their Patriarch and at his cortège,
every detail of his attire and appearance must have emphasized the fact
that the empire was no longer theirs and that their haughty church like
themselves was fettered and enslaved.
Gennadios bore with him the still preserved berat or written promise
of the sovereign, which guaranteed certain immunities and religious
privileges to the Christians. It was therein declared (1) that no
person should in any wise interfere with the ecclesiastical rule of
the Patriarch and of his successors, (2) that the Patriarch and all
the bishops should be exempt from tribute, (3) that the churches, not
already converted into mosques, should be forever retained by the
Christians in peace and safety, (4) that weddings, baptisms, funerals
and all other Christian rites and ceremonies should be solemnized
freely and without molestation, (5) that the Christians should observe
Easter and all other religious festivals and fasts with perfect freedom
and customary splendor. These promises have been often evaded or
restricted, and sometimes enlarged. Still from that day to the present
they have been as well kept as such promises usually are, when made by
a stronger to a weaker and when the weaker has no means of enforcing
their observance.
The responsibilities and trials of his position were beyond the
physical strength of Gennadios. Sympathetic and warmhearted despite his
asceticism, the daily spectacle of the suffering and misery among his
flock overtaxed his endurance. Utterly worn out, in 1459 he laid down
the patriarchal staff and withdrew to a monastery in Servia, where he
died during the following year.
Since then, in the space of 437 years the throne has been occupied by
just 100 different patriarchs. The average duration of each incumbency
has been a little over four years and has been almost invariably filled
with labor and sorrow. The fate of the Patriarch Kyril Loukaris, whose
name is more familiar in the West than that of almost any other Eastern
prelate, differed little from that of others of his brethren. Slandered
and an object of suspicion to the government, deposed by order of
the Sultan and imprisoned in the fortress of Roumeli Hissar upon the
Bosporus, then bowstrung and his remains cast into the strait, he trod
the same path of ignominy and martyrdom as Parthenios II, Parthenios
III, Païsios II and many another of the illustrious line.
The last to meet a violent death at the hand of the Moslems was the
saintly Gregory III, in 1821. The Greek revolution had burst forth
in Moldavia and the Peloponnesus. The Ottomans rose in a frenzy of
rage and terror, furious for victims. The Patriarch and his clergy
at Constantinople had opposed the insurrection and could in no way
be accused of complicity with the Greek revolutionists. But the
sanguinary Ottoman Government and populace were indifferent as to
considerations of political innocence or guilt, and eager only for
blood. On Easter Sunday the Dragoman or Interpreter of the Porte came
to the patriarchate and ordered the Holy Synod to assemble. Then he
communicated the command of Sultan Mahmud II, that the See should be
considered vacant and that they should at once name a new Patriarch.
Meanwhile the aged Gregory was hung to a beam over the great gate in
front of his residence and his shrinking successor, after induction
into his office, was forced to pass in formal procession close to the
still warm remains. The reverent Greeks now point to a black beam in
the archway and in low, awed tones repeat the story of the tragedy.
It was the idea of Mohammed II that Gennadios should not only represent
his coreligionists, but be responsible for their tranquillity and
submission. After each race riot or disturbance, the Patriarch must
exculpate not only the participants of disorder, but himself. Most
perilous was the honor of induction into the patriarchal office to him
who filled it. Nevertheless the system inaugurated by the conqueror
was of ultimate advantage in almost every respect to the non-Moslem
community.
Under Ottoman domination the centre of the Orthodox Eastern Church
remained at the same strategic centre, where for centuries it had
exercised a potent force. Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, were not
acquired by the Ottoman Empire for more than half a century.
When the patriarchs of those cities, whose Sees had endured every
vicissitude under Saracens, Kurds and Crusaders, became in their later
turn subjects of the Sultan, they found that their patriarchal brother
on the Bosporus was already acknowledged by the Greeks all through the
Turkish dominions as not only their spiritual father, but as, next
to the Sultan, their civil head. The time-honored titles of their
sacerdotal rank still existed. There were no changes in the hierarchy
of the changeless Church. Yet to the eye of the Moslem and practically
to that of the Greek, there was henceforth but one Patriarch.
The official recognition of a non-Moslem authority as in a certain
degree representative of a nation and intermediary with the Sultan, has
exercised vast influence in determining the relations of the native
Christians with the Porte. It was based upon religious grounds, but
speedily extended to and included civil affairs. It was a natural
sequence that the course pursued with the Greeks should be followed
in dealing with other subject peoples. When, after the conquest of
the Crimea, the Armenian residents at the capital increased, Bishop
Horaghim was summoned from Brusa and installed Patriarch of the
Armenians. In time a khakham bashi or Grand Rabbi was thus appointed
for the Jews, a patriarch for the subject Roman Catholics and, no
longer ago than 1850, a vekil or representative for the Protestants.
One result, which Mohammed II never dreamed of and would have
deplored, was inevitable from this system. By it every person not
a Moslem was bound in closer intimacy to the fellow-members of his
own distressed community. Each was brought moreover into a closer
identification of himself and his interests with his church. Through
that church was to be obtained not only salvation in the future life,
but whatever alleviation was possible in the present existence. The
Ottomans have always sought to extirpate the spirit of nationality
or of any common feeling among the conquered. They have welcomed
every influence which would apparently foster divisions and produce
antagonistic factions among those whom they ruled. Thus they judged
they could play party against party, interest against interest, and
render each subservient and pliable to their own control. For a
Mussulman to change his faith was, till within half a century, a crime
punishable with death. But they rejoiced at and favored the labors
of foreign missionaries among such of their subjects as were already
Christians, thinking that thus there would be a multiplication of sects
and a larger number of interests to set against each other.
Through the system inaugurated by the Conqueror, unwittingly in each
community the instinct of solidarity was kept alive and developed. The
intensity of a common sentiment among the proscribed was fanned to a
hotter glow. Only during the last century have the rulers recognized
their possible mistake.
The Constitution, craftily devised by the astute Midhat Pasha and
promulgated in the name of Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid II in 1876, was designed
to accomplish two results, one foreign and one domestic. The former
result was to be attained in blinding the eyes of Europe to the real
internal condition of the empire. The latter result should be the
gradual but entire sweeping away of a policy of internal administration
which was intrenched in its duration of over four hundred years. The
scheme, so shrewdly contrived and so elaborate in its provisions,
utterly failed. Mussulmans and Christians alike contemned it. Only
for a short time did the Sultan himself observe its conditions. It
accomplished nothing beyond the creation of vexatious questions between
the government and the Greeks. The latter perceived that their scanty
privileges were involved. For a time they were almost delirious with
excitement and ready to resist by every means at their command the
abrogation of the system. The diplomatic skill of the Sultan conjured
the difficulty and the annoying issues were forgotten.
A hundred years ago the feeling of nationality--as we understand the
word--was practically non-existent among the non-Moslems except the
Greeks. With them it was always keenly alive, even when destitute of
outward expression. But among the other peoples a stranger would have
concluded that that sentiment, so mastering to-day, was extinct. Even
forty years ago politics seemed restricted, not only by necessity, but
by common consent and preference, to ecclesiastical questions.
In European Turkey and Asia Minor, almost every non-Moslem, if not an
Armenian or a Jew, was an adherent of the Orthodox Greek Church and
hence, whatever his blood and vernacular, was reckoned and denominated
a Greek. Up to the Greek revolution, every communicant of that church,
whether Servian, Wallachian, Moldavian, Bulgarian, Bosnian or Orthodox
Albanian, spoke of himself as such. Further examination would have
revealed that these foster children of the church founded by Saint
Andrew, these worshippers following the Byzantine ritual, recognized
a broad distinction between themselves and the real Greeks. But a
community of administrative and religious interests dwarfed so small
considerations as those of language and race. Each readily accepted the
label which circumstances had placed upon him.
The Hellenes or Romaioi, in whom the traditional pride and ambition
through all their degrading servitude never slumbered, rejoiced in this
state of things which was to their political advantage, and did their
utmost to expand and intensify it. With a lively appreciation of the
past and an ardent anticipation of the future, they looked forward to
the time when the Moslem domination should be swept away, and all the
various tribes south of the Danube be readily absorbed in a resurrected
Byzantine Empire.
It is a natural fact that the self-assertive sense of ignored
nationality was first manifested in an ecclesiastical phase. The
herald, for example, of the rousing of Bulgaria was the universal
demand among that people that the bishops, sent to the region inhabited
by them between the Danube and the Balkans, should be not Hellenes
but Bulgarians. All should receive appointment and consecration as
before from the Ecumenical Patriarch, but it was fitting that they
should be of the same branch of the human family as the flocks to which
they were sent. Every detail of creed and ceremonial was to remain
unchanged. If the course hitherto pursued was followed, each new bishop
on arrival in his diocese was regarded as an unwelcome foreigner. If
the now longed for innovation was made, he would be hailed as one of
their own kith and kin, from whose lips they would listen to their
own tongue. The Patriarch and Holy Synod obstinately resisted the
demand. If granted, it seemed to shatter every hope of an ultimately
to-be-restored Greek dominion. Every argument, which ingenuity could
suggest or which superstition and ignorance might heed, was devised to
quiet the awakened aspiration. In the gospel there was neither Greek
nor Jew; therefore it made no difference from what nationality a bishop
was chosen; therefore it was appropriate that all the bishops should be
Greeks!
In the peculiar medley of Eastern affairs, the final decision was to
be rendered by no Christian organization, but by the Mussulman Sultan.
After months of delay it was announced and it was favorably to the
Bulgarians. Forthwith the Bulgarians were anathematized by the Holy
Synod, not for any error of doctrine or depravity of life, but on
account of ecclesiastical insubordination. Lo, though Orthodox on every
point, holding in all its minutiæ the Orthodox creed, theirs is in the
eyes of the Greeks a Schismatic Church. It is however in full communion
and paternal fellowship with the Orthodox Church of Russia. The
position of the Bulgarian Church is in other respects anomalous. Its
spiritual head or exarch is confirmed by the Sultan and resides not in
Bulgaria, but in Constantinople, where there are almost no Bulgarians,
and near the palace of the Sultan.
Gradually during the century, territories have been lopped off from
the Ottoman Empire and erected into sovereign states. Such are Greece,
Rumania and Servia. Montenegro might be reckoned in the number, save
that the heroic band of mountaineers, which lives in her restricted
limits, never acknowledged subjection. As political independence was
achieved, there was a galling impropriety in the fact that a people,
politically free, should bow to the ecclesiastical control of a
religious organization over which the Sultan was master. So naturally
and without shock have arisen churches autonomous, but revering the
Ecumenical Patriarch as in rank and functions superior to any other
prelate.
As the Ottoman Empire shrinks and outlying provinces drop away or are
absorbed by neighboring states, the direct jurisdiction of the Orthodox
Church of Constantinople is circumscribed in equal degree, but her
indirect influence knows no diminution or change. Her long-bearded,
black-robed clergy are the most imposing priestly body in the world. An
assembly of her bishops transports the stranger to the early Christian
centuries with their hoary titles of Nice and Nicomedia and Chalkedon
and Ephesus. Her formal worship is the most elaborate rendered in
the name of Christianity. The devotion of her sons and daughters
has grown the stronger in their common humiliation and distress.
The active, tumultuous West may reproach her as unprogressive and
inactive and lifeless. But her children glory in her and the Christian
world may glory in her, as the Apostle of the Gentiles gloried in
the Thessalonian Church, for the patience and the faith in all the
persecutions and the tribulations which she endured.
[Illustration:
THE CITY OF BRUSA. Mount Olympus in the background. In the foreground
is an old khan and just behind it the mosque in which are buried the
two first Sultans of the present dynasty, Othman and Orchan. This
mosque is held in special reverence by the Turks.]
[Illustration:
LAND WALLS OF CONSTANTINOPLE. They extend for about four miles from
the Marmora to the Golden Horn, and are now to a considerable degree
in a ruined condition. The gardens in the foreground occupy the
ancient moat.]