Chapter VIII: Faith And Science Of Progress (3)

The forest was its chief attraction to the kings of old Gaul, as it has been in later days to their successors. Clotaire I. met with an accident while hunting there in 561, and died of it; he was interred at Soissons, whither his fourteen sons accompanied him, bearing torches and singing psalms all the way. Fredegonda made the merry hunting‐lodge the scene of atrocities never surpassed even by her, fertile as she was in inventive cruelties. Her infant son fell ill of a fever at Compiègne and died, while the son of the prefect, Mumondle, who was taken ill with the same illness at the same time, recovered. The courtiers, thinking to allay the despair of the terrible mother by giving it an outlet in revenge, whispered to her certain stories that were current in the village about a witch who had sacrificed the royal infant to secure the potency of her charms in favor of the life of the other. Fredegonda caught at the bait like a tiger at the taste of blood. She scoured the country for decrepit old women, and, afraid of missing the right one, caused the entire lot to be seized and put to death before her eyes. The details of the tortures inflicted on them by the ruthless mother are too terrible to be described.

Clotaire II. lived many years at Compiègne, much beloved for his gentle and benevolent disposition, but nothing particular marks that period. King Dagobert made it likewise his principal residence, and enriched the surrounding country with many fine churches and noble monasteries. The most celebrated of these was the Abbey of S. Ouen’s Cross. The king was out hunting, one hot summer’s day in the year of grace 631, and emerging from the forest to the open road, he suddenly saw before him a gigantic cross of snow. Marvelling much at the unseasonable apparition, he sent for S. Ouen, who dwelt in the wood hard by, and bade him interpret its meaning to him. The saint replied that he saw in the sign a command to the king to build a church on the site of the miraculous cross. No sooner had he said this, than the cross began to melt, and presently vanished like a shadow. Dagobert at once set about obeying the mandate uttered in the peaceful symbol, and raised on the road from Compiègne to Verberie the stately pile called the Abbaye de la Croix de S. Ouen.

Many other foundations followed, but no event of note took place at Compiègne till Louis le Debonnaire appeared on the scene in 757—unless, indeed, we may record as such the arrival there of the first organ ever seen in France. It was sent as a present to Pepin by the Emperor Constantine, and the first time it was played a woman is said to have swooned, and awoke only to die. Louis le Debonnaire lived chiefly at Verberie, the magnificent palace of Charlemagne, a right royal abode, befitting the greatest monarch of France. Bronze, and marble, and precious stones, and stained glass, and all costly and beautiful materials were lavished with oriental prodigality on this wonderful Verberie, whose colossal towers and frowning battlements and elaborately wrought gates and gables were the marvel of the age and the theme of many a troubadour’s song. But what monument built by the hand of man can withstand the ravages of man’s ruthless passions? The palace of the Gallic Cæsar was not proof against the successive wars and sieges that battered its massive walls, till not even a vestige of the wonderful pile remains to mark where it stood.

The sons of Louis le Debonnaire, Louis, Pepin, and Lothair, rebelled against their father; Lothair got possession of his person, stripped him of all the ornaments of royalty, clothed him in sackcloth, and in this unseemly plight exhibited the old king to the insults and mockeries of the people. After this he compelled him to lay his sword upon the altar, and sign his abdication in favor of the unnatural son, who presided in cold‐ blooded triumph at the impious ceremony. As soon as this was done he sent his father, bound hand and foot, to Compiègne, where he was kept a close prisoner. Lothair’s brothers, however, hearing of this, were moved to indignation, and, stimulated perhaps not a little by jealousy of the successful rival who had started with them, but secured all the winnings for himself, they set out for Compiègne, stormed the fortress, and set free the king. But the unhappy father was not to enjoy long the freedom he owed to these filial deliverers. Louis again rose up in arms against him, and the king was forced to take the field once more in defence of his crown; he fell fighting against his three sons on the frontiers of the Rhine, and expired with words of mercy and forgiveness on his lips.

In 866, Charles the Bald held a splendid court at Compiègne to receive the ambassadors whom he had sent on a mission to Mahomet at Cordova, and who returned laden with costly presents from the Turkish prince to their master. Charles did a great deal to improve Compiègne; the old château of Clovis, which was no better than a hunting‐lodge grown into a fortress, he threw down and rebuilt, not on its old site, in the centre of the town, but on the banks of the Oise. Louis III. and Charles the Simple spent the greater part of their respective reigns at Compiègne, and added to the number of its institutions—primitive enough some of them—for the instruction of the people. “Good King Robert” comes next in the progress of royal tenants (1017): his name was long a household word among the people to whom his goodness and liberality had endeared him. One day at a banquet, where he was dispensing food to a multitude of poor and rich, a robber stole unobserved close up to him, and, under pretence of doing homage to the king, clung to his knees, and began diligently cutting away the gold fringe of his cloak. Robert let him go on till he was about halfway round, and then, stooping down, he whispered discreetly: “Go, now, my friend, and leave the rest for some other poor fellow.” Like many another wise and good man, Robert was harassed by his wife; she was a hard and haughty woman, who, while professing great love for him, made his home wretched to him by her quarrels and her domineering temper. The people knew it, and hated Constance; but, like the king, they bore it rather than quarrel with the shrew. “Let us have peace, though it cost a little high!” the henpecked husband was for ever repeating; and his people seemed to have been of one mind with him, for Constance ruled both him and them with her rod of nettles to the end, and had her own way in everything.

Philip II.’s occupation of Compiègne, which in those days of simple faith, when religious fervor ran high, had a significance that can hardly be appreciated in our own chill twilight days, so slow to see beyond the material world, so reluctant to recognize the supernatural as an aim or a motive power in the great movements that enlist men’s energies and direct them, changing the face of nations. This was the translation of the holy winding‐sheet from the casket of carved ivory—in which it had been given to Charlemagne, along with many other relics of the same date,(183) by Constantine II. and the King of Persia, as a reward for his services in expelling the Saracens from the Holy Land—into a reliquary of pure gold, inlaid with jewels. The holy shroud, when it was taken by Charles the Bald to the Abbey of S. Corneille at Compiègne, is thus described in the _procès‐verbal_ of the translation, given at full length in the _Grandes Chroniques_: “It was a cloth so ancient that one could with difficulty discern the original quality of the stuff, being two yards (_aunes_) in length and a little more than one yard in width.... The liquors and aromatic ointments used in the embalmment had rendered it thicker than ordinary linen, and prevent one from discerning the color of the stuff, esteemed by the greater number of the spectators to be of pure flax, woven after the manner of the cloth of Damascus.” There are old pictures still extant, representing Charles amidst a vast concourse of prelates and nobles, accompanying the relic with prayer and solemn ceremonial.

In 1093, Matilda of England, on rising from an illness which had been considered mortal, sent as a thank‐offering for her recovery a costly shrine of gold and precious stones to Philip II., with a request that the holy shroud might be placed in it. Philip, in a charter drawn up and signed by himself, thus testifies to the gift and the translation: “It has pleased us to place in a shrine (_chasse_) of gold, enriched with precious stones, and given to this church by the Queen of England, the relics of our Saviour; we have beheld this cloth (_linge_), in which the body of our Lord reposed, and which we call shroud (_suaire_), according to the holy evangelist, and which has been withdrawn from the ivory vase.” We cannot realize, we say, how an event like this would stir the hearts of men in those days. Peter the Hermit was preaching the first crusade; his burning eloquence, like a lever, uplifting the arm of Christendom, and compelling every man who could draw a sword to shoulder the cross and go forth to fight and die for the deliverance of the tomb, where for three days their Lord had lain wrapped in this winding‐sheet. The union of mystical devotion and enthusiastic service which characterized the crusaders was fed by every circumstance that tended to embody to their senses those mysteries which had their birth in that remote eastern land towards which they were hastening, and the transfer of this sacred memento of the Passion from its simple ivory casket to a sumptuous one of gold and gems, the offering of a powerful sovereign, occurring at such a moment, was calculated to arouse a more than ordinary interest. They hailed the honors so apportioned paid to the holy shroud as a symbol and a promise; their faith, already quickened by the renunciation of all that made life dear, home, kindred, nay, life itself, for the deliverance of the Sepulchre, was stimulated to more heroic sacrifice; their hope was intensified to prophecy, by what appeared like a typical coincidence, a manifestation of divine approval that must ensure beyond all doubt the success of their enterprise. We should not be astonished, then, at the paramount importance assigned by the historians of that time to this event, but recognize therein the sign of our own condemnation, and of a spirit that is no longer of our day, but belongs, like those glorious relics, to a bright and glowing past.(184)

Philip’s son, Louis le Gros, like his father, lived principally at Compiègne; while he was away carrying on the second crusade, his incomparable minister, Suger, took up his abode there, and, dividing his time between prayer and the business of the state, governed wisely during the king’s absence.

When another crusading hero, Philip Augustus, offered his hand and his crown to the fair Agnes de Méranie, destined to expiate in tears and exile the ill‐fated love of the king and her own short‐lived happiness, it was at Compiègne that he presented her to the court and the people; it was here that amidst pomp and popular rejoicing the marriage was celebrated.

But the most curious episode in the whole range of the annals of Compiègne is perhaps that of a claimant whose story opens at this date. Baldwin IX., Count of Flanders and Hainaut, usually called Baldwin of Constantinople, before starting for the Holy Land came to Compiègne to swear fealty to the King of France, who invested him with knighthood on the same day that Agnes, like a softly shining star of peace and love, rose upon the troubled horizon of the kingdom. At Constantinople Baldwin was proclaimed emperor, and solemnly crowned by the pope’s legate at S. Sophia (1204). He immediately sent off his crown of gold to his beloved young wife, Marie de Champagne, desiring her to hasten to rejoin him, and share his new‐found honors. The countess obeyed the command and set sail for Constantinople, but, overcome by the unexpected news of her husband’s election to the throne, she died upon the journey. Baldwin’s grief was inconsolable; he laid her to rest in S. Sophia, the scene of his recent honors, and swore upon her tomb never to marry again, but to devote himself henceforth to the sole business of war: he kept his vow, and began that series of brilliant feats which culminated in his triumphant entry to Adrianople. Such was the fame of his prowess that powerful chiefs trembled at his very name: Joanice, the formidable king of the Bulgarians, sent a message to “the great French warrior,” humbly praying for his friendship. But the warrior mistrusted these overtures, and haughtily repulsed them. Whereupon Joanice, full of wrath, vowed vengeance, and in due time kept his vow. He raised an army, made war on Baldwin, whom he took prisoner after a fearful slaughter of his army at the battle of Adrianople. When the news of the disaster reached Flanders, Henri of Hainaut, brother of Baldwin, was at once proclaimed regent; he continued the war against Joanice, but without success, nor could he by bribes, concessions, or threats obtain the emperor’s release; Joanice would not even vouchsafe to reply to any of his overtures on the subject. All else failing, the pope interfered, and besought the conqueror not to sully his triumph by revenge, worthy only of a savage, but to treat magnanimously, or at least according to the rules of civilized warfare, for the ransom of his captive. To this appeal Joanice condescended to reply that, alas! it was no longer in his power, or any man’s, to comply with the desires of his holiness. The answer was taken for an announcement of Baldwin’s death, and universally accepted as such. Stories soon began to eke out concerning the horrible tortures practised on the unfortunate prince by his cruel captor; some accredited eye‐witness declared that he had been barbarously mutilated, his hands and arms cut off, and in this state thrown to the wild beasts, his skull being afterwards made into a drinking‐cup for the brutal Joanice, who had stood by gloating over the spectacle of his victim’s agony. Years went by and nothing transpired to throw the least doubt on the fact of Baldwin’s death, though the accounts as to the manner of it were somewhat conflicting. Henri of Hainaut was proclaimed sovereign of Flanders; after reigning ten years he died, and was succeeded by Jeanne, eldest daughter of Baldwin. She was not long in possession of the throne when the report was bruited about that her father was alive; he had been seen by some pilgrims journeying through Servia, who having lost their way in the forest of Glaucon came upon the grotto of a hermit, and were taken in and restored by him and sheltered for the night. This hermit, they recognized as their former prince, Baldwin; he was much altered by suffering, and his long white beard and uncouth garb were calculated to disguise him from any eyes but such as had known him well, but the pilgrims recognized him at once; they, however, discreetly forebore announcing the fact till they brought other witnesses to corroborate their own assurance. They returned soon with several trustworthy persons who had known Baldwin too well to mistake his identity after any lapse of years, and these declared unhesitatingly that the hermit was no other than the hero of Adrianople.

Baldwin, finding his secret discovered, fled to a distant and more inaccessible part of the forest; he was tracked thither, and again fled; but the pursuers finally got possession of him, and dragged him by main force into the neighboring town; the people flocked eagerly to see him, and with one voice they proclaimed him their long‐lost Baldwin, welcoming him with joyful acclamations as a father returned from the dead. Whether this popular welcome merely emboldened the real Baldwin to confess his identity and, as a necessary consequence, claim his rights, or whether it suggested to the false one the idea of simulating the person whom he resembled and was taken for, it is impossible to say, but at any rate from this period we no longer see him dragged, but marching forth, of his own free‐will, from town to town, and surrounded by all the paraphernalia of an injured claimant. His march was not, however, one of unbroken triumph; the town of Flanders refused to believe in him, and indignantly scouted himself and his followers as a band of impostors. The daughters of the dead man, Jeanne and Marguerite, refused to believe in him, and denounced him as a malefactor whose aim was to stir up disorder in the state for his own ambitious purposes. But Jeanne’s government was odious to the people; to escape from her harsh and cruel rule they would have willingly adopted any claimant who came with a fair show of right to enlist their credulity. Jeanne knew this, and at once took strong measures to put down the movement. It proved more difficult than she anticipated. Before many months the country was in a blaze, divided into two camps, one of believers, the other disbelievers, but both ready to devour each other to prove and disprove their special theories. A witness whose testimony went hard against the claimant was that of the old bailiff of Quesnoy; he had known Baldwin from a child, and mourned over him like a father, and, when he now appeared at the castle gates and demanded admittance, the old man refused to open to him, and vowed solemnly that he was not his master, but a base impostor. The conduct of this stubborn sceptic drew forth a pathetic appeal from the claimant. “I find,” he says, “more cruel enemies in my own house than in the land of strangers. Flanders, my mother, dost thou repulse thy son whom Greece and Macedonia received with open arms! I escaped from Adrianople through the carelessness of my guards; I fell into the hands of barbarians, who dragged me to the distant plains of Asia; there, like a vile slave, I, who had wielded the sceptre, was condemned to dig the earth; I dug until some German merchants, to whom I confided my story, ransomed me, and sent me back to my country, and lo! I arrive and show myself, and you repulse me! My daughter Jeanne refuses to own me in order not to resign her rank and subside into the subject of a court!” Unmoved by this touching denunciation, Jeanne persisted in disowning him, but, failing to prove her case, she referred it to Louis VII. of France. Louis, much interested in the extraordinary story, willingly undertook the arbitration. The claimant, on his side, testified great satisfaction on hearing that his fate was placed in the hands of a wise and powerful monarch, who was sure to prove a just and discerning judge; he set out in high spirits to Compiègne, where the king was then residing. Attired in the violet robes of a hermit, and bearing a white wand in his hand, he entered the august assembly with a countenance full of unblushing assurance, saluted the King of France with an air of proud equality, and noticed the barons and knights by a courtly inclination of the head. Louis, who had carefully studied the case, conducted the examination himself; he put many subtle and perplexing questions to the supposed Baldwin concerning events which had passed in his youth, and which it was thought impossible he could have learned from any one he had seen since his return, and the claimant answered accurately with an assurance that carried conviction with it. The examination lasted several hours, and, the closer it pressed him, the more triumphantly it established his identity. The witnesses who boasted of being able to confound the imposture in the twinkling of an eye were themselves confounded; they withdrew covered with confusion, and vowing inwardly that “this man was sold to the devil,” as only the father of lies could have told him so many hidden things, and borne him to success through such a quagmire of difficulties. There was, indeed, much conflicting evidence forthcoming. Henri, his brother, was dead, but the Dukes of Brabant and Limbourg, cousins and contemporaries of Baldwin’s, swore that the claimant was the real man; on the other hand, sixteen knights of unimpeachable honor swore to having seen the real man dead on the field of Adrianople. The king, after hearing with great patience, and weighing most impartially what was said on both sides, declared in favor of the claimant. The excitement was indescribable when he rose to pronounce the verdict; but at this point the Bishop of Beauvais stepped from his seat, and, holding up his right hand, adjured Louis to suspend for one moment the final words while he put a few short questions to the hermit. The king consented; a deathlike silence fell upon the assembly, and the bishop, going close up to the hermit, who was seated on a chair in the centre of the great hall, addressed him thus in a loud voice:

“Answer me three questions: 1st, In what place did you render homage to King Philip Augustus? 2d, By whom were you invested with the order of knighthood? 3d, Where did you marry Marie de Champagne?”

The claimant stammered, grew pale, and, after a vain attempt to fence with the questions, broke down. Extraordinary as it may seem, he had never given a thought to these prominent events in the life of Baldwin of Constantinople, or foreseen that he would be questioned concerning them. The enthusiastic sympathy of the court was changed in an instant to rage and scorn. Sentence of death was pronounced on the hermit of Glaucon on a charge of high treason, conspiring, fraud, perjury, and the long list of iniquities that make up the sum of a claimant’s budget. But having thus far acquitted himself of his office, the king handed over the criminal to Jeanne to be dealt with as she thought fit. In those rough and ready days there were no back‐stairs for a plucky claimant to escape by, no counsel to save him with a nonsuit, or such like modern convenience; the make‐ believe Baldwin was without more ado hung up between two dogs on the market‐place of Flanders. Some chroniclers throw uncomfortable doubts on the justice of the execution; a few maintain that this was the true man, and anathematize Jeanne as a parricide who sacrificed her own father to the love of power. Père Cahour, who is certainly a conscientious writer, speaks of her, on the other hand, as a just and upright woman, utterly incapable of so diabolical a crime, and stoutly vindicates the evidence of the sixteen knights, though how he adapts it to the belief in Baldwin’s capture by Joanice, which appears to have been general after the battle of Adrianople, it is difficult to see. The _Chronique de Meyer_, again, denounces Jeanne as an execrable monster, and declares that the man who was hanged was the real Baldwin. Clearly claimants have been always a troublesome race to deal with; even hanging does not seem to make an end of them, for their claims outlive them, and leave to historians a legacy of doubt and discord that is exceedingly difficult to settle.

The passage of S. Louis at Compiègne is marked by an event characteristic of him and of his time. He had ransomed from the Venetians at at an enormous price the crown of thorns of our Saviour. To do it public honor he carried it bare‐headed and bare‐footed from the wood of Vincennes to the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and thence to the Sainte Chapelle, that gemlike little shrine which had been raised expressly to receive the priceless relic, and whose beauty is invested with a fresh interest since it escaped the fire of the Communists; the Conciergerie and the Palais de Justice were burning so close to it that the flames might have licked its walls, yet not even one of its wonderful stained‐glass windows was injured.

Other monuments S. Louis left behind him, not built of stone or precious metals, but which have nevertheless endured and come down to us unimpaired by the lapse of ages, while houses and castles of stony granite have crumbled away, leaving no record on the hearts of men. Compiègne in the days of the saintly king was the refuge of God’s poor, of the sick and the sorrowing; S. Louis gave up to them all the rooms he could spare from his household, and devoted to tending and serving them with his own hands what time he could steal from the affairs of state.

To Be Continued.

The Russian Clergy.

We have heard nothing new of late about the project of certain zealous Anglicans and members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States to establish communion between their churches and the schismatic Oriental Christians in the empire of Russia. It seemed fitting enough at first glance that the special variety of Christianity introduced by Henry VIII. should agree with the methods of ecclesiastical discipline prescribed by an equally autocratic sovereign at the opposite extremity of Europe; and there were, of course, abundant reasons why the Anglicans and their American descendants should covet a recognition from a branch of the church which, whatever its corruptions and irregularities, can at least make good its connection with the parent stem. Our readers have not forgotten, however, how coldly the overtures of these ambitious Protestants were received. The Russian clergy ridiculed the hierarchical pretensions of their English and American friends. They denied their apostolical succession. They questioned their right to call themselves churchmen at all; and, in short, looked upon them as no better than heretics, and not very consistent heretics either. The movement for union was a foolish one, begun in utter misconception of the radical differences between the two parties, and sure from the first to end in discomfiture and irritation.

Indeed, it was even more foolish than most of us still suppose. Not only was it impossible for the Russian Church to make the concessions required of it, but there is no reason to believe that the Episcopalians would have been very well satisfied with their new brethren had the alliance been effected. The Russian Church is an organization which stands far apart from every other in the world, presenting some monstrous features which even Protestantism cannot parallel. The Jesuit Father Gagarin has published a very curious work on the condition and prospects of the Russian clergy,(185) which would perhaps have modified the zeal of the English and American petitioners for union and recognition if they could have read it before making their recent overtures. We see here the rottenness and uselessness into which a national church falls when it is cut off from the centre of Christian unity and the source of Christian life.

The Russian priests are divided into two classes, the white and the black clergy, or seculars and monks. The great difference between them is, the white clergy are married, and the black are celibates. Whatever learning there is in the ecclesiastical order is found among the monks. The bishops are always chosen from the monastic class; and the two classes hate each other with remarkable heartiness. The marriage of priests is an old custom in the East, which antedates the organization of the Russian schism. It prevails in some of the united Oriental churches to this day. But in Russia it exists in a peculiarly aggravated form. Peter I. and his successors, by a multitude of despotic ukases, succeeded in erecting the white clergy into a strict caste, making the clerical profession practically hereditary, and marriage a necessary condition of the secular clerical state. The candidate for orders has his choice between matrimony and the monastery; one of the two he must embrace before he can be ordained.

The rule seems to have originated in an attempt to improve the education of the white clergy. The deplorable ignorance of the order led the government to establish ecclesiastical schools. But the schools remained deserted. The clergy were then _ordered_ to send their children to them, and sometimes the pupils were arrested by the police and taken to school in chains. The Czar Alexander I. ordered, in 1808 and 1814, that all clerks’ children between six and eight years of age should be at the disposal of the ecclesiastical schools; and, that there might be no lack of children, the candidate for the priesthood was compelled to take a wife before he could take orders. Once in the seminary, the scholar has no prospect before him except an ecclesiastical life. He cannot embrace any other career without special permission, which is almost invariably refused. At the same time, the seminaries are closed against all except the sons of the clergy. The son of a nobleman, a merchant, a citizen, a peasant, who wanted to enter, would meet with insurmountable obstacles, unless he chose to become a monk.

Thus the paternal government of the czar secures first an unfailing supply of pastors for the Russian Church, which otherwise might be insufficiently served; and, secondly, a career for the children of the clergy, free from the competition of outside candidates. And, indeed, the priests might very well say: Since you compel us to marry, you are bound, at least, to furnish a support for our offspring. But the system does not stop here. What shall be done with the priests’ daughters? In the degraded condition of the Russian Church, where the white clergy or popes are popularly ranked lower in the social scale than petty shopkeepers or noblemen’s servants, these young women could not expect to find husbands except among the peasantry, and they might not readily find them there. The obvious course is to make them marry in their own order. The seminarian, therefore, by a further regulation of the paternal government, is not only obliged to marry, whether he will or no, but he must marry a priest’s daughter, and some bishops are so careful of the welfare of their subjects that they will not suffer a clerk to marry out of his own diocese. Special schools are established for these daughters of the church; and we could imagine a curious course of instruction at such institutions, if the Russian ecclesiastical schools really attempted to fit their pupils for the life before them; but, as we shall see further on, they do nothing of the kind.

Sometimes it happens that a priest has built a house on land belonging to the church. He dies, leaving a son or a daughter. His successor in the parish has a right to the use of the land, but what shall be done with the house? The law solves this difficulty by providing that the living shall either be saved for the son (who may be a babe in arms), or given to any young Levite who will marry the daughter. Thus the clerical caste is made in every way as compact and comfortable as possible, and, for a man of mean extraction, moderate ambition, and small learning, becomes a tolerable, if not a brilliant career.

The clergy of a fully supplied parish consists of a priest, a deacon, and two clerics, who perform the duties of lector, sacristan, beadle, bell‐ ringer, etc. The deacon has little to do, except to share on Sunday in the recitation of the liturgy, which, being inordinately long, is sometimes divided into sections and read or chanted by several persons concurrently, each going at the top of his speed. The clerks of the lower ranks, however, may pursue a trade, but they are all enrolled in the same caste, out of which they must not marry. The number of parish priests in Russia is about 36,000; of deacons, 12,444; of inferior clerics, 63,421. One‐half the revenue of the parish belongs to the priest, one‐quarter to the deacon, and one‐eighth to each of the two clerics. The prizes of the profession are the chaplaincies to schools, colleges, prisons, hospitals, in the army, in the navy, about the court, etc., most of which are liberally paid. The parochial clergy are supported by: 1. Property belonging to the parish, chiefly in the towns, yielding about $500,000 per annum; 2. A government allowance of $3,000,000 per annum; 3. About $20,000,000 per annum contributed by parishioners; 4. Perpetual foundations, with obligation to pray for the departed, invested in government funds at four per cent., say $1,075,000. The average income of a priest is thus about $341. In addition to this, however, each parish has a glebe, of which the usufruct belongs to the clergy. The minimum extent of this church domain is about eighty acres, and it is divided after the same rule as the revenues, namely, one‐half to the priest, one‐quarter to the deacon, and the remainder to the inferior clerks. When there is no deacon, the priest’s share is, of course, proportionately larger. In many parishes, the glebe is much more extensive than eighty acres. In Central Russia, it amounts sometimes to 250, 500, even 2,500 acres; and, in those fertile provinces known as the Black Lands, the share of the priest alone is sometimes as much as 150 acres. At St. Petersburg, the church provides the parish priest a comfortable and elegant home. “The furniture is from the first shops in Petersburg. Rich carpets cover the floors of the drawing‐room, study, and chamber; the windows display fine hangings; the walls, valuable pictures. Footmen in livery are not rarely seen in the anteroom. The dinners given by these curés are highly appreciated by the most delicate epicures. Occasionally their salons are open for a soirée or a ball; ordinarily it is on the occasion of a wedding, or the birthday of the curé, or on the patron saint’s day. The apartments are then magnificently lighted up; the toilettes of the ladies dazzling; the dancing is to the music of an orchestra of from seven to ten musicians. At supper the table is spread with delicacies, and champagne flows in streams. A Petersburg curé, recently deceased, loved to relate that at his daughter’s nuptials champagne was drunk to the value of 300 roubles (£48).”

Considering the education and social standing of a Russian priest, this is not bad. In the rural districts there is much less clerical luxury; there is even a great deal of poverty and hardship. But we must not forget that the rustic clergy is but a little higher in culture than the rudest of the peasantry, and a life which would seem intolerable to an American laborer is elysium to a Russian hind. Most, even of country priests, have comfortable houses, well furnished with mahogany and walnut; and, though they do not eat meat every day that the church allows it, they have their balls and dancing parties, at which their daughters dance with the young men from the neighboring theological seminaries. The wives and daughters of the reverend gentlemen, to be sure, have to labor sometimes in the fields; but “they are dressed by the milliner of the place; you will always see them attired with elegance; they do not discard crinoline, and never go out without a parasol”—except, of course, when they are going to hoe corn and dig potatoes.

The voluntary contributions of the parishioners are collected, or enforced, in a variety of ways, and paid in a variety of forms. Towards the feast of S. Peter each house gives from three to five eggs and a little milk. After the harvest, each house gives a certain quantity of wheat. When a child is born, the priest is called in to say a few prayers over the mother, and give a name to the baby; the fee for this is a loaf and from 4 to 8 cents. Baptism brings from 8 to 24 cents more. For a second visitation and prayers at the end of six weeks there is a fee of a dozen eggs. At betrothals the priest gets a loaf, some brandy, and sometimes a goose or a sucking‐pig. For a marriage he is paid from $1 60 to $3 20; for a burial, from 80 cents to $1 60; for a Mass for the dead, from 28 to 64 cents; for prayers for the dead, which are often repeated, 4 or 8 cents each time; for prayers read at the cemetery on certain days every year, some rice, a cake, or some pastry. The peasants often have a Te Deum chanted either on birthday or name‐day, or to obtain some special favor; the fee for that is from 8 to 16 cents. The penitent always pays something when he receives absolution; but as confession is not frequent in the Russian Church, the income from this source must be small. In the towns the fee is often as high as $1, $2, $4, and even more. Among the peasantry it sometimes does not exceed a kopec (one cent); but if the penitent wishes to receive communion, he must renew his offering several times. At Easter, Christmas, the Epiphany, the beginning and end of Lent, and on the patron saint’s day, which sometimes occurs two or three times a year, it is customary to have prayers chanted in every house in the parish, for which the charge varies in the rural districts from 4 cents to 60 cents each visit, according to the importance of the occasion. In the large cities the fees are much more considerable. Father Gagarin cites the case of a parishioner in St. Petersburg to whom the clergy presented themselves in this manner twenty‐seven times in a single year, and at each call he had to give them something. This, however, was an exception. Generally the visits are only fifteen a year. “Sometimes it happens,” continues our author, “that the peasant cannot or will not give what the priest asks. Hence arise angry disputes. One priest—so runs the story—unable to overcome the obstinacy of a peasant refusing to pay for the prayers read in his house, declared that he would reverse them. He had just before chanted, ‘_Benedictus Deus noster_’; he now intoned, ‘NON _Benedictus_, NON _Deus_, NON _noster_’ thus intercalating a _non_ before each word. The affrighted peasant, the chronicle says, instantly complied. Often enough, too, in spite of all the prohibitions of the synod, the wives and children of the priests, deacons, and clerks accompany their husbands and fathers, and stretch out _their_ hands also. The worst of all this is that the Russian peasant, while long disputing merely about a few centimes, will think himself insulted unless the priest accept a glass of brandy. And when the circuit of all the houses in the village has to be made, though he stay only a few minutes in each, this last gift is not without its inconveniences.” It must be an edifying round certainly. But then the reverend gentleman has a wife to help him home.

The black clergy is not in a much better condition than the white. All the monasteries are supposed to be under the rule of S. Basil; but they are not united in congregations, each establishment being independent of all the rest. Most of them do not observe the great religious rule of poverty and community of goods, but each monk has own purse, and the superiors are often wealthy. One hundred years ago, the number of convents, not reckoning those in Little and White Russia, was 954. The ukase of Catharine II., which confiscated the property of the clergy, suppressed all but 400. Since then the number has increased.

The great increase in the number of monks between 1836 and 1838 is accounted for by the forcible incorporation of the United Greeks. This was not formally effected until 1839, but the United Greeks were reckoned as part of the Russian Church in 1838, and many of their monks were transferred from their own to the non‐united monasteries earlier than that. It will be seen, however, that the increase thus obtained was not permanent.

The curious discrepancy between the number of monks and the number of nuns has an equally curious explanation. Women are forbidden, by a decree of Peter the Great, to take the vows under forty years of age. Hence the convents are crowded with postulants who must wait sometimes twenty years before they can take the veil. Some persevere, some return to the world, and many continue to live in the convent without becoming professed. If we reckon the whole population of the convents—monks, nuns, novices, and aspirants—we shall find the number of the two sexes more nearly agree.

It is interesting to see from which classes of society these monks and nuns are drawn. F. Gagarin distinguishes five classes: I. The clergy, including priests, deacons, and clerks, with their wives and children; II. The nobility, embracing not only the titled nobility, but government functionaries and members of the learned professions; III. The urban population, comprising merchants, artisans, citizens, etc.; IV. The rural population, consisting of peasants of all conditions; V. The military. The monks are recruited from these five classes in the following ratio:

Clergy: 54.3 per cent. Urban population: 22.3 " Rural population: 16.3 " Military: 3.4 " Nobility: 3 "

The immense preponderance of the clerical element is owing primarily, of course, to the regulation of caste, which virtually compels the children of the clergy to follow the profession of their fathers. For the ambitious, the monastery alone offers an alluring prospect, since it is from the black clergy that the bishops are taken. The religious calling, therefore, in Russia is not so much a vocation as a career. If there were really an unselfish devout tendency towards the monastic life among the children of the clergy, we should expect to find it stronger with the daughters than with the sons. But the case is far otherwise. There are no bishoprics for the women; their career is to marry priests, go with them from house to house collecting alms, and help them home when they have taken too much brandy. Hence we find the following ratio among the population of the nunneries:

Urban population: 38.8 per cent. Rural population: 31 " Clergy: 13 " Nobility: 12 " Military: 4 "

The number of recruits supplied to monasteries by the clerical profession averages 140 a year. These comprise a curious variety of persons. First, there are priests or deacons who have committed grave crimes; they are sentenced to the convent, as lay convicts are sentenced to the galleys. Next there are seminarists who have failed in their studies; if they quit the ranks of the clergy altogether, they are forced into the army; if they remain among the white clergy, they have no prospect of becoming anything better than sacristans or beadles; by entering a convent they will at least live more comfortably and may aspire to become deacons or priests. Then there are deacons and priests who have lost their wives; they cannot marry again; the Russian government hesitates to entrust a parish to a wifeless priest; the wife indeed, as we have just seen, has some very important functions to perform in the administration of parochial rites; so the unfortunate widower is not only advised but sometimes compelled to go to a convent. Again, there are seminarists who after completing their studies act as professors for some time before they are ordained. Suppose such a man has been married and his wife dies. He cannot be ordained if he marry again. He cannot be ordained a secular priest without a wife. He must either go to the convent or seek some career outside the clerical profession, and that, as we have seen, it is almost impossible to find. Ambition draws many to the monastery. A student of any one of the four great academies of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kasan, and Kieff, who embraces the monastic life during his academical course, is morally certain on quitting the academy of being named inspector or prefect of studies in a seminary; at the end of a few years he becomes rector; and if he do not impede his own advancement he can hardly fail to be a bishop after a while. Still there is difficulty in obtaining from the academies a sufficient number of educated monks, and according to F. Gagarin some extraordinary devices are resorted to in order to supply the demand. When persuasion has failed, the student whom the convent wishes to capture is invited to pass the evening with one of the monks. Brandy is produced and it is not difficult to make the young man drunk. While he is insensible the ceremony of taking the habit and receiving the tonsure is performed on him, and he is then put to bed. When he awakes, he finds by his side, instead of the lay garments he wore the night before, a monastic gown. All resistance is useless. He is told that what is done cannot be undone, and after a while he submits angrily to his fate. This at any rate was the method of impressment into the religious state adopted fifty years ago. Now, says our author, it is unnecessary, inasmuch as a shorter way has been found of reaching the same result. The students of the academies (these are students of theology, be it remembered—equivalent to our seminarians) are in the habit of frequenting public‐houses and getting drunk. They are carried home on hand‐barrows, and this proceeding is known as the “Translation of the Relics.” When a young man has been fixed upon as a desirable recruit for the monastery, the superior has only to watch until he is brought home on a barrow; the next morning, while his head and his stomach are rebuking him, he is informed that he has been expelled for his disgraceful conduct; but, if he will give a proof of his sincere repentance by making a written request to be received as a monk, he may be forgiven.

There is no novitiate in the Russian convents. The neophyte makes his vows at once—provided he has reached the age prescribed by the law—and instances are not wanting of monks who have even attained the episcopate without ever having lived in a convent. According to the Russian law, academy pupils may make the religious profession at 25; other men at 30. It often happens that a youth has finished his studies before reaching 25; in that case, instead of applying for a dispensation, he makes a false statement of his age. Others who fail at their books wait for their thirtieth year, and are placed meanwhile each one under the care of some monk, who is supposed to form him for the monastic state. But he receives no religious training. He does not learn to pray, to meditate, to examine his conscience. He waits upon his master; he joins in the long service in the church; and the rest of the time he spends in amusement within or without the convent. His pleasures are not always of the most edifying character, and his excursions are not confined to the day.

What sort of monks can be formed by such training? The asceticism prescribed by S. Basil is rarely observed. Meat is forbidden, but it is a common dish on the convent tables. Drunkenness is so prevalent that it hardly causes surprise. “After that,” says our author, “one can imagine what becomes of the vow of chastity.” There is, as we have already said, no pretence of observing holy poverty. Every monk has a certain share of the convent revenues, proportioned to his rank, and this share is sometimes large. The average income of the black clergy is not easily ascertained. There are two sorts of convents—those which receive aid from the state, as compensation for confiscated estates, and those which depend entirely upon private resources. Those of the first kind are divided into monasteries of the first, second, and third classes, receiving from the government respectively 2,000, 1,600, and 670 roubles a year ($1,680, $1,344, $563). There are 278 of these convents, receiving 259,200 roubles, or about $217,728 from this source. In former years, each convent was entitled to the compulsory services of a certain number of peasants. Since the emancipation of the serfs the government has commuted this privilege by paying an annual sum of 307,850 silver roubles, or $258,594. Endowments with an obligation to pray for the departed yield in addition $2,150,400 to white and black clergy together. Let us suppose that the monks get one‐ half; that would be $1,075,200 per annum. Then the convents possess large properties in arable lands, woodlands, meadows, fisheries, mills, etc. One convent is mentioned which has derived an income of $10,000 merely from the resin collected in its forests. The greater part of the revenues, however, are derived from the voluntary contributions of the people. These seem to be enormous. Russians prefer to be buried within the precincts of the monasteries, and the monks not only ask an exorbitant price for the grave, but make the deceased a permanent source of profit by charging for prayers over his remains. Images famous for miracles, churches enriched with the relics of saints, have multitudes of visitors who never come empty‐handed. How much can be made from this concourse of the faithful may be imagined when it is remembered that a single laura, that of S. Sergius at Moscow, is visited every year by a million pilgrims. Begging brothers traverse all Russia, gathering alms. A very pretty trade is driven in wax tapers. The various arts resorted to by the white clergy to collect money are well known to the monks also. The Laura of S. Sergius is said to have a revenue all told of at least 2,000,000 roubles ($1,680,000), and a single chapel in Moscow yields to the convent to which it is attached an annual income of about $80,000. These princely revenues are not devoted to learning, education, charity, religion. A large part is misappropriated by the persons appointed to gather them. A third is the property of the superiors. The rest is divided among the monks. The annual income of the superior of one of the great lauras is from $33,600 to $50,400; of the superior of a monastery of the first class, from $8,400 to $25,200; second class, $4,200 to $8,400; third class, $840 to $4,200. All this is for their personal use; the monastery gives them lodging, food, and fuel, and they have to buy nothing but their clothing.

The seminaries, governed by the state, teach successfully neither piety nor learning. The tendency of the courses of instruction is to become secular rather than ecclesiastical. A proposal has recently been made that each bishop shall choose for his diocesan seminary a learned and pious priest to hear the confessions of the pupils, and excite them to devout practices; but it is objected that no secular priest can be found who is fit to discharge such important functions, while those monks who are fit are already employed in more important duties; besides, if one could discover among the white clergy the right sort of man, so much virtue would come very expensive, and the bishops could not or would not pay the salary he would be in a condition to demand. The seminarians are required to confess twice a year, namely, during the first week of Lent and during Holy Week. In reality, most of them omit the second confession; they go home to their families at Holy Week, and rarely approach the sacraments, though they always bring back a certificate from the parish priest that they have done so. A new regulation prescribes two additional confessions and communions, namely, at Christmas and the Assumption, and attempts another reform by ordaining that seminarians shall say their prayers morning and evening, and grace before and after meat.