There cannot perhaps be any thing conceived more prudent than these institutions; but what merits the attention of all ages, is the regulation which Peter made himself, and which he addressed to the synod in 1724. The ancient ecclesiastical institution is there very learnedly explained, and the indolence of the monkish life admirably well exposed; and he not only recommends an application to labour and industry, but even commands it; and that the principal occupation of those people should be, to assist and relieve the poor. He likewise orders, that sick and infirm soldiers shall be quartered in the convents, and that a certain number of monks shall be set apart to take care of them, and that the most strong and healthy of these shall cultivate the lands belonging to those convents. He orders the same regulations to be observed in the monasteries for women, and that the strongest of these shall take care of the gardens, and the rest to wait on sick or infirm women, who shall be brought from the neighbouring country into the convents for that purpose. He also enters into the minutest details relating to these services; and lastly, he appoints certain monasteries of both sexes for the reception and education of orphans.
In reading this ordinance of Peter the Great, which was published the 31st January, 1724, one would imagine it to have been framed by a minister of state and a father of the church.
Almost all the customs in the Russian church are different from those of ours. As soon as a man is made a sub-deacon, we prohibit him from marrying, and he is accounted guilty of sacrilege if he proves instrumental to the population of his country. On the contrary, when any one has taken a sub-deacon's order in Russia, he is obliged likewise to take a wife, and then may rise to the rank of priest, and arch-priest, but he cannot be made a bishop, unless he is a widower and a monk.
Peter forbid all parish-priests from bringing up more than one son to the service of the church, unless it was particularly desired by the parishioners; and this he did, lest a numerous family might in time come to tyrannize over the parish. We may perceive in these little circumstances relating to church-government, that the legislator had always the good of the state in view, and that he took every precaution to make the clergy properly respected, without being dangerous, and that they should be neither contemptible nor powerful.
In those curious memoirs, composed by an officer who was a particular favourite of Peter the Great, I find the following anecdote:—One day a person reading to the czar that number of the English Spectator, in which a parallel is drawn between him and Lewis XIV. 'I do not think,' said Peter, 'that I deserve the preference that is here given me over that monarch; but I have been fortunate enough to have the superiority over him in one essential point, namely, that of having obliged my clergy to live in peace and submission; whereas my brother Lewis has suffered himself to be ruled by his.'
A prince, whose days were almost wholly spent in the fatigues of war, and his nights in the compiling laws for the better government of so large an empire, and in directing so many great labours, through a space of two thousand leagues, must stand in need of some hours of amusement. Diversions at that time were neither so noble or elegant as they now are, and therefore we must not wonder if Peter amused himself with the entertainment of the sham conclave, of which mention has been already made, and other diversions of the same stamp, which were frequently at the expense of the Romish church, to which he had a great dislike, and which was very pardonable in a prince of the Greek communion, who was determined to be master in his own dominions. He likewise gave several entertainments of the same kind at the expense of the monks of his own country; but of the ancient monks, whose follies and bigotry he wished to ridicule, while he strove to reform the new.
We have already seen that previous to his publishing his church-laws, he created one of his fools pope, and celebrated the feast of the sham conclave. This fool, whose name was Jotof, was between eighty and ninety. The czar took it into his head to make him marry an old widow of his own age, and to have their nuptials publicly solemnized; he caused the invitation to the marriage guests to be made by four persons who were remarkable for stammering. The bride was conducted to church by decrepit old men, four of the most bulky men that could be found in Russia acted as running footmen. The music were seated in a waggon drawn by bears, whom they every now and then pricked with goads of iron, and who, by their roaring, formed a full base, perfectly agreeable to the concert in the cart. The married couple received the benediction in the cathedral from the hands of a deaf and blind priest, who, to appear more ridiculous, wore a large pair of spectacles on his nose. The procession, the wedding, the marriage-feast, the undressing and putting to bed of the bride and bridegroom, were all of a piece with the rest of this burlesque ceremony.
We may perhaps be apt to look upon this as a trivial and ridiculous entertainment for a great prince; but is it more so than our carnival? or to see five or six hundred persons with masks on their faces, and dressed in the most ridiculous manner, skipping and jumping about together, for a whole night in a large room, without speaking a word to each other?
In fine, were the ancient feasts of the fools and the ass, and the abbot of the cuckolds, which were formerly celebrated in our churches, much superior, or did our comedies of the foolish mother exhibit marks of a greater genius?