The Orthodox Eastern Church/Chapter 8

by Adrian Henry Timothy Knottesford Fortescue

 

CHAPTER VIII

 

UNDER THE TURK

 

1. The Fall of Constantinople, May 29, 1453.

In Chapter VI we left the Eastern Roman Empire, after the Council of Florence, on the eve of destruction. The story of that calamity, the great turning-point of the history of the Orthodox Church, and one of the chief turning-points of European history, is too well known to need a long description here. The Emperor John VIII was succeeded by his brother Constantine XII (Palaiologos, 1448–1453). This most heroic prince, although now without any hope of success, was faithful to his trust to the last. The Turkish Sultan, Mohammed II (the Conqueror, 1451–1481) had now seized everything up to the very walls of Constantinople. Constantine tried desperately to get help from the West, and Pope Nicholas V (1447–1455) too did all he could to persuade his Latins to save the city. To their eternal shame no one of them would move. They did not believe that the city would really fall; it had so often come out of the direst straits before; and they really cared very little for the last poor remnant of the old Empire. The days of the Crusades had gone long ago. They reaped their desert afterwards when the Turk poured across Servia, Bosnia, Hungary, and came thundering to the very gates of Vienna.^[1]

But there were two honourable exceptions to this selfish policy. We have seen that Pope Eugene IV had sent all the help he could, two ships and three hundred men (p. 217).

The little Republic of Genoa had constant relations with Constantinople in her trade and, unlike Venice, her policy was always a friendly one to the Empire. Just across the Golden Horn, at Galata, was a colony of Genoese merchants,^[2] so for their sakes too the Republic had an interest in the defence of Constantinople. Genoa then alone, besides the Holy See, sent help—a fleet of five ships and seven hundred men, under the valiant sea-captain John Giustiniani. This little fleet arrives at the gate of the Golden Horn on April 21, 1453, and finds it blockaded by 150 Ottoman galleys. With his five ships Giustiniani fights his way through them and sails into Constantinople, bringing a force that was not strong enough to save the city, but that, at any rate, could share the glory of the heroic defence, and leave to the "proud" Republic a memory of which it really had a right to be proud. Constantine XII had also tried everything to make terms with the enemy. Knowing that resistance was now quite hopeless, he sent to Mohammed to offer him any sum of money, if only he would be content with what he had already conquered and would spare the city. But Mohammed would not hear of this. To the Moslems the most glorious day of their history was approaching; ever since the time of the original Mohammed, the Prophet of God, the dream of every True Believer had been that some day they would conquer "Rum," that is New Rome, and set up the throne of the Khalifah on the ruins of the Christian Empire. But Mohammed II was quite ready to be kind to the Emperor, to give him a palace and a pension if he would give up the city quietly. But Constantine could not do that. As long as he lived the Roman Emperor must defend the Roman world, even if that world were shut up within the walls of one city. So he answers Mohammed in words that at the end of this long Byzantine period at last are really worthy of the Roman Cæsar: "Since neither oaths, nor treaties, nor any offer can bring us peace," he says, "go on then with the war. I trust in God; if he will soften your heart, I shall indeed rejoice, if he lets you take my city, I shall submit to his will. But until the Judge of all men settles this quarrel I must live and die defending my people." And now after a thousand years of defence against so many different enemies, New Rome is about to fall in a blaze of heroic glory that makes one forget all the ugly pages of her long history. The Romans had drawn a chain across the Golden Horn to prevent the barbarian fleet from attacking their walls. Early in May, they awoke one morning to find that fleet riding at anchor right up by the city. Mohammed had carried out the almost impossible plan of laying down greased planks round by land and of dragging his ships one by one over them. He had made the most elaborate arrangements to win at last what would be the crowning victory of his faith. A Magyar renegade made him a monstrous bronze cannon that could throw gigantic stones against the walls of the city. Seven hundred men were told off to serve this engine. Happily, when it was fired it blew up (after they had spent two hours loading it), made an appalling noise, scattered death around the Turkish camp, and judiciously selected the apostate who had made it for its first victim. The siege lasted from April 6 to May 29; 258,000 Turks fought against less than five thousand Romans.^[3] After they had broken down part of the wall, Mohammed ordered a general assault for Tuesday, May 29th. He had again offered Constantine liberty, riches, and the whole Peloponnesus for a princedom; and Constantine had again refused. The Emperor had done everything that could be done, with the courage of despair. He had throughout the siege never ceased encouraging his soldiers, inspecting the defence of the walls, taking his share in every part of the work. When the morning of that most disastrous of days dawned he went to the Hagia Sophia, heard the Liturgy and received Holy Communion. It was the last Christian service held in the great cathedral, and we shall remember, too, that he received that last Sacrament in communion with the Holy See and with the Catholic Church. Then he made that speech to his men that Gibbon calls the funeral oration of the Roman Empire, and rode out to die. He stood, surrounded by his guard, near the Gate of St. Romanos, defending while he lived the city he could no longer save. Fighting valiantly with his back to the wall, he fell in the tumult of the assault, as the last heir of the Roman name should fall, fighting for Christ and Rome and adorning the Imperial purple with the glory of his heroic blood.^[4] Constantine Cæsar Augustus Palaiologos was the 80th Roman Emperor since Constantine the Great, the 112th since Cæsar Octavian. With him the old Empire died.

The barbarians burst into the city, carrying death and havoc, and the day that had begun with the chant of that last sad liturgy ended with the shrieks of a hideous massacre. Then Mohammed the Conqueror rode his white horse up the Hippodrome, and gradually the news spread throughout the distant lands of the Franks that at last the impossible had happened, that Constantinople had fallen; facta est quasi vidua domina gentium.^[5]

 

2. The Rayahs.

It is important to understand the position of the Orthodox Christians under their Turkish masters since they have been a conquered people. It is really only one special case of the treatment of any non- Mohammedan Theists under Moslem law. The fundamental idea of that law is, first of all, that Moslems should by right rule over the whole world. The Koran says: "The earth is God's and he gives it to whom he will of his servants" (S. vii. 125); and this is understood to mean that God is the supreme Lord of all men, and that he gives his servants, the True Believers, Moslems, right over all. They have never distinguished religion and politics. It is a distinction they still cannot understand. All law and right comes from God and his Prophet; and it makes no difference whether that law concern the hours of prayer or the payment of taxes. The Koran is both Bible and Code of Civil Law. The visible head of the Moslem world is the Khalifah, the Vicar of Mohammed; all authority comes from him, he can command anything, as long as he does so conformably with the Koran, and he is head of both Church and State, or rather Church and State are the same thing. Since then, like all great religions, they want to convert every one to the faith that they believe to be the only true one, they also want their Khalifah to rule temporally over all men as well. In theory, at any rate, you cannot be a real orthodox True Believer unless you obey the Khalifah in all things; he is both Pope and Emperor, and as the whole world accepts Islam, so will all independent kings and princes be replaced by his Emirs.^[6] That is the ideal. As a matter of fact they have not yet conquered the whole world. So the great division of all is between the House of Peace (Dar al-Islām), where Islam reigns, and the House of War (Dar al-Harb), that is, all parts not yet converted and submitted to the Khalifah. It will be understood, then, that they never want a pretext for making war on unbelievers. It is the right and the duty of all Moslems to convert (if necessary by force) all the House of War, to join it to the House of Peace in the obedience of the Khalifah. Such a process is one of the very first religious duties^[7]—the Holy War (Jihad), from which they are only excused when it is for a time impossible. Whereas, then, both Christians and Moslems wish to convert all unbelievers to their own faith. Christians can do so without changing the civil organization of any State, and the new converted Christians can and should go on fulfilling the same civil duties to a heathen Government as their heathen fellow-citizens. But the Mohammedan theory makes this impossible, and conversion to them involves political submission to their Khalifah—to convert is to conquer. When they have conquered a country they distinguish between the two kinds of unbelievers they may find there. First there may be Kuffār (Kafirs), that is idolaters or worshippers of false gods. They are to have no mercy. Either they accept Islam or they are killed. Secondly, Moslems may find in the conquered land people who worship the true God, though not in the right way. These people are the Ahl al-Kitāb (Kitabis)—"People of the Book." Namely, God has given to men three successive revelations, each true and right while it lasted, though the two earlier ones have already been, and the present one will some day be, supplanted by a succeeding and more perfect one. Each of these revelations or religions has a book inspired by God. They are: The revelation of Moses, of which the book is the Old Testament, that of ‘Isa the son of Mariam (by which they mean our Lord), whose book is the New Testament, and that of Mohammed with his Koran. Some day the Mahdi will come and supplant Islam too.^[8] Meanwhile it is the last and at present the true revelation. The People of the Book then are those who still follow one of the older revelations given before Islam, that is Jews and Christians, each of whom have a book to show for their belief.^[9] And these Kitabis are not to be persecuted. "Fight those who do not believe in God and in the day of judgement (the Kafirs) … and those who have received the book shall pay you a poll-tax and be subject to you " (Sura ix. 29). The Kitabis were originally called Dhimmis ("protected ones") by the Arabs; the Turks call them Rayahs (Ra‘iyyah, Flock). They have to pay a poll-tax and a land-tax, they may not serve in the army. To convert a Moslem to their faith or seduce a Moslem woman, to speak openly against Islam, to make any treaty or alliance with people outside the Moslem Empire, is punished with death. The Rayahs must also dress differently from Moslems, may not have as high houses as their masters, nor expose any sign of their faith (crosses) outside their churches, nor ring church bells, nor bear arms, nor ride a saddled horse. A Rayah's evidence cannot be accepted in a court of law against a Moslem. If they obey these laws they are not to be in any way annoyed or molested; they may keep all their other customs and social arrangements, and are quite free with regard to their religion.^[10] Of course any Rayah may always accept Islam and thus enter the governing race; if he does so it is death to go back. These, then, were the conditions imposed upon all Christians and Jews by the Turks.^[11] The only point added by them was what was certainly the worst of all—the tribute of children. A certain number of the strongest and healthiest Christian children of six or seven years old were taken away every year to supply the Sultan's Janissary (yeni cheri = new troop) guard. They were, of course, brought up as Moslems, knowing neither father nor mother nor country, having no attachment to, anything or any one except to their barracks and the Sultan. So they formed a tremendous engine in the hands of the Government, and the Christians, whose lands were harried and whose homes were burnt by the Janissaries, had the additional horror of knowing that these persecutors were really their own children. The Janissary corps lasted till 1826. It was only then, after they, knowing their own strength, had become too utterly unruly, that Sultan Mahmud II (1808–1839) at the risk of his own life abolished them.^[12] This most cruel piece of tyranny was not part of the law of Islam, but a special and private abomination of the Turk.

With this exception, however, the fate of the Rayahs was not the worst possible. What they had to complain of was, first, that they always remained a separate subject-people under a race of foreign conquerors and masters; and, secondly, that they were at the mercy of tyrants, who at any time could, and who continually did, overstep their own law. The root of the whole evil was that Christian and Moslem never could, never can mix into one people. There have been other conquests as cruel and as unjust as the Turkish conquest of the Empire, and yet in other cases after a century or two the races have mixed and no one either knows or cares any longer whether he belongs by blood to the original conquerors or conquered. This can never happen where Moslems rule over Christians. No one now asks whether an Englishman be Briton or real Englishman or Norman, whether an Italian be Roman or Goth or Lombard; but the Turk and the Rayah belong to two different nations to-day as much as in 1453. The difference of religion in this case makes a barrier that nothing can break down. Religion to the Moslem is the only thing that matters at all. Islam is the perfect example of a theocratic democracy, governed of course, like most democracies, by an irresponsible tyrant. Neither race nor language nor colour makes any difference.^[13] All True Believers are equal and any one of them may rise to any position: the world of the Arabian Nights, in which barbers become Great Wazirs and pastry-cooks marry Sultans' daughters really exists (or did exist until the invasion of Western manners quite in our own time) round the Bosphorus. All Islam are brothers. But, on the other hand, people who are not True Believers are utterly shut out from the world in which Moslems live. They remain another nation, may be tolerated, and may exist side by side with their own laws, but they are always as remote from the governing class as another species. And to be a subject-nation governed by a foreign race is a position with which no civilized people can be finally satisfied. So there have been endless revolts among the Rayahs, and after a revolt the Turk has no mercy. That is why, in spite of the tolerance of Moslem law, the history of the Ottoman Empire in Europe has been one long, monotonous story of the shedding of Christian blood. The Rayahs have always been in revolt, and the Turks have always been massacring. It began when they slew steadily through the whole day as soon as they had entered Constantinople in 1453; it is going on to-day all over Macedonia. And there has been no change in between.

But even when they do not revolt the Rayahs have no certainty that the Turk will keep his own law. Selim I (1512–1520) in a fit of religious enthusiasm suddenly ordered all churches to be turned into mosques and all Rayahs to become True Believers under pain of death (1520). With infinite difficulty the Patriarch Jeremias I persuaded him to obey the command of his own Prophet. Murad III (1574–1595) and Mohammed III (1595–1603) both nearly carried out the same plan. In Crete in 1670, fifteen thousand Christian children were taken from their homes, circumcised and brought up as Moslems. Throughout Asia Minor, where the Turk has always been very anxious to Ottomanize the whole population, the punishment for speaking Greek was to have one's tongue torn out. Of course thousands of Rayahs did apostatize; and in the purely artificial medley of races who, joined by the profession of Islam, make up the Turkish people there is a great proportion of Greek and Slav (that is originally Christian) blood. On the other hand, it is the eternal glory of the Orthodox people that as a people it has remained faithful. This is the most wonderful fact of the history of the Eastern Churches. These Rayahs, cut off from the West by the schism, forgotten by civilized Europe, ignorant and miserable, a servile race, paying for their faith by taxes, disabilities, degrading humiliations, and the sacrifice of their own children, always exposed to the violence of their masters, having every possible advantage to gain by turning Turk, yet kept their faith throughout those centuries of oppression. And what they suffered, how many thousands of them shed their blood for the name of Christ during those long dark ages, God only knows. But we, who have never had to sit under the shadow of the Sultan's blood-stained throne, if we remember the ugly story of their fathers' schism must also remember how valiantly the Eastern Christians have stood for Christ ever since, and how in the days of her trial the Byzantine Church, once so foolish and obstinate, has sent that long procession of her children to join the white-robed army of martyrs.

 

3. The Porte and the Christian Churches.

As soon as the Turks settled down after their conquest they began to organize the subject-peoples. They classified them naturally according to their religions. Our idea that there is one law for all and that a man's religion, as far as the State is concerned, is his own private affair only is one that the Turk has never understood. Moslems are the dominant race directly under the Sublime Porte.^[14] And the Rayahs, too, must be organized according to their various "nations." By millet (nation) the Turk means simply religion. This use of this word alone shows their whole attitude. The subject-nations then were (and are): first, and by far the largest, the Roman nation (rum millet). And the Roman nation (strange survival of the name of the dead Empire) is nothing else than the Orthodox Church, under the Patriarch of Constantinople. Every Orthodox Rayah in Turkey, no m.atter of what descent, belongs to the Roman nation. Next in size come the Armenian nation (ermeni millet), who are the Monophysite (Gregorian) Armenians and the Armenian Catholic nation (ermeni katulik millet), that is the Uniates. The other Monophysites (Jacobites, Copts, and a few Abyssinians) are represented by the Armenian Monophysite Patriarch of Constantinople, all other Uniates (katulik) by the Armenian Catholic Patriarch. Then comes the Jewish nation (yahudi millet), nearly all Sephardim from Spain,^[15] and lastly the Latin nation (latin millet). Catholics of the Latin rite.^[16] The few native Protestants (mostly converted Armenians and a very few Syrians) are not a millet. The Porte will not allow them to be one, and they form a small irregular organization under the Minister of Police.^[17] In this way, then, all the Rayahs were classified and arranged in groups. Since each "nation" is a religious body, it is natural that, when the Porte looked for responsible heads and representatives of the nations under it, it should have fixed on their ecclesiastical superiors. This quite agrees with the view of the Moslems, who always confuse civil and spiritual authority; and indeed there was no one else to choose. So the Œcumenical Patriarch became the recognized civil head of the Roman nation.

 

4. The Porte and the Œcumenical Patriarch.

It is strange that the last step in the advancement of the Patriarch of Constantinople should be due to the Turkish conquest. He now takes something like the place the Emperor would have taken, if Constantine had not preferred a glorious death to the shame of being a tributary prince under the Sultan. And so the Patriarch reached the highest point of his career. When we first met him he was not a patriarch at all, nor even a metropolitan, but only a local bishop under Thrace. Now he has an enormous patriarchate covering all Russia, Turkey in Europe, and Asia Minor; in ecclesiastical affairs he has precedence and something very like jurisdiction over the other Eastern patriarchs, and in civil affairs he has authority over them and all Orthodox Christians.^[18] Only he must humble himself before the Sultan, and to make this degradation quite complete he is invested with the signs of his spiritual jurisdiction by the unbaptized tyrant who is his lord. The patriarchs, although they held so great a place over Christians, have always been made to feel that they are nothing before the Turk. They represent the enormous majority of subjects of the Porte in Europe, but they have never been given even the smallest place in the Diwan, that is, the Sultan's advising council. And the Sultans have deposed them, reappointed them, even killed them, just as they liked. On the whole, then, for a Christian bishop the place of a small diocesan ordinary, from which the Patriarchs of Constantinople rose, was more dignified than the servile grandeur they now enjoy. And, as we shall see, the last epoch of this history is the story of how they have lost their authority piece by piece, till at the present moment the Œcumenical Patriarchate is only a shadow of what it once was.

The See of Constantinople was vacant during the last troubled years of the falling Empire. Athanasius II had been elected in 1450 and had resigned at once. When the first storm of the conquest was over and the Turks at last rested from the massacre of May 29th, Mohammed II realized that, now that he had at last taken New Rome, he did not want to reign over deserted ruins. So he ordered the slaying of Christians to stop, and persuaded those who had fled and hidden themselves to come back. He promised them the usual conditions of Rayahs and set to work to organize his conquest. He seized the finest churches (this was directly forbidden by his own law); the Hagia Sophia was whitewashed all over, the names of the Prophet and the first Khalifahs were hung up on huge round boards over the old ikons, the altar and Ikonostasis were destroyed, and a Mihrab to show the direction of Mecca was fixed in the apse, the Church of the Holy Apostles (in which the Emperors since Constantine had been buried) was razed to the ground to make room for a mosque, and any other churches the conquerors wanted were seized too.

Mohammed, however, took care to have a new patriarch elected; he made the metropolitans choose George Scholarios, because he was a bitter enemy of the union. Scholarios became Gennadios II (1453–1456). When he was elected Mohammed sent for him and said: "Be patriarch, and may Heaven protect you. You may always count on my favour, and you shall enjoy all the rights of your predecessors," and then, copying the custom of the Emperors, he solemnly invested him with the signs of his office and gave him a diploma (berat) exactly defining his rights. All the patriarchs since have submitted to this same degrading ceremony, and have received, each one as soon as he is elected, the berat, that declares him an Imperial Ottoman functionary. Although the Sultan allowed the old form of election to go on, there was no pretence about the fact that it depended simply on his will; as he deposed patriarchs so did he appoint them. Very often after having been deposed for a time the same man was re-elected. This has happened as often as five times (pp. 265, 267); there seem to have been nearly always, as there are at this moment, three or four ex-patriarchs living at the same time. None of them reigned more than a year or two, and so the number of Patriarchs of Constantinople since 1453 is quite incredible. For instance, during the seventyfive years from 1625 to 1700 there were fifty patriarchs—an average of eighteen months each.

The last and worst result of the subjection of the Church to the Moslem tyrant was Simony. Each patriarch had to make the Sultan an enormous present of money in return for his appointment; to raise this money they then sold all benefices to their bishops and priests, and so the taint of Simony, the buying and selling of the things of God, has been for centuries one of the characteristic marks of the Orthodox Church. However, when he had bought his berat from the Sultan and had swallowed as best he could the shame of the investiture, the Patriarch became, as far as his fellow-Rayahs were concerned, a great lord. The spiritual rights given to him by the berat were: Full authority over all churches and convents, and in all questions of faith, discipline, or rites, the right to depose any unworthy bishop or other clerk in his patriarchate, the right to hand over to the Porte contumacious clerks for punishment. Most of these rights he uses only in union with his synod. As head of the Roman nation the Patriarch judged all questions of marriage law and all disputes between Orthodox Christians, in which both sides had agreed to sue at his court.^[19] He could levy taxes from his nation for ecclesiastical purposes, and could keep a small number of gendarmes at his service.^[20] Neither he nor any clerks paid any taxes to the Porte at all, and he was the official representative of the other Orthodox patriarchs at the Court. Until quite lately the Byzantine patriarchate was enormously rich. All property of bishops or other celibate clerks who died intestate came to it; also regular taxes from the clergy, the simoniacal purchase-money for all bishoprics and other benefices, heavy stole-fees, legacies, and the ordinary endowments of the See of Constantinople made up a very great income. On the other hand the disbursements, and especially the heavy bribe each patriarch had to pay to the Sultan for his appointment, and for the sake of which the Sultan took care to change the occupier of the see as often as possible, made a steadily growing debt. This debt, called the court-debt (τὰ αὐλικά), was met by an additional tax on the clergy; and so the Orthodox bishops and priests, who were free from taxes to the Porte, found that the payments they had to make to the Phanar left them on the whole in a worse case than laymen.

The patriarchate, having lost the cathedral of the Holy Wisdom, was first set up at the church of the Pammakaristos ("the All-blessed one," our Lady); Murad III (1574–1595) in 1586 turned this into a mosque, and the Patriarch moved to St. Demetrios's Church. In 1603 he moved again to St. George's Church, where he still remains. This church of St. George is the centre of the Greek quarter of Constantinople, the Phanar (so called from the old lighthouse), on the bank of the Golden Horn, behind the city. The Phanar has been ever since the centre of the Orthodox Church, and the name is used for its government, much as we speak of the Vatican. It has also been the centre of the Greek people under the Turk; the rich Phanariote merchants who live around the seat of the patriarchate have always been the leaders of their countrymen; they pride themselves on speaking the purest Greek, their strong national feeling has formed the nucleus of the hatred of Slav, Roumanian, and Bulgar, that is still the chief note of Greek policy, and even now that part of their people are independent, Greeks all over the world look, not to Athens and the Danish Protestant who reigns there, but to the Phanar as the centre, and to the Œcumenical Patriarch as the chief of their race.^[21]

We shall come back to the Phanar and the organization of the patriarchate when we come to the state of the Orthodox Church to-day (p. 338). Meanwhile it is only fair to remember that much of the degradation of the patriarchal throne during the long dark ages of Turkish oppression was not the fault, but the very great misfortune of the Christians. And many of those patriarchs who had to serve the tyrant so basely stood out valiantly against him when it came to a point that no Christian possibly could concede. Gennadios's immediate successor, Isidore II (1456–1463), was murdered for refusing to allow a Christian woman to become the second wife of a Moslem. Maximos III (1476–1482) was mutilated for the same cause, and so there have been many confessors of the faith on the patriarchal throne down to the martyr-patriarch, Gregory V (p. 341).

 

Summary.

The great turning-point of history for the Orthodox Christians after the schism was the Turkish conquest of their lands that ended with the taking of Constantinople on May 29, 1453. The old Roman Empire then ended with the glorious death of the last Emperor, Constantine XII. The Christian subjects of the Porte, called Rayahs, were allowed to keep their religion and customs, and were tolerated as an inferior and subject race. But they continually tried to revolt, and were each time cruelly put down; even when they did not revolt the Turks often broke their own law and persecuted them. The Porte organized all the Rayahs in different nations, meaning thereby religions, and each nation was put under its ecclesiastical head in civil matters too. So the Œcumenical Patriarch became the civil head of his people, thus gaining even more authority. But he was degraded by having to be invested by the Sultan, and each patriarch was forced to pay a heavy bribe for his appointment; from this beginning Simony became a characteristic of every rank in the Church. The patriarchs were very rich, but the Sultan changed them continually for the sake of the bribes. During the centuries of Turkish tyranny the Rayahs kept their faith, and thousands of them suffered valiantly for Christ.

 

1. Battle of Mohácz (conquest of Hungary), 1526; siege of Vienna, 1683.
2. These merchants at Galata formed the original nucleus of the "Latin nation," afterwards and still officially recognized by the Porte.
3. The whole population of Constantinople was then about 100,000, From these the Emperor's most careful muster could raise only 4,973 fighting men. Great numbers of old men, women, and children had taken refuge in the city as the Turks seized the country round.
4. His body was afterwards found and recognized by the golden eagles on his shoes. Mohammed let him be buried near the Mosque of Suleiman, and a lamp is always kept burning near his tomb. As far as they dare, the Greeks still make the grave of the last Autocrat of the Romans a place of pilgrimage. But they have not canonized him; is it because he was a Catholic? However, he does not need the doubtful honour of Byzantine canonization. Saint and hero he rests in peace in the city he guarded till death, and all over the Christian world his glorious memory is honoured. In pace Christi quiescas Auguste Cæsar.
5. For the fall of Constantinople see Gibbon, chap. 68, with Bury's notes. There is a good account also in De la Jonquière: Hist. de l'Empire ottoman, chap. 8, pp. 156–162. The rival Empire at Trebizond just outlived the one at Constantinople, and lasted till 1461. At that time David Komnenos was reigning, and when the Moslem armies surrounded his city, he, now utterly cut off from the rest of Christendom, promised to surrender it, if he and his family were given a safe passage to Europe. The Turk swore to do so, and David believed him. As soon as the Moslems entered the city they seized the Emperor and his seven sons and offered them the choice of Islam or death. The end of the last Komnenos was as glorious as that of the last Palaiologos. The youngest son did indeed apostatize, but David and the other six chose rather to die than to renounce their faith. So they were murdered. The Empress Helen then, valiantly defying the tyrant's command, herself dug a grave and buried her husband and sons. So the end of this rather absurd little Empire was dignified and glorious, and the memory of the martyrs' blood has brought it far more honour than it could have gained had it lasted.
6. They are not always consistent to this ideal. In modern times especially they have at last been forced to recognize and treat with independent sovereigns. But it is curious to see how unwillingly they have climbed down from their original attitude. The first time they recognized another State was in 1535, when Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–1566) made a treaty with Francis I of France (1515–1547). In this treaty Suleiman is the "King of kings, the Sultan of earth and sea, the shadow of God"; Francis is the "Honour of the princes of the faith of Jesus" (see De la Jonquiere, o.c. p. 236). But even now a Moslem would of course say that the ideal is for every one to accept Islam, and that involves (to an orthodox Sunni Moslem) obeying the Khalifah of the Prophet in all things.
7. So said the Prophet: "Finish my work, spread the House of Peace (Islam) all over the world; God gives you the House of War" (S. ix. 39). "Oh True Believers, fight your neighbours if they be unbelievers, treat them severely" (S. ix. 124).
8. Or rather perfect Islam. The Sunni view of the Mahdi's office is ahnost exactly the same as the Christian view of our Lord's attitude towards the old law. The Shiah (Persian and heretical) Mahdi is to be simply the long-lost 12th Imam come out of hiding at last. See J. Darmesteter: Le Mahdi (Paris, 1885). Every Moslem pretender, usurper, rebel or reformer at once says he is the Mahdi.
9. Afterwards the Persian Zoroastrians (Parsis) were recognized as Kitabis too, and their founder was added to the list of true prophets before Mohammed.
10. Their clergy were even exempt from the poll-tax. In Turkey the inevitable influence of Western ideas during the last century modified many of these rules.
11. For Moslem law on all these points see e.gr. H. Grimme: Mohammed, II Einleitung in den Koran (Münster, 1895), passim, also E. V. Mulinen: Die latein. Kirche im Türk. Reich, pp. 1–4.
12. The tribute of children was done away with in 1638.
13. The Ottoman Turks are now an almost entirely artificial race, as far removed from the original Turanians who came into Asia Minor in the 13th century as modern Turkish with its elaborately artificial forms and gigantic loans from Persian and Arabic (it has swallowed the grammars of both these languages besides its own) is from the rude dialect they brought with them from Central Asia. Any one can turn Turk by accepting Islam.
14. Sublime Porte means in English, High Gate. The Gate is a very common Semitic idiom for Government. The Gates of Hell in Mt. xvi. 18 mean simply the devil's government; judgement was given and laws were proclaimed at the gates of the city (cf. Job v. 4, Is. xxix. 21, Prov. xxii. 22), also the strength of a city was in its high strong gates. The metaphor of keys for authority is the same idea. The "Holy and True one" has the key of David "to open and no one shall shut, to shut and no one shall open" (Apoc. iii. 7), and our Lord gives St. Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven (Mt. xvi. 19), that is, supreme authority in his Church. The High Gate (al-Bāb al-‘āli) then in Arabic means simply the Supreme Government, and the Turks have taken this expression, like almost every idea they have, from the Arabs.
15. Under the Chacham bashi (Chief Rabbi).
16. The Turk uses the word katulik for Uniates and latin for Latin Catholics.
17. The difficulty in organizing these Protestants is that they have no hierarchy and so the Porte does not know how to arrange them.
18. The highest point of his advancement in the Balkans was after 1765, when he had crushed the three independent Churches of Bulgaria, Serbia, and Roumania (pp. 307, 317, 328), but Russia had been independent since 1591 (p. 294). The decline of the Patriarch's power began with the independence of the Greek Church in 1833 (p. 312).
19. Most of these rights were shared in a less degree by other bishops as well. The other "nations" had similar arrangements.
20. These civil rights have now disappeared. A Turkish law in 1856 did away with them and established "mixed councils" of Turks and Christians to try cases formerly settled by bishops. The ecclesiastical arrangements of the Orthodox Church have been modified too, since 1860 (p. 338).
21. A Greek said to Professor Gelzer in 1898: Le chef de notre nation n'est pas ce petit roitelet à Athènes, mais le patriarche œcouménique" (Gelzer: Geistliches u. Weltliches aus dem Türk-Griech. Orient, p. 24).