Servia and the Servians 1862 William Denton

90 BE.B.Yl.4. 4.ND TJIB BBRYI.4.NS.
of the saints, but more especially the face of our
Blessed Lord, amongst the frescoes, are invariably so
riddled by bullets as to show that they were used as a
common target by the Turkish soldiery.
Whilst the monastic clergy are necessarily unmarried,
and live in co~on, the rule throughout the Eastern
Church is that the parish priest should be married,
and this rule is so invariable, that on the death of
the wife of a parish priest, the widower, since he is not
allowed to contra.ct a second marriage, and is, by the
/ death of his wife, absolutely disqualified from holding a
parochial charge, is compelled to enter a monastery.
But for the supply of compulsory monks thus obtained,
it would not be possible to find a sufficient number of
men to become inmates of these retreats. To these
persons, however, possessing no natural vocation for
such a life, accustomed to the active duties of a
parish, and to mingling in the world, the monotony
and restraint of a monastic life, without any of the
aids by which such a life could be made tolerable
to them, must needs be irksome, and already the
question of permitting the parish priest who has
lost his wife to contract a second maniage has been
agitated in the Servian Church. Some few of the
monastic clergy are, however, employed as theological
professors and teachers in the seminary at Belgrade,
and these furnish the Servian episcopate with its more
learned bishops. The present Archbishop received his
education in a Russian monastery, and the Bishop of
Scbabatz, probably the most learned of the Servian
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