ST. GEORGE.
St. George is a patron saint of all the Slavonic nations; whether Wend
or Serb, Russine or Russ, Polack or Czeck; but he is worshipped with
peculiar reverence by the elder Russ. His days are their chief
festivals; the days on which it is good for them to buy and sell, to
pledge and marry, to hire a house, to lease a field, to start an
enterprise. Two days in the year are dedicated in his name,
corresponding in their idiom and their climate to the first day of
spring and the last day of autumn; days of gladness to all men and
women who live by tending flocks and tilling fields. On the first of
these days the sheds are opened, the cattle go forth to graze, the
shepherd takes up his crook, the dairy-maid polishes her pots and
pans. The second day is a kind of harvest-home, the labor of the year
being over, the harvest garnered, and the flocks penned up. But George
is a city saint as well as a rustic saint. His image is the cognizance
of their free cities, and of their old republics; and the figure of
the knight in conflict with the dragon has been borne in every period
by their dukes, their grand dukes, and their Tsars. His badge occurs
on a thousand crosses, amulets, and charms; dividing the affections of
a pious and superstitious race with images of the Holy Trinity and the
Mother of God. The knight in conflict with the dragon was proudly
borne on the shield of Moscow hundreds of years before the Black Eagle
was added to the Russian flag. That eagle was introduced by Ivan the
Third; a prince who began the work (completed by his grandson, Ivan
the Fourth) of crushing the great boyars and destroying the free
cities. Ivan copied that emblem from the Byzantine flag; a symbol of
his autocratic power, which many of his people read as a sign that
devil-worship was the new religion of his army and his court. They saw
in this black and ravening bird the Evil Spirit, just as they saw in
the white and innocent dove the Holy Ghost. To soothe their fears, St.
George was quartered on the Black Eagle; not in his talons, but on his
breast; and in this form the Christian warrior figures on every
Russian flag and Russian coin.
St. George was the patron of an agricultural and pacific race; a
country that was pious, rich, and free; and what he was in ancient
times he still remains in the national heart. As the patron of
soldiers he is hardly less popular with princes than peasants. Peter
the Great engraved the figure of St. George on his sword; the Empress
Catharine founded an order in his name; and Nicolas built in his honor
a magnificent marble hall. Yet the high place and typical shrine of
St. George is Novgorod the Great.
For miles above and miles below the red kremlin walls at Novgorod, the
Volkhof banks are beautiful with gardens, country houses, and monastic
piles. These swards are bright with grass and dark with firs; the
houses are of Swiss-like pattern; and the convents are a wonder of the
land. St. Cyril and St. Anton lend their names to masses of
picturesque building; but the glory of this river-side scenery is the
splendid monastery of St. George.
Built by Jaroslav, a son of St. Vladimir, on a ridge of high ground,
near the point where Lake Ilmen flows into the river Volkhof, the
Convent of St. George stood close to an ancient town called Gorod
Itski--City of Strength--literally, Fenced Town. Of this fenced town,
a church, with frescoes older than those of Giotto, still remains; a
church on a bluff, with a quaint old name of Spas Nereditsa:
literally, Our Saviour Beyond Bounds. In these old names old tales lie
half-entombed. From this fenced town, the burghers, troubled by a
fierce democracy, appear to have crossed the river and built for
themselves a kremlin (that is to say, a stone inclosure) two miles
lower down the stream, on a second ridge of ground, separated from the
first by an impassable swamp. This new city, called Novgorod (New
Town), was to become a wonder of the earth; a trading republic, a
rival of Florence and Augsburg, a mother of colonies, a station of the
Hanseatic League.
The old Church of our Saviour Beyond Bounds, and the still older
Convent of St. George on the opposite bank, were left in the open
country; left to the neglects of time and to the ravages of those
Tartar begs who swept these plains from Moscow to the gates of Pskof.
Neglect, if slow, was steady in her task of ruining that ancient
church, now become a landmark only; but a landmark equally useful to
the critic of church history, and to the raftsman guiding his float
across the lake. As we leave the porch, an old man, standing uncovered
near the door, calls out, "You come to see the church--the poor old
church--but no one gives a ruble to repair the poor old church! It is
St. George's Day; yet no one here remembers the dear old church! Look
up at the Mother of God; see how she is tumbling down; yet no man
comes to save her! Give some rubles, Gospodin, to our Blessed Lady,
Mother of God!" The old man sighs and sobs these words in a voice that
seems to come from a breaking heart.
St. George was able to defend his cells and shrines; and in all the
ravages committed by Tartar hordes, the rich convent near Lake Ilmen
was never profaned by Moslem hoof. Cold critics assume that the belt
of peat and bog lying south of Novgorod for a hundred miles was the
true defense; but the poets of Novgorod assert, in many a song and
tale, that they owed their safety from the infidel spoilers to no
freak of nature and no arm of flesh. St. George defended his convent
and his city by a standing miracle; and, in return for his protecting
grace, the people of this province came to kneel and pray, as their
fathers for a thousand years have knelt and prayed, before his holy
shrine.
My visit to the Convent of St. George is paid (in company with Father
Bogoslovski, Russian pope, and Mr. Michell, English diplomat) on the
autumnal festival of the saint. Three or four thousand pilgrims,
chiefly from the town and province of Novgorod, camp in a green
meadow; their carts unyoked; their horses tethered to the ground;
their camp-fires lighted here and there. Each pilgrim brings a present
to St. George; a load of hay, a sack of flour, a pot of wax, a roll of
linen, an embroidered flag. That poor old creature, who can hardly
walk, has brought him a ball of thread; a widow's mite, as welcome as
an offering in gold and silver. Booths are built for the sale of bread
and fruit; tea is fizzing on fifty stalls; grapes, nuts, and apples
are sold on every side. The peasants are warmly and brightly clad: the
men in sheep-skin vests, fur caps, and boots; the women in damask
gowns and jackets, quilted and puckered, the edges fringed with silver
lace. A fine day tempts the women and children to throw themselves on
the green in groups. Monks move among the crowd; country folk stare at
the finery; hawkers chaffer with the girls; and more than one
transparent humbug makes a market of relics and pious ware. Every one
is in holiday humor; and the general aspect of the field in front of
the convent gates is that of a village fair, with just a dash of the
revival camp.
The worshippers are a placid, kindly, and (for the moment) a sober
folk, with quaint expressions and old-world manners. On the boat we
hear a rustic say to his neighbor, "If you are not a noble, take your
bundle off that bench and let me sit down; if you are a noble, go into
the best cabin, your proper place." The neighbor sets his bundle down,
and the newcomer drops into his seat, saying, "See, there is room for
all Christians; we are equal here, being all baptized." An English
churl might have said he had "paid his fare." On board the same boat a
man replies to the steward, who wishes to turn him out of the
dining-room, "Am I not a Christian, and why should I go out?" On
hiring a boat to cross the river, Father Bogoslovski says to the
oarsman, "Take your sheep-skin; you will get a cold." "No; thank you,"
answers the waterman, "we never take cold if God is with us." Another
boatman tells us we are doing a "good work" in visiting the shrines.
"Once," he says, "I was sick, and died; but I prayed to my angel
Lazarus to let me live again. He listened to my prayers, not for my
own sake, but for that of my brother, who had just come back from
Solovetsk. My soul came back, and we were very glad. Your angel can
always fetch back your soul, unless it has gone too far." Here stands
a group of men; a young fellow with a basket of red apples, two or
three lads, and an old peasant, evidently a stranger to these parts.
"Eat an apple with me, uncle," says the young fellow to his elder; for
a rustic, who addresses a stranger of his own age as "brother," always
speaks to elderly ones as "uncle." "Very nice apples," says the
stranger, "where were they blessed?" "In St. Sophia's, yonder; try
them." Apples are blessed in church on August 6th, the feast of the
transfiguration; the earliest day on which such garden fruit is
certain to be ripe. It is an old popular custom, maintained by the
Church, in the simple interest of the public health.
The scene is lovely. From the belfry of St. George--a shaft to compare
with the Porcelain Tower--you command a world of encircling pines,
through which flow, past your feet, the broad and idle waters of the
Volkhof; draining the ample lake, here shining on your right. Below
you spreads the deep and difficult marsh; and on the crests of a
second ridge of land springs up a forest of spires and battlements,
rich in all radiant hues; red walls, white towers, green domes, and
golden pinnacles; here the kremlin and cathedral, there the city gate
and bridge; and yonder, across the stream, the trading town, the
bazar, and Yaroslav's Tower; the long and picturesque line of Novgorod
the Great.
A bell of singular sweetness soothes the senses like a spell. At one
stall you drink tea; no stronger liquor being sold at the convent
gate. At a second stall you buy candles; to be lighted and left on the
shrines within. At a third you get consecrated bread; a present for
your friends and domestics far away. This fine white bread, being
stamped with the cross and blessed, is not to be bought with money;
for how could the flesh of our Lord be sold for coin? It is exchanged.
You give a man twenty kopecks; he gives you a loaf of bread. Gift for
gift is not barter--you are told--but brotherly love. On trying the
same thing at an apple-stall, the result appears to you much the same.
You pay down so many kopecks; you take up so much fruit; the quantity
strictly measured by the amount of coin laid down. You see no
difference between the two? Then you are not an Oriental, not a
pilgrim of St. George.
Some twelve or fifteen thousand men and women bring their offerings,
in kind and money, every spring and autumn, to the shrine of this
famous saint.