one
hundred and fifty Christian houses, but that he only found thirty-six
or thirty-seven Christian women, the men having all gone over to
Islam. People were wont to come secretly to him for confession and to
communicate; he tells how these converted men would marry Christian
women, but would leave them Christian all their lives, and only on his
deathbed would a man ask his wife to be converted also.

The Prophet had also found his way into many households of Montenegro,
where the clans, with neither civil nor military government, had been
compelled, for their protection, to live in a patriarchal fashion: the
people--that is, the chiefs of the clans--elected a bishop and
gathered round him as the champion of their religion against Islam.
Until the time of Danilo (1697-1737) there had been fourteen bishops.
During his reign the problem of Turkish penetration was taken in hand.
It was intolerable that Montenegrin families should stand well with
the Sultan because one of their members had gone over to Islam. The
small, untidy village of Virpazar, by the Lake of Scutari, has got a
certain fame, because the chosen men who were to purge the country of
this evil started out from there on Christmas Eve in 1703. Those who
participated in the "Montenegrin Vespers" were not likely to forget
the incidents of that impressive ceremony. The Bishop celebrated Mass,
and from the consecrated tapers in his hand the people lit their own.
Every man was armed. They knelt--their tapers hardly trembling--and
they kissed the sacred image which the Bishop held. Then he blessed
their weapons and they sallied forth, running round the lake and
climbing up the rough, long road to Cetinje. Every house was visited
in which there was a Moslem, and the choice was given of repudiation
or of death. With such missionaries and with subjects such as these to
work upon, you could not hope that the negotiations would be quite
pacific. Many of the Moslem, young and old, were slaughtered, and when
Mass was sung on Christmas morning in the rugged, little monastery of
Cetinje, many of the chosen men assembled, weary but content, and gave
whole-hearted thanks to God that Montenegro had been liberated from
the scourge.

As for those who came under the influence of Islam in Old Serbia, they
were left after 1737 even more to their own resources, as the zone
which united them to the main body of Serbs was depleted by another
great exodus, under Patriarch Arsenius IV.