stical dignitaries. The Bulgarian,
Servian, Montenegrin and Greek churches are, however, in reality
autocephalous. The Bulgarian church enjoys an exceptional position,
inasmuch as its spiritual chief, the exarch, who resides at Constantinople,
controls the Bulgarian prelates in European Turkey as well as those in the
kingdom of Bulgaria. On the other hand, the Greek prelates in Bulgaria are
subject to the patriarch. Religious and political questions are intimately
connected in eastern Europe. The heads of the various religious communities
are the only representatives of the Christian population recognized by the
Turkish government; they possess a seat in the local administrative
councils and supervise the Christian schools. The efforts of the several
branches of the Orthodox Church to obtain a separate organization in the
Turkish dominions are to be attributed exclusively to political motives, as
no difference of dogma divides them. The Serbo-Croats of Dalmatia, and
Croatia-Slavonia, some of the Gheg tribes in Albania, about 21% of the
Bosnians, a still smaller number of Bulgarians in the kingdom and in
Macedonia and a few Greeks in the islands belong to the Roman Catholic
Church. A certain number of Bulgars at Kukush in Macedonia and elsewhere
form a "uniate" church, which accepts the authority and dogma of Rome, but
preserves the Orthodox rite and discipline. The Armenians are divided
between the Gregorian and Uniate-Armenian churches, each under a patriarch.
The other Christian confessions are numerically inconsiderable. The Gagauzi
in Eastern Bulgaria, a Turanian and Turkish-speaking race, profess
Christianity.

_Languages._--Until comparatively recent times Turkish and Greek were the
only languages systematically taught or officially recognized in the Balkan
lands subject to Turkish rule. The first, the speech of the conquering
race, was the official language; the second, owing to the intellectual and
literary superiority of the Greeks, their educational zeal and the
privileges acquired by their church, became the language of the upper
classes among the Christians. The Slavonic masses, however, both Servian
and Bulgarian, preserved their language, which saved these nationalities
from extinction. The Servian dialect extending into regions which escaped
the Turkish yoke, enjoyed certain advantages denied to the Bulgarian: in
free Montenegro the first Slavonic printing-press was founded in 1493; at
Ragusa, a century la