“Sec. 200.—He who is well aware that his wife or his children, or any persons legally under his surveillance, intend to abandon the orthodox creed, and does not attempt to dissuade them from it, or take such measures as are authorised by the law to prevent them from doing so, shall be liable to an imprisonment of three days to three months; and if he is orthodox, he shall be subject to ecclesiastical punishment.”
This law therefore obliges a man, even if he is a Roman Catholic, to denounce his wife and children of the orthodox faith and act with rigour against them.
“Sec. 202.—Members of the clergy of the Christian sects, convicted of having taught the Catechism to orthodox children, although it should not be proved that they intended to beguile them, will be liable: for the first offence, to be removed from their spiritual charge for one to three years; for the second, to forfeit entirely their charge, and, after having been imprisoned for one to two years, to be placed continually under the surveillance of the police.”
With regard to the grave question of mixed marriages, the tenth book of the laws, among other vexatious regulations, stipulates that: “If one of the two contracting parties is orthodox, the priest can only give his benediction to the marriage when he shall have obtained from the heterodox party a formal engagement in writing, that he or she shall not attempt to gain over the other to his or her religion by allurements, threats, or other means, and that all their children shall be brought up in the orthodox faith.”
Marriages between members of the Catholic and of the Orthodox faith, celebrated only in a Catholic church, are declared null and void.
Note 6, Chap. XIII., [Page 225].
The exiled Poles, at present even, can only carry offensive weapons with the permission of the military governor.
Note 7, Chap. XIII., [Page 226].
In Siberia, poor people, who travel enormous distances afoot, in order to pray at a tomb or the image of a saint, are often met with. It is not a rare occurrence for peasants to attempt to undertake a journey thus as far as Jerusalem. There are many, indeed, that abandon their project on the way from sheer fatigue, but not from want of courage. A few are sometimes known to accomplish even this formidable undertaking.