Page:Orthodox Eastern Church (Fortescue).djvu/345

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CONSTITUTION OF ORTHODOX CHURCH
307

as an independent Power till the revolt of 1817.[1] The Servian Church went on for a time after the destruction of the kingdom, but the Phanar persuaded the Porte that any sort of national organization among the Serbs, even a purely ecclesiastical one, was a danger to the Sultan's rule, and that the best safety for the Turkish Government would be in the destruction of the Church of Ipek, and in the submission of the Orthodox Serbs to the Patriarch of Constantinople. So after centuries of bickering and machinations, at last, in 1765, the Sultan put an entire end to the Servian Church. Since then, all the Serbs in Turkey have to obey the Patriarch, although, as we shall see, they do so very unwillingly, and always hope for a great united Servian Church under a Patriarch of Ipek again. But in three cases where the Porte does not rule over Serbs, the Œcumenical Patriarch has no authority either. One of these is that of the new kingdom of Servia (p. 325), the others are those of the Churches of Carlovitz and Czernagora, which still represent the legitimate continuity from Ipek. In 1690, while the Serbs were being much harassed by the Porte and the Phanar, King Leopold I of Hungary (Emperor Leopold I, 1658–1705) invited them to come over to his land and to try the advantages of a civilized country. Thirty-seven thousand Servian families did so, and many more followed in 1737. With the approval of Arsenius III (Zrnojevitch), the shadowy Patriarch of Ipek, they founded the Orthodox Metropolitan See of Carlovitz (Karlocza on the Danube, in Slavonia). Eventually Arsenius came himself. So the See of Carlovitz has the best claim to represent the extinct Patriarchate of Ipek. We have seen how the Orthodox Georgians fared under a Government of their own religion. The happier Orthodox Serbs under a Catholic Government have always enjoyed the most absolute freedom. In 1695 the King of Hungary guaranteed entire liberty to them to do whatever they liked, and no one has ever thought of disturbing them since. As long as any sort of See of Ipek existed,[2] the Metropolitan of

  1. It was a tributary principality under the Turk for a short time, from 1442 to 1459.
  2. The Turks had allowed a successor (Kallinikos I) to be appointed at Ipek when Arsenius III went to Hungary.