Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor

METROPOLITAN CHURCH OF MAGNESIA, ASIA MINOR.
INSTALLATION OF THE BISHOP

T. Allom. G. Presbury.

The existence of the Greek church, and the religion of the Gospel, among its bitterest enemies, has evinced, at different periods when it seemed doomed to destruction, a preservation as unexpected as it was extraordinary. When the conqueror of Constantinople had suffered his followers to glut their worst passions on the Christians, and their total extinction was expected, he made a show of unexpected moderation, and, to the astonishment of all, he sent for the patriarch Gennadius, appointed him to his Christian pastoral office by placing in his hand a staff of ebony, and, to do him further honour, after the military manner of a Turk, he placed the meek minister of the Gospel on a war-horse richly caparisoned. He then divided the churches equally between the two sects; half being reserved to the former use, and the other to the use of the Prophet.

This apparent indulgence was of short duration. The extirpation of Christianity in the Turkish empire was resolved on, and his successor, like another Diocletian, issued his decree, for the purpose; it ordained that all the Greeks, subject to the spiritual authority of the patriarch, should conform to the religion of Mahomet. It was then that an extraordinary trait in the Turkish character displayed itself. The patriarch affirmed that he could not, consistently with his duty, comply with the firman, without first stating his reasons before the mufti and the divan. This was pronounced to be reasonable. A Turk, in his fiercest determination, tries to preserve an appearance of equity and justice; so the patriarch was allowed to appear before the assembled divan. He there affirmed that “not only a compact was made on the surrender of the city, that the Greeks should enjoy the free exercise of their religion in half the churches, but that all the gates should be thrown open at Easter for three days, in order that those without may have an opportunity of going to them at this solemn season.” The Turks admitted no evidence but living witnesses; so they demanded if the patriarch had any such, to prove the fact. Aware of the circumstance, he had provided them. Two very old and grey Janissaries, who had been engaged for a large sum of money, were produced, who testified that they were present when the compact was made, though it was notorious it had happened before they were born. The divan was satisfied with this impossible evidence. The mufti pronounced a fetva, that the attestation of living witnesses could not be gainsaid, and the extirpation of Christianity was for that time averted.

Again, when the Greeks, instigated by the intrigues of Russia, endeavoured to throw off the Turkish yoke, and put themselves under the protection of their fellow-Christians, it was resolved in the divan that the whole population should be exterminated, and orders were issued for that purpose. Their fate now seemed inevitable, and the gospel was to be suppressed in Turkey by the extinction of all its professors. The sagacity of one enlightened Turk saved them. The Capitan Pasha, Gazi Hassan, was distinguished by his rough and energetic, but humane character. “If,” said he to the ferocious divan, “you extirpate the Greeks of the empire, who will remain to pay the haratch?” The haratch is a capitation-tax, laid on the rayas, or Christian subjects, which, when paid, ensures to them the permission to wear their heads for another year. This tax had produced annually 49,000 purses, or about £542,000; so this appeal to the cupidity of the Turks again saved the Christians.

After various similar menaces and perils, during which the Greeks adhered to their religion with the most inflexible constancy, their church has finally established itself, with some modifications, under its own independent government, while that portion of it under the Turks retains its old form. It is superintended by four patriarchs, in Asia, Africa, and Europe; viz. Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Constantinople. They are elected by a body composed of the clergy and laity forming a synod; but in reality the situation is a mere matter of purchase from the Turkish government. Every patriarch, on his election, pays a large sum to the Porte; on many occasions the demand has amounted to 250,000 dollars. When the exigency of the state requires such a sum, the existing patriarch is deposed or strangled, and his successor pays it on his election. This causes a constant succession; the tenure of a patriarchate seldom exceeds a year or two. On payment, however, of the money required, a written diploma, called Berat, is given, securing to the patriarch the full and free exercise of his functions. This is strictly observed by the Turks, till they seek occasion to depose him, and appoint another.

Under the Greek empire, the number of bishops was unsettled. They now amount to 150, of whom 60 are suffragans, and three claim independence of any superior ecclesiastical authority in their own sees. Both patriarchs and bishops are judges in right of their office, not only in matters of faith and discipline, in their church, but also in civil and criminal cases. They are assisted by a synod composed of laics and ecclesiastics, and administer justice in their courts with the same formalities as Turkish functionaries, with attendants, formerly Janissaries, who are bound to execute their decrees. The code of laws by which they decide is that of Justinian, and they have the power of condemning delinquents to prison or exile. Such is the reputation of those courts, that Turks and Jews are known to appeal to them in preference to their own tribunals.

As the office of patriarch is purchased from the Porte, that of prelate is purchased from the patriarch; the amount paid is proportionate to the value of the sees, and varies from 18,000 to 150,000 piasters. This, with various other sums paid on different occasions, both by clergy and laity, form a common chest, out of which all the expenses of the Greek church are defrayed. This is managed by a κοινον, or public community, composed of members taken from all classes; for, notwithstanding the state of slavery and depression in which the nation lives under their Turkish masters, they preserve a semblance of freedom, and manage their own affairs by popular assemblies, like their republican ancestors.

The clergy, as in the Western church, are divided into regular and secular: the first are called Kaloyers, literally, “good old men,” the latter Papas, or “fathers.” The kaloyers are generally men of better education; they are not allowed to marry, and, as the dignitaries of the church are all taken from this class, neither patriarch nor bishop is permitted to have a wife. So rigidly is this regulation enjoined, that from some convents cows, hens, and all females of inferior animals, are excluded, as infringing on monastic discipline. They inhabit numerous edifices, scattered all over the Turkish empire. They are very strongly built, resembling fortresses, and in fact are retreats to which people retire from the outrages of pirates and robbers. They are seen the most conspicuous objects on hills and islands by land and sea; the most remarkable are those of mount Athos in Europe, and mount Sinai in Asia. The papa, or secular priest, is generally a married man; he is allowed to take one wife, and not marry another after her death; he has no fixed residence, is generally very illiterate, poor, and humble, and but little respected.

The dress of the clergy under the Lower Empire was not remarkable; and under the first year of the Ottoman sway, it retained its indistinct simplicity; but in the reign of Soliman an alteration took place. A deputation of the patriarch and his prelates issued from Adrianople, to do him homage; and the Turks seeing this mass of people approaching, and not recognizing them by any dress, supposed their intention hostile, and prepared to attack them, when they discovered their mistake. To prevent the recurrence of such a thing, the clergy were ordered to assume a particular and conspicuous dress, by which they could be recognized at a distance; they, therefore, adopted one on the other extreme: bright hats of crimson velvet, adorned with glittering crosses of gold. This is now laid aside, and one extremely humble, but sufficiently distinctive, is substituted. That of the dignitaries was adopted from the monks of mount Athos−a black crape veil thrown over a plain black cap, and falling down the shoulders. The dress of the papas is a plain tunic of blue cotton, and a felt hat without a brim, but broader on the top than below. When he is a married man, his state is indicated by a narrow band of white muslin round his black cap. All wear beards, which they cherish till they grow to a venerable length. Their vestments, when performing service in their churches, are rich and gaudy.

Our illustration represents the installation of a bishop in the metropolitan church of Magnesia: the throne is before a screen which separates the nave from the sanctuary, into which none are allowed to enter but the clergy. This screen is profusely adorned with pictures of saints,−an essential part of the decorations of every Greek church. Among the priests and elders who assist at the ceremony, is one who holds a triple taper, to represent the Trinity; with this emblem, patriarchs and bishops confer their blessing, waving it over the heads of the congregation while they pronounce the benediction. During this, one finger is carefully bent, so as to separate the little finger from the first and second, to intimate that peculiar dogma of the Greek church, “the procession of the Spirit from the Father only.”

Among the display of the Greek church are banners, borne on festival days, representing favourite saints, to whose representation they attribute extraordinary qualities. A remarkable superstition of this kind prevails at Magnesia: St. George, the patron of England, is in high esteem there, and at Easter his banner forms the most distinguished object in the procession. It has the important property of distinguishing and punishing a sinner; it is borne to church always by a priest, who of course passes the ordeal uninjured and with credit; but on returning, it is given to some unfortunate layman, who bears to the grave the marks of the chastisements inflicted on him for his sins. He is violently beaten by some persons appointed for the purpose, while the blows are faithfully believed to proceed from the image of our pugnacious saint.

THE RUINS OF HIERAPOLIS, FROM THE THEATRE.
ASIA MINOR

T. Allom. S. Fisher.

Nothing marks so strongly the genius and propensities of the ancient Greeks, as their theatres. As these edifices were the most interesting and most attractive, so they seemed to have engaged their greatest attention, and to have called forth all their skill, to render them the most permanent and beautiful of the buildings they erected. We have already remarked, that every town, inhabited by Greeks, or the descendants of Greeks, seems to have had one, as essential to its well-being; and they were not erected with the fragile and perishable materials with which the modern edifices of the same kind were constructed. Their seats were not wooden benches enclosed with slight walls and covered with slender roofs, or their decorations flimsy painted paper and canvass; they were built with solid blocks of marble, roofed with the canopy of heaven, adorned with statuary and sculptured ornaments of imperishable materials; and their remains, at the present day, are as durable as the rock on which they were generally erected. When every other vestige of an ancient city is obliterated, its theatre is the only building that remains, to determine its site; and when ruins had concealed it, or the lapse of time had covered it with soil, accident or design has detected it under the mass, as perfect in some of its parts as when it was frequented by a crowded audience. The beautiful theatre in the small and comparatively obscure Island of Milo had disappeared for ages, till unexpectedly discovered by agricultural labourers, in a solitary spot, where no other evidence existed but itself, of the city to which it had belonged. Its materials were solid blocks of beautifully sculptured marble; the angular mouldings seemed as sharp, and the workmanship as recent, as when the chisel had first struck them; and though probably not less than 2,000 years erected, looked as fresh, said a traveller, “as if the masons had just gone home to their dinner, and you expected them to return every moment, and put the last hand to their work.”

As these characteristic structures form so prominent a feature in ancient Greek cities, and at this day are generally the most striking objects emerging from their ruins, a brief notice of their structure will be the best accompaniment to our illustration. The inventor of dramatic entertainments was Thespis, who lived about 550 years before the Christian era. His theatre was as simple as his exhibition was rude; it was an ambulatory machine, moving from place to place, like the booth of an English fair. On the cart, a stage was erected; the dramatic representation was confined to two performers, whose faces were smeared with lees of wine, and who entertained the audience with a dialogue of coarse and rustic humour. This movable edifice was improved by being fixed, and the spectators accommodated with wooden benches, raised one above the other; but the fondness of the Greeks for such exhibitions was so great, and the throng so pressing, that frequent accidents occurred from the breaking down of these frail structures, and the loss of life was so serious, that it was necessary to accommodate the people with more durable edifices. The name of Æschylus is immortalized as well by his mechanical as his literary genius; he not only fixed the drama by the composition of forty regular plays, in which the characters were dressed in suitable costume, but he gave his representations in a regular and permanent edifice, the arrangement of which was the model on which all others were afterwards built.

The building was a semicircle whose extremities were limited by a right line; this was divided into three parts, each having its own appropriation. The theatre, properly so called, from whence the spectators “saw” the exhibition, filled the semicircle, where the people were accommodated with benches rising one above the other. The upper were allocated to females. The seats were confined to a particular number in each row, in all theatres they were eighteen inches high and three feet broad, so that the people sat at their ease, the feet of those above never incommoding those below. Behind each row were galleries, formed in the walls, by which the spectators entered from without, and, from the crowds that issued from them, they were called “vomitories;” from them were passages through the seats in a right line tending to a common centre, and, from the shape of the enclosed spaces, broad above and narrow below, the portions into which the benches were divided, were called “wedges.” As the actor’s voice would be insufficient to fill the vast space enclosed by some theatres, which contained 40,000 people, the sound was augmented, and rendered distinct, by hollow vessels of copper, dispersed under the seats in such a way as to reverberate the words distinctly to the ear of every individual.

The right line, in front, was occupied by the orchestra, so called because it was originally intended for the exhibition of “mimes and dancers;” it afterwards admitted other exhibitions. In one of its compartments, the chorus acted, which from its square form was called thymele, or “the altar;” another received a band of music, and, from its position at the bottom of the theatre, was named “hyposcene;” behind this was the stage, divided also into three parts; the largest, properly called the “scene,” extended across the theatre. Here was suspended the large curtain, which fell, not rose, when the exhibition commenced; the next was the proscene, or “pulpit,” where the performance was carried on; and the last the parascene, or green room, the place “behind the stage,” where the performers retired to dress, and the machines were kept and prepared.

The bland and beautiful climate of the country inhabited by the Greeks, require for the greater part of the year no shelter. The theatre, therefore, had no roof, and all the exhibitions were in the open air; when a passing shower required it, there were porticoes to which the audience retired in winter; in summer, the rays of the sun were to be guarded against in a warm climate, and machinery was provided, by which canvass awnings were drawn across over the theatre. The degree of sultriness which this caused among a crowd in confined air, was mitigated by an artificial rain. Reservoirs of scented water were formed above the porticoes, from whence it descended to the statues and other sculptured ornaments, and was suffered to exude through certain pores in the marble, and filled the covered space not only with grateful coolness but fragrant exhalation.

The fondness of the Greeks in general, and of the Athenians in particular, for such dramatic exhibitions, is not to be expressed; it was not only the medium through which the music of their poetry, the refinement of their sentiments, the display of their taste, and their moral impressions, were conveyed, but it was the great channel of their political opinions. Every sense and faculty was engaged in these exhibitions: the eye, the ear, the imagination, the understanding, were appealed to, and gratified; but what rendered it so deeply interesting was, that it became the arena upon which the public affairs were exhibited, the channel through which public sentiments were conveyed; and the great interests and transactions of the republic, in which every man felt a personal interest, were discussed in mimic representations. When an event or character was introduced in the drama, its parallel was immediately found, and its application was made to some passing circumstance or person. When a passage in Æschylus was uttered, that Amphiaraus “had rather be great and good, than seem so,” it was instantly and simultaneously applied by the audience to Aristides, and they rose up spontaneously to salute him. It was thus, that not only in Athens, their vast theatre, capable of holding 30,000 people, was constantly crowded, but in every city inhabited by the Greeks, either in the islands or on the continents of Asia and Europe, theatres were erected among their first public edifices; and there is scarcely a town, however obscure or little noticed, where one is not found at this day among the most perfect part of the ruins.

The theatre of Hieropolis, given in our illustration, is the least dilapidated among its existing remains; it is an extensive and sumptuous structure, even in its present ruinous state; it retains perfectly its semicircular form, and part of the proscene is still standing in good preservation; the wedge-form rows of benches still afford seats to the traveller; and the arched vomitories, opening upon the passages to admit spectators, are still perfect; but the centre is filled up with heaps of broken cornices, fragments of fluted shafts, and almost perfect capitals of pillars, tumbled from their elevation, and indicating, by their number and the excellency of their workmanship, the skill and labour bestowed upon the theatre of this provincial town. On a low semicircular screen, dividing the seats, is still legible an inscription in which “Apollo the Archegetes,” or manager of the theatre, is entreated to be “propitious to the performers;” and on another is a panegyric on the city of Hieropolis, in which it is called “the city of gold.” The perspective in the background exhibits the remains of stadia, baths, and other edifices before mentioned.

The circumstance which most strongly impresses a traveller in visiting these ancient theatres, is the dismal contrast presented by their first and present state. These crowded scenes of life and enjoyment are now the most dismal and desolate spots among the ruins; they seem to be the place to which every thing that is foul and venomous repair, attracted perhaps by the shelter and concealment their more perfect state affords. “The busy hum of men” is exchanged for the serpent’s hiss and the eagle’s scream−the crowded seats

 
“Are now the raven’s bleak abode,
Are now the apartment of the toad.”
 

Snakes are everywhere seen gliding through the rubbish, or rustling among the thicket of shrubs that grow among them. Their exuviæ are found deposited in every crevice, and the alarmed traveller starts back, supposing that to be a living reptile, which he finds is only the spotted skin from which the renovated serpent had extricated itself, and just left behind. Jackals and wolves drag here their prey, as to a congenial spot, to devour them; and vultures, “scenting their murky quarry from afar,” are heard screaming in the air, and seen hovering over the carcase, ready to alight, and snatch it from their rapacious rivals. Such is the almost universal aspect that every ancient theatre we have visited presents to the traveller.