Thomas Smith, who was in Constantinople in 1669, speaks of the number of Christian converts about this period, but assigns baser motives. “’Tis sad to consider the great number of wretched people, who turn Turks; some out of meer desperation; being not able to support the burthen of slavery, and to avoid the revilings and insultings of the Infidels; some out of a wanton light humour, to put themselves into a condition of domineering and insulting over others … some to avoid the penalties and inflictions due to their heinous crimes, and to enjoy the brutish liberties, that Mahomet consecrated by his own example, and recommended to his followers. These are the great and tempting arguments and motives of their apostasy, meer considerations of ease, pleasure and prosperity, or else of vanity and guilt; for it cannot be presumed, that any through conviction of mind should be wrought upon to embrace the dotages and impostures of Turcisme.”[85] Records of conversions after this period are rare, but Motraye gives an account of several renegades, who became Muhammadans in Constantinople in 1703; among them was a French priest and some other French Catholics, and some priests from Smyrna.[86]
Another feature in the condition of the Greek Church that contributed to the decay of its numbers, was the corruption and degradation of its pastors, particularly the higher clergy. The sees of bishops and archbishops were put up to auction to the highest bidders, and the purchasers sought to recoup [[167]]themselves by exacting levies of all kinds from their flocks; they burdened the unfortunate Christians with taxes ordinary and extraordinary, made them purchase all the sacraments at exorbitant rates, baptism, confession, holy communion, indulgences, and the right of Christian burial. Some of the clergy even formed an unholy alliance with the Janissaries, and several bishops had their names and those of their households inscribed on the list of one of their Ortas or regiments, the better to secure an immunity for their excesses and escape the punishment of their crimes under the protection of this corporation which the weakness of the Ottoman rulers had allowed to assume such a powerful position in the state.[87] The evidence of contemporary eye-witnesses to the oppressive behaviour of the Greek clergy presents a terrible picture of the sufferings of the Christians. Tournefort in 1700, after describing the election of a new Patriarch, says: “We need not at all doubt but the new Patriarch makes the best of his time. Tyranny succeeds to Simony: the first thing he does is to signify the Sultan’s order to all the Archbishops and Bishops of his clergy: his greatest study is to know exactly the revenues of each Prelate; he imposes a tax upon them, and enjoins them very strictly by a second letter to send the sum demanded, otherwise their dioceses are adjudg’d to the highest bidder. The Prelates being used to this trade, never spare their Suffragans; these latter torment the Papas: the Papas flea the Parishioners and hardly sprinkle the least drop of Holy Water, but what they are paid for beforehand. If afterwards the Patriarch has occasion for money, he farms out the gathering of it to the highest bidder among the Turks: he that gives most for it, goes into Greece to cite the Prelates. Usually for twenty thousand crowns that the clergy is tax’d at, the Turk extorts two and twenty; so that he has the two thousand crowns for his pains, besides having his charges borne in every diocese. In virtue of the agreement he has made with the Patriarch, he deprives and interdicts from all ecclesiastical functions, those prelates who refuse to pay their tax.”[88] The Christian [[168]]clergy are even said to have carried off the children of the parishioners and sold them as slaves, to get money for their simoniacal designs.[89]
The extortions practised in the seventeenth have found their counterpart in the nineteenth century, and the sufferings of the Christians of the Greek Church in Bosnia, before the Austrian occupation, exactly illustrate the words of Tournefort. The Metropolitan of Serajevo used to wring as much as £10,000 a year from his miserable flock—a sum exactly double the salary of the Turkish Governor himself—and to raise this enormous sum the unfortunate parishioners were squeezed in every possible way, and the Turkish authorities had orders to assist the clergy in levying their exactions; and whole Christian villages suffered the fate of sacked cities, for refusing, or often being unable, to comply with the exorbitant demands of Christian Prelates.[90] Such unbearable oppression on the part of the spiritual leaders who should protect the Christian population, has often stirred it up to open revolt, whenever a favourable opportunity has offered itself.[91] It is not surprising then to learn that many of the Christians went over to Islam, to deliver themselves from such tyranny.[92]
Ecclesiastical oppression of a rather different character is said to have been responsible for the conversion of the ancestors of a small community of about 4000 Southern Rumanians, at Noanta in the Meglen district of the vilayet of Salonika; they have a tradition that in the eighteenth century the Patriarch of Constantinople persuaded the reigning Sultan that only the Christians who spoke Greek could be loyal subjects of the Turkish empire; the Sultan [[169]]thereupon forbade the Christians to speak anything but Greek, on pain of having their tongues cut out; when the news of this reached Noanta, a part of the population fled into the woods and founded fresh villages, but those who were left behind went over to Islam, with their bishop at their head, in order thereby to retain their mother-tongue.[93]
Though the mass of the parish clergy were innocent of the charges brought against their superiors,[94] still they were very ignorant and illiterate. At the end of the seventeenth century, there were said to be hardly twelve persons in the whole Turkish dominions thoroughly skilled in the knowledge of the ancient Greek language; it was considered a great merit in the clergy to be able to read, while they were quite ignorant of the meaning of the words of their service-books.[95]
While there was so much in the Christian society of the time to repel, there was much in the character and life of the Turks to attract, and the superiority of the early Ottomans as compared with the degradation of the guides and teachers of the Christian Church would naturally impress devout minds that revolted from the selfish ambition, simony and corruption of the Greek ecclesiastics. Christian writers constantly praise these Turks for the earnestness and intensity of their religious life; their zeal in the performance of the observances prescribed by their faith; the outward decency and modesty displayed in their apparel and mode of living; the absence of ostentatious display and the simplicity of life observable even in the great and powerful.[96] The annalist of the embassy from the Emperor Leopold I to the Ottoman Porte in 1665–1666, especially eulogises the devoutness and regularity of the Turks in prayer, and he even goes so far as to say, “Nous devons dire à la confusion des Chrêtiens, que les Turcs têmoignent beaucoup plus de soin et de zèle à l’exercice de leur Religion: que les Chrêtiens n’en font paroître à la pratique de la leur.… Mais ce qui passe tout ce que nous experimentons de dévot entre les Chrêtiens: c’est que pendant le tems de la prière, vous ne [[170]]voyez pas une personne distraite de ses yeux: vous n’en voyez pas une qui ne soit attachée à l’objet de sa prière: et pas une qui n’ait toute la révérence extérieure pour son Créateur, qu’on peut exiger de la Créature.”[97]
Even the behaviour of the soldiery receives its meed of praise. During the march of an army the inhabitants of the country, we are told by the secretary to the Embassy sent by Charles II to the Sultan, had no complaints to make of being plundered or of their women being maltreated. All the taverns along the line of march were shut up and sealed two or three days before the arrival of the army, and no wine was allowed to be sold to the soldiers under pain of death.[98]
Many a tribute of praise is given to the virtues of the Turks even by Christian writers who bore them no love; one such who had a very poor opinion of their religion,[99] speaks of them as follows:—“Even in the dirt of the Alcoran you shall find some jewels of Christian Virtues; and indeed if Christians will but diligently read and observe the Laws and Histories of the Mahometans, they may blush to see how zealous they are in the works of devotion, piety, and charity, how devout, cleanly, and reverend in their Mosques, how obedient to their Priest, that even the great Turk himself will attempt nothing without consulting his Mufti; how careful are they to observe their hours of prayer five times a day wherever they are, or however employed? how constantly do they observe their Fasts from morning till night a whole month together; how loving and charitable the Muslemans are to each other, and how careful of strangers may be seen by their Hospitals, both for the Poor and for Travellers; if we observe their Justice, Temperance, and other moral Vertues, we may truly blush at our own coldness, both in devotion and charity, at our injustice, intemperance, and oppression; doubtless these Men will rise up in judgment against us; and surely their devotion, piety, [[171]]and works of mercy are main causes of the growth of Mahometism.”
The same conclusion is drawn by a modern historian,[100] who writes:—“We find that many Greeks of high talent and moral character were so sensible of the superiority of the Mohammedans, that even when they escaped being drafted into the Sultan’s household as tribute-children, they voluntarily embraced the faith of Mahomet. The moral superiority of Othoman society must be allowed to have had as much weight in causing these conversions, which were numerous in the fifteenth century, as the personal ambition of individuals.”
A generation that has watched the decay of the Turkish power in Europe and the successive curtailment of its territorial possessions, and is accustomed to hearing it spoken of as the “sick man,” destined to a speedy dissolution, must find it difficult to realise the feelings which the Ottoman empire inspired in the early days of its rise in Europe. The rapid and widespread success of the Turkish arms filled men’s minds with terror and amazement. One Christian kingdom after another fell into their hands: Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, and Hungary yielded up their independence as Christian states. The proud Republic of Venice saw one possession after another wrested from it, until the Lion of St. Mark held sway on the shores of the Adriatic alone. Even the safety of the Eternal City itself was menaced by the capture of Otranto. Christian literature of the latter half of the fifteenth and of the sixteenth centuries is full of direful forebodings of the fate that threatened Christian Europe unless the victorious progress of the Turk was arrested; he is represented as a scourge in the hand of God for the punishment of the sins and backslidings of His people,[101] or on the other hand as the unloosed power of the Devil working for the destruction of Christianity under the hypocritical guise of religion. But—what is most important to notice here—some men began to ask themselves, “Is it possible that God would allow the Muhammadans to increase in such countless numbers without good reason? Is it conceivable that so many thousands [[172]]are to be damned like one man? How can such multitudes be opposed to the true faith? since truth is stronger than error and is more loved and desired by all men, it is not possible for so many men to be fighting against it. How could they prevail against truth, since God always helps and upholds the truth? How could their religion so marvellously increase, if built upon the rotten foundation of error?”[102] Such thoughts, we are told, appealed strongly to the Christian peoples that lived under the Turkish rule, and with especial force to the unhappy Christian captives who watched the years drag wearily on without hope of release or respite from their misery. Can we be surprised when we find such a one asking himself? “Surely if God were pleased with the faith to which you have clung, He would not have thus abandoned you, but would have helped you to gain your freedom and return to it again. But as He has closed every avenue of freedom to you, perchance it is His pleasure that you should leave it and join this sect and be saved therein.”[103]