CHAPTER VIII
DIPLOMACY—HIGH AND OTHERWISE
Our Ambassador’s first interview with the Kehayah had for its primary object a demand of the greatest delicacy, though no way connected with English interests in the Levant: a sort of “side-show” springing out of Charles II.’s secret diplomacy and directed from the inmost recesses of the Cabal. Whether Finch knew the dark inwardness of the policy he served can only be matter of conjecture: his despatches are too guarded.[106] But certain it is that he threw himself unflinchingly into measures which he knew to be agreeable to his master and his patron, Lord Arlington.
The custody of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem had for ages supplied an apple of discord between Greek and Latin monks, who fought for the tomb of the Prince of Peace with more rancour than monarchs ever displayed in their struggles for temporal gains. It was not the ownership of the holy places, which belonged to the Grand Signor; it was not even the exclusive occupation of them that the unholy contest raged about. The whole feud was for certain honorific privileges or tokens of pre-eminence, such as the right to decorate a shrine, to light the lamps, or to keep the keys of a church. For these trifles both sects were prepared to spend thousands in corrupting the pashas of the Divan with whom the decision lay, and, besides, the Latin friars in Palestine, though being Spaniards, they had no ambassador of their own to assist them, enjoyed the diplomatic support of France, of Germany, of Venice, and of Poland. The Greeks would fain rely on their wits and their dollars. So equipped, each sect had alternately turned the other out. When M. de Nointel came to Turkey in 1670, he found the dispute in progress: it was one of the aims of his mission to have it settled in favour of the Latins, and on renewing the French Capitulations, in the summer of 1673, he had, as he imagined, carried his point.
The Greeks, however, had at that time a powerful champion in the First Dragoman of the Porte, Panayoti Nicusi, commonly called by the diminutive Panayotaki—an exceedingly clever and accomplished Greek, who easily persuaded the Vizir of the impolicy of taking the custody of the Holy Sepulchre from subjects of the Grand Signor and giving it to the protégés of foreign Powers—Powers which once owned the Holy Land and hoped to own it again: religious penetration being but the first step to ultimate conquest. A Hattisherif was, accordingly, handed to Panayoti, confirming the Greek claim. But, as Germany and the other European Powers whom Panayoti, before entering the service of the Porte, had served in the capacity of interpreter, were patrons of the Latins, and Panayoti did not wish to appear as his former employers’ opponent, the grant remained dormant until after his death, which took place in October 1673. Once the Dragoman safe in his grave, his countrymen produced the document and asserted their rights. The feud had reached its climax at Easter 1674, when M. de Nointel was on the spot.
Greek and Latin friars were preparing to adorn their respective portions of the marble shrine that covered the Tomb, when, stimulated by the presence of the French Ambassador, they fell out about the use of a ladder. The quarrel soon grew into a free fight which ended in the murder of one or two—some said two or three—Greek Caloyers. Result, in the French Ambassador’s own words, “un enfer déchaîné”—hell let loose. The whole of the Greek community, clergy and laity, men, women, and children, rushed to the Cadi clamouring for help against the Latin assassins; the Latins stoutly denied the deed, affirming that the Caloyer or Caloyers had died of old age. M. de Nointel, in a paroxysm of diplomatico-religious frenzy, wrote to his King, to the Pope, to the Queen of Spain, to all the Catholic princes and potentates in Europe, denouncing the Greeks as usurpers, calling for vengeance, begging for money—much money wherewith to purchase the favour of the pashas and foil the intrigues of the schismatics.
All this, however, had failed to undo the dead Panayoti’s work. Ahmed Kuprili never was the man to be moved by any one, least of all by the representative of a nation which, while calling itself the ally of Turkey, openly aided Turkey’s enemies: the Vizir had met thousands of Frenchmen fighting against him both in Hungary and in Crete. Moreover, as Sir John remarks, the murder of the Greek or Greeks had “highly displeasd’ the Gran Visir.” The Spanish Cordeliers of Jerusalem, reduced to their own devices, sent to Adrianople Padre Canizares, their Commissary at Constantinople, armed with letters from the Bailo of Venice and good store of gold of his own, to see what they could do at the Porte. The Greeks, on their part, sent to Adrianople the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Dositheos, armed with the Sultan’s Hattisherif and good store of gold of his own, to see that the Spaniards did nothing at the Porte. Thus things stood on the eve of Sir John Finch’s appearance on the scene: Greek and Latin Christians wrangling for the possession of Christ’s grave before a Moslem tribunal.[107]
Our Ambassador had followed the feud from Pera with profound attention. England, looking upon the Greeks as natural allies against the common enemy—Popery—had, since the time of Elizabeth, consistently supported them in all their quarrels with the Latins. That Queen’s representative, Edward Barton, lived on terms of affectionate intimacy with the Patriarch Meletios. His successors, Henry Lello and Sir Thomas Glover, likewise maintained the closest friendship with the successors of Meletios. After enduring unabated throughout the reign of James I., this Anglo-Greek alliance had attained its height in the time of Charles I., during the Patriarchate of the renowned and unfortunate Cyril Lucaris, when the Catholic intrigues against the Greek Church reached their depth. Sir Thomas Roe and Sir Peter Wych, all the years they were at Constantinople, strove to save that prelate from the infamous plots of the Jesuits and their patron the French Ambassador, who, however, succeeded at length in compassing his strangulation at the hands of the Turks.[108] The first departure from this policy appears, strangely enough, to have occurred during the Commonwealth. When Lord Winchilsea arrived at Constantinople, in 1661, the Latin President of the Holy Sepulchre appealed to him for his favour on the ground that his antecessor, Sir Thomas Bendyshe, was a great defender of the Catholics in Turkey against the Greeks[109]—at a time when the Catholics in England were treated as almost outside the Christian pale and all heretics scattered over the Catholic world regarded Cromwell as their protector! Such a paradox might give food for interesting speculation indeed.[110] What concerns us here is Winchilsea’s response to the appeal: it forms a tolerably good example of the edifying ways of diplomacy.
Among the King’s Instructions to Winchilsea there is a clause bidding him “show all kindness and humanity to those of the Greek Church,” and counteract, by all the means in his power, the machinations of her antagonists, “especially such Jesuits and Friars as under religious pretences compass other ends.”[111] This looks as if at the beginning of his reign Charles II. meant to revert to the ancient tradition. Very soon, however, his attitude changed. As everybody now knows, though at the time the thing was a secret known to very few, Charles, already a crypto-Catholic, promised himself to establish papacy in England—to re-unite his kingdom to the Church of Rome. After the displacement of Secretary Nicholas (who, like Clarendon, always opposed the King’s favour for the Catholics) by Arlington, in 1662, the Romanist tendencies of the English Court became more pronounced, culminating in the Treaty of Dover which, among other things, stipulated the subversion of Protestantism in England. It was natural, therefore, for a king who entertained such projects at home to foment similar designs abroad; that his representatives at Constantinople should promote in the East the cause which their master promoted in the West.
What verbal orders Winchilsea may have had it is impossible to say; but it can be shown that, even while pretending to exert himself on behalf of the Greek Patriarchs of Constantinople and Jerusalem, he earned the gratitude of their Latin rivals. After the supersession of Nicholas, he dropped all pretence, obtained His Majesty’s authority to disregard the pro-Greek clause, and thenceforward made the protection of the Roman Catholics an integral part of his programme.[112] His successor, Harvey, went out to Turkey with Instructions from which the awkward clause was significantly omitted,[113] and this negative evidence is supplemented by that Ambassador’s confidential relations with the Marquis de Nointel who had on his eager mind the “re-union” of the Greek and Roman Churches under the aegis of Louis. The Rev. John Covel, who assisted at many after-dinner discussions between the two diplomats about the doctrine of Transubstantiation and kindred topics, makes it quite clear that in Harvey the Catholic cause had found, at least, a benevolent neutral.[114] In the more zealous and less discreet Finch it was to find an active ally.