Travels in Southeastern Europe

The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.

MIRDITA. 377 stood up white against the mountain beyond, which is cleft by a wide gully, terraced and cultivated. Some twenty houses are scattered up it. This is Oroshi, the capital of the Mirdites. Before the inroad of Dervish Pasha it was a flourishing village of a hundred houses. Now ruins mark where many a house has stood, and the home of the Bib Dodas has never been rebuilt. The Abbot, wh se title is the traditional one for the head of the Church in Mirdita, is in reality a secular priest, for the Benedictine abbey of Oroshi was long ago destroyed. His position is quite a unique one. Thi3 wild land of 30,000 eople has no temporal head. It is princeless, and there is no tribunal of any kind'before which a criminal can be brought. The Abbot is the only power in the land, and his power is purely spiritual. Exiled by the Turkish Government when quite a young man, he spent t e ears of his exile, not as do so many Turkish subjects, in Asia Minor, but, by the aid of th Church, under British government, first in Newfoundland and afterwards at Bombay, where he used to hear confessions in English. But his heart was always with his poor Mirdites, all unhelped in the wilderness, and after long years of exile he succeeded in obtaining a hearing at Constantinople, pleaded his cause, and won it. Now for fifteen years he has toiled for his brethren, striving by prayer, preaching, and example to win them from their state of prehistoric savagery. He has fifteen parishes under him, all of which he
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About this Item

Title
The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.
Author
Durham, Mary Edith, 1863-1944.
Canvas
Page 377
Publication
London :: Nelson,
[1905]
Subject terms
Eastern question (Balkan)
Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel.

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https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ans3900.0001.001
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https://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bosnia/ans3900.0001.001/384

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"The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham." In the digital collection Travels in Southeastern Europe. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ans3900.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 30, 2025.
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