The Russian Church and Russian Dissent/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II.
Introduction of Christianity into Russia.
The power and dignity of the Church in the East were doomed to dwindle and decrease with the waning glories of the lower empire. Its patriarchs were to become mere puppets of court favor, nominees and sycophants of an infidel sovereign; but brighter destinies and renewed splendor awaited it in other climes. From the dwarfed and puny shoulders of the effeminate Greek its mantle was to fall on the strong and stalwart frame of the Barbarian; enervated and lifeless in its ancient home, it was to be rejuvenated by the bracing atmosphere of the North, and spring again into fresh and youthful life in the rude, inhospitable regions of its later conquests.
But little is positively known regarding the first introduction of Christianity into Russia, although legends and traditions abound.
In popular belief, the city of Novgorod was founded by Japhet, son of Noah, and thither St. Andrew came to preach the gospel. The wild and barbarous natives ridiculed teachings so contrary to their fierce and savage habits. They found amusement in tormenting the apostle and mocking his simplicity; they plunged him, bound with cords, into a bath heated to the utmost, and the saint, distressed and suffocated by the vapor, exclaimed, "ἵδρωσα" ("I sweat"); hence, it is said, came the name of Roussa, or Russia. Moved by his patience and meekness, his rough hosts released him, listened to his words, and believed. They glory over all the rest of the people of Muscovy for being rooted in the faith from ancient times, and having been the first to receive it.
Novgorod is a city of great antiquity, and its religious edifices are held in deepest veneration by the people. In popular tradition its celebrated monastery of St. Anthony the Great, or "the Roman," was founded by a monk of Rome, who, during the persecution for image worship, was miraculously borne upon a rock from the Tiber, over seas and rivers, to Novgorod on Lake Ilmen. The treasures of his convent, which he had consigned to the waters, followed him on his voyage. At Novgorod he found a Christian church, of which St. Nikita was metropolitan; with him Anthony joined in prayer, and immediately a knowledge of each other's tongue was imparted to them both. The ruler of the city gave him land for a convent; and his treasures, fished up from the lake, provided sacred furniture for the altars. The boat of stone still excites the devotion of the worshippers, and the palm branches in the chapel are still as green as when brought from Rome by Anthony.
Of St. Nikita it is related that he shut up Satan in a jar, and released him upon condition that he would carry him to Jerusalem and back. Thus the saint visited the holy places of the East in a single night.
These pious legends generally bear impress of the Oriental origin of the Church.
The Russian monk, Nestor, who died in 1116, relates in his chronicle that St. Andrew the Apostle, journeying by the river Dnieper, on his way from Asia Minor to Rome, came to the hills surmounting the site of the city of Kiev, and on their summit, after kneeling in prayer, he exclaimed to his companions: "Behold this mountain, for it is here that the grace of God shall shine forth. A great city shall arise on this spot, and in it the Lord shall have many temples to His name."[1]
Byzantine annalists record the labors of St. Peter of Kiev, a Greek monk sent thither by the Emperor Basil, the Macedonian, and who was, according to them, the first metropolitan of Russia. The heathen inhabitants demanded proof of the divine nature of his teachings; to convince them he passed, uninjured, with the Gospel in his hands, through a great fire kindled by them, whereupon they all embraced the faith. He repeated the same miracle among the Muscovites, and they also were converted.
The patriarch Photius, in a circular letter addressed to the Eastern bishops in a.d. 866, speaks of the Russians as having renounced their pagan superstitions and professed the faith of Jesus Christ, and adds that he has sent them a bishop and priests.
In the same year Oskold and Dir, companions of Ruric and rulers of Kiev, pursuing their quest for booty and plunder, descended the Dnieper and appeared before Constantinople; the city was saved by the miraculous interposition of the Virgin; her robe, a relic of the Church of Blacherne, was bathed in the sea, whereon a furious tempest arose which dispersed the hostile fleet. According to Greek chroniclers the Russian princes, struck with awe, abjured their heathen gods and embraced Christianity. These chroniclers also enumerate Russia as the seventieth archbishopric depending on the see of Constantinople.
The recruitment of the imperial body-guard from the Varagians along and beyond the Dnieper, bringing many from those regions under Christian influences, and the intercourse between Russians and Greeks, arising from trade and from frequent predatory excursions of the former against the empire, doubtless combined to spread among them some knowledge of Christianity. Efforts for their conversion, attempted by emperors preceding Basil I., were continued by him and by his successors, stimulated by their desire, during the struggles of the Greek Church with Rome, to extend its sway. A treaty, concluded in 945, between Igur of Kiev and Constantine VII., distinguishes Russians who had been baptized from those who were yet pagans, and makes mention of a church at Kiev, dedicated to St. Elias.
From these scanty and confused historical data it would appear that Christianity had penetrated into Russia prior to the middle of the tenth century.
The conversion of the savage tribes who occupied the vast deserts of Dacia and Sarmatia was preceded, and the way for it prepared, by the missionary labors of the Greek Church along the Danube and in the Chersonesus. Slavonic tribes, who had heard of Christ, applied to Constantinople for teachers. Constantine Cypharas, a monk better known as St. Cyril, was sent to them by Michael III. in 860. He called to his assistance his brother Methodius, and they both, animated by true apostolic zeal, extended their mission to the surrounding pagans. They invented a Slavonic alphabet, translated the Scriptures and the Liturgy, and celebrated religious services in the language of the people, according to the rites of the Greek Church. Their lives were devoted with singlehearted earnestness to the conversion of the heathen, and the results of their missionary efforts spread far beyond the sphere of their labors. They had great influence upon the growth and destinies of the Church in Russia, where their translations of the Bible and the Liturgy into Slavonic were subsequently adopted, and their practice of celebrating the service in a language familiar to the people was followed.
In 955 Olga, wife of Igur, ruler of Kiev, mother of Sviatoslav, and whom Nestor calls "the dawn and morning-star of salvation for Russia," journeyed to Constantinople in search of knowledge of the true God, and was there baptized by the name of Helena, in memory of the sainted mother of Constantine the Great. The humble creed and self-denying precepts of her new religion were repugnant to the rude barbarian, her son, a proud and haughty chief of fierce warriors; but he respected the genius and virtues of his mother, who, venerated and loved by his people, was surnamed by them "the Wise." He tolerated and protected the belief she professed, and confided his children to her care. His son, Vladimir, was a kindred spirit to his own—enterprising and ambitious, of fiery passions, strong and enthusiastic temperament, imbued with the superstitions and addicted to the gross and sensual indulgences of his race, fit leader of hardy and rapacious tribes, whose only occupation was war, and whose pastimes were revelry and the chase. A zealous worshipper of idols, Vladimir erected a huge image of Peroun, the God of Thunder, and offered to it human sacrifices. To celebrate a victory over a neighboring tribe, lots were cast for a victim, and fell on Feodor, son of Ivan, a Christian Varagian; the father refused to yield him up, mocked the heathen deities of wood and stone, and declared the God of the Greeks to be the true and only God; whereon the people massacred them both—the first and the only martyrs of the Church at Kiev. Vladimir's success in war spread his renown abroad; his alliance was courted, and his conversion became an object of solicitude to nations near and remote. Emissaries came to him from the Mahometan Bulgarians and the Khorazian Jews, from the Latin Christians of Germany and Rome, and from the Greeks of Constantinople. To each of them he returned a characteristic reply. The pleasures of Mahomet's paradise were tempting, but he refused to be circumcised or to abstain from pork or from wine, "for drinking," said he, "is the delight of Russians, nor can we live without it." Of the Jews he asked: "Where is your country?" and when they acknowledged that for their sins God had driven them forth and scattered them over the earth, he indignantly rejoined, "Do you, whom your God has forsaken and dispersed, pretend to teach others, and would you have us share your fate?" The Western doctors were dismissed with scant courtesy, as coming from troublesome neighbors; "Our fathers have never believed in your religion," said he. He listened more attentively to the Greek, who alternately aroused and soothed his superstitious fears by eloquently depicting the future torments of the wicked and the reward of the righteous, enforcing his words by pictures representing the Judgment Day. "Tell me more," said Vladimir, "happy are those seated on the right, wretched the sinners on the left." All the mysteries of the Orthodox faith were explained; he was deeply moved, and perhaps recalled the teaching of his grandmother Olga. In the succeeding year, 987, by the advice of his boyars, he sent trusty counsellors to examine in different countries the religion of each. At Constantinople the importance of their mission was more seriously realized than elsewhere, and every effort was made by the emperor and the patriarch to impress their imaginations and convince them of the superiority of the Greek Church. They were dazzled by the magnificence of the court, and transported by the splendor and imposing ceremonies of the ritual "When we stood in the temple," said they, on their return, "we hardly knew whether or not we were in heaven, for, in truth, upon earth it is impossible to behold such glory and magnificence; we could not tell all we have seen; there, verily, God has His dwelling among men, and the worship of other countries is as nothing. Never can we forget the grandeur which we saw. Whoever has enjoyed so sweet a sight can never elsewhere be satisfied, nor will we remain longer as we are."[2] They adduced Olga's example as an additional reason for adopting the Eastern faith: "If the Greek religion had not been good," they urged, "thy grandmother Olga, wisest of mortals, had not embraced it." Vladimir still hesitated; but when, in the following year, his armies were held in check before the walls of Kherson, he made a vow to be baptized if he captured the city. It fell, and then the crafty prince, eager for every advantage, demanded as a condition of peace and of his conversion the hand of Anna, sister of Basil II., in marriage, threatening otherwise to march on Constantinople. An old prophecy of unknown origin was current in the tenth century on the shores of the Bosphorus, and had been inscribed on the statue of Bellerophon within the city walls, that "the Russians would some day seize upon the capital of the Empire of the East." It has not yet been forgotten, and it may, in those ancient days, have influenced the emperor's decision. The danger was imminent, and in order to avert it and to bring so powerful an enemy under the banner of the cross, the haughty Greek consented, and, in spite of her reluctance, sent the Princess Anna, with a retinue of priests, to Kherson. On her arrival she found Vladimir suffering from a sudden attack of blindness; but when the bishop laid hands upon him in baptism he recovered his sight and exclaimed, "Now it is that I know the true God!"
On his return to Kiev he commenced, with characteristic energy, the propagation of the new faith; his twelve sons and all the people, by his command and under penalty of his anger, were baptized; idols were overthrown, the great statue of Peroun was cast into the Dnieper, and the entire nation, with a unanimity and suddenness that have no parallel in the religious history of Europe, turned from paganism to Christianity at the bidding of its prince.
Doubtless the labors of early missionaries, in neighboring countries, had prepared the way, while the translations of the Bible and of the Liturgy into Slavonic by Cyril and Methodius assisted in the dissemination of the truth. By popularizing the holy books, they tended to impart, from the first, a religious tone to the literature of Russia, and a national spirit to its religion.
The docile and submissive nature of the people had been exemplified centuries before, when they summoned Ruric to reign over them. "Our country is vast and fertile," said they to him; "all things abound therein, but order and justice are wanting; come, therefore, govern and rule over us."
It was again illustrated by their ready compliance in matters of belief with the commands of their ruler, and explains the character, at once popular, national, and loyal, of the Russian Church. At the same time, the extraordinary power of sacred pictures, and the devotional feeling which they excite in the Russian mind, the regard for ceremonial and external rites, the rigid adherence to ancient forms, the strong tincture of Orientalism which pervades the Church, mark the influences which surrounded its birth and its affiliation with Constantinople.
Vladimir, from his conversion to his death, remained steadfast and zealous in the faith. He exhibited by his acts, throughout his later career, the depth and earnestness of his convictions. Architects and builders, bishops, priests, and teachers, were summoned from the East. In all the cities of his realm he erected churches and established schools; at Kiev he built a cathedral and there founded the metropolitan see, over which St. Michael, and, after him, St. Leontius, prelates from Constantinople, were called to preside. By a formal decree he provided for the regular support of the Church establishment and the clergy, setting aside for the purpose a tenth part of the revenues of his kingdom and of his subjects. He based his legislation upon the Greek Nomocanon, which embodies the canons and decisions of the seven œcumenical councils, and, in accordance therewith, he gave to the Church exclusive jurisdiction over ecclesiastical affairs, pronouncing his curse upon any of his descendants, or any officers of state, who should, in the present or the future, disturb or infringe upon the regulations thus declared. The authenticity of this enactment, which is attributed to him, is doubtful; but his persistent devotion to the interests of the Church is abundantly proven. Few princes can show better title to the admiration of posterity than Vladimir, who, a rude pagan warrior, became a wise and Christian ruler. Known in history as the "Great," and canonized by the Church as "Equal to the Apostles," he lives also in popular song and tradition; his exploits are related in Byzantine annals, Arab chronicles, and Scandinavian sagas. He cleared forests, sent colonies into the wilderness, reclaimed deserts, founded cities, promulgated laws, administered justice, encouraged learning and the arts, overthrew paganism, established Christianity, and called into Russia all the civilizing influences that the world, in his time, could offer.