The Passing of the Turkish Empire in Europe. B. Granville Baker

But Ignatius, his predecessor, who had abdicated, still had many supporters, and these appealed to Pope Nicholas I, one of the proudest, most ambitious of the Roman Pontiffs, who welcomed an opportunity of judging and condemning his rival of the East. But the Greeks resented the interference, and after many intrigues Photius emerged triumphant, and reconciliation between the two Churches was made more difficult than ever. After about two centuries of unseemly wrangling and bitter recriminations, Papal legates came to Constantinople in 1054 and laid a bull of excommunication against the Patriarch upon the altar of St. Sophia.

      It will be readily understood that the Crusades, organized under the auspices of the Church of Rome, were not looked upon with favour by the Eastern Emperors and Patriarchs who, however much they bickered between themselves, showed a united front to outsiders. It is therefore not surprising that the Eastern Empire lent but half-hearted support to the crusading Western nations, and that, when that Empire was in turn threatened from the East, its appeals to Western Christianity fell on deaf ears. This made the path of Osmanli conquerors all the smoother. To-day we are faced with a new crusade, Eastern Christians, members of the Orthodox Church, carrying the Cross against the Crescent. They have met with hardly any but that somewhat overrated “moral” support from Western Christians. Montenegrins came down from their Black Mountains, all available fighting men of a population of some 250,000, and fiercely fought for an ideal. Servia, out of a population of about 3,000,000, sent an army as strong and as well-found as the much-vaunted expeditionary force of Great Britain over the mountain-passes into Macedonia. Meeting with stubborn resistance, suffering checks, they pressed on, and now hold lands which once formed part of Servia when, for a short time, it was a great Empire, and had its capital at Üsküb, which King Peter’s army entered in triumph some short time ago. Then the Hellenes, under the Crown Prince Constantinos, name borne by several Greek Emperors, came up from the south, and smarting under the memory of former reverses, fought their way over the mountains into Macedonia, and have occupied Saloniki. Here, again, is a small nation of barely 3,000,000 sending an army of near 100,000 into the field. Then from the north, in irresistible force, came the hosts of Ferdinand, Tsar of all the Bulgarians. His forces were reckoned at 300,000 when they crossed over the border, and this number was taken from an industrious, thriving population of little more than 4,000,000 souls. Numbers as yet untold have fallen in battle, others have succumbed to disease and the hardships of war, but what remains are loudly clamouring for admission to Tsarigrad, the Castle of Cæsar, where all these sons of the Greek Orthodoxy, though of different nations, hope to reunite in worship at Santa Sophia.

      And while these deeds have been doing, Eastern and Western Christianity have been gazing unfriendly at each other. A great Power which adheres to the Church of Rome is looking with disfavour upon the successes gained by these young nations, and diplomacy, which has hitherto failed woefully in its endeavours to maintain peace, is now put to it to prevent another appeal to the arbitrament of arms, and this time of a nature that will make the present war seem but an advanced-guard action. In the meanwhile, with this danger threatening, the part played by Turkey in Europe seems almost incidental only, albeit this great Power is passing from Europe to its native Asia, shorn by a sudden, violent storm of all its old possessions but that narrow corner, fenced off from the onslaught by the lines of Chatalja.

CHAPTER VI

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