What sort of monks can be formed [pg 410] by such training? The asceticism prescribed by S. Basil is rarely observed. Meat is forbidden, but it is a common dish on the convent tables. Drunkenness is so prevalent that it hardly causes surprise. “After that,” says our author, “one can imagine what becomes of the vow of chastity.” There is, as we have already said, no pretence of observing holy poverty. Every monk has a certain share of the convent revenues, proportioned to his rank, and this share is sometimes large. The average income of the black clergy is not easily ascertained. There are two sorts of convents—those which receive aid from the state, as compensation for confiscated estates, and those which depend entirely upon private resources. Those of the first kind are divided into monasteries of the first, second, and third classes, receiving from the government respectively 2,000, 1,600, and 670 roubles a year ($1,680, $1,344, $563). There are 278 of these convents, receiving 259,200 roubles, or about $217,728 from this source. In former years, each convent was entitled to the compulsory services of a certain number of peasants. Since the emancipation of the serfs the government has commuted this privilege by paying an annual sum of 307,850 silver roubles, or $258,594. Endowments with an obligation to pray for the departed yield in addition $2,150,400 to white and black clergy together. Let us suppose that the monks get one-half; that would be $1,075,200 per annum. Then the convents possess large properties in arable lands, woodlands, meadows, fisheries, mills, etc. One convent is mentioned which has derived an income of $10,000 merely from the resin collected in its forests. The greater part of the revenues, however, are derived from the voluntary contributions of the people. These seem to be enormous. Russians prefer to be buried within the precincts of the monasteries, and the monks not only ask an exorbitant price for the grave, but make the deceased a permanent source of profit by charging for prayers over his remains. Images famous for miracles, churches enriched with the relics of saints, have multitudes of visitors who never come empty-handed. How much can be made from this concourse of the faithful may be imagined when it is remembered that a single laura, that of S. Sergius at Moscow, is visited every year by a million pilgrims. Begging brothers traverse all Russia, gathering alms. A very pretty trade is driven in wax tapers. The various arts resorted to by the white clergy to collect money are well known to the monks also. The Laura of S. Sergius is said to have a revenue all told of at least 2,000,000 roubles ($1,680,000), and a single chapel in Moscow yields to the convent to which it is attached an annual income of about $80,000. These princely revenues are not devoted to learning, education, charity, religion. A large part is misappropriated by the persons appointed to gather them. A third is the property of the superiors. The rest is divided among the monks. The annual income of the superior of one of the great lauras is from $33,600 to $50,400; of the superior of a monastery of the first class, from $8,400 to $25,200; second class, $4,200 to $8,400; third class, $840 to $4,200. All this is for their personal use; the monastery gives them lodging, food, and fuel, and they have to buy nothing but their clothing.
The seminaries, governed by the state, teach successfully neither piety nor learning. The tendency of the courses of instruction is to become secular rather than ecclesiastical. A proposal has recently been made that each bishop shall choose for his diocesan seminary a learned and pious priest to hear the confessions of the pupils, and excite them to devout practices; but it is objected that no secular priest can be found who is fit to discharge such important functions, while those monks who are fit are already employed in more important duties; besides, if one could discover among the white clergy the right sort of man, so much virtue would come very expensive, and the bishops could not or would not pay the salary he would be in a condition to demand. The seminarians are required to confess twice a year, namely, during the first week of Lent and during Holy Week. In reality, most of them omit the second confession; they go home to their families at Holy Week, and rarely approach the sacraments, though they always bring back a certificate from the parish priest that they have done so. A new regulation prescribes two additional confessions and communions, namely, at Christmas and the Assumption, and attempts another reform by ordaining that seminarians shall say their prayers morning and evening, and grace before and after meat.
The bishops are appointed by the czar, and transferred, promoted, degraded, imprisoned, knouted, or put to death at the imperial pleasure. Until very recently, no bishop could leave his diocese without the permission of the synod, so that consultations among the episcopacy were, of course, impossible. Now, however, a bishop may absent himself for eight days, on giving notice to the synod. It is the synod at St. Petersburg that exercises, under the czar, the whole ecclesiastical authority of the empire. The bishop has no power, and nothing to do but to sign reports. All the business of his diocese is really transacted by a lay secretary, appointed not by the bishop, but by the synod. Under the secretary is a chancery of six or seven chief clerks, with assistant clerks and writers. This office superintends all the affairs of the clergy, and transacts no business without drink-money. It is the most venal and rapacious of all Russian bureaus, and such a mine of wealth to the officials that recently, when the chancery of a certain town was abolished on account of the destruction of its buildings by fire, the employees petitioned to be allowed to restore them at their own expense. The secretary is the one all-powerful person of the diocese. From 12,000 to 15,000 files of documents are referred to the chancery every year for decision, and it is he who passes upon them, asking nothing of the bishop except his signature. He is almost invariably corrupt, and as he [pg 412] possesses, through his relations with the synod, the power to ruin the bishop if he chooses, there is no one to interfere with him.
The synod consists of the metropolitan of St. Petersburg and a number of other bishops chosen by the czar and changed every now and then, and of two or three secular priests, one of whom is the czar's chaplain, and another the chief chaplain of the army and navy. But in reality, the whole power of the synod is held by an imperial procurator, who sits in the assembly, watches all its proceedings, stops deliberations whenever he sees fit, is the intermediary between the church and the state, and formulates decisions for the signature of the synod. Most of these decisions are signed without reading, and sometimes they are made to express the direct contrary of the sense of the assembly. The procurator, in a word, is to the synod what the secretary is to the bishop—the representative of the civil power ruling the enslaved and submissive church. The czar speaks through the procurator, the procurator speaks through the lay secretaries of the bishop, and so the church is governed practically without troubling the clergy at all.
The “Old Catholics” of Germany, and the new and improved Catholics who are (perhaps) going to be made under the patent of Father Hyacinthe and wife, are understood to be looking eagerly for connections in various parts of the world. Let them by all means go to Russia. They will see there how much liberty a church gains when it cuts itself off from its obedience to the See of Peter, and what kind of a clergy is constructed when men try to improve upon the models of Almighty God.
The Cross Through Love, And Love Through The Cross.
Maheleth Cristalar was the daughter of a Spanish Jew. Her father had once been very wealthy, and indeed until the age of sixteen she had lived in princely splendor. The beauties of her Spanish home were very dear to her; she had many friends, and as much time as she chose to spend in study.
But one day, her mother, a stately, handsome matron, came into her little sitting-room, looking pale and worn.
“Maheleth, my child,” she began, in faltering tones, “we have had some bad news this morning. I am afraid we are in danger of being totally ruined.”