Much might be added to the protection of the peasantry if their houses were rebuilt so that they could live more freely and peacefully; for much damage is done to them through overcrowding: if one man’s house take fire, the whole village is threatened, and frequently not a single house is left. This leads to endless poverty. If they had not been so much crowded in their settlements, they would not be so easily ruined. It is against this ruin that they ought to be protected. Let them build their houses farther from each other, nor join yard to yard, but with intervals, a few houses in a lot; the streets ought to be wide, where there is sufficient space, not less than two hundred feet in width; where the space is crowded, not less than one hundred feet in width. In this way, if there should be a fire, all the neighbours would run to put it out: there being intervals between the houses, it would be easy to reach them from all sides, and as there would be little danger for the neighbouring houses, the peasants would not rush, as before, to save their own possessions, but would aid their unfortunate neighbour. As the settlements are now arranged, it is utterly impossible for the neighbours to bring aid; they rush for their own, which they cannot all save, but generally lose everything they have. Thus they are ruined and become impoverished.
Not a small degree of annoyance is caused the peasants from not having literate people among them. There are many villages of twenty or thirty houses that have not a single man that can read; if any come to them with an ukase, or without an ukase, pretending to have one, they believe him, and suffer damages; for they are all blind,—they see nothing and understand nothing. They are not able to dispute with the people that pretend having ukases, and they frequently pay unwarranted taxes to them. To guard the peasants from such losses, it seems to me, they ought to be compelled to send their children of ten years and less to some subdeacon to be instructed how to read and write. I think it would not be a bad thing if the smallest village were not without a literate man, so there ought to be a strict law compelling the peasants to have their children instructed for three or four years. And there ought to be a severe punishment for those who do not have their children taught anything for four years, or who do not have them instructed at all as they grow up.
Having learned to read and write, they will not only conduct more intelligently the affairs of their masters, but they will be also useful in the Government, being eligible as hundred-men and fifty-men, and no one would abuse them and mulct them for nothing.
Feofán (in private life Eleázar) Prokopóvich. (1681-1763.)
Peter the Great’s reforms were not so much the beginning of a new movement, as the accomplishment of a mental ferment which was taking place in Russia towards the end of the seventeenth century, and they were successful and permanent in the degree that he made use of persons who were already in sympathy with Western culture. The most important of these was Feofán Prokopóvich. Prokopóvich studied in the schools of Kíev, then became a Uniat and continued his studies in Poland, then went to Rome and entered the College of St. Athanasius, which had been established for the purpose of a Catholic propaganda among the Greeks and Slavs of the Eastern Church. There he distinguished himself for his brilliant learning, which included a thorough knowledge of the classics. He returned to Russia in 1702, renounced his Uniat affiliations and became a teacher in the Kíev Academy. Here he composed a text-book on the art of poetry and a tragi-comedy, Vladímir, which was played by the students of the Academy. Peter I. met Feofán in 1709, after the victory at Poltáva, when the latter received him in Kíev with a panegyric. In 1716 he was called to St. Petersburg, where, during the absence of Peter, he employed his oratorical powers to advocate the Emperor’s reforms. The following year he was made bishop of Nóvgorod. The following year he was entrusted with reforming the government of the Church, which he did by his famous Spiritual Reglement, a work that breathes the most enlightened liberalism. One of the chief changes introduced by this Reglement was the abandonment of the all-powerful Patriarchate, and the substitution for it of the Holy Synod, of which he became the ruling spirit. After the death of Peter the Great, his enemies swooped down upon him, but, having passed the school of the Jesuits, he was an adept at diplomacy and intrigue, and paid them back in their own coin. However, Prokopóvich is remembered for the enormous good he did, for his prodigious learning, to which many foreigners who visited Russia are witnesses, but especially for encouraging scholarship and literature. Tatíshchev and Kantemír were his friends, and upon the appearance of Kantemír’s first satire (see p. 223), he was the first to hail his promising talent.
There is a translation of Prokopóvich’s Catechism under the title, The Russian Catechism, composed and published by order of the Czar [Peter I. Translated from the Russian by J. T. Philipps], London [1723], second edition 1725.
FROM “THE SPIRITUAL REGLEMENT”
OF INSTRUCTION
It is known to the whole world how weak and impotent the Russian army was when it had no regular instruction, and how incomparably its strength was increased and became great and terrible when our august monarch, his Imperial Highness Peter the First, instructed it in a proper manner. The same is true of architecture, medicine, political government, and all other affairs.
But, most of all, that is true of the government of the Church: when there is not the light of instruction, the Church cannot have any good conduct, and impossibly can there be avoided disorder and superstitions that deserve a great deal of ridicule, as well as strife, and most foolish heresies.
Many foolishly assert that instruction is the cause of heresy. But the heretics of ancient days, the Valentinians, Manichæans, Catharists, Euchites, Donatists and others, whose stupid acts are described by Irenæus, Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodoret and others, raved, not through instruction, but through arrogant foolishness. And did not our own dissenters rave so deliriously through their lack of culture, and ignorance? Though there are some heresiarchs, such as were Arius, Nestorius and a few others, yet their heresies arose not through instruction, but from an imperfect understanding of the Holy Writ, and they grew and were strengthened through malice and false pride which did not permit them to change their wrong opinion after they had discovered the truth, and against their conscience. And though their instruction gave them the power to use sophisms, that is, cunning proofs of their elucubrations, yet he who would want to ascribe this evil simply to instruction would be compelled to say that where a physician poisons a patient, his knowledge of medicine was the cause thereof, and where a soldier valiantly and cunningly strikes down the enemy, military art is the cause of killing. And when we look through history, as through a telescope, at the past ages, we shall discover more evil in the Dark Ages than in those that were enlightened through culture. The bishops were not so arrogant before the fifth century as they were afterwards, especially the bishops of Rome and Constantinople, because before there was learning, and afterwards it grew less. If learning were dangerous to the Church and State, the best Christians would not study themselves, and would forbid others to study; but we see that all our ancient teachers studied not only the Holy Writ, but also profane philosophy. Besides many others, the most famous pillars of the Church have advocated profane learning, namely: Basil the Great in his instruction to the studying youths, Chrysostom in his books on monastic life, Gregory the Theologue in his sermon on Julian the Apostate. I should have a great deal to say, if I were to dwell on this alone.