Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/368

 360 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE July foreign hands, although Morosini allowed a few communities to manage their local affairs, and Maina enjoyed practical indepen- dence. This liberal concession was not, however, altogether successful. ' Every castle, almost every village, aspired to erect itself into a republic,' wrote one of the governors-general, and these petty communes begged Venice to send them a Venetian noble, in order that they might pose as the equals of the provincial capitals, even offering to pay his salary for the advantage con- ferred by his presence. Moreover, persons suddenly promoted from the status of Turkish rayah to be local magnates were not always disposed to treat the Greek peasants well, but rather upon those principles by which they had been treated themselves. An emancipated slave is apt to be a slave-driver. One important privilege was granted to the communities from political motives — the election of the orthodox bishops. Of all the difficulties which Venice had to face, the greatest was the oecumenical patriarch, an oflficial who, being resident in the Turkish capital, was perforce a Turkish agent, and who, before this reform, had named the nineteen Moreote bishops and the abbots of the stavropegia — monasteries directly dependent upon him. These, in 1701, formed 26 out of the total of 158 (with 1,367 monks). The patriarch's patronage had, therefore, been considerable, and his influence, even apart from Turkish pressure, was unlikely to be used in favour of a catholic government. But this was not his only loss. Before the Venetian conquest, one-half of the Epiphany and Easter offerings of the priests and people — 3 reals for every priest in the diocese and I real for every house- hold — ^had gone to the bishop, and one-half to the patriarch. Morosini reduced these offerings, the phildtimo as it was called, by about one-half, at the same time ordering that the whole of it should be given to the local bishop and nothing to the patriarch. The patriarch, thus injured in both his powers and his purse, threatened to excommunicate such communes as elected their own bishops. To this the Venetian governor-general, Grimani, retorted by forbidding the entry of the patriarchal exarch into the Morea ; but his duties, mainly those of a tax- collector, were quietly undertaken by the metropolitan of Patras, while the patriarch became as anxious as the Turks to turn the Venetians out of the country. Unfortimately, these disadvantages of a well-meant reform were not accompanied by corresponding benefits. Simony continued to be rife, and unsuitable persons were often chosen as bishops by the communities. Nor was the patriarch the only external influence over the Moreote church, for there were some twenty-four metdchia, or ' monastic farms ' belonging to monasteries in Turkish territory, which not only sent money out of the country to swell the enemy's revenues, but were centres of jwlitical propaganda and smuggling. These