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CLAUDE DELAVAL COBHAM
Exerpta Cypria
page 358

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tenants only, not owners; and thns they bore all the unimaginable 91s which these new and bad neighbours could inflict npon them. Mustafa Pasha, with twenty-one galleys, returned as a conqueror to Constantinople, expecting to be received with great honour and ceremony : but as he arrived just at the time of that marvellous naval victory of the Venetians over tho Turkish fleet, and the destruction of abont 30,000 Turks—which took place on October 6 in the gulf of Arta, near Zacynthos— the people of Constantinople were too terrified to go out as usual to meet him : they gave him no public reception, Bred no cannon, and very few persons went to congratulate him. The whole population of the capital was deeply grieved at the destruction of their Armada, for one had lost a son, another a father, brother, husband or kinsman ; and all agreed in ascribing to Mustafa the stirring up the war against Venice. AVe saw, in one narrative of the war, how the Vazir, Mehmed Pasha, dissnaded Snltan Selim from such an enterprise, wishing to preserve the peace with the Venetians, while Mustafa Pasha first moved the Sultan to the acquisition of Cyprus, with a view of gaining his sovereign's favour, and of representing the Vazir, who was also the Sult»n's son-in-law, as an enemy and conspirator. The aversion shown to him by the inhabitants of Constantinople disturbed him greatly, and between disgust and fear he saw at every moment death imminent. Jnst then, that is soon after the return of Mustafa, certain Greeks of Ammochostos arrived at Constantinople as envoys to the Vazir Mehmed Pasha, begging him to ratify the conditions made by the said Mustafa. He ratified them, allowing them to live as Greek Christians, on condition that no Christian of the Latin Chnrch shonld be found among them : for to the Latins he would grant neither church nor honsc, end those who remained in Cyprus were obliged to frequent the Greek churches, and forbidden to hold property in the island. He permitted the Greeks to keep their own Cathedral Chnrch, and the chapel of S. Symeon, inside Famagusta, and they might redeem at will the monasteries annexed by certain Turks. They might buy bouses, fields and other property, enjoy them without interference, and bequeath them as they would. The Greeks too were to have in Cyprns preference and precedence over every other nation. They were further allowed to have such houses in Ammochostos as the Turks had not occupied : if η Turk wished to sell a house the Greeks should have tho right of preemption, bnt if the Turks were unwilling to sell, they might remain their tenants. S. Nicolas, the Cathedral Church of the Latins in Ammochostos, became a mosqne, and the other chinches were nsed as stables for horses, stores for merchandise, or receptacles of rubbish. The Greeks, who to a certain extent preferred to be subject to the Ottoman, rather than to a Latin, power, were even glad in all their wretchedness, because so far as concerned their rites and customs, they escaped the tyramry of the Latins. For the Patriarch of Constantinople, and the rest of the Greek clergy, looked on the Greek bishops of Cyprus and their flocks as Ijatins, and would not receive them into communion with the Chnrch accordingly. Particularly when the Cypriot« went to Jerusalem, the Patriarch there and his clergy rejected thorn as excommunicate and of Latin tendencies, because they were subject to the'Latin bishops. And even more energetically did they repel the Greek bishops of Cyprns, because they were chosen by the royal council and confirmed by the Latin bishops. For this reason the Greek population generally nourished in their breasts an implacable hatred against the Latins, nnd were impatient for the moment of their deliverance. The bishops, lwth Greek and Latin, the abbots nnd higher clergy, had been in great part slaughtered, some had died, others were enslaved. The Latin Archbishop alone escaped, for he happened to be at Venice before the war began, and remained there. The monasteries were stripped aud secularised : the monks changed their habit nnd fled whither they conld, 348 EXCERPTA OYPRIA.

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