Why Is There an Eastern Question?
"The Turkish atrocities" which perennially horrify the world are by long prescription ascribed to Mohammedan hatred of Christianity. Doubtless such is the case in many countries where the Turks govern, but in the Balkan Peninsula the Schismatical Greek Christians seem to be largely responsible for present and past conditions; and it is reasonably sure that if their influence were eliminated a modus vivendi could be arranged for Bulgarian and Macedonian Christians even under the rule of the Turk.
The Bulgar hates the Greek, and has expressed this hatred in bloody wars seven hundred years before the Turkish invader set foot on European soil, and today Macedonian Bulgars massacre Macedonian Greeks as remorselessly as the Mohammedans murder both. To this unhappily is added religious animosity; not because of any divergence of faith, for their creeds are identical, but for what will appear very trivial to those who do not thoroughly grasp the situation, viz.: ecclesiastical jurisdiction. That is what Balfour meant when he spoke of the strife between Patriarchates and Exarchates; the former being adherents of the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople; the latter of the Bulgarian Metropolitan or Exarch. Of course over and above this mutual hatred of Turk and Bulgar and Greek, other mighty interests loom. There is Russia's scheme of Panslavism which France approves and Austria encourages but dreads lest it come too near herself; there is England's terror of Russia so acute that it puts her on the side of the Turk where Germany also stands for commercial reasons; and there is even Italy's hope of something in the general debacle with the fear, however, that it will make her Austrian foe too great; but all these interests are foreign to the people of the Balkans who are mere incidents in the game and perhaps to be divided up in the ultimate reckoning. Would their helplessness be so complete, and would their country be made the battle ground for the aggrandizement of foreign nations if the Greeks had not reduced them to their present humiliating condition? They think not. For Bulgaria threw off the Greek and with it the Turkish yoke, and immediately became an independent nation. To achieve a similar independence in a similar way is what Macedonia is aiming at today. The first one in their path is the Greek Patriarch who is the Sultan's agent and has been such ever since the fall of Constantinople and before, not only in ecclesiastical but in civil matters, and who has used the Church to effect the civil and national servitude of the country. Hence, their opposition to all he represents. He, on the other hand, is bound to keep his grip on the Peninsula at all costs, and hence, the scandal which shocks the world when it sees a Christian prelate standing side by side with the unspeakable Turk to crush a Christian people. "Joachim III, the present Greek Patriarch and his bishops," says a correspondent of the Civilta, November 21, 1903, "ordered public prayers for the definitive triumph of Islamism over the rebellious and schismatical Bulgars." The schism referred to is not from Rome but Constantinople. According to a writer in the Quarterly of October, 1903, "this is the dark side of the revolutionary movement; a side frequently overlooked by those who, blinded by religious or nationalist enthusiasm, see in the action of the Bulgarians nothing but the struggle of a Christian people against Mohammedan misrule. The motive of the atrocious tactics of the Macedonians is," he says, "to enable the Bulgarian Exarch to obtain from the Sultan new bishoprics and spread his spiritual jurisdiction over new districts so that when the opportune movement comes he may claim the whole district as Bulgarian."
This is true as far as it goes, though the writer's sympathies are evidently with the Patriarchates; but, as a matter of fact, the Exarchate is the native struggling against the foreigner. His ecclesiastical obedience is a badge of his race and nationality; and he understands perfectly well that a blow at the Greek is a blow at the Turk; that if one goes the other will follow. Church matters are indeed at the root of the strife, but they happen to be synonymous with patriotism, just as Russia's "orthodoxy "is identified with its nationality; Mohammedanism with that of Turkey, and the various rites with the autonomy of most of the Orientals. In the eyes of the Bulgars the Greeks are those who not only robbed them of their liturgy, but of their language and their independence. They are foreigners with whom war has been waged from time immemorial, and who are especially detested because their entrance into the country is associated with that of the enemy of the cross.
The fight at present is in Macedonia but around Bulgaria whence Macedonia draws her aid, everything in that part of the East centres at present, and on its existence all depends. In its present dimensions it is about as large as Indiana, and runs east and west along the south bank of the Danube until near the place where that river turns somewhat to the north and empties into the Black Sea; Roumelia and Macedonia are on the south, and on the west is ill-famed Servia.
The resurrection of this people is one of the political miracles of modern times. Even as late as the beginning of the last century you could have scarcely found a few peasants there who would call themselves Bulgars. Suddenly they are a nation, and the unwilling and unwitting cause of it is the Greek, their enemy. The Greeks had been sedulously educating them with a view of instilling hellenic ideals for political purposes, when it began to dawn upon some stray students, priests and bishops in this instance, that there had once been an ancient Bulgaria, with its own language and Czar. About 1835, the first Bulgarian school was opened. Others followed, and the movement from literary became political. In 1860, Rakowski, a Haidout or Bulgarian mountaineer rebelled, and in 1862 assailed Belgrade, the scene of the recent royal massacre in Servia. Just as now, the fight won from the Turk only a reform in the vilayets. In 1870, as a measure of appeasement, an independent Exarch or Bishop of Bulgaria was appointed, but this unexpectedly fanned the flame. In 1875 Bulgaria and other States revolted, and Bashibasouks, apostate Bulgarian Pomaks and Circassians were let loose on them. Fifty villages were burned and fifteen thousand men, women and children were slaughtered in the single district of Philipopolis. The insurrection was almost stifled, when, in the interests of Panslavism, Gourko and the Skoboleffs led their Russians over the mountains, won the terrible fight at Plevna and drove the Turks to Constantinople, but did not enter;—"the greatest military mistake of modern times," said General Grant. But Bulgaria was free, and by the treaty of San Stefano, which the Russians wrung from the Turks on March 3, 1878, its territory included almost all the Balkan Peninsula; and consequently took in Macedonia, which the world is now concerned about; but at Berlin, a few months later, the European Powers cut it down to its present size, thus unhappily excluding Macedonia, which is now struggling for the old arrangement. It was too big to give to Russia all at once. Alexander, Prince of Battenberg, was made the first king, with a nominal vassalage to Turkey. Though a relative of the Czar, he fell out with Russia when he annexed Roumelia, beat the Servians in a fifteen days' war and became a popular hero. He was kidnapped and forced to abdicate December 8, 1886. The regency of Stambouloff followed. He held his grip until he put on the throne Ferdinand of Saxe Coburg Gotha, a Roman Catholic, but not one to be proud of. In 1896, Stambouloff was assassinated in the streets of Sophia, and Ferdinand completely succumbed to Russia, even giving his son Boris to the Russian Church. Such is the history, in brief, of this twenty-five-year-old kingdom.
In Bulgaria proper there are 2,000,000 Bulgars and about 600,000 Greeks. In Macedonia some reports give us only 130,000 Bulgars, while Bulgarian statistics insist upon 1,200,000 with about 300,000 Greeks in which latter figure both sides concur. Although a few years ago there were no Bulgarian schools in Macedonia there are now 800, the Greeks having shrunk to half that number. "The Greeks unable to resist the Macedonia flood," says a writer in the Civilta, "have withdrawn from the country districts and are gathered chiefly in the seaports. Nevertheless the last insurrection has resulted in battering to pieces the Bulgarian influence in Macedonia. The Turks in spite of their humanitarian protests have demolished everything with fire and sword and for a long time to come the Exarch will receive no more berats from the Sultan for the erection of new Macedonian dioceses. Crowds of former exarchists are clamoring for protection from the Patriarch. They have already changed flags. However, the Greek will not have it all their own way. The Servians are declaring that Macedonia is a Servian Province, the Roumanians are collecting historical and ethnographical proofs that the Macedonians are all Wallachians, and the Albanians on their part have no doubt that they themselves are the original owners of the vilayets of Scopia and Monastir. In a word Macedonian ethnography is a veritable inferno. It is impossible to decide who are the aborigines. Meantime, Turkey keeps its grip on the land."
Bulgaria's capital is Sophia, so called from a church of St. Sophia built by Justinian but now a mosque. Its former designation was Serdik from the old Latin Ulpia Sardica. ft is in a bleak mountainous region in the west and with little prospect of a future. The author of La Bulgarie aux Bulgares, however, is ecstatic over its modern improvements, but a recent writer in Harper's describes it as "the dirtiest European city he has ever seen." Philipopolis in the east is in the midst of a fertile territory and is oriental in its character. It was there that the Arians who were condemned in Sardica convened. Philip, of Macedon, had founded it as a penal colony, but like Van Dieman's Land it achieved respectability in the next generation and assumed its present name for that of Ponerapolis or Hard Labor Town which Philip had fastened on it. Roustchouk is a Turkish creation in the north and a few years ago was "a city of closed doors, barred windows, and deserted streets except for an occasional dog asleep in the sun, and a few ragged prowlers who stole or begged; what shops were opened displayed goods that only poverty invested in, while a disconsolate Jew passed along here and there selling multicolored sorbets for a sou." Now it is modernized and is flourishing; Varna is its chief port on the Black Sea.
Everything Greek has been virtually overwhelmed in the country. The Exarch appoints Bulgarian bishops and priests; the old Slavonic liturgy is restored; the schools are mostly Bulgarian and a national spirit pervades the whole country. The people are chiefly farmers, with small holdings of six or seven acres which they got from the old Turkish landlords. In fact, The Peasant Kingdom is a title which Dicey gives it in a recent book descriptive of the country. They are a cold, reserved, taciturn, somewhat suspicious people, which is due, no doubt, to long centuries of oppression. Those of the south, however, who came in contact with the Greek are more frank and amiable. They are slight but sinewy and strong, have light hair, but what the writer just named, calls "a muddy complexion." They have high cheek bones, shaggy brows, and eyes somewhat Mongolian in their shape, and "they look down." They are fond of children, but unconcerned and neglectful of old and suffering parents. According to the author of Bulgarie aux Bulgares, who is a priest and an ultra Bulgarian, "they are religious," which is hard to reconcile with the previous statement. Other writers are very severe with them on this point. Dicey, while admitting that they are honest and well behaved, finds their Christianity "rudimentary," and adds: "The Greek faith is the least spiritual of all the creeds of Christendom, and the Bulgars are the least religious of all the races under the Eastern rite. They have very little worldly wealth, but poverty, in our sense of the word "—he probably means dependent pauperism—"does not exist; there is no need of poor relief; there are no labor unions and no strikes; smoking is not common, drunkenness unknown; street quarrels, rows, shouts and cries rare; children who play, play often in silence." The best type is around Philipopolis. There are gypsies among them, called Bohemians, though they never were in Bohemia; there are Jews who come from distant Spain, and who still speak Spanish, and Pomaks who are Bulgarian apostates to Mohammedanism. The Turks are emigrating. The peasants still adhere, to some extent, to their national dress, which for the men is a sloping, yellow, buttoned waistcoat and purplish, black-braided trousers, with sometimes a blue jacket, trimmed with red, and a fur-lined overcoat; while on their head is a huge covering of fleece. The women affect long skirts of brown stuff, trimmed with white and dotted with many colored knots; a large handkerchief on their head, falling to the shoulders, and on their forehead a band of coins. The Jew keeps to the dress of the Turk. There are no nobles among them and no social distinction. Education is making wonderful strides, with the danger ahead of making a proletariate that can find no occupation but politics. There is but one legislative assembly. Their army numbers about 40,000.
The separation of this people from Catholicity confronts us with one of those inscrutable rulings of Divine Providence which bewilder the student of history.
They were not originally Slavs. They are of the Finnish stock akin to the Tartars and Huns, and appeared first near the Volga in Russia under khans or bolyars; all of which names, though some lexicographers deny it, appear to have an etymological affinity. In the wake of other barbarians they came down into the old Roman Province of Moesia, where they found the Slavs already in possession, the old Thraco-Illyrian population having been destroyed or displaced. By these Slavs the Bulgars were absorbed, not even a trace of their primitive speech remaining. From the beginning they were bitter foes of Constantinople. Again and again, they attacked the city, but never took it, though the empire once paid them tribute. Their most formidable monarch in the early days was Kroum, who ruled at the same time as Charlemagne. Haroun al Raschid had just defeated the Emperor Nicephorus. Kroum completed the work by slaughtering the whole Christian army in a defile of the Balkans. He cut off the Emperor's head, stuck it on a spear and paraded with it before his wild troops. Later on before the walls of Constantinople, he immolated a multitude of Greek captives to propitiate the Bulgarian gods; sprinkled his soldiers and implements of war with blood from the altar and then set fire to the towns and villages for twenty-five leagues around.
Now begins a curious turn in affairs which resulted in the ruin of the Bulgars. A short time after these events, in the year 850, there arrived at Constantinople a fugitive from captivity among the Bulgars. Famished and weary he sat on the steps of St. Diomedes outside the walls. Nicholas, the Guardian of the City, saw him and befriended him. His name was Basil. He was a marvellous horseman; his old Bulgarian masters, wild riders themselves, having taught him the art. It happened just then that the Emperor Michael, who was insanely fond of horses, in fact who was little else, when not drunk, than an imperial coachman, was worried about a fiery steed which no one could break; and there was question of hamstringing the beast. Someone spoke of Basil. He was summoned, and after the fashion of the hero in Dion and the Sibyls, rode the animal around the hippodrome amid thunders of applause. That was the beginning of his fortune. In 854 he was made Grand Chamberlain of the empire. Twelve years after he poniarded Bardas, his rival, in the very room of the Emperor, and the next year stabbed the Emperor himself, while that wretched ruler was in the midst of a drunken debauch. Michael, the Drunkard, is the name given to that monarch by his contemporaries. This assassination made Basil, the Macedonian horse tamer, Emperor of Constantinople.
These tragedies coincided with the initial steps of the great Eastern Schism. Michael, the Drunkard, Bardas, his fellow debauchee, and Photius, a layman reputed to be learned, were just then plotting to separate the Greek Church from Rome. The death of two of the conspirators and the deposition of Photius who had been consecrated Patriarch in place of Ignatius put an end to the scheme, but only for the time being.
By an inscrutable permission of Divine Providence, Sts. Cyril and Methodius were at that precise moment converting the Bulgars to Christianity, and the converts naturally associated themselves in their new faith with their near neighbors, the Greeks. Had their entrance into the Church been earlier or later, humanly speaking the whole history of the nation would have been changed. They would not have become schismatics; nor would the Russians who were likewise becoming Christians at the time. But so it came to pass. Why it was so, who can tell?
The first conspicuous convert among them was Boris the son, though not the immediate successor, of the old Greek-hating savage Kroum. His name Boris is evidently a favorite with the race, for the unfortunate little heir to the Bulgarian throne is a Boris and so is the hero of the recent Macedonian insurrection; but when its original owner was baptized he took the name of Michael for he had an unexplainable regard of some kind for the drunken Emperor who stood sponsor at the baptism. Many of his people had already accepted the faith. His own sister, who had been thirty-eight years a captive in Constantinople, had come to persuade him to embrace Christianity; political considerations had some weight, also, for the neighboring tribes and among them the Russians were entering the fold; some marvellous occurrences are said to have helped his decision; so he took the step, and dragooned into following him those of his people who had not made up their minds. Later on he laid down the sceptre and became a monk, but when the son who succeeded him turned renegade, old Boris threw off the cowl, grasped the sword, and leading an army against his son deposed him and then returned to his penance and prayers. A theologian of such a character could not be expected to see his way clearly in the matter of Roman and Greek obedience.
After his conversion he applied to Rome for bishops. They were sent him. But when he wished to make one of them Metropolitan, Rome demurred; so he applied to Constantinople.
The legates of the Pope were present and protested vigorously against making Bulgaria in anyway subject to Constantinople, basing their claim to immediate jurisdiction over the new Church and the consequent right to appoint its bishops, on the ground that the faith had been originally taught in Moesia by the Apostles Peter and Andrew; that it was the home of a very flourishing church in the early centuries, the Council of Sardica having been convened, in what is now Sofia, to condemn Arius; that the church of the Slavs had been revived there after the incursions of those barbarians and was subject to Rome until 713, when without warrant Leo, the Isaurian, had its allegiance transferred to Constantinople; and lastly that Bulgaria proper had been evangelized anew by missionaries from Pope Nicholas I.
The Greek contention was chiefly that the territory belonged to the empire. Basil was appealed to but he naturally decided in his own favor: for there was a political advantage in having this new nation brought into such close contact with him by means of the Church, and an opportunity of extending his influence to those other Slavs, the Russians, who were just becoming Christians. Constantinople was thus reaching out to Russia, as Russia now is to Constantinople. Thus a Macedonian welded the chains of the Greeks on his country. He could not have foreseen, half barbarian as he was, the disastrous consequences which would follow the machinations of Photius. But Rome dreaded it and her fears were soon realized. Then came the schism into which, of course, Bulgaria was swept. Learning the lesson of rebellion Boris soon separated his Church from Constantinople, but remained in schism from Rome and then religious animosity began to be added to the old race hatred and has continued to increase with time. The Bulgars remember how the Greek Emperor dethroned the second Boris and dragged him a prisoner to Constantinople; how, in 1014, the Czar Samuel died of horror when he saw the second Basil gouge out the eyes of 15,000 Bulgarian captives after the battle which put an end to the nation for a time, and gave a chance to the Greek Patriarch to hellenize their Church. The country rose again, but in 1382 it succumbed to the Turks, who handed it over to the Patriarch as Basil had done. The Turks would have left them their religion and language for they despised the Bulgars, but the Greeks destroyed both. Finally, when Mohammed II took Constantinople itself, in 1456, they saw the Patriarch again made the master of all the Christians of the Peninsula and he has remained so ever since.
This gives the key to the whole situation. The Greek Church is associated with everything horrible and hateful in Bulgarian history; and we can understand what grave political interests are involved in the question as to whence the Bulgarian ecclesiastics derive their jurisdiction. Separation from Constantinople in religious matters is a question of national life or death; and this has been forcibly brought out by a recent occurrence.
The Bulgars are proverbially grateful, and hold Russia in the highest regard for having given them independence, even though they paid over five million francs for the service and knew that she was seeking her own selfish ends. The action of the Powers in rescinding the Treaty of San Stefano only increased Russia's popularity. Hence they never refused Russia anything. They submitted to leave in Russian hands all the civil and military control of the country; to have the national policy dictated at St. Petersburg; to find Servia, backed by Russia, attacking them at a critical moment in their national existence; to hear the Czar advise the Sultan to re-conquer Roumelia; to see their favorite King Alexander kidnapped, brought to Russian soil and forced to abdicate. But when Russia advised a reunion of the Greek and Bulgarian Churches there was such an explosion of wrath throughout the country that the matter was incontinently dropped. That union meant for the Bulgars the abandonment of their nationality.
It finds itself thus between the upper and nether millstones. More than likely, Russia's proposal of reconciliation was only tentative, and it would scarcely have permitted such a union, even if it had been asked. Bulgaria as a Russian province, with religious subjection to russia, is more likely to be the programme intended, and its insistence upon the admission of Prince Boris into the Russian Church is indicative of its purpose. If it succeeds, then we shall have a repetition of what is going on in Poland and Finland. The Bulgarian Church will be Russianized, a comparatively easy process, for they have the same Slavonic liturgy and the same belief; the bishops will be appointed by the Holy Synod instead of Constantinople; the Bulgarian language, which is only beginning to be studied, will be forbidden, and the nation, which has already given such promise in its twenty-five years of existence, will again sink out of sight and have worse troubles than it ever suffered under the Greek and the Turk.
What is the way out of this difficulty? There is but one. No doubt it may seem absolutely unrealizable, and only the narrow and sentimental view of bigoted churchmen, but as a matter of fact it is the hope of a considerable part of the Bulgars; its realization is connected with one of the splendid epochs of their history, and it was the life-long policy of the greatest statesman that modern Bulgaria has produced namely, Stephen Stambouloff. It is union with Rome; the cessation of its schism. A national or governmental act is probably out of the question. Extinction of the schism by other means is not.
The idea is not novel. At the time when Bulgaria's glory was in its zenith, for its military power, its education, and its commercial prosperity, namely in the thirteenth century, under the Asen dynasty, Kaloyan, the third Czar of that line, was crowned by a Papal Legate and the country formally united to Rome. In our own times a delegation representing the whole Bulgarian Church was sent to Pius IX to ask for reunion. The whole Sobranye or Legislative Assembly voted for Vladimir as King, which meant a Catholic sovereign, for he was married to a Catholic. Finally, Stambouloff fought for reunion up to the day of his terrible death; and his assassination may have had something to do with that policy. He succeeded in inserting a clause in the Constitution permitting the heir of the crown to be brought up a Catholic; he placed Ferdinand, a Catholic, on the throne, and in a politico-religious congress, which he convened in Sophia in 1892, one hundred and twenty deputies voted for submission to the Holy See. Not that he was actuated by any tenderness for Catholicism, but because he saw that his country could be saved only by withdrawing it as far as possible from Russian influence.
Russia of course was intensely hostile to such a measure. In fact it arbitrarily seized the Latin Patriarch whom Pius IX had appointed at the request of the Bulgarian deputation of 1868, and imprisoned him in the fortress of Kiew and it succeeded in frightening back into apostacy, Zankoff, the leader of the delegation whom the Pope had made a Knight of St. Gregory; it refused to accede to the election of Vladimir though he was the Czar's own brother-in-law; it has withheld its recognition of Ferdinand's election most probably because of that monarch's religious faith; it has exacted the apostacy of the helpless child, Boris, and the everlasting infamy of his wretched father as the price of its favor, and has forced the Bulgarian Exarch to place a wreath on the tomb of the Czar; an act which is looked upon as a sign of ecclesiastical submission.
We do not know what is to be the last scene of the national drama, but assuredly had it not been for the unfortunate schism into which she was led, almost without fault of hers, the outlook would be different. One last chance was offered her after her fall, but she was swept along in the general torrent and was unable to avail herself of the opportunity. In 1439 a Council was held at Florence where the last Greek Emperor, Palaeologus, and four Eastern Patriarchs succeeded in uniting to Rome, not only the Greeks among whom were the Bulgars, but the Armenians, Copts, Abyssinians, Syrians, Chaldeans and Maronites. Only fourteen years afterwards the Turks, under Mohammed II, were at the walls of Constantinople. Weakened in their allegiance by long years of schism the wretched inhabitants of the city declared they preferred the Turban to the Tiara. Palaeologus, aided by a few Latins, defended the walls but was slain, and the Turks entered. "The Sultan," says Guggenberger, "made no demands on the Greeks to turn Moslem, but at once gave his protection to the opponents of the Union. He claimed the right of appointing and investing the Patriarch, and exercised and maintained all the rights which the Byzantine Emperor had exercised and maintained over the schismatical Church. The Patriarchs had to purchase their offices and receive their investitures from the head of the Moslem world. The Greek Church under Mohammedan rule sank to the lowest degradation of which a Christian Church is capable." Thus perished a great empire because of religious schism, and with it perished its victim, Bulgaria.
After that the battle line receded from the Bosphorous to Belgrade, when Hunyadi, St. John Capistran and Cardinal Carvajal made their heroic stand. Scanderbeg, aided by Pope Calixtus, fought the Turks for a quarter of a century, and if he averted the fate of his own country only for a time, he permanently secured the safety of Italy, and at the other end of Europe. Spain kept up the fight for a hundred years after Bulgaria succumbed, until it drove the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula.
Thus it was Latin Christianity alone that saved Europe from being what the Balkan Peninsula is today. Not only that, but it prevented another schism from completing the work which the older schism had inaugurated. Suleyman, the Magnificent, appeared before the walls of Vienna at the very moment of the rebellion of Martin Luther. In spite of the peril that menaced all Europe the Protestant Powers not only refused to oppose the Turks, but with the recreant Francis I were actually in league with them against Charles V, who was almost the only Catholic sovereign left in Europe. It was Charles who drove the Turks back to Constantinople and destroyed the power of the Moslem Corsair Barbarossa in the Mediterranean. Later on it was Pope Pius V who, almost unaided, utterly routed the Turks in the battle of Lepanto, with the result that since that time Mohammedanism has made no further advances in Europe. Had the world not been disunited by Protestantism, it is quite conceivable that with such a leader as Charles V, reprehensible as he was in many ways, all that was lost might have been regained and Europe freed from the Turk forever. It is not even too great a flight of fancy to imagine that if Bulgaria, with its splendid fighting power, had remained Catholic, it might have stood as a rampart on the Black Sea, like Spain on the Straits of Gibraltar. In such an event there would not be now an Eastern Question. It is a lesson of loyalty to the Holy See.
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