The Greek and Eastern Churches/Part 2/Division 3/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN MODERN RUSSIA
After the death of Peter the Great (a.d. 1725) Russia was disturbed by contending factious. The great tsar's widow Catherine succeeded to the throne, but only survived him for two years. Peter, the son of the ill-fated Alexis, followed, and soon died. Next came the uneventful reign of Anne, who died in the year 1740. A series of changes in the government now rapidly supervened, till Elizabeth, the only surviving child of Peter the Great, was seated on the throne. Her father had introduced civilians into the body that managed the Church estates. Elizabeth reverted to the old custom and gave these estates back entirely into the hands of ecclesiastics. It was a time of reaction in favour of the Church. The empress showed herself very energetic in church-building, the promotion of pilgrimages, and the persecution of dissenters.
Peter iii., Elizabeth's nephew and successor, meditated a great measure of reform. This was nothing less than the appropriation of the Church lands. He was not strong enough to carry out so stupendous an enterprise. But this task was accomplished by his consort and successor, Catherine ii. (a.d. 1762–1796). She was an able sovereign, of German birth and education, and therefore more enlightened than her predecessors, but of scandalous morals, who ousted her feeble husband and usurped his authority. Although Peter the Great acquired large practical knowledge in the West and set a high value on European science, he was always a barbarian at heart, and he mocked the civilisation he mimicked. But Catherine, also deservedly called "the Great," really understood it and endeavoured to introduce genuine reforms on modern lines. The specific reform which Peter iii. dreamed of and which Catherine effected was urgently needed. The Church had become a parasite on the State, a vampire sucking its life-blood, showing no life itself, but able to drain the life of the nation, fattening on the starvation of the people. An English contemporary writer says of the monasteries, "They have wrought that if any part of the realm be better and sweeter than other, there standeth a friary or monastery dedicated to some saint."[1] The number of serfs belonging to the monks now amounted to nearly a million. Catherine appointed a mixed lay and ecclesiastical commission to arrange the transference both of the land and of its human property, the serfs. The one became crown land, and the other, remaining still in slavery, passed over to State ownership. In return it was ordered that a fixed revenue drawn from the public funds should be paid to the archimandrites for the support of their monks. Monasteries could now no longer acquire land without the sanction of the government. With the loss of their property the monks declined in independence and prestige. They also rapidly declined in numbers, although the number of the nuns is said to have been growing. There was a constant rivalry between the black clergy (the monks), and the white clergy (the parish popes), the black clergy trying to exercise authority over the white, who in turn endeavoured to evade their interference.
Napoleon's ill-fated attack on Russia distracted attention for a time from internal affairs, both civil and ecclesiastical But its successful repulse with immense loss to the invader and his final overthrow were followed by a corresponding expansion and strengthening of the power of Russia, which may be said to have been now at her zenith. Alexander i. (a.d. 1801–1825) showed himself at first to be progressive and reforming in several directions. During his reign, several universities, including that of St. Petersburg, were founded. But the administration of the whole empire was rotten. "Everything was corrupt, everything unjust, everything dishonest," writes the official Russian historian when describing the last ten years of Alexander's reign.[2] The tsar now became distinctly reactionary. He allowed the censorship of the press to be made more rigid—a sure sign that discontent was rising, and that attempts to meet its demands were slackening.
At this time there were 110,000 white clergy, 5,700 black clergy, and 5,300 nuns; 27,000 churches, including 450 cathedrals (sobors) and about 500 chapels, 377 monasteries and 99 nunneries. The annual expenditure of the Church was about 900,000 roubles.[3] A contest now arose between the Holy Synod and the government. The Church authority was desirous of making itself independent of control by the State. In this movement the synod was led by Seraphim, archbishop of Tver, afterwards of Moscow, and later of St. Petersburg, where he became also president of the Holy Synod. He was a narrow-minded bigot, but astute, and he induced an excitable young ascetic, the archimandrite Photius, religious teacher of the school of cadets, to further his projects. A man of a finer type was Philaret, archbishop of Yaroslaff, and afterwards of Moscow, whom Photius denounced as a "freemason," and whom Seraphim accused of being "unorthodox" and of having "Lutheran" tendencies. In his early reforming period Alexander endeavoured to improve the wretched condition of the white clergy, by placing them on a fixed salary paid by the State, and raising the character of the whole body. It was with the tsar's assistance that a Bible Society was formed in Russia after the model of the "British and Foreign Bible Society." During the first nine years of its existence this society printed 129 editions of the Bible and as many as 675,000 copies. In the year 1817 Alexander reorganised the synod and put it under the authority of the Minister of Education, who, according to the terms of his appointment, "was henceforth to occupy the same leading position with respect to the synod, as the Minister of Justice with respect to the Senate." The tsar manifested some sympathy with mysticism; he also came to an agreement with the pope for the establishment of an archbishopric at Warsaw, and a harmonious arrangement between the two Churches in that city. He may have been meditating the age-long question of the "union," so dear to the hearts of successive popes of Rome, and opening at times so promising a prospect for much-harassed emperors. But this arrangement was nothing so ambitious. The two religions existed side by side in Poland. It was well that they should be at peace, each enjoying its rights and liberties.
But all this was most objectionable to the Holy Synod, for it seemed to threaten the foundations of the authority of the hierarchy. A few years later (a.d. 1822), Seraphim, taking the lead in the opposition, used Photius as his instrument to influence the tsar. That strange personage, half-mediæval saint, half-Jesuit in character, so completely won over Alexander that the tsar fell at his feet, kissed his hands, and seemed to yield entirely to his hypnotic influence. Photius made the best of his opportunity, denouncing Galitzin, the Minister of Education, the Catholics, the Lutherans, the mystics, the secret societies, the Bible Society—everything that made for freedom of thought, as enemies both to the throne and to the Church. Alexander wavered; he would not yield at once, for he was of a suspicious nature. Two years passed, and then Seraphim himself denounced Galitzin to the tsar as the enemy of orthodoxy. Alexander, who was well meaning, but dreamy and vacillating, still resisted for a time; but Seraphim was firm and uncompromising, and he had supporters. In the end the tsar yielded. Galitzin was dismissed, and was succeeded by a reactionary, Shishkoff; the independence of the sacred synod was restored; and the Bible Society's activity was checked, though not actually suppressed till after Alexander's death.
Nicholas i. (1825–1855) favoured the orthodox Church and the reactionaries, and persecution of nonconformists was now revived. Nevertheless the Uniats once again tried to bring the Russian Church into the Roman communion. This most recent attempt was no more successful than its predecessors. In the year 1839 the Russian Uniat bishops met at Polosk, and issued a memorial to the tsar expressing their willingness to return to the orthodox fold. The consequence was that a million and a half Uniats were forcibly brought into the Russian Church and more than 2,000 churches taken over. The effect of this act of tyranny on Poland was most disastrous. Nicholas i. was a stern despot who drove the synod with a tight rein.
Alexander ii. (1855–1881) is deservedly famous for his great act of humanity in the emancipation of the serfs. In earlier ages the country people had consisted of three classes—independent peasant farmers, free hired labourers who could move at will from place to place, and slaves. But in course of time all three had become serfs, and the serfs were really nothing but slaves. Their lot was much worse than that of the villeins of feudalism in the West. In Russia there was no idea of mutual obligations subsisting between the lord and his people, no family bond. Serfs were bought and sold like cattle. The same advertisement would offer cows and horses, capable working-men and handsome young women for sale. This marketing was quite regardless of relationship. A family might be broken up and its several members sold to different masters.[4] The serfs were flogged and tortured and outraged with impunity. When extravagance and bad public finance were bringing many of the aristocracy to the verge of ruin, the serfs had to work the harder. This slavery of white men and women in Russia was as bad as the worst form of negro slavery in America.
Nicholas had meditated putting a stop to the dreadful social condition of his empire that serfdom involved; but it was left for his son to carry out the great reform. This was done in the year 1861. The landowners received an indemnity from the State, and the serfs were set free from all bondage to them; at the same time the land of the village commune was made the actual property of the peasants.
Three years later (a.d. 1864), Alexander released the clergy from their caste bondage. The Church was now thrown open to all classes. Nevertheless, as there were no parsonages and glebes attached to the parishes, and since each pope's house and the land he cultivated was his own property, it still remained necessary for a newly appointed priest to marry his predecessor's daughter—unless his own father was a priest whom he might succeed—in order to have a house to live in and a field to live by.
Some other slight changes have since been effected in the social life of the people. Count Dmitri Tolstoi, when both High Procurator and Minister of the Interior, multiplied the parish schools and put them under the direction of the local clergy. In the reign of Alexander ii. there were as many as 20,000 such schools—on paper. Subsequently the Zemstvos established secular schools, before which the church schools shrank up and withered away. One of the reactionary measures of the notorious Pobiêdonostsef was the restoration of the church schools. In 1884 he stated to the Holy Synod that the parish schools were especially intended to strengthen the people in the foundations of the faith! These schools were then placed Tmder the direction of the Holy Synod.[5]
There is tragic irony in the fate of the tsar who conferred the greatest boons on his people. Alexander had found his people really no nation, divided by a gulf of social cleavage, the workers mere bondsmen to the lords. At one stroke he had granted freedom, if not social equality. His reward was assassination by agents of one of the secret societies formed in the interests of liberty. Nothing could demonstrate more clearly the deep-rooted disease of the body politic. And yet improvements were still going forward.