Macedonia, a plea for the primitive . midst of their daily avocations, steal afew moments and enter a church to say a fewprayers at the shrine or ikon of the saint whoseanniversary it may happen to be, so in the villagethe peasantry may be seen from an early hourwending their way to the church, paying theirhumble lepta for a taper and devoutly crossingthemselves before some sacred picture. The village church, so characteristic of the Greek 192 MACEDONIA people, affords a quaint mixture of modernity andantiquity and exemplifies, as nothing else, theircurious efforts at civilization in the midst
Macedonia, a plea for the primitive . midst of their daily avocations, steal afew moments and enter a church to say a fewprayers at the shrine or ikon of the saint whoseanniversary it may happen to be, so in the villagethe peasantry may be seen from an early hourwending their way to the church, paying theirhumble lepta for a taper and devoutly crossingthemselves before some sacred picture. The village church, so characteristic of the Greek 192 MACEDONIA people, affords a quaint mixture of modernity andantiquity and exemplifies, as nothing else, theircurious efforts at civilization in the midst of paganand primitive ideas. The countless variety of thelittle white belfries, marking each village, howeversmall ; the cheap tawdriness of the interiordecoration, denoting a crude devotion ; and lastly,the care, however misdirected, that these peoplebestow on their places of worship, enforce a con-viction that religion, with them, is not merely acreed of phrase and fable, but a soothing influenceand a laudable profession of /TvT CHAPTER XIV THE TURKISH MOSQUE THE Turkish Mosque is one of the out-standing features of Macedonia. Withits white minaret, it is so characteristicas to be almost symboUcal. No land-scape is complete without this graceful ornamentand, so numerous are they in the towns, that theirquantity almost seems to be the result of rivalrybetween communities rather than of religiousfervour amongst the inhabitants. Besides beinga conspicuous landmark of the countryside—aminaret is often the only sign of a village hiddenamongst a clump of trees—the mosque, togetherwith an isolated cemetery, is sometimes the onlymemorial of a once populous village. Since the termination of the second BalkanWar, which signalized the return of Christianityto Macedonia, there has been a reduction in thenumber of mosques, as well as a certain amountof incipient decay in the buildings which haveendured. In many cases, only minarets remain as evidenceof a former place of Mosle
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