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I little thought 'that in a few years time the place would be the scene of a hideous massacre by the Montenegrins modelled on the Moslem-slaying of Vladika Danilo. We reached Ipek after some sixteen hours of very severe travel and knocked at the gates of the Patriarchia long after nightfall the very place whose Bishop had led the retreating Serb population into Austria over two centuries before.
My Montenegrin guide showed anxiety also and begged me on no account to reveal his origin. From a little hill belonging to the Patriarchia I saw the widespread Turkish camp on the plain. The Igumen and the few monks and visitors gave me the Serb point of view. Because some six centuries ago the Sveti Kralj had been crowned in the church they regarded the land as rightfully and inalienably Serb.
My disguised Montenegrin guide who was pledged to hand me over safe and sound to Voyvoda Lakitch at Andrijevitza signalled to me in great anxiety. Each day he remained on Turkish territory he risked detection and the loss of his life. I returned therefore to the Patriarchia, recovered my passport from the Pasha and was given by him a mounted gendarme to ride with me as far as Berani.
A personal friendship with Bishop Nicholas of Zicca brought the gift of his rooms in the Patriarchia, opposite the Cathedral. Nicholas, better known during the war years as Father Nicholas Velimirovic, being on a mission to the United States, his simple white-walled rooms hung with bright-coloured ikons were free, and could be a home for a wanderer in an over-crowded city.
"Sire," said I, "it was your Montenegrins who made me do it." He made no reply to this, but lamented that for him such a tour was out of the question. And of all things he desired to see the Patriarchia at Ipek and the Church of Dechani and the relics of the Sveti Kralj. He had been told I had secured photographs of these places. If so, would I give him copies?
My arrival was a thunderbolt, both for the Patriarchia and the Turkish authorities, who had forbidden the entry of strangers into the district and closed the main routes to it, but had never imagined any one would be so crazy as to drop in over the Montenegrin frontier by way of Rugova. The whole district was under military occupation.
The Patriarchia had been persuaded to appoint one Dochitch, a Montenegrin of Moracha, to the Bishopric of Prizren, in place of Nicephor, dismissed for drunkenness and other inappropriate conduct. Montenegro triumphed, and looked on Prizren as hers. The Serbs were furious; the priests of Kosovo refused to recognize him, and had telegraphed to the two priests of Scutari and Vraka to do so, too.
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