While Raskolniks are justly considered as the most honest, frugal, sober, and industrious of the Russian people, in all the ordinary avocations of life, they are, in all that relates to the intercourse of the sexes, held, with equal justice, to be the most immoral. But this is not the worst feature of the case; free love and free divorce are among the lesser evils which flow from their opinions; more deplorable still are the consequences arising from doctrines which have been inculcated by the more rigid of their sects, especially by the Feodocians of Praobrajenski, who have held that all connection of the sexes is unlawful, inasmuch as nothing can replace the lost sacrament. Their creed is concisely enunciated, "Zshenaty, raz zshenis; ne zshenaty, ne zshenis"—"Being married, get unmarried; not married, never marry." Or, as a popular catechism states it, "The youth should never take wife, the husband should never possess the wife; the maiden should never marry, the wife should never bear children." Those who infringed this commandment, and were convicted of having had children, were ignominiously expelled from the community, or were subjected to severe and humiliating penance. Adherence to such maxims was, in the nature of things, impossible, and those who sinned had strong inducement to conceal or suppress the evidence of their guilt. Infanticide was a frequent reproach, substantiated by the discovery of bodies of newly-born children in draining ponds, and by the bribery of officials to prevent similar measures when they were contemplated.[1] Occurrences of this nature were recorded often in provinces where the Bezpopovtsi were numerous. Although these accusations were strenuously denied, they were natural
- ↑ "Le Raskol," p. 66; Haxthausen, vol. i., p. 263.
16
