It is commonly supposed that the members of the Orthodox church are the only victims of Mussulman misrule. Russian intrigue and Slavonic societies are believed to be always brewing mischief and stirring up insurrection among the Orthodox population. All this tends to rouse the fanaticism of their Mussulman neighbors, and hence the injustice and cruelty of which we read. The members of the Roman Church, on the other hand, are loyal and peaceable, and are consequently not molested by the Mussulman authorities or populace.
This account of the matter is purely ideal. Intrigue and chronic outbursts of insurrection are the necessary concomitants of Turkish misrule; and if the Roman Catholics do not so often revolt, it is because, being fewer in number, and having no great power to sympathize with them, their spirits are crushed, and they have not the courage to rise against their oppressors. To this must be added the important fact, which I deeply lament, that jealousy of the Russo-Greek Church has induced the Vatican to sacrifice the cause of humanity to the supposed interest of the Roman Curia. Cardinal Manning is just now a vehement preacher of peace, and an indignant censor of those who would imperil its reign; and he and Sir George Bowyer consider it a flagrant breach of international law that Russian volunteers should be allowed to fight in Servia, and a monstrous iniquity that Russia should mediate a possible intervention on behalf of its co-religionists and kindred who are groaning under the yoke of a worse than Egyptian bondage. But I never heard that either Cardinal Manning or Sir George Bowyer objected to the enrolment of Irish and Canadian volunteers in the papal army, or that either of them protested against the intervention of a French army to protect the territory of the pope against the invasion of an Italian army; and I do not suppose that the League of St. Sebastian would be laid under the ban of the Church if it took up arms, on a fitting occasion, to restore the temporal power.
But, however that may be, the result of the Vatican policy is undoubtedly that the Roman Catholics in European Turkey are less prone to take part in insurrections than the Orthodox Christians. Many of their teachers and leaders are Italians, who prefer the rule of the Turk, with all its cruelties and abominations, to the rule of any power professing the Orthodox religion. This, however, is not the feeling of the Roman Catholic population of south-eastern Europe, except in so far as it has been instilled into them by Italian emissaries. In Bosnia the Roman Catholics would rejoice as sincerely as their Orthodox neighbors at the substitution of any rule, Orthodox or otherwise, for that of the Turk. A sham address to the Porte from the Catholics of Bosnia was got up some time ago by the Turkish authorities, in the way and by the methods usually employed on such occasions. Bishop Strossmayer, in whose diocese Bosnia is, told Dr. Liddon and myself all about this address, which was paraded at the time in the English newspapers; and the truth is that the Roman Catholics of Bosnia were no more represented by it than were the Orthodox Christians of Constantinople by that famous band of warriors, swept from the slums of Stamboul, who marched out of Constantinople under "a flag on which the Crescent and the Cross were displayed side by side" to fight "against the Servian aggression." We all remember the lively emotion which this union of the Crescent and the Cross against Christian freedom excited in the breasts of Sir Henry Elliot and Mr. Disraeli.[1] But alas, for the vanity of human hopes and the frustration of potential achievements! The ragamuffins who bore the "banner with a strange device," did not live to drive back "the Servian aggression." The Bashi-Bazouks, more simple and logical than Sir Henry Elliot and Mr. Disraeli, could not understand this union of the Crescent and the Cross at all. It was a scandal and an offence in the eyes of a true believer; and so the Bashi-Bazouks fell upon the "Christian volunteers," and having slaughtered most of them, dispersed the rest and captured the "banner with a staange device."
On the occasion of the so-called Roman Catholic address from Bosina the real representatives of the Roman Catholics acted as they are said by the correspondent of the Daily News to have acted the other day:[2] —
- Vali Pacha Effendi, the civil governor of the province, gathered the Greek and Catholic notables of Serajevo together, and requested them to sign a petition to the Porte protesting against any autonomy or other change in the government of the province. They replied that, being rayahs, they had no right to meddle in politics, and therefore refused their signatures to the petition. The insurrection continues spreading in Bosnia.
