STRANGE MIXTURE OF CHRISTIANITY AND SUPERSTITION IN RUSSIA.
By Thomas Stevens
A FOREIGNER visiting Russia for the first time is always deeply impressed by the outward and visible signs of religion that confront him at every turn. Long before he reaches St. Petersburg the golden domes of its splendid churches and cathedrals, twinkling brightly in the sunlight, have been visible from the deck of the steamer or from the windows of the train. He admires from afar these costly evidences of the religious character of a great nation, and they are among the first places he visits after his arrival. St. Isaac's and the Kazan Cathedral, of St. Petersburg, and St. Saviour's, of Moscow, each in turn, dazzles and bewilders you by the splendor and wealth of gold altars, icons [images] all ablaze with diamonds and every variety of precious stones, priceless paintings, columns of malachite, millions on millions lavished on marble and granite. The izvoshchik who drives you about the city is forever removing his hat and crossing himself as the drosky passes a church or a holy image in a shrine. The throngs of people in the streets, merchants, soldiers, sailors, peasants, clerks, truckmen, officers, gentlemen, ladies, boys, nursemaids, the whole heterogeneous population of a city, follow your coachman's example. Passing in and out of the churches are never-ceasing streams of people going or coming on errands of devotion. Before the principal shrines on the street corners a throng is never absent. Hung up like a picture in one corner of your room at the hotel, not always in St. Petersburg, but always in the provinces, is a holy icon, and if you are the guest of a Russian family uncorrupted with European influence, a little icon very likely will be fastened to the head of your bed. In short, you have arrived in Holy Russia; Russia, the Orthodox; Russia, the home and the champion and defender of the only true Christian religion. As for you, whatever else you may be, Catholic, Protestant, Hebrew, Moslem, or nothing in particular, you are, in the eyes of these holy people—whose government, after looking over its blacklist to make sure that you are not an active champion of liberty or enlightenment, has permitted you to cross the frontier—a heretic. Since nobody troubles to reproach you, however, nor to convert you from the errors of your own religion, you can easily assume the attitude of a non-belligerent, and set about fathoming, without bias or prejudice, the depth or shallowness of the sweeping claims of the Orthodox. That the Russians are strict observers of the outward forms of religion there is no room for dispute; but are they really a religious people? The first doubt probably finds its way into your mind through the medium of the extremely pious coachman, who has been driving you about to visit the gorgeous cathedrals. Though he has removed his perky ivoshchik's hat twenty times and made twenty crosses with every mark of reverence during the hour of his engagement, when you come to pay him off, he will not unlikely assure you that you engaged him not one but two hours ago, and all but literally pick your pocket. The smile of roguish enjoyment that comes into his face is in no way abashed by the sign of the cross which he immediately makes, and if he has swindled you to his heart's satisfaction, he will very likely jog along to the nearest shrine and make several signs of the cross. Though this happens at a very early stage of your investigations, a glimmer of light begins to break over your understanding and awakens a suspicion that all this show of holiness springs less from fear of God than fear of the devil. This idea grows upon you in proportion to the length of your stay in the country, and increases with the growth of your acquaintance with the people. And if you stay long enough and investigate the subject as thoroughly as may be, your first suspicion is very apt to be confirmed. The educated Russians may be dismissed from the subject of religion sans ceremonie. As a class they represent the extreme section of atheism, free thought, "advanced ideas," etc., of the age, and of those who bare heads before churches and icons, one-half do it as a matter of policy and the others because it is less trouble to drift with the stream than to stand still in it, and altogether too much of a strain to think of swimming against it. Apart from this Voltarian fringe the mass of the Russian people are passing through much the same moral and religious transformation that Western Europe passed through in the Middle Ages. Allowing for a difference in social conditions, the empire of the czar presents a similar picture of splendid religious edifices towering over the habitations of squalid poverty, of large monasteries full of treasures of gold, silver, and jewels, rich abbots, and fat monks, standing in the midst of the broadest and fairest portions of the land. The Russian moujik of to-day is about as full of superstitions and the dread of the evil one as was the villein of the West 600 years ago, and his conceptions of religion are leavened, as those of the villein were, with the lingering remains of paganism. His creed is largely composed of superstition and demonology. To him the holy image that is never absent from his humble abode is a mysterious, living thing, representing the saint after whom it is patterned, not only in form, but in spirit and power. St. Nicholas is the moujik's favorite saint, and a "Nicholai icon" is to be found in nearly every peasant's house in Russia. It consists of a small picture of the saint, a figure holding in one hand a church and in the other a sword, set in a deep, box-like frame, and gaudily decorated with brass, silver, tinsel, or wax flowers. The peasants burn tapers before it, and place offerings of food, etc., before it, much as the Hindu ryot of India does before his household idol. And the place that the icon holds in the Russian moujik's mind seems to me to differ very little indeed from that of the idol in the ryot's. One day, in the province of Kursk, while drinking kvass in a peasant's house, I asked the housewife why she kept a taper burning before the Nicholai icon. She immediately made the sign of the cross. The icon had been very good to them that summer, she said, the crops were good, and the eldest son, who had been away several years in the army, had returned and brought home thirty roubles. I asked her if the icon was a living thing, capable of influencing the affairs of the family. She seemed almost frightened at the question, as some good old soul in America, who from infancy had lived and prayed in simple faith, would if suddenly challenged to prove the existence of God. Again she rapidly made the sign of the cross, but gave no answer. I asked her the question in another form. She shook her head. "Such things are not for ignorant people like me to say," she replied. Determined to corner her if possible, I then asked her how many rubles she had paid for it, and where she had bought it. But it was a family heirloom, inherited from her husband's people. Although Christianity has been the religion of Russia for more than eight centuries, the customs and superstitions of old pagan times continue to exercise considerable influence on everyday life and the surroundings of the peasantry. With all their church ceremonies and outward observance of the official religion, and their self-denomination of "the orthodox," the superstitious moujik is only a half-converted heathen. So much is this the case that it is sometimes difficult to define where paganism ends and Christianity begins in his creed. For instance, not only does he regard the Christian icons much as his ancestors of the old pagan days did their idol, but he enthrones them in precisely the same place in his house that they used to occupy. In the home of the pagan Slavs the household idols used to stand on a bench or shelf in what was and is still known as the "upper corner," the further right-hand corner from the door, and facing the big stove, which occupies the central part of the house, and around which the rooms are built. Then, as now, this was the sacred corner of the house, and the holy icons of the present day have merely dethroned the pagan images and occupy the same shelf in the same corner. This corner is referred to as the "great corner," or the "beautiful corner," and no member of the family thinks of crossing the threshold to enter the room without making towards it the sign of the cross. Near this corner is set the family dinner table, another custom that connects the present with the past, when the heathen Slavs used to transfer the idols from the shelves to the table during meal times. The moujik of to-day does not place the icons on his dinner table, but he believes the souls of his ancestors, and of any members of the family who have died, are hiding behind the icons, and bread or little saucers of food are often placed on the shelf where the holy pictures stand. Small loaves of holy bread, made of fine white flour, purchased from the monks in the monasteries, are favorite articles of food to keep on the icon shelves. To make these loaves more acceptable to the departed, inscriptions are sometimes written on the smooth white crust with pen and ink, by the monks or the village priests. In religious matters the more ignorant of the Russian peasants still waver, so to speak, between the devil and the deep sea. They are afraid to make themselves too familiar with the village priest lest they give mortal offense to the old pagan gods, which have now taken the form of various mischievous and malignant spirits; and, on the other hand, to protect themselves from the evil designs of these, they are eternally making the sign of the cross and spending their scant earnings on candles to burn before the shrines of protecting saints. Though centuries of time have naturally modified this fear, it would seem to be a matter of doubtful credit to the "only true12church" that its children and chief supporters, the very orthodox, on whose patient shoulders it rests, still shy at its priests, lest the angels of the evil one be offended. In many instances the peasants have transferred, in a foggy way, the attributes and functions of their ancient gods to the saints of the Christian church, or, to reverse the transformation, have simply bestowed the names of the saints on their old pagan deities. In transferring their allegiance from the old faith to the new they have not always escaped getting matters seriously muddled. Thus the prophet Elias has succeeded to the office of Perun, the ancient god of thunder. St. Elias is now the Russian peasants' "clerk of the weather." He it is who gives or withholds the rain necessary to the growing of their crops. And when it thunders and lightens it is St. Elias driving in his chariot across the heavens. A Russian peasant will not harm a pigeon nor would he think of eating one, even if suffering for want of food. All through Russia, and particularly in the lower forest zone south of Moscow, the country is full of pigeons, that enjoy complete immunity from molestation. In the country they are as tame as the semi-domestic pigeons owned by breeders in American cities. The pigeon has always been a sacred bird in Russia. In the old pagan times it was consecrated to Perun, the god of thunders, just mentioned. When the missionaries of the cross invaded the country and prevailed against Perun and his associates, the lucky pigeon lost nothing of its sacred character by the new order of things. The converts, by some occult process of reasoning, came to associate it with their idea of the Third Person of the Trinity. The sacred character of the pigeon, like the office of "weather clerk," has been brought over from the old religion to the new and consecrated to the Third Person of the Trinity, which the majority of the peasants think to be St. Nicholas.—New York World.