The Danubian Principalities were formerly governed by princes called waywodes, who were appointed by the Sultan. Those waywodes, it is true, exercised every species of oppression; but our readers will perhaps be surprised when they learn that these provincial tyrants were not Mussulmans: they were Christians, and Christians of the same communion as the people whom they ruled over; and they were selected because they were Christians, to administer Christian dependencies. The waywodes were Fanariote Greeks, and denizens of Constantinople. We do not deny that the Turkish government were bound to see that their provinces were properly administered; but they were powerless to repress these abuses, as they were powerless to repress the abuses in the Turkish Pashalicks.
The influence of Russia for a long time, and particularly for the last twenty-five years, has been paramount in the Danubian Principalities. We have shown that the Moldo-Wallachians, with a slight exception, prefer the Greek rite; but there is no evidence that they have any religious sympathies with the Church of which the Emperor of Russia is the head. The Moldo-Wallachians also regard the Russian dogmas as schismatic, and recognise only the religious supremacy of the Patriarch of Constantinople. In Paris there is a Russian chapel for the use of the Russian embassy, the residents of that nation, and the few subjects of Independent Greece who may think it proper, or useful, to attend Russian worship. The Moldo-Wallachians who also reside in the French capital have been often pressed to attend that chapel, with a view, no doubt, to establish in the eyes of the world a homogeneity which in reality does not exist. As a proof of the antipathy between the two communions, we quote a passage from a discourse delivered on the occasion of the opening of a temporary place of worship for the Moldo-Wallachians by the Archimandrite Suagoano. To those who still believe that there exists the bond of a common faith between the Church of Constantinople and that of St Petersburg, and that the Moldo-Wallachians, or the Greeks of the Ottoman empire, desire a Russian Protectorate, we recommend the perusal of the following, which was pronounced to a numerous congregation in the beginning of January last. “When we expressed a desire,” said the archimandrite, “to found a chapel of our own rite, we were told that a Russian chapel already existed in Paris, and we were asked why the Roumains (Moldo-Wallachians) do not frequent it? What! Roumains to frequent a Russian place of worship! Is it then forgotten that they can never enter its walls, and that the Wallachians who die in Paris, forbid, at their very last hour, that their bodies should be borne to a Muscovite chapel, and declare that the presence of a Russian priest would be an insult to their tomb. Whence comes this irreconcilable hatred? That hatred is perpetuated by the difference of language. The Russian tongue is Sclavonic; ours is Latin. Is there in fact a single Roumain who understands the language of the Muscovites? That hatred is just; for is not Russia our mortal enemy? Has she not closed up our schools, and debarred us from all instruction, in order to sink our people into the depths of barbarism, and to reduce them the more easily to servitude? On that hatred I pronounce a blessing; for the Russian Church is a schism which the Roumains reject; because the Russian Church has separated from the great Eastern Church; because the Russian Church does not recognise as its head the Patriarch of Constantinople; because it does not receive the Holy Unction of Byzantium; because it has constituted itself into a Synod of which the Czar is the despot; and because that Synod, in obedience to his orders, has changed its worship, has fabricated an unction which it terms holy, has suppressed or changed the fast days, and the Lents as established by our bishops; because it has canonised Sclavonians who are apocryphal saints, such as Vladimir, Olga, and so many others whose names are unknown to us; because the rite of Confession, which was instituted to ameliorate and save the penitent, has become, by the servility of the Muscovite clergy, an instrument for spies for the benefit of the Czar; in fine, because that Synod has violated the law, and that its reforms are arbitrary, and are made to further the objects of despotism. These acts of impiety being so notorious, and those truths so known, who shall now maintain that the Russian Church is not schismatic? Our Councils reject it; our canons forbid us to recognise it; our Church disavows it; and all who hold to the faith, and whom she recognises for her children, are bound to respect her decision, and to consider the Russian rite as a schismatic rite. Such are the motives which prevent the Roumains from attending the Russian chapel in Paris!” This address was received with enthusiasm by the assemblage. Letters of felicitation have been received by the archimandrite from his unhappy brethren of the Principalities, who are driven with the bayonet to the churches to chant Te Deum for Russian victories; and, impoverished as they are, the prelates and priests of Wallachia send their mites to Paris, to aid in the construction of a true Greek church.[[2]]
It would be unjust to charge any religious community with the responsibility of the crimes or vices of individual members. The police offices and law courts in our own country occasionally disclose cases of moral depravity among members of the clerical profession; but these cases are few, we are happy to say, in comparison with the number of pious and learned men that compose the body. Nor do we pronounce a sweeping anathema on the Russo-Greek Church, because, with the exception of, as we are informed, a few of the superior dignitaries, no ecclesiastical corporation can produce more examples of gross ignorance and vicious habits. The degradation, the miserable condition of the mass of the Russian clergy, the pittance they receive from the State, being insufficient to keep body and soul together, and the almost total want of instruction, are, no doubt, the cause of this state of things. Marriage is a primary and indispensable condition for the priesthood; and the death of the wife, unless where a special exemption is accorded by the Synod or the Emperor, involves not merely the loss of his sacerdotal functions, but completely annuls the priestly character. The widowed priest returns to a lay condition from that moment; he may become a field labourer, or a valet; a quay porter, or a groom; a mechanic, or a soldier of the army of Caucasus; but his functions at the altar cease then, and for ever. The irregularities which in Russia, as elsewhere, prevailed in the monastic establishments, afforded a pretext to that rude reformer, Peter the Great, for abolishing the greater number of them. Their immense wealth, the gifts of the piety or the superstition of past ages, was a temptation which the inexorable despot could not resist; and having once acquired a taste for plunder, he appropriated not only monastic property, whilst abolishing monasteries, but filled the imperial treasury with the confiscated wealth of the secular clergy. What Peter left undone Catherine II. completed. During the reign of that Princess, whose own frailties might have taught her sympathy for human weaknesses, the whole of the remaining immovable property of the Church was seized. The correspondent and friend of Voltaire and the Encyclopedists filled with joy the hearts of the philosophers of Paris, by the appropriation of the resources of superstition, which she devoted to the realisation of her ambitious projects, or to recompense richly the services of her numerous favourites. Miserable pittances were allotted to the functionaries to whom that great wealth had belonged; but the distractions of love and war too often interfered with the payment of even those pittances. In Moscow, St Petersburg, and some other large cities, there are still, perhaps, a few benefices which afford a decent subsistence to the holders; but the stipends, even when augmented by the casuel, the chance and voluntary contribution paid by individuals for special masses, and certain small perquisites for funerals, &c., are insufficient to maintain, in anything approaching to comfort, a single, much less a married clergyman. There appears to be some difference of opinion among the best authorities on the exact stipends received by the higher clergy. The income of the senior metropolitan, the first dignitary of the orthodox church, including all sources of revenue, has never been estimated at more than from £600 to £700 per annum; that of the other metropolitans, at about £160; of an archbishop, £120; of a bishop, £80; of an archimandrite, the next in rank after a bishop, from £40 to £50. The wooden hut inhabited by a parish priest is not superior to that of the poorest of his parishioners, and the spot of land attached is cultivated by his own hands. The destitute condition of the inferior clergy has many times been brought under the notice of the government, and commissioners have been named to examine into the complaints, but without producing any result.
Under such circumstances, it is not extraordinary that the clergy should become degraded in the eyes of the people, and be regarded, when not in the performance of their sacred functions, as objects of derision and contempt. With starvation at home, they are forced to seek in the houses of others what their own cannot supply; to satisfy the most pressing wants of nature, they submit to scoff and insult; and wherever feasting is going on, the priest is found an unbidden, and in most instances an unwelcome guest. This state of life leads to vagrant, idle, and dissolute habits, and it is declared, on what appears to be competent authority, that intemperance is the general characteristic of the lower clergy of Russia. Intemperance easily leads to other vices. According to official reports laid before the Synod, there were, in the single year 1836, 208 ecclesiastics degraded for infamous crimes, and 1985 for crimes or offences less grave. In that year the clergy comprised 102,456 members;—the number degraded and sentenced by the tribunals was therefore about two per cent. In 1839, the number of priests condemned by the tribunal was one out of twenty; and during the three years from 1836 to 1839 inclusive, the cases were 15,443, or one-sixth of the whole. A good deal of scandal, as well there might be, was occasioned by the reports of the Synod, and that body received a hint to be more discreet in exposing to the sneers of the heterodox the state of the orthodox church. It attempted, in a subsequent report, to explain away or palliate those disorders. “If such things,” says the Synodical Report of 1837, “cannot be entirely avoided by reason of the vast extent of the empire; of the want of seminaries, attendance at which has been only recently obligatory; of the little instruction received by the clergy, who in this respect are, as it were, in a state of infancy—so much so, that one old barbarism has not yet disappeared—nevertheless, the same clergy has exhibited rich examples of ancient piety and severity of morals.” Dr Pinkerton assures us that there are to be found among the families of the parochial clergy, a degree of culture and good manners peculiar to themselves. If we can rely on accounts more recent, and quite as good, these are but rare exceptions; and we fear that matters are pretty much the same as when Coxe was in Russia, and many of the parish priests were so ignorant as to be unable to read, even in their own language, the gospel they were commissioned to preach. M. de Haxthausen, whose testimony is entitled to great respect, says, “Ecclesiastics of merit are rare in the country. The greater number of the old popes are ignorant, brutal, without any instruction, and exclusively given up to their personal interests. In the performance of religious ceremonies, and in the dispensation of the sacraments, they have often no other object in view than to obtain presents. They have no care about the spiritual welfare of their flocks, and impart neither consolation nor instruction to them.” This ignorance, added to relaxed morals, accounts for their want of influence with the people, who are in the habit of treating them with the most contemptuous familiarity. The lower classes have special sarcasms and insulting proverbs applicable to their popes.
The higher ranks of the Russian clergy are principally, we believe exclusively, taken from the Tschernoi Duhovenstvo, or black clergy—monks who live in convents, and pass their lives in the practice of religious observances. Their superiority to the secular clergy is in all respects considerable, and whatever of instruction exists among the priesthood must be sought for in the retreats of the Basilians—the only order of monks, we believe, in Russia. They live, however, apart from the people; they have no direct intercourse with them; they are ignorant, or regardless, of their material or moral wants; and for them they feel no sympathy or affection. It must not be supposed that this superiority over the parochial or secular clergy, in station or morals, implies independence, separately or collectively. Their dependence on the government differs not in the least from that of the most ignorant village pope, or of the meanest serf. The high functionaries and dignitaries of the Church are, as we have already observed, taken from the monastic body; and as the Synod, or, which is all the same, the Emperor, can deprive an ecclesiastic of his functions, and degrade him to a lay condition, the metropolitan archbishop, or bishop, who cares to keep his mitre, has no other choice than to be the docile and zealous agent of the Autocrat. Since the time of Peter the Great, the whole body of the Russian clergy, from the highest to the lowest, have lain grovelling in the dust at the feet of every tyrant with the title of Czar or Czarina; and no other corporation in the world that we have any knowledge of, lay or clerical, equals it in hopeless servitude. Taught from their infancy to regard the Czar as the sole dispenser of good and evil, and firmly believing that every people on the earth trembles at his name, they scarcely make any distinction between him and the Deity; and in their public and private devotions their adoration is divided, perhaps not equally, between God and the Emperor. Those names are mingled together in the first lessons they learn, and their awe of the mortal ruler is more intense than their love for the Creator. Those ideas are transmitted by the priests to their children; and as the ranks of the clerical body are filled up almost exclusively from the families of the popes, ignorance and slavishness become as traditional and as hereditary as the office for which they are indispensable. The jealous fears of the Autocrat prevent grafting on the old stock, and he suffers no innovation of any kind to animate that torpid mass of bondage.
In alluding to the social degradation of the Russian clergy, it is but fair to admit that there are certain privileges attached to that body which are not accorded to the rest of his Imperial Majesty’s subjects. The Czar, out of his mere motion, and by special favour, the value of which is no doubt properly appreciated by the persons interested, has made a difference in the punishments inflicted on laymen and on clergymen. The Russian priest is not liable to be scourged to death by the knout; nor to be beaten to a jelly by a club, like the other members of the orthodox faith. Yet this privilege, we fear, is more specious than real. It does not survive the sacerdotal character; and as this may be suspended or annihilated at the pleasure of the Synod, or at the death of the popess, the exemption from the knout and the baten is an extremely uncertain privilege. The rule of the Russian Church, which makes the priestly character, indelible in other communions, to depend on so frail a tenure as the life of the partner, is most curious, and must perpetuate those vices which we have already noticed. The pastor who loses his wife must at once abandon his sacred functions, and set himself to some other pursuit, if he be still in the force of health and manhood; if he be aged or infirm, his lot is hard indeed. When the sacerdotal office is forfeited by some very grave offence, hard labour for life, or the distractions of a campaign in the Caucasus in one of the condemned regiments, with glimpses of the knout, form the hopeless future of the unhappy wretch who, but a few months before, was dispensing the sacraments at the altar. We may add, that the wives and widows of the priests, and their young children, enjoy, by a pious dispensation of the head of the Church of Russia, an exemption from the knout. The children, moreover, are exempt from the payment of imposts and military enlistment.
The sects that have started into life since the seventeenth century are comprised by the established or official church of Russia in the sweeping designation of roskolnicki, or schismatical; but the term is rejected with indignation by the parties to whom it is applied. They refuse, as a base and groundless calumny, the term schismatical, and claim for their own special qualification that of Starowertzi, or Ancient believers. They have also, no less than their predecessors, been the object of the severity of the government. Every opportunity has been laid hold of to crush them; and in the revolt of the Strelitz, not only were ruinous fines imposed on them, but many of their leaders were imprisoned, exiled, hanged, or poniarded, by order of Peter I. Severity being of no avail, milder measures were resorted to. A compromise was proposed in the reign of Catherine II., and after a show of examination, several of their less objectionable doctrines were allowed to pass muster as orthodox, and the variations in their liturgy received, on condition that their priests submitted to receive orders from the prelates of the Synod. As an additional inducement, they were promised that ordination should be conferred according to the sectarian, and not the established rite; that their usages should be respected, and no interference take place in the education of their clergy. But so great was the animosity that no concession could win, no kindness soften them, and the experiment of gaining over this stray flock to the fold failed totally. At an earlier period Starowertzi convents were erected in the deep recesses of the forests in the northern provinces of Russia. These convents were soon demolished, and their prelates and abbots banished, or otherwise removed. Yet for many years their religious necessities were supplied by priests ordained by the Starowertzi bishops; and, since their death, pastors are recruited from the many seceders from the orthodox church. In spite of the difficulties the sect has to contend with, and the incessant vigilance and rigour of the authorities, it possesses a mysterious influence, which is said to be felt even in the councils of the empire. It is believed that no important reform is ever attempted, no change in the internal administration of the country takes effect, until the opinions of the chiefs of this formidable party are ascertained, and the impression likely to be made upon the mass of their followers. In all social relations, in all matters connected with everyday life and business, it is affirmed that the Starowertzi are trustworthy and honourable. They are not habitually mendacious or deceitful, like the more civilised classes of his Imperial Majesty’s subjects; and the more closely the lower orders resemble the Starowertzi the better they are. In education they are also superior to the mass of the Russians. Among them there are few who have not learned to read and write, though even in the acquisition of this elementary instruction their religious prejudices prevail. They make use only of the Sclavonic dialect, the modern Russian being regarded as heretical. They are familiar with the Bible, and commit some portions of it to memory, which they recite with what the French would term onction; neither are they despicable opponents to encounter on the field of theological controversy. One of the principal seats of Starowertzism was in the midst of those vast and dismal swamps which extend towards the Frozen Ocean, on the European side of the great Oural chain, and on the banks of the river which discharges its waters into the Caspian; in the government of Saratoff, more than four hundred miles to the south-east of Moscow; and among the Cossack tribes that wander near the Volga and the Terek, close to the military line which extends in front of the Caucasus, are to be found numerous disciples. But for many years the great centre of Starowertzism was on the Irghis. On its banks four great monasteries once rose, and their inmates found a never-failing supply from the deserters of the army, and the fugitives from the wilderness and the knout of Siberia. Priests of the official church, excited by fanaticism or degraded for their vices, and monks expelled from their convents, were received with open arms as welcome converts. Their numbers increased so rapidly as to give serious alarm to the governors, and in 1838 a razzia was proclaimed against these religious fortresses. Strong bodies of troops were sent against them; the convents were pillaged, and then given to the flames, and the inmates were either sent to the army, or driven into the impenetrable wilds of Siberia. The doctrines of the sect have chiefly spread in the rural districts, and among the lower classes of tradesmen. In the convents for females (for Starowertzism has also its nuns), the only occupation consists in multiplying copies of their liturgy, for no religious work is allowed to be printed. The Starowertzi divide the inhabitants of the earth into three great classes—the Slaves, by them termed Slovaise, or Speakers; the Nemtzi, or Mutes, whom they regard as little above heathens; and all the Orientals are, without distinction, called by the general designation of Mussulmans. The rite of baptism is performed by immersion—they admit the validity of no other; but in no case do they recognise it when administered by the orthodox Russian, and all converts must be rebaptised before admission. It is a curious fact, almost incredible, were we not assured of its exactness on good authority, that though their spiritual directors belong mostly to the scum of the Russian clergy—degraded priests or monks—the Starowertzi are the least immoral of all the sects into which the orthodox church has been broken up.
The sect which more closely approximates in fundamentals to the established church is that which terms itself the Blagosslowenni (the Blessed); and so slight is the difference between them, that in the official nomenclature they are designated as the Jedinowertzi, or the Uniform Believers. In essential points of doctrine the difference is not great, in some almost imperceptible, though the ceremonial varies notably from that which is recognised by the Holy Synod. They make the sign of the cross in a different manner from the orthodox. They denounce the shaving the beard as a sin of the greatest enormity. Some other peculiarities are worth noting: they repeat the name of Jesus in three distinct parts; walk in procession in their places of worship from right to left, and, taking their ground on the text of Scripture which says that that which enters at the mouth is not sinful, but that which issues from it, they denounce the practice of smoking as a crime. There is another point, which we fear would be unpopular among our fellow-subjects in Ireland: the Blessed attribute a diabolical origin to that useful root the potato, and, what we believe has been strenuously maintained, though in a different spirit, by some Irish antiquarian, they pretend to prove that the potato was actually the fruit with which Eve was easily seduced by the wily serpent, and which our first mother persuaded her confiding husband to partake of. This sect reprobates the reforms attempted by Peter I., and they are not to this day reconciled to the Emperor Nicholas for not wearing the costume, and bearing the title of the Belvi Tzar, or the White Czar.
The Starrobriadtzi, or the Observers of the ancient rite, are an offshoot of the Starowertzi, but are still more exclusive and intolerant, and much more hostile to the official church. The scum of the orthodox priesthood are sure to find a welcome with them, and the more degraded they are the better. Every candidate for admission must formally recant his previous heresy—for such they term the orthodox dogma.
The most numerous of all these sects is one which is termed the Bespopertchine (Without priests). They not only reject ordination as conferred by the orthodox bishop, but dispense altogether with clergy as a distinct body. The sect is subdivided into several fractions, each known by the name of its founder, such as the Philipperes, the Theodosians, the Abakounians, &c., &c. They anticipate a general conversion of the reprobates,—that is, all who are not of their sect, whether Christian or Infidel—by reason or by force; and believe that the time is at hand when the errors of Nicon, the Luther of the Russo-Greek church, will be solemnly abjured by Russia; that a regenerated order of ecclesiastical superintendents will come from the East, when their own sect, the only true church of God, will reign triumphant wherever the name of Russia is heard. The reign of Antichrist began with Nicon; it still subsists, and will endure until the advent of the Lord, who is to smite the unbelievers, and scatter the darkness that envelopes the earth. Though a regularly ordained priesthood is not recognised, yet a sort of religious organisation is admitted by the Philippon section of it. Instead of the popes of the orthodox church, they have a class of men whom they term Stariki, or Elders, and who are selected from a number of candidates. The ceremony of installation consists in a few words of prayer, and the accolade in the presence of the congregation. The elders, who are distinguished by a particular costume, have no regular stipend, but subsist entirely on alms. In case of misconduct, they are not only deprived of their office, but expelled altogether from the community. The Philippons retain the rite of confession; but the avowal of their sins is made, not to a living man, but to an image, which acts by way of conductor to the pardon which is sent down from heaven. An elder, however, stands by as a witness of the confession and forgiveness; and while the long story of offences, mortal or venial, is unfolded, his duty consists in crying out at regular intervals, “May your sins be forgiven!” The simple exclamation, in the presence of three witnesses, that a man takes a woman to wife, is the only ceremony required for marriage, nor is it indispensable that the elder should be present. The portion of the Bible translated by Saint Cyril is the only part of it they retain. Their doctrine of the procession of the Holy Ghost is the same as that of the Greek Church. They believe that the souls of the dead are sunk in a profound lethargy from the moment they quit the body until the general judgment, to which they will be summoned by the archangel’s trumpet. On that awful day the souls of the wicked only are to resume their bodies, and pass into eternal fire. Their fasts, which comprise a third of the year, are of the strictest. They rigorously abstain from malt liquors; and though, on certain specified occasions, wine is permitted, yet the moderate draught must be administered from the hand of one of their own sect. In the matter of oaths they are quite as rigid as the Society of Friends. They are distinguished by no family name, but only by that received at their birth. Their differences are all settled before a tribunal composed of an elder and two or three of the sect, who must, however, be fathers of families; and from this decision there is seldom an appeal. Between husband and wife a complete community of goods exists, and the surviving partner inherits all.