Day, they became so excited that the Phanar was frightened, and removed the interdict; but the two Exarchist sees were founded and still exist. In August, 1903, the Patriarchist bishops wailed aloud, and sent round to the Ambassadors of the Great Powers a memorandum in French against the "aggressions of the schismatical Bulgarian Exarchate."[1] The most absurd part of the situation is that the great Russian Church, which from the beginning has been the warm friend and protector of the Exarchists, is in communion with both sides. The Phanar dares not excommunicate all Russia, of course, but in the long list of its grievances against that country, one of the chief is the Russian patronage of the Bulgarian schism. It is true that the Synod of 1872 declared schismatic and excommunicated every one who should aid, abet, or acknowledge the Exarchate, but, except a few very ardent Greeks, no one has dared apply that law to the obvious case of Russia. Meanwhile, the Exarchists get their Holy Chrism from Petersburg, and the Russians hold open communion with the excommunicate. Occasionally a very public case raises a storm of angry protest from the Greek papers, but no one takes any notice of it.[2] To the furious accusations of the Phanar the Bulgars answer in a language that is common to all schismatics: they are not schismatics at all, but a national branch of the Church Catholic, using their sacred right to manage their own
- ↑ The text in E. d'Or. vi. pp. 408–410. Its language against the "apostles of Panslavism" is extraordinarily violent: "Ces fureurs et ces brutalités," "cette persecution inexorable contre les habitants grecs orthodoxes," &c. On the other hand, "Heureux de nous sentir guidés par la main paternelle de notre auguste souverain le sultan Abdul Hamid, nous souhaitons ardemment à ces provinces si éprouvées le prompte rétablissement du régime de l'ordre," &c. Only a Phanariot Greek can grovel like this. "La Macédoine n'est pas slave," say these bishops, which is a categorical falsehood. They estimate the Turkish and Greek population at three-quarters of the whole!
- ↑ For instance, the Ἑλληνισμός (an Athenian paper) of November 15, 1902, published a furious protest against an atrocity that had lately been perpetrated at Sipka, in Eastern Roumelia. The atrocity was that three Russians—Alexander Zelobovski, the head chaplain of the Russian forces, John Philosophov, and Alexis Mestcherski, both Protopopes at Petersburg—had publicly concelebrated with Methodius, the Exarchist Metropolitan of Stara-Zagora, in open defiance of Photios, Patriarchist Metropolitan of Philippopolis, in whose diocese Sipka lies. The Russian Holy Synod had sent them officially to do so.
