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is the largest Mohammedan empire of the world, containing extensive possessions in Eastern Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa. Including the provinces in Europe and Africa, which are virtually independent, and only pay an annual tribute to the Turkish government, the Turkish Empire, in 1880, had an area of 2,302,000 square miles, and 47,000,000 inhabitants. In consequence of the treaty of Berlin in 1878, Turkey had to recognize the entire independence of Roumania and Servia, and to consent to the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the government of Austria. Moreover, Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia have become virtually independent of Turkish rule, leaving to the Turkish government only a small territory in Europe which is fully under its control. In Africa, Egypt and Tunis are likewise independent in point of administration. Deducting the dependencies, the Turkish government at present rules over a territory of 1,043,000 square miles, with a population of 23,500,000. In June, 1880, the Supplementary Conference at Berlin declared that in order to carry out the provisions of the treaty of Berlin concerning the rectification of the frontier between Turkey and Greece, Turkey ought to cede to Greece a territory containing about 8292 square miles and 400,000 inhabitants.
Note by the Editor. — For the purpose of enabling our readers to understand more fully the present complicated boundaries of Turkey, we insert a map based upon the one recently issued by Stanford, of Charing Cross, London. It will be perceived that, in consequence of the late Russo- Turkish war, Turkey has lost far more than half her European possessions, which are to be bounded henceforth by the Balkan Mountains instead of the River Save and the eastern Carpathian chain. Romania, Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, and Montenegro are wholly severed from her. Bulgaria has lost a slice of her territory on the west, given to Servia, and another on the north-east, given to Romania. Montenegro has gained a piece on the north- west from Bosnia, and another on the south-east from Turkey. Bosnia, including the part of Croatia formerly in Turkey, together with Herzegovina, has been occupied by Austria, and is not likely to be restored to Turkey. Greece gains a part of Albania and Thessaly and Russia that part of Romania (bounded by the Pruth and the Danube) adjoining Bessarabia (which she already held). In Asia Russia also acquires a district of Armenia adjoining Batum. Besides, there is created a quasi-independent district of Eastern Romania, within the above narrowed limits of Turkey. Turkey in Europe virtually now consists merely of am part of Romania and a part of Albania. The interior changes ill territory and population made by the Berlin treaty are stated as follows in the London Athenmeum. Estimates of other statisticians vary considerably from these figures tants, to Russia. If we exclude the provinces “indefinitely” to be occupied by Austria, and Eastern Romania, there remain to Turkey in Europe only 74,790 square miles, with 4,779,000 inhabitants, of whom 1,521,500 are Mohammedans. In Armenia Russia takes 10,000 square miles, with about 350,000 inhabitants. Cyprus, entrusted to the keeping of England, has an area of 2288 square miles, and about 150,000 inhabitants. Many of these accessions, however, are already the fruitful source of contention, and some of them will probably have to be taken possession of by force of arms. Greece is at the present moment (Aug. 1880) preparing to do so for her share. It is impossible now to predict what the issue will be.]
The former volumes of this Cyclopaedia have special articles on SEE BULGARIA, SEE EGYPT, SEE ROUMANIA, SEE SERVIA; and on some of the Eastern Churches which are wholly or chiefly found in Turkey, as the JACOBITES, NESTORIANS, and MARONITES. In the present article, after giving such preliminary information of a general character as the intense interest at present prevailing on the Oriental question seems to demand, we treat, more particularly, of the religions of Turkey proper, so far as they have not yet been discussed in the special articles which have just been referred to.
I. Geographical and Ethnological Features. — The geographical position of the Turkish empire is peculiar, and would, under a strong government, be most advantageous. It connects Europe with Asia, Asia with Africa, the East with the West the Mohammedan with the Christian world. It has an extensive seacoast, which is indented by numerous gulfs and bays, and embraces many excellent harbors; Some parts of this coast were in former times the seat of a very flourishing commerce, which would undoubtedly be revived under favorable circumstances. Almost the entire territory which is subject to direct Turkish rule is noted for its fertility; but Turkish misrule has not only arrested, but diminished, its productiveness. By far the greater portion of the Turkish possessions is situated in Asia. The European possessions have always been much smaller, but as they contained the capital and seat of government, they have hitherto been of much greater political importance. This importance has, however, of late been greatly reduced by the territorial losses which Turkey has sustained by the last Eastern war and the treaty of Berlin. The African part of the Turkish empire consists almost wholly of tributary states; and the farther the territory of one of these states, Egypt, is extended, the smaller becomes the hold the Turkish government has on it. Although ruling over portions of Europe, Asia, and Africa, Turkey is really an Asiatic power.
While the Turks are the ruling race of the empire, they constitute a majority of the total population only in the Asiatic possessions. Even Asiatic Turkey can hardly be said to be an Ottoman land, for the bulk of the people are descendants of the old Seljukian Turks who have been subjected by the Ottoman Turks. In the African dependencies the Turks are hardly represented at all, and in Europe they are almost everywhere in a minority. According to an elaborate article on the ethnographical relations of Turkey in Petermann's Geographische Mittheilungen, 1876, No. 7, the Turks are to be found as a compact population only in three sanjaks, those of Rustchuk, Tulcha, and Varna. These three sanjaks formed part of the vilayet of the Danube. They are less numerous in the Rhodope Mountains. On the shores of the AEgean Sea and the Sea of Marmora, and on the south-east shore of the Black Sea, they are greatly outnumbered by the Greeks, especially in the direction of Constantinople. It is a remarkable fact that all the sanjaks which contain the most compact Turkish population are now subject to the semi-independent prince of Christian Bulgaria and to the Christian governor of the autonomous province of Eastern Romania. The aggregate number of the Osmanli Turks in Europe, including Bulgaria, Eastern Romania, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, is estimated at about 2,000,000. Exclusive of these provinces, over which the authority of the sultan is not likely to be ever restored, the number of Osmanlis will barely reach 1,000,000 in a total population of about 5,000,000. In Asia the Turkish race is supposed to number more than 8,500,000 of a total population of 17,000,000; but this number embraces many old tribes who have been totally absorbed and merged in the Turks. The Turcomans, who live chiefly in Northern Mesopotamia, and number about 100,000, belong to the same race as the Turks.
Up to the time of the late Eastern war, the bulk of the population in the European dominions of Turkey was made up of five non-Turkish tribes — Roumanians, Servians, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Albanians. The Roumaians, who chiefly inhabit the principality of Roumania, where they number about 5,000,000, have long been semi-independent of Turkey, and became entirely independent by the treaty of Berlin. Only about' 200,000 remain subject to Turkish rule. Outside of Roumania and Turkey, Austria has a Roumanian population exceeding three millions. West and south of the Roumanians we find two branches of the Slavic race, the Servians and the Bulgarians. The Servians embrace the inhabitants of the principalities of Servia and Montenegro, and of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Both Montenegro (q.v.) and Servia (q.v.) are now independent states; Bosnia and Herzegovina have been placed under Austrian administration, and are likely to become soon a part of the Austrian empire. In Bosnia, the landed aristocracy, after the conquest of the country by the Turks, became Mohammedans, in order to save their property and their privileges, but they continue to speak the Servian language. Outside of the present and former dominions of the sultan, Austria has a Servian population of about 4.500,000, called Croatians, Slavonians; Dalmatians, and Slovenians. The large majority of the Servians belong to the Greek Oriental Church; but in Austria and in Bosnia there is also a large Roman Catholic element. According to a recent work by Klaic on Bosnia (Agram, 1878), written in the Croatian language, the population of Bosnia is divided, as regards the religious denominations, into Orthodox Greek Church, 646,678, or 48.4 percent; Mohammedans. 480,596, or 35.9 percent; Roman Catholics, 207,119, or 15.5 percent; and Jews, 3000, or 2 percent; but in regard to race, 1,291,393 of this population are Slaves, only 2000 Osmanli Turks, 30,000 Albanians, and 11,000 gypsies. Tie Servians of all the different denominations in Austria and the former Turkish dominions are only' now awakening to the full significance of the fact that their common language makes them joint members of one nationality, and a strong movement towards uniting at some future time all these members into one state has set in. Although the Mohammedan Bosnians are strongly opposed to this union movement, as well as to the annexation of their province to Austria, the rule of the Osmanli Turks over the Servian nationality may be said to be at an end.
The second Slavic race of European Turkey is the Bulgarians. They occupy the country south of the Danube, their southern ethnic boundary being a line passing through the towns of Nissa, Prisrend, Ochrida, Kastoria, Niagostos, Salonica, Adrianople, and Burgas, on the Black Sea. The number of Bulgarians is estimated at from three to four millions. After four centuries and a half of oppression, they were considered at the beginning of the 19th century the most wretched people of Europe. Then a marvelous awakening began. SEE BULGARIA. In spite of all oppression, they laid the foundation of a national system of education, and re-established the independence of their national Church. The treaty of San Stefano, March 3, 1878, between Russia and Turkey, provided for the establishment' of' Bulgaria as a tributary Ottoman principality and a national militia. The principality thus constituted would have extended from the boundaries of Servia and Albania to the Black Sea, and from the Danube nearly to the AEgean Sea, taking in about fifty miles of the AEgean coast. It would have included all the predominantly Bulgarian districts, both north and south of the Balkans, containing an aggregate of 79,400 square miles and an estimated population of between five and five and a half millions. But although the Bulgarians would have been the dominant race, a considerable number of Turks, Servians, and Greeks would have been merged in the Bulgarian majority. The treaty of Berlin of July 13, 1878, greatly modified this plan. The tributary principality of Bulgaria, as constituted by it, contains only 33,000 square miles and about 1,860,000 inhabitants. The Bulgarian districts south of the Balkans were constituted as the autonomous province of Eastern Roumelia, the governor of which must be a Christian, but is appointed by the Turkish government with the consent of the treaty powers. Eastern Roumelia ,has about 13,664 square miles and 850,000 inhabitants, of whom about 600,000 are Bulgarians, 150,000 Greeks, and 70,000 Turks. The aggregate population of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia reaches about 3,000,000, of whom fully 2,500,000 are Bulgarians, and the remainder mostly Turks and Greeks. The Mohammedan population is estimated at from 800,000 to 950,000, but fully two thirds of them are of Bulgarian descent. The Bulgarians, generally, were greatly dissatisfied with the provisions of the treaty of Berlin, and a strong movement began at once for a reunion of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia, which can hardly fail to be ere long successful, and result in the emancipation of the entire Bulgarian population from Turkish rule.
The Greeks, or Hellenes, have a numerical preponderance in the southern part of European Turkey, especially in Thessaly, Epirus, Southern Macedonia, and the islands, the most important of which is Crete. They are the most civilized among the Christian races of Turkey. Their number is estimated at about 1,000,000 in European and 1,000,000 in Asiatic Turkey. The people of the predominantly Greek districts expressed during the late civil war a desire to be annexed to the kingdom of Greece, and the government of that kingdom made in January, 1879, an attempt to occupy these districts. The attempt had, however, to be abandoned at the request of the great powers. The Congress of Berlin expressed a desire that the frontier between Greece and Turkey should be rectified to the advantage of the former power, and offered the mediation of the great powers in case Turkey and Greece should be unable to agree. As this agreement was not reached, the supplementary congress held in Berlin in June, 1880, designated the new frontier between the two states. In Asia, the Greeks are fast occupying the seaports and coast of Asia Minor, from which the Turks are steadily retiring before them, and it is believed by many that a vigorous Greek kingdom in Europe would soon find a legitimate field of expansion along the coast of Asia no less than that of Europe.
The Albanians occupy the country south of the Servians and Bulgarians, and north of the Greeks. Their number is estimated at from 1,200;000 to 2,000,000. More than one half of them have embraced Islam, though it is said that many of the Mohammedan Albanians remain secretly Christian. They are divided into a number of tribes. Some of the most warlike mountain tribes are Roman Catholics. In the frontier districts the Albanians are greatly mixed with Servians in the north and with Greeks in the south. They opposed with great vigor the cession to Montenegro by the Turkish government of some districts largely inhabited by Albanians, and declared an intention to oppose no less vigorously the cession of some of their southern districts to Greece. The Albanians are the only one of the five non-Turkish nationalities of European Turkey which shows some kind of attachment to the Ottoman government. This must partly be explained by the predominance among them of Mohammedanism, and partly by their determination not to be absorbed by Servians and Greeks. The increasing consolidation of Servians, Bulgarians, and Greeks will, however, cut them off from Constantinople, and make it impossible for them to remain a Turkish province.
A curious fact in the relation of the different races that people European Turkey is the irregular manner in which they are distinguished and mingled. “No locality,” says Baker, in his Turkey, “can be found where the population is exclusively of the same nationality; but a rival race crops up here and there, and jostles its neighbors. We find, for instance, a quarter where the majority of the population are Bulgarians; but among them in considerable numbers are Turks, Greeks, Circassians, and gypsies. In another quarter the majority are Albanians, but they again have to bear the friction of Bulgarians, Wallachians, Greeks, and Turks; and so on all over the country. Each of these nations has its own language, religion, and customs; and it therefore follows that the difficulty of governing the mass lies in a direct ratio to the number of races represented in it.” This irregular distribution of races has, however, been considerably affected by the close of the Eastern war, when, especially, large numbers of Turks and Bulgarians left their endangered homes, and emigrated to districts predominantly inhabited by coreligionists. The Austrian consul Sax (in Oesterreichische Monatsschruffür den Orient, 1878) estimates the number of those who from the spring of 1877 to the close of, 1878 changed their residence at more than one million.
II. Origin and Political History. — The Turks are first heard of in history when they emerged from the regions of Central Asia, and emigrated, early in the Christian sera, to the neighborhood of the Aral and Caspian seas. In the 6th century they formed an alliance with the Roman emperor Justin II; in the 7th they began to learn the Mohammedan religion at the hands of the Saracens. After their conversion to Mohammedanism they rapidly rose in power and influence. One branch, which, after its leader, Seljuk, received the name of Seljukian Turks, subjugated a large portion of Persia, and thence spread into Syria, Armenia, Georgia, and Lower Egypt. Under Malek Shah, the grandson of Seljuk, the dynasty of the Seljukian Turks was in the 11th century the greatest power in Asia. They gradually pressed their conquests to the West, and from this time a more special and crying persecution of the Christians began. After Malek's death, the empire was divided into smaller states, which became rivals, and were finally extinguished in the 13th century by the irruption of the Moguls under Genghis Khan.
Then the history (of the Ottoman Turks begins. The first mention of them is made at the beginning of the 13th century, when they emigrated, under the name of Oghuze Turks, from the main body in Khorassan, Persia, to the mountains in Armenia, whence a part removed and settled near Angora, still acknowledging the suzerainty of the Seljukian sultan of Iconium. Partly at the expense of the Greeks, partly at that of other Turkish emirs or princes, the leaders of this band, Ertoghrul and his son Othman, or Osman, gradually grew in power. Othman became the most powerful prince in Western Asia and from him his followers took the name by which this branch of the Turks has ever since been designated, that of Ottoman, or Osmanli. Shortly before the death of Othman, in 1326, his armies took Brousa, which became the Asiatic capital of the Ottomans. With Othman's son, Orkhan the Ottoman empire begins. He made himself entirely independent of the Seljukian sultan, though he continued to bear the inferior title of emir. During his reign Gallipoli, in the Thracian Chersonesus, the first acquisition of the Turks in Europe, was conquered, in 1357, and all of Western Asia occupied. He imposed upon the conquered Christian nations the tribute of children, who were brought up in the Mohammedan faith, and out of whom was formed the famous force of the Janizaries, who for three centuries constituted the strength of the Ottoman armies in the reign of Murad I, the successor of Orkhan, Adrianople was taken, which became the European capital of the Ottomans till they captured Constantinople. When the Turks entered Europe, the territory of the Greek empire was almost limited to a quadrangle extending from Constantinople to Adrianople, and from the Black Sea to the Archipelago, to a small part of the coast near Thessalonica, and the larger portion of the Peloponnesus.
The bulk of what subsequently became European Turkey consisted of the empire of Servia, extending from the Danube to the Peloponnesus, and bounded on the west by Bosnia and the Adriatic Sea; and of the kingdom of Bulgaria, extending from the Danube to Adrianople bounded on the east by the Black Sea. The frontier between Bulgaria and Servia was constantly changing. When the Turks began to get a foothold, Widdin and Sophia were the nearest Bulgarian towns to the frontier. At this time the power of Servia began to go down after the death of Stephen Dushan, its greatest ruler, and Bulgaria began to split up into three separate kingdoms. Thus both were unable to resist the advancing Turks. In 1363 the Bulgarian city of Philippopolis was taken. About 1371 the chief of the three Bulgarian kingdoms, that of Tirnova, became tributary. For a while a Slavic confederation, under the Bosnian king Stephen, won some successes; but in the great battle of Kossova, in 1389, the confederate Bosnians, Servians, Bulgarians, and Wallachians were utterly defeated. Two or three years later, Servia and Wallachia became tributary, and the greater part of Bulgaria was conquered. Murad's son, Bajazet I, was the first to exchange the humbler title of emir for that of sultan, and also the first who attacked Constantinople. The progress of the Turks was arrested by the stunning defeat which they suffered in 1402 at Angora, at the hand of Timur, the famous Tamerlane; but they recovered their power under Bajazet's grandson, Murad II (1421-51), who conquered Thessalonica, Corinth, Patras, and a part of Albania, which was heroically defended by the great Scanderbeg. His son, Mohammed II (1451-81), conquered Constantinople, and thereby destroyed the Greek empire. He reduced, in 1459, Servia from a tributary principality to an Ottoman province; in 1463 Bosnia was annexed; in 1461, the Christian empire of Trebizond, in Asia; in 1466, Caramania; in 1479, the Peloponnesus, which at that time belonged to the Venetians.
In 1480 Otranto, in Italy, was captured; and the design was openly avowed to conquer all of Western Europe and to exterminate Christianity. But Mohammed's death, in 1481, put an end to these schemes; Otranto was soon abandoned, and no further progress was ever made west of the Adriatic. The conquests of Mohammed gave to the Turkish empire about the same extent it had before the late Eastern war. In the whole of the Balkan peninsula only the small mountain district of Montenegro has kept its independence to our own times. Selim the Inflexible (1512-19) warred against Mohammedan enemies, and annexed Syria and Egypt to his dominions. From the last of a line of nominal caliphs Selim obtained a cession of his rights, and ever since the Ottoman sultans have been acknowledged as chiefs of their religion by all Mussulmans of the Sunnite sect. During the reign of Suleiman II (1519-66) the empire attained the greatest extent it has ever had. The larger portion of Hungary was annexed; a Turkish pasha ruled at Buda; and the princes of Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia became vassals of the sultan. Rhodes was taken from the Knights of St. John, and a large tract of land in Asia from the Persians. With the death of Suleiman the decline of Turkish power began. The reign of Selim II, the Drunkard (1566-74), was marked by the first great reverse of the Ottoman arms-the overthrow of the Turkish fleet by the fleets of Spain and Venice at the battle of Lepanto, in 1571. No lasting conquests of importance were made from this time, except the islands of Cyprus and Crete. The frontier on the north towards Hungary, and in later times towards Russia, went steadily back. The succession of great rulers was stopped. The powers of the sultan became less, the power of the pashas greater. In 1622 a sultan was, for the first time, murdered. In the latter half of the 17th century the Turks began to lose their hold on Hungary. The battle of St. Gotthard, in 1664, was the first great overthrow of the Turks by land.
At the end of the 17th century the Turks had been at war with all their Christian neighbors, and they had lost territory at all points except one. In a war against Poland they had gained Podolia; they had lost, besides Hungary, the Peloponnesus, and Azof. All of these territories, inclusive of Podolia, were given up by the treaties in 1699 and 1700. The peace of Carlowitz, in 1699, marks a point in the decline of the Ottoman power, and the Turks were for the first time compelled to treat with the Christian powers of Europe on equal terms. The wars against Austria, which, with breaks from time to time, had gone on since the battle of Mohacz, 1526, by which the Turks established their rule over Hungary, were ended by the peace of Sistova in 1791. The result was that Hungary was freed from the Turk, but that Servia and Bosnia were left in his clutches. The frontier established by that peace has remained almost unchanged. The most dangerous of all the foreign enemies of Turkey proved to be Russia. The wars between Russia and the Turks began in the middle of the 17th century, and the two countries have ever since appeared as irreconcilable hereditary foes whose interminable conflict could only be ended by the destruction of the one or the other. The wars between Russia and Turkey put oil a very distinctive character when Peter the Great, in 1696, took Azof, the key of the Black Sea. From the time that Mohammed the Conqueror took the Genoese possessions in the Crimea, the Black Sea had been wholly under the power of the Turks. When Azof fell into the hands of the Russians, it remained for a great time the point of contention between the two countries. A new stage in the history of these wars is marked by the famous treaty of Kainarji of 1774, which ended the first war of Catherine II against the Turks. This treaty for the first time. brought the Ottoman power into some measure of dependence. It gave Russia a firm foothold on the Black Sea, and the important right to remonstrate in behalf of Wallachia and Moldavia, in case of any breach of their privileges by the Turks.
The most prominent feature in the Turkish history of the 19th century is the successful revolt of the subject Christian nations against the Ottoman power. This war of independence began in Servia in the first years of the new century. It was at first a rising against local tyrants who defied the authority of the sultan, but it soon became a war of independence. In 1826 the independence of the country was recognised by Turkey, which was only to receive an annual tribute, and for some time retained the right of keeping garrisons in certain fortresses. The Greek war of independence began in 1821. Finding himself unable to subdue both Greece and Servia, the sultan had to apply for help to his rebellious vassal, pasha Mehemet Ali of Egypt; but the outrages of the Egyptians led to an interference by England, France, and Russia, who, in 1827, in the treaty of London, agreed to make Greece free; destroyed, in November, 1827, at the battle of Navarino, the Turkish and Egyptian fleet, and compelled the sultan to agree to the treaty of London. In the treaty of Adrianople (1829), Turkey had not only to acknowledge the independence of Greece, but the almost complete independence of Moldavia and Wallachia, whose hospodars thereafter held office for lifetime, and to cede several fortresses on the coast of the Black Sea to Russia. Mahmud II (1808-40) was desirous of introducing important reforms, and in 1826 exterminated the Janizaries; but while his reforms did little good to the Christians, they set his Mohammedan subjects against him.
There were Mohammedan revolts in Albania and Bosnia, which were put down in 1831 and 1832; but more important was the rebellion of Mehemet Ali of Egypt, who conquered Syria and other Asiatic possessions of the sultan, and seemed to threaten the very existence of the empire, when (1840) four of the great Christian powers of Europe concluded the treaty of Buda-Pest, and compelled Mehemet Ali to give up his Asiatic conquests. In the Crimean war (1853- 55), Turkey would probably have been crushed by Russia but for the interference of England, France, and Sardinia in its behalf. By the treaty of peace in 1856, the powers which signed it-France, Austria, Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, and Sardinia-declared that the Sublime Porte was admitted to partake in the advantages of public law and the European concert. This concession was made to the Porte in recognition of the hatti-hamayum (Feb. 18, 1856), a proclamation which promised to the Christians equal civil rights, but which the Porte found itself no more able to carry out than a preceding reformatory edict, the hatti-sherif of Gulhane of 1853. The approaching collapse of Turkey became more and more apparent. Terrible massacres of Christians in Damascus and Mount Lebanon led, in 1860, to a French intervention. In 1861 Moldavia and Wallachia united themselves, in spite of the treaty of Paris and of the protest of the Porte, into one state, called Roumania.
A powerful impulse was given to the aspiration of the Christians for freedom by the complete victory of the nationality principle in Italy and Germany. As the Italians and Germans had re-established an Italian kingdom and a German empire, thus the Greeks of Turkey expressed a wish for a union with Greece, the Servians began to dream of the re-establishment of a large Servian empire, the Bulgarians of a Bulgarian kingdom, the Roumanians of severing the last tie of connection with Turkey. The first movement in this direction was the insurrection in Crete in 1866, which was suppressed in 1869. The powers which had signed the treaty of Paris held a special conference and recognised the demands of the Porte as just. In 1867 the demand of Servia that the Turkish garrisons be withdrawn from all the Servian fortresses was granted. In 1872 the sultan conceded to the khedive of Egypt two important attributes of sovereignty, the direct hereditary succession and the authorization to make loans. On July 6, 1875, an insurrection broke out in Herzegovina, which gradually kindled the great Eastern war. A series of joint steps were taken by the great powers of Europe to induce the Porte to concede the reform demanded by the Christian insurgents. The most important were, the note of count Andrassy of Dec. 30,1875; the Berlin Memorandum of May 14, 1876; the Constantinople Conference from December, 1876, to January, 1877; and the London Protocol of March 21,1877. On April 24 Russia declared war, and at the beginning of 1878 Turkey was utterly crushed. In the peace of San Stefano of March 3,1878, Turkey had to recognize the entire independence of Roumania, Servia, and Montenegro, to cede some additional territory to Servia and Montenegro, and to consent to the establishment of an independent principality of Bulgaria.
In the case of Bulgaria, these stipulations were considerably modified by the treaty of Berlin of July 13, 1878, as has already been stated. Bosnia and Herzegovina were placed under Austrian administration, and to Greece the annexation of some Greek districts in Southern Turkey was promised. The introduction of the reforms formally demanded by the great powers of Europe was again promised, and their execution placed under the guarantee of the great powers. A few weeks before (June 4, 1878), Turkey had concluded a secret treaty with England, which assumed a protectorate over the Asiatic dominions of the sultan as long as Russia would not return its conquests in Armenia. In return, Cyprus was placed under English administration, and the Porte pledged itself to carry through administrative reforms in the Asiatic possessions. Thus Turkey appeared in an entirely helpless condition, and, so far as its European possessions were concerned, in a state of total decay. Among the European powers, only one-the Tory government of England-occasionally used its influence in behalf of the Turkish government. The fall of the Tory ministry in 1880, and the access to power of the Liberal party, which, during the war, had openly expressed its sympathy with the Christian nationalities of the Balkan peninsula, especially with the Greeks, deprived the Mohammedan government of its last hope. As the Turks had been unable to agree with the Greek government about the promised rectification of frontier, the powers which had signed the treaty of Berlin held another special conference at Berlin in June, 1880, and designated the districts which, in their opinion, should be ceded to Greece. The vital power of Turkey appears to be exhausted. A constitution drawn up by Midhat Pasha, and proclaimed Dec. 23, 1876, which promised to the population very extensive rights, failed to make any impression either at home or abroad. The Parliament which met in March, 1877, attracted more attention by its novelty than by its work.
III. National Characteristics and Governmental Policy. — Comparing Turkey with the other states of Europe, we are struck with one very remarkable distinction. In all the other countries of Europe the bulk of the people have learned that they have a common country, and that, however widely their opinions may differ, and however much they may dislike the existing government, they have important interests in common. The Turks have never become a nation. After subjecting many tribes of different race and religion, the exclusive aim of the sultans has been to keep them in subjection, and to extort from them as high a tribute as possible. The effect of Turkey's rule has therefore been most blighting upon every interest of her subjects. Morally, socially, economically, and politically, her dependencies have sunk, under the combined influence of a false, fanatical, and sensual religion, a bigoted, selfish, and imbecile regime, and an ignorant, fatalistic, and effete philosophy, to the lowest possible point of civilized communities. Corruption reigns in every department of state, and superstition in every form of society. The ruling class, being Turks and Moslems, feel no sympathy with the natives, who are largely Christian and of different races from themselves. Extortion, bribery, chicanery, and treachery have for ages characterized the government, until it has become a festering ulcer and a burning shame upon the face of Europe. But for the intrigues and jealousies among the other European powers, each of which has been anxious to outwit the rest in seizing upon the spoils of “the Sick Man's estate,” Turkey would have been dismembered long ago by foreign interference, or have collapsed in utter ruin by its internal rottenness. England has been largely chargeable for maintaining, by her diplomatic policy, this eyesore and blot upon the map of the world.
Several large territories are but very loosely connected with the empire. Tunis, in Africa, considers itself as a vassal state of the sultan, but without any definite obligation, not even that of paying an annual tribute. Formerly there were two other states of this class, Algeria and Tripoli; but the former has been conquered by France, and the latter has recently come under the direct authority of the sultan. The vassal states which had only to pay an annual tribute, and were otherwise autonomous, were, in 1878, Roumania and Servia, in Europe; Samos, in Asia; and Egypt, in Africa. In 1878 Roumania and Servia became entirely independent, and Bulgaria was erected into a tributary vassal state. In the autonomous province of Eastern Roumelia, the power of the sultan has been almost reduced to the right of appointing a governor.
By the old law of succession, which has been left unchanged by the constitution of 1876, the crown is inherited, according to seniority, by the male descendants of Othman, sprung from the imperial harem. The harem is considered a permanent State institution. All children born in the harem, whether offspring of free women or of slaves, are legitimate and of equal lineage; but the sultan is succeeded by his eldest son only when there are no uncles or cousins of greater age. It has not been the custom of the sultans for some centuries to contract regular marriages. A special feature attending the accession of new sultans to the throne has been the slaughter of brothers and other near kinsfolk who were feared as rivals. Until very recently the will of the sultan was not limited by any law. The precepts of the Koran were regarded as the fundamental law of the empire. The legislative and the executive authority were exercised in the name of the sultan by the grand vizier as head of the temporal government, and the Sheik el-Islam as the head of the Church. The constitution of 1876 pretended to make the sultan a constitutional monarch and to provide for the exercise of the legislative and judicial powers after the model of the West European states; but the constitution thus far (1880) is almost a dead letter. Several Christians, however, have of late held the position of Minister of State. The financial affairs of the government are in a condition of thorough and hopeless disorganization, and the time of the empire's complete dissolution cannot be distant.
IV. Mohammedanism. — The Turks have been a Mohammedan people from the 10th century, and have ever since been the banner-bearer among the Mohammedan states. The sultan is regarded as the head of the Sunnite Mohammedans, SEE SUNNITES not only in Turkey, but as far' as the Sunnite form of Mohammedanism extends. Church and State are so intimately united in Turkey that the judicial and the priestly power are vested in the same officer, the Ulema, who regards the Koran as the sole authority for the decision of ecclesiastical as well as civil causes. “The administration of justice in Turkey is now divided into two parts — that of the Sheri, wherein all judges are Mussulmans, and that of the Nizamiyeh, composed of both Christians and Mussulmans. The head of all the courts of the Sheri is the Sheik el-Islam, who sanctions all their judgments. The judicatory of the Sheri is composed of a high court of appeal (Arzodacy), divided into two chambers (Sudur), one for Turkey in Europe, and one for Asia. At the head of each is a cazi-asker, literally military judge. The cazi- asker is assisted by fourteen honorary chief justices. In the hierarchy of the Ulema the mollahs rank next to the cazi-asker, and after them the cadis. The first in rank are the mollahs of Constantinople, nine in number, and who sit in the court Sheri, at the capital, for a year, being taken in turn from the body of the mollahs. At its head is the mollah of Stamboul. The second in rank is the Mevlevizet, which numbers fifty-seven titularies. The mollah, when on duty, serves for only a year, and then returns to the roll” (Baker, Turkey). Turkish education, until recently, was also in close connection with the State religion. It was organized by sultan, Mohammed I (1451-81), the greatest soldier statesman that the Ottoman empire has produced.
He established elementary schools called mektebs, scattered over his empire in every town and in almost every Mohammedan village, and numerous public-schools or colleges of the higher order, which were called medresses, in distinction from the mektebs, or elementary schools. The mediesses went through ten regular courses of grammar, syntax, logic, metaphysics, philology, the science of tropes, the science of style, rhetoric, geometry, and astronomy. The taker of a degree in these subjects received the title of danishmend, which, has now been replaced by the term sofia. The degree entitles him to the mastership of one of the minor public schools; but in that case he renounces the prospect of becoming a member of the ‘Ulema, or of any of the higher educational appointments. For this it is necessary to go through a still further course of study, and to pass several examinations. Incentives to work are given in the honors and endowments, which are conferred. The Ulema supplies all the professors of the high-schools, who are called muderris, and from the; same order are chosen all the ministers of justice, including the cazi-askers, the mollahs, and the cadis. The actual priesthood of Turkey takes a very inferior position in the State. The ministers of public worship are called imaums, who officiate at public prayers, and sheiks, or preachers. But the fact that the appointments to the priesthood are allotted to the holders of minor degrees does not mark, on the part of the Turks, any want of respect for their faith. It only arises in consequence of the legal profession being so intimately connected with the Church as expounders of the law of the Koran that they, in fact, form the senior branch of the hierarchy. Dervishes, or Mohammedan monks, are very numerous and are divided into a number of sects. SEE DERVISH.
The Vacouf, or Church property, which belongs to the mosques and other religious institutions and to benevolent foundations, is administered by a special department of the State called the Evkaf, and consists of two classes: 1st Property or its produce actually belonging to such ecclesiastical establishments, and held and received on their account by the Evkaf; and 2nd. Property owned by private persons, but lapsing, in default of direct heirs of the owner, to the Evkaf, and subject, in the meantime, to a small yearly contribution payable to that department; but an owner of Vacouf property having no direct.heirs is not debarred from selling it to a person having such heirs, and so preventing it, for the time, from falling into the Evkaf. By a recent law a private person holding Vacouf property can, on payment of certain fees to the government, have it converted into what is called mulkieh, a title which gives the holder the fee simple of the land, to do with it as he pleases, to leave it by will, and, in default of his doing so, it passes to his next heir. Trustworthy statistics on the religious denominations of Turkey cannot yet be obtained. E.G. Ravenstein, in an article on the population of Russia and Turkey in the Journal of the Statistical Society (Lond. 1877), estimates the total population of European Turkey, exclusive of Roumania and Servia, but inclusive of Bosnia and Bulgaria, at 9,661,000, which he distributes-as follows among the religious denominations:
EUROPE.
Turkish Mohammedans
Turks
A Servian statistician, Jakshitsh, gives the following estimates of the population of European Turkey: Christians in Turkey proper, 2,484,501; in Eastern Roumelia, 559,776; in Bosnia, 780,276; in Bulgaria, 1,196,248; total; 5,020,801. Mohammedans in Turkey proper, 1,883,127; in Eastern Roumelia, 359,434; in Bosnia, 400,635; in Bulgaria, 760,267; total, 3,403,463. Jews in Turkey proper, 55,018;. in Eastern Roumelia, 3969; in Bosnia, 6968; in Bulgaria, 8959; total, 74,914. Total population of European Turkey, 8,499,178. According to these authorities, the aggregate number of Mohammedans in European and Asiatic Turkey may be estimated at from 15,700,000 to 16,500,000, that of Christians of all denominations at about 8,000,000, that of the Jews at about 200,000. The aggregate population of the African dependencies, owing to the rapid expansion of the Egyptian dominions of late years, was estimated, in 1880, at 20,500,000, nearly all of whom, with the exception of the Copts of Egypt, are Mohammedans. SEE MOHAMMEDANISM.
V. The Christian Churches of Turkey. — Although the Turks, after the conquest of the Balkan peninsula, displayed all the horrors of Oriental despotism, they did not aim at the extermination of the Christian religion. There is probably no country of Christian Europe which has not imposed, at some time in the course of its history, more severe penalties upon the profession of a dissenting Christian creed than the Turks have done upon the profession of Christianity. The Christians, in their civil relations, found themselves greatly oppressed, but the Turks did not meddle with the internal affairs of the churches. The influence which they usurped by the appointment of the high dignitaries in the Eastern churches was inspired by considerations not of power or proselytism, but of greed. The social advantages which an apostasy to Islam involved gradually induced nearly the whole population of Albania, the entire nobility of the Bosnians, and large numbers of the Bulgarians and other Christian tribes to adopt the religion of the conquerors; but the immense majority of the population of the European dominions of Turkey and large numbers in Asia continued to adhere to the several Christian churches. As the military power of Turkey began to wane, Russia, France, and other powers claimed, and received by treaty, the right of protectorate over the Turkish subjects professing the national religions of the several European countries. In 1839 the sultan, by the hatti-sherif of Gulhane, proclaimed the equality of Christians and Moslems before the law. The provisions of this charter of religious liberty were renewed and extended by sultan Abdul-Mejid in the charter called the hatti-humayum, promulgated in February, 1856. The renewal of the charter was mentioned in the treaty of Paris as the consideration on which the powers admitted Turkey to the company of European states, and guaranteed to it its rights as an independent and inviolable power. The new Turkish constitution of December, 1876, promised to the professors of all religious denominations full equality of civil rights.
In the first Turkish Parliament, which met in 1877, all the religions of the empire were fairly represented. Thus among the deputies returned from Constantinople were five Turks, four Christians, and one Jew; and of the Christians, one was a Greek, one a Roman Catholic Armenian, and two Gregorian Armenians. In 1878 the treaty of Berlin (art. 62) placed the establishment of the principle of religious liberty to its fullest extent under the guarantee of all the great powers of Europe. When the Turks completed the conquest of the Balkan peninsula, they designated the aggregate of the Christian subjects as rajah (herds), while the different tribes were distinguished as millet (nation). The Mohammedan Turks were, however, so strongly inclined to confound Church and State that they viewed the several millets as so many religious communions. Mohammed II, after the capture of Constantinople, made the patriarch of that city the secular head of all the rajah belonging to the Orthodox Eastern or Greek Church. The civil functions of the patriarch were shared in different degrees by the subordinate bishops, and thus the entire hierarchy of the Greek Church appeared as the actual administrator of the civil interests of the people, and as such were held by the Porte responsible for the loyalty of the population. Besides the millet of the Greeks, there are others for the Armenians, United Armenians, Latins, Protestants, and Jews. Their organization is similar to that of the Greeks. The secular jurisdiction of the Armenian patriarch includes the Jacobites. For various statistical statements of the present Christian population of Turkey, see above.
1. The Greek Church. — When the Turks took, in 1453, possession of Constantinople, the foremost episcopal see of the Eastern Church became subject to their rule. The patriarch of Constantinople had gradually become for the Eastern Church what the patriarch of Rome became for the West. SEE GREEK CHURCH.
When the termination of ecclesiastical communion between the patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople became a fixed fact, all of the Orthodox Eastern churches looked upon the patriarch of Constantinople as the most eminent bishop of the Orthodox churches, although many of them, like the churches of Russia, were entirely independent of his jurisdiction. As long as there was a shadow of hope that the Eastern Roman empire would be aided by the Catholic Church of Western Europe in its resistance to the advance of the Turks, several patriarchs of Constantinople had shown a readiness to reunite with Rome. To the bulk of the clergy and the laity the idea of such a reunion was extremely distasteful, and after the conquest of Constantinople it was entirely abandoned. The sultans claimed the same rights with regard to the appointment of the patriarchs that had been possessed by the Eastern or Byzantine emperors, and the Eastern Church submitted to the demand. Georgius Scholarins, who was elected patriarch soon after the conquest of Constantinople, and assumed the name of Gennadius, accepted from sultan Mohammed II the investiture as patriarch of New Rome. The sultan showed, however, but little respect for the authority of the patriarch, and finally compelled him to resign, notwithstanding the petitions of the faithful in his behalf. The next patriarch, Joasaph, was banished by the sultan because he had refused to acknowledge the unlawful marriage of a Mohammedan minister with the daughter of an Athenian. prince. Patriarch Simon, also living in the second half of the 15th century, was the first who offered to the sultan one thousand ducats for the patriarchate.
This money for the confirmation of the new patriarch is called kharatzion or peskesion; it has not only been always paid since, but the amount was constantly increased, and the Turkish government generally showed a disposition to sell the patriarchate to the highest bidder, and to vacate it as often as possible. Only a few of the patriarchs were allowed to remain in office for a long term; generally, after holding it for a short term, they were either compelled to resign, or they were banished, throttled, or degraded. The habit of the patriarch to purchase the confirmation by the sultans had a most disastrous influence upon the Church. The Simonistic corruption descended from the patriarchs to the archbishops and bishops, who had to pay heavy sums for their confirmation, and, in return, tried to indemnify themselves by extorting as much money as possible from their people. For political reasons, the external form of the Church was changed as little as possible; but in consequence of the corruption prevailing in the high places, the Church fell into great decay. The lower clergy, who were generally destitute of a higher education, showed but little sympathy with the people; and when the government conferred upon them some privileges, they looked with indifference upon the heavy taxes which oppressed the laity. Little resistance was even made by the clergy to the cruel institution of the Janizaries, a military corps formed by the children of Christians, who were taken away from their parents, educated as fanatical Moslems, and used for the compulsory extension of Mohammedanism. In some of the provinces the power of the Christian people to resist the proselytism of the Turks gradually relaxed. Especially was this the case in Albania, where the Christian population decreased from 350,000 to 50,000, during the period from 1620 to 1650. Among the apostates were even many priests and monks. The subsequent history of the Greek Church of Turkey does not offer many points of great interest.
The growing power of Russia extorted from the Ottoman Porte in a number of treaties the official promise to protect the Christian religion and the Christian churches, and made itself chiefly felt in behalf of the coreligionists of Russia, the Orthodox Eastern Church. Between Constantinople and Rome an entire estrangement continued to exist. At the beginning of the 17th century the patriarch Neophytus II of Constantinople was believed to be favorable to a union with Rome; but no formal negotiations were opened, and none of the following patriarchs of Constantinople has shown any leaning in that direction. All the invitations and overtures that were made by the popes met, in Constantinople, with a firm and decided refusal: thus, in 1848, an invitation from Pius IX, addressed to the entire Eastern Church, for a corporate union with Rome, and another in 1869, addressed by the same pope to tile Greek bishops to attend the Vatican Council, were promptly and firmly declined in Constantinople and throughout the Greek Church. In the Asiatic part of Turkey the patriarch Athanasius IV of Antioch, who was elected in 1686, joined the communion of Rome, and was followed by a part of the clergy and laity.
Thus arose the United Greek Church of Turkey, SEE GREEK CHURCH, UNITED, which, from Syria, spread over all parts of the Turkish Empire. In the 16th century both the Lutheran and the Calvinistic theologians endeavored to establish friendly relations with the Greek Church, and entered into correspondence with several patriarchs of Constantinople. The Lutheran attempts were never attended with any success. The Calvinists completely gained over to their side one of the most gifted patriarchs that have ever occupied the see of Constantinople, Cyril Lucar (q.v.), who went so far as to transmit to Geneva the form of a Calvinistic confession of faith; but, with the violent death of the patriarch, who was strangled, and whose memory was execrated by the Oriental patriarchs, this attempt, too, came to an end, and the Greek Church in Turkey, as well as in other countries, has kept aloof from all corporate negotiations with Protestant churches. In the 19th century the attempts made by the more congenial Anglican churches of the British isles and the United States to establish intercommunion with the various Episcopal churches of the East led to friendly correspondence between the patriarchs of the Greek Church, on the one hand, and the archbishop of Canterbury and other Anglican bishops, on the other. At the union conferences held at Bonn, Germany, in 1874 and 1875, between Oriental, Anglican, and Old- Catholic theologians, the Greek Church of Turkey was also represented by several theologians. SEE RUSSIA.
Until the establishment of the independence of Greece, the Turkish empire comprised nearly all the Greek churches of the world, except those of Russia and Austro-Hungary. Among the bishops of the Greek Church the patriarch of Constantinople holds the highest rank. He alone is invested by the Turkish government with the attributes of civil head of the entire Church. In regard to ecclesiastical jurisdiction, he is, however, only the head of the patriarchate of Constantinople; the other three patriarchs (of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria), as well as the metropolitan of Cyprus and the abbot of Mount Sinai, being independent of him. The three patriarchs named receive in their beraat, or official decree of confirmation, the same rights and privileges as the patriarch of Constantinople; each of them has his own patriarchal synod, which fills the see in case of vacancy. An attempt made by the patriarch of Constantinople to appoint the patriarchs of the three other sees led, from 1843 to 1845, to a violent controversy between the patriarch of Constantinople and the Patriarchal Synod of Jerusalem, in which the latter remained victorious.
The three patriarchs communicate, nevertheless, with the Turkish government through the patriarch of Constantinople, and are not even' allowed to come to the capital without his permission. The aggregate territory of these three patriarchates is, however, small, and all the remainder of the Greek churches of Turkey was until recently under the immediate jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constantinople. The' establishment of the kingdom of Greece, in 1821, virtually severed the connection of the churches of the kingdom with the patriarch of Constantinople, on whom they had formerly been dependent. The entire independence of the Church of Greece was, however, not proclaimed until 1833, when a synod of the bishops of Greece met for this purpose at Nauplia, and the formal recognition of the independence by the patriarch of Constantinople did not take place until 1850. Servia and Roumania were virtually as independent of the patriarch of Constantinople in ecclesiastical affairs as they were of the sultan in politics. The establishment of their entire political independence, in 1878, entails the complete severance of their ecclesiastical connection with Constantinople. The Bulgarians, although agreeing in doctrine with the Eastern Orthodox Church, were, until 1767, independent of the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constantinople, having a primate and patriarch of the national Bulgarian Church at Ochrida; but in 1767 the last patriarch abdicated, and, by the joint efforts of the Turkish government and the patriarch of Constantinople, the Bulgarian Church was not only placed under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Greek patriarch, but entirely denationalized.
Their bishops and priests were dismissed, their sees and parishes were occupied by Greeks, their monasteries and schools were seized, and the revenues appropriated by the Greek communities; but the greatest blow of all was struck in the elimination of the Bulgarian language and literature from all the educational establishments. A strong educational movement for re-establishing the rule of the Bulgarian language in school and Church set in about 1840. It made at once rapid and steady progress in the province of education, and at length, in 1870, led to the reorganization of a national Bulgarian Church. Notwithstanding the most desperate opposition to the Bulgarian movement by the patriarch of Constantinople and the Greek Fanar, the Porte found it necessary to yield to the Bulgarians so far as to issue a firman which constituted, under the title of The Bulgarian Exarchate, a separate spiritual administration, comprising in its jurisdiction the towns and districts of Rustchuk, Silistria, Shumla, Tirnova, Sophia, Vratcha, Lovtcha; Widdin, Nish, Kustenji, Samarkov,Veles (with the exception of about twenty villages and three towns), the sanjak of Slivmia (except a few villages), the district of Sisopolis, the town of Philippopolis, the district of Stanimaka (with the exception of a few villages), and the metropolitan diocese of Philippopolis (except a few monasteries).
The firman further provided that the powers of the exarchate be defined by an organic code, which was to be in conformity on all points with the established laws and religious principles of the Qrthodox Church; but to exclude entirely, on the other hand, all interference, direct or indirect, on the part of the patriarch, with monastic affairs, and more especially with the election of the exarch and the bishops. The exarch was to be named by imperial berat. He was to be bound, in conformity with ecclesiastical rules, to commemorate the name of the patriarch of Constantinople, and the synod of the exarchate was to be bound to obtain the holy oils in use in the Church from the patriarchate of Constantinople. Although the patriarch of Constantinople at first excommunicated all who availed themselves of the firman and connected themselves with the Bulgarian exarchate, the latter rallied more and more all members of the Orthodox Church who were of the Bulgarian nationality. The treaty of Berlin of 1878, which provided for the establishment of a tributary principality of Bulgaria, and an autonomous province of Eastern Roumelia, in both of which countries the Bulgarians are the predominant race, made the bulk of the Bulgarian nation virtually independent of both the sultan and the patriarch of Constantinople, and cannot fail to complete, ere long, the organization of a national Bulgarian Church, comprising all the Orthodox Christians who speak the Bulgarian language, and enjoying an independence equal to the national churches of Russia, Greece, Roumania, and Servia. The jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constantinople is thereby restricted to those Christians of the Eastern Orthodox Church who are of the Greek nationality. SEE RUSSO-GREEK CHURCH.
The office of the patriarch is intended to be held by the occupant for life; but the Porte may remove him on account of high-treason, and the synod may ask the Porte for his removal on account of bad administration and of heresy. Charges of the first class are very frequent; and as it is the pecuniary interest of Turkish officials to have the patriarchs removed as often as possible, they are always found willing to co-operate in such removal. Depositions of patriarchs are therefore very frequent. The patriarch is assisted by a “Holy Synod”(Jemaat), which consists of from ten to twelve metropolitans, besides the patriarch, its president. The patriarch has the right to select them, with the exception, however, of the metropolitans of Heraclea, Cyzicus, Nicomedia, and Chalcedon, who are members ex officio, and among whom, as they are so near the capital, the patriarchal seal, which consists of four parts, is divided. As the keepers of the patriarchal seal must always be present in Constantinople, the four metropolitans occupy a peculiar position, which the Porte recognises by specially enumerating them in the berat of the patriarch. The patriarch has no right to send them to their dioceses. He may increase the number of the members of the synod, but is not allowed to reduce it below ten. It is customary for eight of the metropolitans who are members of the synod to be present at Constantinople. They are called “the prominent”( ἔãêñéôïé ), and are addressed as the “holy old ones”( ἃãéïé ãÝñïíôåò ).
In 1847, the Porte desired to add to the synod, for all questions not relating to the doctrine or discipline of the Church, three lay members-the grand logothete Aristarchi; the experience of Samos, Vogoridesi and a rich merchant of Chios, Psychari, generally called Messeyani; but the synod opposed the plan so strongly that it was abandoned by the Porte. According to a habit which is expressly recognised by the sultan, all the patriarchs and metropolitans of the Eastern Orthodox Church who happen to be present at Constantinople have a right to take part in the debates and resolutions of the Holy Synod. For questions of minor importance, especially such as relate to the administration of the Church, the decision of the patriarch and the four metropolitans who keep the patriarchal seal is deemed sufficient. The Holy Synod is the supreme tribunal for the clergy of-the Greek Church, and serves as a court of appeal from the decisions of the bishops.
Without its consent, the patriarch can give no decision in ecclesiastical or temporal affairs, and appoint no bishop. The synod alone has judicial and punitive power over the patriarch; and the deposition of the patriarch by the Porte, except in cases of high-treason, takes place only at the request of the Holy Synod. The most important right of the synod is the election of a new patriarch. The synod regulates and distributes the ecclesiastical taxes, and keeps the seals of all the monasteries. It has its own seal, consisting of four pieces, one of which is kept by the patriarch of Constantinople, and the other three by metropolitans elected by the synod. The sessions of the synod are generally held on Sundays and holidays, after divine service. Most of its decrees need for their execution a firman of the sultan. When a new patriarch is to be elected, the members of the synod, and the archbishops and bishops present at the time in Constantinople, assemble at the synodicon, or patriarch's palace, which is situated in