this unnatural method of recruiting the army came to an end. The last recorded case occurred in the year 1676. Meanwhile its long continuance was a proof of the abject degradation of the people who endured it for centuries. Not only was it a cruel outrage on the family; it was a barefaced insult to Christianity, since it was an organised instrument of apostasy. How came the Greeks to bow their necks to the humiliating yoke, instead of preferring death to the dishonour of it? In other respects their peaceful submission to the Ottoman rule is not surprising. This rule was not always harsh. In the Turkish Empire the peasant was at least a free man, while in Christian countries at the same time he was a serf, subject to cruel feudal tyranny. Still, in spite of all that is unheroic in the attitude of the Greeks, it is to the credit of the Church that she held on her course through centuries of abuse and hardships; for all along the Christians were suffering from wrongs and miseries which they could easily have escaped by becoming converts to Islam. It is not to be supposed that none took this tempting course. The truth is, immense numbers did become Mohammedans. Manuel, the last of the Palæologi, joined the religion of the destroyer of his ancestors' throne. But these facts do not derogate from the stubborn fidelity of the multitudes who resisted the temptation to apostatise; on the contrary, they enhance the martyr-like character of it. The Greek Church has always gloried in her orthodoxy; she has more reason to be proud of her very existence, more ground for congratulation in the fact that she has not been worn down by the continuous friction of centuries of abuse and contempt.
Unhappily little can be said to the credit of the highest officials of the Church during these desolate ages. For the most part the simple peasants who clung to their faith did so against all inducements to abandon it. The case of their superiors presents a grim contrast to this unworldly fidelity. The patriarchs of Constantinople were now chosen and appointed by the sultan, although the fiction of a synodical election was more or less ostentatiously preserved; and they
