[REQUIRED READING]
FOR THE
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle for 1882-83.
MARCH.
[HISTORY OF RUSSIA.]
By Mrs. MARY S. ROBINSON.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE LITHUANIAN AND LIVONIAN ORDERS.
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, three new races entered Slavonia whose character essentially modified its subsequent history. From the northwest came the Germans, from the east the Tartar Mongols, from the west the Lithuanians. The modern Russian divisions of Livonia and Esthonia, with the outlying regions, were peopled in the ninth century with the Tchud or Lett tribes, of the Finnish race,—the most ancient, it is believed, of living European peoples. The Russian Finns of the present time number one and a half million souls; but though they long retained their distinctive nationality, they have yielded to the process of “Russification,” and to-day, among the majority of them, their ancient character is noticeable merely by certain peculiarities of physiognomy and dialect. They are short and thick of stature, tough as oak, and of a hickory hue. The countenance is blurred and unfinished, so to speak. The face is broad and flat, the cheek bones high, the nose depressed and bridgeless. Their dialects are primitive and meager. Their manners and superstitions are traceable to the earliest of known races; their religious observances antedate those of any known form of paganism. They remain, in fact, pagan at heart, loyal to their ancient gods, though with these they are willing to give Saint Nicholas some qualified homage. They recognize a good and an evil principle, both to be equally revered. An offspring and mingling of the two is Keremet, who, with his progeny of Keremets, is more mischievous than malevolent, and to whom, far in the depths of the forests, offerings and sacrifices are made. The evil principle is Shaïtan, philologically allied with the Arabic Shatana, and the still older Hebrew Sâtân. The Finn buys his bride, by paying to her father a kalm or fee. With his fellows he practices an agricultural communism. Through a thousand years he has remained without education, incapable, apparently, of progress, unchangeable. At present, however, the Russian Finn, along with the other races of the country, is being merged into the ubiquitous, self-asserting Russian.
The Baltic Letts, occupying Esthonia, had been subjugated by the Dane, Knut the Great, the conqueror of England. But Livonia had submitted to the arms of Iaroslaf the Great, who founded there Iurief, later called Dorpat; and Mstislaf, son of Vladimir Monomakh, had taken one of the chief cities of the Tchudi. The princes of Polotsk and the republic of Novgorod claimed the country and virtually bore rule over it. To Livonia early in the twelfth century came the German merchant in search of trade, and the Latin priest, seeking souls for his hire and subjects for his Pope. The monk Meinhard, commissioned by the Archbishop of Bremen, compulsorily brought the Livonians under his sway, and was constituted bishop of their country. But this invasion of a stranger race bearing the wares of commerce, and the authority of Rome behind the symbol of the cross, implied the overthrow of the untutored but brave descendants of the Tchud hero Kalevy, the extinction of their liberties and their independence. In 1187 Meinhard completed a church at Uexhüll, and surrounded it with a fortification. Eleven years later the tribes revolted against their episcopal master, and killed him in open warfare. They then plunged into the Dwina to wash off and send back to Germany their baptism, and restored to their shrines their ancient gods. Innocent III preached a crusade against them, and another bishop, commander of a large fleet, built for his capital the town of Riga (1200). In the following year was established the Order of the Brothers of the Army of Christ, or the Sword Bearers, later known as the Livonian Knights, “men of iron,” who broke the strength of the tribes, and against whom the Russian princes, occupied with their own dissensions, made no united resistance. The knights intrenched themselves firmly in the regions whither they hewed with the sword a pathway for the cross, and built fortifications of cemented stone, that were a wonder and a terror to the simple natives, who were driven in herds to the waters of baptism, or massacred if they offered resistance. A song of the Tchudi of Pskof, entitled “The Days of Slavery,” commemorates this period of misery: “Destroying fiends were unchained against us. The priests strangled us with their rosaries, the greedy knights plundered us, murderers with their weapons cut us in pieces. The father of the cross stole our wealth; he stole the treasure from the hiding place. He hewed down the sacred tree, he polluted the fountain, the waters of salvation. The axe smote the oak of Tara, the cruel hatchet the tree of Kero.”