OLD BELIEVERS.
The new service-books and crosses were ordered to be used in every
Church. The Church which used them was declared official, orthodox,
and holy. Every other form of public worship was put under curse and
ban.
Princes, Vladikas, generals, all made haste to pray in the form most
pleasing to their Tsar. Cajoled and terrified by turns, the monks
became in a few years orthodox enough; and many of the parish priests,
on being much pressed by the police, marched over to the stronger
side. Not all; not nearly all; for thousands of the country clergymen
resisted all commands to introduce into their services these suspected
books; contending that the changes wrought in the sacred texts were
neither warranted by fact nor justified by law. They treated them as
the daring labor of a single man. Not all of those who held out
against Nikon could pretend to be scholars and critics; but neither,
they alleged, was Nikon himself a scholar and a critic. When he came
to Solovetsk he was an ignorant peasant, too old to learn; when he was
driven from Anzersk by his outraged brethren, he was as ignorant of
letters as when he came. Since that time he had led a life of travel
and intrigue. If they were feeble judges, he was also a feeble judge.
Clinging fast to their venerable forms, the clergy kept their altars
open to a people whom neither soldiers nor police could drive to the
new matins and the new mass. Many of the burghers, most of the
peasants, doggedly refused to budge from their ancient chapels, to
forego their favorite texts. They were Old Believers; they were the
Russian Church; Nikon was the heretic, the sectarian, the dissident;
and, strong in these convictions, they set their teeth against every
man who fell away from the old national rite to the new official rite.
From those evil times, the people have been parted into two hostile
camps; a camp of the Ancient Faith, and a camp of the Orthodox Faith;
a parting which it is no abuse of words to describe as the heaviest
blow that has ever fallen upon this nation; heavier than the Polish
invasion, heavier than the Tartar conquest; since it sets brother
against brother, and puts their common sovereign at the head of a
persecuting board of monks.
One consequence of these Old Believers being driven into relations of
enmity towards the Government is the weakening of Russia on every
side. The Church is shorn of her native strength; the civil power
usurps her functions; and the man who brought these evils on her was
deposed from his high rank. Nikon was hardly in his grave before the
office of Patriarch was abolished; and the Church was virtually
absorbed into the State. The Orthodox Church became a Political
Church; extending her limits, and ruling her congregations by the
secular arm. Imperious and intolerant, she allows no reading of the
Bible, no exercise of thought, no freedom of opinion, within her pale.
The Old Believers suffer, in their turn, not only from the
persecutions to which their "obstinacy" lays them open, but from the
isolation into which they have fallen.
From the moment of their protest down to the present time, these Old
Believers have been driven, by their higher virtues, into giving an
unnatural prominence to ancient habits and ancient texts. Living in an
old world, they see no merit in the new. According to their earnest
faith, the reign of Antichrist began with Nikon; and since the time of
Nikon every word spoken in their country has been false, every act
committed has been wrong.
Like a Moslem and like a Jew, an Old Believer of the severer classes
may be known by sight. "An Old Believer?" says a Russian friend, as we
stand in a posting-yard, watching some pilgrims eat and drink; "an Old
Believer? Yes."
"How do you read the signs?"
"Observe him; see how he puts the potatoes from him with a shrug. That
is a sign. He eats no sugar with his glass of tea; that also is a
sign. The chances are that he will not smoke."
"Are all these notes of an Old Believer?"
"Yes; in these northern parts. At Moscow, Nijni, and Kazan, you will
find the rule less strict--especially as to drinking and smoking--least
of all strict among the Don Kozaks."
"Are the Don Kozaks Old Believers?"
"Most of them are so; some say all. But the Government of Nicolas
strove very hard to bring them round; and seeing that these Kozaks
live under martial law, their officers could press them in a hundred
ways to obey the wishes of their Tsar. Their Atamans conformed to the
Emperor's creed; and many of his troopers so far yielded as to hear an
official mass. Yet most of them stood out; and many a fine young
fellow from the Don country went to the Caucasus, rather than abandon
his ancient rite. You should not trust appearances too far, even among
those Don Kozaks; for it is known that in spite of all that popes and
police could do, more than half the Kozaks kept their faith; and fear
of pressing them too far has led, in some degree, to the more tolerant
system now in vogue."
"You find some difference, then, even as regards adherence to the
ancient rite, between the north country and the south?"
"It must be so; for in the north we live the true Russian life. We
come of a good stock; we live apart from the world; and we walk in our
fathers' ways. We never saw a noble in our midst; we hold to our
native saints and to our genuine Church."
The signs by which an Old Believer is to be distinguished from the
Orthodox are of many kinds; some domestic--such as his way of eating
and drinking; others devotional--such as his way of making the cross
and marking the consecrated bread.
An Old Believer has a strong dislike to certain articles; not because
they are bad in themselves, but simply because they have come into use
since Nikon's time. Thus, he eats no sugar; he drinks no wine; he
repudiates whisky; he smokes no pipe.
An Old Believer of the sterner sort has come to live alone; even as a
Hebrew or a Parsee lives alone. He has taken hold of the Eastern
doctrine that a thing is either clean or unclean, as it may happen to
have been touched by men of another creed. Hence he must live apart.
He can neither break bread with a stranger, nor eat of flesh which a
heretic has killed. He can not drink from a pitcher that a stranger's
lip has pressed. In his opinion false belief defiles a man in body and
in soul; and when he is going on a journey, he is tortured like a
Hebrew with the fear of rendering himself unclean. He carries his
water-jug and cup, from which no stranger is allowed to drink. He
calls upon his comrades only, since he dares not eat his brown bread,
and drain his basin of milk in a stranger's house. Yet homely morals
cling to these men no less than homely ways. An Old Believer is not
more completely set apart from his neighbors of the Orthodox rite by
his peculiar habits, than by his personal virtues. Even in the north
country, where folk are sober, honest, industrious, far beyond the
average Russian, these members of the Popular Church are noticeable
for their probity and thrift. "If you want a good workman," said to me
an English mill-owner, "take an Old Believer, especially in a
flax-mill."
"Why in a flax-mill?"
"You see," replied my host, "the great enemy of flax is fire; and
these men neither drink nor smoke. In their hands you are always safe."