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THE TURKS
57

that they were baptized. He was charged, further, with having said the Litanies with the sultan and his followers. The patriarch replied to the two first with contempt; if the Turks had used the church bath, no harm had been done. As to giving Communion, he declared that he had been duly-certified that the children had been baptized.[1] Witnesses asserted that it was true that the accused had said the Litanies with the sultan, and that he had allowed him to sit by his side during celebration, but added that they did not know whether the sultan was a Christian or not! Other persons were found who declared that he was not a Christian. The sultan, hearing of the proceedings, sent to ask, either in jest or seriously, that the emperor would give him the sacred relics which he wore round his neck, and offered to eat ham as a proof that he was not a Moslem. Pachymer adds that in thus professing his readiness to worship the relics and to eat the forbidden flesh, the sultan caused the proceedings against the patriarch to fail. As it appeared that there were eminent ecclesiastics in the court who really believed that the sultan of the Turks was a Christian, those who desired the condemnation of the patriarch tried to turn the question by suggesting that, whether he was Christian or not, it was certain that members of his suite, who had been present when Communion was administered, were unbelievers.[2] That the sultan should have been present at a Christian service at all, that his children should have been allowed by him or his Moslem followers to communicate, and that his children were baptized, or believed to be baptized, show that, whether they were Christians or not, the fanatical spirit which animated the Moslems of an earlier period, or the Turks a century later, was not present among these representatives of the Asiatics who had entered the country as followers of Genghis or his immediate successors.

Permanent characteristics of Turkish race.The characteristics of the Turk have remained singularly like those possessed by his ancestors. The Turkish soldiers who had come in with Genghis, and the hordes of those
  1. Pach. iv. 3.
  2. Ibid. iv. 6.