The Raskol (schism) is neither a sect nor a group of sects. It is, rather, an aggregate of doctrines and heresies, which are often divergent or even contradictory, with no other tie than a common starting-point and a common hostility to the official orthodox Church. In this respect the Raskol is more nearly analogous to Protestantism than to anything else. It is inferior to Protestantism in the numbers and education of its adherents, but it almost equals it as regards the variety and originality of its developments. Further the likeness cannot be fairly said to go. In the midst of their unfilial revolt, German Protestantism and the Russian Raskol preserve alike the signs of their origin, the stamp (so to speak) of the Church whence they have issued, as well as of the widely-differing states of society which gave them birth. In Western Europe love of speculation and a critical spirit gave rise to the larger part of modern sects, while in Russia they are the offspring of reverence and unenlightened obstinacy. In the West, the predominance of feeling over the value attached to the externals of religion has been the cause of religious divisions, whereas the same result has been produced in Russia by an extraordinary reverence for external forms for ritual and ceremonial. The two movements thus seem to be in absolutely opposite directions, but they have nevertheless terminated at the same point. In other words, the Raskol, when once freed from the authority which maintained the unity of the faith, was as powerless as Protestantism to establish any authority within itself. It has in consequence become a prey to the same license of opinion, to the same individualism, and, finally, to the same anarchy.
Few religious revolutions have involved results so, complex as the Raskol, yet few have been simpler in their inception. The countless sects which for two centuries have had their being among the Russian people took their rise, in general, from the revision of the liturgy. One stock produced them nearly all: only a few sects (though these, by the way, are by no means the least curious) date from an earlier time or have another origin than this liturgic reform. The Middle Ages in Russia, as elsewhere, were marked by the rise of heresies. Of these the oldest may have arisen before the Mongol conquest, from contact with Greeks or Slaves, particularly with the Bulgarian Bogomiles, the ancestors or Oriental brethren of the Albigenses. Other heresies sprang up later in the North, in the Novgorod region, from intercourse with Jewish or other Western traders. Of most of these the name alone remains: such are the Martinovtsy, the Strigolniki, the Judaizers, and so on. All these sects were dying away when the Raskol broke out; and it absorbed all the vague, embryonic beliefs floating in the popular mind. Some of these antique heresies—the Strigolniki, for instance—after having disappeared from history, seem to have come to light again in the shape of certain sects of our own days; and one might fancy that they had been for centuries running on in an underground channel.
In the dim disputes of mediæval times, however, one may make out with some clearness the fundamental principle of the Raskol: it is a scrupulous veneration for the letter—formalism, in a word. "In such a year," says a Novgorod chronicler of the fifteenth century, "certain philosophers began to chant, 'O Lord, have mercy upon us!' while others said, 'Lord, have mercy upon us!'"[004] In this remark the whole Raskol stands revealed. Controversies like these begat the schism which has rent the Russian Church asunder. Religious invocations have for this people the nature of magical formulæ, the slightest change in which destroys their efficacy. The Russian clings to the heathen feeling, though he hides it under a Christian veil. He believes in the power of particular words and gestures. He still seems to regard his priest as a kind of chaman, religious ceremonies as enchantments, and religion in general as witchcraft. A fondness for rites (obriad) is indeed one of the characteristics of the inhabitant of Greater Russia. The way in which Russia was converted to Christianity has much to do with this. The mass of the people became Christians at the bidding of others, and with no sufficient preparatory instruction, without even having passed through all the stages of that polytheistic evolution from which other nations of Europe had emerged before their adoption of Christianity. The religion of the gospel was, in its highest statement, too far advanced for the mental and social condition of the people; and so it was corrupted, or rather reduced to external forms. Russia adopted merely the outside of Christianity; and there, even more strictly than in the West, it is true that the peasant was still a heathen. Other nations have adopted the outside of a religion, and have afterward absorbed its spirit: from its geographical and historical remoteness such an absorption was hard for Russia to achieve. It was separated from the centres of the Christian world by distance and by Mongol rule: its religion, like everything else, was debased by poverty and ignorance. Theology, properly speaking, utterly vanished, and its place was taken by ceremonial, which thus became the whole of religion. Amidst the general degradation a knowledge of the words and rites of public worship was all that could be exacted of a clergy which did not always know how to read.
The changes which had taken place in the traditional texts and ritual have little solid ground for the popular devotion entertained for them. The liturgy was corrupted by the superstitious veneration paid it by the ignorant. False readings had crept into the books which contained the various local "uses," to borrow a term from the Anglican terminology. Liturgical unity had imperceptibly disappeared amidst various readings and discordant ceremonies. In course of transcription absurdities had slipped into the missals, along with grotesque additions and arbitrary intercalations, while the new readings were received with the respect due to antiquity, and these sometimes unintelligible passages acquired a sanctity in direct proportion to their obscurity. The devout mind found in them mysteries and occult meanings. On such perverted texts were erected theories and systems which pious fraud from time to time expanded into treatises attributed to the Fathers of the Church. So wild was the confusion, and so palpable the alterations, that early in the sixteenth century Vassili IV., a Russian prince, summoned a Greek monk for the purpose of revising the liturgical books. But the blind veneration of the clergy and people rendered this attempt abortive. The reviser, Maximus, was condemned by a council, and confined on a charge of heresy in a distant monastery. The crisis was superinduced by the introduction of the press. Here, as elsewhere, the new discovery brought with it a taste for the study and revision of texts, and ultimately violent theological contests. The missals which issued from the Russian presses of the sixteenth century at first only aggravated the evils for which they should have afforded a remedy. The errors of the manuscripts from which they were printed received from these missals the authority and circulation of type. The copyists had introduced countless variations, but these acquired a fresh unity and unanimity from the very fact of their publication in such a form.
The Slavonic liturgy of Russia seemed in a state of hopeless corruption when, toward the middle of the seventeenth century, the patriarch Nikon determined upon a measure of reform. In addition to a degree of cultivation unusual in his age and country, and an enterprising and determined character, he possessed what was specially required for such a step: he had learning, firmness and power, for through his influence over Alexis, the czar, he ruled the State almost as thoroughly as he ruled the Church. In Russia, as it was before Peter the Great, a task so completely dependent on learning was indeed a bold undertaking. By order of the patriarch ancient Greek and Slavonic manuscripts were gathered from all quarters, and monks were summoned from Byzantium and from the learned community of Athos to collate the Slavic versions with their Greek originals. The interpolations due to the ignorance or whims of copyists were remorselessly stricken out, and into the ritual, thus purified, was introduced the pomp customary at the court of Byzantium. The new missals were printed and adopted by a council (through the patriarch's influence), and finally imposed, with all the authority of the state government, on every Russian province. "A sore trembling laid hold upon me," says a copyist of the sixteenth century, "and I was affrighted when the reverend Maximus the Greek bade me blot out certain lines from one of our Church books." Not less was the scandal under Peter the Great. The man who laid hands on the sacred books was everywhere held guilty of sacrilege. Whether from a knowledge of the propriety of the measure, or from the spirit of ecclesiastical fidelity, the higher clergy upheld the patriarch, but their inferiors and the common people made a determined fight. And even now, after the lapse of more than two centuries, a large body adhere immovably to the ancient books and the ancient ritual, which are made sacred to them by the approbation of national councils and the blessing of generations of patriarchs. Such was the inception of the schism, the Raskol, which still divides the Russian Church. Tracing the matter back to its source, the contest is seen to turn upon the knotty question of the transmission and the translation of the sacred texts, which has more than once divided the churches of the West. In Russia no one was competent to form a proper judgment of the essence of the dispute, and it was thus rendered only more lasting and bitter. Monks, deacons, plain sextons, denounced the innovations as novelties borrowed from Rome or from the Protestants, and as being tantamount to the bringing in of a new religion. When the Church brought to bear upon these recusants the pains and penalties everywhere employed against heretics, the only result was to give the schism martyrs, and with martyrs a fresh impetus. Ten years after the promulgation of the revised liturgy its rash author fell a victim to the jealousy of the boyards and to his own arrogance, and was solemnly deposed by a council. To the Raskol his deposition appeared in the light of a justification of their own course. The condemnation of the reformer seemed necessarily to involve the condemnation of the reform. Great, then, was the popular bewilderment when the council turned from deposing the author of the liturgic revision to hurl its anathemas against those who opposed that revision. The share taken in this excommunication by the Oriental patriarchs rather lessened than added to its weight, since the dissenters denied to Greek and Syrian bishops, who knew not a letter of the Slavonic alphabet, the right of passing judgment on Slavonic books.
The theological world is no stranger to subtleties, but never perhaps did causes so trifling breed such interminable quarrels. The sign and the form of the cross, the heading of processions westward or eastward, the reading of a particular article of the Creed, the spelling of the name of Jesus, the inscription to be placed over the crucifix, the single or double repetition of the Hallelujah, the number of eucharistic wafers to be consecrated,—such are the leading points in the controversy which ever since has rent the Russian Church. The orthodox make the sign of the cross with three fingers, while the dissenters follow the Armenian practice of only two. The former permit the cross with four arms, like our own: the latter cannot away with any but that with eight arms, with a crosspiece for the Saviour's head and another for his feet. Since the reform the Church chants the Hallelujah thrice, the Raskolniks only twice. The dissenters defend their persistence by symbolical interpretations, and delight to make a profession of faith out of the simplest rite. For instance, they insist that after their fashion of making the sign of the cross the three closed fingers render homage to the Trinity, while the two others testify to the double nature of Christ, so that, without uttering a word, the sign of the cross is an act of adherence to the three fundamental dogmas of Christianity—the Trinity, the incarnation and the atonement. In like manner they interpret the double Hallelujah following the three Glorias, and cast it in the teeth of their opponents that they ignore in their ritual one or another of the great Christian doctrines. Such interpretations, based on corrupted texts or feigned visions, show the grotesque blending of coarseness and subtlety which makes up the Raskol.
If we may judge from the origin of the schism, its essence lies in the worship of the letter, the servile respect for forms. To the anti-reforming Russian, ceremonies form the whole of Christianity, and liturgy is one with orthodoxy. The same confusion between faith and the outward forms of worship is revealed by the chosen name in which the dissenters delight. Not content with the title of Starovbriadtsy (old ritualists), they adopt that of Starovery (maintainers of the old faith), which amounts to styling themselves true believers, the genuine orthodox, since in religious matters, unlike those of human science, authority is on the side of antiquity, and even innovations must come forward invoking the past. Here, as often happens, there is little ground for the Starovery's boast, for if they preserve the ancient Russian books, their opponents have gone back to the old Byzantine liturgy; and the party which most loudly vaunts its claim to antiquity does so with least reason.
The principle of the Raskol, which sometimes runs out into the wildest dreams of mysticism, is essentially realistic. Under this materialistic cultus, however, there lurks a sort of idealism, of coarse spiritualism. Religious vagaries, with all their absurdities, always have a lofty, sometimes even a sublime, side. It would be wrong to fancy that there is nothing but ignorant superstition in the Starovere's scrupulous attachment to his ancestral worship. The vulgar heresy is, in fact, only an overdone ritualism, whose logic lands it in absurdity. The Old Believer's reverence for the letter comes from his belief that letter and spirit are indissolubly united, and that the forms of religion are as needful as its essence. Religion is to him, both as regards forms and dogmas, a whole, all whose parts hang together; and no human hand can touch this masterpiece of Providence without blemishing it. There is an occult sense in every word and in every rite. He cannot believe that any ceremony or formula of the Church is void of meaning or of efficacy. Divine service has nothing in it merely accessory, indifferent or unmeaning. Holy things are holy throughout: in the worship of the Lord everything is deep and full of mystery; and it is blasphemy to change anything or to withhold from it its proper veneration. The Starovere, of course, cannot formulate his doctrine, but if he could, religion would appear, according to his view, a sort of completed and adequate representation of the supernatural world. His simple logic exacts from all public worship an absolute perfection which it is impossible to realize. Looked at in this light, the Old Believer who marched to the stake for the sign of the cross, and sacrificed his tongue rather than chant another Hallelujah, grows highly respectable. From this standing-point the Russian schism is essentially religious: its mistake, so to speak, is the excess of religion. Symbolism is the principle of its formalism, or rather the Raskol is symbolism run into a heresy. This gives it originality and value in sectarian history. To these extravagant ritualists ceremonies are not simply the garb of religion: they are its flesh and blood, in whose absence dogma is but a lifeless skeleton. Thus, the Raskol is the direct opposite of ordinary Protestantism, which by its very nature sets small store by outward ceremonies, regarding them as needless ornament or a dangerous superfluity. Ritual to the Starovere is as much an integral part of traditional Christianity as doctrine: it, is equally the legacy of Christ and the apostles; and the sole mission of the Church and the clergy is to preserve both intact. This leaning to symbolism saves his scrupulous fidelity to outward forms from degenerating into a slavish superstition. On the other hand, the allegorizing tendency which clings fast to the letter sometimes takes odd liberties with the spirit of ceremonies and texts. It is the peculiarity of the symbolizing temper scrupulously to respect the form while arbitrarily dealing with the spirit. Thus, the ritual and the sacred books become a kind of heavenly charade, whose answer must be found by the imagination. And so, in their hunt after the hidden sense of narratives and words, some of the Raskolniks have allegorized the histories of the Old and New Testaments, and changed the gospel records into parables. Some have gone so far as to see in the greatest of the gospel miracles nothing but types.[005] Such a system of exegesis easily leads to a kind of mystic rationalism: the forms of religion tend to gain more consistency than the essence, and public worship to be placed above doctrine. Some of the extreme sects of the Raskol have actually reached this point. A perfect carnival of wild interpretation prevailed among this ignorant rabble, and crazy doctrines and grotesque tenets were not slow in following in its train.
The Old Believer loves his peculiar rites, not only for the meaning he puts into them, but also for the sake of the authority on which he holds them: the moral and social rationale of the schism is a deep respect for traditional customs and for the habits handed down from his forefathers. But even in his slavish devotion to ancestral ritual and prayers the Starovere simply exaggerates a feeling which, if not properly religious, commonly links itself with religion and adds to its influence. All men and all nations set great store by the maintenance of their hereditary faith, and even the common rhetorical abuse of such phrases demonstrates its power. When thus intertwined with the associations of family and country, religion assumes the guise of an inheritance solemnly committed to our trust by the departed. This feeling is singularly powerful in Russia from linking itself with a superstitious veneration for antiquity. You can often get no other reason from many of these sectaries for the faith that is in them. Quite recently a judge tried to bring to reason a group of peasants who were under prosecution for celebrating clandestine religious rites, but he could extract no other answer than this: "Our fathers practiced these customs. Take us anywhere you please, but leave us free to worship as our fathers did." A like reply is said to have been made by the Old Believers of Moscow to the late czarovitch on occasion of a visit to their burying-ground at Rogojski.
The liturgic reform of the seventeenth century was a revolution in the simplest elements of worship: it called upon the son to unlearn the sign of the cross that his mother had taught him. Such a change would have been hazardous anywhere, but it caused a peculiarly serious disturbance in Russia, where all prayer is connected with a kind of ceremonial of repeated bowings and crossings, which more closely resemble the devotional customs of the Mohammedans than those of other Christian countries. The people violently rejected the new sign of the cross and the entire reformed liturgy. It mattered little that the new ritual was more ancient than their own. The ignorant Russian knows no antiquity older than his fathers and grandfathers, and his attachment to the outer forms of orthodoxy was only intensified by remembering the recent attempts of popes and Jesuits to gain a foothold in the country. If he suffered the least change in his cherished customs, he might risk being Romanized, and, like the United Greeks of Poland, one day wake up and find himself part and parcel of the spiritual dominion of the papacy. With such dim fears the Old Believer opposed to the orthodox hierarchy a blind fidelity to orthodoxy. Their dread of seeing the Church corrupted inspired people and clergy with suspicion of all foreigners, even of their brethren in the faith whom the czars or the patriarchs had invited from Byzantium and from Kief. The Russian alone, of all the orthodox nations, had maintained his independence against infidel and pope, and he held himself the people of God, chosen to preserve the true faith. Everything European was indiscriminately rejected by this long-isolated nation. Their detestation of the West, its churches and its civilization, leads some of the Old Believers to anathematize even the language of theology and learning. Not longer ago than the close of the last century one of their writers waxed hot against the orthodox priests of Lesser Russia, many of whom, he said, "study the thrice-accursed Latin tongue." He reviled them for their readiness to commit the mortal sin of calling God Deus, and God the Father Pater, as though the Deity could have no other than the Slavic name of Bog, or the change of appellation involved a change of God. A like spirit is evident in the resistance offered by the Staroveres to the correct spelling of the name of Jesus, whom they persist in calling Issous, rejecting as diabolical the more accurate form Iissous. Such peculiarities show a nation shut up in its own vastness and isolated by its position and its history. It is a kind of Christianized China, knowing, and desiring to know, nothing beyond itself.