Page:Uniate Eastern Churches.pdf/247

Rh have lost to them the sympathy of natives. It is a common trick to injure a rival religion by representing it as foreign, and so hostile to all patriotic citizens. Then it was proposed that they should wear a square kalymauchion. The Melkites persisted in claiming that they would go on dressing exactly as their fathers had dressed, in the traditional costume of their rite. The quarrel lasted with great bitterness for ten years. At last a compromise was made by the Government. The Melkite clergy were to wear a kalymauchion, not round, but six-sided; their cassock was to be, not black, but blue or violet. This was made law by the Turk in 1847. But it was not long observed. The blue or violet got darker and darker, the six angles of the hat became more and more blunted, till there is now nothing to distinguish the Melkites from the Orthodox in dress.

A greater work, the greatest work of Maximos's life, was the civil emancipation of his people. It is known that, at any rate till the revolution of 1908, the Turkish Government grouped its Christian victims according to their religions. Each religion was a "nation," dependent on its religious head in civil matters too; these heads were responsible to the Porte for the behaviour of their people. When the division between Melkites and Orthodox came, at first that made no difference to the Turk. He still looked on them as one nation. Since the Government eventually took the side of the Orthodox Patriarchs, Silvester and his successors, these still had civil jurisdiction over the Melkites. Such a state of things was intolerable to them. Naturally, the Orthodox used their authority to vex, annoy, and persecute the followers of the Melkite Patriarchs in every possible way. It was not till 1830 that the Sultan freed all Uniates from dependence on their rivals. At first he put all under the civil authority of the Armenian Patriarch, as representing the largest and best known