Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/116

94 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. pelled to abdicate. "This list," says Bikela, from whose book I have copied it, " comprising nearly half of the whole number, is a sufficient indication of the horrors by which the history of the empire is only too often marked, and it may be frankly admitted that these dark stains, dis- figuring pages which but for them would be bright with the things that were beautiful and glorious, go some way to excuse if not justify the obloquy which Western writers have been so prone to cast upon the East. But it is not by considering the evil only, any more than the good only, that it is possible to form a correct opinion of an historical epoch. To judge the Byzantine Empire only by the crimes which de- filed the palace would be as unjust as if the French people were to be estimated by nothing but the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Reign of Terror, and the Commune of 1871." Notwithstanding the existence of the Chris- tian Church in the Byzantine Empire, the con- tinual and uninterrupted contact of the Byzan- tines with the barbaric elements by which they were surrounded from the beginning to the end of their existence explains the lamented inci- dents in their history. The Byzantine people, although in every respect the superiors of their