A lady

The abbess—The inmates of the convent—The wardrobe—A young Russian priest and his bride—The archbishop—Ancient manuscripts—Alexis, son of Peter the Great—Description of a monastery—Prisoners—The church, cemetery, and garden—Monastic serfs—The archimandrite—Superior and inferior class of Russian clergy—Peter the Great’s policy—Political use of religion—A modern miracle—General estimate of monastic institutions—Proscribed sects—Russian hermits—Hermitage at Kastroma.

Among my acquaintances was the abbess of a nunnery in the province of Twer. Her reason for having embraced the sacred profession was one which we found common enough in Russia: “Je n’avais pas de succÈs dans le monde, ainsi je me suis faite religieuse,” was her candid confession. She was of high family, but the generality of those who thus devote themselves to a convent life are not of noble birth; indeed, we were told that by so doing those who are of gentle blood lose their rank. We frequently went to pay her a visit, and were always received kindly and with true Russian hospitality; but as the monks and nuns of the Greek Church are forbidden to eat any kind of meat, they can only furnish their table with fish cooked in different ways, generally in oil, and with pastry, sweetmeats, and so on; and, to confess the truth, I was not very fond of dining at the convent. The abbess was a lady well accustomed to the politesse of the world; it made no difference to her that I was a busermanca or heretic; she very politely took me over her establishment and explained their mode of life: most of the nuns were either the daughters or widows of priests.

“Those young girls,” said the superior, throwing open the door of a large apartment, “are the orphan children of priests; they are being brought up in the convent as the proper asylum for such. They are, as you perceive, very busy in embroidering the church vestments.”

“But what becomes of them in after life, ma mÈre?”

“Oh,” replied the abbess, “some of them are married off to young priests, for, of course, you are aware that no pope[6] can have a cure unless he be married. Those who have not a chance of becoming so settled remain in the convent, and when they are of the proper age they take the veil; but as no one can do so until she is forty, they hold the position of novices until then.”

The young girls were all occupied in embroidery. One was making a chalice-cover; it was about three-quarters of a yard square, of crimson velvet and pearls; in the middle was a resplendent cross, and the figure of a cherub with its wings spread, painted on some peculiar substance, was inserted at each corner. Another was engaged in ornamenting the collar of a robe with spangles and gold lace, with here and there the imitation of some precious stone. They seemed pleased at my admiration of their skill, and the abbess kindly offered to show me the wardrobe belonging to the church, which she assured me had been made entirely by the inmates of the convent. On my expressing a great wish to see it, she led the way through a long corridor; we descended some stone steps, at the foot of which was a door, which my friend opened. Here I was shown into several rooms surrounded by immense clothes-presses and chests of drawers. Each was unlocked in succession, and innumerable suits of vestments were displayed to view. Some were of silver tissue with flowers of silk woven on it, others of silk with gold flowers, or of cloth of gold enriched with pearl embroidery. Each seemed to me more magnificent than the last, and the dresses were in such quantities that I thought the holy sister who accompanied us would never have finished opening and shutting the drawers. I inquired whether the splendid materials had been presented to the establishment. “Yes,” answered the superior; “all these vestments are made out of the palls thrown over the coffin at rich funerals. After the interment they become the property of the church in which the deceased is buried, and are put to the use you see. Many of the dresses,” continued she, “are, as you may perceive, very ancient; some were embroidered in the reign of Peter the Great, and others in the time of Anne and Elizabeth. But you have seen enough of these; would you not like to visit our infant-school?” So saying she opened a door on the opposite side and led the way through the church. There was an old nun standing before an image as motionless as a statue; she was rapidly repeating in a low tone some prayers in Sclavonic, and then prostrated herself several times and kissed the pavement. The superior smiled approvingly as we passed, and then informed me that it was sister Marie, “one of the most truly devout women in the convent, for no illness nor any other reason ever prevents her from performing her religious duties either night or day.” By this time we had reached a moderately-sized apartment, in which about twenty children were being taught to read by some of the nuns. They seemed happy and contented, and, to all appearance, were well treated: these were also children of priests. We afterwards visited some of the cells, which were very poorly furnished with a small mattress, a deal table, and one chair: we then proceeded to the refectory. It was their supper-time, being five o’clock, for the nuns retire to rest at six, in order to be enabled to perform mass at two o’clock A.M. The sisters were all seated at long tables, partaking of the mushroom-soup of which the Russians are very fond, but which is very distasteful to foreigners. We did not stay in the apartment, as we would not interrupt their repast. My friend the abbess often expressed the most enlightened sentiments regarding religious sects, and I always ascribed great liberality to her on those points, but I was assured that they were not her real sentiments, but that she very frequently uttered them merely out of politeness when persons of another creed were present. Whether that was the case or not I had, of course, no means of ascertaining, but it must, I think, be allowed that the members of the Russian Church are very liberal in their sentiments and conduct towards those of a different religion. They never display the bigotry and narrowness of mind too frequent among the Roman Catholics: they certainly prefer their own road to heaven, but their doing so is no reason why they should deem that none other leads to it. No one who has lived among them can really believe that the fanatical agitation so general at present in the country can be ascribed to any other cause than to the unwise policy of a government that thus influences the minds of the people.

One day, when I was at the convent, a young priest begged to speak with the superior. He was of an interesting appearance, apparently about twenty-four or twenty-five years of age; his beautiful hair was parted in the middle and hung down in wavy curls a foot long over his shoulders; his nose and mouth were well formed, but what gave extreme intelligence to his countenance was a pair of bright black eyes with dark eyebrows: altogether I had rarely seen a more prepossessing young man. He was dressed in the long purple silk robe with loose sleeves, the extremely becoming costume of the Greek clergy, and suspended round his neck was a thick gold chain, to which was attached a crucifix of the same precious metal. The abbess received him with much kindness, and after remaining a few minutes in the drawing-room they retired together into another apartment. A short time elapsed ere the superior returned: when she did so, she informed me that her visitor was a young priest to whom a cure had been offered, and, as no one can accept a cure unless he be married, he had called to inquire of her if, among the orphan daughters of the clergy in her convent, she could recommend him a suitable wife, “which is very fortunate,” added she, “for there is a young girl named Annushca, whom I have been wishing to get married for the last year; she is just nineteen, and he could not find a better partner.”

“But is she likely to be agreeable to the match?”

“I think so,” replied the abbess; “but he is to come to-morrow morning to see her.”

About a month afterwards we saw the abbess’s carriage pass our house. There were three young persons in it; one we had no difficulty in perceiving was a bride, by her orange-flower wreath and long white veil—the two others were bridesmaids. In another carriage was the young priest himself, looking as happy as possible, for on that evening he was to wed Annushca the convent bride.

Among the Greek clergy it is absolutely necessary that the priest should be married, but, if his wife die, he cannot wed a second, because they interpret the phrase “having one wife” in its entirely literal sense: should he have the misfortune to become a widower, he generally enters a monastery, as he can no longer have the care of a parish.

The priesthood in Russia form a class almost entirely distinct from the rest of the community: they mostly intermarry among their own families, and the circle of their acquaintance is limited to those of their profession. If a clergyman have no sons, an alliance with his daughter, if there be one, is much sought after by the young unbeneficed priests, as, on her father’s death, his living becomes her dowry: it may therefore be readily imagined how many suitors are desirous of espousing a girl so portioned.

Our friend the abbess frequently came to pay us a visit. She was always accompanied by one or two nuns, who treated her with extreme respect: they waited on her with great attention, and supported her as she walked to and from the carriage as if they were servants. I was told that she was a very strict disciplinarian in her convent, but, with two hundred women to govern and to keep on the road to heaven, some severity was perhaps necessary. If all the stories that I used to hear told of their backslidings were true, she had no sinecure of it, poor old lady!

I had many acquaintances among the clergy in the provinces, especially in Twer. I remember once I went to a fÊte given by the archbishop, and a very pleasant evening I passed. There was no dancing, of course, but we were entertained with singing and agreeable conversation. The young choristers and monks possessed beautiful voices; they stood among the thick shrubs and sang at intervals their charming national airs like so many nightingales, whilst the brothers of the monastery handed round refreshments of all kinds. Among the company were our friend the abbess and the superior of another convent at some versts distance: they were really very pleasant people. Our entertainer was a very reverend personage; his appearance well befitted his sacred position; his long snowy hair and beard, his benevolent countenance, and his stately figure, habited in the flowing robes of his order, gave him a truly apostolic look, and made us almost wish that the English clergy would adopt so becoming a costume. His conversation was lively and interesting; he spoke several modern languages, including Greek and Turkish, and amused us greatly with anecdotes of his travels through different countries. I remember that, in speaking of the monasteries near the Black Sea and in other distant provinces, he informed us that many of them contained valuable ancient manuscripts in Greek, Chaldaic, &c., which are most jealously guarded by the monks under whose care they are, although the holy men are ordinarily so ignorant that they cannot read them. He seemed to think that many works now supposed to be lost may at some future time be discovered in those unknown collections. On my inquiring in what way the monks had obtained possession of them, he told us that at the siege of Byzantium, and at the destruction of the library of Alexandria, many persons fled into the remoter districts for safety, and carried with them the manuscripts of valuable ancient writings, which in the dark ages gradually became lost to the learned men of the West. Whether the venerable archbishop was right in his conjectures, still, I believe, remains to be proved.

On our taking leave, he bestowed his benediction on us all, but not before he had made us partake of some excellent champagne, and I really quitted the palace with much greater respect for the Greek clergy than I had entertained before.

Among other estimable members of the priesthood may be mentioned the archimandrite of a very large monastery in the same province, to whom I frequently paid a visit. In this monastery Alexis, Peter the Great’s son, was confined for a considerable time. I saw the apartments that were appropriated to him: they had thickly-barred windows and strong doors, well suited to a prison; the furniture was in the same state as when he resided there, and consisted of a few tables and chairs clumsily made of deal, ornamented with green and red streaks on the unpainted wood. I could not help feeling compassion for the unfortunate prince, who, whatever his faults might have been, was certainly unnaturally treated and cruelly deceived by his father. I thought, as I stood in those small, close rooms, how many weary hours he must have passed, and how bitter must his reflections have been as, day after day, he gazed from those grated windows on the never-changing scene outside.

A description of this monastery will serve to give an idea of those buildings in general.

In form it was nearly square, and was surrounded by a high whitewashed wall deeply dovetailed, having at each corner a small circular tower with a pointed roof, furnished with numerous loopholes. A gallery ran along the whole length inside, from which, in the time of the Tartar wars, the men could shoot their arrows on the besiegers. The gateway was surmounted by portraits of the Virgin and Child and those of other saints, before which a lamp was always kept burning. On entering I found a well-kept grass-plot, on two sides of which were buildings three stories high, containing the cells of the monks, the superior’s apartments, and the domestic offices. The lower range was partly devoted to a kind of monastic prison, in which disobedient monks and those convicted of bigamy were confined; for, in Russia, the punishment for men guilty of that crime is imprisonment for life in some religious establishment: the female convicts are, of course, sent to the nunneries. At the time of my first visit there were three criminals confined in the monastery: one for having had three wives; another who had killed a man in self-defence, and who, according to the law, was sent there for one year to atone by repentance and prayer for the blood he had shed. One of the monks informed me that the prisoner in question was quite a youth, being only nineteen; that he was crossing the river very late one night on a hired sledge, when, on arriving at a very solitary spot, the driver suddenly turned and attempted to strangle him. He found means to draw his sword, with which he gave a mortal wound to his assailant, who fell dead instantly. He remained for a few minutes horror-stricken at what he had done and uncertain as to the measures he ought to take. At last he lifted the lifeless body on the sledge, drove back to the town, and presented himself at the police-station. He was arrested, but, as there was every probability that he had committed the act in self-defence, his punishment was the being sent to the monastery. The third prisoner was a monk accused of great immorality, who was shortly to be exiled to Siberia, but, as the final decision of the superior courts had not arrived, he was detained here in the mean time.

On the other sides of the square were the church, the cemetery, and the garden. The church was ancient, and contained various extraordinary old paintings of saints. Several monks were at their devotions when we entered; their long black garments and silent demeanour, their frequent prostrations, and the burning lamps, almost led me to imagine them to be disciples of Zoroaster offering their adoration to the sacred fire, whilst the darkness of the building gave an air of sombre mystery to the scene.

The burying-ground was extensive, and I remarked some curious sarcophagi of great antiquity.

After we had examined all that we thought interesting, we were shown into the garden; it contained a great many fruit-trees and shrubs suitable to the climate, such as apples, pears, currants, gooseberries, and raspberries, a large bed of sun-flowers, and about twenty beehives, for whose benefit the sun-flowers had, I imagine, been planted. On our return to the superior’s apartments we passed through the large room in which all the servants of the establishment, as well as the peasants from the neighbouring village belonging to the monastic estate, were at dinner. Their repast consisted of large bowls of buckwheat, with oil, black bread, and salt, the whole washed down with quass, a kind of sour drink made of fermented meal—a dinner not according to our taste, perhaps, but nevertheless well relished by these poor people, who had acquired a good appetite by making hay in the fields outside of the walls.

But to return from this long digression. The archimandrite was a dignified-looking man of about fifty, and had lost his wife six years previously, when, according to the custom, he had embraced the monastic life. He had two sons, government employÉs, who resided with him in the establishment. He was a man of great erudition, and had views on religious points much too enlightened for his nation, as I was informed that he had been imprisoned some time before on account of opinions he had expressed concerning modern miracles, &c., but, in consideration of his high character for learning and moral excellence, extreme severity had not been resorted to. He always seemed much pleased at our visits, and received us with kindness and hospitality. My Russian friends had known him for many years, and respected him greatly. I was fortunate, certainly, in being acquainted with so many worthy people belonging to the Greek priesthood, and am glad to be able to speak well of a class of men of whom favourable opinions are not generally entertained by foreigners; but I believe that many speak ill of them upon false reports, and judge lightly of the merits of the many from the disgraceful conduct of a few, or from those ignorant, debased members of the profession who are to be found in the remote villages and almost barbarous districts of the interior. I remember accompanying a friend once on a visit to one of her estates at about seven hundred versts from St. Petersburg; the peasants came as usual to pay their respects to their proprietor. I was not astonished at any display of slavish servility on their part, as a long residence in different parts of Russia had too much accustomed me to such conduct, but I was greatly shocked and disgusted to see the priest descend to such meanness as to prostrate himself to the earth, and kiss the lady’s feet: in fact he seemed not a whit superior to the degraded boors amongst whom he lived. A Russo-French gentleman, who had travelled over nearly every part of the empire, even to the interior of Siberia, informed me that the state of the clergy in the remote country places was inconceivably bad; that they were ignorant, slavish, vicious, and drunken in almost an equal degree with the debased peasantry; that, although it is strictly forbidden for a priest to be seen to enter a whisky-shop, yet they are not ashamed to send one of their flock to fetch spirits, nor do they blush to be seen intoxicated in the miserable villages of which they are the pastors; that their wives and children are ragged and filthy, and are scarcely as respectable as those of the serfs. In what state of morality can the peasants be whose teachers are thus degraded?

Notwithstanding the evil state of things in the retired parts of the country, I was assured that great improvements have taken place of late years in the clergy at large, owing to the seminaries established for the education of priests, which are under the direction and management of efficient superiors. In the neighbourhood of most large towns many estimable and worthy members of the sacred profession may be found. It is a pity that the priesthood do not occupy a higher position in Russia, for, as everything is valued according to rank in the country, one would imagine that more personal respect would increase their spiritual authority. Peter the Great deprived the Church of most of its privileges on account of the political use to which they were put, and perhaps his successors have been unwilling to give too much influence to a body of men forming so very numerous a portion of the population, and possessing a great deal of power over an ignorant and superstitious people. Of this power the government makes use to its own advantage as an instrument by which to support its domination over the nation in the present crisis, and by its means contributes to the fanaticism now so rife in Russia, by wickedly appealing to the weak points in the national character, in making the aggression on Turkey wear the semblance of a religious war. Not only are prayers now daily offered in the Russian churches against the “English heretics,” but even pretended miracles are resorted to in order to make the people believe in the sympathy of Heaven. A gentleman told me a short time ago that he had that same morning been present in one of the gymnasiums in St. Petersburg, when the priest belonging to the institution, in giving his wonted lecture on religion, informed the young men and boys there assembled that God had vouchsafed, in a wonderful manner, to show his gracious approbation of the imperial cause by performing a miracle in the sight of men. He went on to say that a child had been born during the previous week, which, to the astonishment of all beholders, when only three days old arose and uttered prophecies concerning the present war! Of course, this extraordinary little monster only said what was favourable to the Muscovite arms, and to the glorification of the Emperor and members of the imperial family; but will it be believed that in the nineteenth century, the age of railroads and electric telegraphs, any one would dare to utter such absurd blasphemies? Think of the wickedness of thus lying in the face of Heaven to forward the ambition of a man! But this man, be it remembered, is the head of the Russo-Greek Church, and is considered as infallible in his spiritual functions by the Greek clergy as the Pope of Rome is by the Romanists.

I found the monkish institutions by no means liked among the upper classes in Russia. I have frequently heard them say, “Those lazy monks and nuns, who pass all their days in idleness, ought to be abolished; they are a burthen to the community, and only eat up the bread of the industrious!” Yet those very people in their old age would, most likely, be continually making rich presents to them for their prayers, by which they hope to render more smooth their own path to heaven.

There are some sects of the Greek Church severely restricted by the Russian government. When I was at Twer a whole religious society, with their superior at their head, were arrested and put under judgment. I could not make out what their peculiar tenets were; but they were accused of shocking crimes and gross ignorance, perverting the doctrines of Christianity as a pretence for vile actions more becoming Indian idolaters than the followers of Christ. Dresses of black stuff embroidered with hieroglyphics and mysterious symbols, veils something like those worn by the familiars of the Spanish Inquisition, which have two holes for the eyes, together with all the etcetera of their degraded superstition, were brought to the governor’s house as so many proofs against them. I believe the sisterhood were dispersed, and placed in different convents belonging to the orthodox Church.

Notwithstanding the excessive severity of the climate, hermits still exist in the immense and almost untrodden forests of the interior, who are held in the same estimation as saints by the population. A Russian noble informed me that in the province of Kastroma a curious subterraneous chapel had been discovered on the estate next to his: it had been dug out by the hands of one of these fanatics, and his skeleton was found lying before the altar, as if he had expired in the midst of his prayers. None of the peasantry of the district had ever seen any person answering to his description, nor was there any tradition concerning him extant; he must have lived and died unremarked and unknown. Probably he was some escaped criminal or deserter, or perhaps a monk who had become deranged with distorted ideas of devotion, and was ambitious of aspiring to the honour of canonization. But how these recluses can possibly exist during the intense severity of a northern winter, where they can find the food to support them, or how they escape becoming the prey of the numerous wolves and bears with which the country abounds, is incomprehensible to me.

The Greek Church permits the New Testament to be read by the laity, with the exception of the Revelation of St. John, but the Old Testament is withheld. Children are taught religion by the priests, who are engaged, just as the masters of languages are, to give a lesson once or twice a week, for which they are also paid.