The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of IndependenceBenson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
History
The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence
Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
Greece -- History -- War of Independence, 1821-1829 -- Fiction
This example of the island primates was to a certain extent followed
by their brethren on the main-land. There had sprung into existence,
in the last month or so, two great powers in Greece, the army and
the church, still in that time the mistress of men's souls; and the
primates, who before the Turkish supremacy had been temporal as well
as spiritual princes, wished to see themselves reinstated in the
positions they had held. Many of them too, such as Germanos, at Patras,
had worked with a true and simple purpose for the liberation of their
country; and now that the people were beginning to reap the fruits of
their labors, they looked to receive their due, and their demands, on
the whole, were just. But never were demands made at so unseasonable an
opportunity, for while the military leaders shrugged their shoulders,
saying "This is our work as yet," they obtained but a divided
allegiance, for the people were devoted to their church. The result
was a most unhappy distrust and suspicion between the two parties. The
primates openly said that the object of the military leaders was their
own aggrandizement to the detriment of other interests, the military
leaders that their reverend friends were interfering in concerns
outside of their province. Even greater complications ensued when the
primates themselves, as in the case of Germanos, were men who fought
with earthly weapons, and he, taking strongly the side of the church as
against the army, was the cause of much seditious feeling.
The personal ascendency of Petrobey and Nicholas was a large mitigation
of these evils in the army at Tripoli, but both felt that their
position was unsettled, depending only on popular favor, and matters
came to a crisis when Germanos himself came to the camp from Patras
with an armed following. To do the man justice, it was jealousy for
the church, not the personal greed of power, which inspired him; as
a prince of that body and a vicar of Christ, he had invested himself
with the insignia of his position. But it was the royalty of his Master
and not His humility which he would fain represent, and if he had
remembered the entry of One into His chosen city, meek and sitting upon
an ass and a colt, the foal of an ass, his heart would have been better
turned to the spirit of the King of kings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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