Of the return of the czar to his dominions.--Of his politics and
occupations.
The behaviour of the Sorbonne to Peter, when he went to visit the
mausoleum of cardinal Richelieu, deserves to be treated of by itself.
Some doctors of this university were desirous to have the honour of
bringing about a union between the Greek and Latin churches. Those who
are acquainted with antiquity need not be told, that the Christian
religion was first introduced into the west by the Asiatic Greeks: that
it was born in the east, and that the first fathers, the first councils,
the first liturgies, and the first rites, were all from the east; that
there is not a single title or office in the hierarchy, but was in
Greek, and thereby plainly shews the same from whence they are all
derived to us. Upon the division of the Roman empire, it was next to
impossible, but that sooner or later there must be two religions as well
as two empires, and that the same schism should arise between the
eastern and western Christians, as between the followers of Osman and
the Persians.
It is this schism which certain doctors of the Sorbonne thought to crush
all at once by means of a memorial which they presented to Peter the
Great, and effect what Pope Leo XI. and his successors had in vain
laboured for many ages to bring about, by legates, councils, and even
money. These doctors should have known, that Peter the Great, who was
the head of the Russian church, was not likely to acknowledge the pope's
authority. They expatiated in their memorial on the liberties of the
Gallican church, which the czar gave himself no concern about. They
asserted that the popes ought to be subject to the councils, and that a
papal decree is not an article of faith: but their representations were
in vain; all they got by their pains, was to make the pope their enemy
by such free declarations, at the same time that they pleased neither
the czar nor the Russian church.
There were, in this plan of union, certain political views, which the
good fathers did not understand, and some points of controversy which
they pretended to understand, and which each party explained as they
thought proper. It was concerning the Holy Ghost, which, according to
the Latin church, proceeds from the Father and Son, and which, at
present, according to the Greeks, proceeds from the Father through the
Son, after having, for a considerable time, proceeded from the Father
only: on this occasion they quoted a passage in St. Epiphanius, where it
is said, 'That the Holy Ghost is neither brother to the Son, nor
grandson to the Father.'
But Peter, when he left Paris, had other business to mind, than that of
clearing up passages in St. Epiphanius. Nevertheless, he received the
memorial of the Sorbonne with his accustomed affability. That learned
body wrote to some of the Russian bishops, who returned a polite answer,
though the major part of them were offended at the proposed union. It
was in order to remove any apprehensions of such a union, that Peter,
some time afterwards, namely, in 1718, when he had driven the jesuits
out of his dominions, instituted the ceremony of a burlesque conclave.
He had at his court an old fool, named Jotof, who had learned him to
write, and who thought he had, by that trivial service, merited the
highest honours and most important posts: Peter, who sometimes softened
the toils of government, by indulging his people in amusements, which
befitted a nation as yet not entirely reformed by his labours, promised
his writing-master, to bestow on him one of the highest dignities in the
world; accordingly, he appointed him knéz papa, or supreme pontiff, with
an appointment of two thousand crowns, and assigned him a house to live
in, in the Tartarian quarter at Petersburg. He was installed by a number
of buffoons, with great ceremony, and four fellows who stammered were
appointed to harangue him on the accession. He created a number of
cardinals, and marched in procession at their head, and the whole sacred
college was made drunk with brandy. After the death of this Jotof, an
officer, named Buturlin, was made Pope: this ceremony has been thrice
renewed at Moscow and Petersburg, the ridiculousness of which, though it
appeared of no moment, yet has by its ridiculousness confirmed the
people in their aversion to a church, which pretended to the supreme
power, and whose church had anathematized so many crowned heads. In this
manner did the czar revenge the cause of twenty emperors of Germany, ten
kings of France, and a number of other sovereigns; and this was all the
advantage the Sorbonne gained from its impolitic attempt to unite the
Latin and Greek churches.
The czar's journey to France proved of more utility to his kingdom, by
bringing about a connexion with a trading and industrious people, than
could have arisen from the projected union between two rival churches;
one of which will always maintain its ancient independence, and the
other its new superiority.
Peter carried several artificers with him out of France, in the same
manner as he had done out of England; for every nation, which he
visited, thought it an honour to assist him in his design of
introducing the arts and sciences into his new-formed state, and to be
instrumental in this species of new creation.
In this expedition, he drew up a sketch of a treaty of commerce with
France, and which he put into the hands of his ministers at Holland, as
soon as he returned thither, but it was not signed by the French
ambassador, Chateauneuf, till the 15th August, 1717, at the Hague. This
treaty not only related to trade, but likewise to bringing about peace
in the North. The king of France and the elector of Brandenburg accepted
of the office of mediators, which Peter offered them. This was
sufficient to give the king of England to understand, that the czar was
not well pleased with him, and crowned the hopes of baron Gortz, who
from that time, left nothing undone to bring about a union between
Charles and Peter, to stir up new enemies against George I. and to
assist cardinal Alberoni in his schemes in every part of Europe. Gortz
now paid and received visits publicly from the czar's ministers at the
Hague, to whom he declared, that he was invested with full power from
the court of Sweden to conclude a peace.
The czar suffered Gortz to dispose all his batteries, without assisting
therein himself, and was prepared either to make peace with the king of
Sweden, or to carry on the war, and continued still in alliance with the
kings of Denmark, Poland, and Russia, and in appearance with the elector
of Hanover.
It was evident, that he had no fixed design, but that of profiting of
conjunctures and circumstances, and that his main object was to complete
the general establishments he had set on foot. He well knew, that
the negotiations and interests of princes, their leagues, their
friendships, their jealousies, and their enmities, were subject to
change with each revolving year, and that frequently not the smallest
traces remain of the greatest efforts in politics. A simple manufactory,
well established, is often of more real advantage to a state than twenty
treaties.
Peter having joined the czarina, who was waiting for him in Holland,
continued his travels with her. They crossed Westphalia, and arrived at
Berlin in a private manner. The new king of Prussia was as much an enemy
to ceremonious vanities, and the pomp of a court, as Peter himself; and
it was an instructive lesson to the etiquette of Vienna and Spain, the
punctilio of Italy, and the politesse of the French court, to see a
king, who only made use of a wooden elbow-chair, who went always in the
dress of a common soldier, and who had banished from his table, not only
all the luxuries, but even the more moderate indulgences of life.
The czar and czarina observed the same plain manner of living; and had
Charles been with them, the world might have beheld four crowned heads,
with less pomp and state about them than a German bishop, or a cardinal
of Rome. Never were luxury and effeminacy opposed by such noble
examples.
It cannot be denied, that if one of our fellow-subjects had, from mere
curiosity, made the fifth part of the journeys that Peter I. did for the
good of his kingdom, he would have been considered as an extraordinary
person, and one who challenged our consideration. From Berlin he went to
Dantzic, still accompanied by his wife, and from thence to Mittau, where
he protected his niece, the duchess of Courland, lately become a widow.
He visited all the places he had conquered, made several new and useful
regulations in Petersburg; he then goes to Moscow, where he rebuilds the
houses of several persons that had fallen to ruin; from thence he
transports himself to Czaritsin, on the river Wolga, to stop the
incursions of the Cuban Tartars, constructs lines of communication from
the Wolga to the Don, and erects forts at certain distances, between the
two rivers. At the same time he caused the military code, which he had
lately composed, to be printed, and erected a court of justice, to
examine into the conduct of his ministers, and to retrieve the disorders
in his finances; he pardons several who were found guilty, and punishes
others. Among the latter was the great prince Menzikoff himself, who
stood in need of the royal clemency. But a sentence more severe, which
he thought himself obliged to utter against his own son, filled with
bitterness those days, which were, in other respects, covered with so
much glory.