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204 THE PEACE OF BUKHAREST [chap. xiii.
understood better than any of those around him what
the "Monte Santo" represented to the Orthodox
populations of Russia and the Levant.
As we know, Mt. Athos from time immemorial had
rejoiced in autonomy and special privileges, which the
Turks had respected. The twenty oldest monasteries,
from which the other convents depended, each sent a
representative to the Protat, that is the Superior
Council which sat at Karea, a small borough built around
an ancient cathedral; the Protat represented the high
court of justice for all the convents of the Monte Santo,
and the organ through which the republic of monks
communicated with the outside world, that is to say,
with the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Turkish
authorities. The latter were represented at Karea by
an Ottoman official, who had under him a dozen
soldiers, who possessed a mosque but could not bring
their families with them. Besides this minute armed
force, the Protat kept up a score or so of armed guards
recruited from among the Greeks and Orthodox
Macedonians. These palikars, chiefly quartered on the
narrow isthmus 1 which connects the long peninsula of
Mt. Athos to Chalcidice, protected the monastery-land
from the incursions of wolves and bands of brigands;
women are strictly forbidden to enter this territory by
all the statutes of the Monte Santo.
But if the cenobites were thus protected from the
ferocity of beasts, the violence of men, and the charms
of women, they were always exposed to another great
temptation of monastic life—internal dissensions. And
during the last few years, a new subject for discussion
had been added to those which had always existed—
political questions.
The Greco-Bulgarian ecclesiastical conflict was the
signal for the first serious tension in Greek and Russian
relations. The protection accorded to the Bulgarians
by the Russian Ambassador in Constantinople, General
1 The isthmus which Xerxes originally cut through ; the traces of the
canal can still be seen.
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