begun to take severe measures for the suppression of the insurrection. When the news of the massacre in the Morea reached him he executed sixteen of the Hetairists in one day. Then he had a number of Greeks of the highest rank seized as hostages, under the circumstances a sensible policy; several were beheaded. On the 22nd of April the despot's vengeance reached its climax in the execution of Gregorios, the patriarch of Constantinople, now an old man, much respected by his flock, who was hung from the lintel of the gate of the patriarchate with his sentence fixed to his breast. His body was exposed for three days and then given to the mob to be dragged through the streets and flung into the sea. Recovered by the Christians, it was conveyed in an Ionian vessel to Odessa, where it was received as a holy relic by the Russians and buried with great pomp. The accusation against Gregorios was complicity in the insurrection. It would seem that he had not taken any active part in it, but that, on the other hand, he had possessed some knowledge of what was going on which he had not reported to the government. Constructively, this was treason against the Ottoman power to which he owed his appointment, so that the sultan was justified in executing him; and yet to have betrayed his fellow-Christians would have been treason to his race and his religion. It was a terrible dilemma for a good man to be in. Few can blame him for the course he chose, which was that of silence. But this was one more evidence of the monstrous anomaly of the position he held as the chief pastor of the Eastern Church and at the same time an official of the Mohammedan government. Gregorios was a man of high character, and the calm and dignified way in which he died helps us to sympathise with the view of the Greeks who honour him as a martyr.
The violent death of so venerable a personage as the old patriarch of Constantinople sent a shock of horror through Europe. The Tsar Alexander withdrew his representative from the city. This was not merely a diplomatic move, since it appears that the Russian ambassador was in
