SACRIFICE.
Sacrifice is a cardinal virtue of the Church. To the Russian mind it
is the highest form of good; the surest sign of a perfect faith.
Sacrifice is the evidence of a soul given up to God.
A child can only be received into the church through sacrifice; and
one of the forms in which a man gives himself up to heaven is that of
becoming insane "for the sake of Christ."
Last year (1868), a poor creature called Ivan Jacovlevitch died in the
Lunatic Asylum in Moscow, after winning for himself a curious kind of
fame. One-half the world pronounced him mad; a second half respected
him as a holy man. The first half, being the stronger, locked him up,
and kept him under medical watch and ward until he died.
This Ivan, a burgher in the small town of Cherkesovo, made a
"sacrifice" of his health and comfort to the Lord. By sacred vows, he
bound himself never to wash his face and comb his hair, never to
change his rags, never to sit on chair and stool, never to eat at
table, never to handle knife and fork. In virtue of this sacrifice, he
lived like a dog; crouching on the floor, and licking up his food with
lips and tongue. When brought into the madhouse, he was washed with
soap and dressed in calico; but he began to mess himself on purpose;
and his keepers soon gave up the task of trying to keep him clean.
No saint in the calendar draws such crowds to his shrine as Ivan
Jacovlevitch drew to his chamber in this lunatic's house. Not only
servant girls and farmers' wives, but women of the trading classes,
came to him daily; bringing him dainties to eat, making him presents
in money, and telling him all the secrets of their hearts. Sitting on
the ground, and gobbling up his food, he stared at these visitors,
mumbling some words between his teeth, which his listeners racked
their brains to twist and frame into sense. He rolled the crumbs of
his patties into pills, and when sick persons came to him to be cured,
he put these dirty little balls into their mouths. This man was said
to have become "insane for the Lord."
The authorities of the asylum lent him a spacious room in which to
receive his guests. They knew that he was mad; they knew that a
crowded room was bad for him; but the public rush was so strong, that
they could neither stand upon their science, nor enforce their rules.
The lunatic died amidst the tears and groans of half the city. When
the news of his death was noised abroad, a stranger would have thought
the city was also mad. Men stopped in the street to kneel and pray;
women threw themselves on the ground in grief; and a crowd of the
lower classes ran about the bazars and markets, crying, "Ivan is dead!
Ivan is dead! Ah! who will tell us what to do for ourselves, now Ivan
is dead?"
On my table, as I write these words, lies a copy of the _Moscow
Gazette_--the journal which Katkoff edits, in which Samarin
writes--containing a proposal, made by the clergy, for a public
monument to Ivan Jacovlevitch, in the village where this poor lunatic
was born!
All monks prefer to live a life of sacrifice; the highest forms of
sacrifice being that of the recluse and the anchorite.
Every branch of the Oriental Church--Armenian, Coptic, Greek--encourages
this form; but no Church on earth has given the world so many hermits
as the Russ. Her calendar is full of anchorites, and the stories told
of these self-denying men and women are often past belief. One Sister
Maria was nailed up in a niche at Hotkoff, fed through a hole in the
rock, and lingered in her living tomb twelve years.
On the great plateau of the Troitsa, forty miles from Moscow, stands a
monastic village, called Gethsemane. This monastic village is divided
into two parts; the convent and the catacombs; separated by a black
and silent lake.
A type of poverty and misery, the convent is built of rough logs,
colored with coarse paint. Not a trace of gold or silver is allowed,
and the only ornaments are of cypress. Gowns of the poorest serge, and
food of the simplest kind, are given to the monks. No female is
allowed to enter this holy place, excepting once a year, on the feast
of the Virgin's ascent into heaven. Three women were standing humbly
at the gate as we drove in; perhaps wondering why their sex should be
shut out of Gethsemane, since their Lord was not betrayed in the
garden by a female kiss!
Across the black lake lie the catacombs, cut off from the convent by a
gate and fence; for into these living graves it is lawful for a female
to descend. Deep down from the light of day, below the level of that
sombre lake, these catacombs extend. We light each man his taper, as
we stand above the narrow opening into the vaults. A monk, first
crossing his breast and muttering his pass-words in an unknown tongue,
goes down the winding stairs. We follow slowly, one by one in silence;
shading the light and holding to the wall. A faint smell fills our
nostrils; a dull sound greets our ears; heavily comes our breath in
the damp and fetid air. The tapers faint and flicker in the gloom.
Gaining a passage, we observe some grated windows, narrow holes, and
iron-bound doors. These openings lead into cells. The roof above is
wet with slime, the floor is foul with crawling, nameless things.
"Hush!" drones the monk, as he creeps past some grated window and some
iron-clad door, as though he were afraid that we should wake the dead.
"What is this hole in the stone?" The monk stops short and waves his
lurid light: "A cell; a good man lies here; hush! his soul is now with
God!"
"Dead?"
"Yea--dead to the world."
"How long has he been here?"
"How long? Eleven years and more."
Passing this living tomb with a shiver, we catch the boom of a bell,
and soon emerge from the narrow passage into a tiny church. A lamp is
burning before the shrine; two monks are kneeling with their temples
on the floor; a priest is singing in a low, dull tone. The fittings of
this church are all of brass; for pine and birch would rot into paste
in a single year. Beyond the chapel we come to the holy well, the
water of which is said to be good for body and soul. It is certainly
earthy to the taste.
On coming into the light of day, we question the father sharply as to
that recluse who is said to have lived eleven years behind the
iron-clad door; and learn without surprise that he comes out from time
to time, to ring the convent-bell, to fetch in wood, and hear the
news! We learn that a man retired with his son into one of these
catacombs; that he remained in his grave--so to speak--two years and a
half, and then came out completely broken in his health. My eminent
Russian friend, Professor Kapoustin, turns to me and says, "When our
country was covered with forests, when our best road was a rut, and
our villages were all shut in, a man who wished for peace of mind
might wall himself up in a cell; but the country is now open, monks
read newspapers, travellers come and go, and the recluse likes to hear
the news and see the light of day."
Instead of living in their catacombs, the monks now turn a penny by
showing them to pilgrims, at the price of a taper, and by selling to
visitors the portraits of monks and nuns who lived in the sturdier
days of their church.
The spirit of sacrifice takes other and milder forms. In the
court-yards of Solovetsk one sees a strange creature, dressed in rags,
fed on garbage, and lodged in gutters, who belongs to the monastic
order, without being vowed as a regular monk. He lives by sufferance,
not by right. He offers himself up as a daily sacrifice. He follows,
so to speak, the calling of abjectness; and makes himself an example
of the worthlessness of earthly things. This strange being is much run
after by the poorer pilgrims, who regard him as a holy man; and he is
noticeable as a type of what the Black Clergy think meritorious in the
Christian life.
Father Nikita, the name by which this man is known, is a dwarf, four
feet ten inches high, with thin, gray beard, black face, and rat-like
eyes. He never pollutes his skin with water and soap; for what is man
that he should foster pride of the flesh? His garb is a string of rags
and shreds; for he spurns the warmer and more decent habit of a monk.
Instead of going to the store when he needs a frock, he crawls into
the waste-closet, where he begs as a favor that the father having
charge of the castaway clothes will give him the tatters which some
poor brother has thrown aside. A room is left for his use in the
cloister; but a bench of wood and a pillow of straw are things too
good for dust and clay; and in token of his unworthiness, he lives on
the open quay and sleeps in the convent yard. Nobody can persuade him
to sit down to the common meal; the sup of sour quass, the pound of
black bread, the morsel of salt cod being far too sumptuous food for
him; but when the meal is over, and the crumbs are swept up, he will
slink into the pantry, scrape into one dish the slops and bones, and
make a repast of what peasants and beggars have thrown away.
He will not take his place in church; he will not pass through the
Sacred Gates. When service is going on, he crouches in the darkest
corner of the church, and listens to the prayers and chants with his
head upon the ground. He likes to be spurned and buffeted by the
crowd. A servant of every one, he is only too happy if folk will order
him about; and when he can find a wretch so poor and dirty that every
one else shuns him, he will take that dirty wretch to be his lord. In
winter, when the snow lies deep on the ground, he will sleep in the
open yard; in summer, when the heat is fierce, he will expose his
shaven crown to the sun. He loves to be scorned, and spit upon, and
robbed. Like all his class, he is fond of money; and this love of
dross he turns into his sharpest discipline of soul. Twisting plaits
of birch-bark into creels and crates, he vends these articles to
boatmen and pilgrims at two kopecks apiece; ties the copper coins in a
filthy rag; and then creeps away to hide his money under a stone, in
the hope that some one will watch him and steal it when he is gone.
The first monk who held the chair of abjectness in Solovetsk, before
Nikita came in, was a miracle of self-denial, and his death was
commemorated by an act of the rarest grace. Father Nahum is that elder
and worthier sacrifice to heaven.
Nahum is said to have been more abject in manner, more self-denying in
habit, than Nikita; being a person of higher order, and having more
method in his scheme of sacrifice. He abstained from the refuse of
fish, as too great a delicacy for sinful men. He liked to sleep in the
snow. He was only too happy to lie down at a beggar's door. Once, when
he slept outside the convent gates all night, some humorous brother
suggested that perhaps he had been looking out for girls; and on
hearing of this ribald jest he stripped himself nearly naked, poked a
hole in the ice, and sat down in the frozen lake until his feet were
chilled to the bone. A wing of the convent once took fire, and the
monks began to run about with pails; but Nahum rolled a ball of snow
in his palms and threw it among the flames; and as the tongues lapped
higher and higher, he ran to the church, threw himself on the floor,
and begged the Lord to put them out. Instantly, say the monks, the
fire died down. An archimandrite saw him groping in a garden for
potatoes, tearing up the roots with his fingers. "That is cold work,
is it not, Nahum?" asked his kindly chief. "Humph!" said the monk;
"try it." When the present emperor came to Solovetsk, and every one
was anxious to do him service, Nahum walked up to him with a wooden
cup, half full of dirty water, saying, "Drink; it is good enough."
When this professor of abjectness died, he was honored by his brethren
with a special funeral, inside the convent gates. He was buried in the
yard, beneath the cathedral dome; where all day long, in the pilgrim
season, a crowd of people may be seen about the block of granite which
marks his grave; some praying beside the stone, as though he were
already a "friend of God," while others are listening to the stories
told of this uncanonized saint. Only one other monk of Solovetsk has
ever been distinguished by such a mark of grace. Time--and time
only--now seems wanting to Father Nahum's glory. In another
generation--if the Black Clergy hold their own--Nahum of Solovetsk,
canonized already by the popular voice of monks and pilgrims, will be
taken up in St. Isaac's Square, and raised by imperial edict to his
heavenly seat.