The appearance of a Greek church differs from those of the Roman Catholics, infinitely more than do the several religions. The Sanctuary, in the midst of which stands the High Altar, is separated from the church by a close screen; and there are neither aisles nor side chapels. The whole edifice is lighted by chandeliers suspended from the ceiling in three straight lines, reaching from the Sanctuary to the principal entrance: and the screen is ornamented with the effigies of saints, hardly and drily painted; which frequently figure in such sort in their temples as thoroughly to exonerate them from the imputation of making to themselves the “likeness of anything in Heaven, or on earth, or in the waters under the earth.” Nor is this all; for the pious being to the full as prone to make votive offerings to their favourite saints as any Catholic in Spain or Portugal, the staring, wooden pictures are furthermore decorated with gold and silver hands, eyes, ears, or noses, as the case may be; which gives them so comical an effect that the gravest person cannot contemplate them without a smile.
The centre of the screen is closed by a curtain above the low double door opening into the church—the veil shrouding from the eyes of the congregation “the holy of holies,” according to the old Jewish use. On the present occasion, the curtain was drawn back, and the High Priest was robing himself in front of the altar.
The Patriarch’s throne was on the right hand, and immediately opposite to it was the pulpit; while at the bottom of the church on each side of the door stood two enormous chests of polished wood, containing the church plate and properties. In the centre of the marble floor was placed the boast and treasure of the chapel—a stone which once formed part of the Sepulchre of the Saviour, affirmed to have been brought from the Holy Land, and ultimately deposited here. The crush towards this point was enormous: the dense crowd shoving and elbowing each other most determinedly to secure an approach; which, when they had effected it, enabled them to cross themselves, according to the rite of their church, seven times successively with a rapidity only to be acquired by long practice, and to kiss each extremity of the stone, leaving a piece of money in the salver of the attendant priest.
Huge wax candles of at least seven inches in diameter were burning in front of the Sanctuary, and on the canopy covering the Sepulchre; and the glare fell upon a dense crowd of heads, some shaven close, some decorated with a single long tress of hair hanging from the summit; some half-shaved, as though a platter had been adjusted to the cranium of the individual, and that the barber had operated round its edges; and others with long dishevelled elf-locks falling about their shoulders—the effect was perfectly ludicrous!
Meanwhile, the ladies in the gallery were not idle: compliments were exchanged—inquiries made and answered—and conversations carried on, as coolly as though the interlocutors had been quietly seated in their own houses: while every five or six minutes a priest made his appearance, bearing a salver to receive the donations of the pious and charitable. But I soon wearied of the nasal, monotonous chant of the officiating priests, which more than counteracted the light and gladsome aspect of the edifice; and, satisfied with having seen a great deal of paint and gilding, and a rich display of tissue and embroidery, as well as a holy scuffle among the crowd at a particular period of the service, to possess themselves of the candles that had lit up the Sepulchre, I escaped from the scene of pious confusion; and slowly taking my way through the cypress-shaded burial-ground, and onward to the Echelle des morts, I gladly stepped into the caïque, to share, beneath the hospitable roof of a friend, in the magnificent ceremonials which were to take place in the ancient patriarchal church at the Fanar.
As we traversed the port, I was struck by the various character of the shipping, more than usually conspicuous under a flood of bright sunshine. The vessels of war, (one of them the largest in the world) were lying like floating cities on the still surface of the mirror-like Bosphorus: the foreign merchant ships, anchored in dense ranks along the shore, with their sails furled, and their slender masts shooting upwards, like the tall stems of a wind-stripped forest—the Arab vessels, with their sharp high prows and sterns, precisely as I had often seen them represented on the antique medals—the steam-packets, dark and motionless like ocean-monsters, about to vomit forth their volumes of thick, suffocating smoke upon the clear air; while about, and around, and among all these, darted, and glided, and whirled, the slender caïques of polished and carved walnut wood, with their gracefully-clad rowers, and their minute gilded ornaments glittering in the light; the sharp shrill cry of “On the European side”—“On the Asiatic side!”—ringing upon the ear every moment, as the boatmen indicated each to the other which course to steer, in order to leave to all a free passage.
We landed on a terrace overhanging the water, at the extremity of our friend’s garden; and after taking coffee with the ladies, immediately set forth to visit the church by daylight. Though more limited in its dimensions, and less rich in its decorations, than the church at Pera, it nevertheless pleased me infinitely better; there was an air of time-hallowed holiness about the whole of its interior, far more attractive than the unfaded paint and fresh gilding which I had seen in the morning.
The Patriarch’s throne, simple, and even clumsy in its form and fashion, had existed for twelve hundred years, and was consequently respectable from its antiquity; close beside it stood the raised and high-backed chair of Logotheti; and about twenty feet beyond, stretched the magnificent screen of the Sanctuary, delicately carved in dark oak. This screen particularly attracted me, the workmanship was so minute and elaborate, and the columns which separated the panels in such high and bold relief. Here, as at Pera, dry, hard, savage-looking Saints ornamented the spaces between them, and were equally decorated with the incongruous and disjointed offerings of their votaries.
The most popular personage of the whole calendar among the Greeks is decidedly St. George, who had no less than two entire effigies in beaten silver in this church. The pulpit was of mosaic, thickly overstrown with stars of mother-of-pearl; and two large chests, similar to those which I have already named, were composed of the same materials. The women’s gallery was even more closely latticed than that at Pera, and the flood of light without was admitted so sparingly by the high and infrequent casements, that a solemn twilight reigned throughout the edifice, which accorded admirably with its antique and somewhat gloomy character.
Thanks to the guidance under which we entered, the priest who had opened the doors for us was obliging enough to walk to the other extremity of the church, and thus leave us the opportunity of penetrating into the Sanctuary, which the profane foot of woman is supposed never to tread. It consisted of a small chapel, containing an altar by no means remarkable, spread with the sacramental plate: a high-backed chair of marble for the Patriarch, a fountain for the use of the officiating priests, a few miserable oil-paintings, and a vast number of small pictures of Saints and Virgins, placed there during a certain time for “a consideration,” to become hallowed by the sanctity of the spot ere they were removed to the private chapels of the different families: every Greek, however limited in fortune, having an apartment in his house fitted up as an oratory.