MORE NEW SECTS.
On my arrival in the province of Simbirsk, every one is talking of a
singular people, whose proceedings have been recently brought to
light. One Peter Mironoff, a private soldier in the Syzran regiment,
has set up a new religion, which is to be professed in secret and to
have no name. Peter is known as a good sort of man; pious, orderly,
sedate; a soldier never absent from his drill; a penitent who never
shirked his priest. Nothing fantastic was expected from him. It is
said that he began by converting fourteen of his comrades, all of whom
swore that they would hold the truth in private, that they would act
so as to divert suspicion, that they would suffer exile, torture,
death itself, but never reveal the gospel they had heard.
Not being a learned man, and having no respect for books, Peter
rejects all rituals, derides all services, tears up all lives of
saints. He holds that reading and writing are dangerous things, and
takes tradition and a living teacher for his guides. Though waging war
against icons and crosses, on which he stamps and frowns in his secret
rites, he ostentatiously hangs a silver icon in his chamber, and wears
a copper cross suspended from his neck. Teaching his pupils that true
religion lies in a daily battle with the flesh, he urges them to fast
and fast; abstaining, when they fast, from every kind of food, so as
not to mock the Lord; and when they indulge the senses, to reject as
luxuries unfit for children of grace such food as meat and wine, as
milk and eggs, as oil and fish. He warns young people against the sin
of marriage, and he bids the married people live as though they were
not; urging them to lead a life of purity and peace, even such as the
angels are supposed to lead in heaven. By day and night he declares
that the heart of man is full of good and evil; that the good may be
encouraged, the evil discouraged; that fasting and prayer are the only
means of driving out the evil spirits which enter into human flesh.
The men whom Peter has drawn into order reject all mysteries and
signs; they wash themselves in quass, and then drink the slops. They
live in peace with the world, they help each other to get on, and they
implicitly obey a holy virgin whom they have chosen for themselves.
This virgin, a peasant-woman named Anicia, living in the village of
Perevoz, in the province of Tambof, is their actual ruler; one who is
even higher in authority than Peter Mironoff himself. Anicia has been
married about nineteen years. Fallen man, they say, can only have one
teacher; and that one teacher must be a woman and a virgin. After
Anicia, they recognize the Saviour and St. Nicolas as standing next in
rank.
Their service, held in secret, with closed doors and shutters, begins
and ends with songs; brisk music of the romping sort, accompanied by
jumping, hopping, twirling; and a part of their worship has been
borrowed from the Tartar mosques. They stand in prayer. They bow to
the ground in adoration. They make no sign of the cross. Instead of
crying "Save me, pardon me, Mother Mary!" they cry "Save me, pardon
me, Mother Anicia Ivanovna!"
Like all the sectaries, these Nameless Ones reject the official empire
and the official church.
A long time passed before Peter and his fellows were betrayed to the
police, and now that the prophet and virgin have been seized, attempts
are made to pass the matter by as a harmless joke. The Government is
puzzled how to act; nearly all the men and women accused of belonging
to this lawless and blasphemous sect being known through the province
of Simbirsk for their sober and decent lives. The leaders are noted
men, not only as church-goers, but supporters of the clergy in their
struggles against the world. Every man whom the police has seized on
suspicion holds a certificate from his priest, in which his regularity
in coming to confess his sins and receive the sacrament is duly set
forth and signed. Nay, more, the parish priests come forward to
testify in their behalf; for in a society which does not commonly
regard priests with favor, the men who are now accused of irreligion
have set an example of respect for God's ministers by asking them, on
suitable occasions, to their homes.
Mother Anicia, arrested in her village, has been put under the
severest trials; yet nothing has been found against her credit and her
fame. She is forty years old. She has been married nineteen years. A
medical board, appointed by the governor, reports that she is still a
virgin, and her neighbors, far and near, declare that she has lived
amongst them a perfectly blameless life.
The police are not yet beaten in their game. An agent of their own has
sworn to having been present in one of the sheds in which they
conducted their indecent rites. Peter Mironoff, he declares, took down
the ordinary icons from the wall, spat on them, cursed them, banged
them on the floor, leaped on them, and ground them beneath his feet.
After cursing the images, Mironoff kneaded a peculiar cake of ashes,
foul water, and paste, in mockery of the sacred bread, and gave to
every man in the shed a piece of this cake to eat. When they had eaten
this cake, he called on them to strip, each one as naked as when he
was born--garments being a sign of sin; and when they had all obeyed
his words he bade them sing and pray together, in testimony against
the world.
Each man, says this agent, is bound by the rules to choose for himself
a bride of the Spirit, with whom he must live in the utmost purity of
life.
What can a reforming minister do in such a case? A jurist would be
glad to leave such folk alone; but the Holy Governing Synod will not
suffer them to be left alone. Peter and Anicia remain in jail; their
case is under consideration; and the model soldier and blameless
villager will probably end their days in a Siberian mine.
COUNTERS.
In the province of Saratof, a wild steppe country, lying between the
lands of the Kalmuks and the Don Kozaks, I hear of a new sect, called
the Counters or Enumerators (Chislenniki). The high-priest of this
congregation is one Taras Maxim, a peasant of Semenof, one of the
bleak log villages in the black-soil country.
Taras speaks of having been out one night in a wood, when he met a
venerable man, holding in his hands a book. This book had been given
to the old man by an angel, and the old man offered to let Taras read
it. Parting the leaves, he found the writing in the sacred Slavonic
tongue, and the words a message of salvation to all living men. The
book declared that the people of God must be counted and set apart
from the world. It spoke of the Official Church as the Devil's Church.
It showed that men have confused the order of time, so as to profane
with secular work the day originally set apart for rest; that Thursday
is the seventh day, the true Sabbath, to be kept forever holy in the
name of God. It mentioned saints and angels with contempt; denounced
the official fasts as works of Satan; and proclaimed in future only
one fast a year. It spoke of the seven sacraments as delusions, to be
wholly banished from the Church of God. It said the priesthood was
unnecessary and unlawful; every man was a priest, empowered by Heaven
to confess penitents, to read the service, and inter the dead.
Having read all these things, and some others, in the book, Taras
Maxim left his venerable host in the wood, and going back into
Semenof, told a friend what he had seen and learned. Men and women
listened to his tale, and, being anxious for salvation, they counted
themselves off from a corrupt society, and founded the Secret Semenof
Church.
So far as I could learn--the sect being unlawful, and the rites
performed in private--one great purpose seems to inspire these
Counters; that of pouring contempt, in phrase and gesture, on the
forms of legal and official life. Sometimes, I can hardly doubt, they
carry this protest to the length of indecent riot. Holding that Sunday
is not a holy day, they meet in their sheds and barns on Sunday
morning, while the village pope is saying mass, and having closed the
door and planted watchers in the street, they sing and dance, they
gibe and sneer; using, it is said, the roughest Biblical language to
denounce, the coarsest Oriental methods to defile, the neighbors whom
they regard as enemies of God.
Semenof stands east of Jerusalem, and even east of Mecca.
Maxim's chief theological tenet refers to sin. Man has to be saved
from sin. Unless he sins, he can not be saved. To commit sin, is
therefore the first step towards redemption. Hence it is inferred by
the police that Maxim and his pupils rather smile on sinners,
especially on female sinners, as persons who are likely to become the
objects of peculiar grace. Outside their body, these Counters are
regarded, even by liberal men, as an immoral and unsocial sect.
NAPOLEONISTS.
In Moscow I hear of a body of worshippers who have the singular
quality of drawing their hope from a foreign soil. These men are
Napoleonists. Like all the dissenting sects, they hate the official
empire and deride the Official Church. Seeing that the chief enemy of
Russia in modern times was Napoleon, they take him to have been,
literally, that Messiah which he assumed to be, in a certain mystical
sense, to the oppressed and divided Poles; and they have raised the
Corsican hero into the rank of a Slavonic god.
Their society is secret, and their worship private. That they live and
thrive, as an organized society, is affirmed by those who know their
country well. Their meetings are held with closed doors and windows,
under the very eyes of the police; but this is the case with so many
sects in Moscow, that their immunity from detection need excite no
wonder in our eyes. Making a sort of altar in their room, they place
on it a bust of the foreign prince, and fall on their knees before it.
Busts of Napoleon are found in many houses; in none more frequently
than in those of the imperial race. I have been in most of these
imperial dwellings, and do not recollect one, from the Winter Palace
to the Farm, in which there was not a bust of their splendid foe.
The Napoleonists say their Messiah is still alive, and in the flesh;
that he escaped from the snares of his enemies; that he crossed the
seas from St. Helena to Central Asia; that he dwells in Irkutsk, near
Lake Baikal, on the borders of Chinese Tartary; that in his own good
time he will come back to them, heal their sectional quarrels, raise a
great army, and put the partisans of Satan, the reigning dynasty and
acting ministers, to the sword.