Alexander Schmemann

5. The Dark Ages (16 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 3

That year was marked by the martyrdom of Patriarch Gregory V. He was not saved even by the decree of excommunication he brought himself to issue against the rebels, his own fellow believers, and later he redeemed this cowardice by his faithfulness to Christ at the hour of death. When it was suggested to him that he recant his faith, he answered, “You are laboring in vain; the Christian patriarch will die a Christian.” This was on Easter Sunday, 1821. In the morning the patriarch had performed the Easter liturgy and had called on all, on this great feast, to forget all earthly cares. After distributing an Easter egg to everyone, he was arrested and hanged that same day at the gates of the patriarchate.

None of the laws promulgated by the Turkish Government to placate European public opinion helped the Christians. After the Crimean War, for example, during which the Turks were allies of England and France, and after the Peace of Paris of 1856, Sultan Abdul Medjid “out of ceaseless concern for the welfare of his subjects” issued the well-known Gatti-Gamayun, or decree written by his own hand, according to which the Christians were granted equal rights with the Moslems.
What joy there was then in Europe! Actually, as Professor Lopukhin has pointed out, it meant

. . . that the Christian subjects of the Sultan, whatever oppression and humiliation they were suffering, were now unable to rely on any outside help but were obliged to count solely on their own resources . . . Since Turkey remained in the same disorganized, elemental state, the deliberate idolizing of her by European diplomacy in 1856 had never before been so sharply contradictory to the facts. This policy was shamefully exposed by the subsequent course of events during the last years of the reign of Abdul Medjid, when the Greeks, as a result of the Gatti-Gamayun, not only remained in a dreadful social and economic state, but even lost many of their former rights and privileges.[34]

The whole second half of the nineteenth century was marked by Christian uprisings and bloody reprisals from the Turks. A period of open struggle and slaughter began, on a scale hitherto unknown — all at a time when benevolent European liberalism was triumphant in the West.
The year 1861 was marked by uprisings in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Serbia, Wallachia, Moldavia, and Bulgaria; 1866 by a rebellion on the island of Crete; and 1875 again in Bosnia and Herzegovina. These uprisings prepared the way for a new chapter in the history of the Orthodox Church.

 

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