GREECE
739
GREECE
Patriarchs of Constantinople had succeeded in assert-
ing jurisdiction over all this vast territory, as well as
over Asia Minor and the purely Slav lands to the
North. After the schism of Cocrularius (1054) these
metropolitans and bishops followed their patriarch by
striking the pope's name from their diptychs. They,
too, like their chief, learned to abhor Latin customs, to
look on the Latin Church under the pope as a fallen
branch and a synagogue of Satan. There is no trace
of independent action in any of these local Greek
Churches. They all used the Byzantine Rite and fol-
lowed the Byzantine Patriarch faithfully. During the
short-lived unions of Lyons (1274) and Ferrara-Hor-
ence (1439) they became Uniats too. They cared for
the union as little as did their leaders at Constanti-
nople and fell away again as easily as they had joined.
The Latin conquest of their lands (after the Fourth
Crusade, in 1204) brought about a rival Latin hier-
archy and something very like persecution for the
Greeks. Naturally, they hated and scorned the Latin
bishops and groaned under the disabilities they suf-
fered from the Prankish princes and from Venice.
The Slavs invaded their lands, destroyed many of
their cities, so that Greek dioceses disappear because
there are no more Greeks left in great tracts of what
they still affect to call Greece; but the remnants that
maintain themselves still look to Constantinople for
orders and still keep the Byzantine Rite in Greek.
The Turkish conquest brought about still greater hard-
ships. Invited in the first instance as allies by the
fatal policy of the Emperor John VI (Cantacuzene,
1341-55), the Turks first took hold of European soil by
seizing Kallipolis (in the Thracian Chersonese) in 1356.
From this time they steadily advanced, taking city
after city, ravaging and plundering what they could
not keep. In 1361 they took .\drianople and madeit
their capital in Europe till the fall of Constantinople.
Then, moving north, they conquered the remnants of
Stephen Dushan's great Servian Empire (Battle of
Kossova, 1389). Lastly, nearly a century after they
had first landed in Europe, they finished their work by
taking Constantinople (29 May, 1453). From this
time till the nineteenth century the Greeks and the
Orthodox Church in CSreece were subject to a Moslem
government. The Sultans applied the usual terms of
Moslem law regarding non-Moslem Theists to the
Christian population of their empire (Orth. Eastern
Church, 233-244). There was to be no active perse-
cution. Christians suffer certain disabilities. They
may not serve in the army, and they have to pay a
poll-tax; they must dress differently from their mas-
ters, may not have as high houses, maj' put no sign of
their faith (crosses) outside their churches, nor ring
church bells, nor bear arms, nor ride on horses. Their
evidence may not be accepted in a court of law against
a Moslem. To convert a Moslem to their faith, seduce
a Moslem woman, speak openly against Islam, make
any treaty or alliance with people outside the Moslem
empire is punished with death. As long as they keep
these laws they are not to be molested further, and
they are quite free with regard to their religion. Of
counse any Christian may turn Moslem at any time;
if he does so it is death to go back. (During the last
century the European Powers have forced the Porte
to modify most of these laws.) The Orthodox were
organized into a subject community under the name
of Roman Nation (rum millet, a strange survival of the
name of the old Roman Empire which the Turks had
destroyed). Their civil head was the oecumenical pa-
triarch. During the century after the Turkish con-
quest this patriarch reached the height of his power;
then, in 1591, Russia became an independent Church
— an example followed later by one branch of the
patriarchate after another, till he is now the merest
shadow of what his predecessors were. During the
centuries between the fall of Constantinople and the
beginning of Greek independence the Greek Church
(although it was certainly not happy) has no history,
unless one counts as such the affairs of the patriarchate
(Cyril Lucarisand the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672, for
instance, op. cit., 264-268). The other Greek bishops
paid their heavy fees to the patriarch and the govern-
ment; the parish priests paid their heavy fees to the
bishops. The hideous oppression of the Turk over-
shadowed all their lives. For the Turk has never kept
his own fairly tolerant law. The tribute of children
for the Janissary guard was levied till 1638. The
Christians were always in a state of simmering rebellion
and the Turks were always punishing their attempts
by wholesale massacre. In Crete 50,000 Christian
children, in the year 1670, were torn from their par-
ents, circumcized, and brought up as Moslems; in
Asia Minor thousands of Greeks had their tongues torn
out for not talking Turkish (op. cit., 237-238). Mean-
while the clergy celebrated the Holy Liturgy on
Sundays, worked in the fields, and kept wine-shops on
week-days. But for the kamclaukion (or kalemau-
kirni — the tall hat without a brim) there was little
to distinguish them from other peasants. But they
kept alive faith in Christ and Hellas, prayed for
better days, were generally at the bottom of each
attempt at resisting the pasha's abominations, and
bore silent but heroic witness for Christ during those
dark centuries. And who can reproach them for
being poor and ignorant? The schism (not the fault
of these poor Papades at any rate) had cut them
off from the West. Europe had forgotten them.
They had everything in the world to gain by turning
Turk; and yet they kept the Christian faith alive
among their people, in spite of pashas, and soldiers,
and massacres. Their little dark, dirty churches were
the centres not only of Christianity but of Hellenism
too. And while their wives poured out the strong
resinous wine for whispering conspirators, their sons
were out on the hills, klephts and armatoloi keeping up
the hopeless war for Greece.
The Greek War of Independence brought a great change to the Church of the free kingdom. The clergy had taken a leading part in the revolution. In 1821, at the beginning of the movement, when Alexander Hypsilanti was making his absurd attempt to rouse the Vlachs, Gregory V of Constantinople, forced by the Turkish government, denounced the "Hetairia Phi- like " and excommunicated the rebels. But the Met- ropolitan of Patras, Germanos, the Archimandrite Dikaios (Pappa Phlesas), and other leading ecclesias- tical persons openly took the side of the Greeks, helped them with their counsels, and in many cases even joined in the fighting. Dikaios made a heroic stand with 3000 men against Ibrahim Pasha's Egyp- tians at Maniaki on Mount Malia. In 1822 the Turks began their series of reprisals by barbarously murder- ing the Patriarch Gregory V in his vestments, after the Liturgy of Easter Day (22 April), although he, so far from being responsible, had obeyed them by excom- municating his fellow-countrymen. Throughout the war the Greek Church showed that the cause of her children was her cause too. But, in spite of Greek enthusiasm for Gregory V (his relics were buried with great honour at Athens in 1871), the court of the patriarch (the Phanar) was too much under the power of the sultan for the free Greeks to submit to its juris- diction. The example of Russia showed that a na- tional Church could remain Orthodox and keep the communion of the patriarch while being itself inde- pendent of his authority. As soon as the affairs of free Greece began to be settled, one of the first acts of the national party was to throw off the jurisdiction of the Phanar. .Alexander Koraes wrote at the time: "The clergy of that part of Hellas that is now free cannot submit to the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople, who is under the power of the Turk; it must rule itself by a Synod of freely elected pre- lates" (lloXiTiKo! Xlapaiv^acis, quoted by Kyriakos,
