BLACK CLERGY.
All men of the higher classes in Russia talk of their Black Clergy as
a body of worthless fellows; idle, ignorant, profligate; set apart by
their vows as unsocial; to whom no terms should be offered, with whom
no capitulations need be kept. "Away with them, root and branch!" is a
general cry, delivered by young and liberal Russians in the undertone
of a fixed resolve.
The men who raise this cry are not simply scoffers and scorners,
making war on religious ideas and ecclesiastical institutions. Only
too often they are men who love their church, who support their parish
priests, and who wish to plant their country in the foremost line of
Christian states. Russia, they say, possesses ten thousand monks; and
these ten thousand monks they would hand over to a drill sergeant and
convert into regiments of the line.
This rancor of the educated classes towards the monks--a rancor roused
and fed by their undying hatred of reforms in Church and State--compels
one to mark the extent and study the sources of monastic power. This
study will take us far and wide: though it will also bring us in the
end to Solovetsk once more.
"A desert dotted with cloisters," would be no untrue description of
the country spreading southward from the Polar Sea to the Tartar
Steppe. In New Russia, in the khanates of Kazan and Crimea, in the
steppes of the Lower Volga, and in the wastes of Siberia, it would not
be true. But Great Russia is a paradise of monks. In the vast regions
stretching from Kem to Belgorod--an eagle's flight from north to south
of a thousand miles--from Pskoff on Lake Peipus, to Vasil on the
Middle Volga--a similar flight from west to east of seven hundred
miles--the land is everywhere bright with cloisters, musical with
monastic bells.
Nothing on this earth's surface can be drearier than a Russian forest,
unless it be a Russian plain. The forest is a growth of stunted birch
and pine; the trees of one height and girth; the fringe of black
shoots unvaried save by some break of bog, some length of colorless
lake. The plain is a stretch of moor, without a swell, without a tree,
without a town, for perhaps a hundred leagues; on which the grass, if
grass such herbage can be called, is brown; while the village, if such
a scatter of cabins can be called by a name so tender and picturesque,
is nothing but log and mud. A traveller's eye would weary, and his
heart would sicken, at the long succession of such lines, were it not
that here and there, in the opening of some forest glade, on the ridge
of some formless plain, the radiant cross and sparkling towers of a
convent spring towards heaven; a convent with its fringe of verdure,
its white front, its clustering domes and chains. The woods round
Kargopol, the marshes near Lake Ilmen, and the plains of Moscow, are
alive with light and color; while the smaller convents on river bank
and in misty wood, being railed and painted, look like works of art.
One of my sweetest recollections in a long, dull journey, is that of
our descent into the valley of Siya, when we sighted the great
monastery, lying in a watery dell amidst groves of trees, with the
rays of a setting sun on her golden cross and her shining domes--a
happy valley and a consecrated home; not to speak of such trifles as
the clean cell and the wholesome bread which a pilgrim finds within
her walls!
The old cities of Great Russia--Novgorod, Moscow, Pskoff,
Vladimir--are much richer in monastic institutions than their rivals
of a later time. For leagues above and leagues below the ancient
capital of Russia, the river Volkhoff, on the banks of which it
stands, is bright with these old mansions of the Church. Novgorod
enriched her suburbs with the splendid Convents of St. George, St.
Cyril, and of St. Anton of Rome. Moscow lies swathed in a belt and
mantle of monastic houses--Simonoff, Donskoi, Danieloff, Alexiefski,
Ivanofski, and many more; the belfries and domes of which lighten the
wonderful panorama seen from the Sparrow Hills. Pskoff has her
glorious Convent of the Catacombs, all but rivalling that of Kief.
Within the walls, these cloisters are no less splendid than the
promise from without. Their altars and chapels are always fine, the
refectories neat and roomy, the sacristies rich in crosses and
priestly robes. Many fine pictures--fine of their school--adorn the
screens and the royal gates. Nearly all possess portraits of the
Mother and Child encased in gold, and some have lamps and croziers
worth their weight in sterling coin. The greater part of what is
visible of Russian wealth appears to hang around these shrines.
These old monastic houses sprang out of the social life around them.
They were centres of learning, industry, and art. A convent was a
school, and in these schools a special excellence was sought and won.
This stamp has never been effaced; and many of the convents still
aspire to excellence in some special craft. The Convent of St. Sergie,
near Strelna, is famed for music; the New Monastery, near Kherson, for
melons; the Troitsa, near Moscow, for carving; the Catacombs, near
Kief, for service-books.
In the belfry of the old Cathedral of St. Sophia at Novgorod you are
shown a chamber which was formerly used as a treasure-room by the
citizens--in fact, as their place of safety and their tower of
strength. You enter it through a series of dark and difficult
passages, barred by no less than twelve iron doors; each door to be
unfastened by bolt and bar, secured in the catches under separate lock
and key. In this strong place the burghers kept, in times of peril,
their silver plate, their costly icons, and their ropes of pearl. A
robber would not--and a boyar dared not--force the sanctuary of God.
Each convent was, in this respect, a smaller St. Sophia; and every man
who laid up gold and jewels in such a bank could sleep in peace.
"You must understand," said the antiquary of Novgorod, as we paddled
in our boat down the Volkhoff, "that in ancient times a convent was a
home--a family house. A man who made money by trade was minded in his
old age to retire from the city and end his days in peace. In England
such a man would buy him a country-house in the neighborhood of his
native town, in which he would live with his wife and children until
he died. In a country like Old Russia, with brigands always at his
gates, the man who saved money had to put his wealth under the
protection of his church. Selecting a pleasant site, he would build
his house in the name of his patron saint, adorn it with an altar,
furnish it with a kitchen, dormitory, and cellar, and taking with him
his wife, his children, and his pope, would set up his tent in that
secure and comfortable place for the remainder of his days on earth."
"Could such a man have his wife and children near him?"
"Near him! With him; not only in his chapel but in his cell. The
convent was his home--his country-house; and at his death descended to
his son, who had probably become a monk. In some such fashion, many of
the prettiest of these smaller convents on the Volkhoff came to be."
Half the convents in Great Russia were established as country-houses;
the other half as deserts--like Solovetsk; and many a poor fellow
toiled like Zosima who has not been blessed with Zosima's fame.
But such a thing is possible, even now; for Russia has not yet passed
beyond the legendary and heroic periods of her growth. The latest case
is that of the new desert founded at Gethsemane, on the plateau of the
Troitsa, near Moscow; one of the most singular notes of the present
time.
In the year 1803 was born in a log cabin, in a small village called
Prechistoe (Very Clean), near the city of Vladimir, a male serf, so
obscure that his family name has perished. For many years he lived on
his lord's estate, like any other serf, marrying in his own class
(twice), and rearing three strapping sons. At thirty-seven he was
freed by his owner; when he moved from his village to Troitsa, took
the name of Philip, put on cowl and gown, and dug for himself a vault
in the earth. In this catacomb he spent five years of his life, until
he found a more congenial home among the convent graves, where he
lived for twenty years. Too fond of freedom to take monastic vows, he
never placed himself under convent rule. Yet seeing, in spite of the
proverb, that the hood makes the monk in Russia, if not elsewhere, he
robed his limbs in coarse serge, girdled his waist with a heavy chain,
and walked to the palace of Philaret, Metropolite of Moscow, begged
that dignitary's blessing, and craved permission to adopt his name.
Philaret took a fancy to the mendicant; and from that time forth
the whilom serf from Very Clean was known in every street as
Philaret-oushka--Philaret the Less.
Those grave-yards of the Troitsa lay in a pretty and silent spot on
the edge of a lake, inclosed in dark green woods. Among those mounds
the mendicant made his desert. Buying a few images and crosses in
Troitsa and Gethsemane at two kopecks apiece, he carried them into the
streets and houses of Moscow, where he gave them to people, with his
blessing; taking, in exchange, such gifts as his penitents pleased; a
ruble, ten rubles, a hundred rubles each. He very soon had money in
the bank. His images brought more rubles than his crosses; for his
followers found that his images gave them luck, while his crosses sent
them trouble. Hence a woman to whom he gave a cross went home with a
heavy heart. Unlike the practice in western countries, no peasant
woman adorns herself with this memorial of her faith; nor is the cross
a familiar ornament even in mansions of the rich. A priest wears a
cross; a spire is crowned by a cross; but this symbol of our salvation
is rarely seen among the painted and plated icons in a private house.
To "bear the cross" is to suffer pain, and no one wishes to suffer
pain. One cross a man is bound to bear--that hung about his neck at
the baptismal font; but few men care to carry a second weight.
An oddity in dress and speech, Philaret-oushka wore no shoes and
socks, and his greeting in the market was, "I wish you a merry angel's
day," instead of "I wish you well." In his desert, and in his rambles,
he was attended by as strange an oddity as himself; one Ivanoushka,
John the Less. This man was never known to speak; he only sang. He
sang in his cell; he sang on the road; he sang by the Holy Gate. The
tone in which he sang reflected his master's mood; and the voice of
John the Less told many a poor creature whether Philaret the Less
would give her that day an image or a cross.
This mendicant had much success in merchants' shops. The more delicate
ladies shrank from him with loathing, not because he begged their
money, but because he defiled their rooms. Though born in Very Clean,
this serf was dirtier than a monk; but his followers saw in his rusty
chains, his grimy skin, his unkempt hair, so many signs of grace. The
women of the trading classes courted him. A lady told me, that on
calling to see a female friend, the wife of a merchant of the first
guild, she found her kneeling on the floor, and washing this beggar's
feet. Her act was not a form; for the mendicant wore no shoes, and the
streets of Moscow are foul with mire and hard with flints. One old
maid, Miss Seribrikof, used to boast, as the glory of her life, that
she had once been allowed to wash the good man's sores. Young brides
would beg him to attend their nuptial feasts; at which he would
"prophesy" as they call it; hinting darkly at their future of weal or
woe. Sometimes he made a lucky hit. One day, at the wedding-feast of
Gospodin Sorokine, one of the richest men in Moscow, he turned to the
bride and said, "When your feastings are over, you will have to smear
your husband with honey." No one knew what he meant, until three days
later, when Sorokine died; on which event every one remembered that
honey is tasted at all Russian funerals; and the words of Philaret the
Less were likened to that Vision of Zosima, which has since been
painted on the pillar in Novgorod the Great.
Madame Loguinof, one of his rich disciples, gave this mendicant money
enough to build a church and convent, and when these edifices were
raised in the grave-yard of Troitsa his "desert" was complete.
At the age of sixty-five, this idol of the people passed away. When
his high patron died, Philaret the Less was not so happy in his desert
as of yore; for Innocent, the new Metropolite, was a real missionary
of his faith, and not a man to look with favor on monks in masquerade.
Deserting his desert, the holy man went his way from Troitsa into the
province of Tula, where, in the village of Tcheglovo, he built a
second convent, in which he died about a year ago. The two convents
built by his rusty chains and dirty feet are now occupied by bodies of
regular monks.
In these morbid growths of the religious sentiment, the Black Clergy
seek support against the scorn and malice of a reforming world.
These monks have great advantages on their side. If liberal thought
and science are against them, usage and repute are in their favor. All
the high places are in their gift; all the chief forces are in their
hands. The women are with them; and the ignorant rustics are mostly
with them. Monks have always attracted the sex from which they fly;
and every city in the empire has some story of a favorite father
followed, like Philaret the Less, by a female crowd. Vicar Nathaniel
was not worshipped in the Nevski Prospect with a softer flattery than
is Bishop Leonidas in the Kremlin gardens. Comedy but rarely touches
these holy men; yet one may see in Moscow albums an amusing sketch of
this gifted and fascinating man being lifted into higher place upon
ladies' skirts.
The monks have not only got possession of the spiritual power; but
they hold in their hands nearly all the sources of that spiritual
power. They have the convents, catacombs, and shrines. They guard the
bones of saints, and are themselves the stuff of which saints are
made. In the golden book of the Russian Church there is not one
instance of a canonized parish priest.
These celibate fathers affect to keep the two great keys of influence
in a land like Russia--the gift of sacrifice, and the gift of miracles.