THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 1821 TO 1833 BY W.ALISON PHILLIPS 1897

6 THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE
even Mussulmans would occasionally, in disputes with.
Christians, prefer episcopal arbitration to the dilatory
processes of the cadi's court. It was, however, through
the lower clergy that the organisation of the Orthodox
Church was most intimately bound up with the life of
the people; for, as married men, the parish priests
shared to the full in the feelings and aspirations of
their flocks, from whom, though set apart by
the sanctity
of their office, they were hardly distinguished by
culture or attainments.
Just then as, in the West, the idea of imperial unity
had been preserved, all through the troubled period of
the barbarian invasions, by the Church of Rome, so,
throughout the Ottoman dominions, the theocratic
basis of Greek unity had been deliberately maintained
by the policy of the Ottoman conquerors.
The creation
or toleration of such an imperiiim in impcrio
might from the first have seemed of doubtful wisdom.
As a matter of fact it worked, from the point of view
of the Sultan, well enough, as long as the Patriarch remained
completely at his mercy. The danger of the
system became apparent only when, with the decay of
the Ottoman Empire, the Christian subjects of the sultans
began to look abroad for support, and the Patriarch
of Constantinople could reckon upon
ance of a foreign power.
the assist-