RAGOSKI.
Ragoski, another cemetery of the Old Believers, in the suburbs of
Moscow, has a different story, and belongs to a second branch of the
Popular Church. There is a party of Old Believers "with priests" and a
party "without priests." Ragoski belongs to the party with priests;
Preobrajenski to the party without priests.
One party in the Popular Church believes that the priesthood has been
lost; the other party believes that it has been saved. Both parties
deny the Orthodox Church; but the more liberal branch of the Popular
Church allows that a true priesthood may exist in other Greek
communions, by the bishops of which a line of genuine pastors may be
ordained.
"You wish to visit the Ragoski?" asks my host. "Then we must look to
our means. The chiefs of Ragoski are suspicious; and no wonder; the
times of persecution are near them still. In the reign of Nicolas, the
Ragoski was shut up, the treasury was seized, and many of the
worshippers were sent away--no one knows whither; to Siberia, to
Archangel, to Imeritia--who shall say? Alexander has given them back
their own; but they can not tell how long the reign of grace may last.
An order from Prince Dolgorouki might come to-morrow; their property
might be seized, their chapel closed, their hospital emptied, and
their graves profaned. It is not likely; it is not probable; for the
favor shown to this cemetery is a part of our general progress, not an
isolated act of imperial grace. But these Old Believers, caring little
about general progress, give the glory to God. If you told them they
are tolerated, as Jews are tolerated, they would think you mad; 'The
Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the
Lord.' Who among them knows when the evil day may come? Hence, they
suspect a stranger. Not twenty men in Moscow, out of their own
communion, have been within their gates. The cemetery will be hard to
enter; hard as to enter your own Abode of Love."
By happy chance, a gentleman calls while we are talking of ways and
means, who is not only an Old Believer, but an Old Believer of the
branch with priests. A short man, white and wrinkled, with a keen gray
eye, a serious face, and speech that takes you by its wonderful force
and fire, this gentleman is a trader in the city, living in a fine
house, and giving away in charities the income of a prince. I know one
man to whom he sends every year a thousand rubles, as a help for poor
students at the university. This good citizen is a banker, trader,
mill-owner, what not; he is able, prompt, adroit; he gives good
dinners; and is hand-and-glove with every one in power. I have heard
folks say--by way of parable, no doubt--that all the police of Moscow
are in his pay. You also hear whispers that this banker, trader, what
not, is a priest; not of the ordained and apostolic order, but one of
those popular priests whom the Synod hunts to death. Who knows?
"You are an Old Believer," he begins, addressing his speech to me. "I
know that from your book on The Holy Land; every word of which
expresses the doctrines held by the Russian Church in her better
days."
My host explains my great desire to see the cemetery of Ragoski. "You
shall be welcomed there like a friend. Let me see; shall I go with
you? No; it will be better for you to go alone. The governor, Ivan
Kruchinin, shall be there to receive you. I will write." He dashes off
a dozen lines of introduction, written in the tone and haste of a
recognized chief.
Armed with this letter we start next day, and driving through the
court-yards of the Kremlin, have to pull up our drojki, to allow a
train of big black horses to go prancing by. It is the train of
Innocent, metropolite of Moscow, taking the air in a coach-and-six!
"This Ragoski cemetery," says the councillor of state, as we push
through the China Town into the suburbs, "had an origin like that of
the Transfiguration. It was opened on account of plague (1770), not by
a single founder, like its rival, but by a company of pious persons,
anxious to consecrate the ground in which they had already begun to
lay their dead. A chapel was erected, and a daily service was
performed in that chapel for eighty-six years. Of late, the police are
said to have troubled them very much; no one knows why; and no one
dares to ask any questions on such a point. We are all too much afraid
of the gentlemen in cowl and gown."
In about an hour we are at the gates. The place is like a desert,
brightened by one gaudy pile. An open yard and silent office; a wall
of brick; a painted chapel, in the old Russ style; a huge tabernacle
of plain red brick; a wilderness of mounds and tombs: this is Ragoski.
Not a soul is seen except one aged man in homely garb, who is carrying
logs of wood. This man uncaps as we drive past; but turns and watches
us with furtive eyes. Our letter is soon sent in; but we are evidently
scanned like pilgrims at Marsaba; and twenty minutes elapse before the
governor comes to us, cap in hand, and begs us to walk in.
A small, round man, with ruddy face and laughing eyes, and tender,
plaintive manner, Ivan Kruchinin is not much like the men we see
about--men who have a lean, sad look and fearful eyes, as though they
lived in the conscious eclipse of light and faith. Coming to our
carriage-door, he begs us to step in, and puts his service smilingly
at our will.
"What is this new edifice with the gay old Tartar lozenges and bars?"
"Ugh?" sighs the governor.
"One of the last efforts made to win these Old Believers over," says
the councillor of state. "You see the monks have gone to work with
craft. The pile is Russ outside, like many old chapels in Moscow;
piles which catch the eye and impress the mind. They call it an Old
Believers' Chapel; they have built it as the Roman centurion built the
Jews a synagogue; and they hold a service in it, as they hold a
service in the Transfiguration; said and sung by Orthodox popes, but
in the language and the forms employed before Nikon's time."
Inside, the chapel is arranged to suit an Old Believer's taste; and
every point of ritual, phrase and form is yielded to such as will
accept the ministry of an Orthodox priest.
"Do they draw any part of your flock?"
"Not a soul," says the governor. "A few of those 'without priests,'
have joined them in despair; not many--not a hundred; while thousands
of their people are coming round to us."
"These converts, who accept an Orthodox priest and the ancient ritual,
are called the United Old Believers--are they not?"
"United! They--the new schismatics! We know them not; we hate all
sects; and these misguided men are adding to our country another
sect."
Passing the cemetery yards, ascending some broad stone steps, we stand
at a chapel door. This door is closed, and all around us reigns the
silence which befits a tomb. Kruchinin makes a sign; his tap is
answered from within; a door swings back; and out upon us floats a
low, weird chant. Going through the door, we find ourselves in a
spacious church, columned and pictured, with a noble dome. This is the
Old Believers' church. A few dim lamps are burning on the shrines;
some tapers flit and mingle near the royal gates; a crowd of women
kneel on the iron floor, not only in the aisles, but across the nave.
Advancing with our guide, up the central aisle, we come upon a line of
men, some prostrate on the ground, some standing erect in prayer. A
group of singers and readers stands apart, in front of the royal
gates, with service-books and candles in their hands, reciting in a
sweet, monotonous drone the ritual of the day.
As a surprise the scene is perfect.
"Who are these readers and singers?"
"Citizens of Moscow," says the governor; "bankers, farmers, men of
every trade and class."
We stand aside until the service ends--a most impressive service, with
louder prayers and livelier bendings than you hear and see in Orthodox
cathedrals. Then we move about. "What is the service just concluded?"
Kruchinin bends his eyes to the ground, and answers, "Only a layman's
service; one that can be said without a priest. You noticed, perhaps,
that neither the royal gates nor the deacon's doors were opened?"
"Yes; how is that?"
"Our altars have been sealed."
"Your altars sealed?"
"Yes; you shall see. Come round this way," and the governor leads us
to the deacon's door. Sealed; certainly sealed; the door being nailed
by a piece of leather to the screen; and the leather itself attached
by a fresh blotch of official wax. It looks as if the persecution were
come again.
"How can such things be done?"
"Our Emperor does not know it," sighs the governor, who seems to be a
thoroughly patriotic man; "it is the doing of our clerical police. We
ask to have the use of our own altar, in our own church, according to
the law. They say we shall have it, on one condition. They will give
us our altar, if we accept their priest!"
"And you refuse?"
"What can we do? Their priests have not been properly ordained; they
have lost their virtue; they can not give the blessing and absolve
from sin. We have declined; our altars continue sealed; and our people
have to sing and pray, as in the synagogues of Galilee, without a
priest."
"That was not always so?"
"In other days we had our clergy, living with us openly in the light
of day; but when our cemetery was restored to us by our good Emperor
in 1856, some trouble came upon us from the Synod on the subject of
consecration, and we have not yet lived that trouble down."
"The prelates in St. Isaac's Square object to your priests receiving
ordination at the hands of foreign bishops?"
"Yes; they wish us to receive the Holy Spirit from them; from men who
have it not to give! We can not live a lie; and we decline their offer
to consecrate our priests."
"You have no popular priests?" "No."
"If you have no priests, how can you marry and baptize infants?"
"According to the law of God."
"Without a priest?"
"No; with a priest. We have a priest for such things; though we can
not suffer him to risk Siberia by performing a public office in our
church. Father Anton lives in secret. In the bazar of Moscow he is
known as a merchant, dealing in grain and stuffs. The world knows
nothing else about him; even the police have never suspected _him_ of
being a priest."
"He is ordained?"
"You know that some of our brethren live in Turkey and in Austria,
where the Turks and Germans grant them asylums which they have not
always found at home. A good many Old Believers dwell in a village,
called Belia Krinitza, in the country lying at the feet of the
Carpathians, just beyond the frontiers of Podolia and Bessarabia. One
Ambrosius, a Greek prelate from Bulgaria, visited these refugees, and
consecrated their Bishop Cyril, who is still alive. Cyril consecrated
Father Anton, our Moscow priest."
"Father Anton marries and christens the members of your church?"
"He does, in secret. In his worldly name he buys and sells, like any
other dealer in his shop."
"You live in hope that the persecution will not come again?"
"We live to suffer, and _not_ to yield."
Passing into the hospital, we find a hundred men, in one large
edifice; four hundred women in a second large edifice. The rooms are
very clean; the beds arranged in rows, the kitchens and baking houses
bright. A woman stands at a desk, before a Virgin, and reads out
passages from the gospels and the psalms. Each poor old creature drops
a courtesy as we pass her bed, and after we have eaten of their bread
and salt, in the common dining-hall, they gather in a line and cross
themselves, bending to the ground, thanking us, as though we had
conferred on them some special grace.
These asylums of the Old Believers are the only free charities in
Russia; for the hospitals in towns are Government works, supported by
the state. The Black Clergy does little for the poor, except to supply
them with crops of saints, and bring down persecution on the Popular
Church.
On driving back to Moscow, in the afternoon--pondering on what we have
seen and heard--the lay singers, the clean asylum, and the sealed-up
altar--we arrive under the Kremlin wall in time to find the mitred
monk in our front again, just dashing with his splendid coach and six
black horses through the Holy Gate!