Pitzipios, is a native Christian subject of the Sultan of Turkey, and was the secretary of an imperial commission appointed to examine into the {12} civil and financial administration of the Christian communities, as well as to hear their complaints against their rulers. His position and circumstances, therefore, have enabled him to investigate the matter thoroughly. His estimate of the civil administration of the clergy of the patriarchate from the time of Mahomet II. to that of Mahmoud II.-- that is, from the Turkish conquest to the projected reformation in the Ottoman government--is expressed in these words:

"We have seen why it was that the Sultan Mahomet II. delegated the entire temporal power over his Christian subjects to the Patriarch Gennadius and his successors; gave to the religious head of the Christians of his empire the title of Milet-bachi, and rendered him the absolute master of the lot of all his co-religionists, as well as responsible for their conduct and for their fulfilment of all duties and obligations toward the government. Such an arrangement was calculated to produce in its commencement some alleviations and even some advantages to these unfortunate Christians, as in point of fact it actually happened. But it was sure to degenerate sooner or later into a frightful tyranny, such as is naturally that of privileged slaves placed over those of their own race. Accordingly, as we have stated in several places already, the clergy of Constantinople made use of all the means of oppression, of vexation, and of pillage of which the cunning, the depraved conscience, and the rapacity of slaves in authority are capable. The clergy of Constantinople having become in this way the absolute arbiters of the goods, the conscience, the social rights, and indirectly even of the lives of all their Eastern co-religionists, continued to abuse this temporal power not only during the period of the old regime, but even after the destruction of the Janissaries, and, again, after the reform in Turkey, and up to the present moment" [Footnote 4] (1855).

[Footnote 4: "L'Eglise Orientale," p. iv., pp. 17, 18.]

The allusion to the reform in the lost clause of this extract requires a fuller explanation, and this explanation will furnish the most conclusive evidence of the degradation of the patriarchate, by showing that not only have its clergy submitted to be the tools of the Ottoman government when it was disposed to oppress the Christians in the worst manner, but that they have even resisted and thwarted the efforts of that government itself, when it was disposed to emancipate the Christians from a part of their bondage.

The Sultan Mahmoud I I., a man of superior genius and enlightened views, devoted all the energies of his great mind to the effort of restoring his empire, rapidly verging toward dissolution, to prosperity and splendor. He devised for this end a gigantic scheme of political reformation, one part of which was the abolition of all civil distinction between his subjects of different religions. He was unable to do more, during his lifetime, than barely to commence the execution of his grand project. His son and successor, Abdul-Medjid, continued to prosecute the same work, and, at the beginning of his reign, published a decree called the Tinzimat, enjoining certain reformations in the manner of administering law and justice in the provinces. The Christian inhabitants of Turkey were the ones who ought to have profited most by this decree. On the contrary, the very privileges which it accorded them, by withdrawing them in great measure from the authority of the local Mussulman tribunals, deprived them of their only resource against the oppressions and exactions of their own clergy, and rendered their condition worse. The bishops succeeded in getting a more exclusive control than ever over all cases of jurisdiction relating to Christians, and made use of their power to fleece their people more unmercifully than they had ever done before. Encouraged by the publication of die Tinzimat, these unhappy Christian communities ventured to send remonstrances to the Ottoman {13} government against their cruel and mercenary pastors. In consequence of these remonstrances, the Porte addressed the following official note, dated Feb. 4, 1850, to the Patriarch of Constantinople:

"Since, according to the Christian religion, the bishops are the pastors of the people, they ought to guide them in the right way, protect them, and console them, but never oppress them. As, however, many metropolitans and bishops commit actions in the provinces which even the most despicable of men would not dare to perpetrate, the Christian populations, crushed under this oppression, address themselves continually to the government, supplicating it to grant them its assistance and protection. Consequently, as the government cannot refuse to take into consideration these just complaints of its own subjects, it wills absolutely that these disorders cease. It invites, therefore, the patriarch to convoke an assembly of bishops and of the principal laymen of his religion, and, in concert with them, to consider fraternally of the means of doing away with these oppressions and the just complaints in regard to them, by regulating their ecclesiastical and communal administration in conformity with the precepts of their own religion and with the instructions the Tinzimat." [Footnote 5]