Ascending the Ivan Tower, we find on three successive stories bells to the number of thirty-four. Some of these are of a size to fill one with astonishment had he not seen the giant below. The largest is on the first story above the chapel, and weighs more than sixty tons. It swings freely and is easily rung. I smote it with the palm of my hand, supposing that such a blow could not produce the slightest vibration in such a mighty mass of iron, but it rung out as clear and startling as if a spirit within had responded to my knock without. Two bells are of solid silver, and their tones are exquisitely soft, liquid, and pure. It was exciting to go from one to another and strike them with their tongues, or with your hand, and catch the variety and richness of their several melodies.
The chapel below is dedicated to the patron saint of all ladies about to be married, and it may be readily believed that the bell that gives expression to their prayers will have, at least to their ears, the sweetest tone of all the bells in Moscow.
I came down from the Kremlin to my lodgings at Billot’s, and, wearied with the wanderings of the day, have been lying on the bed and looking out on the city. It is just before sunset, and the day has been oppressively warm. A delicious glow from the gorgeous west is bathing all the domes and roofs with splendid colors, and silence is stealing in with the setting sun upon the crowded town. It is the eve of one of their most holy festivals of the church. One vast church edifice is directly in view of my window and but a short way off. As I lie musing, from this church comes the softest, sweetest tone of an evening bell. Another tone responds. A third is heard. The Ivan Tower on the height of the Kremlin utters his tremendous voice, like the voice of many waters. And all the churches and towers over the whole city, four hundred bells and more, in concert, in harmony, “with notes almost divine,” lift up their voices in an anthem of praise, such as I never thought to hear with mortal ears: waves of melody, an ocean of music, deep, rolling, heaving, changing, swelling, sinking, rising, overwhelming, exalting. I had heard the great organs of Europe, but they were tame and trifling compared with this. The anthem of Nature at Niagara is one great monotone. The music of Moscow’s bells is above and beyond them all. It is the voice of the people. It utters the emotions of millions of loving, beating, longing hearts, not enlightened, perhaps, like yours, but all crying out to the great Father, in these solemn and inspiring tones, as if these tongues had voices to cry: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, heaven and earth are full of thy glory.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE CHURCHES OF MOSCOW.
WE were alone in the holiest of all the holy places in the empire of Russia: a church and a sepulchre; the place where the emperors crown themselves and the primates of the church are lying in their grave-clothes all around; the grandest of all earthly grandeur, and the solemn evidences of the mightier power of King Death staring at the pageant in mockery of all that man is and does.
We were alone in the Cathedral of the Assumption; four gigantic gilded and pictured columns in the midst of it support five great domes; and on the sides are arranged the huge sarcophagi in which repose the bones of old patriarchs whose names are part of the history of the church, and whose relics are thus kept near at hand impressing the worshipper with something of awe, as one will feel it in the presence of the dead. There was no attendant in the church when we entered, and the deep silence reigning seemed befitting the place. We were silent, for the grandeur of the scene, the historic associations with the place, the evidences around us that this spot is holy in the eyes and hearts of the millions of this vast empire, made us solemn. Before us is the Iconastasis, or screen for sacred pictures, and behind this screen are the pictures of the patriarchs and fathers of the church. No woman may enter this holy place. It is very plain that the woman’s rights ideas of equality have not penetrated this veil. Here, too, are views of the final judgment scene, and of the life and death of the Virgin Mary. These sacred pictures surround the sanctuary, the holy of holies, before it is the principal altar, and behind it the throne of the Archbishop of Moscow. In the centre of the church, with the four great pillars at each corner, is the coronation platform, on which takes place the most august ceremony known to the Greek Church or the Russian people. We cannot enter fully into the sentiment of awe that possesses the minds of a half-civilized race, who receive their sovereign with a mingled conception of the divine and human in his person. He seeks to perpetuate this reverential sentiment. He secludes himself from the world before he comes to take the imperial crown; he mortifies himself by fasting and prayer; and when the appointed day arrives for his investiture with the high office to which God has called him, there is none in all his realm that is high and holy enough to put on him the emblem of the power he is to take. This cathedral is thronged with the highest dignitaries of church and state, and the representatives of other empires, eastern and western, with the richest display of all that can illustrate the glory of this scene. They surround this empty platform, and gaze upon it with fixed expectancy. A solitary man enters and ascends alone; he speaks, but it is to repeat the words in which is expressed his faith in the doctrines of the church; he kneels to pray for his empire; he takes his own golden crown, and with his own unaided hands he places it upon his head; he descends, and entering the holiest sanctuary takes the bread and wine from the altar, and thus alone with God, whom alone he confesses to be his superior, he consecrates himself to the throne of Russia. Thus from Ivan the Terrible, all the way down to the Alexander who was shot at in Paris during the exhibition, have the Czars been self-crowned on this sacred spot.
THE RUSSO-GREEK SERVICE.
In a side chapel near the altar lies Peter, the first metropolitan of Moscow, with a nail of the Saviour’s cross and a part of his seamless robe. On the right is the coffin of Philip, who had the courage to rebuke the Terrible Ivan, a terribly brutal ruler, murdering his nobles without mercy, and when Philip became too troublesome he murdered him. Now the dead prelate lies here with one of his skeleton hands exposed to view on his breast, and it is part of the Emperor’s service, when he approaches this tomb, to kiss the holy bone, that is left convenient for the purpose.
Very like this cathedral is that of the Archangel Michael close by; and here lie the coffins and relics of the early rulers of the Runic and Romanoff dynasties, all the way down to Peter the Great. The tomb of Demetrius, son of Ivan the Terrible, is the most sacred of all; he disappeared mysteriously, and the country was plunged into a long and bloody civil war; and, finally, his murdered body and coffin were brought to view by a miracle, and the forehead of the dead prince being exposed, or a hole about an inch in diameter being cut through the coffin and the forehead raised up to it, or what is just as good, a bone being put across the hole, the people approach with reverence and press their lips upon this holy and disgusting skull.