Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/106

 84 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. mere tissue of rebellion, conspiracy, and treach- ery. He says : " The emperors were led by the nose by the monks and priests, who became all powerful after their triumph over the icono- clasts. ... If any one will compare the Greek clergy with the Latin clergy, and the conduct of the Popes with that of the Patriarchs of Constan- tinople, he will see on the one side men as wise as those on the other side were silly." These quotations are in themselves quite enough. As for the reasons by which Montesquieu proposes to explain the fact that the Byzantine Empire lasted for more than a millennium, they are simply self -contradictory. The history of an empire which endured for a thousand years cannot be given by being crumpled up into a few contemptuous sentences, as Montesquieu has done, especially not when that history presents complications probably greater than those of any other empire. " The truth is," says Bikelas (of whose lectures on Christian Greece, delivered at the Cercle St. Simon in Paris in the year 1885, I avail myself to some extent for this paper), "that it has been only by enveloping the shallowness of his his- torical judgments upon Christian and imperial Constantinople in the glittering phantasmagoria