A CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION.
In the great conflict between monks and parish priests, the ignorant
classes side with the monks, the educated classes with the parish
priests.
The Black Clergy, having no wives and children, stand apart from the
world, and hold a doctrine hostile to the family spirit. Their
rivals--though they have faults, from which the clergy in countries
more advanced are free--are educated and social beings; and taking
them man for man through all their grades, it is impossible to deny
that the parish priests are vastly superior to the monks.
Yet the White Clergy occupied (until 1869) a place in every way
inferior to the Black. They were an isolated caste; they held no
certain rank; they could not rise in the Church; they exercised no
power in her councils. Once a priest, a man was a priest forever. A
monk might live to be Rector, Archimandrite, Bishop, and Metropolite.
Not so a married priest; the round of whose duty was confined to his
parish work--to christening infants, to confessing women, to marrying
lovers, to reading prayers for the dead, to saying mass, to collecting
fees, and quarrelling with the peasants about his tithe. A monk
directed his education; a monk appointed him to his cure of souls; a
monk inspected his labor, and loaded him with either praise or blame.
A body of monks could drive him from his parish church; throw him into
prison; utterly destroy the prospects of his life.
Great changes have been made in the present year; changes of deeper
moment to the nation than any thing effected in the Church since the
reforms of Peter the Great.
This work of reform was started by the Emperor throwing open the
clerical service to all the world, and putting an end to that
customary succession of father and son as popes. Down to this year,
the clergy has been a class apart, a sacred body, a Levitical
order--in brief, a _caste_. Russia had her priestly families, like the
Tartars and the Jews; and all the sons of a pope were bound to enter
into the Church. This Oriental usage has been broken through. The
clergy has been freed from a galling yoke, and the service has been
opened to every one who may acquire the learning and enjoy the call.
Young men, who would otherwise have been forced to take orders, will
now be able to live by trade; the crowd of clerical idlers will melt
away; and many a poor student with brains will be drawn into the
spiritual ranks. This great reform is being carried forward less by
edicts which would fret the consciences of ignorant men than by the
application of general rules. To wit: a question has arisen whether,
under this open system, the old rule of "once a priest, always a
priest," holds good. It is a serious question, not for individuals
only, but for the clerical society; and the monks have been moving
heaven and earth to have their rule of "once a priest, always a
priest" confirmed. But they have failed. No rule has been laid down in
words, but a precedent has been laid down in fact.
Father Goumilef, a parish priest in the town of Riazan, applies for
leave to give up his frock and re-enter the world. Count Tolstoi,
Minister of Education, and the Emperor's personal representative in
the Holy Governing Synod, persuades that body to support Goumilef's
prayer. On the 12th of November (Oct. 31, O.S.)--a red-letter day
henceforth in the Russian calendar--the Emperor signs his release;
allowing Goumilef to return from the clerical to the secular life. All
his rights as a citizen are restored, and he is free to enter the
public service in any province of the empire, save only that of
Riazan, in which he has served the altar as a parish priest.
Connected with the abolition of caste came the new laws regulating the
standing of a parish priest's children--laws conceived in a most
gracious spirit. All sons of a parish priest are in future to rank as
nobles; sons of a deacon are to be accounted gentlemen; sons of
readers are to rank as burghers.
In his task of raising the parish clergy to a higher level, the
reforming Emperor has found a tower of strength in Innocent, the
noticeable man who occupies, in Troitsa, the Archimandrite's chair, in
Moscow, the Metropolite's throne.
Innocent passed his early years as a married priest in Siberia--doing,
in the wild countries around the shores of Lake Baikal, genuine
missionary work. A noble wife went with him to and fro; heaven blessed
him with children; and the father learned how to speak with effect to
sire and son. Thousands of converts blessed the devoted pair. At
length the woman fainted by the way, and Innocent was left to mourn
her loss; but not alone; their children remained to be his pride and
stay.
When the Holy Governing Synod raised the missionary region of Irkutsk
into a bishop's see, the crozier was forced upon Innocent by events.
Already known as the Apostle of Siberia, the synod could do little
more than note the fact, and give him official rank. Of course, a
mitre implied a cowl and gown; but Innocent, though his wife was dead,
refused to become a monk. In stronger words than he was wont to use,
he urged that the exclusion of married popes from high office in the
priesthood was a custom, not a canon, of his Church. To every call
from the monks he answered that every man should be called to labor in
the vineyard of the Lord according to his gifts. He yielded for the
sake of peace; but though he took the vows, he held to his views on
clerical celibacy, and the White Clergy had now a bishop to whom they
could look up as a worthy champion of their cause.
On the death of Philaret, two years ago, this friend of the White
Clergy was chosen by the Emperor to take his seat; so that now the
actual Archimandrite of Troitsa, and Metropolite of Moscow, though he
wears the cowl, is looked upon in Church society as a supporter of the
married priests.
By happy chance, a first step had been taken towards one great reform
by Philaret, in raising to the chair of Rector of the Ecclesiastical
Academy of Moscow a priest who was not a monk.
Forty miles to the north of Moscow rises a table-land, on the edge of
which is built a convent dedicated to the Holy Trinity, called in
Russian, Troitsa. This convent is said to be the richest in the world;
not only in sacred dust and miraculous images, but in cups and
coffers, in wands and crosses, in lamps and crowns. The shrine of St.
Sergie, wrought in the purest silver, weighs a thousand pounds; and in
the same cathedral with St. Sergie's shrine there is a relievo of the
Last Supper, in which all the figures, save that of Judas, are of
finest gold. But these costly gauds are not the things which draw
pilgrims to the Troitsa. They come to kneel before that Talking
Madonna which, once upon a time, held speech with Serapion, a holy
monk. They crowd round that portrait of St. Nicolas, which was struck
by a shot from a Polish siege-gun, in the year of tribulation, when
the Poles had made themselves masters of Moscow and the surrounding
plains. They come still more to kiss the forehead of St. Sergie, the
self-denying monk, who founded the convent, and blessed the banner of
Dimitri, before that prince set forth on his campaign against the
Tartar hordes on the Don. St. Sergie is the defense of his country,
and his grave in the convent has never been polluted by the footprint
of a foe. Often as Moscow fell, the Troitsa remained inviolate ground.
The Tartars never reached it. Twice, if not more, the Poles advanced
against it; once with a mighty power, and the will to reduce it, cost
them what lives it might. They lay before it sixteen months, and had
to retire from before the walls at last. The French under Napoleon
wished to seize it, and a body of troops was sent to the attack; but
the saintly presence which had driven off the Poles was too much for
the French. The troops returned, and the virgin convent stood.
These miracles of defense have given a vast celebrity to the saint,
who has come to be thought not only holy himself, but a cause of
holiness in others. On the way from Moscow to Troitsa stands the
hamlet of Hotkoff, in which lies the dust of Sergie's father and
mother; over whose tombs a church and convent have been built. Every
pilgrim on the road to Troitsa stops at this convent and adores their
bones. "Have you been to Troitsa before?" we heard a pilgrim ask his
fellow, as they trudged along the road. "Yes, thanks be to God." "Has
Sergie given you what you came to seek?" "Well, no, not all." "Then
you neglected to stop at Hotkoff and adore his parents; he was angry
with you." "Perhaps; God knows. It may be so. Next time I will go to
Hotkoff. Overlook my sin!" A railway has been made from Moscow to
Troitsa, and the lazy herd of pilgrims go by train. The better sort
still march along the dirty road, and count their beads in front of
the wooden chapels and many rich crosses, as of old. St. Sergie has
gained in wealth, and lost in credit, by the convenience offered to
pilgrims in the railway line.
In the centre of this fortress and sanctuary the monks erected an
academy, in which priests were to be trained for their future work. A
young man lives in it under Troitsa rule, and leaves it with the
Troitsa brand. The rector is a man of rank in the church, equal to the
Master of Trinity among ourselves. Until the day when Philaret brought
Father Gorski into office, his post had always been filled by an
Archimandrite. Now Father Gorski was a learned man, a good writer, and
a great authority on points of church antiquity and ceremonial. Great
in reputation, he was also advanced in years. Some objected to him on
the ground that he was not a monk; but his fame as a learned man, his
noticeable piety, and his nearness with the Metropolite, carried him
through. Even the monks forgave him when they found that he lived,
like themselves, a secluded and cloistered life.
They hardly saw how much they were giving up in that early fight; for
this man of monk-like habit had not taken vows; and in one of the
strongholds of their power they were placing the education of their
clergy in charge of a parish priest!
A second step in the line of march has been taken in the nomination of
a married pope to the post of Rector of the Ecclesiastical Academy of
St. Petersburg. Father Yanycheff is this new rector; and Father
Yanycheff's wife is still alive. This call of a married man to such a
chair has fired the Church with hope and fear--the White Clergy
looking on it with surprise and joy, the Black Clergy with amazement
and despair.
Dr. Yanycheff--in whose person the fight is raging between these
benedicts and celibates--is a young priest, who was educated in the
academy, until he took his degree of doctor, on which he was placed in
the chair of theology at the University of St. Petersburg. In that
chair he became popular; his lectures being eloquent, his manners
easy, and his opinions liberal. Some of the sleepy old prelates took
alarm. Yanycheff, they said, was exciting his pupils; he was telling
them to read and think; and the sleepy old prelates could see no good
in such exercises of the brain. Reading and thinking lead men into
doubt, and doubt is the plague by which souls are lost. They moved the
Holy Governing Synod to interfere, and on the synod interfering, the
professor resigned his chair. Resolved on keeping his conscience free,
he married, and accepted the office of pope in a city on the Rhine.
His intellectual worth was widely known; and when, in process of time,
a teacher was required for the young Princess Dagmar, a man skillful
in languages and arts, as well as learned and liberal, Dr. Yanycheff,
was chosen for the task of preparing the imperial bride. The way in
which he discharged his delicate office brought him into favor with
the great; and on his return to his own country with the princess,
Count Tolstoi got him appointed rector of the academy--a position of
highest trust in the Church, since it gives him a leading influence in
the education of future popes.
The monks are all aghast; the Holy Governing Synod protests; and even
the Metropolite refuses to recognize this act. But Count Tolstoi is
firm, and the synod knows but too well how the enemy stands at court.
Yanycheff, on his side, has been prudent; and the wonder caused by his
nomination is sensibly dying down. Meantime, people are getting used
to the idea of a man with wife and child conducting the education of
their future parish priests.
Once launched on a career of clerical reform, the court has moved with
regular, if with cautious strides. All men can see that the first work
to be done is to be done in the schoolroom and the college; for in
Russia, as elsewhere, the teachers make the taught; and as the rectors
train the priests, ideas prevalent in the rectorial chairs will come
in a few years to be the paramount views of the Church.
A law has recently been passed by the Council of State, and
promulgated by the Emperor, which deals the hardest blow yet suffered
by the monks; a law taking away the right of nominating rectors of
seminaries and academies from the archbishops, and vesting it in a
board of teachers and professors; subject only to approval--which may
soon become a thing of course--by the higher spiritual powers. This
law is opposed by all the convents and their chiefs; even Innocent,
though friendly to the married clergy, stands, on this point, with his
class.
A first election under this new law has just occurred in Moscow. When
the law was published, Prof. Nicodemus, holding the chair of Rector in
the Ecclesiastical Seminary of Moscow, sent in his resignation, on the
ground that his position was become that of a rector on sufferance.
Every one felt that by resigning his chair he was doing a noble thing;
and if it had been possible for a monk to get a majority of votes in
an open board, Nicodemus would, on that account, have been the popular
choice. But no man wearing a cowl and gown had any chance. The contest
lay between two married priests: Father Blagorazumof, a teacher in the
seminary, and Father Smirnof, editor of the Orthodox Review. Innocent
took some part against Father Smirnof, whose writings he did not like;
and Father Blagorazumof was elected to the vacant chair.
What has been done in Moscow will probably be done in other cities; so
that in twenty years from the present time the education of youths for
the ministry will have fallen entirely into the hands of married men.
The same principle of election has been applied to the appointment of
rural deans. These officers were formerly named by the bishop,
according to his sole will and pleasure. Now, by imperial order, they
are elected by deputies from the parish priests.