THE LOCAL SAINTS.
This exclusion of women from the Holy Isle was the doing of Savatie,
first of the Local Saints.
Savatie, the original anchoret of Solovetsk, was one day praying near
a lake, when he heard a cry, as of a woman in pain. His comrade said
it must have been a dream: for no woman was living nearer to their
"desert" than the Karel coast. The saint went forth again to pray; but
once again his devotions were disturbed by cries and sobs. Going round
by the banks of the lake to see, he found a young woman lying on the
ground, with her flesh all bruised, her back all bleeding from recent
blows. She was a fisherman's wife. On being asked who had done her
this harm, she said that two young men, with bright faces and dressed
in white raiment, came to her hut while her husband was away, and
telling her she must go after him, as the land belonged to God, and no
woman must sleep on it a single night, they threw her on the ground,
struck her with rods, and made her cry with pain.
When she could walk, the poor creature got into her boat, and St.
Savatie saw her no more. The fisherman came to fish, but his wife
remained at home; and in this way woman was driven by angels from the
Holy Isle. No monk, no layman, ever doubts this story. How can he?
Here, to this day, stands the log house in which Savatie dwelt, and
twenty paces from it lies the mossy bank on which he knelt. Across the
water there, beside yon clump of pines, rose the fisherman's shed. The
sharp ascent on which the church and lighthouse glisten, is still
called Striking Hill.
This St. Savatie was a monk from Novgorod living at the old convent of
Belozersk, in which he served the office of tonsurer--shaver of heads;
but longing for a life of greater solitude than his convent gave him,
he persuaded one of his brethren, named Valaam, to go up with him into
the deserts near the Polar Sea. Boyars from his country-side were then
going up into the north; and why should holy men not bear as much for
Christ as boyars and traders bore for pelf? On praying all night in
their chapels, these boyars and traders ran to their archbishop with
the cry: "Oh, give us leave, Vladika, to go forth, man and horse, and
win new lands for St. Sophia." Settling in Kem, in Suma, in Soroka,
and at other points, these men were adding a region larger than the
mother-country to the territories ruled by Novgorod the Great. The
story of these boyars stirred up Savatie to follow in their wake, and
labor in the desolate land which they were opening up.
Toiling through the virgin woods and sandy plains, Savatie and his
companion Valaam arrived on the Vieg (in 1429), and found a pious
monk, named German, who had also come from the south country. Looking
towards the east, these monks perceived, in the watery waste, a group
of isles; and trimming a light skiff, Savatie and German crossed the
sea. Landing on the largest isle, they made a "desert" on the shore of
a lakelet, lying at the foot of a hill on which birch and pine trees
grew to the top. Their lake was sheltered, the knoll was high; and
from the summit they could see the sprinkle of isles and their
embracing waves, as far as Orloff Cape to the south, the downs of Kem
on the west.
Savatie brought with him a picture of the Virgin, not then known to
possess miraculous virtues, which he hung up in a chapel built of
logs. Near to this chapel he made for himself and his companion a hut
of reeds and sticks, in which they lived in peace and prayer until the
rigor of the climate wore them out. After six years spent in solitude,
German sailed back to the Vieg; and Savatie, finding himself alone on
the rock, in that desert from which he had banished woman and love,
became afraid of dying without a priest being at hand to shrive and
put him beneath the grass. Getting into his skiff, he also crossed to
Soroka, where he obtained from Father Nathaniel, a prior who chanced
to visit that town, the bread and cup; and then, his work on earth
being done, he passed away to his eternal rest.
Laying him in the sands at Soroka, Nathaniel raised a chapel of pine
logs, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, above his grave; and there
Savatie would have lain forever, his name unknown, his saintly rank
unrecognized on earth, had he not fallen in the path of a man of
stronger and more enduring spirit.
One of the bold adventurers from Novgorod, named Gabriel, settling
with his wife Barbara in the new village of Tolvui, on the banks of
Lake Onega, had a son, whom he called Zosima, and devoted to God.
Zosima, a monk while he was yet a child, took his vows in the
monastery of Palaostrofsk, near his father's home; and on reaching the
age when he could act for himself, he divided his inheritance among
his kin, and taking up his pilgrim's staff departed for the north. At
Suma he fell in with German, who told him of the life he had lived six
years in his desert on the lonely rock. Zosima, taken by this tale,
persuaded German to show him the spot where he and Savatie had dwelt
so long. They crossed the sea. A lucky breeze bore them past Zaet,
into a small and quiet bay; and when they leaped on shore--then strewn
with boulders, and green with forest trees--they found themselves not
only on the salt sea, but close to a deep and lustrous lake, the
waters of which were sweet to the taste, and swarming with fish, the
necessary food of monks.
Kneeling on the sand in prayer, Zosima was nerved by a miraculous
vision to found a religious colony in that lonely island, even as
Marfa's people were founding secular colonies at Suma, Soroka, and
Kem. He saw, as in a dream, a bright and comely monastic pile, with
swelling domes and lofty turrets, standing on the brink of that lovely
sheet of water--henceforth to be known as the Holy Lake. Starting from
his knees, he told his companion, German, of the vision he had seen;
described the walls, the Sacred Gates, the clusters of spires and
domes; in a word, the convent in the splendor of its present form.
They cut down a pine, and framed it into a cross, which they planted
in the ground; in token that this island in the frozen deep belonged
to God and to His saints. This act of consecrating the isle took place
(in 1436) a year after St. Savatie died.
The monks erected cabins near this cross; in which cabins they dwelt,
about a mile apart, so as not to crowd upon each other in their desert
home. The sites are marked by chapels erected to perpetuate their
fame.
The tale of these young hermits living in their desert on the Frozen
Sea being noised abroad in cloisters, monks from all sides of the
north country came to join them; bringing strong thews and eager souls
to aid in their task of raising up in that wild region, and among
those savage tribes, a temple of the living God. In time a church grew
round and above the original cross; and as none of the hermits were in
holy orders, they sent a messenger to Yon, then archbishop of
Novgorod, asking him for a blessing on their work, and praying him to
send them a prior who could celebrate mass. Yon gave them his
benediction and his servant Pavel. Pavel travelled into the north, and
consecrated their humble church; but the climate was too hard for him
to bear. A second prior came out in Feodosie; a third prior in Yon;
both of whom staid some time in the Frozen Sea, and only went back to
Novgorod when they were broken in health and advanced in years.
When Yon, the third prior, left them, the fathers held a meeting to
consider their future course. Sixteen years had now passed by since
Zosima and German crossed the sea from Suma; ten or twelve years since
Pavel consecrated their humble church. In less than a dozen years
three priors had come and gone; and every one saw that monks who had
grown old in the Volkhoff district could not live in the Frozen Sea.
The brethren asked their archbishop to give them a prior from their
own more hardy ranks; and all these brethren joined in the prayer that
Zosima, leader of the colony from first to last, would take this
office of prior upon himself. His poor opinion of himself gave place
to a sense of the public good.
Marching on foot to Novgorod, a journey of more than a thousand miles,
through a country without a road, Zosima went up to the great city,
where he was received by the Vladika, and was ordained a priest. From
the mayor and chief boyars he obtained a more definite cession of the
isles than Prior Yon had been able to secure; and thus he came back to
his convent as pope and prior, with the fame of a holy man, to whom
nothing might be denied. Getting leave to remove the bones of Savatie
from Soroka to Solovetsk, he took up his body from the earth, and
finding it pure and fresh, he laid the incorruptible relics in the
crypt of his infant church.
More and more monks arrived in the lonely isles; and pilgrims from far
and near began to cross the sea; for the tomb of Savatie was said to
work miraculous cures. But as the monastery grew in fame and wealth,
the troubles of the world came down upon the prior and his monks. The
men of Kem began to see that this bank in the Frozen Sea was a
valuable prize; and the lords of Anzersk and Moksalma quarrelled with
the monks; disputing their right over the foreshores, and pressing
them with claims about the waifs and strays. At length, in his green
old age, Zosima girded up his loins, and taking his pastoral staff in
hand, set out for Novgorod, in the hope of seeing Marfa in person, and
of settling, once and forever, the question of his claim to these
rocks by asking for the lordship of Kem itself to be vested in the
prior of Solovetsk!
On a column of the great cathedral of St. Sophia, in the Kremlin of
Novgorod, a series of frescoes tells the story of this visit of St.
Zosima to the parent state. One picture takes the eye with a singular
and abiding force--a banquet in a noble hall, in which the table is
surrounded by headless guests.
Passing through the city from house to house, Zosima was received in
nearly all with honor, as became his years and fame; but not in all.
The boyars of Kem had friends in the city; and the Marfa's ear had
been filled with tales against his monkish guile and monkish greed.
From her door he was driven with scorn; and her house was that in
which he was most desirous of being received in peace. Knowing that he
could do nothing without her aid, Zosima set himself, by patient
waiting on events, to overcome her fury against the cause which he was
there to plead. At length, her feeling being subdued, she granted him
a new charter (dated 1470, and still preserved at Solovetsk),
confirming his right over all the lands, lakes, forests and
fore-shores of the Holy Isles, together with the lordship of Kem, made
over, then and for all coming time, to the service of God.
Before Zosima left the great city, Marfa invited him to her table,
where he was to take his leave, not only of herself, but of the chief
boyars. As the prior sat at meat, the company noticed that his face
was sad, that his eyes were fixed on space, that his soul seemed moved
by some unseen cause. "What is the matter?" cried the guests. He would
not speak; and when they pressed around him closely, they perceived
that burning drops were rolling down his cheeks. More eagerly than
ever, they demanded to know what he saw in his fixed and terrible
stare. "I see," said the monk, "six boyars at a feast, all seated at a
table without their heads!"
That dinner-party is the subject painted on the column in St. Sophia;
and the legend says that every man who sat with him that day at
Marfa's table had his head sliced off by Ivan the Third, when the
proud and ancient republic fell before the destroyer of the Golden
Horde.
Strengthened by his new titles, Zosima came back to Solovetsk a
prince; and the pile which he governed took the style, which it has
ever since borne, of
The Convent that Endureth Forever.
Zosima ruled his convent as prior for twenty-six years; and after a
hermitage of forty-two years on his lowly rock he passed away into his
rest.
On his dying couch he told his disciples that he was about to quit
them in the flesh, but only in the flesh. He promised to be with them
in the spirit; watching in the same cells, and kneeling at the same
graves. He bade them thank God daily for the promise that their
convent should endure forever; safe as a rock, and sacred as a
shrine--even though it stood in the centre of a raging sea--in the
reach of pitiless foes. And then he passed away--the second of these
local saints--leaving, as his legacy to mankind, the temporal and
spiritual germs of this great sanctuary in the Frozen Sea.
About that time the third monk also died--German, the companion of
Savatie, in his cabin near Striking Hill; afterwards of Zosima, in his
hut by the Holy Lake. He died at Novgorod, to which city he had again
returned from the north. His bones were begged from the monks in whose
grounds they lay, and being carried to Solovetsk, were laid in a
shrine near the graves of his ancient and more famous friends.
Such was the origin of the convent over which the Archimandrite Feofan
now rules and reigns.