Crypto-Christianity in the Balkan Area under the Ottomans

Stavro Skendi

Slavic Review, Vol. 26, No. 2. (Jun., 1967), pp. 227-246.

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STAVRO SKENDI

Crypto-Christianity in the Balkan Area

under the Ottomans

LITTLESTUDY has been devoted to the phenomenon of Crypto-Christianity.

While some attention has been paid to the Crypto-Christians of Asia Minor,
who were numerous, lived in groups, and endured a long time, the Crypto-
Christians of the Balkans have been largely neglected, with the exception of
an occasional work referring to only a single nationality, particularly the
Greeks.
Crypto-Christianity is not an easy subject, and the available materials are
scarce. If we exclude the reports of Roman Catholic clergymen, we are
left mainly with fragmentary information from various travelers and
some researchers. Being by definition secret, Crypto-Christianity itself pro-
vided little direct evidence. It was also frequently encountered in a con-
fused state, giving the impression of a mixed religion brought about by an
imperfect Moslem conversion. In Crypto-Christianity the two religions,
Christian and Moslem, coexisted. The South Slavs called it "double faith"
(dvovere or dvoverstvo), and the Greeks, until the middle of the nineteenth
century, gave it the same name (dipistia). The determining feature of
Crypto-Christianity is whether the Christian faith was adhered to in con-
cealment. The present paper attempts to assess the available evidence and
to evaluate the role of Crypto-Christianity in Balkan history.1

First, what is meant by Crypto-Christianity during Ottoman rule? It is the

appearance of individuals or groups who, while publicly professing Islam,
satisfied their conscience by practicing Christianity-Orthodox or Catholic
-in private. Not a unique occurrence, it finds parallels at various places
and times, when people followed one religion outwardly and another in
secret; in Spain, for example, were the Marranos (Jews externally converted

This paper was prepared for the First International Congress of Balkan and Southeast
European Studies, held in Sofia, August 26-September 1,1966.
ICrypto-Christianity among the Rumanians has not been included in this paper be-
cause the Danubian Principalities were not under the direct rule of the Ottomans but
were tributaries. There is more, and preciser, information about the Crypto-Christians in
Asia Minor, although no general critical study on the subject has been published.
228 SLAVIC REVIEW

to Catholicism) and the Crypto-Moslem Moors, in Bukhara and Turkestan

the pseudo-Moslem J e w ~ . ~
T h e first well attested mention of Crypto-Christianity in lands under
Ottoman domination dates from 1338, eight years after the fall of Nicaea in
Anatolia.3 In that year the Christian inhabitants of Nicaea, who had
embraced Islam but had later repented, appealed to the Patriarch of
Constantinople, John XIV, asking him whether the Church would be will-
ing to receive them back in its fold and save their souls. T h e Patriarch re-
plied that the Church would accept them if they manifested their repent-
ance publicly and suffered the consequences, i n which case it would even
number them among its martyrs. As for those who, for fear of punishment,
dared not profess their Christian faith publicly but only in secret, the
Church would still save them if they strove to keep, as far as possible, the
commandments of God. T h e enemies then could be masters of the Chris-
tians but not of their souls.*
As in Nicaea, so in the Balkans-here I have included Cyprus, perhaps
arbitrarily-Crypto-Christianity followed the Ottoman conquests, which
brought about the conversions of which Crypto-Christianity is a conse-
quence. One could not expect a convert to Islam to abandon Christianity
immediately, particularly when conversion did not follow a process of
indoctrination but was accepted under duress or for material advantage. In
general, Ottoman pressure to convert the Balkan peoples to Islam-if we
exclude instances following violent battles and the brief reign of Selim I
(1512-20)--seems to have been slight until the death of Suleiman the
Magnificent (1566). U p to the end of the sixteenth century, writes Finlay,
the Ottoman government was remarkable for the religious toleration it dis-
played. The persecuted Jew, Orthodox Christian, or heretic found in the
Ottoman dominions a toleration present in few Christian lands.5 It was
then mostly for worldly advantages that Christians embraced Islam.

A direct manifestation of Crypto-Christianity comes from Cyprus. T h e

island was in the hands of the Venetians when the Ottomans attacked it.
During their government the Venetians had rendered themselves more
a See D. Iofan, "Nauchnoe issledovanie istorii tuzemnykh evreev Bukhary i Turkestana
'chely' i chasti gornykh tadzhikov," Novyi vostok (Moscow), No. I, 1922, pp. 480-81; I. M.
Babakhonov, "K voprosu o proiskhozhdenii gruppy evreev-musul'man v Bukhare,"
Sovetskaia etnografiia (Moscow), No. 3, 1951, pp. 162-63.
a Possibly the phenomenon was also observed earlier, a t the time of the Saracen occupa-
tion of the island of Crete (825-961). See Robert Pashley, Travels i n Crete (London, 1837).
I , 104; T. W. Arnold, T h e Preaching of Islam: A History of the Propagation of the
Muslim Faith (3d ed.; London, 1935), p. 201.
4See the patriarchal communications @ittakia) of the years 1339 and 1340 in Franz
Miklosich and Josef Miiller, Acta et diplomats graeca medii aevi sacra et profana (Vienna,
1860), I , 183-84 and 197-98; also Nikolaou P. Andrioti, Kryptokhristianikd Philologia
(Thessaloniki, 1953)~pp. 8-9, and Apost. E. Vakalopoulou, Historia tou neou helldnismou
(Thessaloniki, 1961), I , 134-35.
6George Finlay, A History of Greece from the Conquest by the Romans to the Present
T i m e , B.C. 146 to A.D. 1864 (Oxford, 1867),V, 118-19.
CRYPTO-CHRISTIANITY 229

hateful than their predecessors, the French Lusignans. A traveler who

visited Cyprus in 1508, Martin Baumgarten, described the inhabitants of
Cyprus as slaves to the Venetians. They were obliged to pay to the state
one third of all their income, whether in produce or cattle; each man
was bound to work for the state two days every week, wherever he was
assigned; and, moreover, every year there was some new tax or other im-
posed.6 Conditions had not improved at the time of the Ottoman con-
quest, in 1571. An Ottoman survey made a year later shows the exploitation
of the parikoz' by the Venetian "lords and masters." 8 T h e Venetians had
also sought to achieve religious hegemony by bringing the "schismatics"
(Orthodox) into submission to the Roman Church.9 And Hackett, the
historian of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, writes that there were many
instances which marked the extreme aversion of the Orthodox at that
time toward their Venetian rulers and their satisfaction at the prospect
of an Ottoman invasion. In fact, just before the invasion, two Cypriotes
had arrived in Istanbul with letters expressing the desire of many of their
compatriots to come under the rule of the Sultan.lo
Under such circumstances, it is not likely that the Orthodox of Cyprus
were coerced to conversion and turned into Crypto-Christians, but rather
the Catholics, whose leaders had been killed or captured in the bloody
fighting that lasted more than a year. T h e Orthodox were better off than
before, for the Sultan greatly alleviated their burdens,ll and they passed
under the protection of the patriarchate of Constantinople. Originally,
then, the Crypto-Christians of Cyprus descended from Catholics who
renounced their faith to escape persecution. This persecution was not Mos-
lem alone. It has been maintained by Catholic writers that the Catholics
of Cyprus were Maronites (a Syrian and Lebanese Catholic sect) who after
the fall of the island were submitted to humiliating treatment on the part
of the Greek Orthodox bishops, now taking revenge on the Catholic
Church. T h e Maronite priests were accused by the Greek Orthodox at
the Porte of working to reestablish Venetian domination and of plotting
against the Empire. Some were condemned to exile, prison, or death, and
the others were compelled to submit to the Greek hierarchy. This per-
secution had the result of throwing a considerable number of the Catho-
lics into Islam, but they did not completely repudiate their Christian
religion.12 T h e Orthodox who later joined their ranks behaved similarly.
If at the outset the Orthodox felt no pressure to embrace Islam even ex-
Arnold, p. 147, n. 2.
* Parikoz is the Greek paroikos, corresponding approximately to a serf.
8See Halil Inalcik, "The Main Problems Concerning the History of Cyprus," Cultura
Turcica (Ankara), I (1964). 48.
R. L. N. Michell, "A Muslim-Christian Sect in Cyprus," T h e Nineteenth Century
(London), LXIII (Jan.-June 1908), 753.
J. Hackett, A History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus (London, 1901). pp. 182-83,
and note 1, p. 183.
Inalcik, pp. 48-49.
, "A. Palmieri, "Chypre (Eglise de)," in E. Vacant and E. Mangenot, Dictionnaire de
The'ologie Catholique (Paris, igio), Vol. 11, col. 2468.
230 SLAVIC REVIEW

ternally, this certainly was not the case at the time of the decline of the
Empire, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when such op-
pressors as Boyacioglu Mehmet and the Blind Baki wielded power in
Cyprus.13
What beliefs and rites did the Crypto-Christians of Cyprus preserve?
They were almost the same for both those who came from Catholicism
and from Orthodoxy. They baptized and confirmed their children be-
fore the Moslem circumcision. In addition to the Moslem name, they gave
them a secret Christian name. They fasted, and communion was adminis-
tered to them. They were married according to both the Moslem and the
Christian rite; as a rule, a Moslem bridegroom was requested to become a
Crypto-Christian and undergo baptism. They visited the mosque and the
church. On the deathbed they received the consolations of the Christian
religion and then rested in a Moslem cemetery.14
The Crypto-Christians were spread all over the island, but especially in
the district of TyllEria, between Paphos and Nicosia, and in other agricul-
tural regions.15 Whether of Catholic or Orthodox origin, they were com-
monly called Linovamvakoi (a combination of two Greek words, signifying
linen and cotton)-between the Christians and the Moslems in creed,
they were like a textile made of linen and cotton. Other names, rather
contemptuous, were also used for the Linovamvakoi: Lardokophtddes
(lard cutters), obviously because they ate pork, forbidden to Sunnite Mos-
lems; Mesokertt?des, explained as deriving from the Italian mezzo quarto
(one might say "half-and-half '); mesoi or paramesoi (betwixt-and-betweens);
patsaloi (piebalds); and apostolikoi ("apostolicals"), which is explained by
the fact that in Cyprus apostolikos has two meanings, the usual "apostolic"
and also a kind of inferior carob, half wild and half cultivated.16
Certainly the Linovamvakoi did not attempt to return openly to their
ancestral religion as long as Moslem coercion was strong. This began to
weaken at the time of reforms, the so-called Tanzimat. Still, it was not
until the English annexation (1878) that the Linovamvakoi showed them-
selves disposed to declare that they were Christians. I t is said that at that
time their number did not exceed 1200-probably an underestimation.
Their headquarters in 1891 was the village of Louroujina in the district
of Nicosia, where, out of 708 persons, only 87 were Christians, the remainder
being Linovamvakoi. Owing to shame or fear, they hesitated to turn to their
old belief. But by the 1930s the number of the Linovamvakoi was very

See Inalcik, p. 50.

14Hackett, p. 535; Georg Jacob, "Die Bektaschijje in ihrem Verhaltnis zu verwandten
Erscheinungen," in Abhandlungen der Philosophisch-Philologischen Klasse der Koniglich
Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, XXIV (Munich, 1go6), 30; Magda H. Ohne-
falsch-Richter, Griechische Sitten und Gebriiuche auf Cypern (Berlin, 1g13),p. 81.
15 Michell, p. 754; Nikou E. Miliori, Hoi Kyptokhristianoi (Athens, 1962), p. 69.
le See Miliori, pp. 69-70; Simou Menardou, "Peri t6n onomat6n t6n Kypri6n," AthBna,
XVI (1904)~271; R. M. Dawkins, "The Crypto-Christians of Turkey," Bymntion, VIII
(1933)~256; Michell, D. 761.
CRYPTO-CHRISTIANITY *3I

small and their situation had become ambiguous, the majority of them
having decided to declare definitely either for Christianity or Islam.17
Because of the mixed origin of the Linovamvakoi, some having Catholic
ancestors and others Orthodox, the two churches began to assert claims.
Certain Catholic writers have held that the "adherents of the Latin
Church" were numerous and that the opposition of the Greek clergy, who
excited the fanaticism of the Orthodox population, prevented them, after
the occupation of the island by Britain, from carrying out their inten-
tions of returning to Catholicism. Only some loo persons were converted.
This small nucleus centered in Limasol and gave hopes for the return of
others to Catholicism.18 Dawkins, too, is of the opinion that some of the
Linovamvakoi were of the Roman obedience rather than that of the
Orthodox Church.19 However, Greek authors today tend to regard all the
Linovamvakoi of Cyprus as Orthodox in origin.20 It is likely that the
Catholic Linovamvakoi, having lived over the centuries in an Orthodox
environment and on an island where Catholic priests-and in general the
West-were considered enemies of the Ottoman Empire and Orthodoxy,
gradually adopted Orthodox religious practices and acquired Orthodox
religious conscience.
The last territorial conquest of the Ottomans in the Balkan area was
Crete, wrested in 1669 from the Venetian Republic after a struggle of
twenty-five years. For the Orthodox, who constituted nine-tenths of the
population of the island, Venetian domination was so oppressive that it
had excited several revolts, which were ruthlessly crushed. Indeed, the
peasants had been reduced by the Venetian nobles to such a condition of
slavery that they no longer dared complain of any injustice. Like their
coreligionists a century before on the island of Cyprus, the Cretans longed
for a change of rulers.21
This hatred of the Cretans for the oppressive administration of Venice
at the beginning-combined later with coercion on the part of the Turks,
absence of justice, exclusion from opportunities for wealth and power,
deprivation of the right to preserve honor (a Christian could not take
revenge on a Moslem)-accounted for their rapid conversion to Islam.
Thirty years after the conquest, we are told, the majority of the Moslems
in the island were renegades or the children of renegades, and by the time
of the Greek Revolution (1821) half the population consisted of Moslems.
These so-called "Turko-Cretans" spread from one end of the island to the
other.22

See Michell, p. 754; Hackett, p. 535; Dawkins, p. 255.

Is Michell, pp. 752-53; Palmieri, col. 2468.
Dawkins, pp. 255-56.
20 See Andrioti, p. 12; Miliori, p. 70.

21 Concerning conditions in Crete, see G . Foscarini's report (1516) to the Venetian

Senate and that of the Venetian consul in Cairo to the Proveditor of Crete (1622), in
Pashley, I, 30, 318-19; and Arnold, pp. 201-3.
"See Pashley, I, 104; Gustav F. Herzberg, Geschichte Griechenlands seit dem Absterben
 SLAVIC REVIEW
232

Among the converts to Islam were many Crypto-Christians. T h e emer-

gence of Crypto-Christianity posed the same problem to the Cretans as to
the Nicaeans. Soon after the conquest, probably in the late 1670% they
felt compelled to seek the opinion of the Ecumenical Patriarchate whether
it was permissible to accept Islam on the surface, remaining inwardly
Christian. T h e Patriarchate, perhaps acutely mindful of where this solution
had led before-complete Islamization in time-answered with the words
of Christ in the Gospel: "Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will
I also deny before my Father which is in heaven." Apparently the situation
of the Cretans was hopeless, for shortly afterward they turned to the
Patriarch of Jerusalem, Nektarios Pelopidas (1664-82), who was a Cretan.
H e sympathized with them and on the basis of the ecclesiastical principle
of "economy" 23 allowed them to be converted, but only on the surface and
in case of "inescapable need." T h e greater number of the concealed Chris-
tians were to be found on the northern slopes of Mount Ida. Gradually
many of their descendants became true Moslems, forgetting all things
Christian. However, some of the Crypto-Christians succeeded in preserv-
ing the Christian faith from father to son and at the first opportunity would
reveal themselves as Christians and Greek~.~4 A significant role in the
preservation of secret Christianity in Crete has been attributed to w0men.~5
T h e Crypto-Christians of Crete were not referred to by many names, as
in Cyprus. It seems that the only one used was Linovamvakoi, and this
was perhaps borrowed from Cyprus, where the phenomenon of Crypto-
Christianity was of long standing. T h e absence of a variety of contemptu-
ous terms in Crete may be explained by the fact that there, among the
apparent converts to Islam-a great part of the population-the number
of Crypto-Christians most likely was much higher than in Cyprus, and
among them there were powerful and wealthy families.
As in Cyprus, the Linovamvakoi of Crete christened their children and
gave them.names which sounded more or less like the official Moslem
names they carried: Elias/AlEs, Helene/Emine. They married off their daugh-
ters exclusively to sons of Crypto-Christians. Publicly they "prayed to the
Moslem God aloud; in the heart, however, they called on Mary and
cursed Mohammed." 26 They retained many of their old customs, and their
language was Greek only. T h e Crypto-Christian women rarely wore the

des antiken Lebens bis zur Gegenwart (Gotha, 1878), 111, 131-32; Richard Pococke, A
Description of t h e East and Some Other Countries (London, 1765) 11, Part I , 268; and
Arnold, p. 204.
* T h e principle of economy is in contrast to that of strictness and accounts for much
that seems incongruous in the acts of the Orthodox Church. According to Ware, it means,
practically speaking, "any departure from the strict rules of the Church, whether in the
direction of greater rigor or (as is more usual) of greater leniency." For a clear explana-
tion see Timothy Ware, Eustratios Argenti: A Study of the Greek Church under Turkish
R u l e (Oxford, 1964)~pp. 83-84.
%Andrioti, pp. 9-10; "KrCtC," in Megald Helldnikd Egkyklopaideia (Athens, 1931)~X V ,
182; Finlay, V, 120.
"See Miliori, pp. 64-65.
2B Herzberg, 111, 28.
CRYPTO-CHRISTIANITY 233

veil, and when their children were ill or in trouble, they asked for the help
of Mother Mary (Panagia). T h e powerful Linovamvakoi had small secret
chapels in their homes. When one died, either the Orthodox priest was
called to say the prayer before he was buried as a Moslem or was asked
at the time of the burial to pray in the Church in a low voice. Personal hos-
tility never led the Linovamvakoi to denounce one another to the Turkish
authorities.27
As in the Balkans, on Crete the first to embrace Islam after the con-
quest were the great and wealthy landowners. Many of these were Vene-
tians,28 but there were also native Cretans, notably the Kourmouledes,
who, however, retained in secret the faith in which they had been bap-
tized and transmitted it to their descendants. They were a strong and
wealthy clan at Khousi, in the fertile plain of Messara. They were cele-
brated in the whole of Crete, both for what they had done before the
Greek Revolution of 1821 and what they had suffered after it. Through
their influence they protected the Christians against violence and oppres-
sion from the neighboring Moslems in Messara. Until 1821 the Kourmou-
ledes were hidden Christians. In that year they publicly renounced Islam
and raised the banner of revolt; they were followed by other Crypto-
Christians. Of sixty-four men of the Kourmoules family, it is said, only two
survived the battles of the Greek Revolution.29
I t appears that the Kourmouledes30 were the first Cretans to abjure
Islam and declare themselves Orthodox. Even shortly before 1821 they had
expressed that intention. One of the chiefs of their clan went to Jerusalem
and there confessed himself before a bishop, who told him that there was
no salvation for those who did not openly profess their Christian faith.
Upon his return to Crete he was ready, together with thirty other mem-
bers of the clan, to go to the Ottoman governor of the island and make
the declaration. H e was prevented from doing so by the Metropolitan of
Crete, who did not agree with the Jerusalem bishop and impressed upon
the chief the danger to others that was involved.31 I t was the Greek Revolu-
tion and other revolts that broke u p the concealment. As Dawkins put it,
"In Crete increased toleration was forced upon the Turks by the repeated
insurrections of the Christians, until finally Crypto-Christianity entirely
lost its raison d'ttre and disappeared." 32
Did Crypto-Christianity exist anywhere else in Greece? There is ample
reason to believe that where there were conversions to Islam-and condi-
tions of pressure existed-there was also Crypto-Christianity. I t has been
held by Greek scholars that, in addition to those on Cyprus and Crete,
"See Andrioti, p. 11; Herzberg, 111, 132. In Andrioti's booklet there are some in-
teresting excerpts of Crypto-Christian literature dealing with the Cretans.
28 Dawkins, p. 251.

" Pashley, I, 105, 107; Herzberg, 111, 132; "KoumoulOs," in MegalZ HellZnikZ Egkyklo-
paideia, XV, 77.
"Today KourmoulZs is sometimes used in Greece to mean Crypto-Christian.
- 31 Pashley, I, 105-7.
3a Dawkins, p. 252.
 SLAVIC REVIEW
"4
there were Crypto-Christians during the eighteenth century in the Dodec-
anese (Rhodes, Kalymnos, Leros) and Mytilene. In Moglena of Macedonia
there was even the instance when a whole congregation headed by its
bishop espoused Islam outwardly. These converts prayed during the day
in the mosque and at night before the icons hidden in their homes.33 It
has not been possible to find instances of Crypto-Christianity in the Pelo-
ponnesus. Inasmuch as it changed rulers, from Ottoman to Venetian and
back to Ottoman, the Porte pursued a mild policy there. Even after the
Orlov revolution (1770) it expelled the Albanian irregulars who were pil-
laging and massacring Greeks in the countryside.
3
After their landing in 1352 at Tzympe, near Gallipoli, the Ottomans be-
gan to expand in the Balkans. By 1396 the whole of Bulgaria, after unsuc-
cessful resistance, fell under Ottoman domination. It was the policy of the
sultans, based on Moslem sacred law (sheriat), that when a population
surrendered without war, no religious coercion was to be exercised; but
when, as in the case of Bulgaria, a territory was conquered by force of
arms, pressure could be employed to Islamize the inhabitants. Following the
conquest of Bulgaria, the noblemen-those who remained, for the
majority either were killed or fled to exile-were the first to embrace
Islam, in order to retain their property and position. Some of the people
followed the nobility, while others became Moslem under duress. Con-
version took place among the religious sects of the Bogomils and Pauli-
cians, who, long regarded as heretical by church and state and persecuted,
had become alienated from the majority of the Bulgarians and were more
susceptible to the religion of the conqueror. The Pomaks-as the Islamized
Bogomils are generally called3-around Lovech, in the Rhodope Moun-
tains, and in Macedonia, who retained the Bulgarian language, espoused
Islam, some immediately after the conquest, others later.35
The lack of direct information about Crypto-Christianity in Bulgaria
should not be construed as evidence that it did not exist. Among the con-
verted Bulgarians we find the preconditions of its occurrence, It is not to
be expected that all the Bogomils were convinced converts, though for
them the simplicity of Islam, with the absence of icons in the mosques,
must have had a certain appeal. Still less would one expect the Orthodox
Christians, who had been members of the Bulgarian Church, to have
been as converts true followers of Mohammed. If they could not turn to
Crypto-Christianity it was perhaps because conditions were hard. They
were surrounded by true Moslem believers who had settled in their ter-
ritory, particularly the southeastern part. Bulgaria-if we exclude Mace-
donia-was the only Slavic land where true Moslems from Asia Minor had
settled in groups.
Andrioti, p. lo.
84Some writers use the term Pomak for all Islamized Bulgarians.
assee Constantin JireEek, Geschichte der Bulgaren (Prague, 1876), pp. 356, 457; H.
Wilhelmy, Hochbulgarien, I (Kiel, 1935)~
" ~14.
CRYPTO-CHRISTIANITY 235

Nevertheless, even in Bulgaria we have indications of Crypto-Christian-

ity. At the time of Selim I, the sultan noted for his anti-Christian fanat-
icism, when churches were razed in Bulgaria and violence was used to
force the people to embrace Islam,36 a tax record book (1515-20) of the
Nevrokop district, in southwestern Bulgaria, listed a great number of Mos-
lems whose fathers bore Christian names.37 One is tempted to regard these
mass conversions of sons as merely outward, due to expediency. We lack
evidence, however, that in the family circle these converts preserved their
Christian name.

4
The question of Crypto-Christianity among the Albanians is more in-
volved. The Ottomans did not occupy Albania all at once, after a war, as
they did Cyprus, Crete, and Bulgaria. They first came to Albania in 1385 on
the invitation of an Albanian feudal lord of the central region who dis-
trusted Venice and feared the domination of a ruling house in the north.
The Ottomans did not choose in the beginning to employ force for the
propagation of Islam. A record book of timars (Ottoman military fiefs) in
southern and central Albania for the years 1431-32 shows that only 30
percent were held by Turks from Asia Minor. The rest were held by
Albanian lords. It was not obligatory for a Christian Albanian lord to
become a Moslem in order to preserve his feudal possessions as timars, al-
though no doubt converts to Islam were favored by the Ottoman adminis-
tration. For two generations Christian Albanian lords who kept their
Christian faith figured as timar-holders.38
However, in accordance with Ottoman practice following subjugation by
violence, pressure for apostasy was exerted in Albania after Skenderbeg's
death (1468), for during his time the wars had borne the stamp of the
Cross against the Crescent and had been long and bloody. At other times
also there was persecution, but, on the whole, it seems that among the
Albanians fear of persecution was not the principal cause of Crypto-
Christianity; rather it was the desire to avoid payment of taxes and to ob-
tain worldly advantages, such as positions in the government of the Ot-
toman Empire.
Crypto-Christianity was manifested both in the Catholic north (north of
the Shkumbi River) and in the Orthodox south. The first concrete evi-
dence of Crypto-Christianity it has been possible to find among the Catho-
lic Albanians dates from 1610, but there is no doubt that it existed long
before. In that year Marin Bizzi, the Catholic Archbishop of Antivari
(Bar), who had jurisdiction over Catholic Albania, took a trip in Albania
98 P. A. Marinov, Smolen i okoliiata v svoeto blizko i dalechno minalo (Smolen, 1937-

39), 1, 113.
*See B. Cvetkova, "0 religiozno-natsional'noi diskriminatsii v Bolgarii vo vremia
turetskogo vladychestva,"Souetskoe uostokouedenie, No. 2, 1957, pp. 86-87.
a Halil Inalcik, "Timariotes chrktiens en Albanie au XVe siecle, d'aprh un registre de
timars ottoman," Mitteilungen des dsterreichischen Staatsarchius, IV (igp), 120, 126,
236 SLAVIC REVIEW

and stopped at a village called Kalevaq (Calevacci), not far from Durres
(Durazzo). He reported that the village was composed of sixteen houses,
ten of which were Moslem but nevertheless were contributing to the main-
tenance of the priest because almost all the men had Christian wives.
There he was approached by a Moslem who told him that, although he
professed Islam, in his heart he held the Christian faith, in which he
wanted to live and die. Bizzi's answer was that it was not sufficient to have
Christianity in one's heart, that the martyr saints preferred to lose their
lives rather than profess a religion other than Christianity. He then advised
the Moslem that, if he could not renounce Islam in Albania, because he
feared the consequences, he should go elsewhere. The Archbishop added in
his report that of those who outwardly professed Islam but retained Chris-
tianity in their hearts there were many in the Ottoman territories, above all
in Albania, where whole villages had apostatized in order not to pay
tribute.3"
Obviously, in the seventeenth century, when the Catholic population be-
gan to diminish rapidly because of mass conversions to Islam, Crypto-
Christianity expanded among the Albanians of the North. I n 1637 the
Catholic missionaries were dissatisfied with existing conditions in southern
Dalmatia and northern Albania. The mountaineers were Catholics in name
only, leading a "licentious life," and many of their womenfolk were mar-
ried to Moslem~.~O In general, the majority of the converts to Islam were
men. Women married to Moslems often retained their Christian religion
-as in Crete-and were a factor in creating good feeling between the mem-
bers of the two faiths.41
Political reasons contributed to the increase of conversions to Islam
and of Crypto-Christianity. The Ottoman Empire saw Catholicism as an
adversary with which it could not come to terms and which could or-
ganize an attack and incite the warlike Albanians to revolt. As early as
the time of the battle of Lepanto (1571) the northern Albanians were
ready to assist Veni~e.~Z But it was not until the outbreak of the Turkish-
Venetian war in Crete (1645-69) that they participated in support of Ven-
ice. In 1645 a plot was prepared by the Archbishop of Antivari to deliver
Shkoder to Venice. The plan was discovered by the Ottomans and
thwarted. It was the cause of a persecution of the Catholics. Many (some
three thousand) fled to southern Dalmatia, which was under Venetian
rule. The conversions to Islam again r0se.~3Some in northern Albania and
Old Serbia even joined the Orthodox Church, the adherents of which re-
""IzveHtaj barskoga nadpiskupa Marina Bizzia o svojem putovanju god. 1610 PO
Arbanskoj i Staroj Srbiji," Starine, Jugoslavenska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti, XX
(1888), 105-6.
40 Jovan RadoniC, Rimska Kurija i juZnoslovenske zemlje od X V I do X I X veka (Bel-

grade, 1950)~pp. 102-3 (Srpska Akademija Nauka, "Posebna Izdanja," Vol. CLV).
"Arnold, pp. 180-82.
4a Johann W. Zinkeisen, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches i n Europa (Gotha, 1855).

111, 377.
&See Hyacinthe Hecquard, Histoire et description de la Haute Albanie ou Ghkgarie
(Paris, 1858), pp. 47275.
CRYPTO-CHRISTIANITY 237
mained faithful to the Ottoman Empire. I n 1649 another insurrection took
place in favor of the Venetians. I t was crushed by the Ottoman armies, and
another wave of apostasy ensued among the Catholics.44 T h e persecution
seems to have been ruthless, and the missionaries were forced to leave Al-
bania.46
Gregory Mazareku (Gregorius Massarechi), a member of the Catholic
mission in Prizren and its surroundings, reported i n 165-51 that the vil-
lage of Suhoreka (some forty miles from Prizren), which had 160 Chris-
tian houses, had become Moslem; only thirty-six or thirty-seven women had
remained Christian. I n the various villages of the district some of the
converts-and they were many-said that "in our hearts we are Christians;
we have only changed our names [adopted Moslem names] i n order not to
pay taxes imposed by the Turks." They called for priests to come to them
for confession and to administer communion in secret. T h e Islamized Catho-
lics married Christian and not Moslem girls, saying that they did not want
the name Christian to vanish from their homes.46
Another revolt which furthered Crypto-Christianity in the north oc-
curred i n 1689, when the Austrian armies entered deep into the Balkans.
The Albanians took u p arms and went to the assistance of the Venetian
forces-allies of Austria-which, under the Proveditor General, Daniele
Delfino, successfully attacked the Ottoman armie~.~7 Another conversion
ensued after the retreat of the Austrian and Venetian armies. I n 1690
the Pasha of PeC deported inhabitants of northern Albania, who were mostly
Catholics, to the plain of Serbia (in planiticm Serviae), and the villagers
who were left were compelled to espouse I ~ l a m . ~ s
The administration of sacraments to the Crypto-Catholics gave rise to
an acute controversy in the Church. Should the Catholic Church make
such a concession? Successive archbishops of Skopje, yielding to necessity,
had maintained that the priests should be permitted to administer the
sacraments to the secret Christians and give them all the assistance they
needed.49 In order to put an end to the controversy a Provincial Church
Council met in 1703 in Lesh (Alessio) i n northern Albania.
T h e Council, which was presided over by Vincent ZmajeviC (Vincentius
Zmajevich), at that time Archbishop of Antivari and Apostolic Visitor i n
Albania, adopted certain resolutions concerning apostasy and the closely
connected matter, Crypto-Christianity. They are contained in ZmajeviC's
report of July lo, 1703. T h e Council ordered that in the future the rene-
gades who outwardly behaved as "Turks" (Moslems), while in private hold-
ing fast to the faith of their ancestors, should abjure Islam and publicly
profess Christianity. T h e clergy were ordered to bar from the sacraments
Arnold, pp. 188-89.
46 Fulvio Cardignano, L'Albania attraverso l'opera e gli scritti d i u n grande missionario
italiano, il P. Domenico Pasi, S.I. (1847-1914) (Rome, 1933-34). I, 89.
40 Starine, X X V (1892), 173-75.,

47Zinkeisen, V, 185-86; Milan Sufflay, Srbi i Arbanasi (Belgrade, 1gz5), pp. 67-68.
a Cordignano, I, go; Arnold, p. 196.
Hecquard, p. 483.
238 SLAVIC REVIEW

also those Christians who in public ate meat on fast days and, by bearing
Moslem names, passed for "Turks," while among themselves, in concealment,
they professed Christianity.50
Four decades later (1743), the Apostolic Visitor NikoliC reported to Pope
Benedict XIV on the situation of the Catholics of Serbia. In the documents
of the Vatican and of the Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith
what is referred to as the "church of Serbia" is basically the diocese of
Prizren or Skopje. Ecclesiastically this part of Serbia was in various ways
linked to Albania proper, especially since the population was mostly Al-
banian and had been under the jurisdiction of Antivari.51 NikoliC stated in
his report that there were two kinds of Catholics: those who openly pro-
fessed Catholicism and bore all the hardships and taxes, and the secret
Catholics. The latter, unwilling or unable to pay the taxes, appeared as
Moslems, but at home they professed the Christian faith, hiding it even
from their closest relatives. There were thousands of such Catholics in
Serbia and Albania. Although provincial synods and the Congregation of
the Propagation of the Faith were agreed that such secret Catholics could
not partake of the sacraments, NikoliC continued in his report, the bish-
ops and missionaries still allowed them. Afraid that with time the unclear
situation would turn them "heart and soul" to Islam, he requested the
Pope to issue an order "chiaro e chiarissimo" that such Christians must
not be administered the sacraments. On February 2, 1744, the Pope issued
a decree to this effect, addressed to the clergy and the people of Serbia.s2
But even the decree of Pope Benedict XIV did not bring about the
desired effect. It allowed Catholic priests to baptize the children of Crypto-
Christians only when they were about to die, while Orthodox priests
christened them at any time. The Crypto-Christians-who were numerous
around PeC, Djakovica, and Prizren-barred from the sacraments, became
so furious that they reacted like fiery Moslems and bitter opponents of the
Catholics, whom they persecuted more than did the Moslems themselves.53
One cannot help being struck by the difference in attitude of the two
churches toward Crypto-Christianity. The Catholic Church was rigid,
whereas the Orthodox Church was on the whole more accommodating. One
is reminded of other instances. When the Slavs embraced Christianity but
heathenism had not yet died among them-there existed a sort of dvoe-
verie-Rome never ceased to fight the latter violently and succeeded in
suppressing a number of the ancient rites. Byzantium, on the contrary, was
=See Georg Stadtmiiller, "Das albanische Nationalkonzil vom Jahre 1703," in Orientalia
Christiana Periodica, XXII (1956)~68-69, 73-74; Hecquard, p. 483; Johann C. von Hahn,
Albanesische Studien (Vienna, 1853) I, 37, n. 79.
mSee Fulvio Cordignano, Geografia ecclesiastics dell'Albania dagli ultimi decenni del
secolo Xl'I alla met& del secolo XVII (Rome, 1943), p. 248 ("Orientalia Christiana,"
1934). On the influence and jurisdiction of the Archbishopric of Antivari, see also
Starine, XX (1888), 51, and M. &may, "Die Kirchenzustande im vortiirkischen Albanien:
Die orthodoxe Durchbmchszone im Katholischen Damme," in L. Thalldczy, ed., Illyrisch-
albanische Forschungen (Munich and Leipzig, 1916), I, 218.
52RadoniC,pp. 570-71.
6s See ibid., pp. 642,646-47,655.
CRYPTO-CHRISTIANITY 239
usually more tolerant, and often endeavored to adapt to a certain extent
to the-paganism of the Slavs, with the result that 0r;hodoxy has preserved
more traces of it.54
The Albanians called the Crypto-Christians of the north Earamana,
which means motley. The name lavamani, which is encountered in some
serious writings, is wrong.55 In Serbocroatian one sometimes meets Sareni,
which is an exact translation of the Albanian laramana.50 It is similar to
the name in use in Cyprus, patsaloi (piebalds).
The Crypto-Catholics continued their hidden life until the period of re-
form, the Tanzimat, when some of them declared publicly that they were
Christians. These were the secret Catholics of four villages (BinCa, Stubia,
Vernakola, and Karadag) in Srpska Crna Gora, not far from and north
of Skopje. In 1846 the news had spread in these parts that the Sultan had
proclaimed the freedom of cults. The inhabitants of the four villages de-
cided not to remain secret any longer. Upon hearing of their declaration,
the Moslems of the environs immediately informed the governor of the
district, who resided in the town of Gilan. he governor, a fanatic Moslem,
had the chiefs of the families involved brought before him and asked
them why they had abandoned the prophet Mohammed. They responded
that they had not really abandoned him, for they had never been his fol-
lowers. They were tortured and deported to ~ d h a l i a~ ,marshy place in
Anatolia. The great powers then intervened, particularly Great Britain,
which obtained a firman enabling those who survived to return in 1849 to
their homes, free to practice their Catholic religion; subsequently they
remained undisturbed.57
The keen interest of England, a non-Catholic power, in the release of
the internees of Srpska Crna Gora is explained by the fact that it was
through pressure from Stratford Canning, Great Britain's ambassador
to the Porte, that an imperial declaration was made in 1844 forbidding the
death penalty for apostasy from Islam in the case of earlier converts from
Christianity who wished to revert to their original religion.58
However, the example of the inhabitants of Srpska Crna Gora was not
See Lubor Niederle, Manuel de Z'antiquitd slave (Paris, 1926), 11, 168.
5sStadtmiiller, giving the translation of lavamani as "Handwascher," explains it as an
"allusion to the prescribed ritual of the Moslems to wash the hands before prayers"; see
his "Die Islamisierung bei den Albanern," Jahrbiicher fur Geschichte Osteuropas, I11
(1955). 421 and n. go. One wonders what made the German scholar choose, instead of the
laramana of Cordignano (upon whose works he has drawn extensively in his study),
Hecquard's lawamani, because only in the latter's work has this author come across this
term (Hecquard, pp. 481-82). First, the adjective laraman/laramana is a good Albanian
word used both in the north and in the south. Second, it would be odd for Albanians to
employ for their own people and in their own country an Italian word such as lawamani.
68As to the etymology of the word laraman, Gustav Meyer, Etymologisches Worterbuch
der albanesischen Sprache (Strasbourg, 1891), p. 238, relates it to a number of words which
derive from the Albanian root lar. They all mean "motley."
57 There are several versions of this incident, but the most complete and accurate seem
to be those of Georg Rosen, Geschichte der Tiirkei, Part 2 (Leipzig, 1867), pp. 93-98, and
Cordignano, 11, 136-42.
"See Roderic H. Davison, Reform i n the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876 (Princeton, 1963),
P. 45.
240 SLAVIC REVIEW

followed by others. In a memorandum which a Jesuit missionary, P. Pasi,

sent on May 25, 1893, from Shkoder to his superior in Rome, he stated: "In
the Archdiocese of Skopje there are whole villages of secret Christians
who dare not declare themselves for fear of their compatriot 'Turks,'
and although Christians internally, externally they practice the Moslem
religion." As additional reasons for this situation at that late date he men-
tioned the scarcity of clergymen, the iniquity of the past when the Turk
oppressed the Catholic, and fear in many places of the Moslems who lived
near or mixed with the Catholics and did not permit them to declare them-
selves Christians or perform their religious 0bservances.6~ I n 191 1 there
were still Albanian Crypto-Christians around Pet and in the plain of KO-
sov0.60
In the Orthodox south of Albania there were Crypto-Christians but not
in great numbers nor concentrated as in the Catholic north. A well-known
traveler of the Balkan peninsula, Ami BouC, wrote in the first half of the
nineteenth century that in the region south of Berat, in Laberi, there were
Moslems who in secret were Orthodox Christians.61 Only in the region of
Shpat, northeast of Berat and near Elbasan, were there whole villages of
Crypto-Orthodox. Shpat consisted of forty-three villages, inhabited by a
warlike population and inaccessible to its neighbors.62
It is not known exactly at what time the Orthodox Shpataraks became
Crypto-Christians. Hahn maintains that "from time immemorial," in or-
der to avoid the capitation tax (which was paid only by Christians) and
other pressures, they adopted Moslem names and were regarded by the
Ottoman authorities as Moslems.63 Ippen holds that the administrative
center of Elbasan and the coercion exerted by the Moslems in earlier
times (the period of the decline of the Ottoman Empire) brought about the
conversion of numerous Christians who came to carry Moslem names.64
Is there a way of giving an approximate date of the external conversion of
the Shpataraks? If we judge by the ruins of churches and frescoes of the
seventeenth century which have been preserved,66 Shpat must have been
a rather lively Christian community at that time. Islamic pressure on the
Orthodox in the south came with the Russo-Turkish wars of the eight-
eenth century. Whereas in previous centuries Turkey had been suspicious
of the Catholics of the north as potential allies of the West, so now it be-
gan to harbor suspicion of Orthodox connivance with Russia. When one
takes into account also that the conversions in that century were mostly
around Berat, where Moslem Albanians bordered on Christians and
60 Cordignano, 11, 134.
BoVinqencPrennushi, KBng? popullore gegenishte (Sarajevo, 191I), p. lo n.
a BouC, La Turquie d'Europe (Paris, 1840)~111,407-8.
ea See von Hahn, I, 18; Theodor Ippen, "Die Landschaft Schpat im mittleren Albanien,"
Mitteilungen der Kais. Konigl. Geographischen Gesellschaft in Wien, LIX (1916)~459. Sp.
Aravantinou in his Khronographia tds Epeirou (Athens, 1957)~11, 160, gives twenty vil-
lages, which seems to be wrong.
"Von Hahn, I, 18.
* Ippen, p. 456.

%See Selim Islami and Kristo Frasheri, Historia e Shqiperise (Tirana, 1959)~I, 382-83.

CRYPTO-CHRISTIANITY 24'

where Kosmas Aitdlos, the most active Orthodox preacher, was martyred in
177966 in an outburst of Moslem fanaticism, one is inclined to place the
conversion to Islam of the Shpataraks in the latter half of the eighteenth
century.
T h e neighboring Orthodox churches privately knew the Shpataraks to be
Crypto-Christians. They carried two names, the Moslem outside and the
~ h r i s t i a nat home. O n the basis of a manuscript of 1833 treating the geog-
raphy of Albania and Epirus,6i in 1832 the Ottoman government, consider-
ing them Moslems, sought to call them to arms. They decided then to cast
off the cover of Islam, declare themselves Christians, and pay the neces-
sary taxes. T h e writer of the manuscript states that at other times such a
confession would have been impossible, but now a good administration in
the south tolerated such m a t t e r ~ . ~Instances
s of flexibility in the administra-
tion of the Ottoman empire are not rare. But it is hard to explain the
"good administrationJ' at this time. Was it because the Ottoman govern-
ment, tired of the 1821 Greek Revolution, wanted to prevent Albanian re-
volts, or was it because it was on the road to the reforms of 1839? We hear
again about the Shpataraks in 1846, when the law of conscription was ap-
plied in Albania. T h e Turkish authorities of Elbasan, deaf to the former
confession of the Shpataraks, asked them to provide their quota of recruits.
They declared again that they were not Moslems, and their chief elder
was arrested in 1853 and interned in Diber.69 T h e question was reopened in
1897, when the governor of Elbasan, Jonus Effendi, pressed the Shpata-
raks either to serve as soldiers in the Ottoman army, if they were Moslems,
or pay taxes, if they still held that they were Christians. His intention was
to bblige them to declare themselves Moslems.iO T h e Shpataraks thought
that it would be better for them if they became Uniates (Greek Catholics),
for then they might enjoy the protection of Austria-Hungary, whose Kul-
tusprotektorat in Albania had been recognized by Istanbul.
Thus toward the end of the last century the question of the Crypto-
Christianity of the Shpataraks took another turn-it became closely con-
nected with the Uniates.71 T h e first appeal of the Shpataraks to join the
%@See Stavro Skendi, "Religion in Albania during the Ottoman Rule," Sudost-For-
schungen, X V (1956), 321-22.
O7 T h e manuscript has been published as K. Thesprotou and A. Psalida, Geographia

Alvanias kai HZpeirou (Janina, 1964).

s8 Zbid., p. 7.
09See von Hahn, I, 18; Aravantinou, 11, 160; Kosta I. Biri, Arnanites, hoi Ddrieis tou
neoterou Helldnismou (Athens, 1960)~p. 345.
"Nje meshe Shqip ne Berat me 1897," Diturija (Tirana), I1 (Dec. I, 1926), 48.
Because the question of the Shpataraks acquired international significance, one comes
across frequent references to their Crypto-Christianity. These, however, contain certain
errors which tend to be repeated; their correction would be useful. I n the Megald Hel-
Ednikd Egkyklopaideia the article o n Crypto-Christians (XV, 296) was written by no less
a person than the Archbishop of Athens, Chrysostom. Yet he has confused the facts. H e
wrote first about the "SpathiGtas" in the province of Durres (Durazzo) and then about
the "Spataraks" around Elbasan. But the "SpathiGtai" and the Shpataraks are one and
the same, the first name for them being Greek and the second Albanian. Greek scholars,
in referring to the Shpataraks, usually draw upon Konst. Iih. Skenderi's book, Historia
tds arkhaias kai sygkhronou Moskhopoleds (Athens, 1928), pp. 80-85. Documents in the
2 42 SLAVIC REVIEW

Uniate Church was made to Austria-Hungary in 1897. The consular office

of Austria-Hungary in Durres did not give clear and decisive assurance
that this could be done. The next year they renewed their appeal, and the
Catholic clergy in Albania took an interest and came to their aid.T2 Russia,
on the other hand, did not want to lose the Shpataraks for Orthodoxy
and immediately dispatched its consul in Monastir, Rostovskii, to Shpat.
He went "from village to village," and after his departure Orthodox
priests were sent there.73 At the same time, Russia instructed its consul
in Shkoder, Shcherbin, to visit Durres, Kavaje, and Tirana in order to in-
vestigate the situation of the Orthodox, for it was concerned about its
influence on them.74
The conversion movement of Shpat to the Uniate Church spread to
nearby Elbasan. The Greek archbishop in Durres, Prokopios, who had
jurisdiction over Elbasan, attempted through the Turkish authorities to
prevent the Orthodox from embracing the Uniate rite. The question soon
involved not only the Porte and the Constantinople Patriarchate but also
the Vatican, Austria-Hungary, and Russia.75
With the creation of an independent Albanian state in 1912 the problem
of the Shpataraks was solved: they were free to declare themselves for any
religion they liked, and their choice lay with the Orthodox Church.

There is more evidence of Crypto-Christianity among the Serbs than among

Bulgarians. Among the Serbs it may date from the battle of Marica (1371)
or the defeat of Kosovo (1389), after which parts of the Serbian lands came
under direct Ottoman rule (other parts were only tributary) and con-
versions to Islam took place. The first evidence of Crypto-Christianity,
however, is a confession made in 1568 by a Serbian deli (brave warrior) to
the French ambassador at the court of the Sultan. The deli told him at
Adrianople, where they met, that "he was of the Serbian nation, and, as
to his religion, he was living with the Turks and so dissimulated; but
by birth and heart he was a Christian." 76

Vienna H a w - Hof- und Staatsarchiv demonstrate how unreliable that work is; one should
read it with caution.
7aB0rnemisza to Goluchowski, Durazzo, Jan. 25, 1904, NO. 2, Haus- Hof- und
Staatsarchiv, Politisches Archiv, XIV, 5, Albanien I11 (henceforth referred to as HHSA);
Ledoux to France's Ambassador in Turkey, Monastir, Feb. 4, 1898, No. 6, Archives d u
Minkt2re des Affaires Etrangdres, Turquie, Politique IntCrieure, Albanie, 1898-99, Vol.
I1 (henceforth referred to as AMAE).
78Seeletter (Shpat, Oct. 1899) published in Albania (Brussels), IV (1900) 66-68; Kral to
Goluchowski, Monastir, May 19, 1900, No. 29, HHSA.
?'Ledoux to Hanotaux, Monastir, March 2, 1898, No. lo, and Degrand to Delcasst,
Scutari, July 12, 1898, No. 117, AMAE, Vol. 11.
76 See Stavro Skendi, T h e Albanian National Awakening, 1878-1912 (Princeton, 1967),

PP. 29(3-303.
?%InNicholas de Nikolay, Quatre firemiers livres de navigations et pdrt!grinages, as
quoted in Mary E. Durham, Some Tribal Origins, Laws and Customs of the Balkans
(London, 1928), pp. 138-39.
CRYPTO-CHRISTIANITY '43

On the other hand, those secret Christians mentioned as "Latini" in the

reports of the Catholic clergymen could not all have been Albanians--in
the Serbian lands there was a mixed Slavic and Albanian population.
Among them there must have been also Catholic Slavs, who had come to
the lands of Old Serbia from Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Hercegovina. There
were tribes in inner Montenegro-some of them mixed with Albanians-
as well as in the region of the rivers Zeta and Morata, whose language was
"la lingua dalmata," which in this instance meant Serbian.77 I t is believed
that in the seventeenth century they went over from Catholicism to Ortho-
doxy,78 perhaps for protection, as pressure was not exerted on the Orthodox
there at that time.
One may ask why in the Catholic documents which have come to light
there is no mention of Slavic Crypto-Orthodoxy. One reason seems to be
that until the seventeenth century the Orthodox Christians did not feel
pressure for conversion, especially in lands where they were mixed with
Catholics. T h e Serbian Church, which had been reestablished in 1557, be-
gan to take an active part in the anti-Turkish policy of the European powers
in 1684, when upon the appeal of the Papacy the Holy League was formed.79
Another reason is that the Catholic clergymen who reported on the situa-
tion were interested particularly in Catholicism. A third reason, which
seems to be the most important, is that when pressure could be brought
to bear on the Orthodox Serbs, because they had sided with Austria and
Venice in the war against Turkey, they migrated e n masse and settled in
southern Hungary (the velika seoba of 1690). They were followed by another
substantial migration almost half a century later.
Yet instances of Crypto-Christianity among the Orthodox Serbs are not
entirely lacking. Referring to the Islamization of the region of Prizren,
mostly in the seventeenth century, Selishchev maintained that it was ex-
ternal only ("the population nourished the hope of returning to Christi-
anity"), adding that to judge by the names of close relatives, the Islamized
persons were Slavs.80 Hidden Christians were also found in the eighteenth
century in the Slavic and Orthodox region of MrkoviCi, or Mrkojevidi, be-
tween Dulcigno (Ulcinj) and AntivarL81 I t should be remembered also
that the intolerant Sunnite spirit, which accompanied the decline of the
Ottoman Empire, intensified the pressure on the Orthodox Christians of
the Balkan peninsula. T h e Serbian Patriarch Brkid, who has left us a de-
scription of the Ottoman lands and the Christians living i n them in 1771,
speaks of Reka, near Ohrid, as being inhabited by Serbs and Bulgarians,
77 See "Izve5taj barskoga nadpiskupa Marina Bizzia," Starine, XX (1888), 120, 136.
K. S. Draganovich, "Masseniibertritte von Katholiken zur Orthodoxie," Orientalia
Christiana Periodica, I11 (1937). 1g&9g.
7gLaszlo Hadrovics, Le peuple serbe et son dglise sous la domination turque (Paris,
1947)9 p. 136.
So A. M. Selishchev, Polog i ego bolgarskoe naselenie (Sofia, 1g2g),pp. 406-7.

81A. JoviEeviC, "Crnogorsko Primorje i Krajina," in Naselja i Poreklo StanoviStva (Bel-

-.\
g-rade, lgzz), pp. 33-36 ("Srpski Etnografski Sbornik," Srpska Kraljevska Akademija, Vol.
244 SLAVIC REVIEW

some of whom had been totally Islamized while "others held to their [Ortho-
dox] faith in secret." 82
In Bosnia-where Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Bogomilism were pro-
fessed-Crypto-Christianity must also have existed, for, as in Albania,
many were converted to Islam. Whether the conversion of the inhabitants
occurred e n masse after the conquest or was a gradual process is still de-
batable.83 I t has been held that a large section of the Bogomils, at least in
the early period of the conquest, converted to Islam with the intention of
returning to their religion when a favorable opportunity presented itself,
the implication being that they preserved their true faith in secret.84T . W.
Arnold contested this opinion as a pure conjecture without direct evi-
dence to support it.85 But it appears to be more than a conjecture. In the
Ottoman archives of the second half of the fifteenth century and in the
sixteenth one can find among the Kristians, as the true Bogomils were called
by the Ottomans, Moslems whose fathers or brothers bore Christian names,
a fact suggesting outward conversion.80 Further, a report of 1626 addressed
to the Emperor of Austria by Athanasio Georgiceo, a high-ranking Cath-
olic visitor, states, with reference to the population of Bosnia, that almost
all of the Moslems who tilled the fields, knowing full well that their an-
cestors were Christian, would themselves become Christians but for fear of
punishment.87

There seems to be a relationship between Crypto-Christianity and Bektash-

ism grafted on Balkan Christian populations. Bektashism is a pantheistic
Ilfoslem order-one may even call it a sect-considered to be an offshoot
of the Shia branch of Islam. It has many points of contact with Christianity,
for instance, the cult of Christian saints.ss When one looks at the geographic
distribution of the Bektashis and their establishments in the Balkans, which
have been so well described by F. I V . Hasluck,8%ne cannot help being
struck by the fact that the Bektashis were in the territories where Crypto-
Christianity prospered: Albania (the southern part and the regions of Berat

Ed''Opis turskih oblasti i u njima naroda, a narozito naroda srpskoga, sastavljen god.
1771 srpskim patriarhom Vasiljem BrkiCem," Spomenik, Srpska Kraljevska Akademija, X
('891)3 53.
=See Branislav Djurdjev, "Bosna," Encyclopedia of Islam (London and Leiden, igGo),
I, 1264.
84 J. de Asbbth, A n Oficial T o u r through Bosnia and Herzegovina (London, 1890), pp.

9698.
S5 Arnold, p. 199.

"See M. Tayyib Okic, "Les Kristians (Bogomiles Parfaits) de Bosnie d'aprb les docu-
nlents turcs inCdits," Siidost-Forschungen, XIX (igGo), 119 and 131,
S'''Relatione data all'Imperatore dal Sign. Athanasio Georgiceo del Viagio fatto in
Bosnia I'anno 1626," Starine, XVII (1885), 128.
=For other points in common see Jacob, pp. 1-53; F. W. Hasluck, Christianity and
Islam under the Sultans (Oxford, igzg), 11, 568; John K. Birge, T h e Bektashi Order of
Deruishes (Hartford, ig37), pp. 22, 30-33.
89See his "Geographical Distribution of the Bektashi," T h e Annual of the British
School of Athens, XXI (1914-i6), 84-124.
CRYPTO-CHRISTIANITY 245

and Elbasan), Kosovo and Metohija (Djakovica, Prizren, PeC, Tetovo) in

Yugoslavia, and Crete. Could joining Bektashism have represented for the
Christians a more acceptable form of conversion and a more advantageous
choice than Crypto-Christianity? Although held to be heretical by the Or-
thodox Sunnites, the Bektashis were not exposed to danger as were the
Crypto-Christians. Besides, there was a great solidarity among them, which
rendered them a force to be reckoned with, particularly as their religion,
when it spread in the Balkans, had already entered the ranks of the Janis-
saries. Converted to Bektashism, the Christians could feel that they had not
forsaken completely the faith of their ancestors while enjoying protection
as Moslems.
T h e island of Cyprus is not included in the geographic distribution of
Bektashism by Hasluck. However, it is significant that the village Tra-
khona, north of Nicosia, was called I<izilbag by the Turks. T h e Kizilbash in
Asia Minor were a religious sect that had many Christian as well as Mos-
lem practices.g0 When Russia annexed Kars, two of their villages fell
within the annexed territory. T h e Kizilbash inhabitants asked the Russian
authorities to register them as yarim Kristian (half-Christians); but such
a designation was not judged satisfactory by the Russians.91 If the Turks
named the Cyprian village Kizilba~,it seems likely that they saw a resem-
blance between its inhabitants and the Kizilbash of Anatolia, in whom
scholars have found similarities to such religious sects as the Bekta~his.~'

7
Two questions arise now with relation to Crypto-Christianity. We touched
upon one at the very outset, when we mentioned the confused state in
which Crypto-Christianity was often encountered. There is a possible con-
fusion between Crypto-Christianity and an imperfect Moslem conversion
in which the converts retain at least traces of their previous religion. Such
people, holds R. M. Dawkins, have a mixed religion, as there is no evidence
that they did not believe equally in both elements. In this category he places
the Vallakhades, a group of Greeks near Grevena, in Greek Macedonia, who,
although converted to Islam, preserved their Greek language and customs
and did not practice concealment.93 Despite the absence of concealment, it
might be said that in the case of the Vallakhades also there was Crypto-
Christianity, although in a superficial form, for concealment is of the essence
of Crypto-Christianity. Yet concealment was not always of equal impor-
tance, since it depended very much upon conditions. As Dawkins himself

80 Jacob, p. 30. M. F. Grenard, in his study "Une secte religieuse d'Asie Mineure les

Kyzyl-Bichs," Journal Asiatique, Tenth Series, 111 (1g04), 5ii-zr, expresses the opinion
that the Kizilbash did not belong to the Islamic family but were "a corrupt Christian sect"
( P P 513-14).
Grenard, p. 521.
ea See Jacob, p. 30.
Q3Dawkins, p. 228. Concerning the Vallakhades, see Margaret Hardie (Mrs. F. W.
Hasluck), "Christian Survivals among Certain Moslem Subjects of Greece," Contemporary
Review (London), CXXV (Jan.-June igrq), 225-32.
246 SLAVIC REVIEW

maintains, whenever and wherever Turkish rule weakened, the Crypto-

Christians were less careful in their outward conformity to Islam.94 How-
ever, whether the Vallakhades are an instance of a mixed religion or merely
of Islam converts with certain Christian survivals remains uncertain.
Another type of convert went to the mosque on Friday and to the church
on Sunday; for others Christianity was imperfect just as Islam was imperfect.
As it is hard to establish, in such cases, what parts of their Christian be-
liefs were practiced i n secret, one is inclined to stress in a convert what he
had inherited and possessed-even i n a reduced form-rather than what he
had acquired under pressure or for worldly advantages. In most cases it
would perhaps be better to speak of degrees of Crypto-Christianity rather
than of imperfect Moslem conversion or of mixed religion. I n a mixed
religion one would expect a corresponding theological doctrine, while if
Crypto-Christianity had a theological doctrine at all, it would be Christian.
T h e other question relating to Crypto-Christianity is the possible con-
fusion between true religious belief and mere superstition. Thus, for in-
stance, the Moslems' belief that if their children were baptized by a
Christian priest, they were protected from illnesses, or the belief, as in
Montenegro, that a child given a Moslem name-straJno ime (apotropeic
name)-would be protected from evi1,05 should not be interpreted either as
imperfect conversion or Crypto-Christianity.
As has been pointed out, the phenomenon of Crypto-Christianity under
the Ottomans spread into many parts of the Balkan area, among the Ortho-
dox and the Catholics. No separate outcropping can be studied, therefore,
in isolation but must be considered in conjunction with manifestations
among the other Balkan peoples. T h e significance of Crypto-Christianity
goes even beyond the borders of the Peninsula, involving both Christian
Churches-the Orthodox and the Catholic-and at times the great powers.
Moreover, the sort of double allegiance in Crypto-Christianity, one ex-
ternal and the other hidden, though varying in degrees, created a psycho-
logical phenomenon which might usefully be studied in relation to the same
phenomenon among other peoples and other religions.
Dawkins, p. 256.
84
See the interesting article by Milenko S. FilipoviC, "KrSteni Muslimani," Zbornik
Radova Etnografskog Znstituta, Srpska Akademija Nauka, I1 (1951)~
120-28.