The missionaries belonging to this Church are unsurpassed in the admirable manner in which their charitable establishments are arranged. The homes and asylums for the poor and orphan children are for the girls under the control of the Sisters of Charity, and for the boys under that of the priests and monks. These are well kept, and very orderly, the food is good and abundant, and the dress of the children solid and befitting their condition. Hospitals are attached to each establishment, where the sick are well cared for and destitute Europeans admitted irrespective of creed. The good Sisters of Charity take upon themselves the duty of watching over the patients night and day. A dispensary is included in each mission station, where medicines and medical advice are given gratuitously. The children reared in these establishments are placed in situations on leaving them; but I regret to be obliged to say that comparatively few of either sex are known to turn out honest and respectable.
The retired lives led by these active servants of Rome do not prevent their being very intimately connected with their respective communities or using their all-powerful influence for good or for evil in all family concerns. They are hardy, active, and most persevering; their personal wants are small and their mode of living modest and unassuming. But in spite of this they are worldly-wise, crafty, and unscrupulous as to the means they use in obtaining their ends. Their mode of action is based upon the principle that the end justifies the means; few, therefore, are the scruples that will arrest their action or the dangers and difficulties that will damp their courage or check their ardor in their work.
All the internal regulations and arrangements of the Catholic community are made without the Porte troubling itself much about them—indeed, to do the Turk justice, in his high contempt for things Christian, he keeps as much as possible out of the religious dissensions of his subjects, and when by chance he does appear on the scene of action, by turns persecutor, protector, or peacemaker, he is generally prompted in the matter by one of the interested parties. An amusing incident witnessed by one of my friends at Jerusalem well illustrates this fact. This gentleman accompanied one of the peacemaking governors-general to the Holy City at the time the quarrel of the possession of the little door leading to the Sepulchre was at its highest. All the interested parties loaded the Pasha with acts of politeness and civility, which he received with great urbanity; but when the great question was delicately broached in the course of conversation, he at once turned round and exclaimed, Turkish fashion, “Oh, my soul! I pray do not open that door to me!”
There is little to be said about the Uniates, or Bulgarian Catholic converts in Turkey. The movement in its commencement, effects, and results may be compared to Midhat Pasha’s Constitution—a farce and imposition from beginning to end. Like the Constitution, the Uniate movement broke out in the midst of a hot fever of excitement and discontent; the first was created as a palliative for Turkish misrule, the second emanated from the mismanagement of a church. The disputes between the Greeks and Bulgarians on the church question was at its height when a certain number of Bulgarians, carried away by the hope of ameliorating the actual condition of things and ultimately obtaining their end, viz., the emancipation of the Bulgarian Church from the Greek, accepted the nominal supremacy of the Romish Church, and by a fictitious conversion became attached to it under the denomination of Uniates. Their number, at first small, would probably have remained so had it not been that some effective arguments and causes gave it a momentary impetus, bringing it under public notice. The sensational part of the incident was due to the exaggerated accounts given by the agents of the Propaganda and other societies of the future triumphs of Rome in this new field of action, and to the political advantage which the government of Napoleon III. tried to derive from it. Monsieur Bouré, the ambassador at that time in Turkey, greatly favored the movement, while some of the consular agents, overstepping their instructions, held out to the Bulgarian people the open support and protection of the French Government in favor of the anticipated converts: “C’est ici,” said one of those zealous agents, “C’est ici au consulat de France que la nation Bulgare doit dorénavant tourner son regard, porter ses plaintes et demander protection!”
The most telling argument with the Bulgarian peasant to abjure his faith was not the future benefit his soul would derive from the change nor the value of French influence and protection, but simply the prospect of freeing himself from all future Church impositions, and having his children educated at the schools of the Propaganda free of cost. These conditions were very enticing, and some thousands, yielding to the further influence of a few of their superiors who had declared themselves Uniates, blindly followed these as sheep following their shepherd in search of food. They knew nothing of the dogmatic side of the question, and cared not to inquire. The name of the Pope was substituted for that of the Patriarch of Constantinople; the ignorant Greek or Bulgarian priests were superseded by Polish preachers well versed in the Bulgarian tongue, whose sermons were composed with a view to impressing the people with a sense of the material rather than the spiritual benefits to be derived from their apostasy. The proselytizing centres were Adrianople, Monastir, and Salonika, where large establishments belonging to the Roman Catholic Societies undertook the work of conversion in a very zealous manner, and established branches in places of smaller importance in order to give more weight to the affair and increase the confidence of the Bulgarians in its stability. A Bulgarian monk, the best that could be got, was pounced upon by the Fathers and sent to Rome to be consecrated primate of the Uniates. This individual, unprepossessing in appearance and utterly ignorant and stupid, remained at Rome in order to receive the homage due to him as the future primate of the Uniates, and then returned to Bulgaria, where every effort was made by the agents of the Propaganda to give importance to the event and establish the authority of the new primate. The poor Bulgarian Uniates, closely watched and pressed on both sides by the Greeks and the Bulgarians, found it very hard to stand their ground. They began to show signs of laxity of zeal, and gradually dropped out of the newly-formed flock. This reaction took a very decided turn after the formation of the Bulgarian national church, when the converts en bloc returned to it, leaving a few of the faithful to occupy the benches of the deserted churches, and some orphans and beggars to people the schools attached to them.
Thus began and ended an affair which was nothing but a joke to those who were on the spot and behind the scenes; while the Catholic world, judging from all the wild tales of the press on the subject, seemed to lose their reason over it to the extent of exciting the curiosity of some governments and greatly alarming others, until the thing died out, to make room for more important matters.
However successful the work of conversion may be in the East when it is carried on (as with the Romish Church) with the object of entirely denationalizing a community and absorbing it into the proselytizing church, it will prove a failure in the long run. In the case of the United or Catholic Armenians, one sees another instance of the tendency of all the subject races of the Porte whenever a question of religion or political liberty is raised; it is to the West that one and all look for the settlement of these questions, for support, and for protection. European interference has been systematically imposed upon the Porte, and has obtained ascendancy over it in proportion as the Turk has become weak and incapable of resistance.
The Armenian nation seems to have remained united and at peace with the Church of its adoption until the year 1587, when Pope Sixtus sent the Bishop of Sidon as ambassador to the Armenian Melkhites, Jacobites, and Chaldean communities, to recover them from their heresy and establish papal authority over them; but the utmost the legate obtained at the time was the consent of the Armenian Patriarch of Cilicia to sign a confession of the Catholic faith according to the statutes of the Council of Florence. In the meanwhile numerous missionaries belonging to the order of the Jesuits and others had settled in the country with the object of carrying on the work of conversion. It was one of these, a Jesuit, who, a century later, converted Mechitar, the illustrious founder of the United Armenian community, which now numbers over 40,000 souls. Mechitar united in his person the qualities of the theologian, the scholar, and the patriot. Yielding to persuasion, he adopted the Catholic creed and directed all his energies to propagating it among his countrymen. His ideas were, however, those of an enlightened man who wished to combine conversion with mental development and liberal ideas based upon the sound foundation of separating the civil from the religious rights, founding a Church, Catholic in faith, but Armenian in nationality, with a constitution free from the direct control and interference of the See of Rome. It is impossible to say how far the project of the intrepid convert was feasible; his enterprise met with very decided opposition from the head of the propaganda, whose efforts were directed with fanatical tenacity and ardor towards denationalizing and Latinizing the new converts. Thus the community in its very origin found itself divided into two branches—the liberal, professing the views of Mechitar, proud of the name of Armenian, and desirous of promoting the interests of their fatherland; and the Ultramontanes, bigoted and holding Rome as the sole pivot on which their social, moral, and religious existence turned. These divisions soon caused dissensions, and Mechitar, finding the opposition of the Fathers too strong for him in his native land, left it and went to Constantinople, where he hoped to find more liberty and a more extended field for action. Here, also, bitter disappointment awaited him, for he found the pressure of the European Fathers put upon the new Church; mild persuasion and exhortation were set aside and an earnest policy of intolerance and exclusiveness was preached to the new community, forbidding its members to enter the churches of their fathers, which were represented as “sanctuaries of the devil,” holding its liturgy up to execration, and refusing absolution to those unwilling to submit to these severe doctrines. This system of intolerance succeeded so well with the retrograde party as to widen the breach already separating it from the liberal, and sowed at the same time the seeds of that mortal hatred between the United and the Gregorian Armenians that has more than once well-nigh caused their common destruction. At this stage, while party dissensions rendered union among the Armenian Catholics impossible, the work of proselytism marched on, until the Gregorians, alarmed at its rapid progress, rose in a body, and by means of hypocrisy and intrigue, headed by their uncompromising patriarch Ephraim, obtained a firman from the Porte ordering the banishment of all the Armenian Catholics from Constantinople. Thus the sparks of persecution kindled by this patriarch soon spread into a general conflagration under his successor Avidic, who, gaining the ear and support of the Grand Mufti Feizallah, obtained decree after decree for the persecution, confiscation, and expatriation of all their opponents in the empire, including the Fathers. The blow was too strong, and the sensation it created too great, for it to be passed over by the Western powers belonging to the same Church. A French ambassador consequently raised his voice so loudly and effectively at the Porte as to have the obnoxious patriarch expelled and exiled to Chios; the ill-fated dignitary, however, was not allowed to expiate his evil-doing in peace and solitude, but, waylaid, it is believed, by some equally unchristian Jesuit Fathers, he was kidnapped and taken to the Isle of St. Margaret, where he died the death of a martyr.
The Porte, in its desire to right the wronged, felt ill-requited by this act. The abduction of the Patriarch, together with other grievances, magnified by the Gregorians, increased its discontent, and, casting its mask of reconciliation aside, it became the open and direct persecutor of the suspected community. The Jesuits’ house at Galata was put under surveillance, the Armenian printing establishment was closed, and proselytism was forbidden on pain of exile. A Hatti ordered the arrest of all the Armenian adherents of the Romish Church. What remained of the community continued in hiding, awaiting a favorable time for its reappearance. Mechitar himself, suspected, distrusted, and disliked by all parties save his own, fled from Constantinople, and, after many vicissitudes and an unsuccessful attempt to found a monastery at Medon, finally succeeded in doing so in the Isle of St. Lazarus, granted to him by the republic of Venice. The monastery he there founded was of the order of St. Benedict, and was later on approved of by a bull of Clement XI. In this quiet refuge the learned monk established his order, which took the name of Mechitarists after him, and has become the college, not of orthodox catholicism, as understood and practised by the Latinized converts, but of learning, patriotism, and liberal views and ideas in religious matters. Scarcely had the United Armenians recovered from the shock of this persecution than they were again, in 1759, subjected to a fresh one set on foot as before by the Gregorians, who forced upon them religious forms repulsive to them, backed by the active support of the Porte. But the most critical moment for the very existence of the community, including a considerable proportion of Franks, was the time of the battle of Navarino. All the ill-humor and exasperation of the Turks fell upon the unfortunate Armenian Catholics, who, represented to the credulous Turks as traitors and spies of the Franks, were treated accordingly, and persecution and exile, ruin and death, were once more their lot. The principal actors in this last were an obscure sheikh who had a tekké at Stamboul, and who by some freak of fortune had risen to the rank of Kadi Asker, becoming far famed as Khalet Effendi, and an individual who was pipe-bearer in the Duz-Oglou family, one of the wealthiest of the United Armenian families.
The Porte declared that it recognized only one Armenian nation and one Armenian religion, and invited all schismatics to abjure their apostasy and return to the bosom of their own church and nation, on which conditions they could alone be pardoned. This was the climax of the evils and sufferings of the United Armenians. The Governments of Western Europe, indignant at this rigorous treatment and the miseries it brought upon an unfortunate community, took up its cause, and after a prolonged dispute between the French Government and the Porte, the determined conduct of the representative of the former power triumphed over the intrigues of the Gregorian Armenians and the ill-will and cruelty of the Porte; the exiles were recalled, their property restored, and they were recognized as a separate community under a patriarch of their own. We need not follow all the difficulties and complications that had to be overcome before these salutary results could be obtained. Since that epoch this community was formed into a separate body, and owing its welfare, security, and subsequent prosperity to the protection of France has enjoyed in peace the same rights and privileges as the Gregorians. These privileges were further granted by the Porte under the same pressure to the other Catholic communities. The grant of these concessions constituted France the moral supporter and religious protector of all the Catholics of the East, and for some years French influence in favor of the Catholic rayahs was supreme at the Porte.