Monastir

“ Monastir itself is practically an unfortified city; it lies on the edge of a broad level plain, offering not the least advantage to a defending force. A few guns might easily sweep the city into a heap of ruins. But above Monastir towers a lofty mountain, so steep that even under peaceful conditions a strong man finds it hard to climb. A few guns placed in position among the rocks on top of this mountain could command the city and all of the surrounding plain within range of their fire. ”

“ The crack of rifles and revolvers is as frequent in the streets of Monastir as the bang of bursting tires on Fifth Avenue. A Serbian sentry, on duty outside the house in which I was sleeping, suddenly loosed off a clip of cartridges in the street, for no reason in the world, it seemed, than because he liked to hear the noise! Dead bodies are found nearly every morning. ”

“ At all times, and from all points of view, it is imposing and spectacular, and is the dominant note of every landscape round about. Its angularities are not beautiful, nor even solid-looking,{408} and the whole thing is stagy; but for all that it is imposing and above all grim and suggestive of unspeakable Turkish atrocities that may have been carried on in its immediate neighbourhood.
Monastir is a near neighbour of Sousse, twenty odd kilometres away, over as fine a roadway as one may see anywhere. Automobilists take notice! ”

“ The Turks retreated thence to Monastir, where they found reinforcements. On November 17th and 18th, another great battle was fought in front of Monastir, in which the Turks were again defeated, with the loss of ten thousand prisoners. The remains of the army retreated into Albania, where it was too late in the season for the Serbians to follow them. They were ultimately, in the following spring, brought back to Constantinople by sea from the Adriatic. There could not have been a more completely victorious campaign for the Serbians. ”

“ War is a pilgrimage for simple soldiers, long days of marching, longer nights of vigil; they know not where they go, nor why—until the day of battle; if then they see the goal they fight with clearer purpose, and knowledge born of vision casts out their doubts and fears. So it was with the Serbs that day at Novak; they looked across a waste of water and saw before them Monastir—the Mecca of their pilgrimage; the sight inspired these humble pilgrims, they set their faces to the west, entered the icy flood, crossed it unflinchingly, and by this bold manœuvre snatched victory from defeat. ”

“ Roumanian elementary schools were founded in several of the Vlach villages and afterwards higher grade schools were started in Yannina, Salonica, and Monastir. Eventually in 1905 the Vlachs were recognized by the Turks as forming a separate ‘ millet ’ or nationality. This however brought no real unity as the Vlach villages are widely scattered and many from their position alone are too closely connected with Greece to wish to take a course of their own. ”

“ If you will not unite with us, we ask of you at least to remain neutral, and we call upon you in the name of humanity to cease this shedding of blood. We warn you against the dangers of Hellenism. If you Greeks in the Monastir Vilayet do not put a stop to your Hellenic agitation, your brother Greeks in Anatolia, who are much more numerous than yourselves, will suffer as well as yourselves. Secret negotiations between the Yildiz and the Patriarchate will lead, not to your happiness, but to your injury and destruction. ”

“ Monastir, where Draga and Dushan were to go to school, was the halfway station. The old Roman road was still the great highway, but the merchant caravans and the trampling legions had disappeared. Military trucks, white with dust, sometimes lumbered [34] by, carrying stores to some outlying garrison, and the mail car was sure to be met sooner or later jacking up its wheels for new tires. For the most part, people went by on foot or on donkey-back, all burden-laden. ”

“ It is in the neighborhood of one hundred and fifty miles from Monastir to Salonika across the Macedonian plain and the road is one of the very worst in Europe. Deep ruts, into which the car sometimes slipped almost to its hubs, and frequent gullies made driving, save at the most moderate speed, impossible, while, as many of the bridges were broken, and without signs to warn the travelers of their condition, we more than once barely saved ourselves from plunging through the gaping openings to disaster. ”

“ Sometimes they disguised themselves as Turkish women, with long, black veils over their faces, and flowing garments, which concealed weapons; but persons traveling in an ox-cart driven by a barefooted boy had nothing to fear. Nevertheless, they spent the nights near some small village that looked like an outcrop of stones on the hillside, and after coffee and sour milk at the inn, stretched themselves out on the floor of the wagon and pulled the blankets over them.
On the third day they came to Monastir—to Draga and Dushan a bewildering, beautiful place. ”

“ So far as Servia was concerned little remained to be done, old Servia had been reconquered, an outlet to the sea had been acquired. Servia, the State, had more than gained her object; Servia, the Ally, the Member of the Balkan League, was at the parting of the ways. Under the terms of the Secret Treaty, Monastir passed into Bulgaria’s sphere of influence. This Macedonian town, if held as one of the fruits of Servia’s victory, was bound to become an apple of discord. Every thinking man in Servia knew it, but knowledge is not always power. ”

“ He was born in Resna, a little town between Monastir and Ochrida, in a region where fertile valleys studded with orchards and cornfields, grassy downs, forest-clad mountains, craggy Balkan peaks and gorges, and broad lakes combine to make as beautiful a scenery as can be found in Europe. Niazi had known this countryside from his childhood, and he had friends in all the villages, so when it was decided to make this the scene of the first outbreak of the insurrection it was recognised that he was the right man to come forward as leader. ”

“ One night they talked of the young Arab and his look of abstraction. "It is the look," said Monas, "which betokens fitness for a life of seclusion, of devotion to prayer, and thoughts of eternity. The monks often have it, and the generation in which I live is one much given to a monkish life. It is only in such a life that we can find rest, safety from hell fire, and that religious truth without which there is no safety. In Egypt alone there are now six hundred monasteries, all maintaining the truth against the errors of Rome." "And what is the truth?" asked Porlor. ”

“ There are now no Nestorian monasteries and few monks or nuns. What remnant there is of East Syrian monasticism is only to be found among the Uniate Chaldees. But monasticism was once a very flourishing institution in this Church. It played so great a part in their history that we must say at least a word about it here.
Their own tradition is that a certain Augīn [84] brought the monastic life from Egypt in the 4th century. He had been a pearl fisherman in the Red Sea. Then he became a monk in the Nitrian desert, and eventually, with seventy companions, set out for Nisibis. ”

“ To the end of this sojourn belongs the first great wave of Monastic settlement in the desert. During the later part of the great persecution ‘monasteries’ and monks begin to abound (§44, 46) . The remainder of his long life (311–356) is passed mainly in his ‘inner mountain,’ where he forms the head and centre of Egyptian monasticism. Now it is contended by Weingarten and his followers that the Vita is contradicted in this important particular by all the real evidence as to the origin of monasticism, which cannot be proved to have originated before the death of Constantine. ”

“ The monasteries had to fall if England was to be saved from the horrors of civil war, if the hand of the pope was to remain uplifted from her, if the insecure gains of the Reformation were to become established and glorious achievements; if, in fact, all those benefits accompanying human progress were to become the heritage of succeeding ages.
Whatever benefits the monks had conferred upon mankind, and these were neither few nor slight, they had become fetters on the advancement of freedom, education and true religion. ”

“ The secularization of monasteries was an evil which grew with their wealth and influence. At a Council held by the patriarch Photius in the Apostles’ church at Constantinople, it is complained that some persons attach the name of “monastery” to property of their own, and while professing to dedicate it to God, write themselves down as lords of what has been thus consecrated, and are not ashamed to claim after such consecration the same power over it which they had before. ”

“ The Greeks often bitterly complain of the mighty progress of the Catholic Propaganda; but they must themselves own that the best schools and hospitals in Turkey belong to the Catholic Orders. ... It is no good scolding and complaining. If the monks, like their Western brethren, would work for the education and social improvement of their people, then the monasteries would have a real reason for their existence. ”

“ It may be true that in the early days of monasticism the monks pursued the proper course in refusing to become Roman patriots. No human power could have averted the ruin which overtook that corrupt world. Perhaps their non-combatant attitude gave them more influence with the conquerors of Rome, who were to become the founders of modern nations.
In later years, the abbots of the principal monasteries occupied seats in the legislative assemblies of Germany, Hungary, Spain, England, Italy, and France. In many instances they stood between the violence of the nobles and the unprotected vassal. ”

“ The other was the secularization of the church.
Men naturally cling to society as long as there exists any well-founded hope for its regeneration, but when every expectation for the survival of righteousness yields to a conviction that doom is inevitable, then the flight from the world begins. This was precisely the situation in the declining days of Rome and Alexandria, when Christian monasticism came into being. The monks believed that the end of the world was nigh, that all things temporal and earthly were doomed, and that God's hand was against the empire. ”

“ My son, we are not able to dwell in a monastery because our sins are many, and because we are not worthy so to do; for it is great wickedness for us to dwell under the cloak of falsehood among monks, whilst our deeds are more evil than those of the folk who are in the world. But do thou remain in this dwelling, O my son, and the God Whom thou hast loved, and Whom thou hast made plans to please in everything, shall be unto thee a father, and a fellow monk ”

“ For these, and other valuable services, the monks merit the praise of posterity. It is, however, too much to affirm, as Montalembert does, that "without the monks, we should have been as ignorant of our history as children." It is altogether improbable that the human mind would have been unproductive in the field of historical writing had monasticism not existed during the middle ages. While, also, the monks should be thanked for preserving the classics, it should not be supposed that all knowledge of Latin and Greek literature would have perished but for them. ”

“ The hope of the world lies in the further development and completer realization of those great principles of human freedom that distinguish this century from the past. The history of monasticism clearly shows that the monasteries could not minister to that development of liberty, truth and justice, which constitute the indispensable condition of human happiness and human progress. Unable to adjust themselves to the new age, unwilling to welcome the new light, rejecting the doctrine of individual freedom, the monks were forced to retire from the field. ”

“ A ceremony suspiciously like reordination, for instance, is appointed for a bishop who becomes Patriarch.
At one time monasticism flourished among the Nestorians (p. 110) ; ruins of their monasteries may be seen all over the plain of Mosul. None are now inhabited. The monastic life fell to pieces since the 14th century, especially because of the characteristic Nestorian prejudice against celibacy. Since the 14th century they admit a very easy dispensation from vows of celibacy, by which a monk can marry and return to the world. ”

“ Monasticism in one sense or another always existed, and always will exist in the Church. It flourished amongst the first Christian communities at Jerusalem, who had only one heart and one soul, who sold their lands and houses, and laid the price at the feet of the Apostles to feed the poor. It existed in the catacombs during the persecutions, and took more definite shape in the deserts of Syria, Egypt, and Armenia. ”

“ According to these every monastery had one or more clerics for conducting worship and administering the sacrament. Basil also advanced the development and influence of monasticism by setting down the monasteries in the neighbourhood of the cities. In the 5th century two of the noblest, most sensible and talented representatives of ancient monasticism did much for its elevation and ennobling; namely, Isidore, who died about A.D. 450, abbot and priest of a cloister at Pelusium in Egypt, and his contemporary Nilus, who lived among the monks of Sinai. ”

“ Among the Christians, whose religion assumes a spiritural and solitary nature among some,—a man used, as he thought, to elevate his soul above the world by hiding himself in buildings of thick stone, with little low doors and [63] windows barely sufficient to let in the light of Heaven. Monasteries were first founded in the deserts of Upper Egypt, where Antony commonly called “the Great,” collected a number of hermits, about the year 305. ”