Four Lectures on the Massacres of the Christians in Syria/Lecture IV
LECTURE IV.
DELIVERED IN CORK.
(From the short-hand notes taken by the Reporter of the Cork Examiner.)
After having the singular honour and great happiness of addressing an Irish popular audience, not only in the capital of this country, but also in other places, and being on the eve, although very reluctantly I assure you, of leaving the emerald isle, I could not pass over the opportunity which your kindness, your sympathy, your generosity and good feeling accord me, and more especially the kind good feeling of that eminent association—the Young Men's Society of Cork, to whom in an especial manner we owe our meeting together this evening. I could not pass all this over without doing my best, at any rate as far as in me lies, to meet the wishes of your kind and generous hearts by addressing you in a few words, for the limits of our time will not allow us more, which may suffice, as far as I can, to lay before you, and set in a clear light, certain matters connected with the late, or, perhaps I had better have said the present events in Syria, which have arrested so much of our attention, whether we view them as Europeans, as Christians, as Catholics, or, indeed, as men. It is impossible for us at the present time to be ignorant of all that we hear, and all that we read, of what is going on in the land of Syria and Palestine. And that for many reasons, inasmuch as it is the most ancient land on earth, the very land on which man was created, the first land mentioned in holy writ, the land of Abraham, of Job, and of other great and holy men, the land which has been sanctified by our Blessed Lord, by his Virgin Mother, and by his holy apostles; the land that gave birth to those to whom we ourselves owe all that we have of doctrine, of learning, I might almost say of the faith, since all the apostles, all the teachers of our holy church have come from it. How can we be indifferent to the misfortunes, the calamities, that have befallen that land?
We know, indeed, that for many years, indeed for centuries, these lands have, so to speak, been under especial tribulations; under persecutions and troubles, and perils, greater than have been endured in any other part of the world, whether for their severity, or their duration. At the same time, in the whole of its past history, from the time when the sword of Mahomet was first raised over the heads of the Christians of Syria, when they first bowed their heads to receive his yoke, never had they to go through such severe tribulations as they have undergone, or are at present suffering. And can we ourselves, Catholics and Christians as we are, our hearts and feelings stirred by the events that are going on around us, can we shut our feelings and sympathies to the misery and suffering of our eastern brethren? Though we have now in a time of peace and prosperity everything, by God's mercy, though deeds of cruelty and oppression are not now felt as they were felt in this very land, yet you are well aware of the great dangers and troubles which beset our holy religion, our faith, our church, even the very head of that church in the person of the Holy Father himself, while we are assembled here this evening. And for that reason, ladies and gentlemen, I think it is well that we should consider whatever can increase at the same time our knowledge and our sympathy, by the communication of that knowledge, and information respecting the Christians and Catholics of other lands, and awaken for them in our own breasts, those kind and generous feelings, which, whilst they may be productive of assistance to them, will, at the same time, react on ourselves with a healthful influence. And for that reason, ladies and gentlemen, without further preface, for the time we have would not allow me to speak at great length, nor is it necessary that I should, I will proceed to my subject.
It is not my intention, on the present occasion, to give an entire sketch of all the events which have occurred in Syria for the space of the last three months, such a sketch would be impossible. Not even the whole of this night, not even the length of three nights, not even the space of three months during which these events occurred, would suffice to relate to you all that has happened in the Holy Land. Nor do I intend to enter into many of the harrowing details with which I suppose you are all more or less acquainted, whether from piecemeal and partial accounts, viewed through the diminishing glass, not the exaggerating one, of part of the British press. Besides, you may all have become acquainted with those events painted in true colours, though far short of the reality, which have within the last few days obtained publicity partly through my unworthy means. However, I should imagine, that none of you will be unwilling to hear an account of those events from one who, I may say, witnessed them; for, after all, what we hear gives more satisfaction than what we read, and the spoken word is infinitely more effective than the written word. The written word is a dead language; the spoken word has in it the power of life. For that reason I shall lay before you a few of the principal circumstances that led to this outbreak in the East, and whatever else may seem to me capable of instructing, interesting, and edifying you; and this all the more because I have the honour of addressing, in an especial manner, the members of the Young Men's Association, an association that has for its object the enlightening and edifying man, the enlightening of his mind and the strengthening of his heart.
I suppose you are all well acquainted with the Ottoman empire, and how the Turkish government first conquered Syria by the sword about 340 years since, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. At that time Syria was equally divided between a Christian and a Mahometan population. When the Turkish or Ottoman empire took possession of Syria, they found it governed by Mahometans, but these were not foreign oppressors, and there is a great difference between domestic and foreign oppression; there are few men who would not suffer tyranny much more readily from their own than from the stranger. When the Sultan of that day, 340 years ago, entered Syria, he found the country equally divided between Christians and Mahometans, so that if the population were three millions, as it was, one million and a half were Christians, and one million and a half Mahometans. Perhaps some of you may ask what kind of Christians they were, to what sect, to what creed did they belong. They were divided into two bodies, of which the miserable wrecks exist. The first was the Maronite population, who, as you know, having from their attachment to the Catholic Church, remained faithful, from the earliest ages of the Church, to the faith of Peter and the See of Peter, were made the subject of such bitter persecutions as had obliged them to fly from Mesopotamia and seek refuge in the rocks of Mount Lebanon, where they established themselves, defying from their rugged heights, and narrow passes the rage of the enemy. They cut down the cedar woods, which rendered the Lebanon a waste, they cultivated the rocks, and formed a well-organized and happy nation in the midst of those mountains, which were formerly mere desolation. And these mountains they held, I mean the whole of northern and central Lebanon; they remained gathered into this spot, having created a civil and religious governor of its nation, and contrary to what some people say about uniting both qualities in one man, the Maronites while under his rule remained very happy and prosperous, grew and multiplied for the space of 1200 years.
You can easily imagine that such a population as they had in the beginning, being, from the force of circumstances obliged to take up warlike habits, to take up habits of self defence, to protect their lives and properties, and being obliged to undergo frequent conflicts to keep their kingdom, you can easily understand how they deserved that character for courage and vigour by which they were known. They were a sword-bearing population these Maronites of Mount Lebanon, and while they wielded the sword of the true faith, they wielded also the literal and martial sword, by which they sustained it. They were the strength, the centre of refuge of the Christians in Syria. In that part of Mount Lebanon was to be found not only the Maronite patriarch, but also the Armenian patriarch, the Greek patriarch, and Syrian patriarch, all of whom had sought refuge in Lebanon. They were the principal in importance from their number in the division of its population. They were the principal also from another reason. They had never swerved from the true faith, and never consequently diminished their own energy, for the energy of man is knit by his persevering adherence to the faith of his forefathers. The larger number was composed of Syrians and Greeks. These Syrians belonged to that class of Christians who, while holding the Catholic faith from the beginning, at the same time have their prayers and mass, and everything else in the Syrian language, in the same way as we have ours in the Latin language. Their churches, and their altars, and their prayers, and their mass resembled ours. A great number of these Syrians had fallen into heresy, the heresy of Eutyches who, while maintaining the divinity of the Lord, denied the reality of His Incarnation. Of these heretics, for such they were, a very large number have in later times, in my own time, and in some instances under my hands, returned to the centre of the Catholic faith, repudiated the dreadful error into which they had been led through ignorance, blindness, or bad feeling, and returned to the true faith, and were called Syrian Catholics. They formed a large mass of its population. Many villages, containing upwards of four or five thousand inhabitants, situated on the edge of the Syrian desert, were composed of them. As for the Greeks you are well acquainted with them. I am not speaking to an uneducated but an educated audience, and there is no need to say how they have fallen into schism from the Church. However, in our day also, a very large body of them returned to the true faith, to the centre of holy unity; and at the time when I myself, though unworthy, was fulfilling the duties of Catholic missionary, I was able to count 60,000. So far this population of Greeks and Syrians were not formidable to the Mahometans and Turks from military strength. They were what are called townspeople, which had a different meaning in the east from what it bears here, for the luxury, the high living, the easy life, enervate the martial spirit of the population, so that no soldier could be enlisted from the townsmen of the east, no matter whether he is Mahometan or Christian, and the whole strength of the country consequently lies in the peasantry and mountaineers. You know already that all this country which I have been describing, up to the moment of the Turkish invasion, was divided between Mahometans and Christians of different orders, being so divided into three belts, the first of which was occupied by the Bedouins and Maronites, the second by the Syrians, and the third by the remainder of the population.
It would be needless for me to go through a description of the neighbours of these Maronites, and how they are derived from the Druses, of which every one knows the term, and very few the reality. Of the thousands of Christians who inhabit Syria, I hardly met one who really knew their belief or practice. However, we have in our time, and very lately, discovered their belief; and I myself, owing to peculiar circumstances, have been enabled not only to confirm what they have stated, but to add to it, and the result of my investigation, living among them as one who found himself, not in a polemical position, but as an intimate friend, as one coming from the land of India, whence I came, and I was able to discover many points in them I never saw stated; the result is, that I believe the nation of Druses are simply a nation of atheists—nothing less. Though, by a singular inconsistency, they admit the existence of spirits, they still deny the immortality of any spirits, whether the spirits of men or disembodied spirits; and they also deny the existence of a supreme uncreated Being. These people formerly inhabited Egypt, and, after falling into this gulf through circumstances too long to relate, but which would be highly interesting and instructive, if any one had time to lecture upon them, they settled in Mount Lebanon, at least eight hundred years since, and became the neighbours of the Maronites, with whom they lived on very good terms; for such men, having no principle of enthusiasm, and having no object in quarreling with those of a different belief, as they themselves believe in nothing at all, live quietly with all. However, the clashing of different interests and the events which always happen between next-door neighbours would, from time to time, bring on some slight and unimportant war. As to these tribes of the Christians, they are very little known to you; but all of them are distinct from the great body of the Mahometan race. At the first entrance of the Ottoman power into Syria, the number of Christians was, at least, half the population. At the time of the war in the Crimea, and in 1856, the number of Christians in Syria, instead of being half, was not more than one-sixth part of the population. How, you will ask, could such a change have been brought about? In a word, by the systematic course of oppression, of slaughter, of bondage, and of blood and murder, carried on by the Ottoman Government for the space of 340 years, without pause, without intermission. I myself have spoken to many who have witnessed scenes of the most cruel torture, in the same way as some of you may have heard from your grandfathers or your fathers, certain details of oppression in your own country. I will give you an instance. One of the most influential and respectable men in Tripoli—he is advanced in years now—related to me how his father was seized one day by order of the Turkish governor, taken from his home, and cast into a dungeon, and variously tormented for several days, for no other reason than that he had wealth hoarded in his house which he was unwilling to hand over, without a receipt from the Pacha. Having been compelled, by the force of torture, to give up this money, which he had acquired by his own industry, they suspecting that he had not given all, caused a fire to be lighted in the midst of the prison, placed a large cauldron in the centre of it, and flung him into it. The insufferable agony obliged him to disclose where his last farthing was concealed, and then they permitted him to be carried back to his own home, where he died that very evening. It was this man's own son who related to me this fact. But this is only a solitary, casual fact. Hundreds, thousands of other acts, equal to it, have taken place. There was a man who held acres at the time Napoleon the First entered Syria, who having been on the point of being driven out by the French emperor, was upheld in the country by the influence of a government which should never have supported such a man—however, he was supported, and he maintained his post by means of British aid—this man I heard myself, while the fortifications were being built, walked daily around them, and any one, especially a Christian, who displeased him in look or in manner, he would order to be built alive into the wall, so that he actually raised the fortifications of the place in human blood. Such was the Turkish Government for an uninterrupted series of 340 years. Is it strange if the Christian population diminished under such an abominable system of tyranny? Numbers and numbers, who could do so, emigrated, and happy were those who had the means. Some of them, certainly, apostatised from the faith to escape from torture and death; but thousands and thousands perished by the sword, preferring death to apostasy, and gained the crown of martyrdom. There were over 1,750 in Lebanon who fell victims to the Turkish daggers, whether used by the hands of the Turks or by those of the Druses. From the date of the war in Sebastopol, and the peace which followed it, and the treaty which was solemnly made, ratified, signed, and published in Europe and America, it became impossible for the Turkish Government to carry on the process of extermination at which she was employed, and she was obliged to give a sort of outside varnish which should hide her horrible cruelty. This varnish, this veil was too transparent to conceal the real feelings of the inhabitants, and from the very outset a voice was raised that since it was impossible to treat Christians as Christian dogs should be treated, it was necessary to bring matters to a short and speedy end. However, the pressure of persecution being off, the true faith multiplied. But this state of things did not last long. Allow me to place before you one spot in the country—the city of Damascus—in which I lived myself for a short time, and in connexion with which I have lately appeared before the public. In that city, which is, without contradiction, the loveliest city on the face of the globe, situated beneath the mountains, from which the famous rivers of Damascus pour down the rugged side through it until not a home is without its water font, not a street in which there are not to be seen fountains, with the water playing and sparkling in them before the eyes of the inhabitants—a city embosomed in gardens which men on horseback could not pass through in less than three or four hours, so extensive are they—a city so adorned with all that Asiatic luxury and splendour could supply, that the new city of Damascus has passed into a proverb—where are to be seen houses built of marble and precious stones, whose halls, nearly as large as this in which we stand, would not be raised one inch above the ground without having rare marble and precious stones inserted in them—a city where civilization and luxury have been carried to the highest pitch—a city in which have been raised lately, in our own time, almost under my own eyes (for they were only built four or five years before I entered it, and the walls were quite fresh when I arrived there) a magnificent church by the Greek Catholic population of Damascus, in which the faithful assembled daily, but more especially at the customary periods, to the number of 6,000, to offer up prayers to God; close to it, of equally recent date, a Syrian Church, containing 2,000; close to that a Church of the Maronites, in which were no small number of the faithful; besides a convent of the Sisters of Mercy; a convent of the Fathers of St. Vincent de Paul, and a convent of the Basilian Monks, so that whoever entered it would say this is a Christian town, and not only a Christian but a Catholic town, and not only a Catholic but a flourishing Catholic town. I myself, as I had occasion to say once before, on the 30th of April last, a few months since, and just twenty-seven days before the outbreak, was called on by my bishop to preach the first sermon on the opening of a new Catholic Church erected by the bishops in a part of the town which was never used by Christians. Over 1,200 Christians were assembled in that quarter of the city, and I myself, on the 30th of April, preached the opening sermon in the new church there, when the bishop consecrated it and said the first Mass. You all know how the destruction of the city of Damascus was brought about. Imagine that you stand on Mount Lebanon, overlooking the plain of Damascus, and that you see the town with its 150,000 inhabitants—imagine the Christian quarter to be the most brilliant, the most highly ornamented, the most thickly populated of the whole place, adorned with its churches, its monuments, its institutions, containing at the outbreak 24,000 people, 4,000 having sought it for refuge—imagine you see it shining in the morning sun, its fountains sparkling, its palaces, its gardens—imagine that you see all these, and then imagine that you see it at the present moment (I see it still) that whole quarter one blank—not a broken wall, not a ruined house, not a desecrated church remaining, but a mere blank, for at the present moment there is not a wall at the height even of this table from the ground—the whole is levelled to the dust. Such has been the conduct of the Turkish Government to the most faithful subjects on earth, who never disputed an order from Constantinople, who professed, with all respect to the Government, their own religion, and worshipped God according to the faith of their forefathers, who never gave the slightest provocation to the Mahometans, who, from the very outset, had shown great disposition to submit to any thing, who even refrained from taking up arms in self-defence lest it might be said they gave occasion to provoke this war. After all there have been found men to stand before the assembled nations, and say the origin and cause of the war was the fault of the Christians. Incredible falsehood, which the facts will deny, not alone at the present day, but to the end of time. Were you in the country you would see the streams empurpled with the gore of the inhabitants, many of them slain for their money. You would hear the wail of 10,000 exiles rushing to the sea-coast, seeking the protection of Europe. You would hear the groan and wail of others who are unable to drag themselves along, and who die on the road by hundreds and thousands. You should see the tears, you should hear the wail. Who can express the feelings of the 200 women and maidens in the arms of the very men who murdered their fathers, their husbands, their brothers, for no less than 200 are prisoners at the present moment. You should see the corpses mingled with the ashes of the habitations. Such is the result of Turkish government, of Turkish protection, of Turkish civilization. Very many nations have not ceased to insult us for the last four years with the word, "Turkish civilization." If you desire to see Turkish civilization, look at the city of Damascus. Should you wish to know how this state of things was brought about, I will give you, in a few words, some of the principal events, which have been misunderstood by those who receive their information from the press of a neighbouring country. The facts were these, and I can bear witness to them, having myself been present at Damascus, at the beginning of the outbreak, and having heard the rest from eye witnesses, and not only that, I received letters (I being in the mountains) from my friends in Damascus, who gave me accounts day by day of what was going on around them, until the 8th July, when all communication ceased, and I do not know where the writers are—whether in this or the next world. However, the events passed in this manner: After the war had broken out in Lebanon, and the public voice declared in Damascus—and I myself heard it—that after the Turkish fanatics should have succeeded in annihilating, by means of the Druses, whatever remnant of Christianity and Catholicity remained in the East, by hurling a mass of barbarous assassins, without shame or fear of God, on the unprepared population of Lebanon; after they have done there, the next blow will be to occupy the entire of the country, and first Damascus. You can imagine with what consternation the inhabitants received the news of that fatal order. On the 27th of May, a night which, if I had not witnessed, I would not believe ever occurred, forty defenceless villages, containing between three and four thousand Catholics, were reduced to ashes, the inhabitants driven away or massacred, whilst the Turkish governor sat quietly in the midst of the smoking villages, contemplating the massacres, directing and encouraging the murderers. Two days after four masses of Druses were let in at different points, to Damascus, while the inhabitants were wholly unprepared, and let those hear it who say the Christians were the cause of the war; they not only razed the town to the earth, but slaughtered fully a thousand of the population, drove another thousand into a neighbouring wood, and with a cruelty that may have found a parallel in some parts of Ireland in old times, set fire to the wood, where the thousand had taken refuge, and not one of them escaped from the flames. Of those who remained, and they were fully two thousand, the men were butchered, the women insulted, the priests tortured, and the monks and nuns put to the same punishment. From the beginning of the war the Christians of Damascus knew the feelings of the Mahometan inhabitants were against them. I knew one, I lodged in his house, and he was one of the worthiest of men, who went down on his knees to a Mahometan, to beg him to allow his wife and children to take refuge in his dwelling, in case the massacre should take place on that night. The men would not beg their own lives. The inhabitants of the largest Christian village in the southern part of Mount Lebanon, renowned for their courage and generous spirit, the inhabitants of this village—if one can call it a village—which contains 6,000 inhabitants, and large schools for boys and girls, and if you ask me where the masters are, I can tell you that the bones of two of them whiten the ashes of the school, and that the third escaped; they, after having repelled the attack of the Druses, who were three times more numerous than themselves, and provided by the government with ammunition, while the Christians were kept without arms, without powder, without food, so that many of them remained for three days suffering the horrors of hunger, after they had repelled the attack for this period, they at last gave themselves up, the Turkish governor promising on the most solemn oath that he would defend them, and would not suffer a hair of their heads to be injured. But, with a fiendish treachery, which was only equalled in Wexford, when the inhabitants, to the number of 3,000, had been received into the spacious palace of the governor, where he brought them ostensibly for their greater protection, but in reality that he might have the pleasure of seeing them butchered, then and there the doors were thrown open, and the Christians led out one by one, while the Druses, with hatchets and axes and swords, and the implements of vilest butchery, massacred them almost to the very last. Only fifteen escaped. One of these I saw the moment he arrived at Beyrout, and I could not recognise him, so changed was he by the horrors he had undergone. When these massacres took place under the eye of the Turkish governor, what could the inhabitants of Damascus expect but the same or worse treatment? Their expectations were not wrong. A few days after, the governor of Damascus, who holds the same position in Syria as the highest magistrate does in Ireland, who holds his nomination and receives his orders from the Sultan himself, this man—if man one could call him—as if he took a fiendish pleasure in making his victims taste all the agonies of fear, called the Druses, the very men who killed their Christian brethren, to "defend" the quarters of the Christians. They occupied the houses, sat at the tables of the Christians, and from such a beginning it was not hard to see how matters would go on. All arms were taken from the Christians, the Druses, on the contrary, were supplied with every description of weapon, and the cannon of the fort were pointed to the houses of the Christian quarter. The firing of these was the signal for the soldiery to descend from the fort, and occupy the only outlets for the Christians—the eastern gate and the gate of St. Thomas. Every ruffian, every bandit, every Druse, with hatchet reeking with blood, who presented himself, was allowed to pass; but every Christian who attempted to escape from the spreading flames, or the blood-stained hatchet, were driven back on their assassins and the fire, until the ancient river, mentioned in Holy Writ, was literally choked with corpses. You might have heard how the governor was seated on the roof of his palace, a new Nero, smoking his pipe, enjoying the spectacle, and calling on the band to play the liveliest airs. I will record only one circumstance which has been "burked" by the press of a certain country. I have the information on the very best authority, that of an official, a former friend of mine, who had been deputed by the five European consuls at Beyrout, to give notice of what was happening in Damascus. He said to me: "About one hour from the gate of Damascus, passing by a village which contains 2000 inhabitants, more or less, of which the Christians number only two or three hundred, I was surprised to see it utterly silent. I had passed it three days before, and there was no change in the appearance of the place. Well, when I came to the market-place, where there is a large trunk of tree lying on the ground, and used as a seat by the villagers, I saw it in a pool of blood, and around it were the bodies of two hundred Christians, men and women, who had all been decapitated, one by one, on the trunk." The Turkish assassins, after this horrid deed, had gone to take share in the massacres at Damascus. There is not a part of the land, for the extent of at least half of Ireland, that has not been desolated. Draw a line from Dublin to Galway, and imagine at the present moment there is not a single convent, a single person to make the sign of the cross in that whole country, and you have an idea of the state of central Syria at this moment.
I cannot any longer dwell on these matters, and I am happy that this is the last evening that I shall have occasion to speak of them publicly, because, after those scenes occurred I was for a long time unable to speak about them, and even at the present moment, when I picture them it is too much for me. What I have said will suffice; and I consider that you are in duty and honour bound to your fellow Christians and Catholics, to give those facts all the publicity in your power. I will only say, before parting, that you should consider what have been the consequences of this outbreak. You can picture to yourself the country, inhabited at one time principally by Catholics, but in which Turkish treachery and cruelty have now reduced them to a minority. I leave it to yourselves to conceive the number of orphans, of widows, of houseless, roofless, and dying men, women, and children, that are at present wandering over the deserts of Syria, or would vainly seek to return to the ashes of their once happy homes. I would only represent one circumstance to which I have already alluded, but it cannot be too often spoken of. Our Blessed Lord and Redeemer said once to His disciples, and to all Catholics: "Fear not him who can kill the body, and after that can do no more; but fear Him who, after having slain the body, can cast the body and soul into hell-fire." The death of this body is of very slight consequence; but there is another death, more fearful than the death of the body, it is the death of the soul. It is the extinction of faith, it is apostasy from his religion and mother Church, it is that entry into the way of endless death. That is the danger to which the remnants of the Christian population in Syria are exposed by a system of proselytizing invented by the demon himself, carried out with fiendish perseverance, partly by the Mahometans and partly by others—a system of relief which would pretend to be charitable, but which is only given on condition that the person receiving it passes from the holy Catholic faith to the creed of Mahomet and other forms of delusion and false doctrine. That system is being carried on to a great extent in Syria, and unless it be met, and promptly met, it will have deadly results, seeing that the misery of the people will be increased during the coming winter.
These are facts that I have laid before you. Whatever conclusion may be drawn from them I leave to yourselves. I confide in the sympathy of your Catholic breasts and the generosity of your Irish hearts, that what has been said will not be without its fruits and blessing, not only to the inhabitants of Syria, by exerting your charity to assist them, but will also bring upon the inhabitants of Cork, and of all Ireland, the rewards promised by God for acts of charity done to our neighbour.