The thirst for perfection, the ardent desire to draw near to God, sometimes takes the form of an unhappy perversion of reason and common sense. The popular soul knows no hesitation when laying its offerings upon the Altar of the Good. It dares not only to flout the principles of patriotism, of family love, and of respect for the power and the dogmas of the established church, but, taking a step further, will even trample underfoot man's deepest organic needs, and actually seek to destroy the instinct of self-preservation. What even the strictest reformers, the most hardened misanthropists, would hardly dare to suggest, is accomplished as a matter of course by simple peasants in their devotion to whatever method of salvation they believe to be in accordance with God's will. Thus came into existence the self-mutilators, or skoptzi, victims, no doubt, of some mental aberration, some misdirected sense of duty, but yet how impressive in their earnestness!

The sect having been in existence for more than a century ought perhaps to be excluded from our present survey; but it has constantly developed, and even seemed to renew its youth, so merits consideration even if only in the latter phases of its evolution.

The skoptzi were allowed, at the beginning of the twentieth century, to form separate communities, and the life of these communities under quite exceptional social conditions, without love, children, marriage or family ties, offers a melancholy field for observation. Indeed, these colonies of mutilated beings, hidden in the depths of Siberia, give one a feeling as of some monstrous and unfamiliar growth, and present one of the most puzzling aspects of the religious perversions of the present age.

After being denounced and sentenced, and after performing the forced labour allotted to them—a punishment specially reserved for the members of sects considered dangerous to orthodoxy—the skoptzi, men and women alike, were permitted to establish their separate colonies, like those of Olekminsk and SpasskoÏe.

The forced labour might cripple their limbs, but it did not weaken their faith, which blossomed anew under the open skies of Siberia, and seemed only to be intensified by their long sufferings in prison.

The martyrs who took refuge in these Siberian paradises were very numerous. It has been calculated that at the end of the nineteenth century they numbered more than sixty-five thousand, and this is probably less than the true figure, for, considering the terrible ordinances of their religion, it is not likely that they would trouble much about registering themselves for official statistics. We may safely say that in 1889 there were about twelve hundred and fifty in the neighbourhood of Yakutsk who had already accomplished their term of forced labour. They formed ten villages, and it would be difficult to specify their various nationalities, though it is known that in SpasskoÏe, in 1885, there were, among seven hundred and ten members of the sect, six hundred and ninety-three Russians, one Pole, one Swede, and fifteen Finns.

To outward view their colonies were rather peculiar. Each village was built with one long, wide street, and the houses were remarkable for the solidity of their construction, for the flourishing gardens that surrounded them, and for their unusual height in this desolate land where, as a rule, nothing but low huts and hovels were to be seen. A house was shared, generally, by three or four believers, and—perhaps owing to their shattered nervous systems—they appeared to live in a state of constant uneasiness, and always kept revolvers at hand. The "brothers" occupied one side of the building, and the "sisters" the other; and while the former practised their trades, or were engaged in commerce, the women looked after the house, and led completely isolated lives. On the arrival of a stranger they would hide, and if he offered to shake hands with one of them, she would blush, saying, "Excuse me, but that is forbidden to us," and escape into the house.

The existence of the "sisters" was indeed a tragic one. Deprived of the sweetness of love or family life, without children, and at the mercy of hardened egoists, such as the skoptzi usually became, their sequestered lives seemed to be cut off from all normal human happiness.

According to the author of an interesting article on the skoptzi of Olekminsk, which appeared in 1895 in the organ of the then-existing Russian Ethnographical Society, these women were sometimes of an astonishing beauty, and when opportunity offered, as it sometimes did (their initiation not always being quite complete), they would marry orthodox settlers, and leave their so-called "brothers." Cases are on record of women acting in this way, and subsequently becoming mothers, but any such event caused tremendous agitation among the "brothers" and "sisters," similar to that provoked in ancient Rome by the spectacle of a vestal virgin failing in her duty of chastity.

Platonic unions between the self-mutilators and the Siberian peasant-women were fairly frequent, so deeply-rooted in the heart of man does the desire for a common life appear to be.

The skoptzi loved money for money's sake, and were considered the enemies of the working-classes. Although drawn for the most part from the Russian provinces, where ideas of communal property prevailed, they developed into rigid individualists, and would exploit even their own "brothers." Indeed they preyed upon one another to such an extent that in the village of SpasskoÏe there were, among a hundred and fifty-two skoptzi, thirty-five without land, their portions having been seized from them by the "capitalists" of the village.

Their ranks were swelled chiefly by illiterate peasants. As to their religion, it consisted almost exclusively in the practice of a ceremony similar to that of the Valerians, the celebrated early Christian sect who had recourse to self-mutilation in order to protect themselves from the temptations of the flesh.[1]

The lot of the skoptzi was not a happy one, but they were upheld and consoled by their belief in the imperial origin of their faith. According to them, Selivanoff, the prophet and founder of the sect, was no other than the Tsar Peter the Third himself (1728-1762). They did not believe in his assassination by the Empress Catherine, but declared that she, discovering to what initiation he had submitted, was seized by so violent a passion of rage that she caused him to be incarcerated in the fortress of Petropavlovsk. From there they believed that he had escaped, with the help of his gaoler, Selivanoff, and had assumed the latter's name. What strengthened them in this belief was the marked favour shown by the Tsar Alexander I for Selivanoff. Alexander being naturally inclined to mysticism, was impressed by this strange character, and requested him to foretell the issue of the war with Napoleon. He was equally well disposed to the sect of Madame Tartarinoff, which closely resembled that of the self-mutilators, and, influenced by his attitude, all the Russian high officials felt themselves bound to pay court to the new religions. One of the Imperial councillors, Piletzky, who was supposed to be writing a book refuting the doctrines of the skoptzi, defended them, on the contrary, with such warmth that his volume—obviously inspired by the opinions of the Court—was prohibited by the Bishop Filarete as Anti-Christian.

But though they could talk volubly of the illustrious origin of their leader Selivanoff, "the second Christ," and of their "divine mother," Akoulina Ivanovna, their doctrines were in fact obscure and nebulous, and they avoided—with good reason—all religious argument. They insisted, however, upon the sacredness of their initiation ceremony—which invariably ended in deportation for life, or the delights of the prison-cell.

From the physiological point of view, the skoptzi resembled the Egyptian eunuchs, described by M. Ernest Godard. Those who had undergone the initiation at the age of puberty attained extraordinary maxillary and dental proportions. Giants were common among them, and there was frequently produced the same phenomenon that Darwin discovered in the animal world—enlargement of the pelvic regions.

This doctrine, which ought to have repelled the populace, attracted them irresistibly. The young, the brave, and the wealthy, in the full flower of their strength, abandoned at its call the religion of life and yoked themselves to that of death. It seemed to fascinate them. After conversion they despised all human passions and emotions, and when persecuted and hunted down they took their revenge by expressing profoundest pity for those who were powerless to accomplish the act of sacrifice which had brought them "near to divinity."

They often let this pity sway them to the extent of running into danger by preaching their "holy word" to "infidels." Like the ascetics of Ancient Judea, who left their retreats to make sudden appearances in the midst of the orgies of their contemporaries, these devotees of enforced virginity would appear among those who were disillusioned with life, and instruct them in the delights of the supreme deliverance. In their ardent desire to rescue all slaves of the flesh, some rich merchants of Moscow, who had adopted the doctrine, placed the greater part of their fortunes at the disposal of their co-religionists, and in this way the sect was enabled to extend its influence throughout Russia, and even into neighbouring countries.

At one time in Bucharest and other towns certain carriages drawn by superb horses attracted much admiration. These were some of the strange presents—the price of a still stranger baptism—with which the "Church of the Second Christ" rewarded its members!

[1] Valerius, passionate and devout at the same time, was the first to sacrifice himself thus on the altar of purity, following the example of Origen, who had used this heroic method to safeguard the virtue of the women of his entourage. But while Origen was rewarded for his action by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Valerius was expelled from the church, and retired to Arabia, where his sect flourished in the third century (A.D.).