The Passing of the Turkish Empire in Europe. B. Granville Baker
exile at the entrance of the Black Sea, but was recalled before many days had passed, for his faithful flock had risen, slain without mercy the crowd of monks and Egyptian mariners in the streets of the City, roared and rioted round the palace gates in waves of sedition, that Chrysostom had to be recalled to restore order. He returned in triumph; but he was no courtier, and his zeal outran discretion, so the Empress had him banished again, this time to Mount Taurus, and then further away to the desert of Pityas, but he died on his way thither in his sixtieth year. Thirty years later, in 438, Theodosius II went over to Chalcedon to meet the remains of John Chrysostom, which were being brought from the first obscure burial-place to Constantinople. Falling prostrate on the coffin, the Emperor implored forgiveness for his guilty parents, Arcadius and Eudoxia.
Of the many sects thrown up by religious controversy few have survived to this day, but of these one is remarkable in many ways—the Armenian Church. The Armenians are an Indo-European people, living in Great and Little Armenia, an elevated plateau, from which the principal mountains, rivers, and valleys of Western Asia diverge, a plateau some 7000 feet above the sea in places, and rising to its greatest height of 17,260 feet in Mount Ararat, now in Russian territory.
No doubt it is a great satisfaction to the Armenians to have that holy mountain in their native land, though I do not think that undue pride over this interesting feature has kept them apart from others of the Christian faith. They took to it very readily during the reign of Constantius, and during the years when the Eastern Empire was still mighty in Asia maintained their connection with the See at Constantinople. But their country was peculiarly liable to be swamped by alien races, and constant disorders during the many centuries when the Eastern Empire was falling to pieces alienated them from the original fold. Again, their clergy were generally ignorant of the Greek tongue, so they ceased attending synods, and thus widened the rift, so that, as they did not attend the Council of Chalcedon, they came to be considered as schismatics, and have long had a Patriarch in Constantinople, who watches over the interests of his flock. His is a very difficult position, for ever since there has been an Armenian problem no other means of solving it has ever suggested itself to the Porte than that of wholesale massacre—there is an Armenian problem, therefore kill the Armenians; simple, thoroughly Oriental, and not to the taste of Europe, whose protests, however, have never been as loud over Armenian outrages as when some national trade interest is affected. Nevertheless Armenians have stayed on as useful citizens and subjects of Sultans who showed to them less consideration than to any others of the numerous races which live under the Porte’s peculiar jurisdiction; they are advancing in wealth, education, and political importance, and are likely to play an important part in the future of Asia Minor. It is said that the Armenians might have made common cause with the Greeks, and thus assisted towards the deliverance from Turkish yoke which seems to have been brought at last by the arms of the twentieth-century crusaders, who swarmed over the passes of the Balkans and down the Valley of the Maritza only a month or so ago. The Armenians, instead of accomplishing unity by means of their synod, seem to have frittered away their strength in small committees, probably discussing side issues with great earnestness and leaving great questions unsolved, as is frequently the case in the deliberations of such bodies.
Ever since the earliest days of Christianity Constantinople has been the seat of a Father of the Church. His importance increased as the Empire flourished, and he soon was styled Patriarch, a title which has never been relinquished, an office which has never been in abeyance but for those few days between the triumphal entry of Mohammed the Conqueror and the Patriarch’s reinstatement by that monarch.
The buildings which serve as head-quarters for the Patriarch of Greek Orthodoxy in Constantinople stand overlooking the upper reaches of the Golden Horn at the Phanar, and have no great beauty to distinguish them from their surroundings. The cathedral church is small, and the only thing which impressed me in it is the cathedra itself. Not long ago I had the honour of being presented to His Holiness the late Patriarch. A friend and I made our way to the Phanar, through picturesque streets, thronged with the usual crowd of leisurely wayfarers; vines festooned from one side to the other, and in places affording shade from the searching rays of the sun, but at the same time condensing the mingled, varied odours inseparable from life in the East, and which, no doubt, contribute to its indefinable charm. The Phanar is a quarter formerly occupied by those Greeks whose duties brought them in closer contact with the Imperial Court of Byzant; they lived in stone houses that clustered round the Phanar, the lighthouse, at the foot of the heights, where stood palaces of princes, churches, and barracks of the Imperial Guards, and whence the walls defending the City from attack by land draw their rugged lines down to the Golden Horn. We were shown into a long room, hung round with indifferent portraits of former Patriarchs, and introduced by one of the most prominent lay members of the Holy Synod, a gentleman to whom, I fancy, the Greeks of Turkey in Europe owe a debt of gratitude. His Holiness received us most graciously, conversed amiably on many questions, and all went very well till he had a look at the sketch I had taken of him. “As it has not succeeded I will give you a photograph of myself,” said His Holiness, and I am the proud possessor of a signed photograph of this the latest successor of a long line of ecclesiastical potentates. Nevertheless, I consider my sketch a good likeness, and my opinion is not based on conceit alone, but is endorsed by others qualified to judge.
It is sad to reflect that Christianity, even from the earliest days, has strayed so far from the leading precept of its Founder. The Church in all ages, among all nations, proclaimed Him “Prince of Peace,” then incited her followers to take up arms in defence of dogma, ritual, never dreamt of by the Christ. The different peoples which were enabled to divide into groups in accord with racial ambition were used as tools by prelates of the East and West to add to their own importance, to enhance their own prestige. The West drew to it strong Germanic races who, sword in hand, helped to gather the broken remnants of the Latin races into the fold of the Western See; these subtler Latin races, never quite freed from the worship of their forebears, never entirely abandoning the worship of the gods of old, of Isis and Osiris, gained for a space ascendancy over the simpler, purer Teutons, and made the power of the Roman Pontiff possible. Revolts there were many, when the strong, persistent Germanic intellect developed, and tried to free itself from spiritual thraldom. Until the days of Luther, such stirrings were countered by a short shrift and a blazing pyre for the offender. Luther’s theses, nailed to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral, marked the straining of the cords that bound northern races to the Southern See, and led nations to give rein to their ambitions, striving to attain them throughout a war of thirty years. Even then the fight was indecisive, and the “Kultur Kampf,” against which Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, battled with but qualified success, occupies the mind and tends to check the spiritual development of modern Germany.
The people of the Eastern Empire centred in Constantinople in those days, far beyond the intellectual limitations of the West, could not be expected to submit to the spiritual authority of a Roman Pontiff, especially as the Roman Empire of the West had gone under before its barbarian foes, whereas the Roman Empire of the East yet held sway over many distant provinces conquered by Roman arms. The Eastern and the Western world were seldom in complete accord; the bonds that united them in earliest days were frail, and could only be made to hold when in the hands of a strong man like Constantine the Great. The Western Empire’s fall enhanced the greatness of the Eastern Empire, and thus was paved the way to separation in matters of religion. The intellectual pride of the Greeks would not submit to any dictation on the subject of Christian doctrine from the West, and Roman ambition would not allow outlying communities to formulate new doctrines nor to revise old ones. It needed a small pretext to bring about schism,