free download here - Michael Llewellyn-Smith

The Great Island
Ottoman Empire, was to be bought, and a recalcitrant patriarch
might be deposed by the sultan. Nevertheless, the main tenet of Turkish
policy was stable: religious toleration. One might rather call it indifference;
outside a very limited area of social and economic activity, the
Turks were literally not interested in what the Christians were doing.
This religious toleration, indulged at first as an insurance against the
Catholic states of western Europe, had its effect on the Cretans; they
were induced by Turkish promises to support the Venetians only halfheartedly,
or even to assist the conqueror. Theory and practice differed.
Many of the churches of Canea and Candia were converted into
mosques as soon as those cities fell. Still, the Turks made what looked
like a good start by expelling the Latin priests and returning the sees to
Orthodox bishops. The first Metropolitan under this new dispensation,
Nenphytus Patellaros, was installed at Canea while Candia was still in
the hands of the Venetians.
Theoretically, therefore, the Orthodox church now existed once
more in Crete in its pristine form, with its own bishops. In fact, however,
the Turkish assurances soon were seen to be delusive. In theory
and according to the Koran, Christians were not to be forced to
renounce their faith; they were people of the Book, one stage better
than outright heathen. In practice, however, there are other ways of
inducing conversion than putting a pistol to someone’s head. The
material advantages of the Muslims were so great that conversions took
place on an extraordinary scale.
Under the Venetians society was classified into ‘peasants’, ‘serfs’,
‘nobles’, and somewhere apart stood the original Venetian colonists
who formed the nucleus of the nobility. Against this last class the others
might revolt. Society under the Turks was not classless; but the divisions
cut at different points in the social structure. Most fundamental was the
religious difference. The world, for Muslims, was divided into the
House of Mohammed and the House of War. Within the Muslim
world, all men were divided into believers and infidel, and the infidel
had no rights. Christians were Rayahs, human cattle who belonged to
the Sultan and had to buy all their privileges, including the very right
to live. Thus every Christian was liable to the capitation-tax or haratch,
which secured safety of life and limb; and to property taxes; and to
import and export duties heavier than those paid by Muslims. The
Muslims were exempt from such humiliations as the haratch. They had
the advantage over Christians in every way; at law, for instance, a case
between Muslim and Christian was tried before a cadi who could
penalize the Christian far more severely than the Muslim – even
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