‘Usano oltro l’impalare anchora l’inganciare sopra le forche, dove sono tre ganci fatti à modo d’una falcetta da mietere il grano, ma grosse tanto che possin sostenere un’huomo, e qui s’appiccha chi v’è condennato, e vi pende per molti giorne miserabilmente. Appicchano anchora con una fune sottile e lunga, tal che l’appiccato tocca quasi terra co piedi, con tutto che la forcha sia alta. Soglion’ anchora ligare l’huomo tra due tavole, e con quelle dal capo dividerlo per il mezzo con una siega. Usano tormentare lardando, hor con pece hor con lardo, metter celate rouide in testa, metter’i temperatoi sotto l’ungna, cacciare un’ asciugatoio, di quei che loro usano da cingersi, bagnato d’aceto giu per la gola e retirarlo poi su à poco à poco, e questo è un tormento crudelissimo. Sogliono tal’hora ligare un’huomo per un piede nudo à una colonna, attorno la quale fanno assai buon fuoco, l’ultimo rimedio, poi che il ligato è caldo, è di muoversi hor di la, hor di qua, ma poi che non puo piu, stanco e sforzato mancare, e morire, arrostito e rosso, com’un Gambero.’
Recent accounts of impalement in Bosnia have been received with incredulity by a portion of the English public, and that although the Turkish denials were absolutely worthless. For my own part I am credulous enough to believe that the impaled figure seen by Canon Liddon and Mr. McColl was not a scarecrow; and further, that Bishop Strossmayer was well-informed in stating that this was by no means an isolated case. The recent instances attested by Miss Irby’s friends now set the matter beyond dispute. Impalement was common in Bosnia during the disturbed times immediately preceding the Crimean war, and the supposition that a time-honoured institution like this should in a few years’ time have died out in the most conservative country in Europe, is, à priori, extremely improbable. Barbarities like these are characteristic of a certain stage of society, and need excite no surprise. Many of the tortures still practised in Bosnia are an inheritance from præ-Turkish times, and should be considered in connection with the general survival there of feudalism under a Mahometan guise.
[250] The Rev. W. Denton, The Christians in Turkey, p. 44. Hilferding (Ruskaja Besiéda, quoted by M. Yriarte, op. cit.) gives a frightful account of how a Bosnian landlord, a Beg, extorted money from six rayahs by suspending them over a fire of maize-stalks. ‘Les six raïas ne furent rendus la liberté qu’à moitié asphyxiés, après que la douleur leur eut arraché la promesse de donner tout ce qu’ils possédaient.’ In the forthcoming work of Mr. Stillman, the Times’ correspondent, on the ‘Insurrection in the Herzegovina,’ the reader will find (p. 9) an account of horrible instances of judicial torture perpetrated on a rayah family near Trebinje, in the period immediately preceding the revolt. Two were put in long wooden boxes like coffins and rolled down hill: others were stood upright with their heads in a hole in the floor of the prison which allowed them to rest on their shoulders, and splinters of wood were then driven under their finger-nails.
[251] Dervish Pashà has since been removed from the Vilajet of Bosnia.
[252] For the organisation of the Greek Church in Bosnia, see Thoemmel, op. cit. p. 102.
[253] According to the official reports of 1874, there were 576,756 Christians of the Greek Church in the Vilajet of Bosnia (which includes the Herzegovina). The total population was 1,216,846, of whom 442,050 were Bosnian Mussulmans; 185,503 Roman Catholics; 3,000 Jews; 9,537 Gipsies.
[254] Even in Greece, where the state of the Greek Church is said to be somewhat better, the simony is as rampant, and most humiliating disclosures are now (1876) taking place.
[255] For these facts, and some further statistics, I am indebted to Thoemmel. The ordinary price of a cure of souls is from twenty to thirty ducats.
[256] Lest this account of the Fanariote Hierarchy, as it exists in Bosnia should appear incredible to my readers, I may be allowed to appeal to Herr Kanitz’s description of the spiritual rule of these same gentry in Bulgaria, now happily terminated by the resolute action of their Bulgar flock. Herr Kanitz, who is a most candid and impartial observer, and has the advantage of twelve years’ residence in the country, finds no word for them but Spiritual Pashàs. Four thousand ducats (2,000l.) was a tolerably cheap price for a bishopric in Bulgaria, and the bishops, even of the poorest dioceses, sucked as much as 1,500l. a year from their flocks. When the Porte proposed the erection of school-houses for the Christians, the Fanariote Hierarchy stood out against this liberal measure, and embezzled their educational fund to build new churches in their usual swaggering style. ‘What need have you of better schools?’ asked the Archbishop of Nish of his congregation. ‘Do you want your children to become unbelieving heretics?’ True to their Grecizing policy, these Angels of Darkness burnt all the monuments of old Bulgarian literature that they could lay hands on, and imposed Greek services on congregations who could not understand a word. Of their moral influence I will let Herr Kanitz speak—in German:
‘Die schlimmste Demoralisation wurde in directester Weise in die Familien hineingetragen. Weder Frauen noch Jungfrauen waren vor den Gelüsten des höheren Klerus aus dem Fanar sicher. Die dem Grossvezier im Jahre 1860 vorgebrachten Anklagen in allen Städten, die er durchzog, überstiegen, was die Abscheulichkeit und Zahl betrifft, alle Begriffe. Unter vielen Thatsachen sei hier nur erwähnt, dass der Griechische Bischof von Sarköi von dem griechischen Arzte dieser Stadt beschuldigt wurde, 13- bis 14-jährige Mädchen der dortigen Schule geschändet zu haben. Zu diesen Verheerungen in der Unmündigen Jugend ihrer Sprengel gesellte sich ein anderer, nicht minder schwerer, sehr häufig gegen die fanariotische Geistlichkeit erhobener Vorwurf: ihre Begünstigung des Kindesmordes im Mutterschoosse.’—Donau-Bulgarien und der Balkan, I. Band, p. 129.