BUr^GARIAN GIRIv GOING TO THE WELL FOR WATER 



selves in the quarter known as the 

 Phenar, where stood their cathedral 

 church. (Santa Sophia had been taken 

 from them and converted into a mosque.) 



THE QUESTION OE RELIGION 



As all Moslem churches are ruled very 

 largely by religious law, and it was not 

 possible to apply that to Christians, the 

 Greeks were allowed to keep their own 

 laws, and were practically governed in all 

 their personal ways by their church, the 

 Orthodox Greek Church, the head of 

 which was the Patriarch of Constanti- 

 nople. The Bulgarians, who also had 

 been conquered by the Turks, were mem- 



bers of this church, thus coming under 

 Greek domination. 



When the Greeks, accustomed to rule, 

 found themselves subjects of the Turk, 

 they laid hands on all the power they 

 could get, and the Bulgars and Serbs 

 claimed they were oppressed through the 

 church quite as severely as the Turk op- 

 pressed them through the state. The 

 Slavs, badly treated, resented it bitterly, 

 and a hatred grew up between Greek and. 

 Slav that has persisted to this day. 



When the Balkan States were freed 

 from Turkey, in the middle of the nine- 

 teenth century, they demanded and ob- 

 tained separate churches — a Servian 



380 



