Читать книгу The Birth of Yugoslavia - Henry Baerlein - Страница 75

The Croat peasants were in a much worse condition than the Slovenes, and the nobles who might have assisted them in building schools had recently been ruined by the Austrian agrarian policy, for when in 1853 the Austrians put into execution what the Diet of Croatia had resolved to do in 1848 and freed the peasants from their serfdom, the indemnity they gave the landlords was in Austrian State papers, which the landlords had to take at the face value, though this was far above what they were worth. The owners of the so-called latifundia, mostly German or Hungarian noblemen, lost very little; for their wide domains were cultivated mostly by hired labour, not by peasants settled on the land. But these big landlords were not eager to build schools for peasants. It is said these should have been provided by the Church. The Croatian clergy in the villages would stand in a much better light if they had, irrespective of the higher clergy, made more vigorous attempts to bring down the illiteracy figures which to-day are said to be, for Croatia and Slavonia, 65 per cent. The higher clergy worked, with very few exceptions, hand in hand with Austria's Government, which Government was, after the Concordat of 1855, the close ally of Rome. If it was the Government's desire to build no schools, the higher clergy for the most part acquiesced. It surely is a function of a Government to occupy itself with education and to turn away from the great landlords who are frightened that a peasantry more educated will be troublesome. But those who have to bear a good part of the criticism are the village clergy; it is human not to criticize them half so much for what they left undone as for some aspects of their private life. The usual old stories circulate to the effect that they refuse to exercise their office till the peasant who is asking them to baptize or to marry or to bury some one brings a suitable amount of produce, eggs or fowls or something else, in lieu of money; but what is a more serious matter is the question of women. Three-and-twenty priests in the diocese of Zagreb passed a resolution a year or two ago that they were in favour of a married clergy. A Yugoslav bishop told me that most, if not all, of these gentlemen had anticipated the Papal consent; but that in his diocese only 3 per cent. of the clergy lived in sin [hostile critics say he should have added the word "openly"], whereas in two other Yugoslav dioceses, which he named, such clergy might amount to 50 per cent. An examination of this question, which exists in other countries, would be unprofitable, were it not that in Croatia, with a Roman Catholic and Orthodox population living very often side by side, the circumstances are peculiar. The people do not take up any narrow attitude towards the Church of which they are not members: a Roman Catholic will go to an Orthodox and an Orthodox to a Roman Catholic church if they have none of their own. They intermarry; and since their sacred days, such as Christmas, are not celebrated at the same time the non-celebrating congregation cease to work, out of sympathy. Even with the alteration of the Orthodox calendar there will be days which one community will keep as workless days, so that it may go visiting the others and congratulating them. But this bland behaviour of the people is unfortunately not maintained when they discuss their priests. And in the Lika, where the population leads a rough, laborious life, they are not satisfied to have an academical discussion. They hold that if a man is celibate he is not manly, and scenes have taken place which Hogarth might refuse to draw.