The Greek and Eastern Churches/Part 2/Division 3/Chapter 2

by Walter Frederic Adeney

 

CHAPTER II

THE MONGOLIAN INVASION OF RUSSIA

 

(Books named in Chapter I.)

 

The history of the foundation and establishment of the Church in Russia must be read with caution, since it rests on legends and traditions from one or two centuries before the age of the first chronicles. But in the year 1073, Nestor, the traditional father of Russian history, came to the monastery at Kiev.^[1] From this time onwards there are contemporary records. Nestor's own chronicle is continued to a.d. 1113, and it is followed by other chronicles. At this point, therefore, we pass from more or less uncertain popular stories of the early Church in Russia to documentary evidence.

At this very time we also enter on a gloomy period of Russian history, consisting of two troublous centuries—first, the twelfth century, when Russia was torn with internecine strife; second, the thirteenth century, when she was swept and scoured and bled almost to death by a wave of invasion of Tartar tribesmen from the steppes of central Asia.

In the midst of the petty quarrels of the princelings who checked the progress of their country by their ambitions and jealousies, the Church had its own difficulties to contend with. The metropolitan George, who had been appointed in the year 1072, was a man of a gentle, timorous disposition, and he retired to Constantinople feeling unequal to his task in face of the troubles of the times. The Church was now dragged into the vortex of political affairs. The Prince Isyaslaff had been twice driven from Kiev by his brothers, when he turned for help to the emperor, Henry iv., and Borislaff, King of Poland. Now Poland was in the Roman Church, and more than once this country was used by the papal party as their point of attack on the Russian Church. At this time the most powerful of all the popes, Gregory vii., was dominating the councils of the West. Isyaslaff sought the great pope's intercession with the two sovereigns. Gregory's reply has been preserved among his letters.^[2] It is most gracious. He has received Isyaslaff's son, who has come with the petition, and who, as the pope says, has admitted the papal authority, and wishes to have the kingdom as a grant from Peter through the pope, asserting that he makes this request with his father's full authority.^[3] Here is Hildebrand's high claim to have the disposal of thrones and kingdoms in his hands, and his distinct assertion that it is admitted by the son of the Prince of Russia, with his father's deliberate consent. We should like to have had the young man's version of the story. It looks as though he had been as wax in the hands of the masterful ruler of empires. If it were indeed the case that he made this complete submission on behalf of Isyaslaff, we cannot imagine that the bargain would have been kept; if the prince had secured his throne by the help of a foreign alliance on such terms as these, he could only have held it as a tyrant against the wishes of his people. Fortunately he was able to regain his position without the aid he had solicited from abroad; and as he did not have occasion to claim his side of the bargain, we are not surprised that we hear no more about the other side. This was the first serious attempt of the papacy to obtain the great prize of Russia for the see of Peter.

Of the next metropolitan, John ii., who was appointed in the year 1080, Nestor, who was his contemporary, exclaims, "There will never be his like again in Russia." A learned, charitable, courteous, humble man, he holds a conspicuous place among the early bishops of Kiev. Another metropolitan, Nicolas, came forward as a peacemaker at a time of civil war, when Monomachus, a young prince who had married the daughter of Harold, the last Saxon king of England, was besieging Isyaslaff's son, Sviatopolk, at Kiev. A little later, when Monomachus had the upper hand, he was supported by an enlightened and eloquent metropolitan, Nicephorus.

In spite of repeated feuds and frequent disorders in the political world, quiet missionary work was still going on. From Polotsk the gospel now began to spread into Lithuania; from Novgorod it was carried farther north, and Moscow was founded as the result of an effort to convert the heathen in central Russia and introduce them to the civilisation of town life. The one bond of union during these troublous times was the Church with its common faith and life, and the chief ministers of peace were bishops and heads of monasteries. It was fortunate that the Church herself was not now divided. When a difference of opinion did arise from time to time, usually it turned on some minor point and proved to be only of a transient character. Towards the end of the twelfth century we meet with a temporary breach with Constantinople, which indicates the awakening of national jealousy. Russia was still being supplied with metropolitans from -the Greek Church, when a second Isyaslaff, the grandson of Monomachus, determined to have a Russian for his chief bishop, urged it. is said by dissatisfaction with the conduct of the deceased metropolitan, Michael, in absenting himself from Russia. Accordingly he followed the example of Yasolaff and summoned a synod of Russian bishops at Kiev to elect a successor to Michael. The only protest was raised by Niphont, bishop of Novgorod. All the other bishops acquiesced in the daring act of innovation. It was in vain that Niphont appealed to their written promise not to celebrate the liturgy in the church of St. Sophia as a synod while they were without a metropolitan. He was silenced by a temporary imprisonment in the Pechersky Monastery, and the synod elected Clement, a monk of Smolensk. But how could he be ordained without applying to the patriarch at Constantinople? Here was a serious difficulty. The bishops found a way out of it by an ingenious device. In place of the imposition of the patriarch's hand, they laid on the candidate's head the reputed hand of St. Clement of Rome, which was among the precious relics that Vladimir had brought from Cherson. At a time when the corpses and bones of saints were valued as the greatest of treasures and credited with marvellous powers, such a use of the shrivelled hand of one of the most venerated successors of an apostle might be regarded as singularly efficatious. A curious feature of the incident is that the dead hand of a bishop of Rome is used to Hout the claims of the bishop of the rival city of Constantinople. The quarrel lasted for nine years. It got entangled with the civil feuds, which were so fierce that one prince, Igor, who had been sent to a monastery, was torn to pieces by the populace when he reappeared in the city of Kiev. Soon after this the Prince Isyaslaff was forced to flee, taking Clement with him. Meanwhile Niphont was despatched to Constantinople to seek a duly appointed metropolitan. The patriarch Luke was only too glad to comply with so loyal a request, and he consecrated a man named Constantine as bishop of Chernigoff, and despatched him with all due qualifications to Kiev (a.d. 1136). Constantine proceeded to act with vigour in his new office, condemning the deeds of the unfortunate Isyaslaff and his metropolitan, Clement, and even suspending for a time all the clergy whom Clement had ordained. Thus apparently Russia was again brought into ecclesiastical submission to Constantinople. Niphont, who had stood out as a solitary Elijah among the priests of Baal, an Abdiel in the midst of the all but universal rebellion, did not live to reach Kiev and enjoy his triumph. But he had earned an undying reputation in the orthodox Church, where he is reckoned among the saints as the "Defender of all Russia."

A turn in the wheel of fortune brought back the opposite party into power. Then Constantine was dismissed to his original see, where he ended his days, ordering in his will that his body should be cast out of the town as unworthy of burial. After it had been thus exposed for three days, it was buried with due honours in the church of St. Saviour. We may doubt whether the poor man's singular command should be attributed, as Mouravieff says, to "extraordinary humility,"^[4] or to a melancholy sense of failure after his ambitious mission had begun so successfully.

Meanwhile, of course, the patriarch did not recognise Clement, who had been restored by the government and so had renewed the schism. Constantine was no longer available. Accordingly Luke appointed a third metropolitan, Theodore. Andrew Bogolubsky, one of the contending princes, wished him to make his own city of Vladimir the metropolitan see. He had built there the magnificent church of the Mother of God and deposited in it a miracle-working icon brought from Greece. If he had succeeded his daring policy might have cut the knot. Kiev would have been left high and dry with its discredited metropolitan, while the tide of Church favour flowed to the new ecclesiastical metropolis. But Luke was too wise to agree to the proposal. It would have meant a serious division in the Russian Church, not only between two parties, but between two great cities and their surrounding areas. Local ambition would then have been roused; and thus the schism would have been perpetuated long after any excuse for it had died away. All that the patriarch would do to honour the city of Vladimir was to allow the bishop of Rostoff to make it his centre, and sanction an annual festival in celebration of the prince's victory over the Bulgarians on the same day as that on which the Emperor Manuel celebrated his victory over the Saracens, a festival still observed on the first of August.

But now the schism which had sprung out of personal and political sources was complicated with a charge of heresy. This charge is significant of much in the life of the orthodox Church during the Middle Ages. We are familiar with the grave accusation of heresy and its terrible consequences in the Western Church; but there it meant some serious departure from what were deemed great and vital elements of the creed. No such thing was seen in the case of the Russian heresy of the twelfth century. The Church was universally and securely settled in its faith. It had not sufficient originality of mind or intellectual interest to dream of loosening its moorings and entering on unknown seas of speculation. The daring heresiarchs of the East who have left their marks for all time on the course of the world's thought belong to the patristic period; those met with later are of the Western Church. The word heresy has shrunk to much narrower limits within the safe orthodoxy of the later Greek and Russian Church. Nestor, the bishop of Rostoff, who had been deprived of his diocese by the metropolitan Constantine, went to the Byzantine capital to defend his case and vindicate his rights. There he was met with a charge of heresy. The heresy was this, that he had forbidden people to break their Wednesday or Friday fasts even when the festivals of the Nativity and Epiphany fell on those days. The irregularity did not begin with Nestor, nor was he the only promoter of it. It was revived by a bishop named Leon, who had come into his diocese during his absence. Leon was first tried by the metropolitan at Kiev, and then at Constantinople by the patriarch. But the heresy was not crushed. It appeared at Kiev in the person of the metropolitan Constantine ii., who adopted it in all innocence and convoked a synod to establish it; but he was opposed by two valiant champions of sound doctrine with regard to feasts and fasts, Cyril, bishop of Touroff, and Polycarp, archimandrite of the great Pechersky Monastery and continuator of Nestor's Lives of the Saints. This man even suffered imprisonment for his fidelity in the matter.

Subsequently, in the course of the never-ending discords of these times, Kiev was taken by storm and visited with all the horrors of a sacked city. The orthodox Church regarded this as Heaven's just punishment for the heresy of her metropolitan. So ruinous was the disaster that the post of metropolitan remained vacant for about ten years, after which the city had sufficiently revived for a restoration of its ecclesiastical functions, and the patriarch of Constantinople then appointed a Greek, Nicephorus ii. (a.d. 1185). But the storm-cloud which had rolled back for an interval soon gathered again, and Kiev was captured and sacked a second time, a fate from which she never recovered. Her ruin followed sixteen years later in the Mongol invasion. This ends the first period in russian Church history. Hitherto Kiev had been the metropolis both of the State and of the Church, though sharing some of the honour with the older capital in the north, Novgorod. After her own civil wars and the cataclysm of the Asiatic invasion this was no longer the case.

The internal disorders of the twelfth century were followed in the thirteenth century by the infinitely greater disaster of the Mongol invasion. This was part of a vast movement that was sweeping up from Central Asia and threatening to engulf Europe in a sea of barbarism. The Mongols were of the same race as those devastating invaders known as the Huns, who had brought terror to Rome at an earlier period. But in course of time they became Mohammedans, the religion of the Prophet having passed on through Persia to the wild tribes of the region since known as Turkestan. Therefore we might regard their progress as that of the right wing of the vast army of Islam which was advancing in half-moon formation, and closing in upon the civilised world all round its limits from Russia to Spain. But this Mongol invasion had really no relations with the movements of the Moors in Africa and the West; it was the greatest of a series of volcanic outbursts of wild peoples from the steppes of Asia. The terrible leader Genghis^[5] Khan—"Chief of Chiefs"—became one of the world conquerers and empire founders whom we might compare with Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, or Napoleon, if only he had added more constructive genius to his military gifts and powers. At first the Russians appeared able to offer effectual resistance, and they gave the Mongol host a temporary check at the Kalka (a.d. 1224). But it was not long before the pent-up forces burst forth and carried all before them. First Vladimir was taken; then Kiev fell. Still, on marched the host, northwards as far as Novgorod, westwards absorbing Hungary, then peopled by a kindred race, the descendants of an earlier invasion, but now Christian. The invasion was only stopped at the frontier of Poland and Germany. By the end of the century the vast Mongol Empire extended from China to the borders of these countries of central Europe, covering all northern Asia and eastern Europe. The occupation of Russia lasted for three centuries.

It is not easy to imagine the enormous significance of this central fact in Russian history. The Mongol occupation cut that history in two, with the result that the second period, the period that follows the dismal gap of national effacement, differs in many serious respects from the earlier period, with which we were concerned in the previous chapter. The tendency of modern historians is to make less of this fact than was formerly assumed. Russian writers in particular are anxious to vindicate their country from a charge of having adopted Mongolian habits.^[6] It seems clear that some of the Oriental customs which were practised by the Russians were due to the influence of Constantinople rather than to the effect of the Mongol invasion. For instance, there was a strict seclusion of women in the court of the Byzantine Empire, which was imitated when Russia came under Byzantine influences, and therefore must not be attributed to Mohammedanism. Then the Sclavonic is certainly still the basal element in Russian life, as it always has been. Moreover, the Mongols had not the Roman genius for ruling. They let the local Russian princes govern their territories though subject to the supremacy of the "horde," wherever this moving army might be. Novgorod, isolated by its marshes and the barrenness of its neighbourhood, was left almost to itself in virtual independence. We must not regard the Mongols as a mere plague of locusts eating up everything they came across.

Nevertheless, after due allowance is made for these mitigating circumstances, the fact remains that the Mongol invasion left lasting effects on the national life of Russia. Many Russian princes married daughters of the Mongols. Later on, a nobleman of Mongolian origin, Boris Godunov, was elected tsar. Even in dress the influence of the Mongols was felt, and Russians adopted from them the long flowing robe known as the "caftan." A less pardonable Mongolian import was the knout, that horrible instrument of torture, the use of which was continued till the reign of Alexander I., and has been revived in the prisons of to-day. From the same source came the public flogging of debtors, which was subsequently abolished by Peter the Great. But the chief result of the Mongol invasion was that it cut Russia off from the West, and made it more and more an Eastern country. In the previous period Russia had belonged to the comity of European nations. It has been already remarked that her civilisation was then superior to that of France and Germany,^[7] She was joined with Constantinople in the van of progress. But the Mongolian invasion put an end to this state of affairs. For the time being all national life seemed to be crushed, A cringeing attitude was forced on princes and people. The princes were compelled to travel to the horde—the movable court and camp of the khan—for their investiture, and to submit to its authority whenever it chose to interfere with them. To the horde they had to pay their tribute. Even at home they were hampered by the presence of residents called "baskàks." That thirteenth century, which is to us a very golden age—the age of St. Francis and the friars and the awakening of democratic religion throughout the West—the age of early English architecture and cathedral building—the age of the great English king Edward i. and the rise of the House of Commons—the age of Dante and the origin of modern literature—the age of Giotto and Fra Angelico and the beginnings of modern painting—this was in Russia the darkest of ages, the age of oppression and stagnation and misery. Russia had shared with Constantinople the glories of the earlier period, when the rest of Europe was abandoned to the barbarism which followed the break-up of the Roman Empire, and which we have been taught to call the Dark Ages. Now the case was completely reversed. The darkness lifted from the West, and a brilliant day dawned in England, France, and Italy; at the same time the darkness settled down on Russia—just when the abominable "Latin Empire" was filling Constantinople and the Eastern Church with gloom and misery.

This national calamity of Russia could not but have a profound effect on the Church and the course of her life during the period of trial. Here the first thing to observe is that the Mongols, even after they became Mohammedans, did not persecute the Christians in Russia. That country was still the land least stained with the blood of martyrs. It was when she began to persecute her own sons whom she reckoned heretics, the members of the various prohibited sects, that this cruelty became common in Russia. The Mongols permitted the Christians to enjoy their religion freely and to conduct its public services. The khans even protected the Church from attack, and exempted its property from confiscation. But this very fact had its peculiar influence, especially when it was combined with the political factors of the case. Russia was now cut off from Constantinople. Like the prince, the metropolitan had to go to the horde for investiture. He, too, was required to cringe before the great khan. Then the Church centre was removed first to Vladimir, and afterwards to Moscow, which was quite out of reach from Constantinople. Ecclesiastically this is one of the most important results of the Mongol invasion. As regards the internal affairs of the Church, it meant independence. The Russian metropolitan was no longer subject to the patriarch of Constantinople. Thus the Russian Church became free from Greek control. This was one stage in the progress of her importance, to be followed later by her primacy in the holy orthodox Church, with the tsar as its head and protector.

A further consequence of the Moslem invasion is that from this time onwards religion and patriotism blend. It is like the union of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland with the Nationalist party. In some measure this result was brought about by the forced severance of connection with Constantinople. Hitherto the Church in Russia had been in some respects an exotic growth. Her metropolitans had been Greeks, appointed by the patriarch of Constantinople, despatched as foreign missionaries by this ecclesiastic of another country, not always even knowing the language of the people over whom they were imposed as their chief pastors. But after the Mongol conquest the metropolitans were Russians elected by native Russian bishops. Then, in the second place, the common misery of the alien yoke drove the Church along the same way as the nation, or rather awoke national instincts in connection with religion, and made the religious leaders ardent patriots. Thus, through these two influences, the Mongol invasion Russianised the Church in Russia.

It is more difficult to penetrate beneath the surface and discover how far the interests of religion itself were affected by this huge cataclysm; but it would seem that in some respects the trial was a stimulus to faith. In their desolation and wretchedness the people felt the need of religion. Certain fascinating and exciting forms of religion are always found to flourish under such circumstances. The Jewish oppression under Antiochus Epiphanes, and again under the Romans, gave rise to apocalypses which painted the future in glowing colours for the people of God, but threatened doom for their oppressors. Similarly, during the Mongol oppression new prophecies were published and eagerly devoured; people saw strange visions; icons were unusually active in working miracles. At this time too a great impulse was given to monasticism. No doubt there was much poverty, for trade must have been terribly disorganised, and other miseries besides hunger drove multitudes into the monasteries. Many sought the calm seclusion of the monastic life simply because it was more congenial to their devotional temperament. But monasteries which were planted in remote and secluded places for the sake of the retirement sought by their inmates became centres of missionary activity. Thus Russia repeated the experience of Germany in an earlier age.

The consequence was that this very time, when the normal development of the Russians in civilisation and secular progress was checked and thrown back, Christianity was being spread farther afield in outlying regions of northern and eastern Europe by Russian monks. In the East the far-off place called Great Perm, near the Ural Mountains, formerly only visited by fur-hunters, was now both Christianised and won to Russia by the labours of a single monk, bearing the common monastic name Stephen. All alone he penetrated the forests, and, though opposed by the pagan priests, succeeded in winning a body of converts, for whom he built a rude church on the bank of the river Viuma. The metropolitan consecrated him bishop of Perm, where he laboured for many years; he retired to Moscow in his old age. Eudocia, or Eupraxia according to her name in the convent, founded the convent of the Ascension in the Kremlin; St. Euphemius established the celebrated monastery of the Saviour at Souzdal; St. Cyril founded the monastery of Bielo-ozero, one of the most famous of all Russian monasteries. At first simply seeking for a retreat like St. Anthony in the desert, Cyril retired to the lonely shores of the White Lake; but his fame spread, and companions gathered about him peopling the solitude with lives dedicated to the service of religion. Here the traveller to-day sees a monastery of the first class, surrounded by two strong walls flanked by lofty towers, and armed with cannons. The enclosure contains two monasteries, a greater and a lesser. The greater monastery lies between the inner and the outer walls; it has nine churches built of stone. The lesser monastery is within the second wall. This monastery is said to possess the richest treasures of gold-embroidered and jewelled vestments in the empire. In earlier days it earned a more laudable reputation, for then it was a centre of missionary activity in still more remote regions. One of its offsprings is the Solovetsky Monastery, which is built on one of a cluster of islands lying out north of the bay of Onega in the White Sea, The island is inaccessible for nearly eight months of the year on account of ice-floes; but during the summer it is visited by crowds of pilgrims.

This monastery in its turn, long regarded as the northernmost outpost of the Russian Church, became a centre of missionary activity in Arctic regions. On a rocky island on Lake Loubensky, not far from Bielo-ozero, there lived a community of monks who were engaged in preaching the gospel to the Finnish tribe of the Chondes. The monk Lazarus founded a monastery on the shore of Lake Onega as a missionary centre for the conversion of the Laplanders, while the monks of Salaam on the neighbouring Lake Ladoga also evangelised these people. In the south and east, and throughout the greater part of her country, Russia was now down-trodden and distressed by a cruel, barbarous yoke. Yet we see these very years of her oppression to be the times of greatest activity in the extension of Christianity on her inhospitable borders out of reach of the Asiatic intruder. History has few more inspiring tales to tell than this record of the sweet that came out of the bitter, the honey from the lion's mouth. The Russian Church was never more fruitful in winning converts to the gospel than when so many of her sons had fled from before the oppressor, not to rest in peace, but to take up new work, and utilise their exile in the service of their Lord. Thus the dreadful Mongol invasion, which on the surface appeared to be nothing but a curse to the Church as well as to the nation, proved to be the unintentional stimulus of wide-spreading missionary activity, and indirectly the means of transmitting the greatest benefits to unknown tribes by the northern seas.

 

1. Nestor, x.
2. Baronius's Annals, tome xi. p. 472.
3. "Filius vester limina apostolorum visitans ad nos venit, et quod regnum illud dono Sancti Petri per manus nostras vellet obtinere, eidem beato Petro apostolorum Principi debitâ fidelitate exhibitâ," etc.
4. P. 37.
5. Mr. Morfill spells the name Dchingish. M. Leroy Beanlieu spells it Djinghiz.
6. e.g. Soloviev, the historian.
7. P. 363.