But we have no desire to pursue any further details which cannot in themselves have any interest for the public, although, taken in connection with the histories of the antagonistic authors, they may be suggestive. For instance, it is not easy to forget what the ardent professor of Moscow relates of himself with reference to certain of his fellow-countrywomen who had embraced the Catholic faith. Being at Rome, he tells us (and his words depict in a lively manner the character of his zeal) that he felt himself strongly tempted to seize by the hair two Russian ladies[76] whom he saw crossing the Piazza di Spagna to enter a Catholic church. He is said to be at this time preparing a Campaign against Adverse Powers, in which he combats “historic heresies.”
But the services rendered by M. Pogodine to the national history are undoubtedly great. We may notice a new one in his Ancient History of Russia before the Mongolian Yoke,[77] in which, after grouping the Russian principalities around that of Kiev as their political centre anterior to the invasion of the Mongols, he also gives the separate history of each. In the second volume the church, literature, the state, manners, and customs, are treated upon in turn, and form a series of pictures traced by a skilful hand, closing with a terribly-vivid description of the Tartar invasion.
II. Particular or Individual History.—It is about two years since historical science in Russia sustained a loss in the death of M. Pékarski, who had scarcely reached his forty-fifth year. This laborious and learned writer, who, in so short a space of time, produced an unusual number of important works,[78] died after having just completed his History of the Academy of Sciences. This work contains about eighteen hundred pages. After a solid introduction there follow the biographies of the first fifty members of the Academy, all of whom were foreigners, to which succeed those of Trediakovski and Lomonosov. In glancing over these biographies one is struck with the preponderance of the German element, the Academy, at its commencement, being almost exclusively composed of learned men of that nation. With the reign of Elizabeth the Russian party began to take the lead, and it was Lomonosov, the son of a fisherman of Archangelsk, who was the life and soul of it, as a learned man, an historian, and a poet. Pékarski mentions some curious details respecting the correspondence between Peter I. and the Sorbonne, touching the reunion of the Russian Church with Rome. It is to be wished that the documents treating of this matter, and which are preserved in the archives of the academy, might be published.
III. Ecclesiastical History.—After the History of the Russian Church, by Mgr. Macarius, the present Metropolitan of Lithuania, which has just reached its seventh volume, the first place is due to that by M. Znamenski, entitled The Parochial Clergy in Russia, subsequent to the Reform of Peter I.[79] In presence of the Protestant reforms which are in course of introduction into the official church by the Russian government, M. Znamenski’s book offers an eminently practical interest, and it is greatly to be wished that those in power would profit by its serious teaching. The author advances nothing without producing his proofs, drawn from official documents, which he has taken great pains to search for and consult wherever they were to be found.
His work is divided into five chapters, the first of which treats of the “Nomination of the Parochial Clergy.” Down to the middle of the XVIIIth century its members were chosen on the elective system; it is the ancient mode of nomination, which existed also in the Catholic Church. But from the middle of the XVIIIth century this gave place, in Russia, to the hereditary system, which has become one of the distinctive features of the Russian communion,[80] and in which may be found the cause of the separation and the spirit of caste which from that time began to isolate the clergy from the rest of society, and made them in all respects a body apart.
This spirit of caste still subsists, though not in so perceptible a degree as formerly. One inevitable consequence of this Levitism was the difficulty of quitting the caste when once a person belonged to it, as the author develops in his second chapter (pp. 176-354). In the third, he treats of the “Civil Rights of the Clergy,” and there depicts the revolting abuses in which the secular authorities allowed themselves with regard to the unfortunate clergy. The arbitrary injustice to which they were subjected during the whole of the XVIIIth century, and of which the still vivid traces remained in the time of the Emperor Alexander I., appears almost incredible. For instance, a poor parochial incumbent, having had the misfortune to pass before the house of the principal proprietor of the place without having taken off his hat to that personage, who was on the balcony with company, was immediately seized, thrust into a barrel, and thus rolled from the top of the hill on which the seignorial dwelling was situated, into the river which flowed at its base. His death was almost instantaneous. Justice, as represented in that quarter, being informed of this new species of murder, found itself unequal to touch the little potentate, and hushed up the affair. Similar horrors were by no means rare in the XVIIIth century. In the fourth chapter (pp. 507-617) the author speaks of the “Relations of the Clergy with the Ecclesiastical Authorities”; and although the picture he draws is somewhat less sombre than the preceding, still it is melancholy enough. Venality the most systematic, and rigor that can hardly be said to fall short of cruelty, were, for more than half a century, the most prominent features of the ecclesiastical government. No post, however small or humble, could be obtained without the imposition of a purely arbitrary tax; and these taxes formed in the end a very considerable amount. As for the spirit of the government, its fundamental maxim was to hold down the lower clergy in humility (smirenié)—a formula which was imprinted on the very bodies of the unfortunate victims. The slightest fault or error on their part was punished by corporal chastisements so severe that the sufferer sometimes expired under the blows. Priests were treated by their chief pastors as beings on a level with the meanest of slaves. One of these vladykas (which is the name by which the Russian bishops are designated) condemned his subordinates to dig fish-ponds on his estate, which ponds were to be so shaped as to form on a gigantic scale the initials (E. B.) of his lordship’s name.[81]
The failure of resources, so materially diminished by the cupidity of their superiors, forced the parochial clergy to contrive for themselves an income by means more or less lawful. Besides the legal charges, they invented various small taxes on their own behalf; or, when all else failed, they begged their bread from their own parishioners, who were apt to be more liberal of reproaches than of alms. The well-being of the secular clergy being one of the questions under consideration by the present government, the author has devoted to it much of his last chapter.
Such is the general plan of this book, which must be read through to give an idea of the humiliating degradation to which the hapless clergy were for more than a century condemned, thanks to the anomaly of institutions still more than to the abuses practised by individuals. When the source is corrupt, can the stream be pure?
But all this relates to the “Orthodox” of the empire. That which is more directly interesting to the Catholic reader will be found in works respecting the Ruthenian[82] Church, which is at this time attracting the attention of the West.
The History of the Reunion of the Ancient Uniates of the West,[83] by M. Koïalovitch, Professor of the Ecclesiastical (Orthodox) Academy of the capital, repeats the faults of all the numerous writings, whether books, pamphlets, or articles, which have issued from his pen in the course of the last ten years, and which are painfully remarkable for their spirit of partiality, their preconceived ideas, their self-contradictions, and their hatred of the Catholic faith. An organ of the press of St. Petersburg has expressed a desire that the documents upon which this author professedly rests three-fourths of his last book, while purposely neglecting all extraneous sources whatever, whether political or diplomatic, should be given to the public, which would then be enabled to judge for itself how far the statements based upon them are to be trusted. Nor can any obstacle exist in the way of such publication, as was shown by the work of Moroehkine on the reunion of the Uniates in 1839, equally compiled from official documents of unquestionable importance, which were then edited for the first time.