HISTORY OF GREECE UNDER OTHOMAN AND VENETIAN DOMINATION. AD. 1453 — 1821

 

CHAPTER III.

Social Condition of the Greeks until the Extinction of the Tribute of Christian Children, a. d.1453-1676

 

The change produced by the submission of Greece to the Turks was effected with unexampled rapidity, for a single generation extinguished all the boasted intelligence of the Hellenic race, and effaced every sentiment of patriotism and moral dignity in the higher orders of society. The people resigned themselves to passive slavery, but the nobles and dignified clergy became active as well as servile sycophants. The sack of Constantinople, and the depopulation of Trebizond, destroyed the power of the aristocracy, and drove the learned into exile. This, though a calamity to the courtiers and pedants, who consumed a large portion of the fiscal burdens imposed on the people, was in some degree a national benefit, since it swept away a class of men who had formed an insuperable barrier to the moral improvement of a degraded nation, and to the political reform of a corrupt administration. The destruction of the higher classes relieved the people from the trammels of innumerable privileges and monopolies.

The first effect of the extinction of the Byzantine aristocracy and the flight of the literary men was to constitute the provincial landowners and the peasant cultivators of the soil the real representatives of the Greek nation. The agricultural classes formed at this period the majority of the Greeks, and, though ignorant and bigoted, they were far superior to the aristocracy in usefulness and honesty. The inhabitants of each rural district, and often of each valley in the mountains, lived in a state of isolation, connected with the world beyond its limits only by the payment of taxes to the sultan’s government, and of ecclesiastical dues to the orthodox church. They were profoundly ignorant of all the political events which were passing beyond their own horizon. Their religion alone awakened some general ideas in their minds, but the priesthood, to whom they owed these ideas, possessed only such elements of knowledge as were accordant with a corrupt ecclesiastical system. The intellectual cultivation of the Greeks was consequently restricted for nearly two centuries to a very slight acquaintance with the national literature, from which they imbibed little more than a vague persuasion of their own superiority over the rest of mankind, as being Romans and Christians, the true representatives of the ancient conquerors of the world, and the only followers of the pure orthodox faith. This ignorance of the world at large restricted the feelings of the Greeks to a few local and hereditary prejudices. Their thoughts were divided between the strict observance of ecclesiastical formalities and the eager pursuit of their individual interests. Superstition and bigotry became the most prominent national characteristics during the following centuries.

As soon as the great translocations of the inhabitants of various parts of Greece, effected by order of Mohammed II, had been completed, and the Othoman administration regularly established, the condition of the rural population was found to be much more tolerable under the government of the sultan than it had been under the Greek emperor. The agricultural classes were harassed by fewer exactions of forced labour, extraordinary contributions were rarely levied, and the mere fiscal burdens proved trifling when compared with the endless feudal obligations of the Frank, or the countless extortions of the Byzantine sovereignty. The material advantages enjoyed by the bulk of the Greek population at the commencement of the Othoman domination quickly reconciled the people to their Mussulman masters, and even the tithe of their male children was not considered too high a price for this increased security. A single child of each family was sent out into the darkness of Mohammedanism, as a scape-offering to preserve the flesh-pots of a Christian generation. The tameness and silence with which the Greek rural population submitted to this cruel exaction for two centuries, is the strongest proof of the demoralization of the Hellenic race.

The conquest of Greece by the Turks diminished the extent of country peopled by the Greeks. Large bodies of the population were removed to Constantinople and other cities of the sultan’s dominions, to replace the ravages of war. The losses arising from these forced emigrations would, in all probability, have been soon replaced by the natural increase of the surviving Greek peasantry, had the state of the country allowed the cultivators of the soil to improve their condition. But this was the case only to a limited extent. The introduction of the feudal or timariot system created a Turkish military aristocracy in the rich agricultural districts in Greece; and no condition of society has proved more adverse to the increase of population, or to an amelioration of the condition of the people, than that in which a hereditary militia of proprietors has formed the predominant class. On the other hand, the Greek landowners, who had been in easy circumstances before the conquest, were no longer able to obtain slaves for the cultivation of their estates, nor to retain their former serfs by force, and they consequently soon descended to the rank of peasant proprietors, and were compelled to till their lands by their own labour. Their rights of pasturage, their property in fruit-bearing trees of the forest like the valonia oak, and in wild dye-woods, their profits from limekilns and charcoal, were all confiscated as invasions of the fisc, or transferred to Turkish feudatories, who received grants of estates in their vicinity. The extermination of the Byzantine aristocracy was no loss to the nation, for never did a more unprincipled set of men exist, as we find them portrayed in the life-like sketch which Cantacuzenos gives us of the archonts of the Morea, unless, indeed, they be compared with the official aristocracy created by the Othoman administration, and called Phanariots, from the filthy quarter of the Phanar in Constantinople where they dwelt and carried on their intrigues.

Even the peasant proprietors in many districts did not long enjoy the relief from oppression which cheered them during the early period of the Othoman domination. The devastations of war, the incursions of corsairs, the exactions of the Othoman officials, and the diminution of consumption, caused by the increased difficulties of transport, entailed the destruction of olive-groves, orchards, and vineyards. The Mussulman drank no wine, but he loved to sit by a public fountain under a broad platane tree. A portion of the water which the Greeks had reserved for their gardens was turned into the court of the mosque, and wasted on the roadside in numerous fountains. A little care, and a trifling expenditure, would have enabled the spring to supply both the gardens and the fountains; but few things have succeeded that required the smallest degree of constant care on the part of the Turks, and nothing has yet prospered that demanded unity of purpose between Othomans and Greeks.

The Othoman conquest effected a considerable change in the extent of country occupied by the Greek race, and in which the Greek language was predominant. Several extensive tracts in Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly were occupied by pastoral tribes from Asia Minor, called Yuruks, and whole districts were granted as military fiefs to Seljouk Turks, who had taken service under the early Othoman sultans, and received the name of Koniarides or Iconians. These two classes are the only considerable portions of the Mussulman population in European Turkey which are not descended from Christian renegades or from tribute-children. The place that had been previously occupied by the Greeks, as the principal element of the urban population in Bulgaria, Thrace, and Macedonia, was filled by the Othoman Turks. Even within the limits of Greece and the Peloponnesus the Greek rural population abandoned extensive districts to the Albanian race, which extended its settlements, and became the sole inhabitants of many sites celebrated in ancient history. The Greek language was banished from its classic haunts, and the very names of Olympia, Delphi, and Nemea were for­gotten in those spots which had once been the lungs of Hellenic life. Albanian peasants cultivated the fields of Marathon and Plataea, drove their ploughshares over the roomy streets of the Homeric Mycenae, and fed their flocks on Helicon and Parnassus. The whole of Boeotia, Attica, Megaris, Corinthia, and Argolis, a considerable part of Laconia, several districts in Messenia, and a portion of Arcadia, Elis, and Achaia, were colonized by Albanians, whose descendants preserve their peculiar language and manners, their simple social habits, and their rude system of agriculture, to the present day. In these districts the Turks dwelt as a territorial aristocracy, while the Greeks only survived in the towns as artizans and shopkeepers. The colonization of so large a portion of the eastern shores of Greece by an alien race, in an inferior grade of civilization, tended to diminish the influence of the Greek race in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, just as the earlier colonization of the country by the Sclavonians had produced a similar effect in the sixth and seventh centuries.

The energetic government of Mohammed II revived the commerce of his Greek subjects. The concessions which the Italian republics had extorted from the weakness of the Greek emperors, were abolished; and the Othoman domination restored to the Greeks a share in the commerce of the Levant. Unfortunately the fiscal corruption of the sultan’s government soon favoured the commerce of foreigners more than that of natives. Political advantages and large presents obtained relaxations of duties for the subjects of foreign states, which individual native merchants could not purchase. The foreign commerce of the Levant was again transferred to the western nations, while the coasting trade was destroyed by pirates. The Venetians and Genoese succeeded in securing to themselves commercial monopolies in the Othoman empire, and in rendering the reciprocity of trade, which they granted to the subjects of the sultan, an empty privilege. The authority of the Othoman government, nevertheless, enabled the Greeks to raise their commerce from the depressed condition into which it had fallen under the Greek emperors, and the material interests of the boatmen and petty merchants of Greece were greatly benefited by the conquest, though their advantages were not so apparent as those of the cultivators of the soil and of the regular clergy. Sultan Mohammed II brought so great an alleviation of the sufferings of the people, by putting an end to the domestic feuds of the nobles, the civil wars of the despots, and the fiscal oppression of the emperors, that we must not wonder that he was regarded as a benefactor by the majority of the Greeks, in spite of the declamations of orators and historians. These benefits explain the tame submission of the Greeks to the dominion of the sultans, for the extermination of the Byzantine aristocracy caused an immediate improvement in the material condition of the lowest order of society engaged in agricultural pursuits, and removed the most obvious motive for resistance to foreign conquest. Unfortunately, the causes which enabled the people to better their condition physically, produced a moral and social debasement of the whole Hellenic race. The diminished population lived with little labour in plenteous ease. Olives, oil, fruit, wine, and silk were abundant. The plains were so easily cultivated as to furnish large supplies of wheat, of which a part was annually exported. Venice was dependent on the Othoman empire for the greater part of the grain it consumed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and the liberty of exporting wheat to France from Cyprus, the Morea, Negrepont, and Albania, was a favour which the diplomatic agents of the King of France often solicited from the Porte.

The Greeks failed to secure to themselves any permanent advantages from the various favourable circumstances in which they were placed by the revival of their commerce and the increased demand for the produce of their soil. As had been the case for centuries, their national character was in disaccord with their position. Partly from the jealous and envious disposition that prevents their uniting together for a common object or acting in concord for any length of time, and partly from the suspicion with which any popular action was regarded by the clergy, the Phanariots, and the Othoman government, the Greeks could neither form great mercantile associations, permanent and influential banking companies, nor well-organized rural municipalities. To carry on a secure and profitable commerce by sea, it was necessary to possess well-armed vessels, but it was only by singular favour and constant bribes that a Greek vessel could obtain a license to carry arms; and even when armed there was some danger that any vessel under the Turkish flag would be treated as a pirate, in consequence of the jealousy of rival merchants in every port of the Mediterranean.

The long contests between the Greek clergy and the court of Rome, which prevailed from the recognition of the papal supremacy by Michael VIII (Palaeologos), were only terminated by the death of the last Constantine, who died in communion with the Pope. The religious bigotry of the orthodox clergy, which reached the highest pitch of frenzy during the last years of the Greek empire, was calmed by the calamities which attended the sack of Constantinople, for the orthodox viewed this great catastrophe as a divine judgment on the imperial heretic. The Greek priesthood, in the long struggle it carried on with the imperial government and the papal power, had succeeded in persuading the people that orthodoxy in doctrine, and the strict observance of ecclesiastical forms, were the true symbols of Greek nationality. The Greeks warmly espoused these opinions, and loudly expressed their thoughts with all their usual volubility and confidence. The orthodox enthusiasm was undoubtedly both national and sincere, yet never did such a loud and generalexpression of public opinion produce so little moral effect. History has transm itted the name of no orthodox hero to posterity, who was honoured with the respect and blessings even of the Greeks themselves. The real heroes of Eastern nationality at the time of the conquest of Greece were the Catholic emperor Constantine and the Albanian prince Scanderbeg, and both were members of the papal, not of the orthodox church.

Mohammedan princes have generally been more tolerant to their unbelieving subjects than Christian rulers, the commands of the Koran having been more implicitly obeyed than the precepts of the Gospel. Mohammed II granted the fullest toleration to the Greeks which the Koran allows to unbelievers, and motives of policy induced him to add some particular favours to the general toleration he conceded to all his Christian subjects. With that consummate prudence which he displayed on all great occasions during his unfeeling and violent career, he made the bigoted feelings of the orthodox instruments for the furtherance of his objects. He not only tolerated the political and social influence of the Greek clergy, but even added to it. In displaying this spirit of toleration, however, his object was not to favour the Christians; it was to render the orthodox clergy a useful instrument of police for securing the tranquillity of his recent conquests and riveting the fetters with which he bound the people. It depended on Mohammed II, after the taking of Constantinople, to render the Greeks an expatriated race like the Jews, for their military weakness, political incompetency, and moral degradation had rendered them powerless to resist their conquerors. Four rival nations, each equal to the Greeks in number, were competing for his favour, and could have filled up any void created by forcible translocations of the Hellenic race. Had Mohammed II treated Greece as Ferdinand and Isabella treated Granada, Turks, Sclavonians, Vallachians, and Albanians would have instantly occupied the country. But the conqueror chose a wiser course. He felt the fullest confidence that he could direct the minds of the Greeks, and master their intellects, as easily as he had conquered their persons, and without fear he gave them a new centre of nationality by restoring the orthodox patriarchate of Constantinople. He united all the dissevered members of the orthodox church under a central authority, over which he exercised a direct control as its real head. The boon thus voluntarily conferred on the Greek nation enlisted the prejudices and bigotry of the people in the cause of his government. He was accepted as the temporal head of the orthodox church, because he was regarded as its protector against Catholicism. By this insidious gift the sultan purchased the subservience of the Greeks, and for the two succeeding centuries his successors were the acknowledged defenders of the orthodox against the pretensions of the popes.

It must be owned that the contrast between Mussulman toleration and papal intolerance was too glaring not to extort some sentiments of gratitude towards the sultan, even from the hard character and utter selfishness of the Greek people. While the pope and the Christian princes in Western Europe were fierce in their persecution of heresy, and eager to extend the cruelties of the inquisition, the sultans of Turkey and Egypt were mild in their treatment of unbelievers, and tolerant in the exercise of their undoubted authority as absolute sovereigns. Not only was the Christian treated with more humanity in Mussulman countries than Mohammedans were treated in Christian lands, even the orthodox Greek met with more toleration from Mussulmans than from Catholics; and the knowledge of this difference formed one strong reason for the preference with which the Greeks clung to the government of the Othoman sultans in their wars with the Christian powers for more than two centuries.

Of one sad fact history leaves no doubt: the fabric of Greek society, private as well as public, was utterly corrupt. Vice was more universal among the Greeks than among the Turks. The venality of Greek officials, and the cowardice of Greek armies, had allowed the Othoman tribe to found an empire by conquests from the Greeks. The ease and rapidity with which the Greek nation was subdued, and the tameness with which the people bore the yoke imposed on them, prove that the moral degradation of the masses contributed as much to the national calamities as the worthlessness of the aristocracy and the clergy, or as the corruption of the imperial government. The moral inferiority of the Greek race at this period is forcibly intruded on the attention of the reader of Othoman history. The orthodox Mussulman was remarkable for his strict observance of the moral obligations of the Mohammedan law: but the orthodox Christian neglected the great moral precepts of his religion, and was only attentive to the distinctive ceremonies and peculiar formalities of his own church. A strong sense of duty directed and controlled the conduct of the Mussulman in the everyday actions of life; while among the Greeks a sense of duty seems to have failed entirely, and there appears to have been an utter want of those deep mental convictions necessary to produce moral rectitude. Yet, among the Othomans, we find that the strict observance of all the outward formalities of their law was united with a profound devotion to its moral and religious ordinances. This remarkable circumstance must have originated in the wise system of education which enabled the Othoman Turk to emerge as a superior being from the corrupted populations of the Seljouk and Greek empires. Among the Greeks the regular performance of church cere­monies, and the fulfilment of some vain penance, became an apology for neglecting the weightiest obligations of Christ’s moral law. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Islam breathed faith into the hearts of its votaries, while orthodoxy deadened the moral feelings of the soul, by using idolatrous forms as a substitute for faith. This spiritual elevation of Mohammedans long continued to form a marked contrast with the degraded moral condition of the orthodox Christians. No period of Greek history offers us so sad an example of the perversity with which man can stray from the guidance of truth, and set up the ordinances of man’s imagination above the laws of God.

The nature of Mohammedanism gives it a political advantage over Christianity, which must not be overlooked in examining the relations between the Othomans and the Greeks. The outward forms of Islam are an inherent portion of its doctrines; they are tests of religion, not of orthodoxy; and the public manner in which they are hourly exhibited unite all Mussulmans together as one people, while by these very forms a strong line of separation is drawn between them and the rest of mankind. Thus all Mohammedans living in constant intercourse with Christians feel and act as if they composed one nation. The Arab, the Mongol, and the Turk find that their common religion effaces their national differences.

Christianity presents another aspect. The religious divisions of Christians form as strong contrasts as their national distinctions. The Catholic and orthodox Greeks are as completely separated as the Greeks and Armenians. The Orthodox and the Catholics, the Armenians, the Nestorians, and the Jacobites, are as much separated by the articles of their faith as by the diversity of their nations. Those beyond the pale of Christianity could hardly believe that Christianity was really one religion, so marked were the distinctions among Christians, and so violent the animosity which the rival churches entertained to one another. In the individual, the contrast was as great as in the mass. The Mohammedan generally obeyed the commands of his prophet to the letter; while the Christian assumed the wildest license in interpreting the word of God. The pope taught publicly that the doctrines of Christ were not of universal application, and assumed the power of authorizing Christian princes to violate the promises they made to infidels even after they had sworn on the Gospel that they would keep their word. This moral laxity among Christians, and want of an all-pervading religious faith, was the principal cause of the apostasies so prevalent in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Othoman army and administration were filled with Christian renegades, while hardly an example could be found of a Mohammedan forsaking his religion.

The fermenting leaven of self-destruction, which exists in all corporate bodies placed beyond the direct control of public opinion, had so corrupted the Greek clergy in the fifteenth century, that the cause of Christianity suffered by the conduct of its priesthood. Religion was the predominant feature of society; but the religion of the Greeks was far removed from the purity of the apostolic precepts, and from the mild doctrines of Christianity. The characteristics of Byzantine religion were austerity and superstition, two qua­lities impressed on it by monastic influence. The dignified clergy, who had long exercised considerable authority in civil affairs, could only be chosen from among the monks. This prerogative extended the authority of monachism, by making the monastery a surer path to wealth and power than to heaven. Men of rank sent their children into the monastery as a means of securing them a high social position. History affords innumerable examples of the facility with which single classes of society can falsify the opinions of a nation,—so that there is nothing surprising in the power and corruption of monachism in Greece. Ambition introduced the spirit of intrigue among the monks, and a wish to conceal the vices of the clergy spread religious hypocrisy through the whole frame of Greek society, and silenced many of the truths which speak most plainly to the human understanding. Under monastic influence, it became the highest virtue in a Greek to repudiate many of his duties to his country and his fellow-creatures, in order to secure a repu­tation of sanctity as a monk. Some rose to power as courtiers, others as demagogues. The most worthless monk was allowed privileges denied to the best citizen. The prevailing hypocrisy, it is true, could not conceal the truth from all. The common sense of the people ventured at times to question the pretension that the monk was always a better man on account of his monastic garb; but it was nevertheless generally believed that the profession of monachism was a valid reason for exemption from punishment in this world, and a sure mitigation of divine wrath in the world to come. The homage rendered to the monastic order was consequently very great, and the monastery became a retreat for the intriguing politician as well as for the pious enthusiast.

The fermentation of monastic society in the East had passed into a principle of corruption before the fifteenth century. The Greek Church declined with the Byzantine Empire. No examples were any longer to be found of that zealous abnegation of humanity which elevated men for life on the tops of columns, or perched them in the branches of trees. Even the active charity which reflects some rays of glory on the darkest periods of Byzantine history, was almost extinct.

The Stylites and Dendrites of earlier times; the hospitals of Constantinople, and the names of the saints who have been admitted into the Greek calendar for deeds of true Christian charity, form part of the social records of mankind in the East. But in the fifteenth century the moral weakness of the Greek race rendered it incapable of emulating the stern sufferings, or of feeling the tender sympathies, of early Byzantine society. Ecclesiastical learning declined, hypocrisy increased, and bigotry became aggressive. The monasteries no longer supported hospitals and poor-houses, nor did the monks any longer study as physicians, and serve as attendants on the sick. Those who could not advance in the career of eccle­siastical preferment, turned their attention to money-making. They frequented the public marts as dealers in pictures, ancient and modern, profane and sacred; but as picture­dealing alone was not sufficient to enrich them, many became cattle-dealers and wool-merchants. Those who restricted their attention to cultivating and extending the religious influence of their order, dealt only in sacred images—the gilded pictures which had been the abomination of the Iconoclasts—and excited the people to purchase them at an exorbitant price, by forged visions and pretended miracles. Eustathios, Archbishop of Thessalonica in the twelfth century, a man of virtue and a scholar, whose commentaries on Homer and Dionysius Periegetes are still studied by the learned, declares, that in his time the monks neglected the study of Greek literature, and had begun to sell the ancient manuscripts in the libraries of the monasteries. The ignorance and vices of the monks were long the subject of general animadversion; but in this matter, as in many others, Greek society proved incompetent to reform its own abuses. The destructive energy of a foreign conqueror was necessary to sweep away abuses and open a field for improvement.

Many of the social vices of the Greeks under the domination of the Othomans must be traced back to the corrupt monastic influence predominant in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The monks taught the people that vice might be atoned for by prostrations and fasting. Intolerance became a national characteristic. The hatred of foreigners, which Strabo cites as a mark of utter barbarism, grew to be the prominent feature of Greek nationality.

The complete separation effected by monachism in the social standing of the regular and secular clergy—between the bishop and the parish priest—exercised a corrupting influence on the whole clergy. The monks and the dignified clergy became intriguers at Turkish divans, flatterers of Othoman officials, and systematic spies on the conduct of the parish priests and on the patriotic sentiments of the laity. They served for three centuries as the most efficient agents of the Othoman government, in repressing any aspirations for independence among the Greeks.

The only administrative authority which was not entirely annihilated by the Othoman conquest, was that of the church. The modern Greeks boast that their church, having survived the loss of their independence, was the means of preserving their nationality during three centuries of servitude. This may be regarded as true only to a very limited extent. The Greek clergy, doubtless, by becoming the agents of the sultan’s government, secured a legal position in the Othoman empire to the Greeks, as the representative people among the orthodox Christians; but the primary cause of the persevering endurance of the Hellenic race was in its own obstinate nationality, not in the ecclesiastical organization which was capable of being converted into an instrument of Othoman oppression. The virtues which the rural population practised, and not the power which the church prostituted to the service of a Mohammedan government, preserved the nation. The church of Constantinople was always more orthodox than it was Greek.

The church of Constantinople received from Mohammed II an organization which rendered it subservient to his will; and the Greek clergy were the active agents in their own degradation. In judging the relations between the conquered and the conquerors, we must not allow our detestation of tyranny to nourish in our minds a feeling of sympathy with the servility of parasites. No class of men can long remain undeserving of the social position it occupies; even the misfortunes of nations are generally the direct consequence of their own vices, social or political.

One great temporal characteristic of Christianity is, that it connected mankind by higher and more universal 'ties than those of nationality. It teaches men that religion ought to bind them together by ties which no political prejudices ought to have strength to sever, and thus reveals how the progress of human civilization is practically connected with the observance of the divine precepts of Christ. The Greeks have never admitted this truth into their minds. On the contrary, they have laboured strenuously to corrupt Christianity by the infusion of a national spirit. Their church is a great effort to make Christianity a Greek institution; and when the pure principles of religion were found to be at variance with ecclesiastical restrictions, the Greeks made ecclesiastical orthodoxy, not Christian piety, the essence of their national church. They resuscitated the spirit of Paganism under a new form. At a very early period the Greeks placed the Gospel in a subordinate position to the councils of the church, by making them legislative assemblies of Christianity, instead of being administrative councils for maintaining national churches in strict conformity with the precepts of Christ’s Gospel.

Mohammed II understood perfectly the character of his subjects. He spoke their language, and knew their thoughts. After the conquest of Constantinople, he availed himself of the hoary bigotry and infantine vanity of Hellenic dotage to use the Greek Church as a means of enslaving the nation. The orthodox clergy had separated themselves from the imperial government before the taking of Constantinople, and Mohammed II availed himself of the hostile feeling with which they regarded the last unfortunate emperor, to attach them to his government. The last patriarch of the Greek empire retired to Rome in the year 1451, where he died eight years later. The sultan found the Greek Church in such a state of disorganization from the flight of the patriarch and its disputes with the Emperor Constantine, as to admit of his reconstituting its hierarchy, according to his own political views. The orthodox party was restored to power, and George Scholarios, who assumed the monastic name of Gennadios, was selected by the sultan to fill the office of patriarch, and act as minister of ecclesiastical affairs for the Sublime Porte. Gennadios was respected by his countrymen for his learning and morality; but his public conduct testifies that he had more than an ordinary share of the narrow-minded bigotry which perverted the judgment of his contemporaries.

When the unfortunate Emperor Constantine XI confirmed the union of the Greek and Latin Churches in the year 1452, Gennadios exerted all his influence to prevent the orthodox from assisting the schismatic emperor in the defence of Constantinople. His bigotry so completely extinguished his patriotic feelings that he predicted the destruction of the Greek empire as a punishment which Heaven would inflict on the people, to mark God’s reprobation of Constantine’s fall from orthodoxy. Sultan Mohammed, who spoke Greek fluently, and who was perfectly acquainted with the influence the different parties in the church possessed over the people, treated the most popular of the clergy with marked favour He saw the advantages that would result from using them as his agents in reconciling the laity to the Othoman domination. With that profound political skill which enabled him to use his opponents as the instruments of his ends, he selected the bigoted Gennadios as the new orthodox patriarch, and made use of him as an instrument to obtain for himself, though a Mohammedan prince, the ancient personal position of the Byzantine sovereigns as protector of the orthodox church and master of the Greek hierarchy. His policy was completely successful. The sultans never involved themselves in ecclesiastical disputes. The contempt which the Mussulmans then entertained for all Christians saved them from this folly; to them the Orthodox and the Catholic were equally distant from the light of truth. Theological differences and church govern­ment only interested them as questions of public order and police, and personal preferences were only determined by pecuniary payments. Hence the Greek Church was for a long period left at liberty to arrange its own internal affairs; its vices and its virtues were the spontaneous efforts of its own members; its religious action was rarely interfered with, and it must bear the blame if morality and faith did not prosper within its bosom.

It is generally said that, in virtue of the privileges conceded by Mohammed II to the Greek Church, the Patriarch of Constantinople is elected by an assembly composed of Greek bishops who happen to be officially resident at the seat of the patriarchate, joined to a certain number of the neighbouring clergy, under the presidency of the metropolitan of Heraclea. But the truth is, that the Patriarch of Constantinople is appointed by the sultan pretty much in the same way as the archbishop of Canterbury is appointed by the sovereign of England. Mohammed II, after naming Gennadios patriarch, wished him to be instituted in his ecclesiastical dignity according to the ancient ceremonial of the church, in order to prevent the election producing new dissensions. The great object of the sultan was to re-establish the patriarchate in such a manner as to give it the greatest influence over the minds of the whole body of the orthodox clergy and laity. The patriarch Gennadios, and the bishops who survived the taking of Constantinople, were supported by the Othoman government in their exertions to restore the whole fabric of the Eastern Church, in outward form as well as in religious doctrine, to its condition before the Council of Florence in 1439. The synods and councils of the Greek Church, since the taking of Constantinople, have been tolerated by the Sublime Porte only so far as they facilitated administrative measures, without conferring any independent influence on the Greek clergy. The rescript of the sultan has always been necessary to authorize a bishop to exercise his eccle­siastical functions in the see to which he has been elected. The Mohammedan sovereign, as master of the orthodox church, retained in his own hands the unlimited power of deposing both patriarchs and bishops. The absolute power of condemning every Greek ecclesiastic, whether patriarch, monk, or parish priest, to exile or death, was a prerogative of the sultan which was never doubted.

Mohammed II, nevertheless, invested the patriarch with privileges which gave him great civil as well as ecclesiastical power over his countrymen. He was authorized by the usages of the church to summon synods and decide ecclesiastical differences; and by the concessions of the sultan to hold courts of law for the decision of civil cases, with permission to enforce his sentences by decrees of excommunication, a punishment which few Greeks had courage to encounter. A virtuous and patriotic clergy might have rendered these privileges a source of national improvement, an incitement to good conduct, and an encouragement to true religion, for Mohammed and his successors would willingly have employed Christians, on whose morality they could depend, as a counter­poise to the military power of the Seljouk feudatories and the independent authority of the Ulema.

The demoralization of the clergy and laity was so great at the time of the Othoman conquest, that it would have required some time, and patient perseverance on the part of virtuous and able patriarchs, to render honesty an influential element in orthodox society. Gennadios had not even the purity of character necessary to stem the current of evil, and despairing of his own success in any project for the benefit of the church, he resigned the patriarchate towards the end of the year 1458, and retired to the monastery of St. John the Precursor, on Mount Menikion, near Serres. Gennadios, and the three patriarchs who followed him in succession, entered on their office without making any present or paying any tribute or purchase-money to the Porte; but their government of the church was disturbed by internal dissensions and intrigues among the clergy and laity. The third patriarch, Joasaph, a man of tranquil disposition, was driven frantic by the incessant quarrels around him, in which he could not avoid taking some part. Despair and disgust at last so far overpowered his reason, that he attempted to put an end to his life by throwing himself into a well. He was fortunately taken out alive, and the Greeks were spared the scandal of hearing that their patriarch had voluntarily plunged into the pains of hell to escape the torment of ruling the orthodox church on earth.

After the conquest of Trebizond, the Greek clergy and nobles formed themselves into two great parties, the Constantinopolitans and the Trapezuntines, who contended for supremacy at the patriarchate as the green and blue factions had striven in the hippodrome of the Byzantine empire. The exiles of Trebizond spared no efforts to place a member of their party at the head of the orthodox church. They knew that much valuable patronage in the church would be placed at their disposal, and, spurred on by interest, they allowed neither a sense of justice nor a feeling of patriotism to arrest their intrigues. To gratify their ambition, they suggested to the sultan a new source of revenue, drawn from the demoralization of the clergy and the degradation of their nation. The fourth patriarch who was appointed without simony was Markos, a Constantinopolitan. The dissensions which had driven Joasaph frantic increased under Markos, and the Trapezuntine party brought forward various charges against him. At last they supported their petition for his deposition by offering to pay into the sultan’s treasury a thousand ducats on the election of their own candidate. Mohammed II is said by a Greek historian to have smiled at the intensity of the envy displayed by the Greeks, which rendered their customs, their laws, and even their religion, powerless to restrain their intrigues². He accepted the purchase-money, and allowed the Greeks to introduce that black stain of simony into their hierarchy which soon spread over their whole ecclesiastical establishment. From this time simony, which is the worst of ecclesiastical heresies, became a part of the constitution of the orthodox church.

Simeon of Trebizond, who gained the patriarchal throne by this act of simony, lost it by female influence. The ladies of the sultan’s harem began already to traffic in promotions. But it would answer no good purpose to pursue the history of these corruptions into greater detail. The bribe paid to the Porte was increased at each election, and when it became evident to all that the patriarchate could be obtained by money, an additional impulse was given to the spirit of intrigue and calumny, which has always been too active in Greek society. The vainglory of the Greeks, as much as their ecclesiastical extortions, roused the ambition of the Servians, who succeeded in placing a Servian monk, named Raphael, on the patriarchal throne of Constantinople as eighth in succession under Othoman domination. His nomination was purchased by an engagement to render the church liable to an annual tribute of two thousand ducats.

The account the Greeks give of the Patriarch Raphael presents their church in a very contemptible light. They say that he was a confirmed drunkard, and frequently appeared at the most solemn services of religion in such a condition as to be unable to stand without support. He was also so ignorant of the Greek language as to be compelled to use an interpreter in his communications with the Greek clergy who had elected him. His love of wine was a just ground for his deposition; his ignorance of Greek ought to have prevented his election.

Maximos, who succeeded Raphael, had a slit nose. His face had been thus disfigured for defending the cause of Markos against the Trapezuntine party. Mohammed II died during the patriarchate of Maximos, A.D. 1481. The tenth patriarch was Niphon, metropolitan of Thessalonica, whose father was an Albanian primate of the Morea, but whose mother was a Greek. He was highly esteemed by his contemporaries for his eloquence, but his moral conduct was not irreproach­able, as appears from an anecdote which proves that he was guilty of perjury. Simeon of Trebizond died without leaving any heir to his wealth, which was very great. Niphon sub­orned false witnesses, in order to appropriate the fortune of Simeon to the use of the patriarchate. The perjury was discovered by the Turks, and Niphon was deposed.

The misconduct of the clergy degraded the position of the church, and stimulated the avarice of the Turks by augmenting the offers of purchase-money for ecclesiastical offices. In this public prostitution of religion, the clergy endeavoured to persuade the people that patriotic feeling, more than personal interest, was the principal motive of their intrigues and crimes, and the bigotry of the people prevented their scrutinizing very severely any conduct likely to prove advan­tageous to the church.

The credulity of the Greeks enabled the clergy to increase their popularity by circulating strange falsehoods among the people. We find a curious instance of the ignorance and credulity of the people, and of their readiness to confound right and wrong for the glory of their church, recorded in the history of the patriarchs. Though a fable, it deserves notice as a reflection of the national mind.

During the reign of Sultan Suleiman the Lawgiver, while Loufti Pasha, the historian, was grand-vizier (a.d. 1539-1541), the attention of the divan was called to the circumstance that it was the duty of the sultan, as caliph of Islam, to destroy all the places of worship possessed by infidels in every town taken by storm. As Constantinople had been so conquered by Mohammed II, it was consequently the duty of Suleiman to shut up all the Greek churches in the city, or to convert them into mosques. A fetva to this effect was delivered by the mufti, and the sultan issued an ordinance to carry it into effect. The Patriarch Jeremiah was smitten with terror on hearing the news. He immediately mounted his mule and hastened to Loufti Pasha, who had always treated him with kindness. The grand-vizier and the patriarch held a secret conference, and concerted a scheme for evading the execution of the sultan’s orders.

A meeting of the divan was held shortly after, for the purpose of communicating the ordinance to the patriarch and the Greek priests. Jeremiah appeared before the ministers of the Porte, and stated with confidence that Constantinople did not fall within the provisions of the ordinance, not having been taken by storm by the Mussulmans. He declared that a capitulation had been concluded between the Emperor Constantine and Sultan Mohammed before the gates were opened. Well might the members of the divan wonder, cast up their eyes to heaven, and caress their beards at this strange information; but as they had all received large presents from the patriarch before the meeting, they waited in silence to see what turn matters would take. The grand-vizier declared that, as the business now assumed a new character, it would be better to discuss it in a grand divan on the following day.

The report that all the Christian churches in Constantinople were to be destroyed excited general interest, and, long before the meeting of the divan, crowds of Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Catholics, and Jews were assembled to hear the result. The whole open space from the gate of the Serai to the court of St. Sophia’s was filled with people. The patriarch waited long without before he was summoned to enter the divan. When he was at last admitted, he made his prostrations to the viziers with becoming reverence, and then stood erect to speak boldly for his Church. The archonts of the Greek nation crowded behind him. All admired the dignity of his aspect. His white beard descended on his breast, and the sweat fell in large drops from his forehead, for the Greek historian, with national exaggeration and irreverence, suggests that he emulated the passion of Christ, of whose orthodox church he was the representative on earth. A long pause intervened, according to the supercilious and grave etiquette of the Othomans. The grand-vizier at length spoke, “Patriarch of the Greeks, the sultan has issued an ordinance to enforce the execution of our law which prohibits the existence of any place of public worship for infidels in the walled cities we have conquered with the sword. This city was taken by storm by the Great Sultan Mohammed II, therefore let your priests remove all their property from the churches they now occupy and deliver up the keys to our officers”. To this summons the patriarch replied in a distinct voice, “O grand vizier, I cannot answer for what happened in other cities of the sultan’s empire, but with regard to this city of Constantinople, I can solemnly affirm that the Emperor Constantine, with the nobles and people, surrendered it voluntarily to Sultan Mohammed”. The grand-vizier cautioned the patri­arch against asserting anything which he could not prove by the testimony of witnesses, and asked if he was prepared to prove his assertion by the evidence of Mussulmans. The patriarch replied in the affirmative, and the affair was adjourned for twenty days.

The Greeks were greatly alarmed, and men of every rank offered to furnish the patriarch with large sums of money, in order to enable him to bribe the members of the divan to save their churches, but the patriarch had already concerted his plan. He sent an agent to Adrianople to find two aged Mussulmans, who, as was doubtless well known to the grand­vizier, were willing to testify to anything the patriarch might desire, on being well paid. The witnesses were found and conducted to Constantinople, where the patriarch welcomed them on their arrival, embraced them, and took care that they should be well lodged, clothed, and fed. After they had rested from the fatigues of their journey, they were conducted to the grand-vizier, who spoke kindly to them, and assured them that they might give evidence in favour of the patriarch of the Greeks without fear.

The day appointed for the final determination of the cause having arrived, the patriarch presented himself before the divan. The grand-vizier inquired if he was now prepared to adduce the testimony of Mussulman witnesses. Two aged Turks were then led into the divan. Their beards were white as the purest snow, red circles surrounded their eyes, in which the tears gathered incessantly; their hands and their feet moved tremulously. The viziers were amazed, for no one remembered to have seen men so advanced in years. They stood together before the assembly like two brothers whom death had forgotten.

In reply to the questions of the grand-vizier, they told their names, and said that eighty-four years had elapsed since the conquest of Constantinople. Both declared that they were then eighteen years old, and that they had now attained the age of one hundred and two. They narrated the conquest of Constantinople in the following manner:—

“After the siege had been formed by land and sea, and breaches were made in the city walls, the Emperor of the Greeks, seeing that there was no possibility of resisting the assault, sent a deputation to the great sultan to ask for terms of capitulation. The sultan granted him the following conditions, a copy of which he signed, and read aloud to the army:—

‘I, Sultan Mohammed, pardon the Emperor Constantine and his nobles. I grant their petition that they may live in peace under my protection, and retain their slaves and property. I declare that the people of the city of Constantinople shall be free from illegal exactions, and that their children shall not be taken to be enrolled among my janissaries. The present charter shall be binding on me and my successors for ever.’ The deputation delivered this charter to the emperor, who came out of the city and presented the keys to the sultan, who, on receiving them, kissed Constantine, and made him sit down on his right hand. For three days the two princes rejoiced together. The emperor then conducted the sultan into the city of Constantinople, and resigned his empire”.

The members of the divan, after listening to this account of the conquest from the old men who were present, drew up a report, and Sultan Suleiman, on reading this report, ordered that the Christians should retain possession of their churches, and that no man should molest their patriarch or their priests. Such is the modern myth by which Romaic vanity glorified its own talents, and satirized the ignorance and corruption of the Turks.

The great Suleiman, called by Christians the Magnificent, and by the Othomans the Legislator, is represented as an ignorant barbarian, and his learned grand-vizier, Loufti, the historian of the Othoman empire, as a corrupted tool of a Greek patriarch. But the strangest feature of the fable is, the candid simplicity with which the falsehoods and frauds of the patriarch are held up to the admiration of Christians. The fruits of simony in the church are displayed in the moral obtuseness of the people. The ignorance of the inventor of the tale is perhaps less astonishing, for even the wealthiest Greeks at this time penetrated with difficulty into Othoman society. The ecclesiastical historian was ignorant of the name of the person who had been grand-vizier eighty-four years after the taking of Constantinople; it is not wonderful, there­fore, that he had never heard of the learning of Loufti Pasha. He probably knew that Loufti was an Albanian by birth, and the Albanians were proverbially an unlettered race; he could not, therefore, suspect that Loufti had employed the years he lived as an exile at Demotika in writing a history of the Othoman empire, which is still preserved. A com­parison of the flourishing state of Turkish literature with the degraded state of knowledge among the Greeks during the three centuries which followed the Othoman conquest, offers a singular anomaly when contrasted with the constant assumption of mental superiority on the part of the ignorant Greeks over their more accomplished masters. The estima­tion in which Turkish literature was held in Western Europe was not very different from its appreciation by the Greeks, until Von Hammer, in his History of the Othoman Empire, furnished us with accurate information concerning the many learned men who flourished at Constantinople. From him Christian Europe heard, for the first time, that several distinguished statesmen had employed some portion of their time amidst the toils of an active and glorious public life, in the cultivation of literature and in the labours of historical composition; and that the literary productions of several sultans are still known, even to the present degenerate race of Othomans. For several generations after the conquest of Constantinople, the Othoman Turks were really entitled to take as high rank in literature as in politics and war. But the Greeks have always viewed the history of other races through a mist of prejudices, which has distorted the objects they contemplated.

The Greek clergy, and those who believe that the nation owes its preservation to the church, have boasted that the priesthood persuaded the people to repudiate the judicial administration of the Othoman government, and to refer their differences to the decision of their patriarchs and bishops. This, however, is hardly a correct view of Greek society. Under the Othoman domination, the great mass of the Greek nation was engaged in agricultural pursuits, and lived scattered in small villages, removed from immediate contact with Turkish courts of law. Fortunately for them, the communal system, by which they elected their village magistrates or head men, was not disturbed by the Othoman conquest; on the contrary, the Turks allowed these village chiefs more liberty of action than they had enjoyed under the centralizing and aristocratic spirit of the Greek empire. The head men of the village, aided by the parish priest, decided all ordinary judicial cases relating to rights of possession, in a court held before the church, and in this court the most respected among the inhabitants formed a kind of jury. The cases which required a reference to another tribunal were usually those relating to questions of succession, which, by the privileges granted to the Greek Church, were placed under the jurisdiction of the bishop. The usages of the people had more to do with the repudiation of Othoman courts of law than either the conduct or the example of the clergy. The bishop was too distant, and too decidedly an instrument of the Othoman government, to secure the implicit confidence of the people where religion was not directly concerned, while, on the other hand, the general ignorance of the secular clergy prevented their acquiring any judicial authority even as arbiters. The fact, however, is incontestable, that the Greeks displayed a steady determination to avoid, as much as lay in their power, every reference to Turkish tribunals. This determination arose, in part, from the defective administration of justice established in the Othoman empire, and the notorious corruption of the judges. Indeed, the Mussulmans themselves entertained the greatest aversion to seek redress from their own tribunals, and the dislike manifested by the Turkish population to litigation, often spoken of as a national virtue, was nothing more than a dread of being plundered by their judges. This corruption of the Turkish tribunals being generally acknowledged, it was regarded as one of the worst crimes of which a Greek could be guilty, to appeal to a Mohammedan judge if a Christian bishop could be made arbitrator of his difference. The bishops, however, never assumed more judicial authority than had been conceded to them by Mohammed II. Their gains, as instruments of the sultan’s power, induced them to recognize the power of the sword in civil and criminal justice, and, to justify their obedience, and even servility, they cited our Saviour’s words, “My kingdom is not of this world”.

We have seen with what eagerness the Greek clergy recognized the sultan as the judge of their patriarch’s fitness for his sacred office. They displayed the same readiness to appeal to the Turkish law tribunals, when by so doing they could increase their ecclesiastical revenues. The conduct of the Patriarch Jeremiah affords a memorable example. The Archbishop of Achrida claimed the bishopric of Berrhoea, as one of the sees dependent on his jurisdiction as Patriarch of Bulgaria; but the Patriarch of Constantinople considered this bishop as a suffragan of the metropolitan of Thessalonica, and within the patriarchate of Constantinople. To decide the question, Jeremiah applied to the mufti for a fetva, declaring that after a lapse of one hundred years’ uninterrupted possession, it was unlawful to revive a claim to property. With this fetva the patriarch presented himself before the divan; and having proved that the church of Constantinople, and not that of Bulgaria, had exercised jurisdiction in the bishopric of Berrhoea for more than a century, his rights were fully recognized. The production of the fetva had, however, been supported by a considerable bribe, according to the established procedure of Turkish justice, and Jeremiah burdened the church with an annual tribute of four thousand one hundred ducats. Under the Patriarch Dionysius, who succeeded Jeremiah, the election present, or bakshish, to the Porte was increased to three thousand ducats. The contemporary ecclesiastical history of the Greeks is filled with complaints of the simoniacal practices of the clergy, and the Turks displayed their increased contempt for the Greek priesthood by ordering them to take down the cross which had until this time crowned the dome of the belfry at the patriarchate.

The traffic in ecclesiastical preferment went on increasing. The patriarchs, having purchased their own place, disposed of the vacant bishoprics in the orthodox church to the highest bidder; they added to the dues they exacted from their clergy, and augmented the debts of the church. To such a degree had these corruptions proceeded, that in the interval between 1670 and 1678, the Patriarch of Constantinople was changed six times, and the purchase-money of a new candidate was raised to the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars. The annual tribute had then reached six thousand ducats, and the debts of the patriarchate amounted to three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, two dollars being equal to one ducat.

Mutual distrust was a feature in the character of the higher clergy at Constantinople, and if it did not originate, it perpetuated and enforced, one measure which was adopted by the members of the synod, to guard against treachery on the part of any single individual of the body. The patriarchal seal was divided into four parts, the custody of which was intrusted to four metropolitans, but these four parts could only be used when united by a key of which the patriarch retained possession, and he consequently alone possessed the power of affixing it to a public document. By this contrivance no patriarchal writing could be legalized without the concurrence of the four prelates. Want of confidence was shown in every rank of Greek society, at least among the urban population. The common people declared that they considered it a blessing to give hospitality to a parish priest, but that it was a curse to be obliged to receive a monk into their houses. The secular priests in Greece must always be married before they enter on their parochial functions; the monks, who wandered about the country, or who dwelt in the cities, were often men of doubtful character, or men deeply engaged in political and ecclesiastical intrigues, either for themselves or as agents for others.

From what has been said, it is evident that, both as a political and ecclesiastical institution, the Greek Church offered a feeble resistance to the Othoman government. It had been unsuccessful in opposing the progress of Mohammedanism with the Arabs in the seventh and eighth centuries, and with the Seljouk Turks in the eleventh and twelfth, and it proved very ineffectual as a barrier to its progress under the Othomans in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The weakness of the Greek Church arose in part from the defective constitution of Greek society. The governing class in the ecclesiastical establishment was selected from the aristocratic element, and no more selfish and degraded class of men has ever held power than the archonts of modem Greece and the Phanariots of Constantinople. Under the Greek emperors and the Othoman sultans we find them equally ready to sacrifice the interests of their nation and the good of posterity to the gratification of their own avarice and ambition. The Greek hierarchy only shared the character of the class from which it was selected.

The division of the orthodox clergy into regular and secular increased the worldly-minded tendencies of the priesthood. It rendered the regular clergy avaricious and intriguing; it reduced the secular clergy to so low a rank in society that they were generally obliged to gain money by manual labour. The bishops possessed considerable revenues, and a jurisdiction in civil affairs; the monasteries possessed large landed estates; and the whole patronage of the establishment was vested in the hands of the patriarch and the bishops, who were selected from the monastic class. The monasteries served as places of retreat and shelter for the members of the aristocracy who sought to escape Turkish oppression, or who aspired at ecclesiastical promotion. The wealth of the monasteries rendered the lives of these noble monks easy, and they devoted their leisure to political intrigues, to which the quasi-elective forms and open simony of ecclesiastical nominations opened an extensive field. The result was, that though for three centuries the Greek monks were placed in not unfavourable circumstances for the cultivation of Hellenic literature and Christian theology, they forsook these studies entirely, and were more active as Othoman agents than as Greek priests.

The prudent policy of the Othomans to a certain extent conciliated the feelings of the orthodox. They treated the higher clergy with far more respect than was shown to them by the Latins. The sultan conceded some marks of honour, and considerable power and wealth, to the higher Greek clergy; while, on the contrary, the Venetians and Genoese, in their possessions in Greece, excluded the Greek clergy both from honour and power. The consequence was, that the bigotry of the people was inflamed by the galled feelings of the higher clergy: hatred to the Latins was inculcated as the first of orthodox virtues.

This spirit of bigotry drew a strong line of separation between the Eastern and Western Christians, and tended greatly to impede the progress of political civilization among the orthodox. Yet so servile was the priesthood in pursuing its personal advantages, that many members of the Greek Church were found who pretended to countenance both Catholic and Protestant interpretations of the doctrines of the church, when the influence of the French, the Dutch, or the English ambassador at Constantinople appeared most likely to advance their intrigues. Most of the disputes in the Greek Church, which during the seventeenth century induced the Catholics and the Protestants in turn to hope for the establishment of a close union with the orthodox, must be attributed to political interest, not to conformity of doctrine. Cyril Lucar doubtless held some theological opinions tending to Calvinism, and Cyril of Berrhoea, his successor, inclined to admissions that savoured'of Catholicism; but public opinion, both among the clergy and the people of Greece, remained unshaken in its devotion to the national and orthodox church, and bigoted in its hostility to every other. The historian of the Greek Church cannot, therefore, appeal to the contests among the Greek ecclesiastics in the seventeenth century with any confidence, as indicating a wish in either party to modify the theological doctrines, or reform the simoniacal practices, of their church.

The obligations which the modern Greeks really owe to their church, as an instrument in the preservation of the national existence during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, have been greatly magnified by the wish of the people to invest the only prominent national institution they possessed with all imaginary power and virtue. We have seen how little the regular clergy did to resist Othoman supremacy and the moral power of Mohammedanism. Still there can be no doubt that the secular clergy supplied some of the moral strength which enabled the Greeks so successfully to resist the Othoman power. It is true the parish priests were a class of men destitute of learning, and possessing no great personal authority; but as the agricultural classes in the villages formed the heart of the nation, the parish priests had an influence on the fate of Greece quite incommensurate with their social rank. The reverence of the peasantry for their church was increased by the feeling that their own misfortunes were shared by the secular clergy. They believed that every doctrine of their church was of divine institution, and they adhered to all its ceremonies and fasts as affording visible symbols of their faith. As with the Mohammedans, forms became the strongest bond of religion. In the meantime, the secular clergy, without seeking the mighty charge, and without being suited worthily to fulfil the mission, became by the nature of things the real representatives of the national Church, and the national ministers of religion. To their conduct we must surely attribute the confidence which the agricultural population retained in the promises pf the Gospel; and their firm persistence in a persecuted faith. The grace of God operated by their means to preserve Christianity under the domination of the Othomans.

The situation of the secular clergy in large towns was neither so respectable nor so influential as in the agricultural districts. They were generally as ignorant as the village priests, and were too often men of much less virtue. Indeed, we find that the ignorance and low condition of the secular clergy in the towns of the Othoman empire, which excited the contempt of travellers, was too generally taken as the indication of their rank and position in the rural districts. But in the agricultural villages they were the equals of the leading men among the laity, while in the towns they were the equals and companions of the lower orders. In the agricultural districts they escaped the influence of that corruption which demoralized the higher clergy; but in the towns they displayed the vices of their own low grade of society, which were more disgusting to others, and more generally offensive, than the polished wickedness of their superiors. Spon tells us that three instances of apostasy occurred among the secular clergy of Corinth in the year 1675 All general descriptions of society must be liable to many exceptions, and never were anomalies more numerous than in Greece. There was probably no town in which some virtuous members of the secular clergy did not reside, and there were doubtless many rural districts in which the name of a virtuous bishop was respected. Many a city had its respected archont; and many a province had its much-feared brigand and its loathed apostate.

The parochial clergy of Greece lived and died in the same social circle in which they were born and bred. Their educa­tion in the country was the same as that of the better class of the village proprietors around them, of whom they were the companions and spiritual guides. As a body, they were taught by their position to feel the necessity of securing the respect of their parishioners, and on the whole they succeeded. Their ignorance and rusticity, not their immorality and avarice, are made the themes of reproach by travellers, who echoed the opinions of the inhabitants of towns and of the higher orders of the clergy. The parochial clergy could form no ambitious projects which required them to flatter Othoman officials, and hence they held little intercourse with the Turks; while the most active members of the monastic order were eager to cultivate Mussulman society, and to study the Turkish language, as a means for advancing their preferment in the church. Not unnaturally, therefore, we find the secular clergy as superior to the regular in patriotism as they were inferior in learning; and this superiority gave them no inconsiderable moral influence in defending the orthodox church against the attacks of Mohammedanism. Their simple lives, and the purity of their moral conduct, united them in harmony with the laity, in whose fortunes they were directly interested, and in whose feelings they participated. In the lowliness of their social position they emulated the worldly rank of their divine Master; and the history of the Greek people attests that their humble efforts strengthened the great body of the people to persist in their devotion to the Christian faith unto the end.

But, after all, the national existence of the Greek race depended ultimately on the character and fortitude of the people themselves, which could only be partially strengthened by the influence of the clergy. Interest or ambition may be powerful enough to induce a single class of men, a church, a nobility, a corporation, or a privileged body, to assume an artificial character, but a whole people cannot conceal its national vices, nor imitate virtues which it does not possess. No nation can boast of greater firmness of purpose, or stricter devotion to its church, than the Greek. Yet Greek society was divided into so many branches, living under the influence of such different social circumstances, that during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries it offers a great variety of aspects. Orthodox Greeks differed from Catholic Greeks; the subjects of the sultan were unlike the subjects of the Venetian republic; there was a marked contrast between the urban and rural population, and between the regular and secular clergy, even in the different provinces of the Othoman empire. In no other race of men did so little sympathy exist between the different portions of the nation as among the various orders of the Greeks at this period, yet none more vigorously repudiated all foreign influence.

The nation was divided into two great divisions, whose character is more distinct, and whose separation is much more complete in the East, than among the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon races; namely, the urban population, and the cultivators of the soil. These two classes have perpetuated their existence for ages in different stages of civilization, and their increase and decrease have been determined by different political circumstances and social laws. The cultivators of the soil formed, as I have said before, the great majority, and, in fact, really constituted the Greek nation during the period embraced in this chapter. Among the rural population alone some sentiments of manly vigour and true patriotism still survived. The citizens had adopted the philanthropic selfishness of the archonts, regular clergy, and Jewish colonists, with whom they lived, and with whom they struggled for preferment in the Othoman service. The agricultural population, therefore, the despised and ignorant peasantry, were the only class to which the patriot could look forward as likely at any future period to afford materials for recovering the national independence. The extinction of this class, which was often a possible contingency, would have reduced the Greeks in Constantinople, Athens, and Sparta to the same condition as the Jews in Palestine and the Copts in Cairo.

The urban population was again subdivided into two sections, which had almost as few feelings and interests in common as if they had belonged to different nations. These were the aristocracy, which grew up as officials and servants of the Othoman government, and the industrious classes, whether merchants, shopkeepers, artizans, or day-labourers. But this latter class, having no organ among the clergy, and being unable to give expression to its feelings, was compelled to accept the leading of the official aristocracy and the dignified clergy, and to treat its worst oppressors as national leaders. Thus we see that the monastic and parochial clergy, the officials in the Turkish service, the industrious classes in the towns, and the agricultural population, formed five distinct bodies in the Greek nation, acting under the guidance of different, and often of adverse, circumstances and interests. These heterogeneous elements prevented the Greeks from coalescing into one body and offering an united national resistance to the Othoman domination. Socially, as well as geographically, the Hellenic race did not form one compact body.

A correct estimate of the condition of the people can only be obtained by observing how the individuals in each class passed through life; how far they were enabled to better their fortunes; or how they sank gradually in the social scale under the weight of Othoman oppression. The authority and importance of the higher clergy, and the restricted sphere of action of the parish priests, have been already noticed. The patriarch and the bishops purchased their dignities, and repaid themselves by selling ecclesiastical rank and privileges; the priests purchased holy orders, and sold licenses to marry. The laity paid for marriages, divorces, baptisms, pardons, and dispensations of many kinds, to their bishops. The extent to which patriarchs and bishops interfered in family disputes and questions of property is proved by contemporary documents

The trade of the Greeks had been ruined by the fiscal oppressions of the Greek emperors; and, before the conquest of Constantinople, the commerce of Greece had been trans­ferred to the Italian states. Under the firm government of Mohammed II a wider sphere was opened for the commercial activity of his Greek subjects. They not only received protection within the extensive bounds of the Othoman empire, but foreign states were compelled to admit them into ports under the sultan’s flag, from which they had been excluded in the time of the Greek emperors. During the early part of the sixteenth century the port of Ancona was crowded with vessels under the Othoman flag, loading and unloading their cargoes; and the exchange was filled with Greek and Turkish merchants, some of whose houses were said, by their rivals the Venetians, to do business to the amount of 500,000 ducats annually. In the year 1549, about two hundred Greek families were settled as traders in Ancona, where they were allowed to have their own church. Barcelona also carried on a considerable trade in the produce of the Levant with Ragusa, Rhodes, and Cairo. The long wars of Spain with the Othoman empire prevented all direct trade, but it was the fiscal measures of Philip II, and not the extension of Spanish commerce with America, which at last ruined the trade of Catalonia with the Levant. Greek merchants travelled to Azof, Moscow, and Antwerp, where their gains were very great. They wore the dress and assumed the manners of Turks; for they found that in western Europe they were more respected in the character of Othoman subjects than as schismatic Greeks. The middle classes in the towns were also at this period superior in industry to the same classes in many parts of western Europe. Various manufactured articles were for two centuries generally imported from the sultan’s dominions into other countries, particularly camlets, a strong Stuff composed of silk and mohair called grogram, rich brocaded silks, embroidered scarfs, Turkey carpets, leather, and yarn; besides Angora wool, cotton wool, and raw silk, flax, and hemp, in addition to the usual produce exported from the Levant, southern Italy, and Sicily, at the present day. Before the middle of the seventeenth century the people of Manchester had already turned their attention to the cotton manufacture, and the material they used was purchased in London from the merchants who imported it from Cyprus and other parts of Turkey. Livadea and Athens, as has been already mentioned, supplied sailcloth for the Othoman navy. English ships already visited the Morea and Mesolonghi to load currants, and often brought back rich scarfs, sashes of variegated silk and gold tissue, and Turkey leather of the brightest dyes, which were manufactured in different towns in Greece, particularly at Patras, Gastouni, and Lepanto.

Soon after the taking of Constantinople, the ancient aristocracy of Greece was exterminated. The young children were forcibly tom from their parents and educated as Mohammedans; many adults voluntarily embraced Islam. Mohammed II systematically put to death all men whom he supposed possessed sufficient power or influence to disturb his government. Manuel, the last male scion of the imperial family of Palaeologos, embraced Mohammedanism. But the protection which the sultan granted to the lower classes, soon enabled a number of individual Greeks to acquire wealth by commerce as well as by acting in the capacity of agents for provincial pashas, and of farmers of the revenue. Several of these men claimed a descent from females of the great Byzantine families, and, according to a common practice among the Greeks, assumed any surname they pleased. One of the best known of this class is Michael Cantacuzenos, who was famous for his wealth and pride in the latter half of the sixteenth century. His rapacity is celebrated in Greek history, and his magnificence and misfortunes in modern Greek poetry.

Michael Cantacuzenos had accumulated great wealth by successful mercantile speculations. To increase his riches and gratify his ambition he became a farmer of the revenue, and, as such, he was remarkable for his rapacity, and the inexorable severity with which he collected the taxes due by the Christians. His corruption and exactions obtained for him the execration of the Greek people, and the name of Sheitanoglu, or Devil’s Child. His influence with Mohammed Sokolli, the celebrated grand-vizier of Selim II and Murad III, enabled him to mix in every political intrigue by which he could gain money. He carried on some of his projects with the concurrence of the Patriarch Metrophanes, but having afterwards quarrelled with the patriarch, he accused Metrophanes of revealing state secrets to the ambassadors of the Emperor of Germany, Busbeck and Wys, who had purchased many valuable ancient manuscripts from the clergy. Metrophanes was deposed, and he then demanded from Cantacuzenos the repayment of 16,000 ducats which he had paid as a bribe to purchase that archont’s support. As the grand-vizier Mohammed Sokolli, and the viziers Pial6 and Achmet, shared in the extortions of Cantacuzenos, the patriarch could obtain no redress. The wealth of Cantacuzenos was so enormous, that he was able to build and present to the sultan several galleys after the battle of Lepanto.

Cantacuzenos, like every Greek, had a mortal enemy among his own countrymen; the name of this rival was Palaeologos; and these two Turkish tax-gatherers revived the feuds of the houses whose names they had assumed. Cantacuzenos amassed his wealth with the rapacity which has been the standing reproach of Greek officials in the Othoman empire. But he lavished it with an ostentation of aristocratic pride which increased the envy of his rivals. When he rode through the streets of Constantinople on his mule, he was preceded by six running footmen, and followed by a train of slaves. When the influence of Mohammed Sokolli declined, it was easy for the intrigues of Palaeologos to inspire Sultan Murad III with a desire to appropriate the wealth of Cantacuzenos—wealth extorted from the sultan’s subjects, and therefore considered by the sultan as of right belonging to the imperial treasury. A political accusation was soon found, and Cantacuzenos was ordered to be strangled for intriguing in Moldavia. On the 3d of March 1578 he was hung in the gateway of a splendid palace at Anchialos, on the construction of which he had expended twenty thousand ducats

At this period the wealth of the Greek merchants, bankers, and farmers of the revenue, and the luxury and lavish expenditure of their wives and daughters, excited the wonder of European ambassadors and noble travellers who visited the East.

During the seventeenth century there was a constant destruction of the capital, employed in preceding ages on works of public utility and private advantage, over the whole surface of the Othoman empire. The neglect of the Porte, the extortions of pashas and primates, the ravages of corsairs, and the plundering of brigands, compelled the Greek landowner with each successive generation to sink lower in the social scale. Accordingly, during this period the Greek race disappeared from several districts, and abandoned the cultivation of the soil exclusively to Albanian peasants of a hardier frame and ruder habits of life. Into such a state of disorder had the Turkish administration fallen, that when Sultan Mohammed IV led his army to Belgrade in 1683, before sending his grand-vizier to besiege Vienna, it was regarded as a favour by the inhabitants of the villages on his line of march through Thrace, to be allowed to bum their houses, and conceal themselves and their property in the mountains, in order to escape the exactions of the feudal militia of Asia, who were now little better than brigands.

The arrival of the Spanish Jews in the Othoman empire at a period of great political depression in the whole Christian population, was particularly injurious to the Greeks. The Jews expelled from Granada settled in the towns of Turkey about the time that a large number of Turkish military colonists settled in Europe; and the sudden increase of the Mussulman warriors and landlords required a corresponding addition to the class of artizans and traders. The Greek population of the towns had suffered so severely in the fifteenth century from famines and plagues, as well as from the incessant slave-forays of the Seljouk and Othoman Turks, that Mohammed II was often compelled to have recourse to the rural population of Greece to repeople the towns he conquered. When subsequent conquests enriched the Othomans, and augmented the demand for all articles of luxury, the demand, suddenly created by a rapid career of conquest, was as suddenly supplied by the bigotry of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, who drove the Jews and Moors of their dominions into exile. In the latter part of the fifteenth century, Jewish colonists settled in great numbers in most of the large commercial cities of Turkey, where they immediately occupied various branches of industry formerly exclusively exercised by Greek artizans. Their arrival filled a void in society, and their superior dexterity in many branches of industry enabled them to resist successfully the rivalry of the Greek emigrants, who quitted the country to seek their fortunes in the commercial cities. For more than a century after the arrival of the Jews in the Othoman empire, they occupied a high social position. They were the principal physicians as well as merchants and bankers of the Turks. Throughout the greater part of the empire the best medical practitioners were Jews. They were the first to open regular shops in the streets of towns throughout the East for the sale of articles of common use, distinct from the magazines and workshops of the fabricant.

Before the end of the fifteenth century, from 30,000 to 40,000 Jews were settled at Constantinople, from 15,000 to 20,000 at Thessalonica, and great numbers at every seaport in Turkey. They were eager to display their gratitude to the Othomans, and the inhuman cruelties they had suffered from the Inquisition made them irreconcilable enemies of the Christians. It was natural, therefore, for them to employ all the influence they gained in the Othoman empire, by their services and industry, to inspire the Mussulmans with their own hatred to Christianity, and when the Mohammedans in Spain were persecuted and driven into exile, their efforts were attended with signal success. Thus the punishment of the bigotry and injustice of the Catholic Christians in Spain fell with greatest severity on the orthodox Christians in the Turkish dominions.

There was always a marked contrast in the character and conduct of the Turkish and Greek population, even when living in the same towns, moving in the same rank of life, and speaking, as was the case in some places both in Asia and Europe, the same language. The Turks, though they were more courageous, cruel, and bloodthirsty than the Greeks when roused to war, were in general far more orderly in conduct, and more obedient to established social laws. The Greeks, though servile and submissive when in the presence of power, were turbulent and insolent whenever there seemed a chance of their misconduct escaping punishment. With such a disposition, fear alone could secure order; and it is surprising how well the Othoman government preserved tranquillity in its extensive dominions, and established a greater degree of security for property among the middle classes, than generally prevailed in European states during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This end was obtained by a regular police, and by the prompt execution of a rude species of justice in cases of flagrant abuses and crimes. In the populous cities of the Othoman empire, and particularly in Constantinople, which contained more inhabitants than any three Christian capitals, the order which reigned in the midst of great social corruption, caused by extreme wealth, the conflux of many different nations, and the bigotry of several hostile religions, excited the wonder and admiration of every observant stranger. Perfect self-reliance, imperturbable equanimity, superiority to the vicissitudes of fortune, and a calm temper, compensated among the Othomans for laws which were notoriously defective and tribunals which were infamously venal. Knolles says, “you seldom see a murder or a theft committed by any Turk^”. European gentlemen accustomed to the barbarous custom of wearing swords on all occasions, were surprised to see Turks of the highest rank, distinguished for their valour and military exploits, walking about, even in provincial towns, unarmed, secure in the power of public order and the protection of the/ executive authority in the State.

The darkest night of ignorance covered Greece in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it was then almost as much forgotten in Christendom as it was neglected by the Othoman government. The Greeks had their whole atten­tion absorbed by the evils of the passing hour; they were forced to think day and night how they could best save their children from the collectors of the living tribute which re­cruited the ranks of the janissaries; their own persons from being enslaved by the pirates who never quitted their coasts; and their means of subsistence from being consumed by the exactions of pashas, and Othoman officials who appeared to be in perpetual motion in the sultan’s dominions. Ancestral records were forgotten, and no hope urged them to look forward to an earthly future. A few orthodox prejudices and local superstitions became the whole mental patrimony of the Hellenic race. Poverty, depopulation, and insecurity of property, seemed to threaten the Greeks with utter ruin.

At this crisis of the national fate, the sultan’s government lightened the sufferings of the Greeks by ceasing to enforce its worst act of oppression. The tribute of Christian children fell into desuetude in consequence of the decline in the numbers of the Christian population engaged in agriculture, which began to be felt as an evil by the Porte. A considerable portion of the Greek population in Asia Minor, and of the Sclavonian and Albanian population in Europe, embraced Mohammedanism to escape this tribute. The example began to be followed by the Greeks in Europe, and a considerable number of the Cretans apostatized soon after the conquest of their island. The sultan found no difficulty in recruiting his armies from the increased Mussulman population of his empire. The corps of janissaries ceased to admit tribute-children into its ranks. The permission which its members had received as early as the year 1578 of enrolling their children as recruits in the corps, ultimately transformed the finest body of regular troops in the world into a hereditary local militia of citizens. About the time this change was going on, the numerous renegades who were constantly entering the sultan’s service filled the Othoman armies with good soldiers, and saved the government the expense of rearing and disciplining tribute-children.

About the same time the fiscal oppression of the Porte fell so heavy on the landed proprietors and peasants, that the tribute of the healthiest children became an insupportable burden. The peasant sought refuge in the towns; the Turkish aga found his estate depopulated and uncultivated, and the timariot could no longer take the field with the armies of the sultan, attended by well-armed followers, as his father had done. The agricultural population of the Othoman empire, Mussulman and Christian, consequently united in opposing the collection of the tribute, and the Porte, feeling no urgent necessity to enforce its collection, gradually ceased to exact it.

For two centuries the Greek population had been diminishing in number, and the Turkish had been rapidly increasing. This change in their relative numbers was the principal cause of the abolition of this singular institution, which long formed the chief support of the sultan’s personal authority and the basis of the military superiority of the Othoman empire. It fell into disuse about the middle of the seventeenth century, not long after the conquest of Crete. The last recorded example of its exaction was in the last year of the administration of the grand-vizier Achmet Kueprili, A. D. 1676.

Thus the Greeks were relieved from the severest act of tyranny under which any nation had ever groaned for so long a time, by the force of circumstances and by the neglect of their masters, without a struggle on their part to rend their chains. History furnishes no example of a nation falling from so high a state of civilization, and perpetuating its existence in such degradation. As long as the Greeks furnished a tithe of their children to augment the strength of their oppressors, their condition was one of hopeless misery. That burden removed, the nation soon began to feel the possibility of improving its condition, and to look forward with hope into the future.

 

CHAPTER IV.

Venetian Domination in Greece, a. d. 1684-1718.