They Were Not Even
Capable Of Conducting Themselves In A Place Of Worship With
Ordinary Decorum, But Would Interrupt The Service With Scandalous
Cries And Warlike Shouts.
Such is the account the Latins give of
them, but I have never heard the other side of the question.
These
wild fellows, notwithstanding their entire ignorance of all
religion, are yet claimed by the Greeks, not only as proselytes who
have embraced Christianity generally, but as converts to the
particular doctrines and practice of their Church. The people thus
alleged to have concurred in the great schism of the Eastern Empire
are never, I believe, within the walls of a church, or even of any
building at all, except upon this occasion of Easter; and as they
then never fail to find a row of some kind going on by the side of
the sepulchre, they fancy, it seems, that the ceremonies there
enacted are funeral games of a martial character, held in honour of
a deceased chieftain, and that a Christian festival is a peculiar
kind of battle, fought between walls, and without cavalry. It does
not appear, however, that these men are guilty of any ferocious
acts, or that they attempt to commit depredations. The charge
against them is merely that by their way of applauding the
performance, by their horrible cries and frightful gestures, they
destroy the solemnity of divine service, and upon this ground the
Franciscans obtained a firman for the exclusion of such tumultuous
worshippers. The Greeks, however, did not choose to lose the aid
of their wild converts merely because they were a little backward
in their religious education, and they therefore persuaded them to
defy the firman by entering the city en masse and overawing their
enemies.
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