By Mrs. MARY S. ROBINSON.

CHAPTER IV.
THE HEROIC AGE—GROWTH OF THE RUSSIAN STATE, TO THE
DEATH OF IAROSLAF (1054).

The glory of the Russian arms, the splendor of the Russian State, attained their maximum in the reign of the great Iaroslaf. Its form of government continued to retain the Variag-Slav elements, but was compacted and confirmed by the ideas brought into the country with the influx of Greek priests and men of letters. The prince long remained, as in the primitive times, first among his equals, the drujina—the head and chief of a family of soldiers. He had great respect for the counsels, and for the demands of these. Vladimir’s men complained, in that they had to eat from wooden bowls. He forthwith provided them with silver ones. “I can not buy myself a drujina with silver and gold,” he said, “but with a drujina I can obtain silver and gold, as did my father and my grandfather.” The Roman empire of the east represented another form of government. Its sovereign was the heir of Constantine and of Augustus; the vicar of God upon earth, the human representative of the Sovereign of the universe. The Greek emperor derived his power, not from the consent of his subjects—a phrase unknown in his dominions,—but rather from the Being who conferred it as a prerogative, a divine right. His person, his regalia, were sacred. The populace of Constantinople believed that when God gave the empire to their city, he gave it also the regal vestments at the hands of an angel. Leo, king of the Kazarui, was said to have been smitten with a fatal ulcer for his temerity in putting the Byzantine crown upon his head. This Roman, and antecedently Asiatic conception of government, as vested in the person of the imperator who made the laws, executed justice, received the adoring homage as well as the unquestioning obedience of his subjects, essentially modified the nobler, freer idea of government, as held by the Variag princes; but the change was wrought gradually, and was hardly perceptible during the epoch of the ascendency of the Russia of the steppes, the supremacy of Kief. It came into prominence, as we shall see, in the Russia of the forests, when Suzdal, and later Moscow, became the nuclei, the centers of the realm in a subsequent epoch. Iaroslaf compiled a code of laws, the Russkaia Pravda, the Russian right, or verity, a code that, though subsequently modified by Byzantine influence, remained for centuries the basis of the national jurisprudence. The laws of the Pravda are in effect those of ancient Scandinavia. Private revenge and avenging are recognized, as are also the judicial duel and the ordeals; fines are fixed for various crimes. The primitive form of trial by jury is established, but none of the harsher penalties are prescribed that were introduced later by the corrupted Greeks. Prisons, torture to wring confession, corporal cruelties, flogging and capital punishment were unknown in the Russia of the eleventh century. Its laws were milder, more humane than those of Charlemagne. The Slav had not become debased by the vices of the Roman empire of the east, nor by the ferocity of the Tatars. “A white Arab,” a child of nature, uncorrupted by the iniquities of an ancient civilization, with his ardent Oriental temperament, he retained as yet much of the simplicity, the freedom from duplicity, that won the recognition of Homer, Choerilius and Strabo.

The introduction of Greek Christianity was a fact of immeasurable significance to the Russian realm. It proscribed the Papal Church from Russian territory, and thereby isolated it from the nations of the west. This isolation precluded the Russian people from the religious sympathy, the material support of the Pope, and of the other European nations, in crises of peril, or periods of emergency, such as that of the appalling Tatar invasion. They could look for no help beyond their own resources, their own strength. The difference of religion served also as a perpetual barrier, a continually irritating antagonism between the Russian and the Polish Slavs. On the other hand, as the new faith was introduced by means of the Slavonic, the mother tongue, Russian society was spared the sharp division between the clerical, the learned, the high, Latin-speaking class, and the lower classes that compose the bulk of every nation; a division that contributed immensely to the founding of caste and to the arrogations of a hierarchy throughout Latin Christendom. In Russia was reared a national church, subject to no foreign, no alien sway, entangled with no foreign alliances or foreign politics. Thus was secured an absolute national and ecclesiastical independence. “No dragonnades, no frightful inquisition, no Saint Bartholomews, no myriads of martyrs, no hideous tortures, such as those invented and practiced by Jesuits and Romish priests, have ever defiled the venerable ministry that traces its origin to Ephesus and Saint John.”

Christianity gradually but essentially modified the social life, the customs and manners of the people. It abolished polygamy; the structure of the family was no longer Asiatic, but European. It heightened the Slav virtues of hospitality and benevolence, by inculcating the humanitarian precepts of the New Testament. It conferred a dignity previously unknown, upon weakness, infirmity, poverty and labor. It modified the public sentiment in regard to crime, by teaching the inherent heinousness of sin. The oft-uttered words of Vladimir, “I fear to sin,” indicate the change that was gradually effected in the popular mind. Assassination, theft, and other crimes ceased to be regarded as private injuries, to be commuted by fines or atoned for by reprisals. They were punished as offences against humanity, in the name of the Legislator, the Father of the race. What is more precious than a Christian soul? asks one of the earlier descendants and successors of Vladimir. The new religion brought music in its train to a people who had a capacity for this art, but who were ignorant of its first principles. It brought architecture into a realm whose buildings were simply wooden tents, and whose ramparts were made of mud. In the rude city were laid the decorated aisles, the sumptuous columns, the golden cupolas and domes of the Russian church. It brought literature, first of all by the sacred books translated into the vernacular; the works of the Church fathers, among them Basil and Chrysostom; the lives of the saints, Byzantine chronicles, eagerly read by the scholastic monk; works on speculative and natural philosophy, and some few romances. Contemporary Byzantine literature was not of the highest order; but exported among a people whose thought and knowledge were limited to the recital of their national legends, their primitive poems, it aroused their germinant powers, and gave direction to their intellectual, their social, and their moral development. We have to concede, however, that the introduction of the Greek form of Christian belief was not entirely salutary in its effects upon the people at large. The Byzantine Church was smitten with the decay whereof the Byzantine civilization was perishing. It retained, indeed, the elevated truths of the Christian system, but had deplorably lost the spirit that alone “giveth life.” It had failed, generally speaking, to eradicate the distinctive vices of the Greek peoples—falsehood, treachery, perfidy, instability. In place of a regenerated nature, it required of its adherents participation in its elaborate ceremonial, the practice of its intricate rites, homage to its imposing forms. It did little for intellectual enlightenment or advancement, save in the perverted form of Oriental monachism,—a painfully unnatural mode of life, calculated to foster mental disease and general self-stultification. With no arrogations of secular or of civil power, it has associated itself throughout Russian history with the baleful conservatism, the hoary tyranny, the enslaving autocracy of her sovereigns. Oriental in its origin, it has fastened upon the Russian State the stationary ignorance, the servitude, the mental inertia of the effete Oriental nations. Among its adherents we shall find scarcely an example of the moral and spiritual liberty wherewith the Head of the Church maketh his children free. So far removed are they from this freedom, that their spiritual debasement, their intellectual bondage and moral perversion lie like an incubus, against which thus far the inherent strength of the nation has struggled in vain. An Oriental autocracy and a church devoid of spiritual vitality have hitherto proved immovable checks upon the advancement of the Russian people. Not without reason does the Nihilist reject the wretched ecclesiasticism that has misguided and miseducated his race throughout a thousand years.

The portraits of Rurik and his Variag-Slav successors, preserved in the imperial galleries of St. Petersburgh, are doubtless much idealized; yet they may be supposed to bear some resemblance to their originals, for Byzantine artists were in Kief as early as the reign of Vladimir (972). The face of Rurik is strong, and possessed of a primitive majesty; beneath heavy brows his eyes are steadfast, penetrating, containing a force that under stress might break into the Berserker rage, the fury that was a characteristic of the ancient Norse warrior. The contours of the face are vigorous, and marked by a certain rude symmetry, so to speak. The heavy mustaches part above the lips; below them falls a dense beard that clings to the sides of the cheeks and climbs to the hair. The head is shielded beneath a plain helmet terminating above in a talon. From the under side of the helmet falls a cape of mail, protecting the throat and shoulders; a sack or loose coat of mail covers the body. A man to put one’s trust in, a man to be feared as an enemy, is the impression conveyed by the portrait, as a whole.

Vladimir, “the beautiful sun of Kief,” the Christianized Apollo of the Russian Slav, the apotheosized hero of numberless legends and poems, still current among his people, is represented with a richly jewelled crown above an ermine border, resting upon his shapely head. His dark hair falls flowing upon his shoulders; his beard is fine and waved; his eyebrows delicately pencilled. Poetry and song lie in his liquid eyes and upon his well-moulded lips. A touch of sadness allied with a princely stateliness adds an indefinable, a melodious charm to this beautiful portrait, that one might take at first glance for a humanized representation of the Son of Man. Lovely, tender, strong, it is not difficult to ascribe to the gracious influences of Christianity the elevation, the chastened symmetry, the perceptible advance, evident in the face, from the rude power of the Norse physiognomy. A bust like unto it, set amid the busts of ancient Athens, would have elicited expressions of admiration from the beholders. “A noble, a beautiful barbarian!” they would have exclaimed.

The portrait of Iaroslaf represents a distinctive Slav. It depicts a melancholy temperament held in equipoise by a clear intellect and a firm will. Delicacy, a capacity for sadness and strength, combine in the intelligence of the face; an intelligence more reposeful than animated. The symmetry of the features is remarkable. The long-lidded, serious eyes are essentially Slavic. The throat is large and shapely. The regal robe is heavily broidered, decorated around the neck and down the front with a band of light-hued fur. A grave man, with capacities for understanding the arts that give solace and charm to existence, Iaroslaf the Great was also a man to love and to be loved. Captain, sovereign, legislator, he was especially the father of his people in his affectionate care of, and in his intercourse with them.

The Slav’s inextinguishable passion for liberty, and the faithfulness of the Variag to his ruler, his capacity for obedience and for martial discipline, augured well for the nascent Russian state. The Slav conception of the family, however, dominated long over that of a compact government. The Byzantine form of political unity took root in Russian soil, but was of slow growth, and was long obstructed by the division of lands among the heirs of the reigning prince—a Slavic custom observed from time immemorial. Iaroslaf had designed that his eldest son should succeed him upon his throne; and upon his death-bed he urged upon his other children the duty of recognizing their brother Isiaslaf as their sovereign; they were to regard him “as a father.” But notwithstanding the precautions of the great prince, the Slavic custom of division prevailed with those who came after him. As a consequence, the hundred and thirty years following his death (1054-1224), form a period of internal partition, of disturbance, of civil wars and strifes between the increasingly numerous members of the royal family. During this period the realm was divided into no less than sixty-four duchies or principalities, under the varying possession of two hundred and ninety-three princes. These partitions were the occasion of eighty-three civil wars, some of which brought into conflict the entire fighting force of the nation. In addition to the internal contentions, the barbarians remained a hostile element in the country. The chroniclers record forty-six invasions of the Polovtsui, and eighteen campaigns directed against them. This anarchy of princes in eastern Europe possessed features of similarity with the feudal anarchy of the west. The principalities of Russia corresponded with the domains of the dukes, grafs, land-grafs, and mar-grafs of Germany, with those of the lords and counts of France, and with the governments of the lords and barons of England.

The principality or grand duchy of Kief remained preËminent among these divisions. Its position near to, and its intercourse with the Greek empire, its control of the Dnieper, the fertility of the Warm Soil, the illustrious history of the capital and metropolis of the realm, mother of Russian cities, all contributed to maintain its supremacy. Its prince was the Grand Prince, chief among his fellow rulers elsewhere in the realm, in point of privilege. Often was his territory hotly contested by those princes whose energy or ambition impelled them to audacious enterprises. To obtain Kief and the position of Grand Prince, were the ends ardently coveted by the restless, warlike rulers who chafed within the restricted limits of their obscure domains.

Along the tributaries to the east of the Dnieper, lay the principalities of Tchernigof and of Novgorod-Severski. The ruling family of Tchernigof, the Olgovitchi, who traced their lineage to the illustrious Olga, were the most formidable rivals of Kief. East of these lay the double principality of Riazan and Murom, whose chief towns, respectively of the same name, the one on the Moskova, the other on the Oka, indicate their ancient principalities on the modern map of the empire. Westward, in the heart of mediÆval Russia, inclosing within its boundaries the great forest of Okof, where rise the Volga, the Dnieper, and the Dwina, was the principality of Smolensk, all of whose towns were built on the banks of one or another of its great rivers. Its political importance lay in its control of nearly all the commerce of the realm. A government in the later divisions of the empire bears the name of the ancient principality. Near by was Toropets, capital of a secondary domain ruled over by two princes of renown, Mstislaf the Brave, and his son Mstislaf the Bold, glorious names in the history of their country. Further to the northeast, in the dense forests of the Volga and the Oka, lay the principality of Suzdal, with its towns, Suzdal, Rostof, Vladimir-on-the-Kliasma. This rugged region at the extremity of the Russia of the eleventh century, encircled by aboriginal Finn tribes, was destined in time to achieve a supremacy over all the other principalities, and to control the destinies of the nation. The Slavs of the Volga, mingling with the Finn tribes, Muromians, Meria, Tcheremisa, who, from being their enemies, were ultimately forced to become their subjects, produced a modified race, endowed with permanent, salient characteristics. The Russia of the steppes of the Dnieper, gave way gradually, and yielded its supremacy to the Russia of the forests of the Volga. From the principality of Suzdal emerged the Grand Duchy or Tsarate of Moscow, and from the Tsarate of Moscow arose Little and Great Russia, with which were included in the fifteenth century Red and White Russia, the Warm Soil, and other vast territories that combine to form the European portion of the modern empire. The principalities we have named presented a frontier against the untamed tribes of the steppes and of the forests. A northern system of frontier defences holding in check the Lithuanians, Letts, and Tchudi, was re-enforced by the powerful governments of Novgorod and Pskof, situated in the regions of Lake Ilmen and Lake PeÏpus. Within the protection of these domains lay two secondary appanages, Polotsk and Mursk, the latter in the basin of the Dnieper. In southwest Russia lay Volhynia and Gallicia, or Red Russia, one of whose cities was Galitch. Gallicia was peopled by the White Kroats, a branch of the Danubian Slavs, who had affinities with the neighboring kingdoms of Poland and Hungary. Igor, Prince of Novgorod-Severski, is the hero of a Russian epic, that relates his expeditions. In it the wealth and glory of Gallicia are thus exalted: “Iaroslaf Osmomuisl of Gallicia,” cries the poet, apostrophizing the prince, “lofty is thy throne of beaten gold! Thou holdest up the Carpathians with thy regiments of iron! Thou art he who shutteth the gates of the Danube, and putteth a bar across the pathway of the King of Hungary. At thy good pleasure the gates of Kief are opened. With thine arrows thou smiteth from afar!”

The division into appanages delayed but did not strike at the root of the unity of the empire. Nay, it may be said to have nourished this idea in its nascent development. At the death of every powerful sovereign fresh divisions were made; hence no principality remained sufficiently secure to become the home of a distinct, an enduring nationality. Identity of race, of language, and of religion characterized these states, whose princes were kinsmen, and whose ties of blood were strengthened in many instances by the bonds of wedlock. The descendants of Rurik bore rule from the Straits of Ienikale to the borders of the Frozen Sea. The Grand Prince was held in fatherly respect; and if some of his contemporaries stood ready to contend for his throne, more were at hand to defend him with their money and their arms. The unity of the nation, notwithstanding its numerous divisions, was more distinct than that of Germany or of France during certain periods of the mediÆval era. The isolation of the Russian realm maintained the permanence of this idea, in that it was preserved from alien invaders, and from diplomatic or other complications with powers that might have interfered with its internal affairs, or that might have modified its advancement. The unity of the realm initiated by Rurik, was developed gradually but irresistibly, and with no considerable fluctuations down to the national uprising in 1612, when it attained its fullest strength, and rendered the nation impregnable alike to the designs of aliens, or to the subversions of internal discord.

[To be continued.]