The Russian Church and Russian Dissent/Chapter 9

by Albert Farley Heard

 

CHAPTER IX.

The Raskol.—Early Heresies.—Attempted Reforms in Church.—Nikon.—Peter the Great.—The Popovtsi and the Bezpopovtsi.—Political Aspect of the Raskol.

 

The Orthodox Russian Church, for upwards of two hundred years, has been disturbed by numerous mysterious sects, almost wholly unknown abroad, and but partially understood at home. The religious movement from which they derive their being, generally designated as the "Raskol,"^[1] or the "Schism," is peculiarly Russian and national in its origin and character. It has never extended beyond the limits of the empire, and, within them, it is restricted chiefly to the more ancient provinces, where the population is essentially Muscovite; it is of most diverse nature, absolutely without unity in its development, subdivided into a thousand different branches, separate and distinct one from the other, having only for their common object opposition to the established Church. It is exclusively a popular movement; it had its rise, and still exists, in the peasant's hut, and among the common multitude, without sympathy from, or affiliation with, the educated or upper classes of society, and it indicates a mental and social condition of the people which has no parallel in other lands.

Both German Protestantism and Russian Raskol preserve the stamp of their similar religious origin, as issuing each from an established State Church, but here the resemblance ceases, until it is again apparent in analogous results.

In the West, Dissent has generally proceeded from a spirit of investigation, doubt, and inquiry; from a desire for liberty, and from impatience of spiritual control; but in Russia it has sprung from diametrically opposite causes—the obstinacy of ignorance, persistent reverence for the past, and obedience to authority.

In the one case, the human soul has sought freedom from the trammels of form and ceremony to satisfy its aspirations towards an ideal, higher life; in the other, superstitious regard for ancient usages, devotion to external rites, have been the predominant influences. From a common starting-point the two movements have progressed in steadily diverging directions, but, while antagonistic in the principle of their development, they I have arrived at similar results, inasmuch as the Raskol, rejecting the authority of the Church, by which alone unity of faith could be preserved, has recognized the right of free interpretation of mysterious, though immutable, dogmas, and accepted all the vagaries of individual opinions regarding them, thereby creating infinite variety of belief.

In the Middle Ages, during the constant wars between the appanaged princes, heresies and religious controversies were rife in Russia, as elsewhere. Each petty sovereign, as he arrived at power, endeavored to enlist the influence of the Church in his own behalf; three metropolitans, in the twelfth century, claimed, at the same time, the ecclesiastical throne at Kiev; and the disturbances within the Church, from their rival pretensions, permitted the growth of heretical doctrines, which related, however, not to fundamental dogmas, but only to external observances. Nestor, bishop of Rostov, accused of favoring them, was summoned to Constantinople for his justification, about 1162; and, during his absence, Leon, a neighboring prelate, usurped charge of his diocese. He openly professed and encouraged the practices laid to the charge of Nestor, and which, while at variance with canonical rule, aimed at stricter observance of Church discipline. He preached the necessity of abstaining from meat at the festivals of the Nativity and the Epiphany, whenever they should fall upon a Wednesday or a Friday. Nestor was acquitted and returned, but the heresy had meanwhile assumed such proportions as to necessitate a further reference to the patriarch, before whom Leon was cited to appear, and by whom he was tried and condemned. This authoritative decision was set at naught by Constantine II., Metropolitan of Kiev, a native Russian, who shared the opinions advocated by Leon, and supported them by his authority.

This religious movement, the first of which any record exists within the Russian Church, is, in its ceremonial character, typical of the dissensions which arose in subsequent centuries; it was swallowed up and forgotten in the civil commotions distracting the country, but, in connection with it, the devotional disposition of the people was manifested in the popular belief that to divine displeasure, aroused by the defection of the head of the Church, was to be attributed the sack and ruin of Kiev, the holy city, in 1168, by a coalition of the appanaged princes, under Andrew Bogoloubsky of Souzdal.^[2]

In 1370 the sect of the Strigolniki^[3] appeared. They took their name from the craft of their founder, one Karp, a sheep or wool shearer, a man of the people, with whom was joined Nikita, a deacon of the Church. The movement was a popular protest against the greed, covetonsness, and corruption of the clergy, and it spread rapidly among the lower classes at Pskov and Novgorod. Its founders commenced by railing at, and finally rejecting, the clergy altogether, as being a human institution, rendered despicable by the ignorance, degradation, and covetousness of its members; they alleged, by authority of St. Paul, that any Christian brother was empowered to teach the Gospel, and, for priests, they substituted leaders chosen freely among themselves. They denied the rite of episcopal ordination, and that the imposition of hands could endow the clergy with any divine power of imparting the grace of the Holy Ghost; this power they claimed for every believer, as an essential privilege of Church membership, by which all brethren were invested with the rights of spiritual priesthood. They renounced auricular confession and priestly absolution, as being contrary to God's commands to confess one's sins to Him, and to bow before Him alone; they rejected the priest's office in baptism and communion, and administered these sacraments one to another. To chant psalms over the dead, and to offer up prayers and oblations for their souls, they declared to be an innovation of the devil, practised by his agents, the priests, to satisfy their greed and covetousness, by the fees they earned. Nikita, degraded from his office, was thrown into prison, and Karp, victim of the fickleness of popular favor, was, at the instigation of his enemies, the priests, drowned by a mob in the river Volkov. The sect was suppressed, so far as outward manifestations went, but the leaven of its teachings remained fermenting in the popular mind.

A century later, about 1470, a heresy, known as that of the "Jedovstchina,"^[4] or the sect of the Judaizers, was discovered at Novgorod. It was introduced from Lithuania by a learned Jew, Zachariah, a man profoundly versed in the cabalistic arts, generally believed, in those days, to be the peculiar inheritance of his race, and the source of Solomon's fabled wisdom. Taught in secret, it had already acquired formidable proportions before it was detected. It was supposed to have been grafted upon the former errors of the Strigolniki, which, not yet entirely forgotten, still remained latent in the mysterious undercurrents of popular belief; there was, however, no apparent affiliation or resemblance, save as regards a common hatred of the priesthood and opposition to clerical authority. This new sect rejected entirely the doctrines of the Christian religion; it denied the divinity, and even the existence of the Saviour, proclaiming that the Messiah was yet to come. Apart from circumcision, it inculcated the tenets of the Jewish faith; promulgated in mystery, it was readily received by a credulous, ignorant people, chafing under the onerous exactions of a grasping, covetous priesthood, which it despised more heartily than it feared. The adherents of this sect were scrupulously observant of all the rites and ceremonies of the Orthodox Church, and, by their crafty dissimulation, for a long period they escaped discovery. Among Zachariah's early proselytes were two priests of Novgorod, Alexis and Dionysius, who, while secretly spreading error, maintained unblemished reputations as faithful ministers of the Church; by their apparent zeal and devotion they gained the confidence of the great prince Ivan III., and were summoned by him to Moscow; there he installed them as archpriests or deans, one in the Cathedral of the Assumption, the other in the Church of the Archangel. At the capital their efforts were, for a while, crowned with success; many in high position, among them Feodor Kouritsin, secretary of the prince, Helena, his daughter-in-law, and Zosimus, an archimandrite, became their disciples. The latter, by the influence of Alexis over the tsar, was, by him, arbitrarily appointed metropolitan of Moscow in 1491. Gennadius, Bishop of Novgorod, was the first whose suspicions were aroused; his representations were unheeded by Gerontius, then metropolitan, an aged and indolent prelate; but subsequent and more earnest appeals to the tsar, as defender of the faith, induced him to convene a council of the Church in 1505. Notwithstanding the protection and connivance of Zosimos, who presided as metropolitan, this assembly, moved by the vehement denunciations of Gennadius, aided by the hegumen of the Volokamsk monastery, St. Joseph, one of the most learned and enlightened men of his day, anathematized these schismatic and dangerous doctrines.

Alexis, meanwhile, had died, but Dlonysius, with the tsar's secretary, and many of their adherents in high ecclesiastic and civil office, were condemned and handed over to the secular arm for punishment at the stake; Zosimos was deposed, but his deposition was attributed to intemperance and incapacity, in order to avert from the Church the scandal of punishing the apostasy of its head. The heresy was stifled, if not thoroughly eradicated.

Popular sympathy with these early religious movements seems to have been excited, both by the dislike and contempt felt for an ignorant, greedy, and rapacious priesthood, and by a preference, already manifested, for ancient and primitive forms of worship, as more akin to, and in harmony with, the earliest, and consequently the most reliable, revelations of divine truth. Already, in these obscure dissensions of the Middle Ages, the fundamental principle of the Raskol—that is to say, scrupulous regard for the letter of the law, formalism—begins to assert itself. An annalist of Novgorod, in the fifteenth century, mournfully complains that some of the clergy have impiously changed the ancient invocation of, "Lord! have pity upon us!" for "O Lord! have pity upon us!"

The manner in which the Russian people were converted to Christianity, suddenly, by order, as it were, made religion appear to them as consisting in form, in words, rites, and ceremonies. There had been among them no gradual assimilation of the truth; they had received no previous preparation by long-continued teaching, as in the West; they still retained their former customs, were still imbued with their ancient superstitions, and were too ignorant to fully comprehend, or appreciate, the pure and elevated morality of the Christian faith. Their rulers commanded, and they obeyed, submissively transferring their allegiance from the idol to the cross, worshipping at the altar in the same spirit as before their pagan shrines. The clergy were hardly more enlightened than the people; for them, also, the letter replaced the spirit, and they deemed their functions limited to the exact repetition of external observances.

By the ignorance and carelessness of scribes and copyists, the liturgy, and the Church-books were soon filled with errors, which, hallowed by constant use, passed into general acceptation, and were held in superstitious veneration by both the minister and the worshipper. The strange interpolations, the contradictions, the capricious readings of the text, seemed the more worthy of reverence as they were the more obscure. They were sacred formulas, full of hidden, mysterious meanings, and, from being capable of divers interpretations, were the source of many singular theories and eccentric teachings, based on what was received as revealed of God.

The necessity of careful revision and correction of the books, the ritual, and the service of the Church was, at an early period, felt to be imperative by many having authority in both Church and State. In the sixteenth century Vassili IV. appealed to Constantinople for competent assistance. Maximus, a Greek theologian of vast erudition and earnest piety, was sent from Mount Athos, and assumed direction of the work. He was favorably received by the tsar, and supported by the more enlightened prelates of the Church, but his efforts were rendered futile by the unreasoning fanaticism of the people and the bigotry of most of the clergy, envious of honors shown to a foreigner. The metropolitan Daniel, an ambitious and intolerant Churchman, was a bitter opponent of the contemplated changes, and his hostility was increased by jealousy of Maximus's influence with the monarch; this mild and pious monk, an uncompromising defender of the laws and canons of the Church, soon fell a victim to court and clerical intrigue, and was condemned by a council for daring to tamper with the ancient and sacred formulas and rites.

Ivan IV., the "terrible" tsar, was deeply read in theological learning, and in early life evinced great solicitude for the Church. He resumed the task, commenced by his father, of correcting and purifying the books and ritual, and convened, for the purpose, the council known as that of the Hundred Chapters, in 1551. Its decisions, of which no authentic record remains, appear to have been tainted by the prejudices and the ignorance of the age; they sanctified by their authority the superstitious practices existing, which, thus approved, took deeper root among the people, while the errors in the books remaining unaltered acquired additional confirmation. The introduction of the printing-press at the same period served to disseminate more widely the books and missals in their ancient form, and this was generally accepted as definitively the true and canonical version.

It was reserved for Nikon, in the middle of the seventeenth century, to accomplish a fundamental reform. This extraordinary man was well fitted for the task. His learning was, for the age and the country, varied and profound, his genius vast and enterprising, his piety and devotion to the Church sincere, his zeal and energy unbounded, and his determination inflexible. He possessed the entire confidence of his sovereign, and wielded over the State a power and influence commensurate with that he exercised over the Church. At his command Greek and Slavonic manuscripts were collected and collated, monks were summoned from Byzantium and from the holy sanctuaries of Palestine, and the work of expurgation and correction was vigorously pursued. The rites and ceremonies were restored in their primitive purity, and invested with all the pomp and splendor of the Oriental Church. The liturgy and missals, freed from interpolations and erroneous readings, were approved by a council, and the use of the amended version forcibly imposed throughout the empire. These radical measures, received with stupefaction and amazement, were at first apparently successful, but soon aroused a storm of popular indignation and revolt; resistance was organized and encouraged by a large portion of the clergy, especially by those of the lower ranks, who came in more immediate contact with the people; they denounced the alterations as a new-fangled religion, akin to Romanism or Lutheranism, and as a deadly attack upon the ancient Orthodox faith. The Church appealed to the State to enforce its edicts, and persecution increased fanaticism. Ten years later Nikon fell from his high estate, and, although the council which condemned him ratified the reforms he had inaugurated, his deposition seemed, to the people, a full justification for their opposition. The sanction and approval of the Eastern patriarchs served only to increase and intensify the popular feeling, by arousing the general hatred of foreign intervention, and added to the bitter contest the element of national jealousy and prejudice. What was, at first, merely an outbreak of religious discontent assumed by degrees the aspect of a political revolution. Dissent rapidly developed into schism; it became the Raskol, or the Rupture, and, once firmly established, was a power no longer to be summarily dealt with.

In all religious history no movement so serious and lasting has ever issued from such futile and trivial causes. The way of making the sign of the cross, its form, whether processions should march towards the East or towards the West, an additional letter in the name Jesus, the repetition of Halleluia twice or three times, the number of loaves upon the Holy Table, constituted the principal points of the controversy. Servile respect for the letter of the law, for the form only, was the very essence of its origin; but it must be remembered that, for the old Muscovite, Orthodoxy, Christianity, Religion itself was but ceremony and symbol, as embodiments of the fundamental dogmas of the faith.

The Dissenters, hitherto known as the Staroobriadtsi,^[5] or Old Ritualists, assumed the name of Staroveri,^[6] or Old Believers; that is, true believers, and, by a singular contradiction, founded their claim to this designation upon the alleged antiquity of their practices, stubbornly ignoring the fact that the innovations, against which they rebelled, in reality restored the ancient worship in its primitive purity, while they were the innovators.

The principle underlying the Raskol is essentially realistic and materialistic, pushed to its extreme limits. Notwithstanding the extravagance of its deductions and the moral barrenness of its results, it is, in the singleness of purpose and fanatical sincerity of its adherents, entitled to respect, if not to sympathy. Reverence for the letter of the law is, for the Old Believer, a consequence of his regard for its spirit; in his mind the two are inseparably united; the form and the essence are one; both necessary elements of faith, both equally of divine origin, essential parts of a complete and perfect whole, revealed by God to man, as the only way of salvation; nothing in it is trivial, nothing superfluous; all is profound, mysterious, holy; one jot or one tittle may not pass from the law, and the words of St. John, set as a seal to close the Apocalypse, are, for him, a real and awful curse.

In this scrupulous regard for form the Raskol is in direct opposition to Protestantism, impatient of all fetters and restraint; it is allied to it in the free interpretation it allows to the text of the Word and in the many explanations it permits of the symbols of the faith. It seeks constantly a hidden, allegorical signification, not only in the expressions used, but also in the events narrated by the sacred writers; for instance, the story of Lazarus has been explained as a parable, and not a miracle performed by the Saviour; Lazarus was the human soul, his death the state of sin; Martha and Mary were, one the body, the other the soul; the grave was the cares of life, the resurrection of Lazaras the conversion of the soul. Christ's entrance into Jerusalem was not an incident in his career, but was a typical description of the entrance of the Holy Spirit into the heart of man. From this freedom of interpretation, indulged m by a superstitious, ignorant, and imaginative people, has arisen division into innumerable sects, with almost infinite variations of belief, as extraordinary and fantastic as they are numerous.

The strength and sacredness of family ties, together with the respect for ancient usages, at all times characteristic of the Muscovite race, have intensified their attachment to parental teachings and to doctrines inherited from their ancestors. "This was the religion of our fathers," they replied to remonstrances and menaces; "punish us, exile us, if you will, but leave us free to worship as our fathers did."

Nikon's changes attacked directly this reverential regard for what they deemed the past; the child remembered its mother's teachings, and refused to surrender the belief she relied upon; the peasant knew nothing of alterations or corruptions introduced centuries ago. Ancient usages, for him, were the usages of his forefathers, and the traditions of the village elders; he had heard vaguely of Romanism as an impious heresy, of his brethren in Poland seduced and forced by Catholic influence to a mongrel belief, hateful in his eyes, and he clung the closer to his father's creed. Both people and clergy were suspicious of every importation from abroad, whether it came from Western Europe, from the shores of the Bosphorus, or even from ancient Kiev, where priests studied "that thrice-accursed language, Latin;" they held it a mortal sin to call God "Deus," or the Father "Pater;" his only name was their own Slavonic "Bogh." A letter written by a Raskolnik, during the reign of Catherine II., relates "that in those days a violent persecution arose against us, pious Christians, dwelling peaceably among Little Russian perverts who eat pigeons and hares, and soil their mouths with the thrice-accursed plants coffee and tobacco; they have dragged some of us into their errors, but these were among us, though not of us; they were led by Satan himself—Satan, son of Beelzebub, offspring of the Serpent; they do not even think it a sin to call God Deus, and his Father, who got him, Pater."^[7] The Raskolniks, who called themselves "spiritual," or "true" Christians, deemed themselves to be the only Orthodox believers, the elect, chosen vessels to preserve the purity of the faith; and classed all foreigners as heretics sure of damnation. The Raskol was the expression of national and popular prejudices, as well as that of earnest religious enthusiasm.

Not long after Nikon, Peter the Great appeared, the chief cause of the schism, the head and front of the offending.

It is difficult, at the present day, to realize the impression this monarch made upon his subjects. It was more than wonder and amazement; they were scandalized by his acts. He trampled under foot their most cherished customs and traditions; openly and brutally assailed ancient and venerable institutions, held in tenderest respect; meddled with private affairs, and invaded the sanctity of domestic life; enforced regulations which shocked their national prejudices and religious belief; revolutionized the form of government; degraded the dignity of his kingly office, and dared even raise a sacrilegious hand upon the holy Church.

In the new Russia which he created the bewildered Muscovite could no longer recognize his native land; Strange names were dinned in his ears, foreign habits and habiliments offended his gaze; the calendar and the alphabet were altered, saints' days and holy days were shifted; men's chins were shaven, women appeared unveiled in the streets; Moscow became Babylon; old Russia was shaken as by an earthquake, and chaos seemed come again. The memory of Nikon's innovations was revived; Peter walked in his footsteps, and was, by popular indignation, accused of being his adulterous offspring.

The civil revolution inaugurated by the tsar gave fresh vigor to the discontent aroused by the old patriarch's attempt to reform the Church; Old Russians, opposed to civic and social changes, sympathized with Old Ritualists, intolerant of clerical innovation. National prejudices were stimulated by religious fanaticism, and religious hostility was excited by respect for ancient customs and institutions.

The complicated machinery of a modern form of government was irksome to a primitive people, strongly attached to simple and long-inherited usages; it was vexatious and repugnant to their habits. They rebelled against heavy imposts, made necessary by the new requirements of the State; against novel duties and obligations imposed upon them; against recruitment and enforced military service. They were impatient of restrictions upon personal freedom, of passports, and rules for dress; they were conscientiously opposed to regulations offending their religious scruples, to the census, to the registration of births and deaths, to the capitation tax, or tax "on souls" ("podouchenoï oklad"); "making them pay," as they said, "for their immortal souls, which God had given;" and they invoked the punishment of David for numbering the people of Israel.

The inflexible determination of the tsar was met with equally persistent opposition from these enthusiasts. They were astounded by his conduct, and, in their amazement, began to question his identity and to deny his authority. Fabulous stories were secretly circulated, some to the effect that he was the son of Nikon; others that the true "white tsar," Peter, had perished at sea; and that a Jew of the accursed race, a son of Satan, had usurped the throne, slain the imperial family, and married a German adventuress, who brought with her into Russia myriads of her countrymen. He was the Antichrist, whose coming had been foretold by the prophets, and his reign was the reign of Satan.

In the presumptuous efforts of Nikon Old Believers had seen portents of impending evil; and in the impious acts of Peter, levelling the venerable institutions of the past, insulting religion and morality, they realized the fulfilment of the prophetic vision of St. John; the last days had come, and the end of the world was at hand. The tsar's abolition of the patriarchate, the restrictions he imposed upon the Church, his attacks upon the rights and privileges of the clergy, the war he waged upon ancient customs, his persecution of true Orthodoxy, his fondness for the hated heretical foreigner, his wonderful triumphs after repeated and crushing defeats, the irregularities and wild excesses of his private life, even his gigantic stature, his strength, and his striking personal appearance, designated him as the Beast of the Apocalypse. Fanatical ingenuity found ample confirmation in the prophecies for this popular belief. He abandoned the national and sacred title of tsar for the infidel appellation of imperator, and as therein, by the suppression of the second letter, they deciphered the apocalyptic number 666, they said he concealed his accursed name under the letter M.^[8] The council at Moscow, which, while condemning Nikon, had anathematized the Raskol, was convoked in 1666; from this number, by dropping the thousand, in accordance with the old Russian custom of reckoning dates, they had 666; and as this was the number of the "beast," they read the date of the council as marking the commencement of Satan's reign. They found in the word Russia (Russa or Roussa) an anagram of Assur, or Assour of the Bible, and averred that the curses of the prophets against the Assyrian cities of Nineveh and Babylon were aimed at their own unhappy land. With their country thus given over to the powers of hell, and the devil sitting on the throne, surrounded by his imps, in the persons of the tsar's ministers and favorites, the Raskolniks felt it to be a religious duty to reject every innovation introduced, and every change made, under this Satanic rule, suffering with patient endurance, even unto death, rather than yield compliance to unrighteous behests. They carried their resistance into all the detail of daily life; as matters of conscience, they eschewed the use of tobacco, for "the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man" (Mark vii. 15); of sugar, as it is refined with blood, and, by the Scriptures, man may not eat of the blood of beasts; of tea and coffee, as of foreign production; of the potato, as being the fruit With which the serpent tempted Eve. They objected to the paving of the streets, as a foreign invention. They submitted to double taxation, deprivation of civil rights, and to exile even, rather than change their dress or crop their hair. They gloried in the red badge they were compelled to wear, as it pointed them out to the sympathy and commiseration of the people as the suffering, yet uncomplaining, defenders of national traditions and the ancient faith. Long hair and beards are still, as then, their distinguishing feature; and popular obstinacy, in this particular, proved stronger than the will of the autocrat. The more exalted and fanatic among them, called Stranniki,^[9] or Fugitives, threw off all allegiance, and arrayed themselves in open opposition to the government, proclaiming resistance to constituted authority as their profession of faith.

Apart from the religious character of the Raskol, it thus assumed another aspect, social and political, equally important as a popular protestation against new or foreign habits, customs, and laws. In its origin and inception it was but a blind attachment to errors born of ignorance, prejudice, and superstition, essentially, a religious movement, and upon this, its first principle, was engrafted, during Peter's reign, that of hostility to the existing government, and to constituted authority. The reforms inaugurated by him were generally accepted by the nobles and by the upper classes, but were repudiated by the people; the lines of demarcation between the two sections of society were more strongly drawn, and the Raskol became concentrated, almost entirely, in the lower ranks, which remained persistently faithful to the ancient order of things. It was conservative and reactionary, hostile as well to civil as to religious reform, a powful and dangerous element, frequently availed of by unscrupulous and designing men for the furtherance of their ambitious ends. The Old Believers were, and are still, upholders of ancient usages, as well as of ancient creeds; they are old Russians, Slavophiles, in the fullest sense, Asiatic, Oriental in their opposition to change or progress; they still look back to the days of their fathers as the golden age, and see no hope nor encouragement in what the future may have to offer. This spirit, which has always been a characteristic of the Russian people generally, has, nurtured and fostered by religious enthusiasm, been one of the strongest influences against which modern civilization, aided by government support, has had to contend. It explains in some degree the crude revolutionary movements which have at times temporarily disturbed the empire. Ignorant and fanatical opposition to authority has frequently led to impatience of all control, political or moral, and given rise to the wildest theories of socialism and communism.

There is a liberal and democratic tendency in the Raskol, notwithstanding its stationary and reactionary character. It sprang into existence not long after the establishment of serfdom; its lowly origin won for it early unconscious sympathy among an enslaved population, to whom it appealed the more strongly from its rejection by their masters. The people, in their material condition, were but little better than the beasts of the field, and the aspirations natural to the heart of man found solace in the prospect of spiritual independence. Their souls, if not their bodies, were their own; and, in the sphere of religious belief, they unwittingly found the opportunity for self-assertion which raised them in their own estimation, and enabled them, in some degree, to realize the dignity of their manhood. Doctrines, to which they were already inclined, met with more hearty response from being at variance with those of their superiors; sympathy for their brethren, oppressed on religious grounds, inspired sympathy for all victims of authority. The Raskol opened its ranks, and afforded protection to the fugitive from justice, as well as to the sufferer from religious persecution. Its many sects, hostile and warring each with the other, were united in opposition, not only to the established Church, but also to the newly constituted order of things throughout; and the spirit of resistance to clerical intolerance was in close accord with resistance to civil authority, each, by mutual reaction, supporting and sustaining the other.

In the vast field of theological discussion there is but slight hinderance to the wildest efforts of the imagination; no material facts, no perfectly ascertained nor minutely defined beliefs arrest the speculative flights of thought, or direct them to positive and necessary conclusions. They may wander on indefinitely, developing most contradictory, yet logical, consequences; and the excitable, imaginative disposition of the Russian people, their devout and superstitious temperament, render them especially prone to indulge in ratiocinations of this nature; while the methodical, argumentative bent of their mind leads them on, from deduction to deduction, to the utmost extremes, which, however irrational, or even absurd, they are boldly prepared to accept. The fundamental dogmas of Orthodoxy, moreover, while being immutable, are simple and elementary, conveyed in language often vague and mysterious, capable of divers interpretations; consequently an inclination to refine and speculate is developed as a means of satisfying a spiritual craving. From this proclivity, freely exercised by an illiterate but intelligent people, untrammelled by any restraint, without guidance from any recognized authority, has arisen the multiplicity of sects in the Raskol, the widely diverging doctrines, the extraordinary, often contradictory, but apparently logical results arrived at from a common starting-point.

From its inception the Raskol seemed doomed to early extinction. The Old Believers originally rebelled in support of ancient rites and ceremonies, and from the first they were confronted by an obstacle fitted to deter men of less enthusiasm or of weaker faith. The only bishop who shared their views, when they rejected Nikon's reforms, was Paul of Kolomna; he was exiled, and died without having consecrated any successor in his episcopal office. The Raskol, thus left without a head, without a bishop to renew and perpetuate its priesthood, without officers to administer the rites which it had been created to defend, seemed paralyzed from its birth. In the opinion of its adherents the Raskol was not merely a doctrinal system that could be propagated by ordinary teachers, it was the true original Church of divine institution, now purified of error, establishing the connection between man and God by the intermediary of a divinely appointed priesthood, capable of transmitting, in regular apostolic succession, the powers received from its Great High Priest. By the bereavement it suffered at the death of its only bishop, all connection with Christ was severed; its mission was frustrated before it had commenced; the reason for its existence and the possibility of its continuance were destroyed by the loss of the sacred authority, without which, as they themselves at first believed, there could be neither Church nor clergy. The difficulty seemed insurmountable, but they had gone too far to recede, and religious enthusiasm stimulated their ingenuity. Two paths only were open; the more exalted and extreme of their number chose the one, the more conservative followed the other, and schism arose within the schism almost at its inception.

The Raskol was divided into two sects, which have ever remained, each hostile to the other. The adherents of one retained the belief that Christianity, or a Church, could not exist without a priesthood of regular apostolic descent; they held that the Church of Russia had not necessarily, by adopting Nikon's heresy, lost its sacred character, that ordination of priests by its bishops was still valid, and, consequently, that to have a clergy in regular standing they had but to convert and draw to their ranks ministers of the national establishment. These sectarians took the name of "Popovtsi,"^[10] or Priest-possessing.

The adherents of the other declared that, by anathematizing true believers, by rejecting ancient traditions, books, and ritual, the National Church had become heretical, and lost all claim to divine power or authority; it was accursed, and its ministers were children of the Evil One; any communication with them was a sin, and consecration or ordination by them was pollution. The Eastern patriarchs shared in the condemnation, and no relief could come from them. Orthodoxy was extinct, apostolic succession and priesthood had perished with it. These fanatics were designated as "Bezpopovtsi,"^[11] or those without priests.

The existence of a sacerdotal class, although it was small in number, and composed chiefly of ignorant, venal, or unfrocked popes, prevented the complete separation of the Popovtsi from the established Church, and the utter rejection by them of all Orthodox doctrines. They recognize, and still accept, the sacraments, and have, as will be explained, managed to revive the episcopate and to establish a regular hierarchy of their own.

The Bezpopovtsi, on the contrary, with no stable foundation on which to stay their belief, no guiding authority to direct their steps, have wandered from Christian truth and ordinary morality, ramifying in every conceivable direction, following out, with inexorable logic, to their most extravagant and absurd conclusions the vagaries and eccentricities of individual opinion.

Renouncing the priesthood, they have abandoned all recognized forms of Orthodox or Christian worship; of the seven channels of divine grace, they have rejected all save baptism, which may be administered by lay brethren; the others are closed forever. Most extraordinary and conflicting ideas prevail among them, and each one is free to adopt and to follow such as may seem good in his own eyes. The more timid and superstitious among them, reluctant to accept as final their utter deprivation of all Christian ordinances, and their complete severance from all Church organization, have ransacked their imaginations to devise substitutes for the one and the other wherewith to appease their spiritual cravings. Without priests to hear confession and grant absolution, some confess to elders, some to sisters, as partaking by their sex of the blessing pronounced on Mary, "blessed among women," whom "all generations shall call blessed," and are fain to be content with promises of pardon. Without communion, these famished souls, hungering for holy food, resort to divers ceremonies which are, according to their moods and disposition, either fanciful and touching, or cruel and revolting: dried fruits, distributed by young girls, or flesh cut from a virgin's breast, are partaken of for spiritual refreshment. Amid their extravagances the ludicrous blends with the lugubrious. During the service of Holy Thursday certain of them, known as "gapers" or "yawners," sit for hours with their mouths wide open, waiting for ministering angels to quench their spiritual thirst from invisible chalices. While in constant and patient expectation of a miracle that shall again unite the body of the faithful upon earth with their Father in heaven, the great number of these enthusiasts rub tranquilly along through life, restrained by the engrossing difficulties of an arduous existence and the natural kindliness of the Russian character, from many of the aberrations that should logically follow upon their theories; but the more exalted and fanatic recoil from no consequences, however painful. Their dead are buried without prayer, as they have lived, in sickness and in trouble, without religious consolation; marriage is ignored, family ties and obligations are disregarded, and all the bonds and reciprocal duties upon which society is based are repudiated. This question of marriage is the chief stumbling-block in their path, the principal and fruitful cause of dissension and division among them. The moderate and more practical of their number consider conjugal reciation, convenient, entitled to respect even, but with nothing sacred or inviolable in its character. The more rigid affirm celibacy to be obligatory, and marriage to be a state of continual sin. Between these two extremes there is room for the wildest and most repulsive theories. Carnal sensuality is allied in monstrous union with religious mysticism. Free love, independence of the sexes, possession of women in common, have been preached and practised. Debauchery, as an incidental weakness of human nature, has been advocated as the lesser evil; libertinism as preferable to concubinage, and the latter as better than marriage. One of their most austere teachers cynically declares that "it is wiser to live with beasts than to be joined to a wife; to frequent many women in secret, rather than live with one openly."^[12]

Such are some of the results at which the most scrupulous defenders of ancient rites have arrived from their modest starting-point. In order to preserve intact a few venerable ceremonies, they entered upon their blind and perilous undertaking, and have been led, step by step, to abandon, not merely the doctrines of the Orthodox Church, but all principles of religion and morality. It was not without evident trepidation that even the most fanatic were brought to accept conclusions so abhorrent, however logical in appearance. They have felt the necessity of justifying their course, and as their apology have argued that Christ had abandoned His Church and His people; that the triumph of sin and iniquity was the fulfilment of the prophecies; that the evil days had come when the saints should be troubled and given over to the adversary; that the Church, deprived of its priesthood, was the desolate sanctuary described by Daniel; that Antichrist had come, and the end of all things was drawing nigh. "Why, then," said they, "should the faithful be disquieted within themselves, or sorrow over a ruined Church; why mourn the social wreck, or be concerned for the mortal destinies of the race, when the last trump is about to sound?"

The reign of Antichrist and the coming of the judgment-day is the ever-recurring cry of the Raskolniks generally, but especially of the Bezpopovtsi. Like all religious fanatics, they differ widely among themselves as to the explication and as to the application of their belief in these events. Many of them hold that this period of tribulation may endure for centuries; that it is a third Dispensation, similar to the old and the new, which both have passed away. The more moderate, together with the Popovtsi, understand them in a spiritual sense; they look more kindly on the civil government and on the established Church, as having been unwittingly made ministers of the powers of darkness, and as being capable of regeneration. The more rabid and extreme of the Bezpopovtsi comprehend them literally. Peter was Antichrist in person, who, in Peter's successors, still sits upon the throne, and the Holy Synod is the ministerial council of His Satanic Majesty. Herein lies a wide difference between the extreme branches of the Raskol, less important in its religious aspect, but more so in its political bearing and consequences. With those who regard the Church and the State as merely wandering from the faith, blind, it may be, to the truth, but not irredeemably perverse, some degree of harmony and some hope of eventual reconciliation are possible; but with the others, for whom all existing institutions, civil and religious, are the incarnation of evil, the handiwork of the devil, no understanding, truce, or peace can be expected.

The general belief in the actual advent of Antichrist has given rise, among the more extreme, who are at the same time the more ignorant and credulous, to the wildest vagaries, subversive of all law, government, and society.

Inasmuch as the tsar was the personification of evil, and his counsellors were imps of Satan, obedience to his decrees was sinful and infamous, and all communication with him or them was pollution. To escape from contamination they fled to desert places and shut themselves up in hidden retreats. Many deemed death preferable to life amid error and iniquity, and shortened their probation in an accursed world by murder and suicide. Certain fanatics, called "Dieto-oubiisti," or Child-killers, felt it a religious duty to slay new-born infants, in order that their souls, innocent of sin, might be sure of heaven without risk of damnation; some known as Stranglers, or Fellers (Doushilstchiki, or Tioukalstchiki), conceived that a violent death was the true way of salvation, pleading in grim earnestness that "the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence; the violent take it by force" (Matthew xi., 12), and piously despatched their relatives and friends by strangulation or blows, in case of mortal illness; others, who were very numerous in the early days of the Raskol, the Philipovtsi, disciples of one Phihp, who were also called Burners (Sojigateli), preached redemption by suicide and purification by fire. In the wilds of Siberia and in the Ural Mountains hundreds, whole families at a time, threw themselves into the flames of their burning houses, kindled by their own hands, or offered themselves up on funeral pyres, with prayers and songs, as a holocaust unto the Lord.

Belief in Antichrist and in the triumph of iniquity induced expectation of the millennium and of the second coming of Christ to reign with the faithful for a thousand years. Vehement exhortations of crazed enthusiasts, interpreting literally the prophecies of the Apocalypse, excited the imaginations of the ignorant and superstitious with wild dreams of material happiness soon to be enjoyed by the elect. Even in recent days, in spite of strict laws and prohibitive enactments, impostors have played upon the credulity of the simple and devout population. Accompanied by women, whom they presented for adoration as the Mother of God, or as the Mystic Spouse of the Church, they have asserted themselves to be the promised Messiah, or the "voice of one crying in the wilderness," foretelling the coming of the Lord, and have sent forth their followers as "seekers after Christ" ("iskateli Christa"), to search through the world for the Redeemer. No prediction was too improbable, no extravagance too wild, for credence. Simple peasants, princes of national and foreign lineage, mighty warriors, have been announced as the long-expected Saviour. Napoleon, destroyer of kings, avenger of oppressed nationalities, was hailed as the victorious conqueror who was to put all things under his feet. There are still worshippers in secret at his shrine—his death is denied; he escaped from captivity and found refuge in the depths of Siberia, on the shores of Lake Baikal, from whence he shall come, in the fulness of time, to trample upon Satan and establish the kingdom of peace and righteousness. The ready acceptance of doctrines so strange and fanciful must be ascribed in great measure to the existence among the people of vague aspirations, similar to those among the ancient Jews, to ardent desire for freedom and for relief from slavery, to a universal longing for emancipation from serfdom and its burdens, to the hope and expectation of a future repartition of the soil. Promises of coming liberty and assurances of participation in the wealth of their masters, based on Biblical prophecies, were welcome to an oppressed and suffering population.

The abolition of serfdom was enthusiastically hailed as the commencement of the final revolution, the beginning of the end so eagerly desired and so long waited for. It deprived, for a while, the preachers of revolt and resistance of their most formidable arguments, and checked the growth of the extreme and fanatical sects of the Raskol. As, however, this benevolent measure failed to immediately realize their extravagant anticipations, in their ignorance and impatience, incapable of comprehending its operation or of appreciating the beneficent results destined to flow from it, they have made the tardy realization of its blessings a fresh departure for denunciation of the authorities, who, as they aver, ever seek to defraud the people of their rights. The influence of these apostles of disorder and evil is still sorely felt, but it has diminished, and must eventually yield to the era of progress and enlightenment inaugurated by Alexander the Emancipator.

Russia is not alone subject to the reproach of extraordinary and extravagant ideas, nor may their existence be solely attributed to the ignorance and degradation of her people; they have had their counterpart in England and in America, under very different conditions. The Ironsides of Cromwell, the Puritans of New England, bear strong resemblance to the Old Believers, and for originality, eccentricity, and multiplicity of religious creeds, the Anglo-Saxon is in no whit inferior to the Muscovite of White Russia. The great republic of the New World and the vast empire of the North complacently find many points of contact, and this one is, perhaps, of all, the most remarkable. Prophets and prophetesses of divers revelations have rallied around them, in America, disciples by thousands; no doctrine has been too absurd, no creed too subversive of order or of morality, to find acceptance and gather adherents there among Mormons, Millerites, advocates of free love, and multitudinous sects of similar description.

This singular analogy between two people of such different antecedents and character, surrounded by influences so opposite and antagonistic, is susceptible, in some degree at least, of explanation. In one case there has been extraordinary exuberance of ideas, excessive individuality of opinion, a vigorous spirit of initiative and innovation, independence of thought, and impatience of authority; these characteristics, combined with strong devotional tendencies inherited from a Puritan ancestry, have overflowed the natural channels of politics and industry into those of religious speculation and creeds. In the other, the domain of religious thought was the only one open to the aspirations and struggling efforts of the popular mind, the only sphere in which the intelligence of the people could move freely and without repression, or find opportunity for its expression and development. Mournful as have been the results attained in Russia, they bear, in their vigor, fecundity, and originality, strong proof of intellectual energy and vitality in the Russian people, of singleness of purpose, and of deep sense of religious obligation; great qualities in themselves, which are, if rightly directed, essential elements in the growth of a great nation.

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1. Raskol is a Russian word meaning the cleft, the rupture.
2. Karamsin, vol. ii., p. 395; Mouravief, p. 39.
3. Karamsin, vol. v., p. 130; Mouravief, p. 65, and note, p. 379. Strigolnik is derived from streetch, to shear.
4. Karamsin, voL vL, p. 242; Mouravief, p. 89, and note, p. 383. See above, p. 43. From Jedovstvo—Judaism.
5. From starii, old, and obriad, ceremonial.
6. From starii, old, and vera, truth.
7. "Le Raskol," p. 50.
8. The Slav letters of the alphabet were, like the Greek, used for figures; and imperator, without the m, figured thus: i=10, p=80, e=5, 1=100, a=1, t=300, 0=70, r=100; total, 666.
9. From strannik, a traveller, or wanderer.
10. From pope, a priest of the Russian Church.
11. From bez, without, and pope, a priest.
12. Kavyline, quoted by N. Popof, v. Revue des Deux Mondes, Nov. 1er, 1874; article by A. Leroy-Beaulieu.