Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/378

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THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES

ing recognition of his sovereignty from the great pope, Gregory vii. Hildebrand was always ready to seize on a political opportunity of extending the influence of the papacy on the borders of the Eastern Church. We have here one illustration among many of the interaction of State and Church in the mutual relations of the Eastern and Western Churches. A people seeking independence and out of sympathy with the government at Constantinople would turn to Rome for aid, and would meet with a ready support, because the popes were on the watch for opportunities to slip into a province of the Greek Church as the protectors of some oppressed race. In this way the bad government of the imperial authorities at Constantinople led to the alienation of outlying branches of the patriarchate. But Servia did not go over to the Latin Church. It now became an independent branch of the Greek Church, holding anomalous, undefined relations with the main body of that Church, its essential union with which, as in other and similar cases, was guaranteed by its orthodoxy. One hundred years of struggle and two hundred years of power and prosperity were followed by the ruin of Servia and the death of her king, Lazar, at the battle of Kossovopolje in the year 1389, when the country was made tributary to the Turks. Its total subjugation was only a matter of time, and this was completed in the year 1462 by the victorious Mohammed ii., when it became a Turkish vilayet ruled by pashas. Servia was now not only groaning under the tyrannical rule of the Ottoman government; she was long to be the battle-ground in the wars between Turkey and Hungary. After Prince Eugene's victories a portion of the country was made over to Austria by the treaty of Passarowitz (a.d. 1718); but twenty-one years later it was recovered by Turkey. At length, in the year 1804, Servia attained its liberty in consequence of an insurrection headed by the swineherd, Kara Gyorgyé (i.e. "Black George"). The troubles which overwhelmed Europe during the Napoleonic wars furnished the Turks with an opportunity to recover some of their lost ground, and they again