Other monuments S. Louis left behind him, not built of stone or precious metals, but which have nevertheless endured and come down to us unimpaired by the lapse of ages, while houses and castles of stony granite have crumbled away, leaving no record on the hearts of men. Compiègne in the days of the saintly king was the refuge of God's poor, of the sick and the sorrowing; S. Louis gave up to them all the rooms he could spare from his household, and devoted to tending and serving them with his own hands what time he could steal from the affairs of state.
To Be Continued.
The Russian Clergy.
We have heard nothing new of late about the project of certain zealous Anglicans and members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States to establish communion between their churches and the schismatic Oriental Christians in the empire of Russia. It seemed fitting enough at first glance that the special variety of Christianity introduced by Henry VIII. should agree with the methods of ecclesiastical discipline prescribed by an equally autocratic sovereign at the opposite extremity of Europe; and there were, of course, abundant reasons why the Anglicans and their American descendants should covet a recognition from a branch of the church which, whatever its corruptions and irregularities, can at least make good its connection with the parent stem. Our readers have not forgotten, however, how coldly the overtures of these ambitious Protestants were received. The Russian clergy ridiculed the hierarchical pretensions of their English and American friends. They denied their apostolical succession. They questioned their right to call themselves churchmen at all; and, in short, looked upon them as no better than heretics, and not very consistent heretics either. The movement for union was a foolish one, begun in utter misconception of the radical differences between the two parties, and sure from the first to end in discomfiture and irritation.
Indeed, it was even more foolish than most of us still suppose. Not only was it impossible for the Russian Church to make the concessions required of it, but there is no reason to believe that the Episcopalians would have been very well satisfied [pg 404] with their new brethren had the alliance been effected. The Russian Church is an organization which stands far apart from every other in the world, presenting some monstrous features which even Protestantism cannot parallel. The Jesuit Father Gagarin has published a very curious work on the condition and prospects of the Russian clergy,[185] which would perhaps have modified the zeal of the English and American petitioners for union and recognition if they could have read it before making their recent overtures. We see here the rottenness and uselessness into which a national church falls when it is cut off from the centre of Christian unity and the source of Christian life.
The Russian priests are divided into two classes, the white and the black clergy, or seculars and monks. The great difference between them is, the white clergy are married, and the black are celibates. Whatever learning there is in the ecclesiastical order is found among the monks. The bishops are always chosen from the monastic class; and the two classes hate each other with remarkable heartiness. The marriage of priests is an old custom in the East, which antedates the organization of the Russian schism. It prevails in some of the united Oriental churches to this day. But in Russia it exists in a peculiarly aggravated form. Peter I. and his successors, by a multitude of despotic ukases, succeeded in erecting the white clergy into a strict caste, making the clerical profession practically hereditary, and marriage a necessary condition of the secular clerical state. The candidate for orders has his choice between matrimony and the monastery; one of the two he must embrace before he can be ordained.
The rule seems to have originated in an attempt to improve the education of the white clergy. The deplorable ignorance of the order led the government to establish ecclesiastical schools. But the schools remained deserted. The clergy were then ordered to send their children to them, and sometimes the pupils were arrested by the police and taken to school in chains. The Czar Alexander I. ordered, in 1808 and 1814, that all clerks' children between six and eight years of age should be at the disposal of the ecclesiastical schools; and, that there might be no lack of children, the candidate for the priesthood was compelled to take a wife before he could take orders. Once in the seminary, the scholar has no prospect before him except an ecclesiastical life. He cannot embrace any other career without special permission, which is almost invariably refused. At the same time, the seminaries are closed against all except the sons of the clergy. The son of a nobleman, a merchant, a citizen, a peasant, who wanted to enter, would meet with insurmountable obstacles, unless he chose to become a monk.
Thus the paternal government of the czar secures first an unfailing supply of pastors for the Russian Church, which otherwise might be insufficiently served; and, secondly, a career for the children of the clergy, free from the competition of outside candidates. And, indeed, the priests might very well say: Since you compel us to marry, you are bound, at least, to furnish a support for our offspring. But the system does not stop here. What shall be done with the priests' daughters? In the degraded condition of the Russian Church, where the white clergy or popes are popularly ranked lower in [pg 405] the social scale than petty shopkeepers or noblemen's servants, these young women could not expect to find husbands except among the peasantry, and they might not readily find them there. The obvious course is to make them marry in their own order. The seminarian, therefore, by a further regulation of the paternal government, is not only obliged to marry, whether he will or no, but he must marry a priest's daughter, and some bishops are so careful of the welfare of their subjects that they will not suffer a clerk to marry out of his own diocese. Special schools are established for these daughters of the church; and we could imagine a curious course of instruction at such institutions, if the Russian ecclesiastical schools really attempted to fit their pupils for the life before them; but, as we shall see further on, they do nothing of the kind.
Sometimes it happens that a priest has built a house on land belonging to the church. He dies, leaving a son or a daughter. His successor in the parish has a right to the use of the land, but what shall be done with the house? The law solves this difficulty by providing that the living shall either be saved for the son (who may be a babe in arms), or given to any young Levite who will marry the daughter. Thus the clerical caste is made in every way as compact and comfortable as possible, and, for a man of mean extraction, moderate ambition, and small learning, becomes a tolerable, if not a brilliant career.