THE RUSSIAN CHURCH.
The Russian Church calls itself the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Orthodox
Church. It is a national Church, and at the same time it is a branch of
a great Christian community which includes many nations and
peoples—namely, the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The Russian Orthodox Church numbers at present over a hundred million
adherents, eighty millions of which are Russian subjects; of the
remainder about half are Slavs of old Turkey or of Austro-Hungary.
Greeks, Roumanians, Bulgarians, and Serbs all belong to the Orthodox
Church, and the Orthodox Church has missions in China, Japan, and North
America.
Until the eleventh century the Eastern and the Western Churches formed
one Church. In the eleventh century a schism broke this unity and
divided a large fragment of the Eastern Church from the Western Church.
Even after the schism had taken place, even as late as the beginning of
the twelfth century, intercommunion existed between the two Churches,
and Russian princes and princesses of Kiev intermarried with members of
the Latin Church. Efforts were made later to heal the schism, the most
important of which were the second Council of Lyons in 1274 and the
Council of Florence in 1439. At both these Councils union was proclaimed
and accepted by the Greeks, but neither of them had any permanent
result. The findings of the first of these two Councils soon became a
dead letter; those of the second were repudiated as soon as the Greek
delegates reached home, and the delegates were regarded as apostates.
Thus the schism has lasted practically since 1054. It was fraught with
deep moral and political consequences for the East, and especially for
Russia. The cause of it was not really doctrinal or dogmatical. Points
of dogma, and trivial points at that, were used as pretexts after the
schism had become a _fait accompli_. The true cause of the schism was
the immemorial rivalry between the Greeks and the Latins.
The schism between the Eastern and Western Churches ranks, Sir Charles
Eliot says in his _Turkey and Europe_, with the foundation of
Constantinople and the coronation of Charlemagne, as one of the
turning-points in the relations of the East and the West. It was
disastrous to Russia and to the Byzantine Empire. To the latter, because
it crystallized and deepened an antagonism which prevented the East and
West from combining against the common enemy, and thus proved one of the
main causes of the fall of the Byzantine Empire and the establishment of
the Turk in Europe. To Russia, because, isolated as she was already by
her geographical situation, by this further isolation and rupture with
the West she fell an easy prey to the hordes of barbarian invaders from
Asia, and her national development was interrupted for centuries. As far
as dogma is concerned, the differences between the two Churches are to
this day trivial, and in earlier times they were slighter still. The
Orthodox Church has the same seven Sacraments as the Catholic
Church—namely, Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Eucharist, Penance, Unction,
Holy Order, and Matrimony.
There is a certain difference in the administration of the Sacraments.
The Orthodox baptize with a threefold immersion. Confirmation is
administered immediately after baptism; and this was so in the West
during all the thirteenth century. Auricular confession is regarded as
indispensable by the Orthodox, but the Sacrament of Penance is less
precise and more flexible than in the West. The Orthodox Church holds
the dogma of Transubstantiation. That is to say, the Orthodox believe
that the Holy Eucharist is the true body and blood of Jesus Christ under
the outward appearances of bread and wine, and that transubstantiation
takes place—namely, the change of the inward imperceptible substance
into another substance; while all the species and accidents—that is to
say, those qualities which are outwardly perceived by the senses, such
as colour, taste or shape—remain unchanged. They reject all explanation
of a typical or subjective presence. Holy Communion is given in both
kinds to the laity; the Sacrament is administered by means of a golden
spoon, in which particles of the bread of the Eucharist float in the
consecrated wine. Infants receive Holy Communion after baptism. The
Sacrament of Extreme Unction, called by the Russians _Soborovanie_ (that
is to say, Unction without the extreme), is administered by several
priests, and is not reserved for those _in extremis_; it is regarded
less as a preparation for death than as a means of healing the sick.
With regard to Holy Order, no priest in Russia is allowed to marry after
he is ordained. He is married before he is ordained, and marriage has
become a necessary preliminary to Order.
The Orthodox Church proclaims the indissolubility of marriage, but in
practice admits that the infidelity of one of the parties authorizes
separation. Violation of the conjugal oath is regarded as annulling the
sacrament, and only the injured party is allowed to remarry.
The Orthodox have the same fundamental cycle of feasts as the Catholics.
The Holy Liturgy is said according to two rites—those of St. John
Chrysostom and of St. Basil.[13]
The Orthodox observe four great fasts: Advent, forty days from November
15 until Christmas Eve; Lent, beginning on the Monday after the sixth
Sunday before Easter; thirdly, a period from the first Sunday after
Pentecost until June 28; fourthly, the fast of the Mother of God from
August 1 to August 15. According to the Orthodox fast, only one meal is
allowed a day, and abstinence not only from meat, but from fish, butter,
milk, cheese, eggs, and oil is required. The fasts are carried out by
the poor with great strictness, and even among the wealthier classes
there is more fasting and abstinence during Lent than in the West.
Statues of our Lord or of saints are forbidden, but pictures and any
images on a flat surface are allowed.
To sum up, the foundations of the Orthodox faith are: Belief in one God
in three Persons, in the Incarnation of God the Son, the Redemption of
Mankind by the sacrifice of His Life, the Church founded by Him with her
Sacraments, the Resurrection of the Body, the Life Everlasting. They
have a hierarchy; they accept the Deutero-canonical books of Scripture
as equal to the others; they believe in and use seven sacraments; they
honour, invoke, and pray to saints; they have a cult of holy pictures
and relics; they look with infinite reverence to the Mother of God.
In all these main points, which I have here enumerated, there is no
difference between the Orthodox Church of the East and the Catholic
Church of the West. The two Churches originally separated on minor
questions of discipline; they are at present separated by certain
questions of dogma as well. But the great difference between the two
Churches is the difference of constitution, which proceeds from the very
fact of the separation. The first difference in dogma between the two
Churches is the procession of the Holy Ghost. The Eastern Church refuses
to add the word _filioque_ to the Nicean Creed. But even here, although
the Orthodox do not admit that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son as
well as from the Father, they have never explicitly stated a contrary
belief; and although they deny that the twofold procession can be
inserted in the Creed, they grant it allows of an orthodox
interpretation. This is a purely theological dispute, and to this day it
remains the chief point of difference between the two Churches. The two
Churches differ in their conception of purgatory; the Orthodox pray for
the dead, and believe in a middle state, where the dead sleep and wait
passively; but they do not define the matter any further, and they
reject all idea of the purification by spiritual fire. They deny that
souls which have departed this life can expiate their faults, or at
least the only expiation they admit are the prayers of the faithful and
the Holy Mysteries.
The Orthodox deny the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The Catholic
dogma of the Immaculate Conception is that all mankind are from their
conception tainted with Original Sin, except the Blessed Virgin, who by
a special privilege and grace of God was preserved immaculate—that is,
free from the stain of Original Sin from the first moment of her
conception.
I repeat this definition because it is not generally known to Protestant
Englishmen, who, as a rule, confuse the Immaculate Conception with the
Incarnation of our Lord, and I know of cases where they obstinately
maintain this belief in the face of evidence.
The doctrine, although not accepted in theory by the Eastern Church, is
practically a part of their belief—that is to say, they never cease to
call the Blessed Virgin All Immaculate, or Very Immaculate.
Finally, the Orthodox Church denies the dogma of Papal Infallibility.
This is in reality the only difference between the two Churches which
has any real importance, either religious or political, because it
includes any other possible difference, and from it proceeds the
difference in constitution and in political situation between the two
Churches.
For Catholics the door on dogmatic definition has been left open
indefinitely; for while holding, _de fide_, that the revelation made to
the apostles was final and complete, new _definition_ of the revelation,
as is seen in the creeds, as heresies arise, or as fuller expansion of
doctrine, is admitted indefinitely.
On the other hand, the Orthodox believe that the time for definition has
been closed, once and for all, and for ever. They believe that nothing
can be added to the decisions of the first Seven Great Councils, which
took place before the schism between the two Churches, and which
contained, according to them, the infallible, final, complete, and
unalterable definition of the Church and the dogmas of the faith. The
Orthodox regard the first Seven Councils to have been infallible in the
definition of dogma, exactly in the same way as Catholics consider the
Pope to be infallible in his capacity of supreme Pastor of the Church,
when speaking _ex cathedrâ_ he defines revealed truth and teaches points
of faith or of morals. The Orthodox deny that the Pope has authority
over the whole Church. The Russian and the Greek catechisms agree that
the Church has no other head than Jesus Christ, our Lord—so far this
agrees with the Catholic catechism—and that He is represented by no
vicar on earth. The Orthodox regard the Pope as the Patriarch of the
West, and legitimate first Patriarch (_primus inter pares_), but they
reject his universal claim.
And as the first Seven Councils left some matters undefined and the
Fathers of the Church did not foresee all possible contingencies, such
matters remain undefined in the Orthodox Church.
Since the Orthodox Church possesses neither a spiritual sovereign nor an
international capital, such as Rome, it naturally tends to
decentralization, and hence the growth of national and independent
Churches, which the Greeks call autocephalous.
The Russian Church was the first to establish its independence, and the
example of Russia was followed by Greece, Servia, and Roumania.
In 1872 Bulgaria, in obedience to its national interests, seceded from
the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, in order
to be no longer classed with the Greeks; for, according to the Turkish
system, all those who submitted to the jurisdiction of Constantinople
were officially classed as “Greeks.”
Thus the Bulgarians formed an autonomous Church in the domains of the
Ottoman Empire, alongside of the Greek Church, before Bulgaria
constituted a State, and for so doing they incurred the anathema of the
Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, and were condemned as
heretical, since the patriarchate maintained that the delimitation of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction should correspond to political delimitation,
and that in the same political state there could only be one Church.
Bulgaria’s action, therefore, was contrary to church canon—that is,
heretical. Nevertheless its independence was recognized by the Sultan,
and the Bulgarian Church was established under an Exarch of its own,
while Russia, without making any definite pronouncement, nevertheless
never accepted the anathema of Constantinople.
A few years later Bulgaria became an independent principality, and had
the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Exarchate been limited to the
principality of Bulgaria, the Œcumenical Patriarchate would have been
logically bound to recognize it; but according to the firmans of the
Sultan, the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Exarchate extended beyond the
frontiers of Bulgaria, and included the dioceses of Thrace and
Macedonia, which nominally belonged to the Sultan and were a bone of
contention between the Greek and the Slav influence. Thus the
Greco-Bulgarian schism continued. This question has now once again
sprung into importance. The dioceses of Macedonia and some of those in
Thrace, which were under the religious jurisdiction of Bulgaria, and
under the political dominion of the Porte, are now, as the result of the
latest wars in the Balkans, and of the Treaty of Bucharest, partly in
the hands of the Servians, and partly in the hands of the Greeks.
Hitherto the Bulgarian Exarchate was the nucleus around which all the
elements of Bulgarian nationality in Macedonia were gathered; but now,
owing to the second Balkan War, the Bulgarians in Macedonia come under
the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan of Servia, and are in fear,
consequently, of losing their nationality, since the Bulgars fear that
neither their churches nor their national schools will succeed in
maintaining their existence in the new Greek and Servian territory. The
consequence was, that some of the Bulgars in those parts of Macedonia
talked of secession from the Orthodox Church, and submission to the
Church of Rome, or of embracing Protestantism, as the best means of
preserving their nationality.[14]
In spite of these differences, the Russian Church and the independent
Churches of the East form in reality one, for if they lack unity of
organization, they possess unity of creed, and the unity of creed is
ensured by its immutabilty, which renders unnecessary all international
authority or periodical congresses. Since matters of dogma have been
discussed once and for all, or have been left vague and undefined
indefinitely, there is nothing for such an authority to define, and
nothing for such a congress to discuss. And the panegyrists of the
Orthodox Church are proud of the lack of central authority and the
organization of the Churches according to States, which they consider
combine unity of creed with ecclesiastical independence, according to
Homayakov’s formula, “Unity of freedom in love.”
But if the nationalization of the Oriental Churches is a source of
strength, it is at the same time a source of weakness, for the result of
the national constitution of the Orthodox Churches, and of their having
no spiritual head, has been that many of its branches have been
secularized, and of this the Russian Church is a signal example.
The Orthodox Churches, and especially the Russian Church, were thrown
open to the civil power, the power of the State, and became subordinate
to it.
The Russian Church became subject to the State. It is often said
that such a circumstance is a guarantee of political liberty and of
liberty of thought; but neither the history of Russia nor that of
the Greek empire furnishes us with examples to the point. Both in
the history of Russia and of Byzantium we are confronted with two
phenomena—intellectual stagnation and political despotism—to which
the Church seems to have contributed, since being subject to the
State she had no means of resisting civil authority, and the power
of the State was left without a single check. The civil authority
had the support of ecclesiastic authority, and the temporal
authority was backed up by the spiritual power; no obstacle was
raised in the path of autocracy.
The alliance of Church and State kept down the intellectual growth of
the nation within, and prevented the invasion of new ideas from without.
The result of the alliance was stagnation and isolation. And in the East
there was no common clerical language, as Latin in the West, to help
civilization, for the Greek Church did not impose its language on its
sister Churches, but left to each the use of its own tongue.
This peculiar constitution of the Russian Church, as Sir Charles Eliot
puts it, “has produced in Russia an almost Mohammedan confusion of
Church and State, or at least of religion and politics.”
But this state of things did not come about all at once.
Christianity reached Russia through Byzantium at a time (988 A.D.) when
the Eastern Church was still in communion with Rome, after a temporary
schism between the East and West; a Russian Metropolitan held the see of
Kiev, and was appointed by the Patriarch of Constantinople. During this
period the Russian Church was a province of the Byzantine Patriarchate.
Then came the Tartar invasion and the migration of the Russian princes
to the basin of the Volga, and finally to Moscow. Moscow had a
Metropolitan who was still suffragan of the Greek patriarch, but elected
by his clergy and chosen by his sovereign. This was the second phase of
the Russian Church during which it gradually acquired its independence.
Moscow became a kingdom, and at the death of Ivan the Terrible, in 1589,
Russia demanded a Patriarch. In 1589 Job, the Metropolitan of Moscow,
was consecrated Patriarch. This was brought about by Boris Godunov, in
the reign of Feodor, the successor of Ivan the Terrible (1589).
Thus began the third phase of the history of the Russian Church—the
phase of its independence. The Russian Church was henceforward
independent of Constantinople.
There were ten Patriarchs of Moscow in succession. At first they played
a powerful and important part in Russian history, and helped to save
Russia from foreign dominion.
The culminating point in the history of the independent Church was
reached when in the reign of Alexis, in 1642, Nikon became Patriarch.
The Patriarchate of Nikon had two great and far-reaching
results—firstly, a conflict with the civil authority which ended in his
defeat and deposition from the patriarchal throne, and in a consequent
loss of prestige to the patriarchate; and secondly, a schism which tore
the Russian Church in two, and which was the result of a wise reform—the
revision of the text of liturgical books, into whose text, owing to
continuous copying and recopying, inaccuracies had crept.
Nikon spoke with great energy against the supremacy of the State over
the Church. Six years after his consecration, he was brought before a
Council, condemned and deposed, thanks to the intrigues of the Boyars.
His revision of the texts was accepted by the Council, but not by a
great part of the Russian people, who clung obstinately to the old
unrevised books and called themselves “Old Believers.” Hence arose the
great schism of the Russian Church. The “Old Believers,” were persecuted
and became fanatical. Besides the revision of the texts, Nikon changed
one or two trifling details of ritual in the liturgy. This was enough to
convulse Russia. Later on, all enemies of foreign innovations flocked to
the camp of the “Old Believers,” endured any persecution, however
severe; and the net result of this, at the present moment, is that there
are 25,000,000 Russians who live in schism from the Russian Church.
The fall of Nikon established once and for all the authority of the
State over that of the Church, and the great schism weakened the
authority of the Church, owing to the secession from it of a great part
of the nation. The patriarchate was shaken and weakened; but weak as it
was, it appeared too strong to suit the taste of Peter the Great, who
abolished it in 1721.
In its place he established the Holy Directing Synod. Thus began the
fourth phase of the Russian Church, which has lasted until to-day.
There is nothing necessarily anti-liberal in the existence of a synod,
and it is not peculiar to the Russian Church. Greece, Roumania, and
Servia administer their Churches by means of a synod. Its tendencies
depend necessarily on the manner of its election, the nature of its
guarantees, the laws and customs of the country in which it exists.
The Holy Synod consists at the present day of executive members and
assistants, of permanent and temporary members. Among the permanent
members are the Metropolitans of Kiev, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, and
the Exarch of Georgia. The temporary members consist of four or five
archbishops, bishops or archimandrites, the emperor’s chaplain, and the
head chaplain of the forces. All the members are appointed by the
Emperor, and in addition to these ecclesiastics, the Emperor appoints a
delegate who is called the Procurator-General. The procurator is a
layman, and represents the civil authority. His duty is to see that
ecclesiastical affairs are carried out in accordance with the imperial
ukases. No act of the synod is valid unless he confirms it. He has the
right of veto, should its decisions be contrary to the law. Practically,
therefore, but not theoretically, he controls the synod; and in his turn
he carries out the will and obeys the orders of the Emperor.
It would be a great mistake, however, whatever may be the result of this
institution in practice, to call the Emperor of Russia the head of the
Russian Church. He makes no such claim, and Russian orthodoxy recognizes
only one Head of the Church, our Lord, and only one infallible authority
speaking in His name, the Seven First Œcumenical Councils. The Emperor
may be the autocratic master of the Church; he is not the head of it.
His authority is from the outside only. In questions of dogma he has no
authority at all. He is regarded as the temporal defender and guardian
of the Church; his authority, and consequently the authority of the
State, concerns the administration of the Church solely, and even here
his power is limited by tradition, canon law, and the œcumenical
character of the Church.
Dogma is equally outside the domain of the Holy Synod, and even
disciplinary measures come before the Holy Synod as before a commission
of inquiry, the final decision remaining with the Church.
Such is the teaching of the Russian Church with regard to relations of
Church and State, and the position of the Emperor with regard to the
Church.
Yet in spite of this, there is no Church where the influence and the
authority of the State is so deeply felt as in the Russian Church; for
in practice the Church is governed through the Holy Synod, and not
through the bishops, for the synod overrules the bishops, and in
practice, and in spite of the theory, the procurator overrules the
synod, and the procurator is the civil authority in the flesh. The
Russian Church is consequently, in practice, a State Church, and many of
its earnest members have never ceased to deplore the fact.
Russian books dealing with theological questions in the past are full of
this bitter and oft-reiterated complaint; but I will quote what an
apologist of the Russian Church wrote as short time ago as November
1912, showing that the complaint of the past is if anything more vital
now than ever. In an article on the Russian public and religion, S.
Bulgakov says that a faithful and powerful ally of the atheism of the
_intelligentsia_ is without doubt the secular character of the Church,
its ruinous dependence on the State under the synod _régime_, and owing
to the absence of self-government. He also says that one of the reasons
of the alienation from the Church, not only of the _intelligentsia_ but
of the people, is the bureaucratic caste of the Church administration,
the access of officialdom and arbitrary power to the fields of freedom
and love. “It is not,” he writes, “a question of any corruption or
distortion of dogma; on the contrary, the Russian Church adheres with
devotion to the dogmas of the Universal Church.
“The main lever by which the State directs the Church at present is the
episcopacy, which, contrary to canon, is appointed by, and consequently
to a certain extent picked out by, secular authority. The Holy Synod is
likewise chosen from these bishops, and by secular authority also....
The bishops, who should remain all their life in their dioceses, have
been commuted into ecclesiastical governors, changing dioceses more
quickly than the governors change provinces.... Theoretically, the
Orthodox Church should be self-governing from top to bottom, but the
painful reality reveals on the contrary so great a paralysis in the
public life of the Church, as to give the outside observer the
impression that nothing is here but ecclesiastical governors, under the
direction of the procurator of the Holy Synod and the secular authority
that is behind him, with a clergy stripped of all rights.”
Such a statement sums up what has been constantly said in the past, and
what is being said with increasing vehemence in the present by earnest
members of the Russian Church, who recognize with sorrow the almost
total alienation of the Church from the educated classes, and look
forward with apprehension to the day when the indifference of the
educated and the street-corner atheism of the half-educated shall spread
to the peasantry. But, on the other hand, the very fact that such
statements are made shows that side by side with the growth of
rationalism there is a movement in the opposite direction as well.
Many years ago, in the days of the fathers and grandfathers of the
present generation, educated Russia was divided into two camps—the
Slavophils and the Westernisers. The leaders of the Westernism were
Bielinsky and Herzen; those of the Slavophils, Homyakov, a poet and the
father of the Ex-President of the Duma; and others.
The Westernisers saw in rationalism and atheism the last word of Western
culture, and made a religion out of socialistic Utopias, and at the same
time took part with a fervent enthusiasm in the struggle for political
freedom. Orthodoxy and the Church were to them an expression of
despotism and reaction.
The Slavophils, who were, in their most flourishing epoch, by no means
political reactionaries, and being more cultured than their opponents,
were saturated with the philosophy, art, and religion of the West,
nevertheless revered the religious character of the sovereign’s
authority, based Utopias on it likewise, and, in contradistinction to
the cosmopolitan ideal of the Westernisers, for whom nationality did not
exist except ethnographically, made a cult of nationality which for them
was inseparable from religion and orthodoxy. There was the same
difference between their ideals as there is now between those of Mr.
Chesterton and Mr. Blatchford; only whereas in England Mr. Chesterton
has but few followers, the Slavophils were expressing the inarticulate
aspirations of the great mass of the Russian people.
Slavophilism was represented by many men of genius, such as Dostoievsky
the novelist and Vladimir Soloviev the philosopher.
Its tradition has not died out, and although the majority of the
_intelligentsia_ may be adherents of the opposite school, yet the
descendants of the Slavophils have many notable representatives among
the minority (whose names I have already cited) in philosophy, art, and
literature; and a universal characteristic of them is their interest in
religion.
The ordinary Russian street-corner atheist sees in the Church nothing
but an instrument of clerical obscurantism and political reaction. He
looks at the matter from the outside, and, from his point of view, the
opinion is excusable.
But the descendants of Slavophilism look at the Church from the inside.
They know from experience the blessing of the Sacraments, the majesty of
an immemorial tradition, the glory of a mystical and liturgical Church
whose ritual and liturgy is one of inexpressible richness, depth, and
beauty. Even to the most indifferent agnostic the Russian Church affords
a spectacle of surpassing æsthetic interest, and if he is musical an
incomparable source of wonder and delight in the quality of its sacred
song.
As far as ritual and ceremony is concerned, the practice and custom of
the first centuries of Christianity, which were in many cases simplified
by Rome, before they were curtailed or rejected by the Reformation, have
been preserved intact in the East. Nothing is more false than the idea
which often prevails in some quarters that the rites of the early Church
were simple, and grew more and more complicated towards the Middle Ages.
The rites of the Church in the fourth and fifth centuries were long and
complicated, and were gradually simplified by the Latins. The proof is
the ceremonial of the Eastern Churches, which has remained exactly where
it was in the fourth and fifth centuries. Mass, for instance, in the
Coptic Church, lasts five hours or longer. Low Mass, which was one of
the simplifications introduced by Rome, is unknown in the Greek and
Russian Churches. Every Mass is a high Mass, intoned and accompanied by
plain song, in the presence of the faithful, and generally only on
Sundays and holy days. The same liturgy and rite is observed by the
Uniate Catholics, whether Greeks, Ruthenians, Poles, etc. The liturgy is
sumptuous, and at the same time austere. There is only one altar, which
is separated from the congregation by a large screen called the
_iconastasis_—that is to say, the screen which bears the holy
images—which has doors which are opened and shut during Mass, and beyond
which the priest alone, and the Emperor when he receives Communion on
the day of his coronation, has the right to penetrate. Behind these
doors, which are shut before the consecration, the most solemn part of
the Mass is consummated. No organ or any other instruments are allowed
in the Eastern Churches, and, as in the Sistine Chapel when the Pope
says Mass, only the human voice is heard.
As far as liturgical song is concerned, the Russians have far surpassed
the Greeks, from whom they received it. The liturgical music consists of
plain song, and of original chants called _raspievi_, which date from
the Middle Ages. The singing of the Church choirs in Russia is without
comparison, the finest in the world. The bass voices reach to notes and
attain effects resembling the 36-foot bourdon stops of a huge organ, and
these, blent with the clear and bold treble voices of the boys, sing
“An undisturbed song of pure concent.”
The best Russian choirs sing together like one voice. They attain to
tremendous crescendoes, to a huge volume of thunderous sound, and to a
celestial softness and delicacy of diminishing tone. There is no finer
chorus singing. The Russians are extremely particular and appreciative
of religious music. Every kind of institution, including banks, has its
private choir; and I know of a case where a banker chose his clerks
simply and solely according to the quality of their voices, so as to
form a choir who could sing in church.
The finest choirs in Russia are those of the Emperor, St. Isaak’s
Cathedral in St. Petersburg, of the Cathedral of the Assumption, and the
Church of St. Saviour, and the Tchudov Monastery at Moscow; and the
finest religious ceremonies are those which take place at Moscow during
Holy Week and on the eve of Easter.
Religious music in Russia has its roots in the heart of the people. And
whatever in the future may be the influence of rationalistic tendencies
and materialistic theories, of superficial indifferentism or
ill-digested science, the Russian people at the present moment love
their liturgy and the ceremony, ritual, and music of their worship. The
Church still plays an overwhelming part in national life. And for the
peasant, the Church is not only a place of mystery, sweetness, and
consolation, but his window opens on to all that concerns the spirit—it
is his opera, his theatre, his concert, his picture gallery, his
library.
The Russian people still flock to the shrines of the Saints, and walk
hundreds of miles on foot to visit holy places. A peasant woman once
asked me to lend her two roubles, as she was going on a journey. I asked
her where she was going to, and she said, “Jerusalem.”
A pilgrim in a Russian crowd is as constant a factor as a soldier, a
student, or the member of any other profession. The churches are still
crowded in Russia, and they have that attribute without which a Church
is not a Church—they smell of the poor.