Читать книгу The Birth of Yugoslavia - Henry Baerlein - Страница 92

The name of Tzankoff brings to mind a strange ecclesiastical movement. The reader may remember how the little Macedonian town of Kukuš carried from its church the books in Greek and how it welcomed the Bulgarian monk who sang the Mass in Slav. The bishops and the clergy of the Greek Church had not made themselves beloved in Macedonia, where the population was indisputably much more Slav. Greek villages were very scarce to the north of Lake Castoria; but after the suppression of the two Slav Patriarchates in the eighteenth century the only Christians who lead a dignified existence were the Greek clergy. Among the Slav upper class there was a good deal of Hellenization; to be a Greek was of much social value. But the people generally stayed intact, because the schools so thoughtfully provided by the Greeks were solely for the boys. The language spoken in the home would therefore still be Slav. And it is not likely that the people would have cherished their Greek clergy, even if they had been archangels, when once the national awakening had begun. But what we hear about this clergy is too seldom of a pleasing character. The children of the Macedonian peasants might go into ecstasies on seeing one of these episcopal processions, with the bishop's glorious white horse and harness such as they had never dreamed of, with his footmen round about him and with all those other priests, the old ones and the young ones and the monks, and then the bishop's doctor and some other men in spectacles, and then the bishop's cook and a few more monks. But the Macedonian villagers who had to entertain all this rapacious brood and pay terrific fees for everything—250 piastres for a liturgy, 500 for a whole service, 500 for marriages among relatives up to the seventh degree, large contributions under the name of charity, and so forth—these had only rancour for the Church. Perhaps the saintliest among the Greeks declined to go to Macedonia. One hears of them so little and of people like Meletios so much. This savage person was appointed in 1859 to be Bishop of Ochrida, although the reputation he had left there—having previously been the coadjutor—was atrocious. Protests and entreaties were sent to Constantinople, but from 1860 until 1869 he stayed at Ochrida and carried on an implacable duel with his flock. He was frequently received with hisses, sometimes he was struck by stones, sometimes he was flung out of a church. But he was not the man to be intimidated—a large man, with broad shoulders, an arrogant expression and a bristling beard; they say he had the appearance of a janissary in clerical garb. He took into his service an Albanian bandit, through whom he terrorized the diocese. At one time he had the young wife of a man who was away in Roumania brought into his harem. The husband returned, asked for his wife and succeeded in obtaining her, but after two months he was assassinated, and the widow thought she might as well allow the bishop to console her. The outcry was enormous; no one doubted that it was Meletios who had given orders for the crime. A deputation of thirty went to lay this case and numerous other transgressions before the Patriarch at Constantinople. He would only receive five delegates, who read their document in a plenary sitting of the Holy Synod. After they had recited the afore-mentioned episode, one of the bishops who was present lost patience and, "Is it really worth our while to listen to such tales?" he asked. "If Christ spoke to the Samaritan woman, why should not a simple bishop hold converse with a woman also?" "At last the moment has come!" said the delegates. They departed, and at the door they shook the dust from their feet. The Patriarch himself ran after them. "Come back, my children!" he cried. But they were deaf to his voice.

About forty years after the reign of Meletios there was still a Greek bishop at Ochrida, but—this was in 1912, after the first Balkan War—the town had also a Bulgarian and also a Serbian bishop. The Greek ecclesiastic did not profess to administer a very large flock—it consisted of about twelve families—but he explained that his presence was made necessary by the ancient Greek culture. He was there to watch over it. The local church of St. Clement and the monasteries of SS. Zaim and Naoum are dedicated to disciples of Cyril and Methodus, the two brothers who introduced Christianity to these parts. They may well have recruited their disciples among the Slavs, whose language they had learned before they set out. But whether the old stones which the Greek bishop was guarding in 1912 are Greek or Slav, he was better employed than most of his predecessors.