miraculous image of the Assumption of the Virgin,--the Falling Asleep
of the Virgin is the Russian name,--was let slowly down on its silken
cords from above the Imperial Gate, where a twelve-fold silver lamp,
with glass cups of different colors, has burned unquenched since 1812,
in commemoration of Russia's deliverance from "the twelve tribes," as
the French invasion is termed. The congregation pressed forward eagerly
to salute the venerated image. Tradition asserts that it was brought
from Constantinople to Kieff in the year 1073, with the Virgin's special
blessing for the monastery. By reason of age and the smoke from
conflagrations in which the monastery has suffered, the image is so
darkened that one is cast back upon one's imagination and the copies for
comprehension of this treasure's outlines. What is perfectly
comprehensible, however, is the galaxy of diamonds, brilliants, and gems
thickly set in the golden garments which cover all but the hands and
feet of the personages in the picture, and illuminate it with flashes of
many-hued light. After a few minutes, the image was drawn up again to
its place,--a most unusual position for a valued holy image, though
certainly safe, and one not occupied, so far as I am aware, by any other
in the country.
It occurred to us that it might prove an interesting experiment to try
the monastery inn for breakfast, and even to sojourn there for a day or
two, and abandon the open sewers and other traces of advanced
civilization in the town. Our way thither led past the free lodgings for
poor pilgrims, which were swarming with the devout of both sexes,
although it was not the busiest season for shrine-visiting. That comes
in the spring, before the harvest, at all monasteries, and, in this
particular monastery, on the feast of the Assumption, August 15 (Russian
style), 27 (European style). But there was a sufficient contingent of
the annual one million pilgrims present to give us a very fair idea of
the reverence in which this, the chief of all Russian monasteries, is
held, and of the throngs which it attracts. But, as usual in Russia,
sight alone convinced us of their existence; they were chatting quietly,
sitting and lying about with enviable calmness, or eating the sour black
bread and boiled buckwheat groats provided by the monastery. I talked
with several of them, and found them quite unconscious that they were
not comfortably, even luxuriously, housed and fed.
The inn for travelers of means was a large, plain, airy building, with
no lodgers, apparently. The monks seemed frightened at the sight of us.
That was a novelty. But they escorted us over the house in procession.
We looked at a very clean, very plain room, containing four beds. It
appeared, from their explanations, that pilgrims have gregarious tastes,
and that this was their nearest approach to a single room. I inquired
the price. "According to your zeal," was the reply. How much more
effective than "What you please" in luring the silver from lukewarm
pockets! The good monks never found out how warm our zeal was, after
all, for the reason that their table was never furnished with anything
but fish and "fasting food," they said, though there was no fast in
progress. The reason why, I could not discover; but we knew our own
minds thoroughly on the subject of "fasting food," from mushroom soup,
fish fried in sunflower oil, and coffee without milk to that most
insipid of dessert dishes, _kisel_, made of potato flour, sweetened, and
slightly soured with fruit juice. They told us that we might have meat
sent out from town, if we wished; but as the town lay several versts
distant, that did not seem a very practical way of coquetting with the
Evil One under their roof. Accordingly, we withdrew; to their relief, I
am sure. As we had already lived in a monastery inn, it had not occurred
to us that there could be any impropriety in doing so, but that must
have been the cause of their looks of alarm. I believe that one can
remain for a fortnight at this inn without payment, unless conscience
interferes; and people who had stayed there told me that meat had been
served to them from the monastery kitchen; so that puzzle still remains
a puzzle to me.
We went to see the brethren dine in the refectory, an ancient, vaulted
building of stone, near the cathedral. Under a white stone slab near the
entrance lie the bodies of Kotchubey and Iskra, who were unjustly
executed by Peter the Great for their loyal denunciation of Mazeppa's
meditated treachery. Within, the walls of the antechamber were decorated
with dizzy perspective views of Jerusalem, the saints, and pious elders
of the monastery. At the end of the long dining-hall, beyond an
_ikonostas_, was a church, as is customary in these refectories. Judging
from the number of servitors whom we had met hurrying towards the cells
with sets of porcelain dinner-trays, not many monks intended to join the
common table, and it did not chance to be one of the four days in the
year when the Metropolitan of Kieff and other dignitaries dine there in
full vestments.
At last, a score of monks entered, chanted a prayer at a signal from a
small bell, and seated themselves on benches affixed to the wall which
ran round three sides of the room. The napkins on the tables which stood
before the benches consisted of long towels, each of which lay across
four or five of the pewter platters from which they ate, as the table
was set in preparation. If it had been a festal day, there would have
been several courses, with beer, mead, and even wine to wash them down.
As it was, the monks ate their black bread and boiled buckwheat groats,
served in huge dishes, with their wooden spoons, and drank _kvas_,
brewed from sour black bread, at a signal from the bell, after the first
dish only, as the rule requires. While they ate, a monk, stationed at a
desk near by, read aloud the extracts from the Lives of the Saints
appointed for the day. This was one of the "sights," but we found it
curious and melancholy to see strong, healthy men turned into monks and
content with that meagre fare. Frugality and dominion over the flesh are
good, of course, but minds from west of the Atlantic Ocean never seem
quite to get into sympathy with the monastic idea; and we always felt,
when we met monks, as though they ought all to be off at work somewhere,
--I will not say "earning money," for they do that as it is in such
great monasteries as that of Kieff, but lightening the burden of the
peasants, impossible as that is under present conditions, or making
themselves of some commonplace, practical use in the world.
The strongest point of the Lavra, even equal to the ancient and
venerated _ikona_ of the Assumption in the great cathedral, is the
catacombs, from which the convent takes its name.
In the days of the early princes of Kieff, the heights now occupied by
the Lavra were covered with a dense growth of birch forest, and entirely
uninhabited. Later on, one of the hills was occupied by the village of
Berostovo, and a palace was built adjoining the tiny ancient "Church of
the Saviour in the Birch Forest," which I have already mentioned. It was
the favorite residence of Prince-Saint Vladimir, and of his son, Prince
Yaroslaff, after him. During the reign of the latter, early in the
eleventh century, the priest of this little church, named Ilarion,
excavated for himself a tiny cave, and there passed his time in devout
meditation and solitary prayer. He abandoned his cave to become
Metropolitan of Kieff. In the year 1051, the monk Antony, a native of
the neighboring government of Tchernigoff, came to Kieff from Mount
Athos, being dissatisfied with the life led in the then existing
monasteries. After long wanderings over the hills of Kieff, he took
possession of Ilarion's cave, and spent his days and nights in pious
exercises. The fame of his devout life soon spread abroad, and attracted
to him, for his blessing, not only the common people, but persons of
distinction. Monks and worldlings flocked thither to join him in his
life of prayer. Among the first of these to arrive was a youth of the
neighborhood, named Fedosy. Antony hesitated, but at last accepted the
enthusiastic recruit.
The dimensions of holy Antony's cave were gradually enlarged; new cells,
and even a tiny church, were constructed near it. Then Antony, who
disliked communal life, retreated to the height opposite, separated from
his first residence by a deep ravine, and dug himself another cave,
where no one interfered with him. This was the origin of the caves of
Fedosy, known at the present day as the "far catacombs," and of the
caves of Antony, called the "near catacombs." The number of the monks
continued to increase, and they soon erected a small wooden church
aboveground, in the name of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, as
well as cells for those who could not be contained in the caverns. At
the request of holy Antony, the prince gave the whole of the heights
where the catacombs are situated to the brethren, and in 1062 a large
new monastery, surrounded by a stockade, was erected on the spot where
the Cathedral of the Assumption now stands. Thus was monastic life
introduced into Russia.
The venerated monastery shared all the vicissitudes of the "Mother of
all Russian Cities" in the wars of the Grand Princes and the incursions
of external enemies, such as Poles and Tatars. But after each disaster
it waxed greater and more flourishing. Restored, after a disastrous fire
in 1718, by the zeal of Peter the Great and his successors, enriched by
the gifts of all classes, the Lavra now consists of six monasteries,--
like a university of colleges,--four situated within the inclosure,
while two are at a distance of several versts, and serve as retreats and
as places of burial for the brethren. The catacombs, abandoned as
residences on the construction of the cells above ground, have not
escaped disasters by caving in. Drains to carry off the percolating
water, and stone arches to support the soil, have been constructed, and
a flourishing orchard has been planted above them to aid in holding the
soil together. Earthquakes in the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries
permanently closed many of them, and when the Tatars attacked the town,
in the thirteenth century, the monks boarded up all the niches and
filled in the entrances with earth. Some of these boards were removed
about a hundred years ago; some are still in place. The original extent
of the caves cannot now be determined.
The entrance to the near catacombs of St. Antony is through a long
wooden gallery supported on stone posts, at a sharp slope, as they are
situated twenty-four fathoms below the level of the cathedral, and
twenty-two fathoms above the level of the Dnyepr.
A fat merchant, with glowing black eyes and flowing, crisp, black beard,
his tall, wrinkled boots barely visible beneath his long, full-skirted
coat of dark blue cloth, hooked closely across his breast, descended the
gallery with us. Roused to curiosity, probably, by our foreign tongue,
he inquired, on the chance of our understanding Russian, whence we came.
I had already arrived at the conclusion that the people at Kieff,
especially the monks and any one who breathed the atmosphere within
their walls, were of an enterprising, inquisitive disposition. My last
encounter had been with the brother detailed, for his good looks and
fascinating manners, to preside over the chief image shop of the
monastery.
"Where do you come from?" he had opened fire, with his most bewitching
glance.
"From the best country on earth."
"Is it Germany?"
The general idea among the untraveled classes in Russia is, that all of
the earth which does not belong to their own Emperor belongs to Germany,
just as _nyemetzky_ means "German" or "foreign," indifferently.
"No; guess again," I said.
"France?"
"No; further away."
"England, then?"
"No."
"Hungary?"
Evidently that man's geography was somewhat mixed, so I told him.
"America!" he exclaimed, with great vivacity. "Yes, indeed, it is the
best land of all. It is the richest!"
So that is the monastic as well as the secular standard of worth! This
experience, repeated frequently and nearly word for word, had begun to
weary me. Consequently I led the fat merchant a verbal chase, and
baffled him until he capitulated with, "Excuse me. Take no offense, I
beg, _sudarynya_. I only asked so by chance." Then I told him with the
same result.
This was not the last time, by many, that I was put through my national
catechism in Kieff. Every Kievlyanin to whom I spoke quizzed me. Of
course I was on a grand quizzing tour myself, but that was different, in
some way.
Over the entrance to these catacombs stands a church. The walls of the
vestibule where my mother, the merchant, and I waited for a sufficient
party to assemble, were covered with frescoes representing the passage
of the soul through the various stages of purgatory. Beginning with the
death scene (which greatly resembled the _ikona_ of the Assumption in
the cathedral) in the lower left-hand corner, the white-robed soul,
escorted by two angels, passed through all the halting-places for the
various sins, each represented by the appointed devil, duly labeled. But
the artist's fancy had not been very fruitful on this fascinating theme.
The devils were so exactly alike that the only moral one could draw was,
that he might as well commit the biggest and most profitable sin on the
list, and make something out of it in this life, as to confine himself
to the petty peccadilloes which profit not here, and get well punished
hereafter. The series ended with the presentation of the soul before the
judgment seat, on the fortieth day after death. Round the corner,
Lazarus reclining in Abraham's bosom and the rich man in the flames were
conversing, their remarks crossing each other in mid-air, in a novel
fashion.
When the guide was ready, each of us bought a taper, and the procession
set out through the iron grating, down a narrow, winding stair, from
which low, dark passages opened out at various angles. On each side of
these narrow passages, along which we were led, reposed the
"incorruptible" bodies of St. Antony and his comrades, in open coffins
lacquered or covered with sheets of silver. The bodies seemed very
small, and all of one size, and they were wrapped in hideous prints or
plaid silks. At the head of each saint flickered a tiny shrine-lamp,
before a holy picture (_ikona_) of the occupant of the coffin. It was a
surprise to find the giant Ilya of Murom, who figures as the chief of
the _bogatyri_ (heroes) in the Russian epic songs, ensconced here among
the saints, and no larger than they. Next to the silk-enveloped head of
St. John the Great Sufferer, which still projects as in life, when he
buried himself to the neck in the earth,--as though he were not
sufficiently underground already,--in order to preserve his purity,
the most gruesome sight which we beheld in those dim catacombs was a
group of chrism-exuding skulls of unknown saints, under glass bells.
On emerging from this gloomy retreat, we postponed meditating upon the
special pleasure which the Lord was supposed to have taken in seeing
beings made to live aboveground turning into troglodytes, and set out
for the Fedosy, or far catacombs, in the hope that they might assist us
in solving that problem.
We chose the most difficult way, descending into the intervening ravine
by innumerable steps to view the two sacred wells, only to have our
raging thirst and our curiosity effectually quenched by the sight of a
pilgrim thrusting his head, covered with long, matted hair, into one of
them. The ascent of more innumerable steps brought us to the cradle of
the monastery, Ilarion's caverns.
In the antechamber we found a phenomenally stupid monk presiding over
the sale of the indispensable tapers, and the offerings which the devout
are expected to deposit, on emerging, as a memento of their visit. These
offerings lay like mountains of copper before him. The guide had taken
himself off somewhere, and the monk ordered us, and the five Russians
who were also waiting, to go in alone and "call to the monk in the
cave." We flatly declined to take his word that there was any monk, or
to venture into the dangerous labyrinth alone, and we demanded that he
should accompany us.
"No guide--no candles, no coppers," we said.
That seemed to him a valid argument. Loath to leave his money at the
mercy of chance comers, he climbed up and closed the iron shutters of
the grated window,--the cliff descended, sheer, one hundred and two feet
to the Dnyepr at that point,--double-locked the great iron doors, and
there we were in a bank vault, with all possible customers excluded.
Luckily, the saints in these caverns, which differed very little from
those in the former, were labeled in plain letters, since the monk was
too dull-witted to understand the simplest questions from any of us. At
intervals we were permitted a hasty glimpse of a cell, about seven feet
square, furnished only with a stone bench, and a holy picture, with a
shrine-lamp suspended before it. Ugh! There were several sets of
chrism-dripping saintly skulls in these catacombs, also,--fifteen of
the ghastly things in one group. I braced my stomach to the task, and
scrutinized them all attentively; but not a single one of them winked or
nodded at me in approval, as a nun from Kolomna, whom I had met in
Moscow, asserted that they had at her. I really wished to see how an
eyeless skull could manage a wink, and hoped I might be favored.
After traversing long distances of this subterranean maze, and peering
into the "cradle of the monastery," St. Antony's cell, the procession
came to a halt in a tiny church. There stood a monk, actually, though we
might have wandered all day and come out on the banks of the Dnyepr
without finding him, had we gone in without a guide. Beside him, denuded
of its glass bell, stood one of the miraculous skulls. The first Russian
approached, knelt, crossed himself devoutly, and received from the
priest the sign of the cross on his brow, administered with a soft,
small brush dipped in the oil from the skull. Then he kissed the
priest's hand, crossed himself again, and kissed the skull. When we
beheld this, we modestly stood aside, and allowed our companions, the
other four Russian men, to receive anointment in like manner, and pass
on after the monk, who was in haste to return to his bank vault. As I
approached the priest, he raised his brush.
"We are not Orthodox Christians, _batiushka_,"* I said. "But pray give
us your blessing."
* Little father.
He smiled, and, dropping his brush, made the sign of the cross over us.
I was perfectly willing to kiss his pretty, plump hand,--I had become
very skillful at that sort of thing,--but I confess that I shrank from
the obligatory salute to the skull, and from that special chrism.
Nevertheless, I wished the Russians to think that I had gone through
with the whole ceremony, if they should chance to look back. I felt sure
that I could trust the priest to be liberal, but I was not so certain
that our lay companions, who were petty traders and peasants, might not
be sufficiently fanatical to construe our refusal into disrespect for
their church, and resent it in some way.
Though we returned to the monastery more than once after that, we were
never attracted to the catacombs again, not even to witness the mass at
seven o'clock in the morning in that subterranean church. The beautiful
services in the cathedral, the stately monks, the picturesque pilgrims,
with their gentle manners, ingenuous questions, and simple tales of
their journeys and beliefs, furnished us with abundant interest in the
cheerful sunlight aboveground.
Next to the Catacombs Monastery, the other most famous and interesting
sight of Kieff is the Cathedral of St. Sophia. Built on the highest
point of the ancient city, with nine apses turned to the east, crowned
by one large dome and fourteen smaller domes,--all gilded, some
terminating in crosses, some in sunbursts,--surrounded by turf and
trees within a white wall, with entrance under a lofty belfry, it
produces an imposing but reposeful effect. The ancient walls, dating
from the year 1020, are of red brick intermixed with stone, stuccoed and
washed with white. It has undergone changes, external and internal,
since that day, and its domes and spires are of the usual degenerate
South Russian type, without a doubt of comparatively recent
construction. So many of its windows have been blocked up by additions,
and so cut up is its space by large frescoed pillars, into sixteen
sections, that one steps from brilliant sunshine into deep twilight when
he enters the cathedral. It is a sort of church which possesses in a
high degree that indefinable charm of sacred atmosphere that tempts one
to linger on and on indefinitely within its precincts. Not that it is so
magnificent; many churches in the two capitals and elsewhere in Russia
are far richer. It is simply one of those indescribable buildings which
console one for disappointments in historical places, as a rule, by
making one believe, through sensations unconsciously influenced, not
through any effort of the reason, that ancient deeds and memories do, in
truth, linger about their birthplace.
Ancient frescoes, discovered about forty years ago, some remaining in
their original state, others touched up with more or less skill and
knowledge, mingle harmoniously with those of more recent date. Very
singular are the best preserved, representing hunting parties and
banquets of the Grand Princes, and scenes from the earthly life of
Christ. But they are on the staircase leading to the old-fashioned
gallery, and do not disturb the devotional character of the decoration
in the church itself.
From the wall of the apse behind the chief of the ten altars gazes down
the striking image of the Virgin, executed in ancient mosaic, with her
hands raised in prayer, whom the people reverently call "The
Indestructible Wall." This, with other mosaics and the frescoes on the
staircase, dates from the eleventh century.
I stood among the pillars, a little removed from the principal aisle,
one afternoon near sunset, listening to the melodious intoning of the
priest, and the soft chanting of the small week-day choir at vespers,
and wondering, for the thousandth time, why Protestants who wish to
intone do not take lessons from those incomparable masters in the art,
the Russian deacons, and wherein lies the secret of the Russian
ecclesiastical music. That simple music, so perfectly fitted for church
use, will bring the most callous into a devotional mood long before the
end of the service. Rendered as it invariably is by male voices, with
superb basses in place of the non-existent organ, it spoils one's taste
forever for the elaborate, operatic church music of the West performed
by choirs which are usually engaged in vocal steeplechases with the
organ for the enhancement of the evil effects. My meditations were
interrupted by the approach of a young man, who asked me to be his
godmother! He explained that he was a Jew from Minsk, who had never
studied "his own religion," and was now come to Kieff for the express
purpose of getting himself baptized by the name of Vladimir, the tenth
century prince and patron saint of the town. As he had no acquaintances
in the place, he was in a strait for god-parents, who were
indispensable.
"I cannot be your godmother," I answered. "I am neither _pravoslavnaya_
nor Russian. Cannot the priest find sponsors for you?"
"That is not the priest's place. His business is merely to baptize. But
perhaps he might be persuaded to manage that also, if I had better
clothes."
He wore a light print shirt, tolerably clean, belted outside his dark
trousers, and his shoes and cap were respectable enough.