THE VLADIKA.
"You have a letter of introduction to the Archimandrite of Solovetsk?"
asks Father John, as we are shaking hands under the pilgrim's lamp.
"No! Then you must get one."
"Why? Are you so formal when a pilgrim comes to the holy shrine?"
"You are not quite a pilgrim. You will need a room in the guest-house
for yourself. You may wish to have horses, boats, and people to go
about. You will want to see the sacristy, the jewels, and the books.
You may like to eat at the Archimandrite's board."
"But how are these things to be done?"
"You know the Most Sacred Vladika of Archangel, perhaps?"
"Well, yes, a little. One of the Vladika's closest friends has been
talking to me of that sacred personage, and has promised to present me
this very day."
"Get from him a line to the Archimandrite. That will make all things
smooth," says Father John.
"Are they great friends?"
"Ha! who can tell? You see, the Most Sacred Vladika used to be master
of every one in the Holy Isles; and now ... but then the Vladika of
Archangel and the Archimandrite of Solovetsk are holy men, not likely
to fall out. You'll get a line?"
"Yes, if he will give me one; good-bye."
"Count on a week for the voyage, and bring white bread," adds the
dwarf. "Prosteté--Pardon me."
Of course, the Vladika (bishop or archbishop) is a monk; for every
high-priest in the Orthodox Church, whether his rank be that of vicar,
archimandrite, bishop, or metropolite, must wear the hood, and must
have taken vows. The rule that a bishop must be "the husband of one
wife," is set aside so far as regards the clergy of higher grades. A
parish priest is a married man; must, in fact, be a married man; and
no young deacon can obtain a church until he has first obtained a
bride. The social offices of the Church are done by these family men;
baptism, purifying, marriage, confession, burial; yet the higher seats
in the hierarchy are all reserved (as yet) for celibates who are under
vows.
The Holy Governing Synod--highest court of the Orthodox Church--consists
of monks, with one lay member to assist them by his knowledge of the
world. No married priest has ever had a seat on that governing board.
The metropolites are monks; and not only monks, but actual rulers of
monastic houses, Isidore, metropolite of Novgorod, is archimandrite of
the great Convent of St. George. Arseny, metropolite of Kief, is
archimandrite of the great Convent of Pechersk. Innocent, metropolite
of Moscow, is archimandrite of the great Convent of Troitsa. All the
vicars of these high-priests are monks. The case of Archangel and
Solovetsk is, therefore, the exception to a general rule. St. George,
Pechersk, and Troitsa, are governed by the nearest prince of the
Church; and in former times this was also the case with Solovetsk; but
Peter the Great, in one of his fits of reverence, broke this old
connection of the convent and the see of Archangel; endowing the
Archimandrite of Solovetsk with a separate standing and an independent
power. Some people think the Archbishop of Archangel nurses a grudge
against the civil power for this infringement of his ancient rights;
and this idea was probably present in the mind of Father John.
Acting on Father John's advice, I put on my clothes of state--a plain
dress suit; the only attire in which you can wait on a man of
rank--and drive to my friend's abode, and finding him ready to go with
me, gallop through a gust of freezing rain to the palace-door.
The archbishop is at home, though it is not yet twelve o'clock. It is
said of him that he seldom goes abroad; affecting the airs of an exile
and a martyr; but doing--in a sad, submissive way, as if the weapon
were unworthy of its work--a great deal of good; watching over his
church, admonishing his clergy, both white and black, and thinking,
like a father, for the poor.
Leaving our wraps in an outer hall (the proper etiquette of guests),
we send in our cards by an usher, and are received at once.
The Most Sacred Vladika, pale as a ghost, dressed in a black gown, on
which hangs a sapphire cross, and wearing his hood of serge, rises to
greet us; and coming forward with a sweet and vanishing smile, first
blesses his penitent, and then shakes hands with his English guest.
This Most Sacred Father Nathaniel is now an aged, shadowy man, with
long white beard, and a failing light in his meek blue eyes. But in
his prime he is said to have been handsome in person, eager in gait,
caressing in style. In his youth he was a village pastor--one of the
White Clergy--married, and a family man; but his wife died early; and
as a pastor in his church can not marry a second time, he followed a
fashion long ago set by his aspiring brethren--he took the vows of
chastity, became a monk, and began to rise. His fine face, his courtly
wit, his graceful bearing, brought him hosts of fair penitents, and
these fair penitents made for him high friends at court. He was
appointed Vicar of St. Petersburg--a post not higher in actual rank
than that of a Dean of St. Paul's, but one which a popular and
ambitious man prefers to most of the Russian sees. Father Nathaniel
was an idol of the city. Fine ladies sought his advice, and women of
all classes came to confess to him their sins. Princes fell beneath
his sway; princesses adored him; and no rank in the Church, however
high, appeared to stand beyond his reach. But these court triumphs
were his ruin. He was such a favorite with ladies that his brethren
began to smile with malicious leer when his back was turned, and drop
their poisonous hints about the ways in which he walked. They said he
was too fond of power; they said he spent more time with his female
penitents than became a monk. It is the misery of these vicars and
bishops that they can not be married men, with wives of their own to
turn the edges of such shafts. Men's tongues kept wagging against
Nathaniel's fame; and even those who knew him to be earnest in his
faith began to think it might be well for the Church if this
fascinating father could be honorably sent to some distant see.
Whither was he to go?
While a place was being sought for him, he happened to give deep
offense in high quarters; and as Father Alexander, Vladika of
Archangel (hero of Solovetsk), was eager to go south and be near the
court, Father Nathaniel was promoted to that hero's place.
He left St. Petersburg amidst the tears of fair women, who could not
protect their idol against the malice of envious monks. Taking his
promotion meekly as became his robe, he sighed to think that his day
was come, and in the future he would count in his church as a fallen
man. Arriving in Archangel, he shut himself up in his palace near the
monastery of St. Michael; a house which he found too big for his
simple wants. Soon after his coming he abandoned this palace for a
smaller house; giving up his more princely pile to the monks of St.
Michael for a public school.
A spirit of sacrifice is the pre-eminent virtue of the Russian Church.
The shadowy old man compels me to sit on the sofa by his side; talks
of my voyage round the North Cape; shows me a copy in Russian of my
book on the Holy Land; inquires whether I know the Pastor Xatli in
London. Fancying that he means the Russian pope in Welbeck Street, I
answer yes; on which we get into much confusion of tongues; until it
flashes upon me that he is talking of Mr. Hatherley of Wolverhampton,
the gentleman who has gone over from the English to the Russian rite,
and is said to have carried some twenty souls of the Black Country
with him. What little there is to tell of this Oriental Church in our
Black Country is told; and in return for my scanty supply of facts,
the Vladika is good enough to show me the pictures hanging on his
wall. These pictures are of two classes, holy and loyal; first the
sacred images--those heads of our Saviour and of the Virgin Mother
which hang in the corners of every Russian room, the tutelary
presence, to be adored with reverence at the dawn of day and the hour
of rest; then the loyal and local pictures--portraits of the reigning
house, and of former archbishops--which you would expect to find in
such a house; a first Alexander, with flat and dreamy face; a Nicolas,
with stiff and haughty figure; a second Alexander, hung in the place
of honor, and wearing a pensive and benignant smile. More to my mind,
as less familiar than these great ones of the hour, is the fading
image of a lady, thoroughly Russ in garb and aspect--Marfa, boyarine
of Novgorod and colonizer of the North.
Nathaniel marks with kindling eyes my interest in this grand old
creature--builder alike of convents and of towns--who sent out from
Novgorod two of her sons, and hundreds of her people, to the bleak
north country, then inhabited by pagan Lapps and Karels, worshippers
of the thunder-cloud, and children of the Golden Hag. Her story is the
epic of these northern shores.
While Red and White Rose were wasting our English counties with sword
and fire, this energetic princess sent her sons and her people down
the Volkhoff, into Lake Ladoga, whence they crept up the Swir into
Lake Onega; from the banks of which lake they marched upward, through
the forests of birch and pine, into the frozen north. She sent them to
explore the woods, to lay down rivers and lakes, to tell the natives
of a living God. They came to Holmogory, on the Dvina, then a poor
fishing-village occupied by Karels, a tribe not higher in type than
the Samoyeds of the present day. They founded Suma, Soroka, and Kem.
They took possession of the Frozen Sea and its clustering isles. In
dropping down a main arm of the river, Marfa's two sons were pitched
from their boat and drowned. Their bodies being washed on shore and
buried in the sand, she caused a cloister to be raised on the spot,
which she called the Monastery of St. Nicolas, after the patron of
drowning men.
That cloister of St. Nicolas was the point first made by Challoner
when he entered the Dvina from the Frozen Sea.
"You are going over to Solovetsk?" says the Vladika, coming back to
his sofa. "We have no authority in the isles, although they lie within
our See. It pleased the Emperor Peter, on his return from a stormy
voyage, to raise the Convent of Savatie to independent rank, to give
it the title of Lavra--making it the equal, in our ecclesiastical
system, with Troitsa, Pechersk, and St. George. From that day
Solovetsk became a separate province of the Church, dependent on the
Holy Governing Synod and the Tsar. Still I can give you a line to
Feofan, the Archimandrite."
Slipping into an inner room for five minutes, he composes a mandate in
my favor, in the highest Oriental style.