RUSSIA AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH
THE STATE OF RELIGION IN RUSSIA
AND THE CHRISTIAN EAST
Vladimir Soloviev



PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE

part one
Contents

INTRODUCTION
THE STATE OF RELIGION IN RUSSIA AND THE CHRISTIAN EAST
THE RUSSIAN LEGEND OF ST. NICOLAS AND ST. CASSIAN
THE QUESTION OF THE RAISON D'ÊTRE OF RUSSIA
THE TRUE ORTHODOXY OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE AND THE PSEUDOORTHODOXY OF THE ANTI-CATHOLIC THEOLOGIANS
RUSSIAN DISSENT. RELATIVE TRUTH OF THE RASKOL. PHILARET OF MOSCOW HIS CONCEPTION OF UNIVERSAL CHURCH
CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE RUSSIAN SLAVOPHILES AND THEIR IDEAS CONCERNING THE CHURCH
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND ECCLESIASTICAL FREEDOM
I. S. AKSAKOV ON THE OFFICIAL CHURCH IN RUSSIA
RELATIONS BETWEEN THE RUSSIAN AND GREEK CHURCHES BULGARIA AND SERBIA
THE FULFILLMENT OF A PROPHECY. CÆSAROPAPISM IN ACTION
THE DESIGN TO ESTABLISH A QUASI-PAPACY AT CONSTANTINOPLE OR JERUSALEM

CHAPTER NOTES

INTRODUCTION

A HUNDRED years ago France, the vanguard of humanity, set out to
inaugurate a new era with the proclamation of the Rights of Man.
Christianity had indeed many centuries earlier conferred upon men not
only the right but the power to become the sons of God — εδωκεν αυτοις εξουσιαν
τεκνα Θεου γενεσθαι (John i. 12). But the new proclamation made by France was
far from superfluous, for this supreme power of mankind was almost entirely
ignored in the social life of Christendom. I am not referring so much to particular
acts of injustice as to the principles which were recognized by the public
conscience, expressed in the laws of the time, and embodied in its social
institutions. It was by legal statute that Christian America robbed the Christian
negroes of all their human rights and ruthlessly abandoned them to the tyranny of
their masters who themselves professed the Christian religion. In God-fearing
England it was the law which condemned to the gallows the man who stole food
from his rich neighbor to save himself from starvation. Lastly, it was the laws and
institutions of Poland and of "Holy" Russia which allowed the feudal lord to sell
his serfs like cattle (note 1). I do not presume to pass judgment on the special
circumstances of France, nor to decide whether, as distinguished writers more
competent than myself declare, (note 2) the Revolution did this country more harm than
good. But let us not forget that if each nation in history works more or less for the
whole world, France has the distinction of having taken a step of universal
significance in the political and social sphere.

Though the revolutionary movement destroyed many things that needed to be
destroyed, though it swept away many an injustice and swept it away forever, it
nevertheless failed lamentably in the attempt to create a social order founded upon
justice. Justice is simply the practical expression and application of truth; and the
starting-point of the revolutionary movement was false. The declaration of the
Rights of Man could only provide a positive principle for social reconstruction if it
was based upon a true conception of Man himself. That of the revolutionaries is
well-known: they perceived in Man nothing but abstract individuality, a rational
being destitute of all positive content.

I do not propose to unmask the internal contradictions of this revolutionary
individualism nor to show how this abstract "Man" was suddenly transformed into
the no less abstract "Citizen," how the free sovereign individual found himself
doomed to be the defenseless slave and victim of the absolute State or "Nation,"
that is to say, of a group of obscure persons borne to the surface of public life by
the eddies of revolution and rendered the more ferocious by the consciousness of
their own intrinsic nonentity. No doubt it would be highly interesting and
instructive to follow the thread of logic which connects the doctrines of 1789 with
the events of 1793. But I believe it to be still more important to recognize that the
πρωτον ψευδος , the basic falsehood, of the Revolution — the conception of the
individual man as a being complete in and for himself — that this false notion of
individualism was not the invention of the revolutionaries or of their spiritual
forbears, the Encyclopædists, but was the logical, though unforeseen, issue of an
earlier pseudo-Christian or semi-Christian doctrine which has been the root cause
of all the anomalies in the past history and present state of Christendom.

Men have imagined that the acknowledgment of the divinity of Christ relieves
them of the obligation of taking His words seriously. They have twisted certain
texts of the Gospel so as to get out of them the meaning they want, while they have
conspired to pass over in silence other texts which do not lend themselves to such
treatment. The precept "Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and to God
the things that are God's" is constantly quoted to sanction an order of things which
gives Cæsar all and God nothing. The saying "My Kingdom is not of this world" is
always being used to justify and confirm the paganism of our social and political
life, as though Christian society were destined to belong to this world and not to
the Kingdom of Christ. On the other hand, the saying "All power is given Me in
Heaven and Earth" is never quoted. Men are ready to accept Christ as sacrificing
Priest and atoning Victim; but they do not want Christ the King. His royal dignity
has been ousted by every kind of pagan despotism, and Christian peoples have
taken up the cry of the Jewish rabble: "We have no king but Cæsar!" Thus history
has witnessed, and we are still witnessing, the curious phenomenon of a society
which professes Christianity as its religion but remains pagan not merely in its life
but in the very basis of that life.

This dichotomy is not so much a logical non sequitur as a moral failure. That is
obvious from the hypocrisy and sophistry which are characteristic of the arguments
commonly used to justify this state of affairs. "Slavery and severe hardship," said a
bishop renowned in Russia thirty years ago, "are not contrary to the spirit of
Christianity; for physical suffering is not a hindrance to the salvation of the soul,
which is the one and only end of our religion." As though the infliction of physical
suffering by a man on his fellow-men did not imply in him a moral depravity and
an act of injustice and cruelty which were certainly imperilling the salvation of his
soul! Granted even — though the supposition is absurd — that a Christian society
can be insensible to the sufferings of the oppressed, the question remains whether
it can be indifferent to the sin of the oppressors.

Economic slavery, even more than slavery properly so called, has found its
champions in the Christian world. Society and the State, they maintain, are in no
way bound to take general and regular measures against pauperism; voluntary
almsgiving is enough; did not Christ say that there would always be the poor on
Earth? Yes, there will always be the poor; there will also always be the sick, but
does that prove the uselessness of health services? Poverty in itself is no more an
evil than sickness; the evil consists in remaining indifferent to the sufferings of
one's neighbor. And it is not a question only of the poor; the rich also have a claim
on our compassion. These poor rich! We do everything to develop their bump of
acquisitiveness, and then we expect them to enter the Kingdom of God through the
imperceptible opening of individual charity. Besides, it is well known that
authoritative scholars see in the phrase "the eye of a needle" simply a literal
translation of the Hebrew name given to one of the gates of Jerusalem (negeb-hakhammath
or khur-ha-khammath) which it was difficult for camels to pass through.
Surely, then, it is not the infinitesimal contribution of personal philanthropy which
the Gospel enjoins upon the rich, but rather the narrow and difficult, but
nevertheless practicable, way of social reform.

This desire to limit the social action of Christianity to individual charity, this
attempt to deprive the Christian moral code of its binding character and its positive
legal sanction is a modern version of that ancient Gnostic antithesis (the system of
Marcion, in particular) so often anathematized by the Church. That all human
relationships should be governed by charity and brotherly love is undoubtedly the
express will of God and the end of His creation; but in historic reality, as in the
Lord's Prayer, the fulfilment of the divine will on Earth is only realized after the
hallowing of God's Name and the coming of His Kingdom. The Name of God is
Truth; His Kingdom is Justice. It follows that the knowledge of the truth and the
practice of justice are necessary conditions for the triumph of evangelical charity in
human society.

In truth, all are one; and God, the absolute Unity, is all in all. But this divine
Unity is hidden from our view by the world of evil and illusion, the result of
universal human sin. The basic condition of this world is the division and isolation
of the parts of the Great Whole; and even Man, who should have been the unifying
rationale of the material universe, finds himself split up and scattered over the
Earth, and has been unable by his own efforts to achieve more than a partial and
unstable unity, the universal monarchy of paganism. This monarchy, first
represented by Tiberius and Nero, received its true unifying principle when grace
and truth were manifested in Jesus Christ. Once united to God, the human race
recovered its own unity. But this unity had to be threefold to be complete; it had to
realize its ideal perfection on the basis of a divine fact and in the midst of the life
of mankind. Since mankind is objectively separated from the divine unity, this
unity must in the first place be given to us as an objective reality independent of
ourselves — the Kingdom of God coming amongst us, the external, objective
Church. But once reunited to this external unity, men must translate it into action,
they must assimilate it by their own efforts — the Kingdom of God is to be taken
by force, and the men of violence possess it. At first manifested for us and then by
us, the Kingdom of God must finally be revealed in us in all its intrinsic, absolute
perfection as love, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Thus the Church Universal (in the broad sense of the word) develops as a
threefold union of the divine and the human: there is the priestly union, in which
the divine element, absolute and unchangeable, predominates and forms the
Church properly so called (the Temple of God); there is the kingly union, in which
the human element predominates and which forms the Christian State (the Church
as the living Body of God); and there is lastly the prophetic union, in which the
divine and the human must penetrate one another in free mutual interaction and so
form the perfect Christian society (the Church as the Spouse of God).
The moral basis of the priestly union, or of the Church in the strict sense of the
word, is faith and religious devotion; the kingly union of the Christian State is
based on law and justice; while the element proper to the prophetic union or the
perfect society is freedom and love.

The Church, in the narrower sense, represented by the hierarchy, re-unites
mankind to God by the profession of the true faith and the grace of the sacraments.
But if the faith communicated by the Church to Christian humanity is a living faith,
and if the grace of the sacraments is an effectual grace, the resultant union of the
divine and the human cannot be limited to the special domain of religion, but must
extend to all Man's common relationships and must regenerate and transform his
social and political life. Here opens up a field of action which is man's own proper
sphere. The divine-human action is no longer an accomplished fact, as in the
priestly Church, but a task awaiting fulfilment, the task of making the divine Truth
a reality in human society, of putting Truth into practice; and Truth, expressed in
practice, is called Justice.

Truth is the absolute existence of all in unity; it is the universal solidarity which
exists eternally in God, but which has been lost by the natural man and recovered
in principle by Christ, the spiritual Man. It remains for human activity to continue
the unifying work of the God-Man by contesting the world with the contrary
principle of egoism and division. Each single being, whether nation, class, or
individual, in so far as it asserts its own individuality in isolation from the divinehuman
sum of things, is acting against Truth; and Truth, if it is alive in us, must
react and manifest itself as Justice. Thus having recognized the universal solidarity,
the All-in-One, as Truth, and having put it into practice as Justice, regenerate Man
will be able to perceive it as his inmost essence and to enjoy it fully in the spirit of
freedom and love.

All are one in the Church through the unity of hierarchy, faith, and sacraments;
all are made one in the Christian State through justice and law; all must be one in
natural charity and free co-operation. These three modes, or rather degrees, of
unity are inseparably connected. In order to impose that universal solidarity which
is the Kingdom of God on nations and classes and individuals, the Christian State
must believe in it as absolute Truth revealed by God Himself. But the divine
revelation cannot be made directly to the State as such, that is to say, to a natural
humanity outside the sphere of the divine operation: God has revealed Himself, He
has entrusted His truth and His grace to an elect humanity, that is, to the Church,
sanctified and organized by Himself. If the State, itself the product of human
agencies and historic circumstances, is to bring mankind under the sway of
absolute Justice, it must justify itself by submission to the Church which provides
the moral and religious sanction and the actual basis for its work. It is equally clear
that the perfect Christian society, or the prophetic union, the reign of love and
spiritual freedom, presupposes the priestly and kingly union. For the divine truth
and grace cannot fully control the moral being of mankind nor effect its inner
transformation unless they first have an objective force in the world, unless they
are incarnate in a religious fact and upheld by law, unless, that is, they exist as
Church and State.

Since the priestly institution is a fact, and the brotherhood of perfect freedom is
an ideal, it is the middle term especially — the State in its relation to Christianity
— which determines the historic destiny of mankind. The State exists in order to
protect human society against evil in its external and public form — that is, against
manifest evil. The true social good being the solidarity of the whole, universal
justice and peace, social evil is simply the violation of this solidarity. The actual
life of mankind shows a threefold violation of that universal solidarity which is
justice: justice is violated, firstly, when one nation attacks the existence or freedom
of another, secondly, when one social class oppresses another, and thirdly, when an
individual by committing a crime openly revolts against the social order.
As long as there existed in the history of mankind several separate States,
absolutely independent of one another, the immediate task of each in the sphere of
foreign policy was confined to maintaining this independence. But the ideal or
rather the instinct of international solidarity persisted throughout human history,
and found its expression either in that tendency to universal monarchy which
culminated in the ideal and the historic reality of the pax Romana, or (among the
Jews) in the religious principle which affirmed the natural unity and common
origin of the whole human race, of all the sons of Adam (bene-Adam) — a
conception afterwards completed by the Christian religion which added to this
natural unity the spiritual fellowship of all those who are regenerate and made sons
of the second Adam, the Christ (bene-Mashiah).

This new ideal was realized, however incompletely, in medieval Christendom,
which despite its turbulent condition did, as a rule, regard any war between
Christian peoples as a civil war and therefore as a sin and a crime. The modern
nations, having shattered the papal monarchy which was the foundation of this
imperfect but genuine unity, have had to substitute for the ideal of Catholic
Christendom the fiction of the European balance of power. On all hands it is
recognized, whether sincerely or not, that the true objective of international politics
must be universal peace.

Two equally obvious facts, then, are to be noted: first, that there exists a general
consciousness of the solidarity of mankind and a desire for international unity, for
the pax Christiana or, if you will, the pax humana; secondly, that this unity does
not exist in fact, and that the first of the three problems of society is as far from
being solved at the present day as it was in the ancient world. The same is true of
the other two problems.

Universal solidarity implies that each element of the sum total — each nation,
society or individual — not only has the right to exist, but possesses in addition a
peculiar and intrinsic worth which forbids its being treated as a mere means to the
general well-being. The true positive conception of justice can be expressed in the
following formula: each particular being, whether collective or individual, has
always a place to itself in the universal organism of the race. This positive justice
was unknown to the ancient State; the State protected itself and maintained the
social order by exterminating its enemies in war, reducing its laboring class to a
condition of slavery, and torturing or killing its criminals. Christianity, regarding
every human being as of infinite worth, was bound to bring about a complete
change in the character and action of the State. The ills of society remained the
same, in their threefold form: international, civil, and criminal; the State, as before,
had to fight evil in these three spheres, but the specific objective and the methods
of the struggle could not remain the same. It was no longer a matter of defending a
particular social group; this negative aim was replaced by a positive task; universal
solidarity had to be established in the face of national differences; there had to be a
reaction against class-antagonism and individual egoism in the name of true social
justice. The pagan State had to deal with the enemy, the slave and the criminal; the
enemy, the slave and the criminal had no rights. But the Christian State has only to
deal with the members of Christ, whether suffering, sick or corrupt; it must pacify
national hatreds, mend the iniquities of society, and correct the vices of
individuals. In it the foreigner has a right to citizenship, the slave a right to
freedom, and the criminal a right to moral regeneration. In the city of God there is
no enemy or foreigner, no slave or proletarian, no criminal or convict. The
foreigner is simply a brother from a far country; the proletarian is an unfortunate
brother who needs succor; the criminal is a fallen brother who must be helped up.

It follows that in the Christian State three things are absolutely ruled out: first,
wars inspired by national selfishness, or conquests which build up one nation upon
the ruins of another (for the prime objective of the Christian State is universal
solidarity or the pax Christiana); next, civil and economic slavery which makes
one class the passive instrument of another; and lastly, vindictive punishment,
especially capital punishment, inflicted by society upon the guilty individual in
order to make him a buttress of public safety. By committing a crime, the
individual shows that he regards society simply as a means to, and his neighbors as
the instrument of, his own selfishness. But this injustice must not be countered
with the further injustice of belittling the criminal's own human divinity and of
reducing him to the level of passive instrumentality by a punishment which leaves
no room for his amendment or regeneration.

In the purely human order, the sphere of temporal relations, it was the duty of
the State to give expression to that absolute solidarity of each individual with the
whole universe which the Church represents in the spiritual order by the unity of
her priesthood, her faith and her sacraments. Belief in this unity had to precede its
realization in practice; before becoming Christian in fact, the State had to accept
the Christian faith. This first step was taken at Constantinople; it sums up the
whole Christian achievement of the Second Empire.

The Byzantine transformation of the Roman Empire, begun by Constantine the
Great, continued by Theodosius and finally achieved by Justinian, produced no
more than a nominally Christian state. Its laws, its institutions, and a good deal of
its public morality, all retained unmistakable characteristics of the old paganism.
Slavery continued to be legal; and crimes, especially political misdemeanors, were
punished by law with an exquisite cruelty. This contrast between professed
Christianity and practical savagery is aptly personified in the founder of the
Second Empire; Constantine believed sincerely in the Christian God, paid honor to
the bishops and discussed the Trinity with them; yet he had no scruple about
exercising the right of a pagan husband and father, and putting Fausta and Crispus
to death.

So glaring a contradiction between faith and life, however, could not last long
without some attempt at reconciliation. Rather than sacrifice its actual paganism,
the Byzantine Empire attempted in self-justification to pervert the purity of the
Christian idea. This compromise between truth and error lies at the heart of all
those heresies (often devised by the imperial power and always, except in certain
individual instances, favored by it) which distracted Christendom from the fourth
century to the ninth.

The fundamental truth and distinctive idea of Christianity is the perfect union of
the divine and the human individually achieved in Christ, and finding its social
realization in Christian humanity, in which the divine is represented by the Church,
centered in the supreme pontiff, and the human by the State. This intimate relation
between Church and State implies the primacy of the former, since the divine is
previous in time and superior in being to the human. Heresy attacked the perfect
unity of the divine and the human in Jesus Christ precisely in order to undermine
the living bond between Church and State, and to confer upon the latter an absolute
independence. Hence it is clear why the emperors of the Second Rome, intent on
maintaining within Christendom the absolutism of the pagan State, were so partial
to all the heresies, which were but manifold variations on a single theme: —
Jesus Christ is not the true Son of God, consubstantial with the Father; God has
not become incarnate; nature and mankind remain cut off from divinity, and are
not united to it; and consequently the human State may rightly keep its
independence and supremacy intact. Constantius and Valens had indeed good
reason to support Ariamsm.

The humanity of Jesus Christ constitutes a person complete in itself, and is
united only by a relationship to the Word of God. From which follows the practical
conclusion that the human State is a complete and absolute entity, acknowledging
no more than an external relationship to religion. This is the essence of the
Nestorian heresy, and it becomes clear why on its appearance the Emperor
Theodosius II took it under his protection and did all he could to uphold it.
The humanity in Jesus Christ is absorbed by His divinity: here is a heresy
apparently the exact opposite of the preceding. Nothing of the sort; if the premise
is different, the conclusion is exactly the same. If Christ's human nature exists no
longer, the Incarnation is simply a past event, nature and humankind remain utterly
outside the sphere of the Divine. Christ has borne away to Heaven all that was His
and has abandoned the Earth to Cæsar. It was an unerring instinct which moved the
same Theodosius, regardless of the apparent inconsistency, to transfer his favor
from vanquished Nestorianism to the new-born Monophysitism, and to bring about
its formal adoption by a quasi-oecumenical council, the "robber-council" of
Ephesus. And even after the authority of a great Pope had prevailed over that of a
heretical council, the emperors, more or less abetted by the Greek hierarchy, did
not cease to attempt fresh compromises. The henoticon of the Emperor Zeno
(which caused the first prolonged rupture between East and West, the schism of
Acacius) and the unprincipled intrigues of Justinian and Theodora were followed
by a new imperial heresy; Monothelitism maintained that there is no human will or
activity in the God-Man, that His human nature is purely passive, entirely
controlled by the absolute fact of His divinity. This was, in effect, to deny human
freedom and energy; it was that fatalism or quietism which would give human
nature no share in the working out of its own salvation; for it is God alone Who
operates, and the whole duty of the Christian consists in passive submission to the
divine fact which is represented in its spiritual aspect by the unchanging Church
and in its temporal aspect by the sacred power of the god Cæsar. Maintained for
more than fifty years by the Empire and the whole Eastern hierarchy with the
exception of a few monks who had to seek refuge at Rome, the Monothelite heresy
was condemned at Constantinople in 680, only to make room before long for a new
imperial compromise between Christian truth and the spirit of Antichrist.
The intimate union of the Creator and the creature is not confined in Christian
belief to the rational being of Man; it includes also his corporeal being and,
through the latter, the material nature of the whole universe. The compromise of
the heretics tried in vain to abstract in principle from the divine-human unity, first,
the very substance of Man's being, at one time by declaring it absolutely separate
from the Divinity (in Nestorianism), at another by making it vanish completely into
the latter (in Monophysitism); secondly, it tried to abstract human will and activity,
the rational being of Man, by absorbing it into the divine operation (in
Monothelitism); there only remained, thirdly, the corporeal nature, the external
being of Man and, through him, of the whole of Nature. The denial to the material
and sensible world of all possibility of redemption, sanctification and union with
God; that is the idea at the root of the Iconoclastic heresy.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ in the flesh has proved that bodily existence is
not excluded from the union of the human and the Divine, and that external and
sensible objectivity can and must become the real instrument and visible image of
the divine power. Hence the cult of holy images and relics, hence the legitimate
belief in material miracles wrought by these sacred objects. Thus in declaring war
on the images the Byzantine Emperors were not attacking a religious custom or a
mere detail of worship so much as a necessary and infinitely important application
of Christian truth itself. To claim that divinity cannot be sensibly expressed or
externally manifested, or that the divine power cannot employ visible and symbolic
means of action, is to rob the divine incarnation of all its reality. It was more than a
compromise; it was the suppression of Christianity. Just as in the previous heresies
under the semblance of a purely theological dispute there lay hidden a grave social
and political issue, so the Iconoclastic movement under the guise of a ritual
reformation threatened to shatter the social organism of Christendom.

The material realization of the Divine, signified in the sphere of religious worship by holy
images and relics, is represented in the social sphere by an institution. There is in
the Christian Church a materially fixed point, an external and visible center of
action, an image and an instrument of the divine power. The apostolic see of
Rome, that miraculous ikon of universal Christianity, was directly involved in the
Iconoclastic struggle, since all the heresies were in the last resort denials of the
reality of that divine incarnation, the permanence of which in the social and
political order was represented by Rome. It is indeed historically evident that all
the heresies actively supported or passively accepted by the majority of the Greek
clergy encountered insuperable opposition from the Roman Church and finally
came to grief on this Rock of the Gospel. This is especially true of the Iconoclastic
heresy; for in denying all external manifestation of the divine in the world it was
making a direct attack on the raison d'être of the Chair of Peter as the real
objective center of the visible Church.

The pseudo-Christian Empire of Byzantium was bound to engage in decisive
combat with the orthodox Papacy; for the latter was not only the infallible guardian
of Christian truth but also the first realization of that truth in the collective life of
the human race. To read the moving letters of Pope Gregory II to the barbarous
Isaurian Emperor is to realize that the very existence of Christianity was at stake.
The outcome of the struggle could not be in doubt; the last of the imperial heresies
went the way of its predecessors, and with it the circle of theoretic or dogmatic
compromises which Constantine's successors had attempted between Christian
truth and the principle of paganism was finally closed. The era of imperial heresies
was followed by the emergence of Byzantine "orthodoxy." To understand this
fresh phase of the anti-Christian spirit we must revert to its origins in the preceding
period.

Throughout the history of the great Eastern heresies, extending over five
centuries from the time of Arius to that of the last Iconoclasts, we constantly find
in the Empire and Church of the East three main parties whose alternating victories
and defeats form the framework of this curious evolution. We see in the first place
the champions of formal heresy, regularly instigated and supported by the imperial
court. From the religious point of view, they represented the reaction of Eastern
paganism to Christian truth; politically, they were the declared enemies of that
independent ecclesiastical government founded by Jesus Christ and represented by
the apostolic see of Rome. They began by conceding to sar, whose protégés they
were, unbounded authority not only in the government of the Church but even in
matters of doctrine; and when Cæsar, impelled by the orthodox majority of his
subjects and by the fear of playing into the hands of the Pope, ended by betraying
his own creatures, the leaders of the heretical party sought more solid support
elsewhere by exploiting the separatist and semi-pagan tendencies of the various
nations which were free, or were aiming at freedom, from the Roman yoke. Thus
Arianism, the religion of the Empire under Constantius and Valens, but abandoned
by their successors, claimed the allegiance of the Goths and Lombards for
centuries; Nestorianism, betrayed by its champion Theodosius II, was for a time
welcomed by the Eastern Syrians; and Monophysitism, thrust out from Byzantium
in spite of all the efforts of the Emperors, finally became the national religion of
Egypt, Abyssinia and Armenia.

At the opposite extreme to this heretical party, trebly anti-Christian — in its
religious doctrine, its secularism, and its nationalism — we find the absolutely
orthodox Catholic party engaged in defending the purity of the Christian idea
against all the pagan compromises and in championing free and worldwide
ecclesiastical government against the onslaughts of Cæsaropapism and the aims of
national separatism. This party could not count on the favor of earthly powers; of
the higher clergy it included only individuals here and there. But it relied on the
greatest religious force of those times, the monks, and also on the simple faith of
the mass of devout believers, at least in the central parts of the Byzantine Empire.
Moreover, these orthodox Catholics found and recognized in the central Chair of
St. Peter the mighty palladium of religious truth and freedom. To indicate the
moral weight and ecclesiastical importance of this party, it is enough to say that it
was the party of St. Athanasius the Great, of St. John Chrysostom, of St. Flavian,
of St. Maximus the Confessor and of St. Theodore of the Studium.

But it was neither the declared heretics nor the genuinely orthodox who
controlled for many centuries the destinies of the Christian East. The decisive part
in the story was played by a third party which, although it occupied an intermediate
position between the other two, was distinguished from them by more than mere
verbal subtleties; it had a clearly defined aim and pursued a well-considered policy.
The great majority of the higher Greek clergy belonged to this party, which we
may call semi-orthodox or rather "orthodox-anticatholic." These priests held firmly
to orthodox dogma, either from theoretical conviction or from force of habit or
from devotion to the common tradition. They had nothing in principle against the
unity of the universal Church, provided only that the center of that unity was
situated in their midst; and since in point of fact this center was situated elsewhere,
they preferred to be Greeks rather than Christians and accepted a divided Church
rather than the Church unified by a power which was in their eyes foreign and
hostile to their nationality. As Christians, they could not be Cæsaropapists in
principle, but as patriotic Greeks first and foremost, they preferred the Byzantine
Cæsaropapism to the Roman Papacy.

Unluckily for them the Greek autocrats distinguished themselves for the most
part as the champions or even as the authors of heresy; and what they found still
more intolerable was that the rare occasions when the Emperors took orthodoxy
under their protection were exactly the occasions when the Empire and the Papacy
were in accord with one another. To disturb this accord and to attach the Emperors
to orthodoxy while weaning them from Catholicism was the chief aim of the Greek
hierarchy. In pursuit of this aim they were ready, despite their sincere orthodoxy,
to make sacrifices even on questions of dogma.

Formal and explicit heresy was regarded with horror by these pious gentlemen,
but when it pleased the divine Cæsar to offer them his own version of orthodox
dogma, they did not scrutinize it too closely. They preferred to receive a revised or
incomplete formula at the hands of a Greek Emperor rather than accept the truth
pure and intact from the mouth of a Pope; they were glad to see Zeno's henoticon
replace the dogmatic epistle of St. Leo the Great. In the six or seven successive
episodes in the history of the Eastern heresies, the policy of the pseudo-orthodox
party was always the same. When heresy in its first flush of victory was being
thrust upon them with violence, these prudent people, having a pronounced distaste
for martyrdom, gave way, though unwillingly. Thanks to their passive support, the
heretics were able to convene general assemblies as large as, or even larger than,
the true oecumenical councils. But when the blood of confessors, the fidelity of the
mass of the people, and the threatening authority of the Roman pontiff had
compelled the imperial power to forsake the cause of error, these unwilling heretics
returned en masse to orthodoxy and, like the laborers hired at the eleventh hour,
received their full pay. The heroic confessors seldom survived the persecutions,
and it was the worldly-wise who enjoyed the victory of Truth. They formed the
majority in the orthodox councils, as they had previously in the heretical
conventions; and though they could not refuse concurrence to the Pope's
representatives when he sent them a precise and definite formulation of orthodox
dogma, though at the first they even expressed their concurrence with more or less
sincere enthusiasm, the evident triumph of the Papacy soon brought them back to
their prevailing sentiment of jealous hatred toward the apostolic see, and they
proceeded to use all the efforts of a determined will and all the resources of an
astute intelligence to counterbalance the success of the Papacy, to rob it of its
rightful influence and to set up in opposition to it an unreal and usurped authority.
The Pope had been useful in dealing with heresy; but once heresy was done with,
what need was there of the Pope? Could not the patriarch of the old Rome be
replaced by the patriarch of the new?

Thus each triumph of orthodoxy, which was always the triumph of the Papacy, was invariably followed at Byzantium by an anti-Catholic reaction into which the sincere but short-sighted champions of orthodoxy were also drawn. This separatist reaction would last until a new heresy,
more or less favored by the imperial power, supervened to disturb orthodox
consciences and remind them of the advantage of a genuine ecclesiastical
authority.

When official Arianism, having reigned supreme in the Eastern Empire for half
a century, failed in the attempt to invade the Western Church, and a Spaniard came
to Constantinople with the blessing of the Roman and Milanese pontiffs to restore
orthodoxy there, the decisive part played by the Papacy in the great struggle and in
the final triumph of the true doctrine of the Trinity did not fail to arouse the
jealousy of those prudent members of the Greek hierarchy who, having been semi-
Arians under Constantius and Valens, had now become completely orthodox under
Theodosius. Gathered in the year 380 in an assembly which a great saint of the
period, Gregory the Theologian, has described in familiar words, they constituted
themselves an oecumenical council without more ado, as though the whole of
Western Christendom did not exist; they wantonly replaced the Nicene profession
of faith, the common standard of universal orthodoxy in East and West, with a new
formula of purely Eastern origin, and they crowned their uncanonical proceedings
by conferring on the bishop of Constantinople, a mere suffragan of the archbishop
of Heraclea, the dignity of first Patriarch of the Eastern Church, in despite of the
apostolic sees of Alexandria and Antioch which the great Nicene council had
confirmed in their rights. If the sovereign pontiffs had been ordinarily as ambitious
as some like to represent them, if, indeed, the defense of their lawful rights had
been dearer to their hearts than the preservation of universal peace, nothing could
have prevented the separation of the two Churches in the year 381. But the
generosity and Christian spirit of Pope Damasus succeeded in averting that
disaster. He recognized that the creed of Constantinople was as orthodox as that of
Nicæa and that the additional article on the Holy Spirit was justified in view of the
new heresy of the Pneumatomachi, who held the Third Person of the Trinity to be a
creature begotten by the Son and thus denied the procession of the Spirit from the
Father. The Pope therefore approved the dogmatic act of the Greek council in his
own name and in that of the whole Latin Church and thereby gave it the authority
of a true oecumenical council; the usurpation of the patriarchate by the see of
Constantinople was ignored.

But the Papacy played an even greater part in the history of the chief
Christological heresies during the fifth century than in the Arian struggles of the
fourth. Most of the Greek bishops, forming our third party, were shamefully
compromised by their passive acquiescence in the robber-council of Ephesus at
which the great body of orthodox prelates were obliged not only to see St. Flavian
done to death before their eyes, but also to sign an heretical profession of faith. In
contrast to this criminal weakness, the Papacy appeared in all its moral power and
majesty in the person of St. Leo the Great. At Chalcedon the great number of
Greek bishops who had taken part in Dioscorus' robber-council were obliged to
beg forgiveness of the legates of Pope Leo, who was hailed as the divinely inspired
head of the Universal Church. Such homage to justice and truth was too much for
the moral mediocrity of these corrupt prelates. The anti-Catholic reaction followed
immediately at the very same council. After enthusiastically applauding the Pope's
dogmatic epistle as "the very words of the blessed apostle Peter," the Byzantine
bishops attempted to substitute for this apostolic utterance an ambiguous formula
which left the door open to heresy (note 3). Foiled in this attempt, they chose a different
ground for their anti-Catholic activities, and in an irregular session of the council
they asserted the imperial patriarch's primacy of jurisdiction over the whole East,
and his equality with the Pope. This act, aimed against the sovereign pontiff, had
nevertheless to be humbly submitted by the Greeks for the ratification of the Pope
himself, who quashed it completely. Thus, in spite of all, the council of Chalcedon
has its place in history as an outstanding triumph for the Papacy. But the orthodox
anti-Catholics could not rest content with such an outcome, and this time the
reaction was decisive and persistent. Pure orthodoxy being too Roman for them,
they began to flirt with heresy. The patriarch Acacius favored the Emperor Zeno's
henoticon, which was a compromise with Monophysitism; he was
excommunicated by the Pope and has the unhappy distinction of giving his name
to the first formal schism between East and West. But the main circumstances of
this anti-Catholic reaction prevented its development into a definite cleavage. In
the schism of Acacius the semi-orthodox party were discredited by the concessions
they had to make to undisguised heresy, concessions which not only did violence
to the religious convictions of the faithful, but did nothing to meet the demands of
the heretics. The latter, emboldened by the henoticon which they had rejected with
contempt, proceeded to set the whole of Egypt ablaze and threatened to separate it
from the Empire. On the other side, the orthodox monks, exasperated by the
treachery of the prelates, were stirring up discord in Syria and Asia Minor; and
even in Constantinople itself the monk who pinned the bull of excommunication
issued by the Pope on to the cope of the schismatic patriarch was applauded by the
crowd.

To prolong such a state of affairs was not good policy; and urged by the imperial
government, the successors of Acacius showed themselves more and more
conciliatory. At length, under the Emperor Justin I, peace was concluded between
the Churches to the advantage and honor of the Papacy. The Eastern bishops, in
order to prove their orthodoxy and gain admission to the communion of the Roman
Church, were obliged to accept and sign without reservation the dogmatic formula
of Pope Hormisdas, that is, to recognize implicitly the supreme doctrinal authority
of the apostolic (note four). But the submission of the Greek prelates was not sincere;
they were still meditating an entente with the Monophysites against the see of
Peter. Despite their underhand intrigues, however, the power of the Papacy was
demonstrated afresh — as the liturgical books of the Greco-Russian Church record
when Pope St. Agapitus, who had come to Constantinople on a political
mission, deposed on his own personal authority a patriarch suspected of
Monophysitism, set up an orthodox patriarch in his stead, and compelled all the
Greek bishops to sign anew the formula of Hormisdas.

Meanwhile, Justinian's forces were victorious in Africa and Italy; Rome was
recovered from the Ostrogoths and the Pope was once again de facto the subject of
the Byzantine Emperor. In these circumstances and under the influence of his
wife's Monophysite tendencies, Justinian changed his attitude to the head of the
Church. The anti-Catholic party seized the reins and Pope Vigilius, a prisoner at
Constantinople, was fated to bear the brunt of a triumphant reaction. The supreme
Teacher of the Church maintained his own orthodoxy, but as sovereign Head of the
government of the Church he found himself deeply humiliated; and soon
afterwards a bishop of Constantinople thought himself powerful enough to usurp
the title of OEcumenical Patriarch
.
This bishop, orthodox in his doctrine and an exemplary ascetic in his private
life, fulfilled the ideal of the great anti-Catholic party. But a new imperial whim
was sufficient to dispel the illusion of this precarious orthodoxy. The Emperor
Heraclius thought he saw in Monothelitism the means of reuniting the orthodox
with the moderate Monophysites and thus restoring peace to the Empire,
consolidating the Greek religion and freeing it once for all from the influence of
Rome. The higher clergy throughout the East welcomed this idea unreservedly.
The patriarchal sees were occupied intermittently by a series of more or less
fanatical heretics, and Monothelitism became for half a century the official religion
of the whole Greek Empire as Semi-Arianism had been in the time of Constantius.
A few monks, the heroic champions of orthodoxy, headed by St. Maximus the
Confessor, took refuge at Rome; and once again the apostle Peter strengthened his
brethren.

A long succession of Popes from Severinus to St. Agatho met the heresies of the
Emperors with an unflinching opposition and one of them, St. Martin, was dragged
by soldiers from the altar, was haled like a criminal from Rome to Constantinople
and from Constantinople to the Crimea, and finally gave his life for the orthodox
faith. At length, after fifty years' struggle, religious truth and moral power won the
day. The mighty Empire and its worldly clergy surrendered once again to a poor,
defenseless pontiff.

At the council of Constantinople, the sixth oecumenical council, the apostolic see
of Rome was honored as an authority that had remained untainted by error; and the
Greek bishops received Pope Agatho's pronouncement with a repetition of the
acclamations with which the fathers of Chalcedon had formerly hailed St. Leo the
Great. But once again it was not long before this momentary enthusiasm was
followed by a powerful reaction. While the true heroes of orthodoxy, such as St.
Maximus the Confessor, could not find words strong enough to extol the preeminence
and achievements of the Roman see, the orthodox anti-Catholics, though
profiting by its achievements, were too jealous of its pre-eminence to give it
recognition. In their humiliation and irritation at the long list of heretics and
heresiarchs who had defiled the see of Constantinople and whom the council was
bound to anathematize, the Greek bishops revenged themselves by inventing the
heresy of Pope Honorius and foisting it upon the good-natured Roman legates. Not
content with this, they re-assembled some years after the council in the imperial
palace at Constantinople (in Trullo); for this convention they claimed oecumenical
authority on various absurd pretexts either by representing it, contrary to the
evidence, as the continuation of the sixth council, or alternatively — such is the
usual duplicity of falsehood — by reckoning it as the conclusion of the fifth and
sixth councils under the outlandish title of "Quinisext." The object of these absurd
deceptions came out clearly in certain canons promulgated by the fathers of the
Trullan council, which condemned various disciplinary and ritual usages of the
Roman Church. There, ready-made, were the grounds for schism; and if schism did
not follow then and there, two centuries before Photius, we have only to thank the
Iconoclast Emperor, Leo the Isaurian, who at that moment came on the scene to
upset the well-laid plans of the orthodox anti-Catholics.

Here was the most violent, as it was the last, of the imperial heresies; and with
its emergence all the indirect and disguised denials of the Christian idea were
exhausted. After the condemnation of the Iconoclasts, the fundamental dogma of
Christian orthodoxy — the perfect union of the Creator and the creature — was
defined in all its aspects and became an accepted fact. But the seventh oecumenica1
council which achieved this task in 787 had been assembled under the auspices of
Pope Adrian I and had taken a dogmatic epistle of that pontiff as guide to its
decisions. It was again a triumph for the Papacy; it could not then be "the triumph
of Orthodoxy;" that was postponed till half a century later when, after the
comparatively feeble Iconoclastic reaction brought about by the Armenian dynasty,
the orthodox anti-Catholic party finally succeeded in 842 in crushing the last
remnants of the imperial heresy without the help of the Pope, and in including it
with all the others under a solemn anathema (note 5). Indeed, Byzantine orthodoxy might
well triumph in 842; the great Photius, its light and glory, was already making his
appearance at the court of the devout Theodora, the Empress who caused the
massacre of a hundred thousand Paulician heretics; before long he would be
mounting the throne of the oecumenical patriarchs.

The schism initiated by Photius in 867 and consummated by Michael Cerularius
in 1054 was closely connected with the "Triumph of Orthodoxy" and was the
complete realization of the ideal which the orthodox anti-Catholic party had
dreamed of since the fourth century. Dogmatic truth having been once defined and
all the heresies finally condemned, they had no further use for the Pope; nothing
remained but to crown the work by a formal separation from Rome. Furthermore, it
was this solution which best suited the Byzantine Emperors; for they had come to
see that it was not worthwhile rousing the religious passions of their subjects by
doctrinal compromise between Christianity and paganism and thus throwing them
into the arms of the Papacy, when a strict theoretical orthodoxy could very well be
reconciled with a political and social order which was completely pagan. It is a
significant fact, and one that has not been sufficiently observed, that from the year
842 not a single imperial heretic or heresiarch reigned at Constantinople, and the
harmony between the Greek Church and State was not once seriously disturbed.
The two powers had come to terms and had made their peace, bound to one
another by a common idea: the denial of Christianity as a social force and as the
motive principle of historical progress. The Emperors permanently embraced
"Orthodoxy" as an abstract dogma, while the orthodox prelates bestowed their
benediction in sæcula sæculorum on the paganism of Byzantine public life. And
since "sine sanguine nullum pactum," a magnificent hecatomb of one hundred
thousand Paulicians sealed the alliance of the Second Rome with the "Second
Church."

This so-called "orthodoxy" of the Byzantines was in fact nothing but ingrown
heresy. The true central dogma of Christianity is the intimate and complete union
of the Divine and the human without confusion or division. The logical
consequence of this truth — to confine ourselves to the sphere of practical human
existence — is the regeneration of social and political life by the spirit of the
Gospel, in other words, the Christianization of society and the State. Instead of this
synthetic and organic union of the Divine and the human, the two elements were in
turn confused or divided, or one of them was absorbed or suppressed by the other.
To begin with, the Divine and the human were confused in the sacred majesty of
the Emperor. Just as in the confused thought of the Arians Christ was a hybrid
being, more than man and less than God, so Cæsaropapism, which was simply
political Arianism, confused the temporal and spiritual powers without uniting
them, and made the autocrat something more than the head of the State, without
succeeding in making him a true head of the Church. Religious society was
separated from secular society, the former being relegated to the monasteries,
while the forum was abandoned to pagan laws and passions. The dualism of
Nestorius, condemned in theology, became the very foundation of Byzantine life.
Or again, the religious ideal was reduced to bare contemplation, that is, to the
absorption of the human spirit in the Godhead, an obviously Monophysite ideal.
The moral life, on the other hand, was robbed of its practical force by the
inculcation of the supreme ideal of passive obedience and blind submission to
power; that is to say, of an ideal of quietism which was in reality the denial of
human will and energy, the heresy of the Monothelites. Finally, an exaggerated
asceticism attempted to suppress the bodily nature of man and to shatter the living
image of the divine incarnation — a logical though unconscious application of the
Iconoclastic heresy.

This profound contradiction between professed orthodoxy and practical heresy
was the Achilles' heel of the Byzantine Empire. There lay the real cause of its
downfall. Indeed, it deserved to fall and still more it deserved to fall before Islam.
For Islam is simply sincere and logical Byzantinism, free from all its inner
contradiction. It is the frank and full reaction of the spirit of the East against
Christianity; it is a system in which dogma is closely related to the conditions of
life and in which the belief of the individual is in perfect agreement with the social
and political order.

We have seen that the anti-Christian movement, which found expression in the
imperial heresies, had in the seventh and eighth centuries issued in two doctrines,
of which one, that of the Monothelites, was an indirect denial of human freedom,
and the other, that of the Iconoclasts, was an implied rejection of the divine
phenomenality. The direct and explicit assertion of these two errors was of the
essence of the Moslem religion. Islam sees in Man a finite form without freedom,
and in God an infinite freedom without form. God and Man being thus fixed at the
two opposite poles of existence, there can be no filial relationship between them;
the notion of the Divine coming down and taking form, or of the human ascending
to a spiritual existence, is excluded; and religion is reduced to a mere external
relation between the all-powerful Creator and the creature which is deprived of all
freedom and owes its master nothing but a bare act of "blind surrender" (for this is
what the Arabic word islam signifies). This act of surrender, expressed in a short
formula of prayer to be invariably repeated day by day at fixed hours, sums up the
whole religious background of the Eastern mind, which spoke its last word by the
mouth of Mohammed. The simplicity of this idea of religion is matched by a no
less simple conception of the social and political problem: Man and the human race
have no real progress to make; there is no moral regeneration for the individual and
therefore a fortiori none for society; everything is brought down to the level of a
purely natural existence; the ideal is reduced to the point at which its realization
presents no difficulties. Moslem society could have no other aim but the expansion
of its material power and the enjoyment of the good things of the Earth. The spread
of Islam by force of arms, and the government of the faithful with absolute
authority, and according to the rules of an elementary justice laid down in the
Koran — such is the whole task of the Moslem state, a task which it would be
difficult not to accomplish with success. Despite the tendency to verbal falsehood
innate in all Orientals as individuals, the complete correspondence between its
beliefs and its institutions gives to the whole of Mohammedan society a distinctive
note of truth and sincerity which the Christian world has never been able to
achieve. Christendom as a whole is certainly set upon the path of progress and
transformation; and the very loftiness of its ideal forbids us to judge it finally by
any one of its various phases, past or present. But Byzantinism, which was hostile
in principle to Christian progress and which aimed at reducing the whole of
religion to a fact of past history, a dogmatic formula, and a liturgical ceremonial —
this anti-Christianity, concealed beneath the mask of orthodoxy, was bound to
collapse in moral impotence before the open and sincere anti-Christianity of Islam.
It is interesting to observe that the new religion, with its dogma of fatalism, made
its appearance at the precise moment when the Emperor Heraclius was inventing
the Monothelite heresy, which was the disguised denial of human freedom and
energy. It was hoped by this device to strengthen the official religion and to restore
Egypt and Asia to the unity of the Empire. But Egypt and Asia preferred the Arab
declaration of faith to the political expedient of Byzantium. Nothing would be
more astonishing than the ease and swiftness of the Moslem conquest were no
account taken of the prolonged anti-Christian policy of the Second Empire. Five
years were enough to reduce three great patriarchates of the Eastern Church to the
condition of historical relics. It was not a matter of conversion but simply of
tearing off the mask.

History has passed judgment upon the Second Empire and has condemned it.
Not only did it fail in its appointed task of founding the Christian State, but it
strove to make abortive the historic work of Jesus Christ. Having attempted in vain
to pervert orthodox dogma, it reduced it to a dead letter; it sought to undermine the
edifice of the pax Christiana by attacking the central government of the Universal
Church; and in public life it supplanted the law of the Gospel by the traditional
policy of the pagan State. The Byzantines believed that true Christianity meant no
more than guarding the dogmas and sacred rites of orthodoxy without troubling to
Christianize social and political life; they thought it lawful and laudable to confine
Christianity to the temple while they abandoned the marketplace to the principles
of paganism. They had no reason to complain of the result; they were given their
wish. Their dogma and their ritual were left to them; it was only the social and
political power that fell into the hands of the Moslems, the rightful heirs of
paganism.

The vocation to found the Christian State which the Greek Empire thus refused
was transferred to the Romano-German world of the Franks and Allemanni. It was
transferred to them by the only Christian power that had the right and duty to do
so, by the power of St. Peter, the holder of the keys of the Kingdom. Observe the
coincidence of dates. The foundation-stone of the future Empire of the West was
laid by the baptism and anointing of the Frankish king Clovis in 496, just when,
after several fruitless attempts at agreement, it seemed that the schism of Acacius
would mean the final severance of the whole of Eastern Christendom from the
Catholic Church. The coincidence of the year 754 is even more remarkable; at the
very moment when, with every appearance of oecumenical authority, a great
Iconoclastic council at Constantinople was approving the last and most violent of
the imperial heresies, directed especially against the Roman Church, Pope Stephen
was anointing the father of Charlemagne at Reims — or was it at St. Denis? Who
will say? — with these words: "Quia ideo vos Dominus per humilitatem meam
mediante S. Petro unxit in reges ut per vos sua sancta exaltatur Ecclesia et princeps
apostolorum suam recipiat justitiam." The Carolingian dynasty was bound to the
Papacy by a direct filial relationship. The Pope, says an old chronicle, "per
auctoritatem apostolicam jussit Pippinum regem fieri." This act, together with its
inevitable consequences, the conquest of Italy by the Franks, the donation of Pepin,
and the crowning of Charlemagne as Roman Emperor, was the real and immediate
cause of the separation of the Churches. By transferring the imperial scepter to a
Western barbarian, the Pope became doubly a foreigner and a foe to the Greeks.
All that was needed to rob him of any support at Constantinople was that the
Emperors should once for all renounce their heretical tendencies, and the union of
all the "Orthodox" under the standard of anti-Catholicism would be complete. The
event was not long delayed; the "Triumph of Orthodoxy" and the schism of
Photius were the answer of Byzantium to the crowning of Charlemagne.
This was no matter of a dispute in theology or of a rivalry between prelates. It
was simply the refusal of the old Empire of Constantine to give place to the new
Western power born of the close alliance of the Papacy with the Frankish kingdom;
everything else was secondary or by way of excuse. This view of the matter is
confirmed by the fact that after Photius' death the schism took no effect for a
century and a half — exactly the period when Western Christendom, newly
organized, seemed on the verge of collapse, when the Papacy was subservient to a
degenerate oligarchy and had lost its moral and religious prestige, and when the
Carolingian dynasty was consumed with internal strife. But no sooner was the
imperial power restored under the energetic government of the German kings, no
sooner was the see of St. Peter again occupied by men of apostolic character, than
the anti-Catholic movement at Constantinople broke forth with violence and the
schism was consummated.

The Franco-German Empire made sincere attempts to fulfil the task imposed
upon it by its dignity as a Christian state. Notwithstanding its vices and its
disorders, the new society of the West possessed one enormous advantage over the
Byzantine Empire, namely the consciousness of its own evils and a profound desire
to be rid of them; witness the innumerable councils summoned by popes, emperors
and kings to effect moral reforms in the Church and to bring the condition of
society nearer to the Christian ideal. These reforms were, indeed, never fully
successful, but the point is that they did occupy men's minds and that there was a
refusal to accept in principle a contradiction between truth and life after the manner
of the Byzantine world, which had never been concerned to harmonize its social
conditions with its faith and had never undertaken any moral reformation; its
councils had only been interested in dogmatic formu1æ and in the claims of its
hierarchy.

But in giving Charlemagne and Otto the Great, St. Henry and St. Louis their
due, we are bound to confess that, taken all in all, the medieval monarchy (whether
under the fictitious form of the Roman Empire or under the real form of a national
dynasty) did not fulfil its mission as a Christian State, nor succeed in definitely
modelling society on the Christian ideal. Those great sovereigns themselves were
far from grasping the social and political problem of Christianity in all its bearings;
and even their ideal, for all its imperfection, proved too exalted for their
successors. It was the policy of the Emperor Henry IV and of King Philip the Fair,
not that of their saintly predecessors, which formed the general rule; it was their
policy that paved the way for the reformation of Luther and in time bore fruit in the
French Revolution. The German Empire, brought to the birth by the Roman See,
broke the bonds of its parentage and set itself up as the rival of the Papacy. Thus
was taken the first and most momentous step on the path of revolution. Such
rivalry between father and son could not form the organic basis of a social order.
The German Empire, by exhausting its strength in an anti-Christian struggle lasting
through two centuries and by attacking the very basis of Catholic unity, forfeited
not only its supremacy among the nations, but its very right to that supremacy.
Disregarding this fictitious Roman Empire, the states of Europe proceeded to
constitute themselves complete and absolutely independent units; and once again it
fell to the Papacy, while warding off the attacks of the German Empire, to assume
the great task which that Empire was unworthy and unable to discharge.
It is not our present concern to praise or to justify the historical achievement of a
Hildebrand or an Innocent III. Among historians of the present generation, they
have received not only vindication but encomium from such distinguished
Protestant writers as Voigt, Hurter and Neander. In what the great medieval popes
achieved (beyond the purely spiritual sphere) for the culture of the European
peoples, the peace of nations and the good order of society, there is all the greater
merit inasmuch as in this work they were fulfilling a function which did not
properly belong to them. Zoology and medicine tell us of cases in which a young
and vigorous organism, accidentally injured in one of its essential organs, transfers
its function for the time being to another organ in good condition, which is known
as a "vicarious organ" (organe vicariant, vikarirendes Organ). The imperial
papacy or papal empire of Innocent III and Innocent IV was such a "vicarious
organ." But this could not continue indefinitely. It needed men of exceptional
quality to deal with the details of a vast and complicated political administration
while keeping them all the while subordinate to the universal and spiritual goal. In
succession to popes who had raised politics to the height of moral activity, there
inevitably followed many more who degraded religion to the level of material
interests. If Protestant historians have extolled the high achievements of the papal
empire, its rapid decay is recorded by the greatest of Catholic writers, who in
immortal lines calls upon a second Charlemagne to put an end to the fatal
confusion of the two powers in the Roman Church (Dante, Inferno, xix;
Purgatorio, vi, xvi).

Indeed, if we consider the political and social condition of Europe towards the
close of the Middle Ages we must admit that the Papacy, robbed of its secular
organ and obliged to combine the two functions, was unable to give to the society
which it had governed a genuinely Christian organization. International unity —
the pax Christiana — was nonexistent. The nations were given up to fratricidal
wars, and only by a supernatural intervention was the national existence of France
saved.

The social constitution of Europe, based on the relationship between victors and
vanquished, always retained this anti-Christian character of inequality and
oppression. The predominance in public life of a pride of blood which created an
insurmountable barrier between noble and serf, and of a spirit of violence which
made every country the scene of civil war and plunder, in addition to a penal code
so barbarous as to seem diabolically inspired — where in all this can the features
of a truly Christian society be recognized?

For lack of an imperial power genuinely Christian and Catholic, the Church has
not succeeded in establishing social and political justice in Europe. The nations and
states of modern times, freed since the Reformation from ecclesiastical
surveillance, have attempted to improve upon the work of the Church. The results
of the experiment are plain to see. The idea of Christendom as a real, though
admittedly inadequate, unity embracing all the nations of Europe has vanished; the
philosophy of the revolutionaries has made praiseworthy attempts to substitute for
this unity the unity of the human race — with what success is well known. A
universal militarism transforming whole nations into hostile armies and itself
inspired by a national hatred such as the Middle Ages never knew; a deep and
irreconcilable social conflict; a class struggle which threatens to whelm everything
in fire and blood; and a continuous lessening of moral power in individuals,
witnessed to by the constant increase in mental collapse, suicide and crime — such
is the sum total of the progress which secularized Europe has made in the last three
or four centuries (note 6).

The two great historic experiments, that of the Middle Ages and that of modern
times, seem to demonstrate conclusively that neither the Church, lacking the
assistance of a secular power which is distinct from but responsible to her, nor the
secular State, relying upon its own resources, can succeed in establishing Christian
justice and peace on the Earth. The close alliance and organic union of the two
powers without confusion and without division is the indispensable condition of
true social progress. It remains to enquire whether there is in the Christian world a
power capable of taking up the work of Constantine and Charlemagne with better
hope of success.

The profoundly religious and monarchic instinct of the Russian people, certain
prophetic events in its past history, the enormous and compact bulk of its Empire,
the great latent strength of the national spirit in contrast to the poverty and
emptiness of its actual existence — all this seems to indicate that it is the historic
destiny of Russia to provide the Universal Church with the political power which it
requires for the salvation and regeneration of Europe and of the world.
Great tasks cannot be accomplished with small means. It is not a matter of
religious compromise between two hierarchies, nor of diplomatic negotiations
between two governments. It is primarily a moral and intellectual bond that must
be forged between the religious conscience of Russia and the truth of the Universal
Church; and in order to commend to our reason the truth of a principle of which
the historical realization is foreign and even repugnant to us, we must seek the
ultimate ground of this truth in the fundamental idea of Christianity.
In the first part of my work, the critical and controversial section, I have tried to
show what Russia actually needs if she is to fulfil her theocratic mission; in the
second I have expounded, in the light of theology and history, the basis of the
universal unity established by Christ, the monarchical government of the Church;
in the third I have set out to relate the idea of theocracy (the social Trinity) to the
theosophic idea (the divine Trinity-note 7)

This work is an abridgment of a larger work in the Russian language at which I
have been working for seven years, but which has not been allowed to appear in
my own country; the first volume, published in 1887 at Agram in Croatia, was
banned by the Russian censorship. In these circumstances it seemed to me more
practical to epitomize my work and address it to a wider public (note 8) I firmly hope to
see the day when my country will enjoy that blessing which is her primary need —
religious freedom. But in the meantime I thought that I ought not to keep silence,
and it seemed that to publish in French would be the most effectual means of
making the truth heard.

In the two first parts of my work, I have suppressed or reduced to a minimum all
those topics on which I could only repeat what has been better said by others. For
details concerning the state of religion and of the Church in Russia, I am glad to be
able to refer my readers to the third volume of M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu's wellknown
work, L'Empire des Tsars. The Western reader will also find useful and
interesting information in the Rev. Fr. Tondini's book, Le pape de Rome et les
papes des Églises orientales.

By way of bringing this too lengthy preface to an end, here is a parable which
will perhaps bring out more clearly my general point of view and the purpose of
the present work.

A great architect, setting out on a voyage to distant parts, called his pupils and
said to them: "You know that I came here to rebuild the principal sanctuary of the
country which had been destroyed by an earthquake. The work is begun; I have
sketched the general plan, the site has been cleared and the foundations laid. You
will take my place during my absence. I will certainly return, but I cannot tell you
when. Work, therefore, as though you had to complete the task without me. Now is
the time for you to apply the teaching that I have given you. I trust you, and I am
not going to lay down all the details of the work. Only observe the rules of our art.
I am leaving you the solid foundations of the Temple which I have laid and the
general plan that I have traced; that will be sufficient if you are faithful to your
duty. And I am not leaving you alone; in spirit and in thought, I will be always
with you." With these words he led them to the site of the new church, showed
them the foundations and handed them the plan.

After his departure, his pupils worked in complete harmony and almost a third
of the building was soon raised. As the work was vast and extremely complicated,
the first companions were not enough and new ones had to be admitted. It was not
long before a serious dispute arose between those who were in charge of the work.

Some of them maintained that of the two things left them by their absent Master —
the foundations of the building and its general plan — only the latter was important
and indispensable; there was nothing, they said, to prevent them from abandoning
the foundations already laid and building on another site. When their companions
violently opposed this idea, they went further and in the heat of the argument
actually declared (contrary to what they themselves had often maintained before)
that the Master had never laid nor even indicated the foundations of the Temple;
that was merely an invention of their opponents. Many of the latter, on the other
hand, in their anxiety to maintain the importance of the foundations, went to the
opposite extreme and declared that the only thing that really mattered in the whole
work was the foundation of the building which the Master had laid, and that their
proper task consisted simply in preserving, repairing and strengthening the already
existing part of the building, without any idea of finishing it entirely, for (they
said) the completion of the work was reserved exclusively for the Master himself at
the time of his return. Extremes meet, and the two opposing parties soon found
themselves agreed on one point, that the building was not to be completed. But the
party which insisted on preserving the foundations and the unfinished nave in good
condition plunged into various secondary activities for that purpose and displayed
indefatigable energy, whereas the party which thought it possible to abandon the
original foundation of the Temple declared, after vainly attempting to build on
another site, that there was no need to do anything at all; the essential thing in the
art of architecture, they maintained, was theory, the contemplation of its classic
examples and meditation on its rules, not the carrying out of a definite design; if
the Master had left them his plan of the Temple, it was certainly not with the object
of getting them to work together on its actua1 construction, but simply in order that
each one of them by studying this perfect plan might himself become an
accomplished architect. Thereupon the most zealous of them devoted their lives to
meditating on the design of the ideal Temple and learning and reciting by heart
every day the explanations of that design which some of the early companions had
worked out in accordance with the Master's instructions. But the majority were
content to think of the Temple once a week, and the rest of the time was spent by
each of them in attending to his own business.

There were, however, some of these dissentients who, from a study of the
Master's plan and of his own original explanation of it, perceived clear indications
that the foundations of the Temple had actually been laid and could never be
changed; among other remarks of the great architect they came across the
following: "Here are the impregnable foundations that I have laid myself; it is upon
them that my Temple must be built if it is to be proof for ever against earthquake
or any other destructive force." Impressed by these words, the good workers
resolved to give up their quarrel and to lose no time in joining the guardians of the
foundations, in order to assist them in their work of preservation. There was,
however, one worker who said: "Let us admit our mistake; let us be just and give
due honor to our old associates; let us rejoin them around the great building which
we began, but to our shame abandoned and which to their incalculable credit they
have guarded and kept in good condition. But above all we must be faithful to the
Master's conception. He did not mean these foundations which he laid to remain
untouched; he meant his Temple to be built upon them. Therefore we must all unite
to complete the building upon the existing foundations. Shall we have time to
finish it before the Master's return, or not? That is a question which he did not see
fit to answer. But he did tell us explicitly to do everything to continue his work;
and, moreover, he added that we should do more than he had done." This worker's
appeal seemed strange to most of his companions. Some called him an idealist,
others accused him of pride and presumption. But the voice of conscience told him
clearly that his absent Master was with him in spirit and in truth.

As a member of the true and venerable Eastern or Greco-Russian Orthodox
Church which does not speak through an anti-canonical synod nor through the
employees of the secular power, but through the utterance of her great Fathers and
Doctors, I recognize as supreme judge in matters of religion him who has been
recognized as such by St. Ireneus, St. Dionysius the Great, St. Athanasius the
Great, St. John Chrysostom, St. Cyril, St. Flavian, the Blessed Theodoret, St.
Maximus the Confessor, St. Theodore of the Studium, St. Ignatius, etc. etc. —
namely, the Apostle Peter, who lives in his successors and who has not heard in
vain our Lord's words: "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build My
Church;" "Strengthen thy brethren;" "Feed My sheep, feed My lambs."

O deathless spirit of the blessed Apostle, invisible minister of the Lord in the
government of His visible Church, thou knowest that she has need of an earthly
body for her manifestation. Twice already hast thou embodied her in human
society: in the Greco-Roman world, and again in the Romano-German world; thou
hast made both the Empire of Constantine and the Empire of Charlemagne to serve
her. After these two provisional incarnations, she awaits her third and last
incarnation. A whole world full of energies and of yearnings, but with no clear
consciousness of its destiny knocks at the door of universal history. What is your
word, ye peoples of the word? The multitude knows it not yet, but powerful voices
issuing from your midst have already disclosed it. Two centuries ago a Croatian
priest announced it with prophetic tongue, and in our own days a bishop of the
same nation has more than once proclaimed it with superb eloquence. The
utterance of the spokesmen of the Western Slays, the great Krishanitch, and the
great Strossmayer, needs only a simple Amen from the Eastern Slays. It is this
Amen that I come to speak in the name of a hundred million Russian Christians, in
full and firm confidence that they will not repudiate me.
Your word, O peoples of the word, is free and universal Theocracy, the true
solidarity of all nations and classes, the application of Christianity to public life,
the Christianizing of politics; freedom for all the oppressed, protection for all the
weak; social justice and good Christian peace. Open to them, therefore, thou Keybearer
of Christ, and may the gate of history be for them and for the whole world
the gate of the Kingdom of God!

PART ONE: THE STATE OF RELIGION
IN RUSSIA AND THE CHRISTIAN EAST

The Russian legend of St. Nicholas and St. Cassian.
Its application to the two separated Churches.

POPULAR Russian legend tells how St. Nicolas and St. Cassian were
once sent from Paradise upon a visit to the Earth. On their journey they
met a poor peasant who had got his wagon, with a load of hay upon it,
stuck deep in the mud and was making fruit1ess efforts to get his horses on.
"Let's go and give the good fellow a hand," said St. Nicolas.
"Not I; I'm keeping out of it," replied St. Cassian, "I don't want to get my coat
dirty."

"Well, wait for me," said St. Nicolas, "or go on without me if you like," and
plunging without hesitation into the mud, he vigorously assisted the peasant in
dragging his wagon out of the rut.

When he had finished the job and caught his companion up, he was all covered
in filth; his coat was torn and soiled and looked like a beggar's rags. St. Peter was
amazed to see him arrive at the gate of Paradise in this condition.

"I say! Who ever got you into that state?" he asked.

St. Nicolas told his story

"And what about you?" asked St. Peter, turning to St. Cassian. "Weren't you
with him in this encounter?"

"Yes, but I don't meddle in things that are no concern of mine, and I was
especially anxious not to get my beautiful clean coat dirty."

"Very well," said St. Peter, "You, St. Nicolas, because you were not afraid of
getting dirty in helping your neighbor out of a difficulty, shall for the future have
two feasts a year, and you shall be reckoned the greatest of saints after me by all
the peasants of Holy Russia. And you, St. Cassian, must be content with having a
nice clean coat; you shall have your feastday in leap-year only, once every four
years."

We may well forgive St. Cassian for his dislike of manual labor and the mud of
the highroad. But he would be quite wrong to condemn his companion for having a
different idea of the duties of saints towards mankind. We may like St. Cassian's
clean and spotless clothes, but since our wagon is still deep in the mud, St. Nicolas
is the one we really need, the stout-hearted saint who is always ready to get to
work and help us.

The Western Church, faithful to the apostolic mission, has not been afraid to
plunge into the mire of history. After having been for centuries the only element of
moral order and intellectual culture among the barbarous peoples of Europe, it
undertook the task not only of the spiritual education of these peoples of
independent spirit and uncivilized instincts, but also of their material government.
In devoting itself to this arduous task, the Papacy, like St. Nicolas in the legend,
thought not so much of the cleanliness of its own appearance as of the urgent needs
of mankind. The Eastern Church, on the other hand, with its solitary asceticism and
its contemplative mysticism, its withdrawal from political life and from all the
social problems which concern mankind as a whole, thought chiefly, like St.
Cassian, of reaching Paradise without a single stain on its clothing. The Western
Church aimed at employing all its powers, divine and human, for the attainment of
a universal goal; the Eastern Church was only concerned with the preservation of
its purity. There is the chief point of difference and the fundamental cause of the
schism between the two Churches.

It is a question of a different ideal of the religious life itself. The religious ideal
of the separated Christian East is not false; it is incomplete. In Eastern
Christendom for the last thousand years, religion has been identified with personal
piety, (note 9) and prayer has been regarded as the one and only religious activity. The
Western Church, without disparaging individual piety as the true germ of all
religion, seeks the development of this germ and its blossoming into a social
activity organized for the glory of God and the universal good of mankind. The
Eastern prays, the Western prays and labors. Which of the two is right?
Jesus Christ founded His visible Church not merely to meditate on Heaven, but
also to labor upon Earth and to withstand the gates of Hell. He did not send His
apostles into the solitude of the desert, but into the world to conquer it and subject
it to the Kingdom which is not of this world, and He enjoined upon them not only
the innocence of doves, but also the wisdom of serpents. If it is merely a question
of preserving the purity of the Christian soul, what is the purpose of all the
Church's social organization and of all those sovereign and absolute powers with
which Christ has armed her in giving her final authority to bind and to loose on
Earth as well as in Heaven?

The monks of the holy mountain of Athos, true representatives of the isolated
Eastern Church, have for centuries spent all their energies in prayer and the
contemplation of the uncreated light of Tabor (note 10). They are perfectly right; prayer and
the contemplation of uncreated things are essential to the Christian life. But can we
allow that this occupation of the soul constitutes the whole Christian life? — for
that is what we must do if we try to put the Orthodox East, with its peculiar
character and special religious tendencies, in the place of the Universal Church.
We have in the East a Church at prayer, but where among us is the Church in
action, asserting itself as a spiritual force absolutely independent of the powers of
this world? Where in the East is the Church of the living God, the Church which in
every generation legislates for mankind, which establishes and develops the
formulation of eternal truth with which to counteract the continually changing
forms of error? Where is the Church which labors to re-mold the whole social life
of the nations in accordance with the Christian ideal, and to guide them towards the
supreme goal of Creation — free and perfect union with the Creator?

The advocates of an exclusive asceticism should remember that the perfect Man
spent only forty days in the wilderness; those who contemplate the light of Tabor
should not forget that that light appeared only once in the earthly life of Christ,
Who proved by His own example that true prayer and true contemplation are
simply a foundation for the life of action. If this great Church, which for centuries
has done nothing but pray, has not prayed in vain, she must show herself a living
Church, acting, struggling, victorious. But we ourselves must will that it be so. We
must, above all, recognize the insufficiency of our traditional religious ideal, and
make a sincere attempt to realize a more complete conception of Christianity.
There is no need to invent or create anything new for this purpose. We merely have
to restore to our religion its Catholic or universal character by recognizing our
oneness with the active part of the Christian world, with the West centralized and
organized for a universal activity and possessing all that we lack. We are not asked
to change our nature as Easterns or to repudiate the specific character of our
religious genius. We have only to recognize unreservedly the elementary truth that
we of the East are but a part of the Universal Church, a part moreover which has
not its center within itself, and that therefore it behooves us to restore the link
between our individual forces upon the circumference and the great universal
center which Providence has placed in the West. There is no question of
suppressing our religious and moral individuality, but rather of crowning it and
inspiring it with a universal and progressive life. The whole of our duty to
ourselves consists simply in recognizing ourselves for what we are in reality, an
organic part of the great body of Christendom, and in affirming our spiritual
solidarity with our Western brethren. This moral act of justice and charity would
be in itself an immense step forward on our part and the essential condition of all
further advance.

St. Cassian need not become a different person or cease to care about keeping
his clothes spotless. He must simply recognize that his comrade has certain
important qualities which he himself lacks, and instead of sulking at this energetic
worker he must frankly accept him as his companion and guide on the earthly
voyage that still lies before them.

The question of the raison d'être of Russia

bUT at this point I am interrupted by the familiar cry of my countrymen.
"Let no one speak to us of our needs, of our shortcomings, least of all of
our duties towards the decadent West! It has had its day! We have no need
of it and no obligation towards it. We have in the East everything that we need. In
(sic) Oriente lux (note 11). The true representative and crowning achievement of
Christianity is Holy Russia. What have we to do with the old Rome in her decay,
when we are ourselves the Rome of the future, the third and last Rome (note 12)? The
Eastern Church has fulfilled her great historic task in Christianizing the Russian
people, that people which has identified itself with Christianity and to which
belongs the whole future of mankind." This view would reduce the ultimate
historical objective of Christianity and the raison d'être of the human race to the
existence of a single nation. But to accept such an assertion would involve the
formal denial of the very notion of a Universal Church. It implies a reversion to
ancient Judaism, with the difference that the unique part played by the Jewish
people in the designs of Providence is attested by the word of God, whereas the
exclusive importance of Russia can only be maintained on the word of certain
Russian propagandists whose inspiration is far from infallible.

Moreover, since the ideas of our inspired patriots on the subject of the grounds
of religious faith are by no means settled or clear, we must get on to more general
ground and examine their claims from a purely natural and human point of view.
For the last forty or fifty years the patriots of Russia have been engaged in the
fanatical repetition, with variations in every key, of one invariable phrase: Russia
is great and has a sublime mission to fulfil in the world. In what exactly this
mission consists and what Russia must do, what we ourselves must do, to fulfil it is
always left undefined. Neither the old Slavophiles nor their present-day
descendants nor M. Katkov himself have said anything definite on that subject (note 13).

They have talked of "light from the East," but it does not appear that this light has
as yet enlightened their understanding or clarified their outlook. We may perhaps
be allowed, therefore, while acknowledging the patriotic sentiments of these
worthy gentlemen, to put to them plainly the question which they attempt to evade,
the great question for our national conscience: How is Russia to justify her
existence in the world?

For centuries, the history of our country was moving towards a single objective,
the formation of a great national monarchy. The union of Ukraine and of a part of
White Russia with Muscovite Russia under the Tsar Alexis was a decisive moment
in this historic work; for that union put an end to the dispute for primacy between
the Russia of the North and that of the South, between Moscow and Kiev, and gave
a real meaning to the title of "Tsar of all the Russias." From that moment there was
no longer any doubt of the success of the arduous task which the archbishops and
princes of Moscow had undertaken since the fourteenth century. And by the logic
of Providence it was the son of this very Tsar Alexis who went beyond the work of
his predecessors and boldly put the further question: What must Russia do now that
she is united and has become a powerful State? To this question the great Emperor
gave the provisional reply that Russia must go to school with the civilized peoples
of the West and assimilate their science and culture. That was indeed all that we
needed for the moment. But this solution, simple and clear as it was, became more
and more inadequate as the young society of Russia made progress in the school of
Europe. The question then arose: What was she to do after her years of
apprenticeship? The reformation of Peter the Great introduced Russia to the
workshop of Europe in order to teach her how to handle all the tools of civilization,
but it ignored those higher principles and ideals which guided the use of these
tools. Consequently, though that reformation gave us the means of asserting
ourse1ves, it did not reveal the ultimate aim of our existence as a nation. If it was
justifiable to ask, What must barbarian Russia do? and if Peter was right in
replying, She must be reformed and civilized; it is no less justifiable to ask, What
must Russia do now that she has been reformed by Peter the Great and his
successors? What is the aim of Russia today?

The Slavophiles must be given credit for having realized the extent of the
problem; but they have done nothing to solve it. Reacting against the nebulous and
barren idealism of Pan-Slavism, harder-headed patriots have in our time declared
that it is not necessary that a nation should entertain a definite ideal or pursue any
higher aim for mankind, but that it is quite enough that it should be independent
and should enjoy institutions suited to its national genius and sufficient power and
prestige to defend its material interests in the affairs of this world; for a good
patriot it is enough to desire this much for his country and to labor to make her rich
and powerful. All of which amounts to saying that nations live by their daily bread
alone; and this is neither true nor desirable. The peoples of history have lived not
merely for themselves, but for the whole of mankind; by imperishable achievements, they have purchased the right to affirm their nationhood. That is the distinctive mark of a great people, and the patriotism which does not realize the price it must pay is a poor patriotism indeed.

No one asks what is the historic mission of the Ashanti or of the Eskimos. But
when a Christian nation as vast and populous as ours, which has existed for a
thousand years and is materially equipped to play a part in world history, asserts its
rank as a great Power and claims an hegemony over other nations of the same race
and a decisive influence in international politics, then it may well be asked what its
real claims are to such a part in history, what principles or ideals it is contributing
to the world, and what it has done or has still to do for the good of mankind as a
whole.

But to answer these questions, we are told, is to anticipate the future. True, if we
were concerned with a nation still in its infancy, the Russia of Kiev in the days of
St. Vladimir, or the Muscovite Russia of Ivan Kalita. But modern Russia, which
for the past two hundred years has played a continuous part on the stage of world
history and which at the beginning of this century measured its strength against the
greater part of Europe — this Russia ought to have some clear consciousness of its
present tendencies and its future aims. Granted that the fulfilment of our historic
mission belongs to the future, yet we must at least have some conception of that
future; there must be in the Russia of to-day the living seed of its future destinies.
Little is achieved by those who are at a loss what to do next. Our ancestors of
the fifteenth century saw clearly the future for which they were striving — the
Empire of all the Russias. It surely cannot be that we, for whom that supreme goal
of their endeavors is already an accomplished fact, have a less clear conception of
our own future than they had of theirs. Nor can we imagine that that future will be
realized without our co-operation in thought and action.

The true Orthodoxy of the Russian people and the pseudo-Orthodoxy of the anti-Catholic theologians

THE distinctively religious character of the Russian people as well as the
mystical tendency exhibited in our philosophy, our literature (note 14) and our arts
seem to indicate for Russia a great religious mission. Moreover, when our
patriots are pressed to state what it is that constitutes the supreme vocation of our
country, or the Russian "idea," as it is called nowadays, they have no choice but to
appeal to religion. According to them, Orthodoxy, or the religion of the Greco-
Russian Church, in contrast to the religious bodies of the West, constitutes the true
basis of our national being. Here, to begin with, is an obvious vicious circle. If we
ask how the separated Eastern Church justifies its existence, we are told: By
having formed the Russian people and provided its spiritual nurture. And when we
enquire how that people justifies its existence, the answer is: By belonging to the
separated Eastern Church. We are brought to this impasse by the difficulty of
really deciding what we mean by this "Orthodoxy" of which we would claim the
monopoly. This difficulty does not exist for those folk who are really orthodox in
all good conscience and in the simplicity of their heart. When questioned
intelligently about their religion, they will tell you that to be Orthodox is to be
baptized a Christian, to wear a cross or some holy image on your breast, to worship
Christ, to pray to the Blessed Virgin most immaculate (note 15) and to all the saints
represented by images and relics, to rest from work on all festivals and to fast in
accordance with traditional custom, to venerate the sacred office of bishops and
priests, and to participate in the holy sacraments and in divine worship. That is the
true Orthodoxy of the Russian people, and it is ours also. But it is not that of our
militant patriots.

It is obvious that true Orthodoxy contains nothing particularist
and can in no way form a national or local attribute separating us in any sense from
the Western peoples; for the greater part of these peoples, the Catholic part, has
precisely the same religious basis that we have. Whatever is holy and sacred for us
is also holy and sacred for them. To indicate only one essential point: not only is
devotion to the Blessed Virgin one of the characteristic features of Catholicism —
generally practiced by Russian Orthodoxy, (note 16) but there are even special miraculous
images venerated in common by Roman Catholics and Russian Orthodox (for
example, the holy Virgin of Czestochowa in Poland). If "piety" is indeed the
distinctive characteristic of our national genius, the fact that the chief emblems of
that piety are common to us and the Westerns compels us to recognize our oneness
with them in what we regard as the most essential thing of all. As regards the
profound contrast between the contemplative piety of the East and the active
religion of the Westerns, this contrast, being purely human and subjective, has
nothing to do with the divine objects of our faith and worship; so far from being a
good reason for schism, it should rather bring the two great parts of the Christian
world into a closer and mutually complementary union.

But under the influence of that evil principle which is constantly at work on
Earth, this difference has been abused and twisted into a division. At the moment
when Russia was receiving baptism from Constantinople, the Greeks, though still
in formal communion with Rome after the temporary schism of Photius, (note 17) were
already strongly imbued with national particularism which was fostered by the
contentious spirit of the clergy, the political ambitions of the emperors, and the
disputes of the theologians. The result was that the pearl of the Gospel purchased
by the Russian people in the person of St. Vladimir was all covered with the dust
of Byzantium. The bulk of the nation was uninterested in the ambitions and hatreds
of the clergy and understood nothing of the theological quibbles which were their
fruit; the bulk of the nation received and preserved the essence of orthodox
Christianity pure and simple, that is to say, faith and the life of religion formed by
divine grace and expressed in works of piety and charity. But the clergy, recruited
in the early days from the Greeks, and the theologians accepted the disastrous
inheritance of Photius and Cerularius as an integral part of the true religion.
This pseudo-Orthodoxy of our theological schools, which has nothing in
common with the faith of the Universal Church or the piety of the Russian people,
contains no positive element; it consists merely of arbitrary negations produced
and maintained by controversial prejudice:

"God the Son does not contribute in the divine order to the procession of the
Holy Spirit."

"The Blessed Virgin was not immaculate from the first moment of her
existence" (note 18).

"Primacy of jurisdiction does not belong to the see of Rome and the Pope has
not the dogmatic authority of a Pastor and Doctor of the Universal Church."

Such are the principal negations which we shall have to examine in due course.
For our present purpose it is enough to observe in the first place that these
negations have received no sort of religious sanction, and do not rest on any
ecclesiastical authority accepted by all the Orthodox as binding and infallible. No
oecumenical council has condemned or even passed judgment on the Catholic
doctrines anathematized by our controversialists; and when we are offered this new
kind of negative theology as the true doctrine of the Universal Church, we can see
in it only an extravagant imposture originating either in ignorance or in bad faith.
In the second place, it is obvious that this false Orthodoxy is no more adequate
than true Orthodoxy as a positive basis for the "Russian idea." Let us try to
substitute real values for this unknown quantity called "Orthodoxy" over which a
pseudo-patriotic press is always working up an artificial enthusiasm. According to
you the ideal essence of Russia is Orthodoxy, and this Orthodoxy, which you
especially contrast with Catholicism, amounts in your view simply to the
divergences between the two professions of faith. The real religious basis which is
common to us and the Westerns seems to have no more than a secondary interest
for you; it is the differences between us to which you are really attached. Very
well, then, substitute these specific differences for the vague term "Orthodoxy" and
declare openly that the religious ideal of Russia consists in denying the Filioque,
the Immaculate Conception, and the authority of the Pope. It is the last point that
you are chiefly concerned with. The others, you know well, are only pretexts; the
Sovereign Pontiff is your real bugbear. All your "Orthodoxy," all your "Russian
idea" is, at bottom, then, simply a national protest against the universal power of
the Pope. But in the name of what? Here begins the real difficulty of your position.

This bitter protest against the monarchy of the Church, if it is to win men's minds
and hearts, should be justified by some great positive principle. You should
confront the form of theocratic government of which you disapprove with another
and better form. And that is exactly what you cannot do. What kind of
ecclesiastical constitution would you confer upon the Western peoples? Are you
going to extol conciliar government and talk to them of oecumenical councils?
Medice, cura teipsum. Why has not the East set up a true oecumenical council in
opposition to those of Trent or the Vatican? How are we to explain this helpless
silence on the part of Truth when faced with the solemn self-assertion of Error?
Since when have the guardians of Orthodoxy become mean-spirited curs that can
only bark from behind a wall? In point of fact, while the great assemblies of the
Church continue to fill a prominent place in the teaching and life of Catholicism, it
is the Christian East which has for a thousand years been deprived of this
important feature of the Universal Church, and our best theologians, such as
Philaret of Moscow, themselves admit that an oecumenical council is impossible
for the Eastern Church as long as she remains separated from the West. But it is the
easiest thing in the world for our self-styled Orthodox to confront the actual
councils of the Catholic Church with a council that can never take place and to
maintain their cause with weapons that they have lost and under a flag of which
they have been robbed.

The Papacy is a positive principle, an actual institution, and if Eastern Christians
believe this principle to be false and this institution to be evil, it is for them to
create the organization which they desire to see in the Church. Instead of doing so,
they refer us to antiquarian traditions, though they admit that they can have no
relevance to the present situation. Our anti-Catholics have indeed good reason for
going so far afield in search of support for their thesis; the fact is that they dare not
expose themselves to the ridicule of the whole world by declaring the synod of St.
Petersburg or the patriarchate of Constantinople to be the real representative of the
Universal Church. But how can they talk of appealing, after all this time, to
oecumenical councils when they are obliged to admit that they are no longer
feasible? Such beating of the air is only a complete revelation of the weakness of
this anti-Catholic Orthodoxy. If the normal organization and proper constitution of
the Universal Church requires oecumenical councils, it is obvious that the Orthodox
East, fatally deprived of this essential organ of Church life, possesses no longer a
true Church constitution or a regular Church government. During the first three
centuries of Christianity, the Church, cemented by the blood of the martyrs,
convoked no world-wide councils because she had no need of them; the Eastern
Church of to-day, paralyzed and dismembered, is unable to convoke them though
she feels her need of them. Thus we are placed in a dilemma: either we must admit,
with our extreme sectarians, that since a certain date the Church has lost her divine
character and no longer actually exists upon Earth; or else, to avoid, so dangerous a
conclusion, we must recognize that the Universal Church, having no organs of
government or representation in the East, possesses them in her Western half. This
will involve the recognition of a historical truth now admitted even by the
Protestants, namely that the present-day Papacy is not an arbitrary usurpation, but a
legitimate development of principles which were in full force before the division of
the Church and against which that Church never protested. But if the Papacy is
recognized as a legitimate institution, what becomes of the "Russian idea" and the
privilege of national Orthodoxy? If we cannot base our religious future on the
official Church, perhaps we can find deeper foundations for it in the Russian
people.

Russian dissent. relative truth of the Raskol. Mgr. Philaret of Moscow his conception of Universal Church

IF we wish to state Orthodoxy in terms of the Russian national ideal, logic
compels us to seek the true expression of that ideal among our native sects and
not within the domain of the official Church, whose origin is Greek and whose
organization, given her by Peter the Great, is Teutonic. Deprived of any specific
principle or practical independence, this "Ministry of the Spiritual Affairs of the
Orthodox Communion" can only reproduce the imperial clericalism of Byzantium
modified by the easy-going good nature of our own people and the Teutonic
bureaucracy of our administration. Apart from the particular causes which
produced the Raskol, (note 19) and which have only a historical importance, it may be
confidently asserted that the reason for the persistence of this schism within the
nation is the obvious inadequacy of Russian Church government coupled with its
exaggerated pretensions. This Church "established" by the Tsar, though totally
subservient to the secular power and destitute of all inner vitality, none the less
makes use of the hierarchical idea to assume over the people an absolute authority
which by right belongs only to the independent Universal Church founded by
Christ. The emptiness of these claims, sensed rather than consciously recognized,
has driven one section of our dissenters to fruitless attempts at constituting a
Russian Orthodox Church independent of the State, while another and larger
section has quite frankly declared that the true Church has completely disappeared
from the world since the year 1666, and that we are living under the spiritual rule
of Antichrist, resident at St. Petersburg. It is plain why the advocates of the
"Russian idea" take good care not to look too closely into the Raskol, nor to seek
this elusive "idea" in that quarter. A doctrine which affirms that the Russian
Church and monarchy are subject to the absolute rule of Antichrist and which
postpones all hope of a better state of affairs to the end of the world, obviously
does not harmonize very well with an extravagant patriotism which represents
Russia in her present condition as the second Israel and the chosen people of the
future.

Nevertheless, it is of interest to note that it is precisely those who would
have Russia undertake a religious mission all her own, namely the Slavophiles,
who are compelled to ignore or to depreciate the one historical phenomenon in
which the religious genius of the Russian people has shown a certain originality.
On the other hand, in some of our liberal and radical "Westernizing" (note 20) circles, our
national Protestantism, in spite of the barbarous forms it assumes, finds ready
champions who imagine that they discern in it the promise of a better future for the
Russian people. We ourselves, having no reason either to belittle or to overestimate
this typical phenomenon of our religious history, are able to view it more
objectively. We do not underrate the great part played in the rise of the Raskol by
the profoundest ignorance, ultra-democratic tendencies, and the spirit of revolt. We
shall not, therefore, look to it for any higher truth or any positive religious ideal.
Nevertheless, we are bound to note that there has always been a spark of the divine
fire in this crude and even senseless incitement of the passions of the mob. There is
in it a burning thirst for religious truth, a compelling need for a true and living
Church. Our national Protestantism aims its shafts at a partial and imperfect
manifestation of ecclesiastical government and not at the principle of the visible
Church. Even the most advanced section of our "old believers" regard an actual
organized Church as so necessary that, because they are robbed of it, they believe
themselves to be already under the rule of Antichrist. Allowing for the ignorance
which leads them to mistake Russia for the whole world, there is to be found at the
bottom of all these queer errors the idea or the axiom of a Church independent of
the State and closely bound up with the whole intimate social life of the people —
a free, powerful and living Church. And if our dissenters see the official Church,
whether Russian or Greek, without independence or vitality, and declare that
therefore she is not the true Church of Christ, they are at least consistent in their
error.

The negative truth implied in the Raskol remains unassailable. Neither the
bloody persecutions of past generations, nor the oppression of a modern
bureaucracy, nor the official hostility of our clergy has done anything to meet the
unanswerable contention that there exists no truly spiritual government in the
Greco-Russian Church. But this is as far as the truth of our national Protestantism
goes. As soon as the "old believers" abandon this simple denial and claim to have
discovered some outlet for their religious instincts or to have realized their ideal of
the Church, they fall into obvious contradictions and absurdities which make them
an easy target for their opponents. It is not difficult for the latter to meet the
Popovtsy (note 21) by proving that a religious society which has been for generations
deprived of the episcopate and which has only partially recovered this fundamental
institution by entirely uncanonical proceedings cannot be the genuine continuation
of the ancient Church and the sole guardian of the Orthodox tradition. It is no less
easy to establish in answer to the Bespopovtsy (note 22) the proposition that the reign of
Antichrist cannot be of indefinite length, and that logically these dissenters should
repudiate not only the Church of the present day but also that of former times
which, in their opinion, was destroyed in the year of grace 1666; for a Church
against which the gates of Hell have prevailed cannot have been the true Church of
Christ.

The great historical importance of the Raskol, with its thousands of martyrs, is
the witness which it bears to the depth of religious sentiment among the Russian
people and to the lively interest aroused in them by the theocratic conception of the
Church. If it is, on the one hand, a matter for great joy that the majority of the
populace has remained faithful to the official Church which, despite the absence of
any lawful Church government,(note 23) has at least preserved the apostolic succession and
the validity of the sacraments, it would, on the other hand, have been deplorable
had the entire Russian people been content with this official Church, such as it is;
that would be a convincing proof that there was no religious future to be hoped for.
The vehement and persistent protest of these millions of peasants gives us an
earnest of the future regeneration of our Church life. But the essentially negative
character of this religious movement is a sufficient proof that the Russian people,
just like every other human power left to its own resources, is incapable of
realizing its highest ideal. All these aspirations and tentative movements towards a
true Church indicate no more than a passive capacity for religion which needs an
act of moral regeneration coming from a higher source than the purely national and
popular element if it is to be effectively realized in a concrete organic form.

We may grant that the official Church ruled by a civil servant is nothing but a
State institution, a minor branch of the bureaucratic administration; but the Church
conceived by our dissenters would at the most be a merely national and democratic
Church. It is the idea of the Universal Church which is lacking on both sides. The
article of the Creed concerning the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church,
though sung at every Mass and recited at every Baptism, remains as much a dead
letter for the "old Orthodox" as for the "ruling Church." For the former, the Church
is the Russian nation — in its entirety up to the time of the patriarch Nikon, and
since his time in that section of it which has remained faithful to the old national
rite. As for the theologians of the official Church, their ideas on the subject are as
vague as they are inconsistent. But the feature which is constant among all their
variations and common to them all, in spite of their differences, is the absence of a
positive faith in the Universal Church. Here, to confine ourselves to a single writer
who is worth a host of others, is the theory of the Church expounded by
Archbishop Philaret, the able Metropolitan of Moscow, in one of his most
important works (note 23):

"The true Christian Church includes all the particular Churches which confess
Jesus Christ 'come in the flesh.' The doctrine of all these religious societies is
fundamentally the same divine truth; but it may be mingled with the opinions and
errors of men. Hence, there is in the teaching of these individual Churches a
distinction of greater and less purity. The doctrine of the Eastern Church is purer
than the rest, indeed it may be recognized as completely pure, since it does not link
the divine truth to any human opinion. However, as each religious communion
makes exactly the same claim to perfect purity of faith and doctrine, it does not
behoove us to judge others, but rather to leave the final judgment to the Spirit of
God Who guides the Churches."

Such is the opinion of Mgr. Philaret and the majority of the Russian clergy agree
with him. The breadth and conciliatory nature of this view cannot conceal its
essential defects. The principle of unity and universality in the Church only
extends, it would seem, to the common ground of Christian faith, namely the
dogma of the Incarnation. This truly fundamental faith in Jesus Christ, the God-
Man, is not regarded as the living and fruitful seed of a further development; the
theologian of Moscow would rather see in it the final unity of the Christian world
and the only unity which he considers necessary. He is content to ignore the
divergences that exist in the Christian religion and declares himself satisfied with
the purely theoretical unity thus obtained. It is a unity based on a broad but hollow
indifference, implying no organic bond and requiring no effective fellowship
between particular Churches. The Universal Church is reduced to a logical
concept. Its parts are real, but the whole is nothing but a subjective abstraction.
Even if it has not always been thus, if the Church in her entirety was once a living
body, yet that body is today a prey to death and dissolution; it is only the existence
of the separate parts that is actually manifest before our eyes, while their
substantial unity has vanished into the realm of the unseen world.

This idea of a "dead Church" is not merely the logical conclusion which we
believe to be implicit in the propositions advanced by our renowned theologian; he
has labored to describe to us the Universal Church as he conceived it under the
form of a lifeless body made up of heterogeneous and distinct elements. He has
even been inspired to apply to the Church of Christ and to the stages of its
historical existence the vision of the great idol recorded in the book of Daniel. The
golden head of the idol is the early Christian Church; the chest and arms of silver
signify "the Church growing in strength and extent" (the age of the martyrs); the
brazen stomach is "the Church in prosperity" (the triumph of Christianity and the
age of the great doctors). Finally, the Church of the present, "the Church in its
divided and fragmentary condition," is represented by the two feet with their toes,
in which clay is mingled with iron by the hands of men. To accept this ill-omened
symbol seriously would mean the denial of the one, infallible and impregnable
Church of God founded to last for all generations. The author perceived as much,
and in subsequent editions of his work he erased the whole of this allegory; but he
found nothing to put in its place. It must, however, be confessed that in limiting the
application of this symbol to the official Greco-Russian Church the distinguished
representative of that institution displayed both acumen and impartiality. Iron and
clay mixed by the hand of man — violence and impotence, and an artificial unity
which needs only a shock to reduce it to powder: no simile could better depict the
actual condition of our established Church.

Critical observations on the Russian Slavophiles and their ideas concerning the Church

ARCHBISHOP Philaret inadvertently laid bare the real condition of the
separated Eastern Church. The Slavophiles have attempted to conceal her
nakedness under the transparent veil of an idealistic theory of the Church
"in its free and living unity founded on divine grace and Christian charity." Their
doctrine, in so far as it envisages the Church in general terms as a moral organism,
is perfectly true, and they must be given credit for having insisted in theory upon
its essential and indivisible unity which has been so completely ignored by our
official theologians and our dissenters. On the other hand, those who consider that
the Slavophiles, in expounding the positive conception of the Universal Church
confine themselves too much to vague generalizations, will find this same
conception of the Church much more fully and clearly developed by certain
Catholic writers, especially by the famous Möhler in his admirable work, Die
Symbolik der christlichen Kirche (note 24).

The Church is One is the title given by Khomyakov, the leader of the Slavophile
group in Russia, to a small volume of dogmatic theology which, though
insignificant in itself, deserves notice as the only attempt on the part of the
Slavophiles to fix and systematize their theological ideas. The unity of the Church
is determined by the unity of the divine Grace which, if it is to work within men
and transform them into a Church of God, demands from them fidelity to a
common tradition, brotherly charity and that free consent of the individual
conscience which is the definite guarantee of the truth of their faith. It is on this
last point especially that the Slavophiles insist in their definition of the true Church
as "the spontaneous, inward synthesis of unity and freedom in charity."

What objection can there be to such an ideal? Is there any Roman Catholic who,
on being shown the whole of mankind or a considerable section of it inspired with
divine love and brotherly charity, having but one heart and one soul, and abiding
thus in a free and wholly interior unity — is there, I ask, any Roman Catholic who
would wish to impose upon such a society the external and binding jurisdiction of
a public religious authority? Do any papists believe that the Seraphim and
Cherubim need a Pope to govern them? And, on the other hand, is there any
Protestant who, if he saw the actual attainment of final truth through "the
perfection of charity," would still insist on the exercise of private judgment?

The perfectly free and inward union of men with the Godhead and with one
another — that is the supreme goal, the haven towards which we steer our course.
Our Western brethren are not agreed among themselves as to the best method of
reaching it. Catholics believe that it is safer to cross the sea together in a large and
seaworthy vessel built by a famous master, navigated by a skilful pilot and
equipped with all that is necessary for the voyage. Protestants, on the contrary,
claim that it is for each one to construct a cockle-shell to his own liking that he
may pursue his uncertain course with greater freedom. This latter opinion, however
mistaken, is at least arguable. But what is to be said to these self-styled Orthodox
who maintain that the best way of reaching harbor is to pretend that you are there
already, and who think that in this respect they have the advantage of their Western
brethren? The latter, it must be admitted, have never suspected that the great
problem of religion was capable of so simple a solution.

The Church is one and indivisible; yet it may at the same time comprise various
spheres, not to be separated but to be clearly distinguished from one another;
otherwise, it would be impossible to understand the past or present history of
religion or to do anything for the religious future of mankind. Absolute perfection
can only belong to that higher part of the Church which has already once for all
appropriated and assimilated the fullness of the divine grace — the Church
triumphant or the realm of Glory. Midway between this divine sphere and the
purely earthly elements of visible humanity stands the divine-human organism of
the Church, invisible in its mystical power and visible in its present manifestation,
sharing equally in the perfection of Heaven and in the conditions of material
existence. This is the Church, properly speaking, and it is with her that we are
concerned. She is not perfect in the absolute sense, but she must possess all the
necessary means of secure progress towards the supreme ideal — the perfect unity
of the whole creation in God — in spite of countless obstacles and difficulties,
through the struggles, temptations and weaknesses of men.

Here below, the Church has not the perfect unity of the heavenly kingdom, but
nevertheless she must have a certain real unity, a bond at once organic and spiritual
which constitutes her a concrete institution, a living body and a moral individual.
Though she does not include the whole of mankind in an actual material sense, she
is nevertheless universal in so far as she cannot be confined exclusively to any one
nation or group of nations, but must have an international center from which to
spread throughout the whole universe. The Church here below, though she is
founded on the revelation of God and is the guardian of the deposit of faith, does
not therefore enjoy absolute and immediate knowledge of all truths; but she is
infallible, that is to say, she cannot be mistaken when, at a given moment, she
defines such and such a religious or moral truth, the explicit knowledge of which
has become necessary to her. The Church on Earth is not absolutely free, since s
he is subject to the conditions of finite existence; but she must be sufficiently
independent to be able to carry on a constant and active struggle against the powers
of the enemy and to prevent the gates of Hell from prevailing against her.

Such is the true Church on Earth, the Church which, in spite of the imperfection
of her human element, has received from God the right, the power and all the
required means to raise and guide mankind towards its appointed end. Were she
not one and universal, she could not serve as the foundation of the positive unity of
all peoples, which is her chief mission. Were she not infallible, she could not guide
mankind in the true way; she would be a blind leader of the blind. Finally, were
she not independent, she could not fulfil her duty towards society; she would
become the instrument of the powers of this world and would completely fail in
her mission.

The essential and indispensable characteristics of the true Church are, it seems,
settled and clear enough. Nevertheless, our modern Orthodox, after confusing the
divine and the earthly aspects of the Church in their nebulous reasonings, are quite
prepared to identify this muddled ideal with the present-day Eastern Church, the
Greco-Russian Church as we see it. They affirm it to be the one and only Church
of God, the true Universal Church, and they regard other communions as nothing
but anti-Christian associations. Thus, while accepting in theory the idea of the
Universal Church, the Slavophiles deny it in fact and reduce the worldwide
character of Christianity to one particular Church which in other respects is far
from corresponding to the ideal which they themselves uphold. According to their
notion, as we have seen, the true Church is "the organic synthesis of freedom and
unity in charity," and it is in the Greco-Russian Church, they say, that we are to
look for this synthesis! Let us try to take them seriously and see what there is in the
idea.

Religious freedom and ecclesiastical freedom

IN the sphere of religion and of the Church, two very different things may be
understood by the word "freedom:" first, the independence of the ecclesiastical
body, both the clergy and the faithful, in relation to the external power of the
State, and secondly, the independence of individuals in matters of religion, that is
to say, the concession to everyone of the right to belong openly to such and such a
religious body, to pass freely from one of these bodies to another, or to belong to
none and to profess with impunity any kind of religious belief or opinion whether
positive or negative (note 25). To avoid confusion, we will call the former "ecclesiastical
freedom" and the latter "religious freedom" (note 26). Every Church takes for granted a
certain number of common beliefs, and anyone who does not share these beliefs
cannot enjoy the same community of rights as the believers. The power to take
action by spiritual means against unfaithful members and definitely to exclude
them from the community is one of the essential attributes of ecclesiastical
freedom. Religious freedom does not come within the particular province of the
Church except indirectly; it is only the temporal power of the State which can
directly admit or restrict the right of its subjects to profess openly all their
individual religious beliefs. The Church can only exert a moral influence to induce
the State to be more or less tolerant. No Church ever regarded with indifference the
propagation of strange beliefs which threatened to rob her of her faithful children.
But the question remains: What weapons should the Church employ against her
enemies? Ought she to confine herself to spiritual means of persuasion, or should
she have recourse to the State and avail herself of its material weapons, constraint
and persecution? The two methods of struggle against the enemies of the Church
are not mutually exclusive. Those who have the necessary equipment can
distinguish between intellectual error and bad faith and, while bringing persuasion
to bear on the former, can guard against the latter by depriving it of the means of
doing harm (note 27). But there is one essential condition if the spiritual struggle is to be
even possible, namely, that the Church herself should enjoy ecclesiastical freedom
and should not be reduced to subservience to the State. A man who has his hands
tied cannot defend himself by his own efforts, but is compelled to rely on the
assistance of others. A State Church totally subject to the secular power and owing
its continued existence to the favor of the latter has renounced its spiritual authority
and can only be defended successfully by material weapons (note 28).

In past times the Roman Catholic Church, which has always enjoyed a measure
of ecclesiastical freedom and has never been a State Church, has encountered her
enemies with the spiritual weapons of instruction and preaching and at the same
time has authorized Catholic States to use the temporal sword in the name of
religious unity. Today there are no longer any Catholic States; the State in the West
is atheist, and the Roman Church continues to exist and to prosper in sole reliance
upon the spiritual sword, upon her moral authority and upon the free proclamation
of her principles. But how can a hierarchy that has committed itself to the temporal
power, and thereby admitted its own lack of spiritual power, exert that moral
authority which it has renounced? Our present established Church has espoused the
interests of the State to the exclusion of all else, in order to receive in return the
guarantee of its existence against the menace of dissent. Since the aim is a purely
material one, the means are bound to be of the same character. The measures of
constraint and violence prescribed by the Imperial Penal Code are in the last resort
the only weapons of defense with which our "State Orthodoxy" can meet either
dissent at home or religious bodies from without which would dispute its authority
over the souls of our people. If, in recent times, the representatives of the clergy
have made certain attempts to counter the sectarians by means of semi-public
discussions, (note 29) the lack of good faith which is only too evident in these conferences
(in which one side is bound to be in the wrong whatever happens, and is able to say
only what its opponents permit) has merely had the effect of showing up the moral
impotence of an established Church which is too accommodating to the powers
that be to win respect and too ruthless in its spiritual claims to win affection. And
yet this is the Church that is to exemplify for us the free union of human
consciences in the spirit of charity!

The Slavophiles, in their anti-Catholic propaganda, have labored to confuse
ecclesiastical with religious freedom. Since the Catholic Church has not always
been tolerant, and since she does not admit the principle of indifference in religious
matters, it is only too easy to declaim against the despotism of Rome without
mentioning the great prerogative of ecclesiastical freedom which Catholicism
alone of all Christian communions has always maintained. But when it comes to
our own case, nothing is gained by the confusion of these two freedoms since it is
clear that we possess neither. No one has expounded this melancholy truth with
greater power or conviction than the late I. Aksakov, the last notable representative
of the old school of Slavophiles. We need not quote more than a few outstanding
passages from his writings (note 31).


I. S. Aksakov on the official Church in Russia

THE general aide-de-camp's shoulder-knots (Achselband) with which Mgr.
Ireneus, archbishop of Pskov and member of the Holy Synod, was
decorated in the reign of Paul I are a symbol of the relations between
Church and State in Russia. It should cause no surprise to see this secular, not to
say military, decoration upon the archbishop's cassock; it merely proves that the
fundamental conception of our ecclesiastical constitution has been consistently
developed ever since the time of Peter the Great" (note 32).

"As is well known, the Russian Church is governed by an administrative council
called a Spiritual Conclave or Holy Synod, whose members are nominated by the
Emperor and are presided over by a civil or military official, the High Procurator
of the Holy Synod, who has complete control of the government of the Church.
The dioceses, or eparchies, are nominally ruled by bishops nominated by the Head
of the State on the recommendation of the Synod, that is, of the High Procurator
who may subsequently depose them at pleasure.

"The various degrees in the clerical hierarchy have been recorded in the List of
Ranks and made to correspond exactly with the various military grades. A
metropolitan is equivalent to a marshal ('full general' according to the Russian
expression), an archbishop to a divisional general (or 'lieutenant-general), and a
bishop to a brigade general (or 'major-general'). Priests may, with a little keenness,
reach the rank of colonel. Paul I was only being consistent in bestowing military
decorations on the dignitaries of the Church" (note 33).

"Are such things unimportant details or matters of purely external significance?
On the contrary, it is these outward features that reflect the inner condition of our
Church. Enrolled in the service of the State, the servants of the altar regard
themselves as the employees and agents of the secular power. If the latter rewards
the services of the clergy with lay decorations, it is because the clergy themselves
covet these rewards (note 34). The Synod of St. Petersburg, from its earliest years, insisted
upon its character as an imperial institution and never failed to quote the temporal
power as the true source of its authority. In all its early official acts, it repeats over
and over again that 'command has been given' (poveleno) by the sovereign to
everyone, 'to persons of every rank, ecclesiastics and laity, to regard the Synod as
an important and powerful body' and in no way to disparage 'the dignity bestowed
upon it by His Majesty the Tsar.' It is easy to see that the element of temporal
authority from which the Synod thought to draw its strength was bound inevitably
to prevail over every other element in its composition and to dominate completely
this hybrid institution which, though declaring itself to be an organ of the secular
power, none the less claimed the authority of an ecclesiastical council (note 35). The dignity
bestowed upon it by His Majesty the Tsar was to be disparaged by no one —
excepting His Majesty. And it was thus that the High Procurator Yakovlev
obtained an imperial order severely forbidding the Synod to carry on direct
correspondence with anyone whatsoever; all communications ('every document'
according to the Russian expression) concerning Church affairs were to be
transmitted to the Procurator.

"Thus, our Church on its administrative side has the appearance of a kind of
huge bureau or chancellery which brings to the task of feeding Christ's flock all
the methods of German bureaucracy with all its inherent official insincerity (note 36).
When once the government of the Church is organized as a department of the secular
administration and her ministers are reckoned as civil servants, there is little to
prevent the Church herself from being transformed into an agency of the secular
power and undisguisedly entering the service of the State. With 'the rights and
privileges of fiscal administration (kazna)' which Russian law grants to the
Established Church, the fiscal (kazenny) element has penetrated deep into her life.
Outwardly all that was done was to introduce the necessary discipline into the
Church; actually, she was robbed of her soul. The ideal of a truly spiritual
administration was replaced by that of a purely formal and external discipline. It
was not a question merely of the secular power, but principally of the secular way
of thinking which found its way into the heart of our Church administration and
gained such a hold upon the minds and souls of our clergy that they have well nigh
lost all notion of the true and living meaning of the Church's mission" (note 37).
This statement is supported by a whole collection of tracts and proposals for
Church reform sent to Aksakov by the "intelligentsia and progressives" among our
clergy and all without exception marked by the same anti-religious secularism (note 38).
"Some suggest that the enthusiasm of preachers should be revived by a new system
of official rewards in the shape of special decorations. Others insist that the State
must formally guarantee the lower clergy protection against the power of the
bishops. Others believe that our religious future depends upon an increase in the
ecclesiastical revenues; they would therefore have the State grant the Churches the
monopoly of certain branches of industry. Some even suggest the introduction of a
scale of charges for the administration of the holy sacraments. . . . Some go so far
as to assert that our religious life is not sufficiently regulated by the government,
and they demand a new code of laws and rules for the Church. And yet in the
present Imperial Code there are more than a thousand articles regulating the
supervision of the Church by the State and defining the duties of the police in the
sphere of religious belief and practice. The secular administration is declared by
our Code to be the upholder of the dogmas of the established religion and the
guardian of good discipline in the holy Church." We see this guardian, with sword
raised, ready to deal sternly with any offence against this Orthodoxy which owes
its establishment not so much to the aid of the Holy Spirit as to that of the penal
laws of the Russian Empire (note 39).

"The High Procurator of the Synod, as the responsible head of the Church,
presents to the Emperor an annual report on the state of that institution. In form
and style there is no difference between this report and those of other ministries,
for instance the Ministry of Transport. Its contents are divided and subdivided in
the same way; only instead of such titles as 'Highways,' 'Railways,' 'Navigable
Rivers,' the report of the High Procurator contains the headings: 'Maintenance and
spread of the faith,' 'Pastoral activity,' 'Manifestations of religious feeling, of
devotion to the sacred person of His Majesty,' etc" (note 40). The report for the year 1866,
analyzed by Aksakov, concludes in the following characteristic manner: "The
Russian Church, infinitely indebted for her prosperity to the august solicitude of
the Sovereign, has embarked upon a new year of her existence with renewed
strength and greater promise for the future" (note 41).

The Church has renounced her ecclesiastical freedom; and the State in return has
guaranteed her existence and her position as the established Church by suppressing
religious freedom throughout Russia. "Where there is no living inward unity," says
Aksakov, "outward uniformity can only be maintained by violence and
deception" (note 42). These are harsh words from a patriotic Russian; but they are none the
less true. The precarious and uncertain unity of our Church rests upon nothing but
deception and violence practiced by, or at least under the ægis of, the government.
From the forged decrees of a fictitious council against an imaginary heretic (note 43) up to
the recent falsifications in the translation of the decrees of the OEcumenical
Councils published by the Ecclesiastical Academy of Kazan, the whole activity of
our Church, both in propaganda and in defense, is simply a series of deceptions
carried out in complete security, thanks to the watchful protection of the
ecclesiastical censorship which forestalls every attempt at exposure. As for the use
of violence in religious matters, it is recognized in theory and developed in detail
in our Penal Code. Any person born in the established Church or converted to
Orthodoxy who embraces another religion, even though it is Christian, incurs a
criminal charge and must be tried before the courts on the same footing as
counterfeiters and highwaymen. Whoever induces anyone to leave the established
Church, even if only by persuasion, without any constraint or violence, is deprived
of civil rights and deported to Siberia or thrown into prison. Such severity is by no
means a dead letter with us; Aksakov had the opportunity of observing it at work in
the cruel persecution of a Protestant sect in Southern Russia.

"To stifle with imprisonment the thirst for religion, for lack of anything
wherewith to satisfy it, to answer with imprisonment the genuine desire for faith
and the questionings aroused in the religious mind, to use imprisonment as an
argument for the truth of Orthodoxy — this is to undermine the whole of our
religion and to surrender to victorious Protestantism. Such weapons of defense and
such methods of establishing orthodox truth must soon supersede and destroy all
pastoral zeal, and must stamp out every spark of true religion. The stringent orders
issued by the ecclesiastical officials compelling the clergy under threat of fines to
establish schools can never introduce real popular religious instruction; and we
hope that it will not seem too sceptical to suggest that the recent ukase which
grants to priests engaged in the work of popular education the right to the Cross of
St. Anne of the 3rd class and to the rank of knighthood will not succeed in raising
up new Apostles" (note 44).

And yet it is a fact that the penal laws are absolutely essential to the
maintenance of this "established Church." The sincerest champions of that Church,
such as the historian Pogodin, whom our author quotes, admit that, if religious
freedom were once introduced into Russia, half the peasants would go over to the
Raskol and half the upper classes, especially the women, would become Catholics.
"What does such an admission imply?" asks Aksakov. "That half the members of
the Orthodox Church belong to her only in name; that they are kept within her fold
only by the fear of temporal penalties. This is what our Church has come to! It is a
dishonorable, depressing and monstrous state of affairs, this riot of sacrilege in the
sacred precincts, of hypocrisy ousting truth, of terror in place of love, of corruption
under the guise of outward order, of bad faith in violent defense of the true faith!
What a denial, within the Church herself, of her own vital principles, of all that
justifies her existence, that falsehood and unbelief should reign where everything
should live and move and have its being in truth and faith! And yet the gravest
danger is not that the evil has spread among the faithful, but that it has been
legalized, that this state of affairs in the Church has been established by statute and
that such an anomaly should be the inevitable outcome of the standard accepted by
the State and by the whole of our society (note 45).

"Generally speaking, among us in Russia, in Church affairs as in all other
matters it is outward decorum that must be preserved at all costs; and with that our
love for the Church, our idle love, our indolent faith, is satisfied. We readily shut
our eyes and, in our childish fear of scandal, attempt to blind ourselves and
everyone else to all that great evil which, under the veil of respectability, is eating
like a cancer into the living core of our religious organism (note 46). Nowhere else is truth
regarded with such horror as in the domain of our Church administration; nowhere
else is there greater servility than in our spiritual hierarchy; nowhere is the
'salutary falsehood' practiced on a larger scale than in the place where all
falsehood should be held in detestation. Nowhere else are there admitted on
grounds of policy so many compromises which lower the dignity of the Church
and rob her of her authority. The root cause of it all is the lack of a sufficient faith
in the power of truth (note 47) And the most serious part of it is that, though we are aware
of all these evils in our Church, we have come to terms with them and are content
to live at peace. But such a shameful peace, such dishonorable compromise, can
never promote the true peace of the Church; in the cause of truth it signifies defeat,
if not betrayal (note 48).

"Our Church, if we are to take the word of her champions, is a huge but
wayward flock, shepherded by the officers of the law who with the lash force the
straying sheep into the fold. Does such a picture correspond to the true conception
of Christ's Church? If not, she is no longer the Church of Christ. What is she, then?
A State institution which can be used in the interests of the State for moral
discipline. But it must not be forgotten that the Church is a domain the moral basis
of which admits of no change, a domain in which disloyalty to the very principle of
her life cannot go unpunished, in which a lie is a lie not to men but to God. A
Church that is unfaithful to Christ's covenant is the most barren and anomalous
phenomenon in the world; she stands condemned already by the word of God (note 49). A
Church which is a department of State, that is, of a 'kingdom of this world,' has
renounced her mission and will inevitably share the fate of all the kingdoms of this
world (note 50). She has no intrinsic reason for existence; she has doomed herself to
impotence and death (note 51).

"The Russian conscience is not free in Russia; religious thought remains
paralyzed; the 'abomination of desolation' stands in the holy place; the breath of
mortality banishes the life-giving Spirit; the sword of the Spirit, which is the word
of God, is left to rust and its place is taken by the sword of the State, while in the
Church's precincts are seen, not the angels of God watching over the faithful in
their going out and coming in, but the officers of the law and inspectors of police
— as guardians of Orthodoxy and directors of our consciences" (note 52).

We have not forgotten that the Slavophiles see in our Church the one true
Church of Christ and the living synthesis of freedom and unity in the spirit of
charity. And this is the conclusion reached by the latest representative of that party
after an impartial enquiry into the state of the Church: "It is the spirit of truth, the
spirit of charity, the spirit of life, the spirit of freedom, of whose invigorating
breath the Church of Russia stands in need" (note 53).

Thus, according to the unimpeachable testimony of an eminent Russian
Orthodox and patriot, our national Church has been deserted by the Spirit of Truth
and Charity and is not the true Church of God. In order to escape from this
inevitable conclusion, we have a habit of recalling for the moment the other
Eastern Churches, to which otherwise we do not give a thought. We do not belong,
we say, to the Russian Church, but to the Orthodox and OEcumenical Church of the
East. It will be readily understood that the champions of the separated Eastern
Church desire nothing better than the ascription to her of a real and positive unity.
It remains to be seen whether she possesses this unity in any effective sense.


Relations between the Russian and
Greek Churches Bulgaria and Serbia

THE Eastern Church is not a homogeneous body. Among the various nations
of which it is composed, the two most important have given it their names;
its official title is the Greco-Russian Church. This national dualism (which,
it may be remarked in passing, is singularly reminiscent of the two feet of clay of
which Archbishop Philaret speaks) suggests a concrete form in which to put the
question of our ecclesiastical unity. We are concerned to discover what the real
living bond is which unites the Russian and the Greek Churches and makes of
them a single moral organism. We are told that the Russians and the Greeks
possess a common faith and that that is the main thing. But we must enquire what
is meant in this case by the word "faith" or "religion" (vera). True faith is that
which possesses our whole soul and is seen to be the moving and guiding principle
of our entire existence. The profession of one and the same abstract belief, having
no influence upon conscience or life, constitutes no corporate bond and cannot
truly unite anyone; it becomes a matter of indifference whether or not anyone
possesses this dead faith in common with anyone else. On the other hand, unity in
real faith inevitably becomes a living and active unity, a moral and practical
solidarity.

If the Russian and Greek Churches give no evidence of their solidarity by any
vital activity, their "unity of faith" is a mere abstract formula producing no fruits
and involving no obligations. A layman interested in religious questions once
asked that distinguished prelate, the metropolitan Philaret,(note 54) what could be done to
revive the relations between the Russian Church and the Mother Church. "But on
what grounds are relations between them possible?" was the reply of the author of
the Greco-Russian Catechism. Some years before this curious conversation, there
occurred an incident which gives us an insight into the truth of the words of the
wise archbishop. William Palmer, a distinguished member of the Anglican Church
and of the University of Oxford, wished to join the Orthodox Church. He went to
Russia and Turkey to study the contemporary situation in the Christian East and to
find out on what conditions he would be admitted to the communion of the Eastern
Orthodox. At St. Petersburg and at Moscow he was told that he had only to abjure
the errors of Protestantism before a priest, who would thereupon administer to him
the sacrament of Holy Chrism or Confirmation. But at Constantinople he found
that he must be baptized afresh. As he knew himself to be a Christian and saw no
reason to suspect the validity of his baptism (which incidentally was admitted
without question by the Orthodox Russian Church), he considered that a second
baptism would be a sacrilege. On the other hand, he could not bring himself to
accept Orthodoxy according to the local rules of the Russian Church, since he
would then become Orthodox only in Russia while remaining a heathen in the eyes
of the Greeks; and he had no wish to join a national Church but to join the
universal Orthodox Church. No one could solve his dilemma, and so he became a
Roman Catholic (note 55). It is obvious that there are questions on which the Russian
Church could and ought to negotiate with the Mother See, and if these questions
are carefully avoided it is because it is a foregone conclusion that a clear
formulation of them would only end in a formal schism. The jealous hatred of the
Greeks for the Russians, to which the latter reply with a hostility mingled with
contempt — that is the fact which governs the real relations of these two national
Churches, in spite of their being officially in communion with one another. But
even this official unity hangs upon a single hair, and all the diplomacy of the
clergy of St. Petersburg and Constantinople is needed to prevent the snapping of
this slender thread. The will to maintain this counterfeit unity is decidedly not
inspired by Christian charity, but by the dread of a fatal disclosure; for on the day
on which the Russian and Greek Churches formally break with one another the
whole world will see that the Ecumenical Eastern Church is a mere fiction and that
there exists in the East nothing but isolated national Churches. That is the real
motive which impels our hierarchy to adopt an attitude of caution and moderation
towards the Greeks, in other words, to avoid any kind of dealings with them (note 56).
As for the Church of Constantinople, which in its arrogant provincialism assumes the
title of "the Great Church" and "the OEcumenical Church," it would probably be
glad to be rid of these Northern barbarians who are only a hindrance to its Pan-
Hellenic aims. In recent times, the patriarchate of Constantinople has been twice
on the point of anathematizing the Russian Church (note 57) ; only purely material
considerations have prevented a split. The Greek Church of Jerusalem, which is in
fact completely subservient to that of Constantinople, depends, on the other hand,
for its means of subsistence almost entirely upon Russian charity. This material
dependence of the Greek clergy on Russia is of very long standing, and does in fact
form the only actual basis of Greco-Russian unity. But it is clear that this purely
external link is incapable of fusing the two Churches into a single moral organism
endowed with unity of life and action.

This conclusion will be further strengthened if we take into consideration the
national Churches of lesser importance which, being under the jurisdiction of the
patriarch of Constantinople, were formerly part of the Greek Church, but became
autocephalous as the various, small States regained their political independence.
The relations of these so-called Churches to one another, to the metropolitan see of
Byzantium and to the Russian Church, are almost non-existent. Even such purely
official and conventional relations as are maintained between St. Petersburg and
Constantinople are not, as far as I am aware, established between Russia and the
new autocephalous Churches of Romania and Greece.

The case of Bulgaria and Serbia is worse still. It is well known that in 1872 the
Greek patriarchs, with the consent of the Synod of Athens, excommunicated the
whole Bulgarian people for reasons of national policy. The Bulgarians were
condemned for their "phyletism," that is to say, their tendency to subject the
Church to racial and national divisions. The accusation was true; but this
phyletism, which was heresy among the Bulgarians, was orthodoxy itself among
the Greeks. The Russian Church, while sympathizing with the Bulgarians, wished
to rise above this political quarrel. But she could only do so by speaking in the
name of the Universal Church, which she had no more right to do than the Greeks.
The Synod of St. Petersburg, therefore, instead of making a clear pronouncement,
merely sulked at the Byzantine hierarchy and, on receiving the decisions of the
council of 1872 with a request for its approval, refrained from answering one way
or the other. Hence arose a state of affairs which had never been foreseen or,
rather, had been thought impossible, according to the canons of the Church. The
Russian Church remained in formal communion with the Greek Church and in
actual communion with the Bulgarian Church without any explicit protest against
the canonical act of excommunication which separated these two Churches or any
appeal, even if only for form's sake, to an oecumenical council.

A complication of the same kind rose with Serbia. The atheist government of
this little kingdom promulgated ecclesiastical laws which established the hierarchy
of the Serbian Church on a basis of compulsory simony, since all sacred offices
were to be purchased at a fixed tariff; the metropolitan Michael and the other
bishops were arbitrarily deposed and a new hierarchy was created in defiance of
canon law. This hierarchy was formally repudiated by the Russian Church and
replied by purchasing the support of the patriarch of Constantinople. It was now
"the Great Church" which found herself in communion with two Churches which
were out of communion with one another.

It need hardly be added that all these national Churches are simply State
Churches entirely without any kind of ecclesiastical freedom. It is easy to imagine
the disastrous effect which such an oppression of the Church can produce upon the
religion of these unfortunate countries. The religious indifference of the Serbs is as
well known as their mania for using Orthodoxy as a political weapon in their
fratricidal struggle against the Catholic Croats. (58) As regards Bulgaria, Mgr. Joseph,
the exarch of that country and a witness of unimpeachable authority, revealed the
distressing state of religion among his people in an allocution delivered at
Constantinople in 1885 on the feast of St. Methodius. "The mass of the people," he
said, "are cold and indifferent, while the educated classes are definitely hostile to
everything sacred; it is only fear of the Russians that prevents the abolition of the
Church in Bulgaria." (59) There is no need for us to show that the religious condition
of Romania and Greece is essentially the same as that of the Serbs and Bulgarians.
In a report presented to the Emperor of Russia by the Procurator of the Holy
Synod, and published last year, the religious and ecclesiastical condition of the
four Orthodox countries of the Balkan peninsula is painted in the darkest colors. It
could not, in fact, be worse. But what is really surprising is the explanation given
in the official document. The one and only cause of all these evils, according to the
ruler of our Church, is the constitutional regime! If that is so, then what is the
cause of the deplorable state of the Church of Russia?


The fulfillment of a prophecy. caesaropapism in action

GEORGE Samarin, (60) a friend of Aksakov and like him a prominent member
of the Slavophile party or group, in a letter on the subject of the Vatican
Council wrote as follows: "Papal absolutism has not killed the vitality of
the Catholic clergy; this should give us food for thought, for some day or other we
shall hear promulgated the infallibility of the Tsar or rather that of the Procurator
of the Holy Synod, for the Tsar is of comparatively no importance. . . . When that
day comes, shall we find a single bishop, a single monk or a single priest who will
protest? I doubt it. If anyone protests, it will be a layman, your obedient servant or
Ivan Sergeyevich (Aksakov), if we are still in this world. As for our unfortunate
clergy, whom you think deserving of pity rather than blame (and perhaps you are
right), they will be dumb."

It was a happy chance that brought these words to my notice, for I know few
prophecies of the kind which have been fulfilled so exactly to the letter. The
proclamation of Cæsaropapist absolutism in Russia, the profound silence and
absolute submission of the clergy, and finally the solitary protest of a single
layman — it has all come about exactly as Samarin foresaw.

In 1885 an official document emanating from the Russian Government (61) declared
that the Eastern Church had resigned its authority and placed it in the hands of the
Tsar. Few people noticed this significant utterance. Samarin was already dead
some years. Aksakov had only a few months to live; nevertheless, he published in
his periodical Russ the protest of a lay writer who incidentally did not belong to the
Slavophile group. This solitary protest, neither authorized nor supported by a
single representative of the Church, only served by its isolation to throw into relief
the deplorable state of religion in Russia. (62). Indeed, the Cæsaropapist manifesto of
the officials of St. Petersburg was merely the explicit admission of an established
fact. It is undeniably true that the Eastern Church has abdicated in favor of the
secular power; the only question is whether it had the right to do so and whether,
having done so, it could still represent Him to Whom all power has been given in
Heaven and Earth. Whatever violence may be done to the Gospel passages
concerning the eternal powers left by Jesus Christ to His Church, they will never
yield any mention of the right of surrendering those powers into the hands of a
temporal authority. The authority which claims to take over the Church's mission
on Earth must have received at least the same promise of stability.

We do not believe that our prelates have willingly or deliberately surrendered
their ecclesiastical authority. But if the Eastern Church has, in the course of events,
lost that which once belonged to her by divine right, it is clear that the gates of Hell
have prevailed against her and that therefore she is not the impregnable Church
founded by Christ.

Nor do we wish to hold the secular government responsible for the anomalous
relation of the Church to the State. The State has been justified in maintaining its
independence and supremacy in regard to a spiritual authority which only
represented one particular national Church in separation from the great Christian
community. The declaration that the State should be subject to the Church can only
refer to the one, indivisible and universal Church founded by God.

The government of a separated national Church is only a historical and purely
human institution. But the Head of the State is the lawful representative of the
nation as such, and a body of clergy which aims at being national and nothing
more must, whether they like it or not, recognize the absolute sovereignty of the
secular government. The sphere of national existence can include within itself only
one single center, the Head of the State. The hierarchy of one particular Church
can only claim to exercise over the State the sovereignty of apostolic authority in
so far as it in fact forms the link between the nation and the universal, that is the
international, Kingdom of Christ. A national Church that does not wish to be
subject to the absolute authority of the State, that is to say, to surrender its
existence as a Church and become a department of the civil administration, must
needs possess a real point d'appui outside the confines of State and nation. With
these it is connected by natural and historical ties; but as a Church it must belong
to a wider social group with an independent center and a world-wide organization
of which the local Church can only constitute a single individual member.

The leaders of the Russian Church could not rely on their religious metropolis in
the struggle against the overpowering despotism of the State; for the Mother See
was itself no more than a national Church which had been long subservient to the
secular power. It is not ecclesiastical freedom but Cæsaropapism, which we have
inherited from Byzantium, where this anti-Christian principle had developed
unhindered ever since the ninth century. The Greek hierarchy, having repudiated
the powerful support which it had possessed hitherto in the independent center of
the Universal Church, found itself completely abandoned to the mercy of the State
and its despot. Before the schism, each time that the Greek Emperors encroached
upon the spiritual domain and threatened the freedom of the Church, her
spokesmen — whether it was St. John Chrysostom, or St. Flavian, or St. Maximus
the Confessor, or St. Theodore of the Studium, or the patriarch St. Ignatius —
turned to the international center of Christendom and appealed to the judgment of
the sovereign pontiff; and if they themselves fell victims to brute force, yet their
cause, the cause of truth and justice and freedom, never failed to find at Rome a
resolute champion who ensured its ultimate triumph. In those days the Greek
Church was, and knew herself to be, a living part of the Universal Church, closely
bound to the whole by the common center of unity, the apostolic Chair of Peter.
This relation of salutary dependence upon a successor of the supreme Apostles,
God's pontiff, this purely spiritual, lawful and honorable relation, gave place to a
worldly, unlawful and humiliating subjection to the power of mere laymen and
unbelievers.

This is not simply an accident of history; it is an instance of the logic of events,
which inevitably robs any merely national Church of its independence and dignity
and brings it under the yoke of the temporal power, a yoke which may be more or
less oppressive but is always ignominious. In every country which has been
brought to accept a national Church, the secular government, be it autocratic or
constitutional, enjoys absolute authority; the ecclesiastical institution only figures
as a special Ministry dependent on the general State administration. In such a case
it is the national State which is the real complete entity, existing by itself and for
itself; the Church is only a section, or rather a certain aspect, of this social
organism of the body politic, only existing for itself in the abstract.

Such enslavement of the Church is incompatible with its spiritual dignity, its
divine origin and its universal mission. On the other hand, reason demonstrates,
and history confirms the conclusion, that it is absolutely impossible for two powers
and two governments, equally sovereign and independent and confined to the same
territory, to exist for long side by side within the bounds of a single national State.
Such a dyarchy inevitably produces an antagonism which can only end in a
complete triumph for the secular government since it is this which really represents
the nation, whereas the Church, by its very nature, is not a national institution and
cannot become one without forfeiting the true reason for its existence.

We are told that the Emperor of Russia is a son of the Church. That is only what
he should be as head of a Christian State. But if he is to be so in actual fact, then
the Church must exercise an authority over him; she must possess a power that is
independent and superior to that of the State. With the best will in the world the
secular monarch cannot be truly the son of a Church of which he is at the same
time the head and which he governs through his officials.

The Church in Russia, deprived of any point d'appui or center of unity outside
the national State, has inevitably come to be subservient to the secular power; and
the latter, acknowledging no authority upon Earth superior to itself, recognizing no
one from whom it may receive religious sanction, that is to say, a partial delegation
of the authority of Christ, has just as inevitably engendered an anti-Christian
despotism.

If the national State asserts itself as a complete and self-sufficient social
organism, it cannot belong as a living member to the universal body of Christ. And
if it is outside that body, then it is not a Christian State and is only reviving the
ancient Cæsarism which was abolished by Christianity.

God assumed manhood in the person of the Jewish Messiah at the moment when
Man was assuming godhead in the person of the Roman Cæsar. Jesus Christ did
not attack Cæsar or dispute his authority; He spoke the truth about him. He said
that Cæsar was not God and that Cæsar's power was external to the Kingdom of
God. The rendering to Cæsar of the money that he coins and to God of all the rest,
that is what is called nowadays the separation of Church and State, a separation
which is essential as long as Cæsar remains pagan, but impossible as soon as he
becomes Christian. A Christian, be he king or emperor, cannot remain outside the
Kingdom of God and set up his own authority against God's. The supreme
commandment: "Render to God the things that are God's" is necessarily binding
upon Cæsar himself if he would be a Christian. He too must render to God what is
God's, and to God belongs, above all, supreme and absolute power upon Earth; for
if we would understand the words about Cæsar which our Lord addressed to His
enemies before His Passion, we must complete them with that other more solemn
utterance after His Resurrection. To His disciples, the representatives of His
Church, He said: "All power is given to Me in Heaven and on Earth' (Matt. xxviii.
18). This is an explicit and decisive passage which cannot honestly be interpreted
in more than one way. Those who really believe in Christ's words will never
recognize a State as an absolutely independent and sovereign temporal power,
separate from the Kingdom of God. There is only one power upon Earth and that
belongs not to Cæsar, but to Jesus Christ. The words about the tribute-money have
already robbed Cæsar of his divinity; this new utterance robs him of his despotic
authority. If he wishes to reign upon Earth, he can no longer do so in his own right;
he must receive his commission from Him to Whom all power is given upon Earth.
How then is he to obtain this commission?

Jesus Christ, in revealing to men the Kingdom of God which is not of this world,
gave them all the necessary means of realizing this Kingdom in the world. Having
affirmed in His high-priestly prayer that the final aim of His work was the perfect
unity of all, our Lord desired to provide an actual organic basis for this work by
founding His visible Church and by giving it a single head in the person of St.
Peter as the guarantee of its unity. If there is in the Gospels any delegation of
authority, it is this. Jesus Christ gave no sanction or promise whatsoever to any
temporal power. He founded only the Church, and He founded it on the
monarchical power of Peter: "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build My
Church."

The Christian State, therefore, must be dependent upon the Church founded by
Christ, and the Church itself is dependent upon the head which Christ has given it.
In a word, it is through Peter that the Christian Cæsar must share in the kingship of
Christ. He can possess no authority apart from him who has received the fullness
of all authority; he cannot reign apart from him who holds the keys of the
Kingdom. The State, if it is to be Christian, must be subject to the Church of
Christ; but if this subjection is to be genuine, the Church must be independent of
the State, it must possess a center of unity outside and above the State, it must be in
truth the Universal Church.

It has latterly begun to be realized in Russia that a merely national Church, left
to its own resources, is bound to become a passive and worthless instrument of the
State, and that ecclesiastical independence can only be ensured by an international
center of spiritual authority. But while the necessity of such a center is admitted,
attempts have been made to bring it into being within the boundaries of Eastern
Christendom This plan to create an Eastern quasi-Pope is the last anti-Catholic
ambition left for us to examine.


The design to establish a quasi-Papacy at Constantinople or Jerusalem

tHIS preconceived determination that at all costs the ce nter of the Universal Church shall be situated in the East indicates at the very outset a spirit of
local egotism and racial hatred that is more likely to breed schism than to
establish Christian unity. Would it not be better to put prejudice aside and look for
the center of unity where it is actually to be found? If it is not to be found
anywhere, it is surely childish to attempt to invent it.

Once it is granted that such a center is necessary to the normal life of the
Church, it cannot be supposed that the divine Head and Founder of the Church did
not foresee this necessity, or that He left the indispensable basis of His work to
chance circumstances or human caprice. If facts compel us to admit that the
Church cannot act freely without an international center of unity, we must also
frankly confess that the Christian East has been deprived of this essential organ for
the last thousand years and cannot therefore alone constitute the Universal Church.
Surely, during so long a period the Universal Church must have manifested her
unity elsewhere. That there is nothing serious or practical in this hybrid notion of
finding a central government for the Universal Church somewhere in the East or of
setting up an Eastern antipope is sufficiently shown by the inability of its advocates
to agree on the following question, even when put as a mere theoretical plan or a
pious aspiration: On which of the dignitaries of the Eastern Church is this uncertain
task to devolve? Some are in favor of the "OEcumenical Patriarch" of Constantinople;
others would prefer the see of Jerusalem, "the Mother of all the Churches." If we here
attempt briefly to do justice to these pathetic utopias, it is not because of their intrinsic
importance, which is absolutely nil, but simply out of regard for certain estimable writers who in desperation have sought to substitute these imaginary notions for the true ideal of the reunion of the Churches.

If the center of unity does not exist by divine right, then the Church of the
present day (which they regard nevertheless as a complete organism) must create
for herself, after a life of eighteen centuries, that upon which her very existence
depends. It is as if a human body, all complete but for the brain, were to be
expected to manufacture this central organ for itself. However, since the general
absurdity of the theory is not apparent to our opponents, we must go into their
schemes in detail.

In conferring the primacy of jurisdiction upon one of her pastors, the Church
may guide her choice either by the facts of religious history attested by
ecclesiastical tradition or by purely political considerations. In order to lend an air
of religious sanction to their national ambitions, the Greeks of Byzantium have
asserted that their Church was founded by the apostle St. Andrew, to whom they
give the title of protokletos (first-called). The legendary connection between this
apostle and Constantinople, even if it were well established,(63) could not confer any
ecclesiastical prerogative on the imperial city, since neither Holy Scripture nor the
tradition of the Church attributes to St. Andrew any kind of primacy in the
apostolic college. The apostle could hardly communicate to his Church a privilege
which he did not possess himself; and at the OEcumenical Council of Chalcedon in
451 the Greek bishops, desiring to attribute to the see of Constantinople primacy in
the East and second place in the Universal Church after the bishop of "Old Rome,"
carefully avoided any appeal to St. Andrew and based their proposal solely on the
political eminence of the imperial city (βασιλευουσα πόλις). This argument, which
is ultimately the only argument for the claims of Byzantium, cannot in fact justify
them either in the past or in the future (64). If the pre-eminence of the "ruling city"
carries with it ecclesiastical primacy, then the ancient city of Rome, which no
longer enjoyed this pre-eminence, should have forfeited her leading place in the
Church. Yet so far was anyone from daring to question her position that it was to
the Pope himself that the Greek bishops came with their humble request that he
would deign to approve the conditional and partial primacy of the Byzantine
patriarch. As far as the situation today is concerned, what is to be done if the
primacy belongs by right to that patriarch who is installed at the residence of the
Orthodox Emperor, seeing that there is neither Orthodox Emperor at
Constantinople nor patriarch at St. Petersburg? Or supposing this difficulty were
overcome and Constantinople became again the ruling city of the Orthodox world
and the residence of an Eastern Emperor, whether Russian, Greek or Greco-
Russian — still for the Church it would be merely a return to the Cæsaropapism of
the Second Empire. We know as a fact that the usurped primacy of the imperial
patriarch was fatal to the freedom and authority of the Church in the East. It is
clear that those who would escape the Cæsaropapism of St. Petersburg by
removing it to Constantinople are merely jumping out of the frying-pan into the
fire.

Jerusalem, the hallowed center of the national theocracy of the Old Testament,
has no claim to supremacy in the Universal Church of Christ. Tradition calls St.
James the first bishop of Jerusalem. But St. James had no kind of primacy in the
Apostolic Church any more than St. Andrew and could not therefore communicate
any special privilege to his see. Besides, for a long time he had no successor. At
the approach of Vespasian's legions, the Christians deserted the condemned city
which, in the following century, lost even its name. At the time of its restoration
under Constantine, the see of St. James was subordinate to the jurisdiction of the
metropolitan archbishop of Cæsarea in Palestine, just as up to 381 the bishop of
Byzantium was subordinate to the metropolitan of Heraclea in Thrace. Even after
this, Jerusalem was for a long time a patriarchate only in name, and when she
finally obtained independent jurisdiction she took the last place among patriarchal
sees. Today the "Mother of all the Churches" is reduced to a coterie subservient to
Phanariot phyletism and pursuing an exclusively national policy. If Jerusalem is to
become the hierarchical center of the Universal Church, then the Pan-Hellenist
clique must be dispossessed and a new order of things created ex nihilo. But even
if such an achievement were within the bounds of possibility, it is obvious that it
could only be brought about by Russia at the price of a definite rupture with the
Greeks. And then what would become of the Universal Church for which Russia is
to provide ready-made an independent center of authority? There would no longer
exist a Greco-Russian Church; and the new patriarch of Jerusalem would be in
reality only the patriarch of all the Russias. Certainly the Bulgarians and Serbs
would do nothing to further the independence of the Church, and so we should
have come back to a national Church with a hierarchy whose acknowledged leader
could be no more than a mere subject and servant of the State.

The manifest impossibility of finding or creating in the East a center of unity for
the Universal Church makes it imperative for us to seek it elsewhere. First and
foremost we must recognize ourselves for what we are in reality, an organic part of
the great body of Christendom, and affirm our intimate solidarity with our Western
brethren who possess the central organ which we lack. This moral act of justice
and charity would be in itself an immense step forward on our part and the
essential condition of all further advance.

NOTES TO FIRST PART

1 I am not forgetting that in 1861 Russia made amends by freeing the serfs.

2 See, among recent publications, the remarkable work of G. de Pascal, Révolution ou Evolution: Centenaire de 1789 (Paris, Saudax).

3 This melancholy episode is somewhat glazed over in the acts of the council, but it stands out quite clearly in the account of the Church historian Evagrius.

4 John, the patriarch of Constantinople, wrote to the Pope: "Prima salus est quia in sede apostolica inviolabilis semper catholica custoditur reigio' (Labbe, Concil. viii. 451, 2).

5 The memory of this event is perpetuated by a feast bearing the title "The Triumph of Orthodoxy," on which the anathema of the year 842 is repeated.

6 I am speaking here of the general result; that there has been progress in certain directions is unquestionable. We need only mention the mitigation of the severity of penal legislation and the abolition of torture. The gain is considerable, but can it be regarded as secure? If class war were to break out one day with all the fury of a long restrained hatred, we should witness remarkable happenings. Events of ill-omen, acts of Mezentian barbarity, have already taken place between Paris and Versailles in 1871.

7 In order to support my argument I have been obliged in places to introduce a literal translation of certain passages of the Bible. I have thought it right to add the Hebrew text, not in order to parade my knowledge which is quite elementary, but to justify my rendering which might appear quaint and arbitrary. Since there is no absolutely binding rule for the transcription of Hebrew words into Latin characters, I have endeavored to suit my spelling to French pronunciation, while avoiding typographical complications. [In the present translation the author's transcription has
been adapted to conform to the recognized English transcription of Hebrew.—Tr.].

8 We recall to our readers the pamphlet L'Idée russe, which for the same reasons M. Solovyev published in Paris in 1888. — Ed.

9 In old Russian the word "piety" (blagochestie) was ordinarily used to express "orthodoxy," and the expression "pious belief" (blagochestivaya vera) was used instead of "orthodox belief."

10 By certain physiological or psychological processes which are summed up among us under the name of "cerebral action" (umnoye delanie) the hermits of Athos achieve a state of ecstasy in which they experience unique sensations and claim to see the divine light which manifested itself at the Transfiguration of our Lord. The curious thing is that this phenomenon is regarded as an eternal, subsistent reality. In the fourteenth century furious controversy arose in the Greek Church over the inquiry into the real nature of the light of Tabor and its relation to the essence of the
Godhead.

11 The title of a poem dedicated by a well-known poet to the late M. Katkov.

12 This was the name given to Muscovy by certain Greek and Russian monks after the fall of the Byzantine Empire.

13 The Pan-Slav politicians would have Russia destroy the Austrian Empire in order to form a Slav confederacy. And what then?

14 Our best modem writers have been impelled by a religious idealism which has proved stronger than their æsthetic vocation to abandon the too restricted sphere of literature and to appear with varying success as moralists and reformers, apostles and prophets. The untimely death of Pushkin debars us from deciding whether the religious tendency shown in his most finished productions was deep enough to become in time predominant in his thought and to make him quit the domain of pure poetry, as happened with Gogol (in Correspondence with my friends), with Dostoyevski (in An author's diary) and with Tolstoy (in My Confession, My Religion, etc.). It seems that the Russian genius does not discover in poetic expression its final objective or the medium suited to the embodiment of its essentially religious ideal. If Russia is called to convey her message to the world, that message must sound forth not from the dazzling regions of art and literature, nor from the proud heights of philosophy and science, but only from the sublime and lowly peaks of religion. My Russian and Polish readers will find a detailed proof of this thesis in the second edition of my work, La Question nationale en Russie, the last chapter of which has been translated into Polish by M. Bénoni and published as a pamphlet entitled Russia and Europe.

15 "Most immaculate" or "all-immaculate" (vseneporochnaya) is the epithet regularly added to the name of the Blessed Virgin in our liturgical books, being the translation of the Greek παντάμωμος and other kindred words.

16 By this term I do not exclude the "old believers" properly so called, whose differences with the State Church are not concerned with the true object of religion.

17 The final rupture, which did not occur till later, in 1054, was nothing in fact but a mere event without any kind of legal or binding sanction. The anathema of the legates of Pope Leo IX was not aimed against the Eastern Church, but solely against the person of the patriarch Michael Cerularius and against "the partners of his folly" (folly obvious enough, to be sure); and, on the other hand, the Eastern Church has never been able to assemble an oecumenical council which, even according to our own theologians, is the only tribunal competent to pass judgment on our differences with the Papacy.

18 Thus these theologians blinded by hatred have the temerity to deny the manifest belief of the Eastern Church, both Greek and Russian, which has never ceased to declare the Blessed Virgin to be all-immaculate, immaculate par excellence.

19 The generic name of raskol (schism) is in use among us to denote especially those of the dissenters who separated from the official Church over the question of rites and who are also called starovery (old believers). The separation was finally consummated in the years 1666-1667, when a council assembled at Moscow anathematized the old rites.

20 This is the name (in Russian, Zapadniki) given to the literary party opposed to the Slavophiles and attached to the principles of European civilization.

21 A moderate party which by unlawful means is now in possession of a priesthood and even, since 1848, of an episcopate, whose center is at Fontana Alba in Austria.

22 A radical party which holds that the priesthood and all the sacraments, with the exception of Baptism, have been completely non-existent since 1666.

22 All our bishops are nominated in a manner absolutely forbidden and condemned by the third canon of the seventhOEcumenical Council, a canon which in the eyes of our own Church can never have been abrogated (for lack of subsequent oecumenical councils). We shall have to return to this subject later.

23 Conversation of an inquirer and a believer on the truth of the Eastern Church.

24 This work is commended and frequently quoted in the Prælectiones theologicæ of the official dogmatic theologian of the Latin Church, the late Fr. Perrone, professor at the Collegium Romanum and member of the Society of Jesus.

25 We are not concerned here with a third kind of freedom, that of the various cults recognized by the State. A certain freedom for the cults in their status quo is imposed by the force of circumstances upon an Empire such as Russia, which numbers more than 30,000,000 subjects outside the ruling Church.

26 The expressions commonly used in the latter sense, such as "freedom of conscience" or "freedom of profession of faith" should be rejected as inexact; conscience is always free and no one can prevent a martyr from confessing his faith.

27 We admit this distinction in theory (in abstracto) but we are far from recommending it as a practical policy.

28 Even our ecclesiastical writers admit as much with considerable naïveté. For instance, in a series of articles in the Orthodox Review (Pravoslavnoye Obozrenie) on the struggle of the Russian clergy against the dissenters, the author, M. Chistyakov, after exposing the exploits of Pitirim, the bishop of Nizhni-Novgorod, whose zeal was invariably supported by the troops of the vice-governor Rzhevski, reaches the conclusion that the famous missionary owed all his success to the help of the secular power and to the right of bringing the dissenters by force to preaching (Prav. Obozr., October 1887, p. 348). Similar admissions can be found in the same Review (of the year 1882) with regard to contemporary missions among the pagans of Eastern Siberia.

29 I refer to the "conversations (sobesedovanya) with the old believers" at Kazan, at Kaluga, and especially at Moscow. Despite the irksome conditions of these discussions and the absence of the leaders of the Raskol, the representatives of the official Church did not always have it their own way. A paper named The Moscow Voice (Golos Moskvy), which had the courage to publish in 1885 the shorthand reports of these conferences, has had reason to repent of its rashness. It no longer exists.

30 For a long time, Aksakov was persecuted by the Russian Government for the frankness of his criticisms. Only in his last years did he share with Karkov the privilege of free speech — a privilege which was peculiar to these two men and has not survived them.

31 1 I. S. Aksakov, Complete Works, vol. iv., p. 119.

32 ibid., p. 120.

33 ibid., p. 121.

34 ibid., p. 122.

35 ibid., p. 124.

36 ibid., pp. 125, 126.

38 ibid., p. 126.

39 1 Ibid., p. 84.

40 Ibid., p. 75.

41 Ibid., p. 77.

42 Ibid., p. 100.

43 I refer to the decrees of the imaginary council of Kiev in 1157, in which all the opinions of the "old believers" of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were imputed to Martin the Armenian, a heretic of the twelfth century, who in fact never existed. This imposture was so crude and improbable that even our ecclesiastical schools were for a time ashamed of it. But latterly the recrudescence of official obscurantism has brought about the revival of this invention of Bishop Pitirim (v. the article already quoted from Prav. Obozr., October 1887. pp. 306, 307, 314

44 Aksakov, ibid., p. 72.

45 ibid., p. 91.

46 ibid., p. 42.

47 ibid., p. 35.

48 ibid., p. 43.

49 ibid., pp. 91, 92.

50 ibid., p. iii.

51 ibid., p. 93.

52 ibid., pp. 83, 84.

53 ibid., p. 127.

54 The reader must not be surprised to come across this name constantly in our writings; he is the only really notable character produced by the Russian Church in the nineteenth century.

55 1 A note at the end of this volume gives certain historical details on the question of second baptism in the Greco- Russian Church. These facts, with which no doubt Palmer was acquainted, could only confirm him in his final resolve not to seek universal truth in a quarter where the basic mystery of our religion has been made an instrument of national politics. [The note referred to is missing from all the editions of Solovyev's work which I have been able to consult. — Tr.]

56 It is also the only practical reason for our still retaining the Julian calendar in defiance of the sun and the stars; no change could be made without entering into negotiations with the Greeks, which is just what our clerical circles most dread.

57 1 In 1872, when the Synod of St. Petersburg refused to associate itself openly with the decisions of the Greek councilwhich excommunicated the Bulgarians; and in 1884, when the Russian Government requested the Porte to nominate two Bulgarian bishops in dioceses which the Greeks regard as entirely under their jurisdiction.

58 For the views on this subject of a Slavophile writer who has lived long in Serbia, the reader is referred to the article by P. K—ky in Aksakov's periodical, Russ (1885, No. 12).

59 This sermon was reproduced in full in Katkov's paper, the Moscow Gazette.

60 1 Yury (George) Fedorovich Samarin (d. 1876), an ardent disciple of Khomyakov, whose brilliant qualities he lacked, but whom he surpassed in learning and critical acumen, deserved well of Russia for the very active part he played in the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. Apart from that, his cultured intelligence and remarkable talent remained almost entirely unproductive, as so often happens in Russia. He left behind him no works of importance and as a writer chiefly distinguished himself by controversial writings against the Jesuits and the Germans of the Baltic provinces. The letter from which we quote was addressed to a Russian lady (Mme. A. O. Smirnov) and is dated 10/22 December 1871.

61 Regulations for State examinations in the Faculty of Laws.

62 Note to Russian readers. I did not sign the article in question ("State philosophy in the University curricula," Russ, September 1885), because I believed myself to be expressing the general feelings of Russian society. This was an illusion and I can now assert my sole claim to this vox clamantis in deserto. But it must not be forgotten that besides what is called "society" there are in Russia twelve to fifteen million dissenters who did not wait for the year 1885 to make their protest against the Cæsaropapism of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

63 1 It was the town of Patras which was hallowed by the martyrdom of St. Andrew and had the honor of originally possessing his relics.

64 We shall have to consider later this first great instance of Byzantine Cæsaropapism; in any case it has nothing to do with the infallible authority of the dogmatic decrees formulated by the Council.

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