Aug. 23rd.—This morning the German Consul, with whom we lunched, informed us that he had just obtained an interview with the Pashà to represent to him the threatening state of affairs, and especially this new Mahometan conspiracy, and to ask what measures he intended to take to protect the Christians in the event of a disturbance. The Pashà explicitly declared that he was ready to use his troops and cannon against the first disturbers of the peace, to whatever party they belonged. The Consul is tolerably satisfied with this, and believes that the troops are sufficiently Osmanlì and obedient to official commands to be trusted not to fraternize with the native Mahometan fanatics.
We had been asked to meet the representatives of Austria and Russia, and received quite an ovation at the Consulate. The conversation turned on the Greek hierarchy of this country, and the worst that we had heard of these wolves in sheep’s clothing was more than corroborated. Perhaps the most terrible feature of the tyranny under which the Bosnian rayah groans, is that those, who should protect, betray him, and that those, to whom he looks for spiritual comfort, wring from him the last scrap of worldly belongings which has escaped the rapacity of the infidel. Amongst all the populations of modern Turkey there is only one so vile as to fawn upon the tyrants. The modern Greeks of Constantinople—the Fanariotes, let us call them—not to pollute a hallowed name—have inherited all the corruption of a corrupt empire, and added to their hereditary store. It is from these, as we have seen, that the odious class of middle-men, who farm the taxes, is chiefly recruited. It is also from these that the dignitaries of the Greek Church throughout Turkey are chosen.
The Turks have not hesitated to utilize the sleek knavery ready to their beck. It has long been a part of Turkish policy to rivet the fetters of their Sclavonic subjects by filling the high ecclesiastical offices of the Greek Church with Fanariote bishops. The office of the old Serbian metropolitans who resided at Ipek was suppressed, and Bosnia has since been divided into four eparchies[252] under the immediate control of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the Eparchs needing, like the head of the Greek Church himself, an exequatur from the infidel before they can enter on their functions. The Greek Patriarch takes good care that these eparchies shall be filled by none but Fanariotes, and thus it happens that the Pravoslaves or orthodox Christians of Bosnia, who form the majority of the population,[253] are subjected to ecclesiastics, aliens in blood, in language, in sympathies, who oppress them hand in hand with the Turkish officials, and set them, often, an even worse example of moral depravity.
It does not become the English language to record the Sejanian arts by which they rise. Usually, as the lackey of a Pashà or some rich Fanariote, they amass gains which they afterwards lay out in an episcopal speculation—for sees go to the highest bidders at Stamboul.[254] The new Metropolitan arrives at Serajevo, and immediately sets to work to make the speculation pay. To retain their office they have further to send enormous bribes yearly to the fountain-head of corruption. Thus the simony which begins on the patriarchal throne descends to the meanest pulpit, and the poorest pope in Bosnia has to bargain with his bishop for his cure of souls! The shepherd, fleeced himself by his bishop, must recoup himself from his flock. On every occasion of life he levies a contribution in money or in kind, and in some cases he has even succeeded in establishing a system of heriots. On the death of the father of a family he takes the best ox; on the mother’s death, a cow. Not infrequently children grew up unbaptized because the parents were too poor to pay the fee required.[255] As to the parsons themselves, their ignorance is usually so gross that they cannot read the Sclavonic liturgy, and simply repeat it by rote! The Metropolitan of Serajevo is said to wring as much as 10,000l. a year from his miserable flock: the other three content themselves with about half that amount apiece. When it is remembered that the salary of the Vali Pashà himself only amounts to 500l. a year, the enormity of these figures may be appreciated. These four successors of the fishermen of Galilee extort annually between them a sum equal to one-sixteenth of the total income received by the government of the province from taxation. Since, however, a large part of what they extract from the unhappy rayahs must be transmitted in the form of bribes to Stamboul, the Turkish authorities have orders to assist them in levying their exactions; and whole Christian villages share the fate of a sacked city from Turkish gendarmerie, for refusing, or too often being unable, to comply with the exorbitant demands of Christian prelates.
De vivis nil nisi bonum. The predecessor of the present Metropolitan of Serajevo, amongst his other accomplishments, was an habitual drunkard. He lived in Sardanapalian luxury—his table groaned with plate; and at his death he left untold treasures in costly furs alone—the fleecings of his flock! His rapacity was such that even the slavish spirit of the Bosnian rayah was provoked to resistance, and in 1864 the agitation became so dangerous that an assembly of the notables was called at Serajevo to devise a remedy; and a certain standard of ecclesiastical dues not to be transgressed was finally imposed on the bishops by the Turkish authorities themselves. But the Metropolitan, with the shrewdness of his race, read between the lines. All that was meant, as he had the good sense to perceive, was a slight increase of his expenditure under the head of lubrication. Thoemmel, writing so soon after these events as 1867, mentions that ‘this standard has already become a dead letter.’ It is no secret that one of the main provocations of the revolt in the Herzegovina was the tyranny of the Turkophile bishop Prokopios. When the storm burst, one of the first attempts at pacification was the translation of this ghostly vampire to a fatter see!
Vain indeed must be the efforts of the rayah flock to save themselves from the wolves while they have a hireling for their shepherd! These episcopal sycophants of the infidel serve the Turk in a hundred ways—they screen a hundred abuses. No sooner does an awkward revelation see the light, than one of these renegade prelates steps forward to throw dust in the eyes of the Christian West. They know well that to a certain class of mind there is something comfortable in the very name of bishop. They trade upon the saintly spell which throws a halo of veracity round any lies they may invent to shield their patrons or themselves. Ill-founded, indeed, seem the complaints of the rayah when his bishop comes forward to confess, from a Christian love of truth and justice—but with how much laudable reluctance!—that the wrongs of his too blatant flock are purely imaginary, and that, if anyone has been aggrieved, it is the honest, the moral, the merciful, the tolerant, Osmanlì![256]
As an useful sedative we have taken a Bosnian bath, and found both building and ceremony deliciously Oriental. We entered to find ourselves under a spacious dome, pierced with a constellation of star-like openings, which shed a dim religious light on marble pavements, and ogee archways and niches. In the centre a fountain, playing into a marble basin, glittered and twinkled in the artificial starlight, and faintly echoing with a cavernous murmur through vault and corridor, not only added a refreshing chill to the atmosphere—cooled already by exclusion of sunlight and the marble walls—but seemed to let in a sense of coolness by the ears. Here a venerable Turk came up, and beckoning us to follow him, led us up a flight of steps to an airy gallery opening from this cool vault, where was a divan with couches for our repose. Hence we presently emerged, attired, like the Turks about, in decorous togas and turbans, convertible into towels, and with clogs on our feet, clattered awkwardly through the spacious Frigidarium—how the whole brings to life the luxurious days of ancient Rome!—and thence, after passing through an antichamber still cool, plunged into the Calidarium with a vengeance. This was a domed chamber of equal dimensions with the first, from which opened several lesser rooms swelling into cupolas above. But we were so suffocated with the hot steamy atmosphere, that it was not till after we had been seated by our attendant Turk on a daïs in one of these side-vaults, that we recovered breath sufficient to take stock of anything. Just behind us, from a leaden spout fixed in an ogival niche in the wall, gushed forth a hot fountain into a marble basin, out of which, after much patient endurance of preliminary sudation, we were basted by our minister. Then succeeded excoriation by a rough gauntlet that served as strigil, then we were well lathered, and so the process was repeated till a final douche of cold water from a wooden bowl gave the signal for girding ourselves once more and making our way through the cool chamber—tenfold refreshing now!—to our couch. Here, in the same turban and light attire as himself, we accompanied a Turk in dolce far niente tempered with fragrant mocha and cigarettes—though sherbet is equally proper as a beverage, and a narghilé would perhaps have been more decorous. The whole process, including the time spent in recovering from our first succeeding lassitude, lasted about an hour.
Thus re-invigorated, we renewed our exploration of the streets of Serajevo—this time accompanied by a gorgeous consular guard. Besides the baths there are other fine stone buildings here, and the Bosniac countryman gapes with as much wonderment at the domes of the two chief mosques as an English rustic at first sight of St. Paul’s. Of these two Dzàmias, or greater mosques, one, the Careva Dzàmia, is the work of Sultan Mohammed, who conquered Bosnia; and the other, the Begova Dzàmia, owes its foundation to Khosrev Beg, her first Vizier. This latter is the largest, and externally, with its central dome, subsidiary cupolas, and its portico in front, preserves faithfully enough the characteristics of its Christian Byzantine prototypes. Before it is a plot planted with trees, and containing a stone font filled with the purest water for the ghusél or religious lustrations. In the porch are two monolithic columns of brown marble, taken from an earlier Christian church: here, too, is a shrine or chapel, in which is a gigantic sarcophagus, containing the bones of the founder, and a smaller one containing those of his wife—both, especially the former, strewn with costly shawls by the hands of the pious. The interior of the mosque is plain and whitewashed, except for the texts of the Koràn upon the walls, and gay Persian carpets strewn upon the pavement. There are two pulpits, one for ordinary lessons and sermons; the other a loftier perch used on Fridays for reading the prayer for the Sultan; and in the wall may be seen a square stone, the Kiblà, which marks the direction of Mecca. But we ourselves were advised not to enter, owing to the dangerous spirit of fanaticism abroad; so these details are gathered second-hand.[257]
Besides her mosques, Serajevo boasts two Bezestans or ‘cloth-halls,’ usually one of the chief public buildings of a Turkish city. The larger of these includes a court, surrounded by cloisters, and with a fountain in the middle; but from the outside you can see little of the building except some stone cupolas, as the wooden shops of the market are built against its walls. Inside we found ourselves wandering along stone arcades vaulted above and bayed at the side with semi-circular recesses, in which the wares are displayed. They consist mostly of cloths; and though light is deficient, the brilliance of the effect is astonishing—the rich display of drapery might recall a street of Ghent in the Middle Ages! Round the Bezestan are crowded the narrow streets of the Caršia or market—by exploring which you can arrive at a fairly exhaustive knowledge of the industries of Serajevo. There was not such a jumble of wares here as in the smaller towns of Bosnia. Shops of a similar kind succeeded each other in a row, or sometimes monopolised a whole street. Here was the blacksmiths’ street, with a display of colossal nails, and a large assortment of the elegant bosses of Turkish door-handles with their knocker-like appendages. Another street was sacred to harness-makers and sellers of horse-trappings; in a third was a double arrangement—a lower row of boot-shops conveniently level with the ground, while, as a roof above the opanka-sellers’ heads, ran the counters of crockery-merchants, with a charming variety of testjas and other water jars—so that foot and mouth could be suited at the same moment! Another street resounded with the hammers of coppersmiths, moulding their metal into coffee-pots or platters; here were rows of salt-merchants, or we came upon a group of armourers’ shops—to-day ominously thronged—bristling with knives and swords of the famed Bosnian steel. In the smaller Bezestan were many second-hand goods, and amongst them magnificent flint-locks of antique form, with stocks richly inlaid with mother-of-pearl and golden arabesques—the masterpieces of the old workshops of Prizren. Near these might be seen gun-flints such as have been described already—the best quality of those imported from Avlona.
But the part of the bazaar which interested us most was the goldsmiths’ quarter. Here sate a whole street full of cunning artificers, pinching and twisting the precious metals—but chiefly silver—into brooches, beads, rings, and ear-rings of filigree work—charming, both from its intrinsic elegance and from its clearly marked Byzantine parentage. The Serajevan work, pure and simple, though not without merit, is somewhat coarse, and we were pleased to find that the more graceful flowers of silver-work had been engrafted on the rude Bosnian stock by the taste of an English lady. Mrs. Holmes, the wife of our hospitable Consul, brought over some of the chefs-d’œuvre of Maltese filigree-work and set these as models for the smiths of Serajevo, who have so profited by the lesson that they are now almost able to compete with the productions of the more refined Italian artists. The Serajevan work has not, however, degenerated into mere imitation: certain native characteristics are still traceable in the new style.