Military: 3.4 "
Nobility: 3 "
The immense preponderance of the clerical element is owing primarily, of course, to the regulation of caste, which virtually compels the children of the clergy to follow the profession of their fathers. For the ambitious, the monastery alone offers an alluring prospect, since it is from the black clergy that the bishops are taken. The religious calling, therefore, in Russia is not so much a vocation as a career. If there were really an unselfish devout tendency towards the monastic life among the children of the clergy, we should expect to find it stronger with the daughters than with the sons. But the case is far otherwise. There are no bishoprics for the women; their career is to marry priests, go with them from house to house collecting alms, and help them home when they have taken too much brandy. Hence we find the following ratio among the population of the nunneries:
Urban population: 38.8 per cent.
Rural population: 31 "
Clergy: 13 "
Nobility: 12 "
Military: 4 "
The number of recruits supplied to monasteries by the clerical profession averages 140 a year. These comprise a curious variety of persons. First, there are priests or deacons who have committed grave crimes; they are sentenced to the convent, as lay convicts are sentenced to the galleys. Next there are seminarists who have failed in their studies; if they quit the ranks of the clergy altogether, they are forced into the army; if they remain among the white clergy, they have no prospect of becoming anything better than sacristans or beadles; by entering a convent they will at least live more comfortably and may aspire to become deacons or priests. Then there are deacons and priests who have lost their wives; they cannot marry again; the Russian government hesitates to entrust a parish to a wifeless priest; the wife indeed, as we have just seen, has some very important functions to perform in the administration of parochial rites; so the unfortunate widower is not only advised but sometimes compelled to go to a convent. Again, there are seminarists who after completing their studies act as professors for some time before they are ordained. Suppose [pg 409] such a man has been married and his wife dies. He cannot be ordained if he marry again. He cannot be ordained a secular priest without a wife. He must either go to the convent or seek some career outside the clerical profession, and that, as we have seen, it is almost impossible to find. Ambition draws many to the monastery. A student of any one of the four great academies of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kasan, and Kieff, who embraces the monastic life during his academical course, is morally certain on quitting the academy of being named inspector or prefect of studies in a seminary; at the end of a few years he becomes rector; and if he do not impede his own advancement he can hardly fail to be a bishop after a while. Still there is difficulty in obtaining from the academies a sufficient number of educated monks, and according to F. Gagarin some extraordinary devices are resorted to in order to supply the demand. When persuasion has failed, the student whom the convent wishes to capture is invited to pass the evening with one of the monks. Brandy is produced and it is not difficult to make the young man drunk. While he is insensible the ceremony of taking the habit and receiving the tonsure is performed on him, and he is then put to bed. When he awakes, he finds by his side, instead of the lay garments he wore the night before, a monastic gown. All resistance is useless. He is told that what is done cannot be undone, and after a while he submits angrily to his fate. This at any rate was the method of impressment into the religious state adopted fifty years ago. Now, says our author, it is unnecessary, inasmuch as a shorter way has been found of reaching the same result. The students of the academies (these are students of theology, be it remembered—equivalent to our seminarians) are in the habit of frequenting public-houses and getting drunk. They are carried home on hand-barrows, and this proceeding is known as the “Translation of the Relics.” When a young man has been fixed upon as a desirable recruit for the monastery, the superior has only to watch until he is brought home on a barrow; the next morning, while his head and his stomach are rebuking him, he is informed that he has been expelled for his disgraceful conduct; but, if he will give a proof of his sincere repentance by making a written request to be received as a monk, he may be forgiven.
There is no novitiate in the Russian convents. The neophyte makes his vows at once—provided he has reached the age prescribed by the law—and instances are not wanting of monks who have even attained the episcopate without ever having lived in a convent. According to the Russian law, academy pupils may make the religious profession at 25; other men at 30. It often happens that a youth has finished his studies before reaching 25; in that case, instead of applying for a dispensation, he makes a false statement of his age. Others who fail at their books wait for their thirtieth year, and are placed meanwhile each one under the care of some monk, who is supposed to form him for the monastic state. But he receives no religious training. He does not learn to pray, to meditate, to examine his conscience. He waits upon his master; he joins in the long service in the church; and the rest of the time he spends in amusement within or without the convent. His pleasures are not always of the most edifying character, and his excursions are not confined to the day.