CHAPTER VI.

THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIAN NATIONS

IN EUROPE UNDER THE TURKS.

We first hear of the Ottoman Turks at the commencement of the

thirteenth century, when fleeing before the Mongols, to the number of

about 50,000, they came to the help of the Sultan of Iconium, and in

return for their services both against the Mongols and the Greeks, had

assigned to them a district in the north-west of Asia Minor. This was

the nucleus of the future Ottoman empire, which, increasing at first by

the absorption of the petty states into which the Saljūq Turks had

split up, afterwards crossed over into Europe, annexing kingdom after

kingdom, until its victorious growth received a check before the gates

of Vienna in 1683. [446]

From the earliest days of the extension of their kingdom in Asia Minor,

the Ottomans exercised authority over Christian subjects, but it was

not until the ancient capital of the Eastern empire fell into their

hands in 1453 that the relations between the Muslim Government and the

Christian Church were definitely established on a fixed basis. One of

the first steps taken by Muḥammad II, after the capture of

Constantinople and the re-establishment of order in that city, was to

secure the allegiance of the Christians, by proclaiming himself the

protector of the Greek Church. Persecution of the Christians was

strictly forbidden; a decree was granted to the newly elected patriarch

which secured to him and his successors and the bishops under him, the

enjoyment of the old privileges, revenues and exemptions enjoyed under

the former rule. Gennadios, the first patriarch after the Turkish

conquest, received from the hands of the Sultan himself the pastoral

staff, which was the sign of his office, together with a purse of a

thousand golden ducats and a horse with gorgeous trappings, on which he

was privileged to ride with his train through the city. [447] But not

only was the head of the Church treated with all the respect he had

been accustomed to receive from the Christian emperors, but further he

was invested with extensive civil power. The patriarch’s court sat to

decide all cases between Greek and Greek: it could impose fines,

imprison offenders in a prison provided for its own special use, and in

some cases even condemn to capital punishment: while the ministers and

officials of the government were directed to enforce its judgments. The

complete control of spiritual and ecclesiastical matters (in which the

Turkish government, unlike the civil power of the Byzantine empire,

never interfered), was left entirely in his hands and those of the

grand Synod which he could summon whenever he pleased; and hereby he

could decide all matters of faith and dogma without fear of

interference on the part of the state. As a recognised officer of the

imperial government, he could do much for the alleviation of the

oppressed, by bringing the acts of unjust governors to the notice of

the Sultan. The Greek bishops in the provinces in their turn were

treated with great consideration and were entrusted with so much

jurisdiction in civil affairs, that up to modern times they have acted

in their dioceses almost as if they were Ottoman prefects over the

orthodox population, thus taking the place of the old Christian

aristocracy which had been exterminated by the conquerors, and we find

that the higher clergy were generally more active as Turkish agents

than as Greek priests, and they always taught their people that the

Sultan possessed a divine sanction, as the protector of the Orthodox

Church. A charter was subsequently published, securing to the orthodox

the use of such churches as had not been confiscated to form mosques,

and authorising them to celebrate their religious rites publicly

according to their national usages. [448]

Consequently, though the Greeks were numerically superior to the Turks

in all the European provinces of the empire, the religious toleration

thus granted them, and the protection of life and property they

enjoyed, soon reconciled them to the change of masters and led them to

prefer the domination of the Sultan to that of any Christian power.

Indeed, in many parts of the country, the Ottoman conquerors were

welcomed by the Greeks as their deliverers from the rapacious and

tyrannous rule of the Franks and the Venetians who had so long disputed

with Byzantium for the possession of the Peloponnesos and some of the

adjacent parts of Greece; by introducing into Greece the feudal system,

these had reduced the people to the miserable condition of serfs, and

as aliens in speech, race and creed, were hated by their subjects,

[449] to whom a change of rulers, since it could not make their

condition worse, would offer a possible chance of improving it, and

though their deliverers were likewise aliens, yet the infidel Turk was

infinitely to be preferred to the heretical Catholics. [450] The Greeks

who lived under the immediate government of the Byzantine court, were

equally unlikely to be averse to a change of rulers. The degradation

and tyranny that characterised the dynasty of the Palæologi are

frightful to contemplate. “A corrupt aristocracy, a tyrannical and

innumerable clergy, the oppression of perverted law, the exactions of a

despicable government, and still more, its monopolies, its fiscality,

its armies of tax and custom collectors, left the degraded people

neither rights nor institutions, neither chance of amelioration nor

hope of redress.” [451] Lest such a judgment appear dictated by a

spirit of party bias, a contemporary authority may be appealed to in

support of its correctness. The Russian annalists who speak of the fall

of Constantinople bring a similar indictment against its government.

“Without the fear of the law an empire is like a steed without reins.

Constantine and his ancestors allowed their grandees to oppress the

people; there was no more justice in their law courts; no more courage

in their hearts; the judges amassed treasures from the tears and blood

of the innocent; the Greek soldiers were proud only of the magnificence

of their dress; the citizens did not blush at being traitors; the

soldiers were not ashamed to fly. At length the Lord poured out His

thunder on these unworthy rulers, and raised up Muḥammad, whose

warriors delight in battle, and whose judges do not betray their

trust.” [452] This last item of praise [453] may sound strange in the

ears of a generation that has constantly been called upon to protest

against Turkish injustice; but it is clearly and abundantly borne out

by the testimony of contemporary historians. The Byzantine historian

who has handed down to us the story of the capture of Constantinople

tells us how even the impetuous Bāyazīd was liberal and generous to his

Christian subjects, and made himself extremely popular among them by

admitting them freely to his society. [454] Murād II distinguished

himself by his attention to the administration of justice and by his

reforms of the abuses prevalent under the Greek emperors, and punished

without mercy those of his officials who oppressed any of his subjects.

[455] For at least a century after the fall of Constantinople a series

of able rulers secured, by a firm and vigorous administration, peace

and order throughout their dominions, and an admirable civil and

judicial organisation, if it did not provide an absolutely impartial

justice for Muslims and Christians alike, yet caused the Greeks to be

far better off than they had been before. They were harassed by fewer

exactions of forced labour, extraordinary contributions were rarely

levied, and the taxes they paid were a trifling burden compared with

the endless feudal obligations of the Franks and the countless

extortions of the Byzantines. The Turkish dominions were certainly

better governed and more prosperous than most parts of Christian

Europe, and the mass of the Christian population engaged in the

cultivation of the soil enjoyed a larger measure of private liberty and

of the fruits of their labour, under the government of the Sultan than

their contemporaries did under that of many Christian monarchs. [456] A

great impulse, too, was given to the commercial activity of the

country, for the early Sultans were always ready to foster trade and

commerce among their subjects, and many of the great cities entered

upon an era of prosperity when the Turkish conquest had delivered them

from the paralysing fiscal oppression of the Byzantine empire, one of

the first of them being Nicæa, which capitulated to Urkhān in 1330

under the most favourable terms after a long-protracted siege. [457]

Like the ancient Romans, the Ottomans were great makers of roads and

bridges, and thereby facilitated trade throughout their empire; and

foreign states were compelled to admit the Greek merchants into ports

from which they had been excluded in the time of the Byzantine

emperors, but now sailing under the Ottoman flag, they assumed the

dress and manners of Turks, and thus secured from the nations of

Western Europe the respect and consideration which the Catholics had

hitherto always refused to the members of the Greek Church. [458]

There is, however, one notable exception to this general good treatment

and toleration, viz. the tribute of Christian children, who were

forcibly taken from their parents at an early age and enrolled in the

famous corps of Janissaries. Instituted by Urkhān in 1330, it formed

for centuries the mainstay of the despotic power of the Turkish

Sultans, and was kept alive by a regular contribution exacted every

four years, [459] when the officers of the Sultan visited the districts

on which the tax was imposed, and made a selection from among the

children about the age of seven. The Muhammadan legists attempted to

apologise for this inhuman tribute by representing these children as

the fifth of the spoil which the Qurʼān assigns to the sovereign, [460]

and they prescribed that the injunction against forcible conversion

[461] should be observed with regard to them also, although the tender

age at which they were placed under the instruction of Muslim teachers

must have made it practically of none effect. [462] Christian Europe

has always expressed its horror at such a barbarous tax, and travellers

in the Turkish dominions have painted touching pictures of desolated

homes and of parents weeping for the children torn from their arms. But

when the corps was first instituted, its numbers were rapidly swelled

by voluntary accessions from among the Christians themselves, [463] and

the circumstances under which this tribute was first imposed may go far

to explain the apathy which the Greeks themselves appear to have

exhibited. The whole country had been laid waste by war, and families

were often in danger of perishing with hunger; the children who were

thus adopted were in many cases orphans, who would otherwise have been

left to perish; further, the custom so widely prevalent at that time of

selling Christians as slaves may have made this tax appear less

appalling than might have been expected. This custom has, moreover,

been maintained to have been only a continuation of a similar usage

that was in force under the Byzantine emperors. [464] It has even been

said that there was seldom any necessity of an appeal to force on the

part of the officers who collected the appointed number of children,

but rather that the parents were often eager to have their children

enrolled in a service that secured for them in many cases a brilliant

career, and under any circumstances a well-cared-for and comfortable

existence, since these little captives were brought up and educated as

if they were the Sultan’s own children. [465] This institution appears

in a less barbarous light if it be true that the parents could often

redeem their children by a money payment. [466] Metrophanes

Kritopoulos, who was Patriarch of Constantinople and afterwards of

Alexandria, writing in 1625, mentions various devices adopted by the

Christians for escaping from the burden of this tax, e.g. they

purchased Muhammadan boys and represented them to be Christians, or

they bribed the collectors to take Christian boys who were of low birth

or had been badly brought up or such as “deserved hanging.” [467]

Thomas Smith, among others, speaks of the possibility of buying off the

children, so impressed: “Some of their parents, out of natural pity and

out of a true sense of religion, that they may not be thus robbed of

their children, who hereby lie under a necessity of renouncing their

Christianity, compound for them at the rate of fifty or a hundred

dollars, as they are able, or as they can work upon the covetousness of

the Turks more or less.” [468] The Christians of certain cities, such

as Constantinople, and of towns and islands that had made this

stipulation at the time of their submission to the Turks, or had

purchased this privilege, were exempted from the operation of this

cruel tax. [469] These extenuating circumstances at the outset, and the

ease with which men acquiesce in any established usage—though serving

in no way as an excuse for so inhuman an institution—may help us to

understand what a traveller in the seventeenth century calls the

“unaccountable indifference” [470] with which the Greeks seem to have

fallen in with this demand of the new government, which so materially

improved their condition.

Further, the Christian subjects of the Turkish empire had to pay the

capitation-tax, in return for protection and in lieu of military

service. The rates fixed by the Ottoman law were 2½, 5 and 10 piastres

a head for every full-grown male, according to his income, [471] women

and the clergy being exempt. [472] In the nineteenth century the rates

were 15, 30 and 60 piastres, according to income. [473] Christian

writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries generally speak of

this tax as being a ducat a head, [474] but it is also variously

described as amounting to 3, 5 or 5⅞ crowns or dollars. [475] The

fluctuating exchange value of the Turkish coinage in the seventeenth

century is the probable explanation of the latter variations. To

estimate with any exactitude how far this tax was a burden to those who

had to pay it, would require a lengthened disquisition on the

purchasing value of money at that period and a comparison with other

items of expenditure. [476] But by itself it could hardly have formed a

valid excuse for a change of faith, as Tournefort points out, when

writing in 1700 of the conversion of the Candiots: “It must be

confessed, these Wretches sell their Souls a Pennyworth: all they get

in exchange for their Religion, is a Vest, and the Privilege of being

exempt from the Capitation-Tax, which is not above five Crowns a year.”

[477] Scheffler also, who is anxious to represent the condition of the

Christians under Turkish rule in as black colours as possible, admits

that the one ducat a head was a trifling matter, and has to lay stress

on the extraordinary taxes, war contributions, etc., that they were

called upon to pay. [478] The land taxes were the same both for

Christians and Musalmans, [479] for the old distinction between lands

on which tithe was paid by the Muhammadan proprietor, and those on

which kharāj was paid by the non-Muhammadan proprietor, was not

recognised by the Ottomans. [480] Whatever sufferings the Christians

had to endure proceeded from the tyranny of individuals, who took

advantage of their official position to extort money from those under

their jurisdiction. Such acts of oppression were not only contrary to

the Muhammadan law, but were rare before the central government had

grown weak and suffered the corruption and injustice of local

authorities to go unpunished. [481] There is a very marked difference

between the accounts we have of the condition of the Christians during

the first two centuries of the Turkish rule in Europe and those of a

later date, when the period of decadence had fully set in. But it is

noticeable that in those very times in which the condition of the

Christians had been most intolerable there is least record of

conversion to Islam. In the eighteenth century, when the condition of

the Christians was worse than at any other period, we find hardly any

mention of conversions at all, and the Turks themselves are represented

as utterly indifferent to the progress of their religion and

considerably infected with scepticism and unbelief. [482] A further

proof that their sufferings have been due to misgovernment rather than

to religious persecution is the fact that Muslims and Christians

suffered alike. [483] The Christians would, however, naturally be more

exposed to extortion and ill-treatment owing to the difficulties that

lay in the way of obtaining redress at law, and some of the poorest may

thus have sought a relief from their sufferings in a change of faith.

But if we except the tribute of the children, to which the conquered

Greeks seem to have submitted with so little show of resistance, and

which owed its abolition, not to any revolt or insurrection against its

continuance, but to the increase of the Turkish population and of the

number of the renegades who were constantly entering the Sultan’s

service, [484]—the treatment of their Christian subjects by the Ottoman

emperors—at least for two centuries after their conquest of

Greece—exhibits a toleration such as was at that time quite unknown in

the rest of Europe. The Calvinists of Hungary and Transylvania, and the

Unitarians of the latter country, long preferred to submit to the Turks

rather than fall into the hands of the fanatical house of Hapsburg;

[485] and the Protestants of Silesia looked with longing eyes towards

Turkey, and would gladly have purchased religious freedom at the price

of submission to the Muslim rule. [486] It was to Turkey that the

persecuted Spanish Jews fled for refuge in enormous numbers at the end

of the fifteenth century, [487] and the Cossacks who belonged to the

sect of the Old Believers and were persecuted by the Russian State

Church, found in the dominions of the Sultan the toleration which their

Christian brethren denied them. [488] Well might Macarius, Patriarch of

Antioch in the seventeenth century, congratulate himself when he saw

the fearful atrocities that the Catholic Poles inflicted on the

Russians of the Orthodox Eastern Church: “We all wept much over the

thousands of martyrs who were killed by those impious wretches, the

enemies of the faith, in these forty or fifty years. The number

probably amounted to seventy or eighty thousand souls. O you infidels!

O you monsters of impurity! O you hearts of stone! What had the nuns

and women done? What the girls and boys and infant children, that you

should murder them?... And why do I pronounce them (the Poles)

accursed? Because they have shown themselves more debased and wicked

than the corrupt worshippers of idols, by their cruel treatment of

Christians, thinking to abolish the very name of Orthodox. God

perpetuate the empire of the Turks for ever and ever! For they take

their impost, and enter into no account of religion, be their subjects

Christians or Nazarenes, Jews or Samarians: whereas these accursed

Poles were not content with taxes and tithes from the brethren of

Christ, though willing to serve them; but they subjected them to the

authority of the enemies of Christ, the tyrannical Jews, who did not

even permit them to build churches, nor leave them any priests that

knew the mysteries of their faith.” [489] Even in Italy there were men

who turned longing eyes towards the Turks in the hope that as their

subjects they might enjoy the freedom and the toleration they despaired

of enjoying under a Christian government. [490] It would seem, then,

that Islam was not spread by force in the dominion of the Sultan of

Turkey, and though the want of even-handed justice and the oppression

of unscrupulous officials in the days of the empire’s decline, may have

driven some Christians to attempt to better their condition by a change

of faith, such cases were rare in the first two centuries of the

Turkish rule in Europe, to which period the mass of conversions belong.

It would have been wonderful indeed if the ardour of proselytising that

animated the Ottomans at this time had never carried them beyond the

bounds of toleration established by their own laws. Yet it has been

said by one who was a captive among them for twenty-two years that the

Turks “compelled no one to renounce his faith.” [491] Similar testimony

is borne by others: an English gentleman who visited Turkey in the

early part of the seventeenth century, tells us that “There is seldom

any compulsion of conscience, and then not by death, where no criminal

offence gives occasion.” [492] Writing about thirty years later (in

1663), the author [493] of a Türcken-Schrifft says: “Meanwhile he (i.e.

the Turk) wins (converts) by craft more than by force, and snatches

away Christ by fraud out of the hearts of men. For the Turk, it is

true, at the present time compels no country by violence to apostatise;

but he uses other means whereby imperceptibly he roots out

Christianity.... What then has become of the Christians? They are not

expelled from the country, neither are they forced to embrace the

Turkish faith: then they must of themselves have been converted into

Turks.”

The Turks considered that the greatest kindness they could show a man

was to bring him into the salvation of the faith of Islam, [494] and to

this end they left no method of persuasion untried: a Dutch traveller

of the sixteenth century, tells us that while he was admiring the great

mosque of Santa Sophia, some Turks even tried to work upon his

religious feelings through his æsthetic sense, saying to him, “If you

become a Musalman, you will be able to come here every day of your

life.” About a century later, an English traveller [495] had a similar

experience: “Sometimes, out of an excess of zeal, they will ask a

Christian civilly enough, as I have been asked myself in the Portico of

Sancta Sophia, why will you not turn Musalman, and be as one of us?”

The public rejoicings that hailed the accession of a new convert to the

faith, testify to the ardent love for souls which made these men such

zealous proselytisers. The new Muslim was set upon a horse and led in

triumph through the streets of the city. If he was known to be

genuinely honest in his change of faith and had voluntarily entered the

pale of Islam, or if he was a person of good position, he was received

with high honour and some provision made for his support. [496] There

was certainly abundant evidence for saying that “The Turks are

preposterously zealous in praying for the conversion, or perversion

rather, of Christians to their irreligious religion: they pray

heartily, and every day in their Temples, that Christians may imbrace

the Alcoran, and become their Proselytes, in effecting of which they

leave no means unassaied by fear and flattery, by punishments and

rewards.” [497]

These zealous efforts for winning converts were rendered the more

effective by certain conditions of Christian society itself. Foremost

among these was the degraded condition of the Greek Church. Side by

side with the civil despotism of the Byzantine empire, had arisen an

ecclesiastical despotism which had crushed all energy of intellectual

life under the weight of a dogmatism that interdicted all discussion in

matters of morals and religion. The only thing that disturbed this

lethargy was the fierce controversial war waged against the Latin

Church with all the bitterness of theological polemics and race hatred.

The religion of the people had degenerated into a scrupulous observance

of outward forms, and the intense fervour of their devotion found an

outlet in the worship of the Virgin and the saints, of pictures and

relics. There were many who turned from a Church whose spiritual life

had sunk so low, and weary of interminable discussions on such subtle

points of doctrine as the Double Procession of the Holy Spirit, and

such trivialities as the use of leavened and unleavened bread in the

Blessed Sacrament, gladly accepted the clear and intelligible theistic

teaching of Islam. We are told [498] of large numbers of persons being

converted, not only from among the simple folk, but also learned men of

every class, rank and condition; of how the Turks made a better

provision for those monks and priests who embraced the Muslim creed, in

order that their example might lead others to be converted. While

Adrianople was still the Turkish capital (e.g. before 1453) the court

was thronged with renegades, and they are said to have formed the

majority of the magnates there. [499] Byzantine princes and others

often passed over to the side of the Muhammadans, and received a ready

welcome among them: one of the earliest of such cases dates from 1140

when a nephew of the emperor John Comnenes embraced Islam and married a

daughter of Masʻūd, the Sultan of Iconium. [500] After the fall of

Constantinople, the upper classes of Christian society showed much more

readiness to embrace Islam than the mass of the Greeks; among the

converts we meet with several bearing the name of the late imperial

family of the Palæologi, and the learned George Amiroutzes of Trebizond

abandoned Christianity in his declining years, and the names of many

other such individuals have found a record. [501] The new religion only

demanded assent to its simple creed, “There is no god but God: Muḥammad

is the apostle of God”; as the above-mentioned writer [502] says, “The

whole difficulty lies in this profession of faith. For if only a man

can persuade himself that he is a worshipper of the One God, the poison

of his error easily infects him under the guise of religion. This is

the rock of offence on which many have struck and fallen into the snare

that has brought perdition on their souls. This is the mill-stone that

hung about the necks of many has plunged them into the pit of despair.

For when these fools hear the Turks execrate idolatry and express their

horror of every image and picture as though it were the fire of hell,

and so continually profess and preach the worship of One God, there no

longer remains any room for suspicion in their minds.”

The faith of Islam would now be the natural refuge for those members of

the Eastern Church who felt such yearnings after a purer and simpler

form of doctrine as had given rise to the Paulician heresy so fiercely

suppressed a few centuries before. This movement had been very largely

a protest against the superstitions of the Orthodox Church, against the

worship of images, relics and saints, and an effort after simplicity of

faith and the devout life. As some adherents of this heresy were to be

found in Bulgaria even so late as the seventeenth century, [503] the

Muhammadan conquerors doubtless found many who were dissatisfied with

the doctrine and practice of the Greek Church; and as all the

conditions were unfavourable to the formation of any such Protestant

Churches as arose in the West, such dissentient spirits would doubtless

find a more congenial atmosphere in the religion of Islam. There is

every reason to think that such was the result of the unsuccessful

attempt to Protestantise the Greek Church in the beginning of the

seventeenth century. The guiding spirit of this movement was Cyril

Lucaris, five times Patriarch of Constantinople, from 1621 to 1638; as

a young man he had visited the Universities of Wittenberg and Geneva,

for the purpose of studying theology in the seats of Protestant

learning, and on his return he kept up a correspondence with doctors of

the reformed faith in Geneva, Holland and England. But neither the

doctrines of the Church of England nor of the Lutherans attracted his

sympathies so warmly as the teachings of John Calvin, [504] which he

strove to introduce into the Greek Church; his efforts in this

direction were warmly supported by the Calvinists of Geneva, who sent a

learned young theologian, named Leger, to assist the work by

translating into Greek the writings of Calvinist theologians. [505]

Cyril also found warm friends in the Protestant embassies at

Constantinople, the Dutch and English ambassadors especially assisting

him liberally with funds; the Jesuits, on the other hand, supported by

the Catholic ambassadors, tried in every way to thwart this attempt to

Calvinise the Greek Church, and actively seconded the intrigues of the

party of opposition among the Greek clergy, who finally compassed the

death of the Patriarch. In 1629 Cyril published a Confession of Faith,

the main object of which seems to have been to present the doctrines of

the Orthodox Church in their opposition to Roman Catholicism in such a

way as to imply a necessary accord with Protestant teaching. [506] From

Calvin he borrows the doctrines of Predestination and salvation by

faith alone, he denies the infallibility of the Church, rejects the

authority of the Church in the interpretation of Holy Scripture, and

condemns the adoration of pictures: in his account of the will and in

many other questions, he inclines rather to Calvinism than to the

teachings of the Orthodox Church. [507] The promulgation of this

Confession of Faith as representing the teaching of the whole Church of

which he was the spiritual head, excited violent opposition among the

mass of the Greek clergy, and a few weeks after Cyril’s death a synod

was held to condemn his opinions and pronounce him to be Anathema; in

1642 a second synod was held at Constantinople for the same purpose,

which after refuting each article of Cyril’s Confession in detail, as

the first had done, thus fulminated its curse upon him and his

followers:—“With one consent and in unqualified terms, we condemn this

whole Confession as full of heresies and utterly opposed to our

orthodoxy, and likewise declare that its compiler has nothing in common

with our faith, but in calumnious fashion has falsely charged his own

Calvinism on us. All those who read and keep it as true and blameless,

and defend it by written word or speech, we thrust out of the community

of the faithful as followers and partakers of his heresy and corruptors

of the Christian Church, and command that whatever be their rank and

station, they be treated as heathen and publicans. Let them be laid

under an anathema for ever and cut off from the Father, the Son and the

Holy Ghost in this life and in the life to come, accursed,

excommunicated, be lost after death, and be partakers of everlasting

punishment.” [508] In 1672 a third synod met at Jerusalem to repudiate

the heretical articles of this Confession of Faith and vindicate the

orthodoxy of the Greek Church against those who represented her as

infected with Calvinism. The attempt to Protestantise the Greek Church

thus completely failed to achieve success: the doctrines of Calvin were

diametrically opposed to her teachings, and indeed inculcated many

articles of faith that were more in harmony with the tenets of Muslim

theologians than with those of the Orthodox Church, and which moreover

she had often attacked in her controversies with her Muhammadan

adversaries. It is this approximation to Islamic thought which gives

this movement towards Calvinism a place in a history of the spread of

Islam: a man who inveighed against the adoration of pictures, decried

the authority and the very institution of the priesthood, maintained

the doctrines of absolute Predestination, denied freedom to the human

will and was in sympathy with the stern spirit of Calvinism that had

more in common with the Old than the New Testament—would certainly find

a more congenial atmosphere in Islam than in the Greek Church of the

seventeenth century, and there can be little doubt that among the

numerous converts of Islam during that century were to be found men who

had been alienated from the Church of their fathers through their

leanings towards Calvinism. [509] We have no definite information as to

the number of the followers of Cyril Lucaris and the extent of

Calvinistic influences in the Greek Church; the clergy, jealous of the

reputation of their Church, whose orthodoxy and immunity from heresy

were so boastfully vindicated by her children, and had thus been

impugned through the suspicion of Calvinism, wished to represent the

heretical patriarch as standing alone in his opinions. [510] But a

following he undoubtedly had: his Confession of Faith had received the

sanction of a synod composed of his followers; [511] those who

sympathised with his heresies were anathematised both by the second

synod of Constantinople (1642) and by the synod of Jerusalem (1672)

[512]—surely a meaningless repetition, had no such persons existed;

moreover the names of some few of these have come down to us:

Sophronius, Metropolitan of Athens, was a warm supporter of the

Reformation; [513] a monk named Nicodemus Metaras, who had brought a

printing-press from London and issued heretical treatises therefrom,

was rewarded with a metropolitan see by Cyril in return for his

services; [514] the philosopher Corydaleus, a friend of Cyril, opened a

Calvinistic school in Constantinople, and another Greek, Gerganos,

published a Catechism so as to introduce the teachings of Calvin among

his fellow-countrymen; [515] and Neophytus II, who was made Patriarch

in 1636, while Cyril was in exile in the island of Rhodes, was his

disciple and adopted son; he recalled his master from banishment and

resigned the patriarchal chair in his favour. [516] In a letter to the

University of Geneva (dated July, 1636), Cyril writes that Leger had

gained a large number of converts to Calvinism by his writings and

preaching; [517] in another letter addressed to Leger, he describes how

he had made his influence felt in Candia. [518] His successor [519] in

the patriarchal chair was banished to Carthage and there strangled by

the adherents of Lucaris in 1639. [520] The Calvinists are said to have

entertained hopes of Parthenius I (the successor of Cyril II), but his

untimely end (whether by poison or banishment is uncertain)

disappointed their expectations. [521] Parthenius II, who was Patriarch

of Constantinople from 1644 to 1646, was at heart a thorough Calvinist,

and though he did not venture openly to teach the doctrines of Calvin,

still his known sympathy with them caused him to be deposed, sent into

exile and strangled. [522] Thus the influence of Calvinism was

undoubtedly more widespread than the enemies of Cyril Lucaris were

willing to admit, and as stated above, those who refused to bow to the

anathemas of the synods that condemned their leader, had certainly more

in common with their Muhammadan neighbours than with the Orthodox

clergy who cast them out of their midst. There is no actual evidence,

it is true, of Calvinistic influences in Turkey facilitating conversion

to Islam, [523] but in the absence of any other explanation it

certainly seems a very plausible conjecture that such were among the

factors that so enormously increased the number of the Greek renegades

towards the middle of the seventeenth century—a period during which the

number of renegades from among the middle and lower orders of society

is said to have been more considerable than at any other time. [524]

Frequent mention is made of cases of apostasy from among the clergy,

and even among the highest dignitaries of the Church, such as a former

Metropolitan of Rhodes. [525] In 1676 it is said that in Corinth some

Christian people went over every day to “the Turkish abomination,” and

that three priests had become Musalmans the year before; [526] in 1679

is recorded the death of a renegade monk. [527] On the occasion of the

circumcision of Muṣṭafā, son of Muḥammad IV, in 1675, there were at

least two hundred proselytes made during the thirteen days of public

rejoicing, [528] and numerous other instances may be found in writings

of this period. A contemporary writer (1663) has well described the

mental attitude of such converts. “When you mix with the Turks in the

ordinary intercourse of life and see that they pray and sing even the

Psalms of David; that they give alms and do other good works; that they

think highly of Christ, hold the Bible in great honour, and the like;

that, besides, any ass may become parish priest who plies the Bassa

with presents, and he will not urge Christianity on you very much; so

you will come to think that they are good people and will very probably

be saved; and so you will come to believe that you too may be saved, if

you likewise become Turks. Herewith will the Holy Trinity and the

crucified Son of God, with many other mysteries of the faith, which

seem quite absurd to the unenlightened reason, easily pass out of your

thoughts, and imperceptibly Christianity will quite die out in you, and

you will think that it is all the same whether you be Christians or

Turks.” [529]

Thomas Smith, who was in Constantinople in 1669, speaks of the number

of Christian converts about this period, but assigns baser motives.

“’Tis sad to consider the great number of wretched people, who turn

Turks; some out of meer desperation; being not able to support the

burthen of slavery, and to avoid the revilings and insultings of the

Infidels; some out of a wanton light humour, to put themselves into a

condition of domineering and insulting over others ... some to avoid

the penalties and inflictions due to their heinous crimes, and to enjoy

the brutish liberties, that Mahomet consecrated by his own example, and

recommended to his followers. These are the great and tempting

arguments and motives of their apostasy, meer considerations of ease,

pleasure and prosperity, or else of vanity and guilt; for it cannot be

presumed, that any through conviction of mind should be wrought upon to

embrace the dotages and impostures of Turcisme.” [530] Records of

conversions after this period are rare, but Motraye gives an account of

several renegades, who became Muhammadans in Constantinople in 1703;

among them was a French priest and some other French Catholics, and

some priests from Smyrna. [531]

Another feature in the condition of the Greek Church that contributed

to the decay of its numbers, was the corruption and degradation of its

pastors, particularly the higher clergy. The sees of bishops and

archbishops were put up to auction to the highest bidders, and the

purchasers sought to recoup themselves by exacting levies of all kinds

from their flocks; they burdened the unfortunate Christians with taxes

ordinary and extraordinary, made them purchase all the sacraments at

exorbitant rates, baptism, confession, holy communion, indulgences, and

the right of Christian burial. Some of the clergy even formed an unholy

alliance with the Janissaries, and several bishops had their names and

those of their households inscribed on the list of one of their Ortas

or regiments, the better to secure an immunity for their excesses and

escape the punishment of their crimes under the protection of this

corporation which the weakness of the Ottoman rulers had allowed to

assume such a powerful position in the state. [532] The evidence of

contemporary eye-witnesses to the oppressive behaviour of the Greek

clergy presents a terrible picture of the sufferings of the Christians.

Tournefort in 1700, after describing the election of a new Patriarch,

says: “We need not at all doubt but the new Patriarch makes the best of

his time. Tyranny succeeds to Simony: the first thing he does is to

signify the Sultan’s order to all the Archbishops and Bishops of his

clergy: his greatest study is to know exactly the revenues of each

Prelate; he imposes a tax upon them, and enjoins them very strictly by

a second letter to send the sum demanded, otherwise their dioceses are

adjudg’d to the highest bidder. The Prelates being used to this trade,

never spare their Suffragans; these latter torment the Papas: the Papas

flea the Parishioners and hardly sprinkle the least drop of Holy Water,

but what they are paid for beforehand. If afterwards the Patriarch has

occasion for money, he farms out the gathering of it to the highest

bidder among the Turks: he that gives most for it, goes into Greece to

cite the Prelates. Usually for twenty thousand crowns that the clergy

is tax’d at, the Turk extorts two and twenty; so that he has the two

thousand crowns for his pains, besides having his charges borne in

every diocese. In virtue of the agreement he has made with the

Patriarch, he deprives and interdicts from all ecclesiastical

functions, those prelates who refuse to pay their tax.” [533] The

Christian clergy are even said to have carried off the children of the

parishioners and sold them as slaves, to get money for their simoniacal

designs. [534]

The extortions practised in the seventeenth have found their

counterpart in the nineteenth century, and the sufferings of the

Christians of the Greek Church in Bosnia, before the Austrian

occupation, exactly illustrate the words of Tournefort. The

Metropolitan of Serajevo used to wring as much as £10,000 a year from

his miserable flock—a sum exactly double the salary of the Turkish

Governor himself—and to raise this enormous sum the unfortunate

parishioners were squeezed in every possible way, and the Turkish

authorities had orders to assist the clergy in levying their exactions;

and whole Christian villages suffered the fate of sacked cities, for

refusing, or often being unable, to comply with the exorbitant demands

of Christian Prelates. [535] Such unbearable oppression on the part of

the spiritual leaders who should protect the Christian population, has

often stirred it up to open revolt, whenever a favourable opportunity

has offered itself. [536] It is not surprising then to learn that many

of the Christians went over to Islam, to deliver themselves from such

tyranny. [537]

Ecclesiastical oppression of a rather different character is said to

have been responsible for the conversion of the ancestors of a small

community of about 4000 Southern Rumanians, at Noanta in the Meglen

district of the vilayet of Salonika; they have a tradition that in the

eighteenth century the Patriarch of Constantinople persuaded the

reigning Sultan that only the Christians who spoke Greek could be loyal

subjects of the Turkish empire; the Sultan thereupon forbade the

Christians to speak anything but Greek, on pain of having their tongues

cut out; when the news of this reached Noanta, a part of the population

fled into the woods and founded fresh villages, but those who were left

behind went over to Islam, with their bishop at their head, in order

thereby to retain their mother-tongue. [538]

Though the mass of the parish clergy were innocent of the charges

brought against their superiors, [539] still they were very ignorant

and illiterate. At the end of the seventeenth century, there were said

to be hardly twelve persons in the whole Turkish dominions thoroughly

skilled in the knowledge of the ancient Greek language; it was

considered a great merit in the clergy to be able to read, while they

were quite ignorant of the meaning of the words of their service-books.

[540]

While there was so much in the Christian society of the time to repel,

there was much in the character and life of the Turks to attract, and

the superiority of the early Ottomans as compared with the degradation

of the guides and teachers of the Christian Church would naturally

impress devout minds that revolted from the selfish ambition, simony

and corruption of the Greek ecclesiastics. Christian writers constantly

praise these Turks for the earnestness and intensity of their religious

life; their zeal in the performance of the observances prescribed by

their faith; the outward decency and modesty displayed in their apparel

and mode of living; the absence of ostentatious display and the

simplicity of life observable even in the great and powerful. [541] The

annalist of the embassy from the Emperor Leopold I to the Ottoman Porte

in 1665–1666, especially eulogises the devoutness and regularity of the

Turks in prayer, and he even goes so far as to say, “Nous devons dire à

la confusion des Chrêtiens, que les Turcs têmoignent beaucoup plus de

soin et de zèle à l’exercice de leur Religion: que les Chrêtiens n’en

font paroître à la pratique de la leur.... Mais ce qui passe tout ce

que nous experimentons de dévot entre les Chrêtiens: c’est que pendant

le tems de la prière, vous ne voyez pas une personne distraite de ses

yeux: vous n’en voyez pas une qui ne soit attachée à l’objet de sa

prière: et pas une qui n’ait toute la révérence extérieure pour son

Créateur, qu’on peut exiger de la Créature.” [542]

Even the behaviour of the soldiery receives its meed of praise. During

the march of an army the inhabitants of the country, we are told by the

secretary to the Embassy sent by Charles II to the Sultan, had no

complaints to make of being plundered or of their women being

maltreated. All the taverns along the line of march were shut up and

sealed two or three days before the arrival of the army, and no wine

was allowed to be sold to the soldiers under pain of death. [543]

Many a tribute of praise is given to the virtues of the Turks even by

Christian writers who bore them no love; one such who had a very poor

opinion of their religion, [544] speaks of them as follows:—“Even in

the dirt of the Alcoran you shall find some jewels of Christian

Virtues; and indeed if Christians will but diligently read and observe

the Laws and Histories of the Mahometans, they may blush to see how

zealous they are in the works of devotion, piety, and charity, how

devout, cleanly, and reverend in their Mosques, how obedient to their

Priest, that even the great Turk himself will attempt nothing without

consulting his Mufti; how careful are they to observe their hours of

prayer five times a day wherever they are, or however employed? how

constantly do they observe their Fasts from morning till night a whole

month together; how loving and charitable the Muslemans are to each

other, and how careful of strangers may be seen by their Hospitals,

both for the Poor and for Travellers; if we observe their Justice,

Temperance, and other moral Vertues, we may truly blush at our own

coldness, both in devotion and charity, at our injustice, intemperance,

and oppression; doubtless these Men will rise up in judgment against

us; and surely their devotion, piety, and works of mercy are main

causes of the growth of Mahometism.”

The same conclusion is drawn by a modern historian, [545] who

writes:—“We find that many Greeks of high talent and moral character

were so sensible of the superiority of the Mohammedans, that even when

they escaped being drafted into the Sultan’s household as

tribute-children, they voluntarily embraced the faith of Mahomet. The

moral superiority of Othoman society must be allowed to have had as

much weight in causing these conversions, which were numerous in the

fifteenth century, as the personal ambition of individuals.”

A generation that has watched the decay of the Turkish power in Europe

and the successive curtailment of its territorial possessions, and is

accustomed to hearing it spoken of as the “sick man,” destined to a

speedy dissolution, must find it difficult to realise the feelings

which the Ottoman empire inspired in the early days of its rise in

Europe. The rapid and widespread success of the Turkish arms filled

men’s minds with terror and amazement. One Christian kingdom after

another fell into their hands: Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, and Hungary

yielded up their independence as Christian states. The proud Republic

of Venice saw one possession after another wrested from it, until the

Lion of St. Mark held sway on the shores of the Adriatic alone. Even

the safety of the Eternal City itself was menaced by the capture of

Otranto. Christian literature of the latter half of the fifteenth and

of the sixteenth centuries is full of direful forebodings of the fate

that threatened Christian Europe unless the victorious progress of the

Turk was arrested; he is represented as a scourge in the hand of God

for the punishment of the sins and backslidings of His people, [546] or

on the other hand as the unloosed power of the Devil working for the

destruction of Christianity under the hypocritical guise of religion.

But—what is most important to notice here—some men began to ask

themselves, “Is it possible that God would allow the Muhammadans to

increase in such countless numbers without good reason? Is it

conceivable that so many thousands are to be damned like one man? How

can such multitudes be opposed to the true faith? since truth is

stronger than error and is more loved and desired by all men, it is not

possible for so many men to be fighting against it. How could they

prevail against truth, since God always helps and upholds the truth?

How could their religion so marvellously increase, if built upon the

rotten foundation of error?” [547] Such thoughts, we are told, appealed

strongly to the Christian peoples that lived under the Turkish rule,

and with especial force to the unhappy Christian captives who watched

the years drag wearily on without hope of release or respite from their

misery. Can we be surprised when we find such a one asking himself?

“Surely if God were pleased with the faith to which you have clung, He

would not have thus abandoned you, but would have helped you to gain

your freedom and return to it again. But as He has closed every avenue

of freedom to you, perchance it is His pleasure that you should leave

it and join this sect and be saved therein.” [548]

The Christian slave who thus describes the doubts that arose in his

mind as the slow-passing years brought no relief, doubtless gives

expression here to thoughts that suggested themselves to many a hapless

Christian captive with overwhelming persistency, until at last he broke

away from the ties of his old faith and embraced Islam. Many who would

have been ready to die as martyrs for the Christian religion if the

mythical choice between the Qurʼān and the sword had been offered them,

felt more and more strongly, after long years of captivity, the

influence of Muhammadan thought and practice, and humanity won converts

where violence would have failed. [549] For though the lot of many of

the Christian captives was a very pitiable one, others who held

positions in the households of private individuals, were often no worse

off than domestic servants in the rest of Europe. As organised by the

Muhammadan Law, slavery was robbed of many of its harshest features,

nor in Turkey at least does it seem to have been accompanied by such

barbarities and atrocities as in the pirate states of Northern Africa.

The slaves, like other citizens, had their rights, and it is even said

that a slave might summon his master before the Qāḍī for ill usage, and

that if he alleged that their tempers were so opposite, that it was

impossible for them to agree, the Qāḍī could oblige his master to sell

him. [550] The condition of the Christian captives naturally varied

with circumstances and their own capabilities of adapting themselves to

a life of hardship; the aged, the priests and monks, and those of noble

birth suffered most, while the physician and the handicraftsman

received more considerate treatment from their masters, as being

servants that best repaid the money spent upon them. [551] The

galley-slaves naturally suffered most of all, indeed the kindest

treatment could have but little relieved the hardships incident to such

an occupation. [552] Further, the lot of the slaves who were state

property was more pitiable than that of those who had been purchased by

private individuals. [553] As a rule they were allowed the free

exercise of their religion; in the state-prisons at Constantinople,

they had their own priests and chapels, and the clergy were allowed to

administer the consolations of religion to the galley-slaves. [554] The

number of the Christian slaves who embraced Islam was enormous; some

few cases have been recorded of their being threatened and ill-treated

for the very purpose of inducing them to recant, but as a rule the

masters seldom forced them to renounce their faith, [555] and put the

greatest pressure upon them during the first years of their captivity,

after which they let them alone to follow their own faith. [556] The

majority of the converted slaves therefore changed their religion of

their own free choice; and when the Christian embassies were never sure

from day to day that some of their fellow-countrymen that had

accompanied them to Constantinople as domestic servants, might not turn

Turk, [557] it can easily be understood that slaves who had lost all

hope of return to their native country, and found little in their

surroundings to strengthen and continue the teachings of their earlier

years, would yield to the influences that beset them and would feel few

restraints to hinder them from entering a new society and a new

religion. An English traveller [558] of the seventeenth century has

said of them: “Few ever return to their native country; and fewer have

the courage and constancy of retaining the Christian Faith, in which

they were educated; their education being but mean, and their knowledge

but slight in the principles and grounds of it; whereof some are

frightened into Turcism by their impatience and too deep resentments of

the hardships of the servitude; others are enticed by the blandishments

and flatteries of pleasure the Mahometan Law allows, and the

allurements they have of making their condition better and more easy by

a change of their Religion; having no hope left of being redeemed, they

renounce their Saviour and their Christianity, and soon forget their

original country, and are no longer looked upon as strangers, but pass

for natives.”

Much of course depended upon the individual character of the different

Christian slaves themselves. The anonymous writer, so often quoted

above, whose long captivity made him so competent to speak on their

condition, divides them into three classes:—first, those who passed

their days in all simplicity, not caring to trouble themselves to learn

anything about the religion of their masters; for them it was enough to

know that the Turks were infidels, and so, as far as their captive

condition and their yoke of slavery allowed, they avoided having

anything to do with them and their religious worship, fearing lest they

should be led astray by their errors, and striving to observe the

Christian faith as far as their knowledge and power went. The second

class consisted of those whose curiosity led them to study and

investigate the doings of the Turks: if, by the help of God, they had

time enough to dive into their secrets, and understanding enough for

the investigation of them and light of reason to find the

interpretation thereof, they not only came out of the trial unscathed,

but had their own faith strengthened. The third class includes those

who, examining the Muslim religion without due caution, fail to dive

into its depths and find the interpretation of it and so are deceived;

believing the errors of the Turks to be the truth, they lose their own

faith and embrace the false religion of the Muslims, hereby not only

compassing their own destruction, but setting a bad example to others:

of such men the number is infinite. [559]

Conversion to Islam did not, as some writers have affirmed, release the

slave from his captivity and make him a free man, [560] for

emancipation was solely at the discretion of the master; who indeed

often promised to set any slave free, without the payment of ransom, if

only he would embrace Islam; [561] but, on the other hand, would also

freely emancipate the Christian slave, even though he had persevered in

his religion, provided he had proved himself a faithful servant, and

would make provision for his old age. [562]

There were many others who, like the Christian slaves, separated from

early surroundings and associations, found themselves cut loose from

old ties and thrown into the midst of a society animated by social and

religious ideals of an entirely novel character. The crowds of

Christian workmen that came wandering from the conquered countries in

the fifteenth century to Adrianople and other Turkish cities in search

of employment, were easily persuaded to settle there and adopt the

faith of Islam. [563] Similarly the Christian families that Muḥammad II

transported from conquered provinces in Europe into Asia Minor, [564]

may well have become merged into the mass of the Muslim population by

almost imperceptible degrees, as was the case with the Armenians

carried away into Persia by Shāh ʻAbbās I (1587–1629), most of whom

appear to have passed over to Islam in the second generation. [565]

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there would seem to have

been a decay of the missionary spirit among the Turks, but the latter

years of the reign of Sultan ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd witnessed a renewed interest

in Muslim propaganda, and Turkish newspapers began to record instances

of conversion. Among the most noteworthy of such converts were some

eighteen amīrs of the princely family of Shihāb in Mount Lebanon, which

had been Christian for about a century; they are said to claim descent

from the Quraysh, and the Turks made every effort to bring them back to

the fold of Islam; those who became Muslims were appointed to lucrative

posts in the Turkish civil service. [566]

In the following pages it is proposed to give a more detailed and

particular account of the spread of Islam among the Christian

populations of Albania, Servia, Bosnia and Crete, as the history of

each of these countries after its conquest by the Ottomans presents

some special features of interest in the history of the propagation of

Islam.

The Albanians, with the exception of some settlements in Greece, [567]

inhabit the mountainous country that stretches along the east shore of

the Adriatic from Montenegro to the Gulf of Arta. They form one of the

oldest and purest-blooded races in Europe and are said to belong to the

Pelasgic branch of the Aryan stock.

Their country was first invaded by the Turks in 1387, but the Turkish

forces soon had to withdraw, and the authority of the Sultan was

recognised for the first time in 1423. For a short period Albania

regained its independence under George Kastriota, who is better known

under his Muhammadan name of Scanderbeg or Sikandarbeg. Recent

investigations have established the falsity of the romantic fictions

that had gathered round the story of his early days—how that as a boy

he had been surrendered as a hostage to the Turks, had been brought up

among them as a Muslim and had won the special favour of the Sultan.

The truth is, that the days of his youth were passed in his native

mountains and his warfare with the Turks began with the victory gained

over them in 1444; for more than twenty years he maintained a vigorous

and successful resistance to their invading forces, but after his death

in 1467, the Turks began again to take possession of Albania. Krūya,

the capital of the Kastriot dynasty, fell into their hands eleven years

later, and from this date there appears to have been no organised

resistance of the whole country, though revolts were frequent and the

subjection of the country was never complete. Some of the sea-port

towns held out much longer; Durazzo was captured in 1501, while

Antivari, the northernmost point of the sea-coast of Albania, did not

surrender until 1571. The terms of capitulation were that the city

should retain its old laws and magistrature, that there should be free

and public exercise of the Christian religion, that the churches and

chapels should remain uninjured and might be rebuilt if they fell into

decay; that the citizens should retain all their movable and immovable

property and should not be burdened by any additional taxation.

The Albanians under Turkish rule appear always to have maintained a

kind of semi-autonomy, and the several tribes and clans remained as

essentially independent as they were before the conquest. Though

vassals of the Sultans, they would not brook the interference of

Turkish officials in their internal administration, and there is reason

to believe that the Turkish Government has never been able to appoint

or confirm any provincial governor who was not a native of Albania, and

had not already established his influence by his arms, policy or

connections. [568] Their racial pride is intense, and to the present

day, the Albanian, if asked what he is, will call himself a Skipetar,

[569] before saying whether he is a Christian or a Muhammadan—a very

remarkable instance of national feeling obliterating the fierce

distinction between these two religions that so forcibly obtrudes

itself in the rest of the Ottoman empire. The Christian and Muhammadan

Albanians alike, just as they speak the same language, so do they

cherish the same traditions, and observe the same manners and customs;

and pride in their common nationality has been too strong a bond to

allow differences of religious belief to split the nation into separate

communities on this basis. [570] Side by side they served in the

irregular troops, which soon after the Turkish conquest became the main

dependence of the government in all its internal administration, and

both classes found the same ready employment in the service of the

local pashas, being accounted the bravest soldiers in the empire.

Christian Albanians served in the Ottoman army in the Crimean War,

[571] and though they have perhaps been a little more quiet and

agricultural than their Muslim fellow-countrymen, still the difference

has been small: they have always retained their arms and military

habits, have always displayed the same fierce, proud, untameable

spirit, and been animated with the same intense national feeling as

their brethren who had embraced the creed of the Prophet. [572]

The consideration of these facts is of importance in tracing the spread

of Islam in Albania, for it appears to have been propagated very

gradually by the people of the country themselves, and not under

pressure of foreign influences. The details that we possess of this

movement are very meagre, as the history of Albania from the close of

the fifteenth century to the rise of ʻAlī Pasha three hundred years

later, is almost a blank; what knowledge we have, therefore, of the

slow but continuous accession of converts to Islam during this period,

is derived from the ecclesiastical chronicles of the various dioceses,

[573] and the reports sent in from time to time to the Pope and the

Congregatio de Propaganda Fide. [574] But it goes without saying that

the very nature of these sources gives the information derived from

them the stamp of imperfection—especially in the matter of the motives

assigned for conversion. For an ecclesiastic of those times to have

even entertained the possibility of a conversion to Islam from genuine

conviction—much less have openly expressed such an opinion in writing

to his superiors—is well-nigh inconceivable.

During the sixteenth century, Islam appears to have made but little

progress, though the tide of conversion had already set in. In 1610 the

Christian population exceeded the Muhammadan in the proportion of ten

to one, [575] and as most of the villages were inhabited by Christians,

with a very small admixture of Muhammadans, [576] the conversions

appear to have been more frequent in the large towns. In Antivari, for

example, while many Christians elected to emigrate into the

neighbouring Christian countries, the majority of those who remained,

both high-born and low, went over gradually to the Muslim faith, so

that the Christian population grew less and less day by day. [577] As

the number of accessions to Islam increased, churches were converted

into mosques—a measure which, though contrary to the terms of the

capitulation, seems justified by the change in the religion of the

people. [578] In 1610 two collegiate churches only remained in the

hands of the Latin Christians, but these appear to have sufficed for

the needs of the community; [579] what this amounted to can only

roughly be guessed from the words of Marco Bizzi: “There are about 600

houses inhabited indiscriminately by Muhammadans and Christians—both

Latin and Schismatics (i.e. of the Orthodox Greek Church): the number

of the Muhammadans is a little in excess of the Christians, and that of

the Latins in excess of the Schismatics.”

In the accounts we have of the social relations between the Christians

and the Muslims, and in the absence of any sharp line of demarcation

between the two communities, we find some clue to the manner in which

Muhammadan influences gradually gained converts from among the

Christian population in proportion as the vigour and the spiritual life

of the Church declined.

It had become very common for Christian parents to give their daughters

in marriage to Muhammadans, and for Christian women to make no

objection to such unions. [580] The male children born of these mixed

marriages were brought up as Musalmans, but the girls were allowed to

follow the religion of their mother. [581] Such permission was rendered

practically ineffective by the action of the Christian ecclesiastics,

who ordered the mothers to be excluded from the churches and from

participation in the sacraments; [582] and consequently (though the

parish priests often disregarded the commands of their superiors) many

of these women embraced the faith of their husbands. But even then they

kept up a superstitious observance of the rite of baptism, which was

supposed to be a sovereign specific against leprosy, witches and

wolves, [583] and Christian priests were found ready to pander to this

superstition for any Muhammadan woman who wished to have her children

baptised. [584] This good feeling between the members of the two

religions [585] is similarly illustrated by the attendance of

Muhammadans at the festivals of Christian saints; e.g. Marco Bizzi says

that on the feast-day of St. Elias (for whom the Albanians appear to

have had a special devotion) there were as many Muhammadans present in

the church as Christians. [586] Even to the present day we are told

that Albanian Muhammadans revere the Virgin Mary and the Christian

saints, and make pilgrimages to their shrines, while Christians on the

other hand resort to the tombs of Muslim saints for the cure of

ailments or in fulfilment of vows. [587] In the town of Calevacci,

where there were sixty Christian and ten Muhammadan households, the

followers of the Prophet contributed towards the support of the parish

priest, as the majority of them had Christian wives. [588] Under such

circumstances it is hardly surprising to learn that many openly

professed Islam, while satisfying their consciences by saying that they

professed Christianity in their hearts. [589] Marco Bizzi has three

explanations to offer for such a lapse—the attraction of worldly

advantage, the desire to avoid the payment of tribute, and the want of

a sufficiently large number of intelligent clergy to supply the

spiritual needs of the country. [590] Conversions are frequently

ascribed to the pressure of the burden of taxation imposed upon the

Christians, and whole villages are said to have apostatised to avoid

payment of the tribute. As no details are given, it is impossible to

judge whether there was really sufficient ground for the complaint, or

whether this was not the apology for their conduct alleged by the

renegades in order to make some kind of excuse to their former

co-religionists—or indeed an exaggeration on the part of ecclesiastics

to whom a genuine conversion to Islam on rational grounds seemed an

absolute impossibility. A century later (in 1703) the capitation-tax

was six reals a head for each male and this (with the exception of a

tax, termed sciataraccio, of three reals a year) was the only burden

imposed on the Christians exclusively. [591] Men must have had very

little attachment to their religion to abandon it merely in order to be

quit of so slight a penalty, and with no other motive; and the very

existence of so large a body of Christians in Albania at the present

time shows that the burden could not have been so heavy as to force

them into apostasy without any other alternative.

If only we had something more than vague general complaints against the

“Turkish tyranny,” we should be better able to determine how far this

could have had such a preponderating influence as is ascribed to it:

but the evidence alleged seems hardly to warrant such a conclusion. The

vicious practice followed by the Ottoman Court of selling posts in the

provinces to the highest bidder and the uncertainty of the tenure of

such posts, often resulted in the occupants trying to amass as large a

fortune as possible by extortions of every kind. But such burdens are

said to have weighed as heavily on Muhammadans as Christians. [592]

Though certainly an avaricious and unjust official may have found it

easier to oppress the Christians than the Muslims, especially when the

former were convicted of treasonable correspondence with the Venetians

and other Christian states and were suspected of a wish to revolt.

However this may have been, there can be little doubt of the influence

exerted by the zealous activity and vigorous life of Islam in the face

of the apathetic and ignorant Christian clergy. If Islam in Albania had

many such exponents as the Mullā, whose sincerity, courtesy and

friendliness are praised by Marco Bizzi, with whom he used to discuss

religious questions, it may well have made its way. [593] The majority

of the Christian clergy appear to have been wholly unlettered: most of

them, though they could read a little, did not know how to write, and

were so ignorant of the duties of their sacred calling that they could

not even repeat the formula of absolution by heart. [594] Though they

had to recite the mass and other services in Latin, there were very few

who could understand any of it, as they were ignorant of any language

but their mother tongue, and they had only a vague, traditionary

knowledge of the truths of their religion. [595] Marco Bizzi considered

the inadequate episcopate of the country responsible for these evils,

as for the small numbers of the clergy, and their ignorance of their

sacred calling, and for the large number of Christians who grew old and

even died without being confirmed, and apostatised almost everywhere;

[596] and unless this were remedied he prophesied a rapid decay of

Christianity in the country. [597] Several priests were also accused of

keeping concubines, and of drunkenness. [598]

It may here be observed that the Albanian priests were not the

repositories of the national aspirations and ideals, as were the clergy

of the Orthodox Church in other provinces of the Turkish empire, who in

spite of their ignorance kept alive among their people that devotion to

the Christian faith which formed the nucleus of the national life of

the Greeks. [599] On the contrary, the Albanians cherished a national

feeling that was quite apart from religious belief, and with regard to

the Turks, considered, in true feudal spirit, that as they were the

masters of the country they ought to be obeyed whatever commands they

gave. [600]

There is a curious story of conversion which is said to have taken

place owing to a want of amicable relations between a Christian priest

and his people, as follows: “Many years since, when all the country was

Christian, there stood in the city of Scutari a beautiful image of the

Virgin Mary, to whose shrine thousands flocked every year from all

parts of the country to offer their gifts, perform their devotions, and

be healed of their infirmities. For some cause or other, however, it

fell out that there was dissension between the priest and the people,

and one day the latter came to the church in great crowds, declaring

that unless the priest yielded to them they would then and there abjure

the faith of Christ and embrace in its stead that of Muḥammad. The

priest, whether right or wrong, still remaining firm, his congregation

tore the rosaries and crosses from their necks, trampled them under

their feet, and going to the nearest mosque, were received by the

Mollah into the fold of the True Believers.” [601]

Through the negligence and apathy of the Christian clergy many abuses

and irregularities had been allowed to creep into the Christian

society; in one of which, namely the practice of contracting marriages

without the sanction of the Church or any religious ceremony, we find

an approximation to the Muhammadan law, which makes marriage a civil

contract. In order to remedy this evil, the husband and wife were to be

excluded from the Church, until they had conformed to the

ecclesiastical law and gone through the service in the regular manner.

[602]

In the course of the seventeenth century, the social conditions and

other factors, indicated above, bore fruit abundantly, and the numbers

of the Christian population began rapidly to decline. In the brief

space of thirty years, between 1620 and 1650, about 300,000 Albanians

are said to have gone over to Islam. [603] In 1624 there were only 2000

Catholics in the whole diocese of Antivari, and in the city itself only

one church; at the close of the century, even this church was no longer

used for Christian worship, as there were only two families of Roman

Catholics left. [604] In the whole country generally, the majority of

the Christian community in 1651 was composed of women, as the male

population had apostatised in such large numbers to Islam. [605]

Matters were still worse at the close of the century, the Catholics

being then fewer in number than the Muhammadans, the proportions being

about 1 to 1⅓, [606] whereas less than a hundred years before, they had

outnumbered the Muhammadans in the proportion of 10 to 1; [607] in the

Archbishopric of Durazzo the Christian population had decreased by

about half in twenty years, [608] in another town (in the diocese of

Kroia) the entire population passed from Christianity to Islam in the

course of thirty years. [609] In spite of the frequent protests and

regulations made by their ecclesiastical superiors, the parish priests

continued to countenance the open profession of Islam along with a

secret adherence to Christianity, on the part of many male members of

their flocks, by administering to them the Blessed Sacrament; the

result of which was that the children of such persons, being brought up

as Muhammadans, were for ever lost to the Christian Church. [610]

Similarly, Christian parents still gave their daughters in marriage to

Muhammadans, the parish priests countenancing such unions by

administering the sacrament to such women, [611] in spite of the

fulminations of the higher clergy against such indulgence. [612] Such

action on the part of the lower clergy can hardly, however, be taken as

indicating any great zeal on behalf of the spiritual welfare of their

flocks, in the face of the accusations brought against them; the

majority of them are accused of being scandalous livers, who very

seldom went to confession and held drunken revels in their parsonages

on festival days; they sold the property of the Church, frequently

absented themselves from their parishes, and when censured, succeeded

in getting off by putting themselves under the protection of the Turks.

[613] The Reformed Franciscans and the Observants who had been sent to

minister to the spiritual wants of the people did nothing but quarrel

and go to law with one another; much to the scandal of the laity and

the neglect of the mission. [614] In the middle of the seventeenth

century five out of the twelve Albanian sees were vacant; the diocese

of Pullati had not been visited by a bishop for thirty years, and there

were only two priests to 6348 souls. [615] In some parishes in the

interior of the country, there had been no priests for more than forty

years; and this was in no way due to the oppression of the “Turkish

tyrant,” for when at last four Franciscan missionaries were sent, they

reported that they could go through the country and exercise their

sacred office without any hindrance whatever. [616] The bishop of

Sappa, to the great prejudice of his diocese, had been long resident in

Venice, where he is said to have lived a vicious life, and had

appointed as his vicar an ignorant priest who was a notorious

evil-liver: this man had 12,400 souls under his charge, and, says the

ecclesiastical visitor, “through the absence of the bishop there is

danger of his losing his own soul and compassing the destruction of the

souls under him and of the property of the Church.” [617] The bishop of

Scutari was looked upon as a tyrant by his clergy and people, and only

succeeded in keeping his post through the aid of the Turks; [618] and

Zmaievich complains of the bishops generally that they burdened the

parishes in their diocese with forced contributions. [619] It appears

that Christian ecclesiastics were authorised by the Sultan to levy

contributions on their flocks. Thus the Archbishop of Antivari

(1599–1607) was allowed to “exact and receive” two aspers from each

Christian family, twelve for every first marriage (and double the

amount for a second, and quadruple for a third marriage), and one gold

piece from each parish annually, and it seems to have been possible to

obtain the assistance of the Turkish authorities in levying these

contributions. [620]

Throughout the whole of Albania there was not a single Christian

school, [621] and the priests were profoundly ignorant: some were sent

to study in Italy, but Marco Crisio condemns this practice, as such

priests were in danger of finding life in Italy so pleasant that they

refused to return to their native country. With a priesthood so

ignorant and so careless of their sacred duties, it is not surprising

to learn that the common people had no knowledge even of the rudiments

of their faith, and that numerous abuses and corruptions sprang up

among them, which “wrought the utmost desolation to this vineyard of

the Lord.” [622] Many Christians lived in open concubinage for years,

still, however, being admitted to the sacraments, [623] while others

had a plurality of wives. [624] In this latter practice we notice an

assimilation between the habits of the two communities—the Christian

and the Muslim—which is further illustrated by the admission of

Muhammadans as sponsors at the baptism of Christian children, while the

old superstitious custom of baptising Muhammadan children was still

sanctioned by the priests. [625]

Such being the state of the Christian Church in Albania in the latter

half of the seventeenth century, some very trifling incentive would

have been enough to bring about a widespread apostasy; and the

punishment inflicted on the rebellious Catholics in the latter half of

the century was a determining factor more than sufficient to consummate

the tendencies that had been drawing them towards Islam and to cause

large numbers of them to fall away from the Christian Church. The

rebellious movement referred to seems to have been instigated by

George, the thirty-ninth Archbishop of Antivari (1635–1644), who

through the bishops of Durazzo, Scodra and Alessio tried to induce the

leaders of the Christian community to conspire against the Turkish rule

and hand over the country to the neighbouring Christian power, the

Republic of Venice. As in his time Venice was at peace with the Turks a

fitting opportunity for the hatching of this plot did not occur, but in

1645 war broke out between Turkey and the Republic, and the Venetians

made an unsuccessful attempt to capture the city of Antivari, which

before the Turkish conquest had been in their possession for more than

three centuries (1262–1571). The Albanian Catholics who had sided with

the enemy and secretly given them assistance were severely punished and

deprived of their privileges, while the Greek Christians (who had

everything to fear in the event of the restoration of the Venetian rule

and had remained faithful to the Turkish government) were liberally

rewarded and were lauded as the saviours of their country. Many of the

Catholics either became Muhammadans or joined the Greek Church. The

latter fact is very significant as showing that there was no

persecution of the Christians as such, nor any attempt to force the

acceptance of Islam upon them. The Catholics who became Muhammadans did

so to avoid the odium of their position after the failure of their

plot, and could have gained the same end and have at the same time

retained their Christian faith by joining the Greek Church, which was

not only officially recognised by the Turkish government but in high

favour in Antivari at this time: so that those who neglected to do so,

could have had very little attachment to the Christian religion. The

same remark holds good of the numerous conversions to Islam in the

succeeding years: Zmaievich attributes them in some cases to the desire

to avoid the payment of tribute, but, from what has been said above, it

is very unlikely that this was the sole determining motive.

In 1649 a still more widespread insurrection broke out, an Archbishop

of Antivari, Joseph Maria Bonaldo (1646–1654), being again the main

instigator of the movement; and the leading citizens of Antivari,

Scodra and other towns conspired to throw open their gates to the army

of the Venetian Republic. But this plot also failed and the

insurrection was forcibly crushed by the Turkish troops, aided by the

dissensions that arose among the Christians themselves. Many Albanians

whose influence was feared were transported from their own country into

the interior of the Turkish dominions; a body of 3000 men crossed the

border into Venetian territory; those who remained were overawed by the

erection of fortresses and the marching of troops through the

disaffected districts, while heavy fines were imposed upon the

malcontents. [626]

Unfortunately the Christian writers who complain of the “unjust

tributes and vexations” with which the Turks oppressed the Albanians,

so that they apostatised to Islam, [627] make use only of general

expressions, and give us no details to enable us to judge whether or

not such complaints were justified by the facts. Zmaievich prefaces his

account of the apostasy of 2000 persons with an enumeration of the

taxes and other burdens the Christians had to bear, but all these, he

says, were common also to the Muhammadans, with the exception of the

capitation-tax of six reals a year for each male, and another tax,

termed sciataraccio, of three reals a year. [628] He concludes with the

words: “The nation, wounded by these taxes in its weakest part, namely,

worldly interest, to the consideration of which it has a singular

leaning either by nature or by necessity, has given just cause for

lamenting the deplorable loss of about 2000 souls who apostatised from

the true faith so as not to be subject to the tribute.” [629] There is

nothing in his report to show that the taxes the Catholics had to pay

constituted so intolerable a burden as to force them to renounce their

creed, and though he attributes many conversions to Islam to the desire

of escaping the tribute, he says expressly that these apostasies from

the Christian faith are mainly to be ascribed to the extreme ignorance

of the clergy, [630] in great measure also to their practice of

admitting to the sacraments those who openly professed Islam while in

secret adhering to the Christian faith: [631] in another place he says,

speaking of the clergy who were not fit to be parish priests and their

practice of administering the sacraments to apostates and secret

Christians: “These are precisely the two causes from which have come

all the losses that the Christian Church has sustained in Albania.”

[632] There is very little doubt that the widespread apostasy at this

time was the result of a long series of influences similar to those

mentioned in the preceding pages, and that the deliverance from the

payment of the tribute was the last link in the chain.

What active efforts Muhammadans themselves were making to gain over the

Christians to Islam, we can hardly expect to learn from the report of

an ecclesiastical visitor. But we find mention of a district, the

inhabitants of which, from their intercourse with the Turks, had

“contracted the vices of these infidels,” and one of the chief causes

of their falling away from the Christian faith was their contracting

marriages with Turkish women. [633] There were no doubt strong

Muhammadan influences at work here, as also in the two parishes of

Biscascia and Basia, whose joint population of nearly a thousand souls

was “exposed to the obvious risk of apostatising through lack of any

pastor,” and were “much tempted in their faith, and needed to be

strengthened in it by wise and zealous pastors.” [634]

Zmaievich speaks of one of the old noble Christian families in the

neighbourhood of Antivari which was represented at that time by two

brothers; the elder of these had been “wheedled” by the prominent

Muhammadans of the place, who were closely related to him, into denying

his faith; the younger wished to study for the priesthood, in which

office “he would be of much assistance to the Christian Church through

the high esteem in which the Turks held his family; which though poor

was universally respected.” [635] This indeed is another indication of

the fact that the Muhammadans did not ill-treat the Christians, merely

as such, but only when they showed themselves to be politically

disaffected. Zmaievich, who was himself an Albanian, and took up his

residence in his diocese instead of in Venetian territory, as many of

the Archbishops of Antivari seem to have done, [636] was received with

“extraordinary honours” and with “marvellous courtesy,” not only by the

Turkish officials generally, but also by the Supreme Pasha of Albania

himself, who gave him the place of honour in his Divan, always

accompanying him to the door on his departure and receiving him there

on his arrival. [637] This “barbarian” who “showed himself more like a

generous-hearted Christian than a Turk,” gave more substantial marks of

good feeling towards the Christians by remitting—at the Archbishop’s

request—the tribute due for the ensuing year from four separate towns.

[638] If any of the Christian clergy were roughly treated by the Turks,

it seems generally to have been due to the suspicion of treasonable

correspondence with the enemies of the Turks; ecclesiastical visits to

Italy seem also to have excited—and in many cases, justly—such

suspicions. Otherwise the Christian clergy seem to have had no reason

to complain of the treatment they received from the Muslims; Zmaievich

even speaks of one parish priest being “much beloved by the principal

Turks,” [639] and doubtless there were parallels in Albania to the case

of a priest in the diocese of Trebinje in Herzegovina, who in the early

part of the eighteenth century was suspected, on account of his

familiar intercourse with Muhammadans, of having formed an intention to

embrace Islam, and was accordingly sent by his bishop to Rome under

safe custody. [640]

No subsequent period of Albanian history appears to have witnessed such

widespread apostasy as the seventeenth century, but there have been

occasional accessions to Islam up to more recent times. In Southern

Albania, the country of the Tosks, the preponderance of the Muhammadan

population placed the Christians at a disadvantage, and a story is told

of the Karamurtads, inhabitants of thirty-six villages near Pogoniani,

that up to the close of the eighteenth century they were Christians,

but finding themselves unable to repel the continual attacks of the

neighbouring Muhammadan population of Leskoviki, they met in a church

and prayed that the saints might work some miracle on their behalf;

they swore to fast till Easter in expectation of the divine assistance;

but Easter came and no miracle was wrought, so the whole population

embraced Islam; soon afterwards they obtained the arms they required

and massacred their old enemies in Leskoviki and took possession of

their lands. [641] Community of faith in Albania is never allowed to

stand in the way of a tribal feud. Even up to the nineteenth century

Albanian tribes and villages have changed their religion for very

trivial reasons; part of one Christian tribe is said to have turned

Muhammadan because their priest, who served several villages and

visited them first, insisted on saying mass at an unreasonably early

hour. [642]

At the present day the Muhammadans in Albania are said to number about

1,000,000 and the Christians 480,000, but the accuracy of these figures

is not certain. The Mirdites are entirely Christian; they submitted to

the Sultan on condition that no Muslim would be allowed to settle in

their territory, but adherents of both the rival creeds are found in

almost all the other tribes. Central Albania is said to be almost

entirely Muhammadan, and the followers of Islam form about sixty per

cent. of the population of Northern Albania; the Christian population

attains its largest proportion in Southern Albania, especially in the

districts bordering upon Greece.

The kingdom of Servia first paid tribute to the Ottomans in 1375 and

lost its independence after the disastrous defeat of Kossovo (1389),

where both the king of Servia and the Turkish sultan were left dead

upon the field. The successors of the two sovereigns entered into a

friendly compact, the young Servian prince, Stephen, acknowledged the

suzerainty of Turkey, gave his sister in marriage to the new sultan,

Bāyazīd, and formed with him a league of brotherhood. At the battle of

Nikopolis (1394), which gave to the Turks assured possession of the

whole Balkan peninsula, except the district surrounding Constantinople,

the Servian contingent turned the wavering fortune of the battle and

gave the victory to the Turks. On the field of Angora (1402), when the

Turkish power was annihilated and Bāyazīd himself taken prisoner by

Tīmūr, Stephen was present with his Servian troops and fought bravely

for his brother-in-law, and instead of taking this opportunity of

securing his independence, remained faithful to his engagement, and

stood by the sons of Bāyazīd until they recovered their father’s

throne. Under the successor of Stephen, George Brankovich, Servia

enjoyed a semi-independence, but when in 1438 he raised the standard of

revolt, his country was again overrun by the Turks. Then for a time

Servia had to acknowledge the suzerainty of Hungary, but the defeat of

John Hunyady at Varna in 1444 brought her once more under tribute, and

in 1459 she finally became a Turkish province.

It is not impossible that the Servians who had embraced Islam after the

battle of Kossovo had knowledge of the fate of the little Muslim

community that had been rooted out of Hungary about a century before,

and therefore preferred the domination of the Turks to that of the

Hungarians. Yāqūt gives the following account of his meeting, about the

year 1228, with some members of this group of followers of the Prophet

in mediæval Europe, who had owed their conversion to Muslims who had

settled among them. “In the city of Aleppo, I met a large number of

persons called Bashkirs, with reddish hair and reddish faces. They were

studying law according to the school of Abū Ḥanīfah (may God be well

pleased with him!) I asked one of them who seemed to be an intelligent

fellow for information concerning their country and their condition. He

told me, ‘Our country is situated on the other side of Constantinople,

in a kingdom of a people of the Franks called the Hungarians. We are

Muslims, subjects of their king, and live on the border of his

territory, occupying about thirty villages, which are almost like small

towns. But the king of the Hungarians does not allow us to build walls

round any of them, lest we should revolt against him. We are situated

in the midst of Christian countries, having the land of the Slavs on

the north, on the south, that of the Pope, i.e. Rome (now the Pope is

the head of the Franks, the vicar of the Messiah in their eyes, like

the commander of the faithful in the eyes of the Muslims; his authority

extends over all matters connected with religion among the whole of

them); on the west, Andalusia; on the east, the land of the Greeks,

Constantinople and its provinces.’ He added, ‘Our language is the

language of the Franks, we dress after their fashion, we serve with

them in the army, and we join them in attacking all their enemies,

because they only go to war with the enemies of Islam.’ I then asked

him how it was they had adopted Islam in spite of their dwelling in the

midst of the unbelievers. He answered, ‘I have heard several of our

forefathers say that a long time ago seven Muslims came from Bulgaria

and settled among us. In kindly fashion they pointed out to us our

errors and directed us into the right way, the faith of Islam. Then God

guided us and (praise be to God!) we all became Muslims and God opened

our hearts to the faith. We have come to this country to study law;

when we return to our own land, the people will do us honour and put us

in charge of their religious affairs.’” [643] Islam kept its ground

among the Bashkirs of Hungary until 1340, when King Charles Robert

compelled all his subjects that were not yet Christians to embrace the

Christian faith or quit the country. [644]

The Servian Muslims may, therefore, well have been pleased to escape

from the rule of Hungary, like their Christian fellow-countrymen, for

when these were given the choice between the Roman Catholic rule of

Hungary and the Muslim rule of the Turks, the devotion of the Servians

to the Greek Church led them to prefer the tolerance of the Muhammadans

to the uncompromising proselytising spirit of the Latins. An old legend

thus represents their feelings at this time:—The Turks and the

Hungarians were at war; George Brankovich sought out John Hunyady and

asked him, “If you are victorious, what will you do?” “Establish the

Roman Catholic faith,” was the answer. Then he sought out the sultan

and asked him, “If you come out victorious, what will you do with our

religion?” “By the side of every mosque shall stand a church, and every

man shall be free to pray in whichever he chooses.” [645] The treachery

of some Servian priests forced the garrison of Belgrade to capitulate

to the Turks; [646] similarly the Servians of Semendria, on the Danube,

welcomed the Turkish troops who in 1600 delivered them from the rule of

their Catholic neighbours. [647]

The spread of Islam among the Servians began immediately after the

battle of Kossovo, when a large part of the old feudal nobility, such

as still remained alive and did not take refuge in neighbouring

Christian countries, went over voluntarily to the faith of the Prophet,

in order to keep their old privileges undisturbed. [648] In these

converted nobles the sultans found the most zealous propagandists of

the new faith. [649] But the majority of the Servian people clung

firmly to their old religion through all their troubles and sufferings,

and only in Stara Serbia or Old Servia, [650] which now forms the

north-eastern portion of modern Albania, has there been any very

considerable number of conversions. Even here the spread of

Muhammadanism proceeded very slowly until the seventeenth century, when

the Austrians induced the Servians to rise in revolt and, after the

ill-success of this rising, the then Patriarch, Arsenius III

Tsernoïevich, in 1690 emigrated with 40,000 Servian families across the

border into Hungary; another exodus in 1739 of 15,000 families under

the leadership of Arsenius IV Jovanovich, well nigh denuded this part

of the country of its original Servian population. [651]

Albanian colonists from the south pressed into the country vacated by

the fugitives: these Albanians at the time of their arrival were Roman

Catholics for the most part, but after they settled in Old Servia they

gradually adopted Islam and at the present time the remnant of Roman

Catholic Albanians is but small, though from time to time it is

recruited by fresh arrivals from the mountains: the new-comers,

however, usually follow the example of their predecessors, and after a

while become Muhammadans. [652]

After this Albanian immigration, Islam began to spread more rapidly

among the remnant of the Servian population. The Servian clergy were

very ignorant and unlettered, they could only manage with difficulty to

read their service-books and hardly any had learned to write; they

neither preached to the people nor taught them the catechism,

consequently in whole villages scarcely a man could be found who knew

the Lord’s Prayer or how many commandments there were; even the priests

themselves were quite as ignorant. [653] After the insurrection of

1689, the Patriarch of Ipek, the ecclesiastical capital of Servia, was

appointed by the Porte, but in 1737, as the result of another

rebellion, the Servian Patriarchate was entirely suppressed and the

Servian Church made dependent upon the Greek Patriarch of

Constantinople. The churches were filled with Greek bishops, who made

common cause with the Turkish Beys and Pashas in bleeding the

unfortunate Christians: their national language was proscribed and the

Old Slavonic service-books, etc., were collected and sent off to

Constantinople. [654] With such a clergy it is not surprising that the

Christian faith should decline: e.g. in the commune of Gora (in the

district of Prizren), which had begun to become Muhammadanised soon

after the great exodus of 1690, the Servians that still clung to the

Christian faith, appealed again and again to the Greek bishop of

Prizren to send them priests, at least occasionally, but all in vain;

their children remained unbaptised, weddings and burials were conducted

without the blessing of the Church, and the consecrated buildings fell

into decay. [655] In the neighbouring district of Opolje, similarly,

the present Muslim population of 9500 souls is probably for the most

part descended from the original Slav inhabitants of the place. [656]

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Bizzi found in the city of

Jagnevo, 120 Roman Catholic households, 200 Greek and 180 Muhammadan;

[657] less than a hundred years later, every house in the city was

looked upon as Muhammadan, as the head of each family professed this

faith and the women only, with some of the children, were Christian.

[658] About the middle of the eighteenth century, the village of Ljurs

was entirely Catholic; in 1863 there were 90 Muslim and 23 Christian

families, but at the present day this village, together with the

surrounding villages, has wholly given up Christianity. [659] Until

recently some lingering survivals of their old Christian faith, such as

the burning of the Yule-log at Christmas, etc., were still to be met

with in certain villages, but such customs are now fast dying out.

After the battle of Kossovo and the downfall of the Servian empire, the

wild highlands of Montenegro afforded a refuge to those Servians who

would not submit to the Turks but were determined to maintain their

independence. It is not the place here to relate the history of the

heroic struggles of this brave people against overwhelming odds, how

through centuries of continual warfare, under the rule of their

prince-bishops, [660] they have kept alive a free Christian state when

all their brethren of the same race had been compelled to submit to

Muhammadan rule. While the very basis of their separate existence as a

nation was their firm adherence to the Christian faith it could hardly

have been expected that Islam would have made its way among them, but

in the seventeenth century many Montenegrins in the frontier districts

became Muhammadans and took service with the neighbouring Pashas. But

in 1703, Daniel Petrovich, the then reigning bishop, called the tribes

together and told them that the only hope for their country and their

faith lay in the destruction of the Muhammadans living among them.

Accordingly, on Christmas Eve, all the converted Montenegrins who would

not forswear Islam and embrace Christianity were massacred in cold

blood. [661]

To pass now to Bosnia:—in this country the religious and social

conditions of the people, before the Turkish conquest, merit especial

attention. The majority of the population belonged to a heretical

Christian sect, called Bogomiles, who from the thirteenth century had

been exposed to the persecution of the Roman Catholics and against whom

Popes had on several occasions preached a Crusade. [662] In 1325, Pope

John XXII wrote thus to the king of Bosnia: “To our beloved son and

nobleman, Stephen, Prince of Bosnia,—knowing that thou art a faithful

son of the Church, we therefore charge thee to exterminate the heretics

in thy dominion, and to render aid and assistance to Fabian, our

Inquisitor, forasmuch as a large multitude of heretics from many and

divers parts collected hath flowed together into the principality of

Bosnia, trusting there to sow their obscene errors and dwell there in

safety. These men, imbued with the cunning of the Old Fiend, and armed

with the venom of their falseness, corrupt the minds of Catholics by

outward show of simplicity and the sham assumption of the name of

Christians; their speech crawleth like a crab, and they creep in with

humility, but in secret they kill, and are wolves in sheep’s clothing,

covering their bestial fury as a means to deceive the simple sheep of

Christ.” In the fifteenth century, the sufferings of the Bogomiles

became so intolerable that they appealed to the Turks to deliver them

from their unhappy condition, for the king of Bosnia and the priests

were pushing the persecution of the Bogomiles to an extreme which

perhaps it had never reached before; as many as forty thousand of them

fled from Bosnia and took refuge in neighbouring countries; others who

did not succeed in making their escape, were sent in chains to Rome.

But even these violent measures did little to diminish the strength of

the Bogomiles in Bosnia, as in 1462 we are told that heresy was as

powerful as ever in this country. The following year, when Bosnia was

invaded by Muḥammad II, the Catholic king found himself deserted by his

subjects: the keys of the principal fortress, the royal city of

Bobovatz, were handed over to the Turks by the Bogomile governor; the

other fortresses and towns hastened to follow this example, and within

a week seventy cities passed into the hands of the Sultan, and Muḥammad

II added Bosnia to the number of his numerous conquests. [663]

From this time forth we hear but little of the Bogomiles; they seem to

have willingly embraced Islam in large numbers immediately after the

Turkish conquest, and the rest seem to have gradually followed later,

while the Bosnian Roman Catholics emigrated into the neighbouring

territories of Hungary and Austria. It has been supposed by some [664]

that a large proportion of the Bogomiles, at least in the earlier

period of the conquest, embraced Islam with the intention of returning

to their faith when a favourable opportunity presented itself; as,

being constantly persecuted they may have learnt to deny their faith

for the time being; but that, when this favourable opportunity never

arrived, this intention must have gradually been lost sight of and at

length have been entirely forgotten by their descendants. Such a

supposition is, however, a pure conjecture and has no direct evidence

to support it. We may rather find the reason for the willingness of the

Bogomiles to allow themselves to be merged in the general mass of the

Musalman believers, in the numerous points of likeness between their

peculiar beliefs and the tenets of Islam. They rejected the worship of

the Virgin Mary, the institution of Baptism and every form of

priesthood. [665] They abominated the cross as a religious symbol, and

considered it idolatry to bow down before religious pictures and the

images and relics of the saints. Their houses of prayer were very

simple and unadorned, in contrast to the gaudily decorated Roman

Catholic churches, and they shared the Muhammadan dislike of bells,

which they styled “the devil’s trumpets.” They believed that Christ was

not himself crucified but that some phantom was substituted in his

place: in this respect agreeing partially with the teaching of the

Qurʼān. [666] Their condemnation of wine and the general austerity of

their mode of life and the stern severity of their outward demeanour

would serve as further links to bind them to Islam, [667] for it was

said of them: “You will see heretics quiet and peaceful as lambs

without, silent, and wan with hypocritical fasting, who do not speak

much nor laugh loud, who let their beard grow, and leave their person

incompt.” [668] They prayed five times a day and five times a night,

repeating the Lord’s Prayer with frequent kneelings, [669] and would

thus find it very little change to join in the services of the mosque.

I have brought together here the many points of likeness to the

teachings of Islam, which we find in this Bogomilian heresy, but there

were, of course, some doctrines of a distinctly Christian character

which an orthodox Muslim could not hold; still, with so much in common,

it can easily be understood how the Bogomiles may gradually have been

persuaded to give up those doctrines that were repugnant to the Muslim

faith. Their Manichæan dualism was equally irreconcilable with Muslim

theology, but Islam has always shown itself tolerant of such

theological speculations provided that they did not issue in a schism

and that a general assent and consent were given to the main principles

of its theory and practice.

The Turks, as was their usual custom, offered every advantage to induce

the Bosnians to accept their creed. All who embraced Islam were allowed

to retain their lands and possessions, and their fiefs were exempt from

all taxation, [670] and it is probable that many rightful heirs of

ancient houses who had been dispossessed for heretical opinions by the

Catholic faction among the nobility, now embraced the opportunity of

regaining their old position by submission to the dominant creed. The

Bosnian Muhammadans retained their nationality and still for the most

part bear Serb names and speak only their national tongue; [671] at the

same time they have always evinced a lively zeal for their new faith,

and by their military prowess, their devotion to Islam and the powerful

influence they exercised, the Bosnian nobility rapidly rose into high

favour in Constantinople and many were entrusted with important offices

of state, e.g. between the years 1544 and 1611 nine statesmen of

Bosnian origin filled the post of Grand Vizier.

The latest territorial acquisition of the Ottoman conquests was the

island of Crete, which in 1669 was wrested from the hands of the

Venetian Republic by the capture of the city of Candia after a long and

desperate siege of nearly three years, which closed a struggle of

twenty-five years between these rival powers for the possession of the

island.

This was not the first time that Crete had come under Muslim rule.

Early in the ninth century the island was suddenly seized by a band of

Saracen adventurers from Spain, and it remained in their power for

nearly a century and a half (A.D. 825–961). [672] During this period

well nigh the whole population of the island had become Muslim, and the

churches had either fallen into ruins or been turned into mosques; but

when the authority of the Byzantine empire was once re-established

here, the people were converted again to their ancient faith through

the skilful preaching of an Armenian monk, and the Christian religion

became the only one professed on the island. [673] In the beginning of

the thirteenth century, the Venetians purchased the island from

Boniface, Duke of Montserrat, to whose lot it had fallen after the

partition of the Byzantine empire, and they ruled it with a heavy hand,

apparently looking upon it only in the light of a purchase that was to

be exploited for the benefit of the home government and its colonists.

Their administration was so oppressive and tyrannical as to excite

several revolts, which were crushed with pitiless severity; on one of

these occasions whole cantons in the provinces of Sfakia and Lassiti

were depopulated, and it was forbidden under pain of death to sow any

corn there, so that these districts remained barren and uncultivated

for nearly a century. [674] The terrific cruelty with which the

Venetian senate suppressed the last of these attempts at the beginning

of the sixteenth century added a crowning horror to the miserable

condition of the unhappy Cretans. How terrible was their lot at this

time we learn from the reports of the commissioners sent by the

Venetian senate in the latter part of the same century, in order to

inquire into the condition of the islanders. The peasants were said to

be crushed down by the cruelest oppression and tyranny on the part of

the Venetian nobles, their feudal lords, being reduced to a worse

condition than that of slaves, so that they never dared even to

complain of any injustice. Each peasant had to do twelve days’ forced

labour for his feudal lord every year without payment, and could then

be compelled to go on working for as long as his lord required his

services at the nominal rate of a penny a day; his vineyards were

mulcted in a full third of their produce, but fraud and force combined

generally succeeded in appropriating as much as two-thirds; his oxen

and mules could be seized for the service of the lord, who had a

thousand other devices for squeezing the unfortunate peasant. [675] The

protests of these commissioners proved ineffectual to induce the

Venetian senate to alleviate the unhappy condition of the Cretans and

put a stop to the cruelty and tyranny of the nobles: it preferred to

listen to the advice of Fra Paolo Sarpi who in 1615 thus addressed the

Republic on the subject of its Greek colonies: “If the gentlemen of

these Colonies do tyrannize over the villages of their dominion, the

best way is not to seem to see it, that there may be no kindness

between them and their subjects.” [676]

It is not surprising to learn from the same sources that the Cretans

longed for a change of rulers, and that “they would not much stick at

submitting to the Turk, having the example of all the rest of their

nation before their eyes.” Indeed, many at this time fled into Turkey

to escape the intolerable burden of taxation, following in the

footsteps of countless others, who from time to time had taken refuge

there. [677] Large numbers of them also emigrated to Egypt, where many

embraced Islam. [678] Especially galling to the Cretans were the

exactions of the Latin clergy who appropriated the endowments that

belonged of right to the Greek ecclesiastics, and did everything they

could to insult the Christians of the Greek rite, who constituted

nine-tenths of the population of the island. [679] The Turks, on the

other hand, conciliated their good-will by restoring the Greek

hierarchy. This, according to a Venetian writer, was brought about in

the following manner: “A certain papas or priest of Canea went to

Cusseim the Turkish general, and told him that if he desired to gain

the good-will of the Cretan people, and bring detestation upon the name

of Venice, it was necessary for him to bear in mind that the staunchest

of the links which keep civilised society from falling asunder is

religion. It would be needful for him to act in a way different from

the line followed by the Venetians. These did their utmost to root out

the Greek faith and establish that of Rome in its place, with which

interest they had made an injunction that there should be no Greek

bishops in the island. By thus removing these venerated and

authoritative shepherds, they thought the more easily to gain control

over the scattered flocks. This prohibition had caused such distress in

the minds of the Cretans that they were ready to welcome with joy and

obedience any sovereignty that would lend its will to the

re-institution of this order in their hierarchy—an order so essential

for the proper exercise of their divine worship. He added, that it

would be a further means of conciliating the people if they were

assured that they would not only be confirmed in the old privileges of

their religion, but that new privileges would be granted them. These

arguments seemed to Cusseim so plausible that he wrote at once to

Constantinople with a statement of them. Here they were approved, and

the Greek Patriarch was bidden to institute an archbishop who should be

metropole of the Province of Candia. Under the metropolitan seven other

bishops were also to be nominated.” [680]

The Turkish conquest seems to have been very rapidly followed by the

conversion of large numbers of the Cretans to Islam. It is not

improbable that the same patriotism as made them cling to their old

faith under the foreign domination of the Venetians who kept them at

arm’s length and regarded any attempt at assimilation as an

unpardonable indignity, [681] and always tried to impress on their

subjects a sense of their inferiority—may have led them to accept the

religion of their new masters, which at once raised them from the

position of subjects to that of equals and gave them a share in the

political life and government of their country. Whatever may have been

the causes of the widespread conversion of the Cretans, it seems almost

incredible that violence should have changed the religion of a people

who had for centuries before clung firmly to their old faith despite

the persecution of a hostile and a foreign creed. Whatever may have

been the means by which the ranks of Islam were filled, thirty years

after the conquest we are told that the majority of the Muslims were

renegades or the children of renegades, [682] and in little more than a

century half the population of Crete had become Muhammadan. From one

end of the island to the other, not only in the towns but also in the

villages, in the inland districts and in the very heart of the

mountains, were (and are still) found Cretan Muslims who in figure,

habits and speech are thoroughly Greek. There never has been, and to

the present day there is not, any other language spoken on the island

of Crete except Greek; even the few Turks to be found here had to adopt

the language of the country and all the firmans of the Porte and

decrees of the Pashas were read and published in Greek. [683] The

bitter feelings between the Christians and Muhammadans of Crete that

have made the history of this island during the nineteenth century so

sad a one, was by no means so virulent before the outbreak of the Greek

revolution, in days when the Cretan Muslims were very generally in the

habit of taking as their wives Christian maidens, the children of their

Christian friends. [684] The social communication between the two

communities was further signified by their common dress, as the Cretans

of both creeds dressed so much alike that the distinction was often not

even recognised by residents of long standing or by Greeks of the

neighbouring islands. [685]

Recent political events have brought about a considerable diminution in

the Muhammadan population of Crete. In 1881 the number of Muhammadans

in the island was 73,234; in 1909, in consequence of continual

emigrations, it had been reduced to 33,496. [686]