and efficient defenders of the images. Leo V. was murdered in a church in
820; and Michael II., surnamed the Stammerer, whom the conspirators placed
on the throne, did not allow the images to be restored, though he was
moderate in his religious views. He recalled the defenders of the images
from exile, and seemed to steer a middle course between the enemies and
the defenders of images, though he shared the opinions of the former. He
was succeeded in 829 by his son, Theophilus,—a most decided opponent of
images,—and whose valour and love of justice are acknowledged by his
religious adversaries. He died in 841, leaving a minor son, Michael III.,
under the regency of his wife, Theodora. This princess, whose personal
character was irreproachable, governed the empire during thirteen years,
with considerable wisdom; but being an adherent of images, she restored
their worship,(61) which has since that time continued in the Greek Church
in perhaps even a more exaggerated form than in the Roman Catholic one,
and which can be without any impropriety called _iconolatry_, since
_idolatry_ may be perhaps considered as an expression too strong for ears
polite.

The struggle between the iconoclasts and the iconolaters, of which I have
given a mere outline, but which agitated the Eastern empire for nearly a
century and a half, ending in the complete triumph of the latter, deserves
the particular attention of all thinking Protestants; because it is
virtually the same contest that has been waged for more than three
centuries between Protestantism and Rome,(62) and which seems now to
assume a new phasis. I do not think that the ignorance of those times may
be considered as the principal cause of the triumph of the iconolatric
party, and that the spread of knowledge in our own day is a sufficient
safeguard against the recurrence of a similar contingency. There was in
the eighth and ninth centuries a considerable amount of learning at
Constantinople, where the treasures of classical literature, many of which
have since been lost, were preserved and studied.(63) The Greeks of that
time, though no doubt greatly inferior to the modern Europeans in physical
science, were not so in metaphysics and letters, whilst the gospel could
be read by all the educated classes in its original tongue, which was the
official, literary, and ecclesiastical language of the Eastern empire. The
Byzantine art was, moreover, very inferior to that of modern Europe, and
could not produce, except on some coarse and rustic intellects, that
bewitching effect, which the works of great modern painters and sculptors
often produce upon many refined and imaginative minds. It has been justly
remarked, by an accomplished writer of our day, that “the all-emancipating
press is occasionally neutralised by the soul-subduing miracles of
art.”(64)

The Roman Catholic Church perfectly understands this _soul-subduing_ power
of art, and the following is the exposition of her views on this subject
by one of her own writers, whom I have already quoted on a similar
subject, p. 51.

“That pictures and images in churches are particularly serviceable in
informing the minds of the humbler classes, and for such a purpose possess
a superiority over words themselves, is certain.

    “Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem,
    Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fldelibus et quæ
    Ipse sibi tradit spectator.”

    —_Horace de Arte Poetica_, v. 180.

    “What’s through the ear conveyed will never find
    Its way with so much quickness to the mind,
    As that, when faithful eyes are messengers,
    Unto himself the fixed spectator bears.”

“The remark of a heathen poet is corroborated by the observations of the
most celebrated amongst ancient and modern Christian writers. So persuaded
was St Paulinus of Nola, fourteen hundred years ago, of the efficacy
possessed by paintings for conveying useful lessons of instruction, that
he adorned with a variety of sacred subjects the walls of a church which
he erected, and dedicated to God in honour of St Felix.

“Prudentius assures us how much his devotion was enkindled, as he gazed
upon the sufferings of martyrs, so feelingly depicted around their tombs
and in their churches. On his way to Rome, about the year 405, the poet
paid a visit to the shrine of St Cassianus, at Forum Cornelii, the modern
Imola, where the body of that Christian hero reposed, under a splendid
altar, over which were represented, in an expressive picture, all the
sufferings of his cruel martyrdom.(65) So moved was Prudentius, that he
threw himself upon the pavement, kissed the altar with religious
reverence, and numbering up with many a tear those wounds that sin had
inflicted upon his soul, concluded by exhorting every one to unite with
himself in intrusting their petitions for the divine clemency to the
solicitude of the holy martyr Cassianus, who will not only hear our
request, but will afford us the benefit of his patronage.”(66)

The anecdote of Prudentius evidently proves that what originally had been
intended for the instruction of the people, may very easily become an
object of their adoration. If a man of a superior education, like
Prudentius,(67) could be carried away by his feelings in such a manner as
to address his prayers to a dead man, how much greater must be the effect
of images upon less cultivated minds! and I have related, p. 88, on the
authority of the great Roman Catholic historian, Fleury, that the fathers
of the second Council of Nice, who, according to the same authority, were
a very ignorant set, shed tears at the sight of an image represented in an
absurd and fictitious story.

Such are the effects produced in teaching religion by means of images.
There can be no doubt about the truth of the observations contained in the
lines of Horace, which the author of “Hierurgia” quotes in defence of
images; but these observations refer to the theatre, and it appears to me
that the application of purely scenic precepts to the house of God is
something very like converting divine service into a comedy.

The limits of this essay allow me not to discuss the chances of an
iconolatric reaction in our days. I shall only observe, that in several
countries where the iconoclasts of the Reformation had gained a
predominant position, they were entirely crushed by the iconolatric
reaction, and that a _fond alliance of females and monks_, supported by
the ruling powers of the state, achieved in these parts as great a victory
as that which it obtained in the east under Irene and Theodora, not only
over the reason of man, but even over the authority of the Word of God;
and I believe that the only human means of preventing similar
contingencies are free institutions, which allow the fullest liberty of
discussion in regard to all religious opinions.

I have said before, p. 82, that the Pope opposed the abolition of images
proclaimed by the Emperor Leo III., and that this opposition was shared by
the imperial provinces of Italy, which revolted on that occasion against
their sovereign, and separated from the Byzantine empire. It was therefore
natural that the second Council of Nice, which restored the worship of
images, should obtain the approbation of Pope Hadrian I.; but his desire
to impose the enactments of that council upon the churches of the West met
with a decided opposition on the part of Charlemagne. This great monarch,
who is so celebrated by his efforts to convert the Pagan Saxons,
prosecuted with all the barbarity of his age, and whom the church has
placed amongst her saints, was so offended by the enactments of the second
Council of Nice in favour of the worship of images, that he composed, or
what is more probable, ordered to be composed in his name, a book against
that worship, and sent it to Pope Hadrian I., as an exposition of his own
sentiments, as well as of those of his bishops, on the subject in
question. This work, though written in violent language, contains many
very rational views about images, and unanswerable arguments against all
kinds of adoration offered to them. The substance of this celebrated
protest is as follows:—

Charlemagne says, that there is no harm in having images in a church,
provided they are not worshipped; and that the Greeks had fallen into two
extremes, one of which was to destroy the images, as had been ordained by
the Council of Constantinople, under Constantine Copronymus, and the other
to worship them, as was decided by the second Council of Nice under Irene.
He censures much more severely this latter extreme than the former,
because those who destroyed images had merely acted with levity and
ignorance, whilst it was a wicked and profane action to worship them. He
compared the first to such as mix water with wine, and the others to those
who infuse a deadly poison into it; in short, there could be no comparison
between the two cases. He marks, with great precision, the different kinds
of worship offered to the images, rejecting all of them. The second
Council of Nice decided that this worship should consist of kisses and
genuflexions, as well as of burning incense and wax candles before them.
All these practices are condemned by Charlemagne, as so many acts of
worship offered to a created being. He addresses the defenders of the
worship of images in the following manner:—

“You who establish the purity of your faith upon images, go, if you like,
_and fall upon your knees and burn incense before them_; but with regard
to ourselves we shall seek the precepts of God in his Holy Writ. _Light
luminaries before your pictures_, whilst we shall read the Scriptures.
_Venerate, if you like, colours_; but we shall worship divine mysteries.
_Enjoy the agreeable sight of your pictures_; but we shall find our
delight in the Word of God. _Seek after figures which cannot either see,
or hear, or __ taste_; but we shall diligently seek after the law of God,
which is irreprehensible.” He further says:—“I see images which have such
inscriptions, as for instance St Paul, and I ask, therefore, those who are
involved in this great error, why they do call images _holy (sanctus)_,
and why they do not say, conformably to the tradition of the fathers, that
these are images of the _saints_? Let them say in what consists the
sanctity of the images? Is it in the wood which had been brought from a
forest in order to make them? Is it in the colours with which they are
painted, and which are often composed of impure substances? Is it in the
wax, which gets dirty?” He taunts the worshippers of images, pointing out
an abuse which even now is as inevitable as it was then. “If,” says he,
“two pictures perfectly alike, but of which one is meant for the Virgin
and the other for Venus, are presented to you, you will inquire which of
them is the image of the Virgin and which is that of Venus, because you
cannot distinguish them. The painter will call one of these pictures the
image of the Virgin, and it will be immediately put up in a _high place,
honoured, and kissed_; whilst the other, representing Venus, will be
thrown away with horror. These two pictures are, however, made by the same
hand, with the same brush, with the same colours; they have the same
features, and the whole difference between them lies in their
inscriptions. Why is the one received and the other rejected? It is not on
account of the sanctity which one of them has, and the other has not; it
is, then, on account of its inscription; and yet certain letters attached
to a picture cannot give it a sanctity which it otherwise had not.”

This work was published for the first time in 1549, by Tillet, Roman
Catholic bishop of Meaux in France, though under an assumed name, and it
has been reprinted several times. Its authenticity, which had been at
first impugned by some Roman Catholic writers, was finally established
beyond every dispute, and acknowledged by the most eminent writers of the
Roman Catholic Church, such as Mabillon, Sirmond, &c. It is a very
remarkable production, for it most positively rejects every kind of
worship offered to images, without making any difference between _Latria_
and _Dulia_, and I think that its republication might be of considerable
service at the present time.(68)

The Pope sent a long letter in answer to the protest of Charlemagne, which
did not, however, satisfy that monarch, because he convened in 794 a
council at Frankfort, at which he presided himself. This synod, composed
of three hundred bishops of France, Germany, and Spain, and at which two
legates of the Pope were present, condemned the enactment of the second
Council of Nice respecting the worship of images.

This decree of the Council of Frankfort is very important, because it not
only condemned the worship of images, but it virtually rejected the
infallibility of the Popes, as well as of the General Councils, since it
condemned what they had established.

The opposition to the worship of images continued amongst the Western
churches for some time after the death of Charlemagne. Thus an assembly of
the French clergy, held at Paris in 825, condemned the decree of the
second Council of Nice as decidedly as it was done by the work of
Charlemagne and the Council of Frankfort. Claudius, bishop of Turin, who
lived about that time, opposed the worship of images, which he removed
from his churches, calling those idolaters who adhered to this practice;
he also condemned the adoration of relics, of the figure of the cross,
&c.; and he was not inaptly called, on this account, by the Jesuit
historian Maimbourg, the first Protestant minister.

There are other traces of a similar opposition during the ninth century,
but it seems to have entirely disappeared in the tenth, and it was again
renewed by the Albigenses in the eleventh century. Their history, however,
is foreign to the object of the present essay; and I shall endeavour to
give in my next chapter a short sketch of the legends of the saints,
composed during the middle ages.

Chapter VI. Origin And Development Of The Pious Legends, Or Lives Of
Saints, During The Middle Ages.

A collection of the lives of the saints of the Roman Catholic calendar has
been accomplished by the Jesuits, and is well known as that of the
Bollandists, from the name of its first originator Bollandus. It extends
to fifty-three huge folios, though it has reached only to the middle of
October,(69) each day having a number of saints assigned to it for
commemoration. It contains, among a mass of the greatest absurdities, a
good deal of valuable information relating to the history of the middle
ages, particularly in respect to the customs and prevailing ideas of that
period. A great, if not the greatest part of the saints whose lives are
described in that collection have never existed, except in the imagination
of their biographers; and the best proof of this is that the learned
Benedictine monk, Dom Ruinart, an intimate friend and collaborator of the
celebrated Mabillon, has reduced the acts of martyrs, whom he considers as
true, to one moderate quarto, though the same work contains a refutation
of the Protestant Dodwell, who maintained that the number of the primitive
martyrs had been greatly exaggerated by their historians.(70)

The Christian church was already, at an early period of her existence,
disturbed by a great number of forgeries, relating to the history and
doctrine of our Lord and his disciples;(71) but the spirit in which they
were written, so contrary to that of the true Gospel, and the gross
absurdities which they contain, were convincing proofs of the apocryphal
character of those writings, which, consequently, were rejected as such
from the canon of Scripture. If the church could not escape such abuses at
a time when she was not yet infected by Pagan ideas and practices, she
became still more exposed to them after the abovementioned corruptions,
and when, as has already been said, p. 20, the Christian society was
invaded by whole populations, who, notwithstanding their abjuration of
heathenism, were Pagans in their manners, their tastes, their prejudices,
and their ignorance. There were, moreover, very great difficulties in
obtaining authentic information about the lives of the martyrs. I have
said, p. 3, that their memory was usually preserved in the churches to
which they had belonged. This was, however, entirely a local affair, and
though the report of such events had undoubtedly circulated amongst other
Christian congregations, there was no general register of martyrs
preserved by the whole church, which had no central point of union. The
means of communication between various places were, moreover, at that time
very imperfect, and this difficulty was increased by the persecutions to
which the primitive churches were often exposed. These persecutions
dispersed many churches, destroying their registers and other documents
belonging to them, whilst even a much greater number of them experienced a
similar calamity from the barbarian nations who successively invaded the
Roman empire. The accounts of the sufferings and death of the martyrs
rest, therefore, with the exception of some comparatively few
well-authenticated cases, upon the authority of vague and uncertain
traditions. These traditions were generally collected and put in writing
only centuries after the time when the event to which they relate had, or
is supposed to have taken place. It was therefore no wonder that the
subjects of many such accounts are purely imaginary. The nature of the
generality of these legends, or lives of martyrs and other saints, may be
judged of best from the following opinion expressed on this subject by a
Roman Catholic clergyman of unsuspected orthodoxy:—

“What shall I say of those saints of whose life we don’t know either the
beginning or the progress,—of those saints to whom so many praises are
given, though nobody knows anything about their end? Who may pray to them
to intercede for him, when it is impossible to know what degree of credit
they enjoy with God? We shall be obliged, indeed, to consider the most
part of the acts of martyrs, which are now produced with so much
confidence, as so many fables, and reject them as nothing better than
romances. It is true that their lives are written, like that of St
Ovidius, St Felicissimus, and St Victor! But, O God! what lives! what
libels! lives deserving a place in the Index of the Prohibited Books,
since they are filled with falsehoods, vain conjectures, or, to say the
least, are ascribing to unknown and apocryphal saints the true acts of the
most illustrious martyrs. Such things cannot but bring about a great
confusion in the history of the church, not to say in religion itself. It
is in this manner that the actions of St Felicissimus, who is generally
believed to have been a deacon to St Sixtus, are ascribed to a new
Felicissimus; and the virtues of St Victor of Milan are now given to a new
Victor, who has been recently brought to Paris. As regards the life of St
Ovidius, is there anything in it more than words and words? and can we
find in it anything solid? This little book speaks of a leaden plate upon
which the senatorial dignity and the year of this saint’s martyrdom are
inscribed. Why is not this inscription given? Why is not at least the
precise date of his martyrdom named? It is said that St Ovidius suffered
towards the end of the second century; is this the manner of fixing the
year of his death? No, no; the ancients did not mark the time in such a
manner; they did not take an uncertain century for the certain epoch of a
year. I am much afraid that this inscription is by no means so authentic
as people wish to persuade us. But there was found in his grave a little
glass vessel; a palm is engraved upon his sepulchre; and his skull has the
appearance of being pierced with a lance. Well, these marks may prove that
St Ovidius was a martyr; but are they sufficient to establish the truth of
his life, such as it has been published?”(72)

I would, however, observe, that many writers of the lives of saints,
without excepting those who are considered legitimate, have rendered
themselves guilty of something worse than the plagiarism of which the
learned Mabillon complains in the passage given above. They may be accused
of having blasphemously parodied the Scriptures, and particularly the
Gospels, by ascribing many of the miracles recorded in the Bible to the
subjects of their biographies. M. Maury, the French savant whom I have
already quoted (p. 11), has traced a great number of miracles ascribed to
various saints, which are nothing but imitations of this kind. This
sacrilegious plagiarism is not confined to the middle ages, but has been
practised in modern times, as is evident from the two following miracles
ascribed to the celebrated Jesuit saint, Francis Xavier, who died in 1552.
It is said that during his residence in Japan a woman of his acquaintance
lost her daughter, after having sought in vain during her illness for St
Francis, who was absent on some journey. At his return the bereaved mother
fell at his feet, and said, weeping, like Martha to our Saviour, “Lord, if
thou hadst been here, my daughter had not died,”—(John xi. 21.) The saint,
moved by the entreaties of the mother, ordered her to open the grave of
her daughter, and restored her to life. Another time the same saint said
to a father whose daughter had died, in the same manner as Jesus Christ
said to the centurion whose servant was sick, “Go thy way; thy daughter is
healed.”(73)

Had these miracles been performed in our part of the world, they would
have converted crowds of Protestants, and thus greatly advanced the
principal object of the order to which St Francis Xavier belonged; but the
air of Europe seems to have been unfavourable for such wonderful
experiments, since the good saint was obliged to betake himself to Japan
in order successfully to perform them.

It is true that the legend writers make no attempt at concealing these
imitations, but, on the contrary, insist upon the likeness of the miracles
performed by their saint to those of our Saviour, as a proof of the high
degree of sanctity attained by the former. No saint, however, of the Roman
Catholic or Græco-Russian calendar had so many miracles ascribed to him,
particularly of the kind mentioned above, as St Francis of Assisi, the
celebrated founder of the mendicant monks, and who, considering the
immense influence which his disciples have exercised on the Catholic
world, was perhaps one of the most extraordinary characters which the
middle ages produced.

It has been frequently observed, that genius is akin to madness, and that
the partition by which the two are separated is so thin that it
occasionally becomes quite imperceptible. Such a condition of the human
mind has perhaps never been exemplified in a more striking manner than by
the life of this famous saint, which presents a strange mixture of the
noblest acts of charity and self-devotion, the wildest freaks of a madman,
and of genial conceptions worthy of the most eminent statesman and
philosopher. The best proof of his genius is the great influence which the
order instituted by him has exercised during several centuries in many
countries, and which even now has not yet lost its vitality. It must also
be admitted, that neither St Francis nor his disciples can be charged with
any of those atrocities by which the life of his contemporary St Dominic,
of bloody memory, the founder of the inquisition, and the preacher of the
crusade against the Albigenses, as well as the annals of his order, are
stained. Neither can it be denied that Francis, as well as his followers,
have on many occasions mitigated the barbarity of their age. His immense
popularity is, however, as I think, chiefly due to the circumstance that
his order, principally destined to act upon the lower classes, was
recruited from the most numerous and most ignorant part of the population;
and is it necessary to observe that the less men are educated, the more
they are prone to credulity and exaggeration? Much learning was not
required for the admission to this democratic order, and its ranks were
increased by the creation of a class whose members remained in the world,
binding themselves only to the observation of some devotional practices
and moral precepts. All this contributed to spread the order of St
Francis, to which both sexes are admitted, with a marvellous rapidity over
many countries; at the same time its members were extolling the virtues
and supposed miracles of their founder in the most exaggerated and often
ludicrous manner, of which the following anecdote may serve as a
specimen:—A Franciscan monk, who was one day preaching about the merits of
the founder of his order, began his sermon in the following manner: “Where
shall I place the great St Francis? Amongst the saints? This is not enough
for his merits. Amongst the angels? no, ’tis not enough. Amongst the
archangels? ’tis not enough. Amongst the seraphims? ’tis not enough.
Amongst the cherubims? ’tis not enough.” He was, however, on a sudden
released, by one of his hearers, from his perplexity about a proper
location for his saint, who, rising from his seat, said, “Reverend father,
as I see that you cannot find for St Francis a proper place in heaven, I
shall give up to him mine on this bench;” which having said, he left the
church.

The story does not say whether this good monk was satisfied with the place
so unexpectedly offered to his saint, or where he would have stopped
without this timely interruption; but we know, from many other cases, that
St Francis was compared by his disciples to our Saviour. Thus, in a work
published by the Father Bartholomeus of Pisa, and entitled “The Golden
Book of the Conformities of the Life of St Francis with that of Jesus
Christ,”(74) the author maintains that the birth of St Francis was
announced by prophets; that he had twelve disciples, one of whom, called
John Capella, was rejected by him, like Judas Iscariot by our Lord; that
he had been tempted by the devil, but without success; that he was
transfigured; that he had suffered the same passion as our Saviour, though
he never was subject to any persecution or ill-usage, but died quietly, in
1218, amidst his devoted admirers. Other writers pushed even farther the
blasphemous comparison, boasting that St Francis had performed many more
miracles than our Lord, because Christ changed water into wine but once,
whilst St Francis did it thrice; and that instead of the few miraculous
cures mentioned in the Gospels, St Francis and his disciples had opened
the eyes of more than a thousand blind, cured more than a thousand lame,
and restored to life more than a thousand dead.

The greatest miracle, however, that has ever been wrought by St Francis
has taken place in our own days, and its authenticity admits of no doubt
whatever. It is a life of this famous saint, published by M. Chavin de
Malan; and my readers may form an adequate idea of its contents by the
following extract from an admirable article in the “Edinburgh Review” for
July 1847:—“Though amongst the most passionate and uncompromising devotees
of the Church of Rome, M. Chavin de Malan also is in one sense a
Protestant. He protests against any exercise of human reason in examining
any dogma which that church inculcates, or any fact which she alleges. The
most merciless of her cruelties affect him with no indignation, the
silliest of her prodigies with no shame, the basest of her superstitions
with no contempt. Her veriest dotage is venerable in his eyes. Even the
atrocities of Innocent III. seem to this all-extolling eulogist but to
augment the triumph and the glories of his reign. If the soul of the
confessor of Simon de Montfort, retaining all the passions and all the
prejudices of that era, should transmigrate into a doctor of the Sorbonne,
conversant with the arts and literature of our own times, the result might
be the production of such an ecclesiastical history as that of which we
have here a specimen,—elaborate in research, glowing in style, vivid in
portraiture, utterly reckless and indiscriminate in belief, extravagant up
to the very verge of idolatry in applause, and familiar far beyond the
verge of indecorum with the most awful topics and objects of the Christian
faith.”—(Pp. 1, 2.)(75)

Now, I ask my reader whether the publication of such a work, in the year
of grace 1845, at Paris, is not a perfect miracle, and undoubtedly much
more genuine than all those which it describes?

We live indeed in an age of wonders, physical as well as moral, and
neither of them have escaped the all-powerful influence of the great
moving spring of our time, and the principal cause of its rapid
advance,—_i.e._, competition. England, which is foremost in many, and not
behind in any, inventions and discoveries of the day, has maintained her
rank, and even perhaps gone ahead, in the production of such moral
miracles as that of which I have given a specimen above. And, indeed, the
lives of the English saints, published in the years 1844 and 1845, in the
capital of this Protestant country, may fearlessly challenge a comparison
with the work of M. Chavin de Malan. They are, moreover, ascribed to a
clergyman of the Church of England, who, though he has since gone over to
Rome, was at that time receiving the wages of the Protestant Establishment
of this country as one of its servants and defenders.(76) The few
following extracts from this curious work will enable my readers to judge
whether I have over-estimated the capabilities of this work for a
successful competition with its French rival:—

“Many of these (legends) are so well fitted to illustrate certain
principles which should be borne in mind in considering mediæval miracles,
that they deserve some attention. Not that any thing here said is intended
to _prove_ that the stories of miracles, said to be wrought in the middle
ages, are true. Men will always believe or disbelieve their truth, in
proportion as they are disposed to admit or reject the antecedent
probability of the existence of a perpetual church, endowed with unfailing
divine powers. And the reason of this is plain. Ecclesiastical miracles
presuppose Catholic faith, just as Scripture miracles, and Scripture
itself, presuppose the existence of God. Men, therefore, who disbelieve
the faith, will of course disbelieve the story of the miracles, which, if
it is not appealed to as a proof of the faith, at least takes it for
granted. For instance, the real reason for rejecting the account of the
vision which appeared to St Waltheof in the holy Eucharist, must be
disbelief of the Catholic doctrine.”(77)

The miracle alluded to above, and which cannot be rejected without
disbelief in the Catholic doctrine, is as follows:—“On Christmas-day, when
the convent was celebrating the nativity of our Lord, as the friar was
elevating the host, in the blessed sacrifice of the mass, he saw in his
hand a child fairer than the children of men, having on his head a crown
of gold studded with jewels. His eyes beamed with light, and his face was
more radiant than the whitest snow; and so ineffably sweet was his
countenance, that the friar kissed the feet and the hands of the heavenly
child. After this the divine vision disappeared, and Waltheof found in his
hands the consecrated water.”(78)

The whole collection is full of similar stories, some of which are really
outrageous; as, for instance, that which it relates about St Augustine,
the great apostle of England.

This saint was, during his peregrinations about the country, received with
great honours in the north of England; “but,” says the work in question,
“very different from this are the accounts of his travels in Dorsetshire.
While there, we hear of his having come to one village, where he was
received with every species of insult. The wretched people, not content
with heaping abusive words upon the holy visitors, assailed them with
missiles, in which work, the place being probably a sea-port, the sellers
of fish are related to have been peculiarly active. Hands, too, were laid
upon the archbishop and his company. Finding all efforts useless, the
godly company shook the dust from their feet, and withdrew. The
inhabitants are said to have suffered the penalty of their impieties, even
to distant generations. All the children born from that time bore and
transmitted the traces of their parents’ sins in the shape of a loathsome
deformity.”(79)

The writer who relates this story had not the courage or the honesty of M.
Chavin de Malan to tell that the insult offered to the holy visitors
consisted in attaching tails of fish to their robes, and that the
loathsome deformity, with which the children of the perpetrators of that
insult were born during many generations, was a tail.

Absurd as this monkish story is, it is nevertheless characteristic of the
spirit of the sacerdotal pride and vindictiveness which would punish a
silly joke, by which the dignity of the priestly order was offended, with
a heavy calamity, entailed upon the innocent descendants of its
perpetrators through many generations; and yet the fables of this modern
mythology cannot be, according to our author, rejected _without disbelief
of the Catholic doctrine_. This is not, however, his personal opinion; and
he has only asserted, in a more decisive manner than it has been done for
a considerable time, a principle which the Roman Catholic Church cannot
disavow, though it may place her in an embarrassing position; and as an
illustration of this, I shall give the following anecdote:—

Under the reign of Frederic II., a Prussian soldier stole a costly
ornament from an image of the Virgin, which enjoyed a great reputation for
its miraculous powers. The theft being discovered, the culprit pleaded in
his defence that, having addressed a fervent prayer to the above-mentioned
image for help in his poverty, it gave him this ornament to relieve him
from his distress. This affair was reported to the king, who, being much
amused by the soldier’s device, required the Roman Catholic bishop in
whose diocese this theft was committed to give a positive opinion whether
the image in question could work miracles of this kind or not? The bishop
could not, without showing _disbelief in the Catholic doctrine_, deny the
possibility of the miracle, and was therefore obliged to give an
affirmative reply. The king, therefore, pardoned the soldier, on condition
of never accepting presents from this or any other image or saint
whatever.

The author of this essay, though a firm believer in the existence of God
and the truth of the Scriptures, has not the advantage of being inspired
with faith in the Catholic doctrine; he therefore will continue his
researches in the same manner as before.

Many legends originated from misunderstanding the emblematic character of
some pictures. Thus the celebrated Spanish lady saint and authoress, St
Theresa, was, on account of her eloquent and impassioned effusions of love
addressed to the Deity, painted by a Spanish artist having her heart
pierced with an arrow, in allusion to the words of the Psalmist, “For
thine arrows stick fast in me,” &c.—(Ps. xxxviii. 2.) She died quietly in
her convent towards the end of the sixteenth century, and though the
particulars of her life and death are generally known, there were some
legend writers who related that she died a martyr, pierced by an arrow. If
such confusion of ideas could happen in a time when literature and science
had made considerable progress, and when the art of printing was already
universally known, how much more frequently such things must have occurred
during the prevailing ignorance of the middle ages! And, indeed, there are
many wild legends which have originated from a similar source, and of
which the most celebrated is that of St Denis, which has been also related
of other saints. This martyr, supposed to have been beheaded, was
represented holding his head in his hand, as an emblem of the manner of
his death. The writer of his legend took this emblem for the
representation of a real fact, and loosening the reins of his imagination,
related that the saint, after having been beheaded, took up his head,
kissed it, and walked away with it.(80)

It is a general tendency of a gross and unenlightened mind to materialise
the most abstract and spiritual ideas, and then what is simply an allegory
becomes with him a reality. It was this tendency which, during the
mediæval ignorance, gave often a literal sense to what is only typical,
and it was carried so far that even the parables of our Lord were
constructed into real stories. Thus, Lazarus was a poor saint who lived in
great want, and was made after his death the patron of beggars and lepers.
The parable of the prodigal son has furnished materials for many a legend;
and to crown all these pious parodies, a monk has shown to the well-known
Eastern traveller Hasselquist, the very spot upon which the good Samaritan
assisted the wounded man, who had been left unheeded by the priest and the
Levite. Future rewards and punishments, heaven and hell, were also
represented in a grossly material manner, that gave rise to many absurd
legends, generally invented with the object of supporting the pretensions
of the church, to have the power of sending at pleasure the souls of the
departed to either of these places.(81)

I have already spoken of the effects which the solitary and ascetic life
of the early monks produced upon their imagination. The same thing took
place amongst the recluses of the convents, but particularly nunneries.
“The imaginations of women,” says a celebrated author whom I have already
quoted, “as their feelings are more keen and exquisite, are more
susceptible and ungovernable than those of men; more obnoxious to the
injurious influence of solitude; more easily won upon by the arts of
delusion, and inflamed by the contagion of the passions.” Hence we may
account for the rapidity with which in orphan houses, cloisters, and other
institutions, where numbers of the sex are intimately connected with each
other, the sickness, humour, habits, of one, if conspicuous and
distinguished, become those of all. I remember to have read in a medical
writer of considerable merit, that in a French convent of nuns, of more
than common magnitude, one of the sisters was seized with a strange
impulse to mew like a cat, in which singular propensity she was shortly
imitated by several other sisters, and finally, without a solitary
exception, by the whole convent, who all joined at regular periods in a
general mew that lasted several hours. The neighbourhood heard, with more
astonishment than edification, the daily return of this celestial
symphony, which was silenced, after many ineffectual measures, by
terrifying the modesty of the sex with the menace, that, on any future
repetition of their concert, a body of soldiers, pretended to be stationed
at the gates of the monastery, would be called in to inflict upon them a
discipline at once shameful and severe.

“Among all the epidemic fancies of the sex I have found upon record, none
equals that related by Cardan to have displayed itself in the fifteenth
century,—which forcibly illustrates what has been remarked of the
intuitive contagion by which fantastic affection is propagated among
women. A nun in a certain German convent was urged by an unaccountable
impulse to bite all her companions; and her strange caprice gradually
spread to others, till the whole body was infected by the same fury. Nor
did the evil confine itself within these limits: the report of this
strange mania travelled from one province to another, and every where
conveyed with it the infectious folly, from cloister to cloister, through
the German empire; from thence extending itself on each side to Holland
and Italy, the nuns at length worried one another from Rome to Amsterdam.

“Numberless instances might be quoted to demonstrate the force with which
the strangest and most wild propensities fasten themselves on the
imagination, and conquer and tyrannise over the will, when the soul is
debarred from a free intercourse with its species, and left too
uninterruptedly to its own unbridled musings. But those which we have
related may be sufficient to show the danger into which he runs who
delivers himself unconditionally to the custody of solitude, and does not
arm himself against its faithless hospitality. Shut up in a barren and
monotonous leisure, without studies to occupy curiosity, without objects
to amuse the senses, or to interest and to attract the affections to any
thing human, fancy will escape into the worlds of chimerical existence,
there to seek amusement and exercise. How fondly does it then embrace and
cherish angelical visions, or infernal phantoms, prodigies, or miracles!
or should its reveries take another direction, with what increasing
eagerness and confidence do its hopes hunt after the delusions of alchemy,
the fictions of philosophy, and the delirium of metaphysics! In cases
where the mind is less capacious, and its stores less copious, it will
attach itself to some absurd notion, the child of its languid and
exhausted powers; and bestowing its fondest confidence on this darling of
its dotage, will abandon reason and outrage common sense.”(82)

I have given this lengthened extract from Zimmerman, because I think it
satisfactorily explains those mystic _visions_ as well as _infernal
phantoms_, with which the mediæval legends and chronicles, generally
composed by monks, abound, and which are often unjustly ascribed to fraud
and wilful deception. Medical science, as well as all the branches of
natural philosophy, being then in a very imperfect condition, such
phenomena as those of nuns mewing like cats or biting like dogs, which are
mentioned by Zimmerman, were not explained as nervous diseases, but
ascribed to the possession of evil spirits; and I frankly confess that I
am by no means sure, that if cases like those mentioned above were to
happen in our enlightened age, there would not be found many good folks
ascribing them to a similar agency. It must be also remembered that, if
notwithstanding the extreme rapidity and regularity of communications in
our own time, reports of various events are often exaggerated and even
completely altered in passing from one place to another; how much more
must it have been the case during the time of such defective communication
as existed previous to the invention of printing and the introduction of
the post! It was therefore no wonder if occurrences of such an
extraordinary nature as those alluded to were immensely magnified by
report, and if it had, at least in many places, converted the mewing and
biting nuns into as many cats and dogs. It is, moreover, now generally
admitted that what is called mesmerism, but whose real nature science has
not yet explained, was known and practised during the middle ages, as well
as in remote antiquity, and that many thaumaturgic operations, described
by the mediæval legends, as well as by ancient writers, were produced by
means of this still mysterious agency.

I have dwelt perhaps too long on this subject, because I am afraid that
the observations relating to it are not confined to a distant period, but
may become but too often applicable to our own times. And, indeed, when we
reflect on the rapid increase of convents and nunneries, particularly in
this country, and that notwithstanding the present state of civilization
these establishments must be filled chiefly by individuals whose
imaginations are stronger than their reasoning powers, there can be little
doubt that they may again become the stage of those extraordinary
manifestations, the cause of which had been too exclusively ascribed to
mediæval darkness. It cannot be doubted, that designing individuals of
both sexes, possessed of superior talents and knowledge, but particularly
endowed with a strong will, may exercise not only an undue influence, but
even an absolute power over the inmates of the above-mentioned monastic
establishments; and that a skilful application of mesmerism may
efficiently promote such unlawful ends.

Many local superstitious remains of Paganism,—as, for instance, miraculous
powers ascribed to certain wells, stones, caverns,—stories about various
kinds of fairies, &c.—have furnished ample materials to the mediæval
legend writers, who arranged them according to their own views. They
generally retained the miraculous part of the story, frequently
embellishing it by their own additions, but substituting the agency of the
Christian saint, the hero of their tale, for that of the Pagan deity, to
whom it had originally been ascribed. It was thus that the localities
considered by the Pagans as possessed of some supernatural properties, and
resorted to by them on this account, were converted into places of
Christian pilgrimages, with the only difference that the Pagan _genius
loci_ was baptised with the name of a Christian saint, whose existence can
often be no more proved than that of his heathen predecessor. Many
hagiographers seem to have indulged their humour as much as their fancy in
composing these legends, which appears from such ludicrous stories as, for
instance, that of St Fechin, whose piety was so fervent that when he was
bathing in cold water it became almost boiling hot. This warm-hearted or
hot-headed saint is said to have belonged to the Emerald isle, though,
considering that his ardent piety was so very much like a manifestation of
the _perfervidum Scotorum ingenium_, in a somewhat exaggerated form, I am
much inclined to believe him a native of the north country. There are many
instances of such humorous miracles, but I shall quote only that of
Laurenthios, a famous Greek saint, and worker of miracles. Having one day
some business with the Patriarch of Constantinople, he was kept waiting in
the prelate’s ante-chamber, and feeling very warm he wanted to take off
his cloak. But as there was not any piece of furniture in the room, nor
even a peg on its walls, St Laurenthios, embarrassed what to do with his
cloak, threw it upon a ray of the sun, which was entering the room through
a hole in the shutter, and which immediately acquired the firmness of a
rope, so that the saint’s cloak remained hanging upon it. It must not,
however, be believed that the hot sun and fervid imagination of Greece
were absolutely requisite for the performance of such wonderful tricks;
for we have sufficient legendary evidence to prove that they were
successfully reproduced under the less brilliant sky of Germany and
France, because St Goar of Treves suspended his cap, and St Aicadrus,
abbot of Jumieges, his gloves upon the same piece of furniture that had
been used by St Laurenthios to hang his cloak, though probably,
considering that the sun is not so powerful in those countries as it is at
Constantinople, the western saints did not venture to try its rays with
such a heavy load, as had been successfully done by their eastern
colleague.

Some miracles were invented in order to inculcate implicit obedience to
the ecclesiastical authorities, which is considered by the Roman Catholic
Church as one of, if not the most important virtue to be practised by her
children. Thus it is related that when the Spanish Dominican monk, St
Vincent Ferrerius, celebrated for the great number of his miracles, was
one day walking along a street in Barcelona, a mason, falling from a high
roof, called for his assistance. The saint answered that he could not
perform a miracle without the permission of his superior, but that he
would go and ask for it. The mason remained, therefore, suspended in the
air until St Vincent, returning with the permission, got him safely down
on the ground.

It must be admitted, that many saints, whose lives are disfigured by
absurd stories of their miracles, were men of great piety, adorned with
the noblest virtues, and who gave proofs of the most exalted charity and
self-devotion. Unfortunately the honours of saintship have been often
bestowed upon such sanguinary monsters as St Dominic, whose shrine would
be the most appropriately placed in a temple where human sacrifices are
offered, or upon madmen who have outraged every feeling of humanity. Thus
it is related that St Alexius left his home on the day of his wedding,
and, having exchanged his clothes for the rags of a beggar, adopted his
mode of life. After some time, when his appearance had become so wretched
that he could no longer be recognised by his friends, he returned to his
parental house, asking for shelter. He obtained a place under the
staircase, and lived there by alms for seventeen years, continually
witnessing the distress and lamentations of his wife, mother, and aged
father about his loss, and was recognised only after his death by a book
of prayers which had been given him by his mother. And it was for this
unfeeling and even cruel treatment of his own family that he was
canonised! It is supposed, however, that all this story is but a fiction,
and, for the sake of humanity, I sincerely hope that it is so.

The limits of this essay allow me not farther to extend my researches
about the legends of mediæval saints, and their miracles; and I shall try
to give in my next chapter a short analysis of several practices which the
Roman Catholic as well as the Græco-Russian Church have retained from
Paganism.

Chapter VII. Analysis Of The Pagan Rites And Practices Which Have Been
Retained By The Roman Catholic As Well As The Græco-Russian Church.

I have given (p. 14) the opinion of an eminent Roman Catholic modern
author (Chateaubriand) about the introduction of Pagan usages into the
Christian worship, and a long extract (pp. 16-28) from another no less
distinguished Roman Catholic writer of our day, describing the cause of
this corruption. The Roman Catholic writers of this country do not,
however, treat this subject with the same sincerity as the illustrious
author of the “Genie du Christianisme,” and the learned French Academician
from whose work I have so largely drawn; but they try hard to deny that
many usages of their church bear the stamp of Paganism.(83) This is
particularly the case with the author of “Hierurgia,” a work which I have
already quoted, and which may be considered as the fairest expression of
what the Roman Catholic Church teaches on the subject in question. Thus
the use of images in churches is represented as being authorised by
Scripture, by the following curious arguments:—

“The practice of employing images as ornaments and memorials to decorate
the temple of the Lord is in a most especial manner approved by the Word
of God himself. Moses was commanded to place two cherubim upon the ark,
and to set up a brazen figure of the fiery serpent, that those of the
murmuring Israelites who had been bitten might recover from the poison of
their wounds by looking on the image. In the description of Solomon’s
temple, we read of that prince, not only that he made in the oracle two
cherubim of olive tree, of ten cubits in height, but that ‘all the walls
of the temple round about he carved with divers figures and carvings.’

“In the first book of Paralipomenon (Chronicles) we observe that when
David imposed his injunction upon Solomon to realise his intention of
building a house to the Lord, he delivered to him a description of the
porch and temple, and concluded by thus assuring him: ‘All these things
came to me written by the hand of the Lord, that I may understand the
works of the pattern.’

“The isolated fact that images were not only directed by the Almighty God
to be placed in the Mosaic tabernacle, and in the more sumptuous temple of
Jerusalem, but that he himself exhibited the pattern of them, will be
alone sufficient to authorise the practice of the Catholic Church in
regard to a similar observance.”—(_Hierurgia_, p. 371.)

All this may be briefly answered. There was no representation of the
Jewish patriarchs or saints either in the tabernacle or in the temple of
Solomon, as is the case with the Christian saints in the Roman Catholic
and Græco-Russian Churches; and the brazen serpent, to which the author
alludes, was broken into pieces by order of King Hezekiah as soon as the
Israelites began to worship it.

The author tries to prove, with considerable learning and ingenuity, that
the primitive Christians ornamented their churches with images, and I have
already given, p. 51, his explanation of the Council of Elvira; but his
assertions are completely disproved by every direct evidence which we have
about the places of worship of those Christians. I have already quoted, p.
7, the testimony of Minutius Felix, that the Christians had no kind of
simulachres in their temples, as well as the indignation of St Epiphanius
at an attempt to introduce them into the churches, p. 68, and for which
there would have been no occasion if it had been an established custom.

The most important part of his defence of the use of images is, however,
the paragraph entitled, “_No virtue resident in images themselves_,”
containing what follows:—

“Not only are Catholics not exposed to such dangers (_i.e._, idolatry),
but they are expressly prohibited by the church (_Concilium Tridentinum_,
sess. xxv.) to believe that there is any divinity or virtue resident in
images for which they should be reverenced, or that any thing is to be
asked of them, or any confidence placed in them, but that the honour given
should be referred to those whom they represent; and so particular are
their religious instructors in impressing this truth upon the minds of
their congregations, that if a Catholic child, who had learned its first
catechism, were asked if it were permitted to pray to images, the child
would answer, ‘No, by no means; for they have no life nor sense to help
us;’ and the pastor who discovered any one rendering any portion of the
respect which belongs to God alone to a crucifix or to a picture, would
have no hesitation in breaking the one and tearing the other into shreds,
and throwing the fragments into the flames, in imitation of Ezechias, who
broke the brazen serpent on account of the superstitious reverence which
the Israelites manifested towards it.”—(_Hierurgia_, p. 382.)

It is perfectly true that the Council of Trent has declared that the
images of Christ, of the virgin, and of other saints, are to be honoured
and venerated, not because it is believed that there is any divinity or
virtue inherent in them, or that any thing is to be asked of them, or any
confidence placed in images, as had been done by Pagans, who put their
trust in idols (Psalm cxxxv. 15-18), but that “the honour given should be
referred to those whom they represent, so that by the images which we
kiss, before which we uncover our heads, or prostrate ourselves
(_procumbimus_), we worship Christ and the saints whose likeness those
images represent.”(84) But if there is “no divinity or virtue resident in
images,” as is declared by the Council of Trent, what is to become of all
those miraculous images which are the subject of pilgrimage in so many
Roman Catholic countries, and the existence of whose miraculous powers has
been solemnly acknowledged by the highest ecclesiastical authorities? I
shall not attempt to enumerate those miraculous images, because their
number is legion, but I shall only ask the rev. doctor whether he
considers the image of the virgin of Loretto, which is the object of so
many pilgrimages, and to which so many miracles are ascribed, as having
some virtue resident in it or not? and would he break it in pieces on
account of the miraculous powers ascribed to it? Is he prepared to act in
such a manner with the celebrated _Bambino_(85) of Rome? and are the
miraculous powers ascribed to it, as well as to the virgin of Loretto, and
other images of this kind, a reality or an imposture? and, finally, what
will he do with the winking Madonna of Rimini, which has lately made so
much noise, and which, instead of being broken to pieces or torn to shreds
by the priests or the bishop of the place, has been approved by
ecclesiastical authority? I can assure the rev. doctor, that by breaking
into pieces the miraculous images, carved as well as painted, he will
break down many barriers which now separate the Protestant Christians from
those who belong to his own church. I am, however, afraid that he will
find many difficulties in attempting such a thing; and I must remind him,
that in quoting the above-mentioned canon of the Council of Trent, he
forgot an essential part of it, which greatly modifies the declaration
that there is _no divinity or virtue resident in images_, saying, “That
the holy synod ordains that no one be allowed to place, or cause to be
placed, any _unusual_ image(86) in any place or church, howsoever
exempted, except that the image be approved by the bishop: also, that no
new miracles are to be acknowledged or new relics recognised, unless the
said bishop has taken cognizance and approved thereof, who, as soon as he
has obtained certain information in regard to these matters, shall, after
having taken the advice of theologians and of other pious men, act therein
as he shall judge to be consonant with truth and piety.”—(Sess. xxviii.,
&c.)

The real meaning of the above-mentioned canon of the Council of Trent is
therefore, I think, that there is no divinity or virtue resident in the
images which are not authorised by the bishop to work miracles, and that
_unlicensed_ images are not allowed to have any such divinity or virtue in
them, but that such _unusual_ carved or painted images, as those which I
have mentioned above, having obtained the required authorization, may work
as many miracles as they please, or as their worshippers will believe.

It has been observed by a writer, who certainly cannot be accused of
violent opinions, the learned and pious Melancthon, “that it was impious
and idolatrous to address statues or bones, and to suppose that either the
Divinity or the saints were attached to a certain place or to a certain
statue more than to other places; and that there was no difference between
the prayers which are addressed to the Virgin of Aix la Chapelle, or to
that of Ratisbon, and the Pagan invocations of the Ephesian Diana, or the
Platean Juno, or any other statue.”(87) To these observations I shall only
add those of M. Beugnot, which I have given p. 27, on the marvellous
facility with which the worship of the virgin, established by the Council
of Ephesus, 431, has superseded that of the Pagan deities in many
countries.

There is scarcely any ceremony in the Western as well as in the Eastern
church, the origin of which cannot be traced to the Pagan worship. I shall
limit my observations on this subject to the three following objects,
which constitute the most important elements in the divine service
performed in those churches, namely,—1. The consecrated water; 2. Lamps
and candles; and, 3. Incense; giving the Roman Catholic explanation of
their origin, as well as that which I believe to be true.

With regard to the consecrated water, it is described by the author of
“Hierurgia” in the following manner:—

“The ordinance of Almighty God, promulgated by the lips of Moses,
concerning the _water of separation_, and the mode of sprinkling it, are
minutely noticed in the nineteenth chapter of the book of Numbers. In the
book of Exodus, we read that the Lord issued the following declarations to
Moses:—‘Thou shalt make a brazen laver, with its foot, to wash in; and
thou shalt set it between the tabernacle of the testimony and the altar.
And the water being put into it, Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands
and feet in it when they are going into the tabernacle of the testimony,
and when they are to come to the altar to offer incense on it to the
Lord.’—(Exod. xxx. 18-20.)

“That it was a practice with the Jews, not only peculiar to the members of
the priesthood, but observed amongst the people, for each individual to
wash his hands before he presumed to pray, is a well-attested fact. The
church adopted this as well as several other Jewish ceremonies, which she
engrafted on her ritual; and St Paul apparently borrows from such ablution
the metaphor which he employs while thus admonishing his disciple
Timothy:—‘I will that men pray in every place, lifting up pure hands.’—(1
Timothy ii. 8.) That in the early ages the faithful used to wash their
hands at the threshold of the church before they entered, is expressly
mentioned by a number of writers.”

As to the use of holy water being of apostolic origin, he says:—

“The introduction of holy or blessed water must be referred to the times
of the apostles. That it was the custom, in the very first ages of the
church, not only to deposit vessels of water at the entrance of those
places where the Christians assembled for the celebration of divine
worship, but also to have vases containing water mingled with salt, both
of which had been separated from common use, and blessed by the prayers
and invocations of the priest, is certain. A particular mention of it is
made in the constitution of the apostles; and the pontiff Alexander, the
first of that name, but the sixth in succession from St Peter, whose chair
he mounted in the year 109, issued a decree by which the use of holy water
was permitted to the faithful in their houses.”—(_Hierurgia_, pp.
461-463.)

It is rather a strange thing for Christians to imitate the religious rites
of the Jews, whose ceremonial law,—“which stood only in meats and drinks,
and divers _washings_, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the
time of reformation” (Heb. ix. 10),—was abolished by the New Testament.
However, if this is to be done, why is not the holy water adopted by the
Roman Catholic Church prepared in the same manner, and used for the same
object, as the Jewish _water of separation_, described in Numbers xix.,
but, on the contrary, composed in the same manner, and employed for the
same purpose, as the _lustral_ water of the Pagans? The fact is, that it
has been borrowed from the Pagan worship and not from the Jewish
ceremonial law, the truth of which is honestly acknowledged by the Jesuit
La Cerda, who, in a note on the following passage of Virgil,—

    “Idem ter socios pura circumtulit unda,
    Spargens rore levi, et ramo felicis olivæ,
    Lustravitque viros”

    —_Æneid_, lib. vi. 229—

says, “_Hence was derived the custom of the holy church to provide
purifying or holy water at the entrance of their churches_.”(88) The same
custom was observed in the Pagan temples, at the entrance of which there
was a vase containing the holy or _lustral_ water, for the people to
sprinkle themselves with, just as is now done at the entrance of the Roman
Catholic churches. The author of “Hierurgia” mentions, as quoted above,
that Pope Alexander I. authorised, in the beginning of the second century,
the use of holy water; and yet Justin Martyr, who wrote about that time,
says “that it was invented by demons, in imitation of the true baptism
signified by the prophets, that their votaries might also have their
pretended purification by water.”(89) And the Emperor Julian, in order to
vex the Christians, caused the victuals in the markets to be sprinkled
with holy water, with the intention of either starving them or compelling
them to eat what they considered as impure.(90)

To these evidences of the abomination in which the primitive Christians
held the Pagan rite of sprinkling with holy water, I may add the following
anecdote, characteristic of the intensity of this feeling:—

When Julian the Apostate was one day going to sacrifice in the temple of
Fortune, accompanied by the usual train of the emperors, the Pagan
priests, standing on both sides of the temple gate, sprinkled those who
were entering it with the lustral or holy water in order to purify them
according to the rites of their worship. A Christian tribune, or superior
officer of the imperial guards (_scutarii_), who, being on duty, preceded
the monarch, received some drops of this holy water on his _chlamys_ or
coat, which made him so indignant, that, notwithstanding the presence of
the emperor, he struck the priest who had thus sprinkled him, exclaiming
that he did not purify but pollute him. Julian ordered the arrest of the
officer who had thus insulted the rites of his religion, giving him the
choice either to sacrifice to the gods or to leave the army. The bold
Christian chose the latter, but was soon restored to his rank on account
of his great military talents, and raised, after the death of Julian and
the short reign of Jovian, to the imperial throne as Valentinian I.(91)

This monarch was, however, by no means a bigot; on the contrary, we have
the unsuspected testimony of the contemporary Pagan writer Ammianus
Marcellinus that he maintained a strict impartiality between the
Christians and Pagans, and did not trouble any one on account of his
religion. He even regulated and confirmed, by a law in 391, the privileges
of the Pagan clergy in a more favourable manner than had been done by many
of his predecessors; and yet this monarch, who treated his Pagan subjects
with such an extreme liberality, committed, when a private individual, an
act of violence against their worship which exposed him to considerable
danger. This, I think, is a strong proof of the horror which the
Christians felt for a rite which constitutes now an indispensable part of
the service in the Western as well as in the Eastern churches, and is most
profusely used by them.

With regard to the candles and lamps, which form a no less important and
indispensable part of the worship adopted by the above-mentioned churches,
the author of “Hierurgia” defends their use in the following manner:—

After having described the candlesticks employed in the Jewish temple, he
says:—“But without referring to the ceremonial of the Jewish temple, we
have an authority for the employment of light in the functions of religion
presented to us in the Apocalypse. In the first chapter of that mystic
book, St John particularly mentions the golden candlesticks which he
beheld in his prophetic vision in the isle of Patmos. By commentators on
the sacred Scripture, it is generally supposed that the Evangelist, in his
book of the Apocalypse, adopted the imagery with which he represents his
mystic revelations from the ceremonial observed in his days by the church
for offering up the mass, or eucharistic sacrifice of the Lamb of God,
Christ Jesus.

“That the use of lights was adopted by the church, especially at the
celebration of the sacred mysteries, as early as the times of the
apostles, may likewise, with much probability, be inferred from that
passage in their Acts which records the preaching and miracles of St Paul
at Troas:—‘And on the first day of the week, when we were assembled to
break bread, Paul discoursed with them, being to depart on the morrow, and
he continued his speech until midnight. And there were a great number of
lamps in the upper chamber where we were assembled.’—(Acts xx. 7, 8.) That
the many lamps, so particularly noticed in this passage, were not
suspended merely for the purpose of illuminating, during the night-time,
this upper chamber, in which the faithful had assembled on the first day
of the week to break bread, but also to increase the solemnity of that
function and betoken a spiritual joy, may be lawfully inferred from every
thing we know about the manners of the ancient Jews, from whom the church
borrowed the use of lights in celebrating her various rites and
festivals.”—(_Hierurgia_, p. 372.)

It is really difficult seriously to answer such extraordinary suppositions
as that the seven candlesticks, expressly mentioned as types of the seven
churches, should be an allusion to the physical lights used in the worship
of those churches, and not to the moral and spiritual light which they
were spreading amongst Jews and Gentiles. Such an explanation appears to
me nothing better than that tendency to materialise the most abstract and
spiritual ideas to which I have alluded above, p. 126. With regard to the
passage in the Acts xx. 7, 8, which says that there were a great number of
lamps in the upper chamber where St Paul was preaching, I think that this
circumstance might have been considered as a religious rite if the apostle
had been preaching at noon; but as it is expressly said that he did it at
night, nothing can be more simple than the lighting of the upper chamber
with lamps. It was also very natural that there should be many of them,
because as St Paul was undoubtedly often referring to the Scriptures, his
hearers, or at least many of them, being either real Jews or Hellenists,
must have been continually looking to copies of the Bible in order to
verify his quotation. It was, therefore, necessary to have the room well
lighted, and consequently to employ many lamps. It is, indeed, curious to
see to what far-fetched suppositions a writer of so much learning and
ingenuity as Dr Rock is obliged to recur, in order to defend a purely
Pagan rite which has been adopted by his church, giving the simplest and
clearest things a _non-natural sense_, similar to that which some
Romanising clergymen have been giving to the precepts of a church which
they were betraying whilst in her service and pay.

The same author maintains that lights were employed from primitive times
at divine service, saying:—

“The custom of employing lights, in the earlier ages of the church, during
the celebration of the eucharist; and other religious offices, is
authenticated by those venerable records of primitive discipline which are
usually denominated Apostolic Canons.”—(_Hierurgia_, p. 393.)

Now, what is the authenticity of these canons? The author himself gives us
the best answer to it, saying:—

“Though these canons be apocryphal, and by consequence not genuine,
inasmuch as they were neither committed to writing by the apostles
themselves, nor penned by St Clement, to whom some authors have attributed
them; still, however, this does not prevent them from being true and
authentic, since they embody the traditions descended from the apostles
and the apostolic fathers, and bear a faithful testimony that the
discipline which prevailed during the first and second centuries was
established by the apostles.”—(P. 394.)

I shall not enter into a discussion about the value of evidence furnished
by a work which is acknowledged to be apocryphal, and not to have been
written by those to whom its defenders had ascribed its authorship;(92)
but I shall only remark, that one of the most eminent fathers of the
church, the learned Lactantius, who flourished in the fourth century, and
consequently long after the time when the Apostolic Canons are supposed to
have been composed, takes a very different view from them in regard to
this practice, because he positively says, in attacking the use of lights
by the Pagans, _they light up candles to God as if he lived in the dark,
and do they not deserve to pass for madmen who offer lamps to the Author
and Giver of light_?(93) And is it probable that he could approve of a
practice in the Christian church which he condemns in the Pagan?

And, indeed, can there be any thing more heathenish than the custom of
burning lights before images or relics, which is nothing else than
sacrifices which the Pagans offered to their idols?

I have described above, p. 74, the manner in which St Jerome defended the
use of lights in the churches against Vigilantius. This defence of St
Jerome is adduced by our author in a rather extraordinary manner.

“It happens not unfrequently that those very calumnies which have been
propagated, and the attacks which were so furiously directed by the
enemies of our holy faith in ancient times, against certain practices of
discipline then followed by the church, are the most triumphant
testimonies which can be adduced at the present day, both to establish the
venerable origin of such observances, and to warrant a continuation of
them. In the present instance, the remark is strikingly observable; for
the strictures which Vigilantius passed in the fourth age, on the use of
lights in churches, as well as on the shrines of the martyrs, and the
energetic refutation of St Jerome of the charge of superstition preferred
against such a pious usage by that apostate, may be noticed as an
irrefragable argument, in the nineteenth century, to establish the remote
antiquity of this religious custom. After mentioning as a fact of public
notoriety, and in a manner which defied contradiction, that the
Christians, at the time when he was actually writing, which was about the
year 376,(94) were accustomed to illumine their churches during mid-day
with a profusion of wax tapers, Vigilantius proceeds to turn such a
devotion into ridicule. But he met with a learned and victorious opponent,
who, while he vindicated this practice of the church against the objection
of her enemy, took occasion to assign those reasons which induced her to
adopt it. That holy father observes:—‘Throughout all the churches of the
East, whenever the Gospel is to be recited, they bring forth lights,
though it be at noon-day; not certainly to shine among darkness, but to
manifest some sign of joy, that under the type of corporeal light may be
indicated that light of which we read in the Psalms, “Thy word is a lamp
to my feet, and a light to my path.” ’ ”—(_Hierurgia_, p. 298.)

Now, I would observe to the learned doctor, that St Jerome, in answering
Vigilantius, maintained, as I have shown above, p. 74, that it was calumny
to say that the Christians burnt candles in the daylight, and that it was
done only by some people, _whose zeal was without knowledge_.
Consequently, the church which has adopted this practice shows, according
to the authority of that “holy and learned father,” that _her zeal is
without knowledge_. With regard to the argument in support of the
abovementioned practices given by St Jerome, and reproduced by our author,
that the Eastern churches make use of lights, I admit that it is
unanswerable, because it is an undoubted fact that the Græco-Russian
Church makes an immense consumption of wax candles, chiefly burnt before
the images, and it remains for me only to congratulate the advocates of
this practice on the support which they derive from such an imperative
authority as that of the Græco-Russian Church.

It remains for me now only to say a few words about the _incense_, which
forms a constituent part of the service of the Roman Catholic and
Græco-Russian Churches, as much as the holy water and lights, and which is
defended by the author of “Hierurgia” in the following manner. After
having described the use of incense in the Jewish temples, he says—

“It was from this religious custom of employing incense in the ancient
temple, that the royal prophet drew that beautiful simile of his, when he
petitioned that his prayers might ascend before the Lord like incense. It
was while ‘all the multitude were praying without at the hour of incense,
that there appeared to Zachary an angel of the Lord, standing at the right
of the altar of incense,’—(Luke i. 10, 11). That the oriental nations
attached a meaning not only of personal reverence, but also of religious
homage to an offering of incense, is demonstrable from the instance of the
magi, who, having fallen down to adore the newborn Jesus, and recognise
his divinity, presented him with gold, and myrrh, and frankincense. That
he might be more intelligible to those who read his book of the
Apocalypse, it is very probable that St John adapted his language to the
ceremonial of the liturgy then followed by the Christians in celebrating
the eucharistic sacrifice, at the period the evangelist was committing to
writing his mysterious revelations. In depicting, therefore, the scene
which took place in the sanctuary of heaven, where he was given to behold
in vision the mystic sacrifice of the Lamb, we are warranted to suppose
that he borrowed the imagery, and selected several of his expressions,
from the ritual then actually in use, and has in consequence bequeathed to
us an outline of the ceremonial which the church employed in the apostolic
ages of offering up the unbloody sacrifice of the same divine Lamb of God,
Christ Jesus, in her sanctuary upon earth. Now, St John particularly
notices how the ‘angel came and stood before the altar, having a golden
censer; and there was given him much incense, that he should offer of the
prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which is before the throne
of God; and the smoke of the incense of the prayers of the saints ascended
up before God, from the hand of the angel.’—Apocal. viii.
3-5.”—(_Hierurgia_, p. 518.)

To this explanation of the use of incense in the churches, I may answer by
the same observation which I have made, p. 144, on a similar defence of
the use of lights, namely, that it is a strange materialization of
spiritual ideas by embodying into a tangible shape what is simply typical,
and which is not warranted by any direct evidence. Such far-fetched and
fanciful conjectures cannot be refuted by serious arguments; but as
regards the Jewish origin of the use of incense, as well as of many other
ceremonies common to the Roman Catholic and Greek Churches, I shall give
the observation of the celebrated Dr Middleton, on an answer made by a
Roman Catholic to his well-known Letter from Rome, and who, defending the
ceremonies of his Church in nearly the same manner as the author of
“Hierurgia,” says, “That Dr Middleton was mistaken in thinking every
ceremony used by the heathens to be heathenish, since the greatest part of
them were borrowed from the worship of the true God, in imitation of which
the devil affected to have his temples, altars, priests, and sacrifices,
and all other things which were used in the true worship.” This he applied
to the case of _incense_, _lamps_, _holy water_, and _processions_,
adding, “that if Middleton had been as well read in the Scriptures as he
seemed to be in the heathen poets, he would have found the use of all
these in the temple of God, and that by God’s appointment.”

“I shall not dispute with him,” says Middleton, “about the origin of these
rites, whether they were _first instituted by Moses_, or _were of prior
use and antiquity amongst the Egyptians_. The Scriptures favour the last,
which our _Spenser_ strongly asserts, and their _Calmet_ and _Huetius_
allow; but should we grant him all that he can infer from his argument,
what will he gain by it? Were not all those _beggarly elements_ wiped away
by the spiritual worship of the Gospel? Were they not all annulled, on
account of _their weakness and unprofitableness_, by the more perfect
revelation of _Jesus Christ_?—(Gal. iv. 9; Heb. vii. 18.) If, then, I
should acknowledge my mistake, and recall my words, and instead of
_Pagan_, call them _Jewish_ ceremonies, would not the use of Jewish rites
be abominable still in a _Christian church_, where they are expressly
abolished and prohibited by God himself?

“But to pursue his argument a little farther. While the _Mosaic_ worship
subsisted by divine appointment in _Jerusalem, the devil likewise_, as he
tells us, _had temples and ceremonies of the same kind_, in order to draw
votaries to his idolatrous worship, which, after the abolition of the
_Jewish_ service, was carried on still with great pomp and splendour, and
above all places, in _Rome_, the principal seat of his worldly empire.
Now, it is certain that in the early times of the Gospel, the Christians
of Rome were celebrated for their zealous adherence to the faith of
Christ, as it was delivered to them by the apostles, pure from every
mixture either of _Jewish_ or _heathenish superstition_, till, after a
succession of ages, as they began gradually to deviate from that apostolic
simplicity, they introduced at different times into the church the
particular ceremonies in question. Whence, then, can we think it probable
that they should borrow them from the _Jewish_ or the _Pagan_ ritual? From
a temple remote, despised and demolished by the Romans themselves, or from
temples and altars perpetually in their view, and subsisting in their
streets, in which their ancestors and fellow-citizens have constantly
worshipped?(95) The question can hardly admit any dispute; the humour of
the people, as well as the interest of a corrupted priesthood, would
invite them to adopt such rites as were native to the soil, and found upon
the place, and which long experience had shown to be useful to the
acquisition both of wealth and power. Thus, by the most candid
construction of this author’s reasoning, we must necessarily call their
ceremonies _Jewish_, or by pushing it to its full length, shall be obliged
to call them _devilish_.

“He observes that I begin my charge with the use of _incense_ as the most
notorious proof of their Paganism, _and like an artful rhetorician, place
my strongest argument in the front_. Yet he knows I have assigned a
different reason for offering that the first; because it is _the first
thing_ that strikes the sense, and surprises a stranger upon his entrance
into their churches. But it shall be my strongest proof, if he will have
it so, since he has brought nothing, I am sure, to weaken the force of it.
He tells us that there was _an altar of incense in the temple of
Jerusalem_, and is surprised, therefore, how I can call it _heathenish_;
yet it is evident, from the nature of that institution, that it was never
designed to be perpetual, and that during its continuance, God would have
never approved _any other altar_, either in _Jerusalem_ or any where else.
But let him answer directly to this plain question: Was there ever _a
temple in the world, not strictly heathenish_, in which there were
_several altars, all smoking with incense, within our view, and at one and
the same time_? It is certain that he must answer in the negative; yet it
is as certain that there were many such temples in _Pagan_ Rome, and are
as many in _Christian Rome_; and since there never was an example of it,
but what was _Paganish_, before the time of _Popery_, how is it possible
that it could be derived to them from any other source? or when we see so
exact a resemblance in the copy, how can there be any doubt about the
original?

“What he alleges, therefore, in favour of _incense_ is nothing to the
purpose: ‘That it was used in the Jewish, and is of great antiquity in the
Christian churches, and that it is mentioned with honour in the
Scriptures,’ which frequently _compare it to prayer_, and speak of its
_sweet odours ascending up to God_, &c., which figurative expressions, he
says, ‘would never have been borrowed by sacred penmen from heathenish
superstition;’ as if such allusions were less proper, or the thing itself
less sweet, for its being applied to the purposes of idolatry, as it
constantly was in the time of the _same penmen_, and, according to their
own accounts, on the _altars of Baal_, and the other _heathen idols_: and
when _Jeremiah_ rebukes the people of _Judah_ for _burning incense to the
queen of heaven_ (Jer. xliv. 17), one can hardly help imagining that he is
prophetically pointing out the worship paid now to the _virgin_, to whom
they actually _burn incense_ at this day under that very title.(96)

“But if it be a just ground for retaining a practice in the _Christian_
church, because it was enjoined to the _Jews_, what will our Catholic say
for those usages which were actually prohibited to the _Jews_, and never
practised by any but by the _heathens and papists_? All the _Egyptian
priests_, as Herodotus informs us, _had their heads shaved, and kept
continually bald_.(97) Thus the Emperor _Commodus_, that he might be
admitted into that order, _got himself shaved, and carried the god Anubis
in procession_. And it was on this account, most probably, that the
_Jewish priests_ were commanded _not to shave their heads, nor to make any
baldness upon them_.—(Lev. xxi. 5; Ezek. xliv. 20). Yet this _Pagan
rasure_, or _tonsure_, as they choose to call it, on the crown of the
head, has long been the distinguishing mark of the _Romish priesthood_. It
was on the same account, we may imagine, that the _Jewish priests were
forbidden to make any cuttings in their flesh_ (Lev. xix. 28, xxi. 5),
since _that was likewise the common_ practice of certain _priests and
devotees among the heathens_, in order to acquire the fame of a more
exalted sanctity. Yet the same discipline, as I have shown in my
_Letter_,(98) is constantly practised at _Rome_ in some of their solemn
seasons and processions, in imitation of these _Pagan enthusiasts_, as if
they searched the Scriptures to learn, not so much what was enjoined by
true religion, as what had been useful at any time in a false one, to
delude the multitude, and support an imposture.”—(_Middleton’s
Miscellaneous Works_, vol. v., p. 11, _et seq._)

The same author justly observes, that “under the _Pagan emperors_ the use
of _incense_ for any purpose of religion was thought so contrary to the
obligations of _Christianity_, that in their persecutions, the very method
of _trying and converting a Christian was by requiring him only to throw
the least grain of it into the censer or on the altar_.”

“Under the _Christian emperors_, on the other hand, it was looked upon as
a _rite_ so peculiarly _heathenish_, that the very _places or houses_
where it could be proved to have been done, were, by a law of Theodosius,
confiscated to the government.”(99)—(_Ibid._, p. 95.)

I shall conclude this essay by a short sketch of the superstitious
practices prevailing in the Græco-Russian Church, which will be the
subject of my next and last chapter.

Chapter VIII. Image-Worship And Other Superstitious Practices Of The
Graeco-Russian Church.

The Græco-Russian Church is perhaps the most important element of the
politico-religious complications in which Europe is at present involved.
It is, moreover, not a fortuitous cause of these complications, but has
been growing during centuries, until it has reached its present magnitude,
though its action upon Turkey may have been prematurely brought into play
by accidental circumstances. It comprehends within its pale about
50,000,000 of souls, whilst it exercises an immense influence upon
13,000,000 of Turkish, and a considerable one upon more than 3,000,000 of
Austrian subjects, professing the tenets of that church, though governed
by separate hierarchies. To this number must be added the population of
the kingdom of Greece, amounting to about 1,000,000: so that the whole of
the followers of the Eastern Church may be computed in round numbers at
66,000,000 or 67,000,000 of souls.(100)

The Russian Church differs from other Greek churches, not in her tenets,
but in her government. From the establishment of Christianity in Russia,
towards the end of the tenth century, to the capture of Constantinople by
the Turks in 1453, the Russian Church was governed by a metropolitan,
consecrated by the Patriarch of Constantinople. After this event, the
metropolitans were consecrated by the Russian bishops till 1588, when a
patriarch of Russia was instituted by that of Constantinople, who had
arrived at Moscow, in order to obtain pecuniary assistance for his church.
The patriarch enjoyed considerable influence, which modified in some
respects the despotic authority of the Czar. It was Peter the Great who
abolished this dignity in 1702, after the death of the Patriarch Adrian,
and declared himself the head of the Russian Church.

He introduced several regulations to restrict the power of the clergy, and
to improve their education. It appears that the violent reforms by which
that monarch tried to introduce the civilization of western Europe amongst
his subjects, had produced an intellectual movement in their church, but
which, not squaring with the views of the imperial reformer, was violently
suppressed by him. Thus, in 1713, a physician called Demetrius
Tveritinoff, and some other persons, began to attack the worship of
images, and to explain the sacrament of communion in the same sense as has
been done by Calvin.

These reformers were anathematised by the order of the Czar, and one of
them was executed in 1714.(101) Next year, 1715, a Russian priest, called
Thomas, probably a disciple of the above-mentioned reformers, began
publicly to inveigh against the worship of saints and other practices of
his church, and went even so far as to break the images placed in the
churches. He was burnt alive, and nothing more was heard afterwards of
such reformers. The Russian clergy regained their influence under the
reign of the Empress Elizabeth, 1742-62, a weak-minded, bigoted woman, who
was continually making pilgrimages to the shrines of various Russian
saints and miraculous images, displaying on those occasions such a
splendour and such munificence to the objects of her devotion, that the
finances of her state were injured by it.(102) Elizabeth’s nephew and
successor, Peter III., Duke of Holstein, who, for the sake of the throne,
had passed from the Lutheran communion to the Greek Church, entertained
the greatest contempt for his new religion. This half-crazy, unfortunate
prince, instead of trying to reform the Russian Church by promoting a
superior information amongst her clergy, offended the religious prejudices
of his subjects by an open disregard of the ordinances of that church, and
his projects of violent reforms. He not only did away with all the fasts
at his court, but he wished to abolish them throughout all his empire, to
remove the images and candles from the churches, and, finally, that the
clergy should shave their beards and dress like the Lutheran pastors. He
also confiscated the landed property of the church. Catherine II., who
observed with the greatest diligence those religious rites which her
husband treated with such contempt, and who greatly owed to this conduct
her elevation to the throne, confirmed, however, the confiscation of the
church estates, assigning salaries to the clergy and convents who had been
supported by that property. She made use of the influence of the
Græco-Russian Church for the promotion of her political schemes in Poland
and in Turkey; yet, as her religious opinions were those of the school of
Voltaire and Diderot, which believed that Christianity would soon cease to
have any hold upon the human mind, she seems not to have been fully aware
of that immense increase of power at home and influence abroad which a
skilful action upon the religious feelings of the followers of that church
may give to the Russian monarchs. This policy has been formed into a
complete system by the present Emperor, and it was in consequence of it
that several millions of the inhabitants of the ancient Polish provinces,
who belonged to the Greek United Church, _i.e._, who had acknowledged the
supremacy of the Pope by accepting the union concluded at Florence in
1438, were forced to give up that union, and to pass from the spiritual
dominion of the Pope to that of the Czar. This wholesale conversion was
necessarily accompanied with a good deal of persecution. Those clergymen
who had refused to adopt the imperial ukase for their rule of conscience
were banished to Siberia, and many other acts of oppression were committed
on that occasion, but of which only the case of the nuns of Minsk has
produced a sensation in western Europe. The same system of religious
centralization has also been applied to the Protestant peasantry of the
Baltic provinces, many of whom were seduced by various means to join the
Russian Church; and this policy continues to be vigorously prosecuted in
the same quarter, as may be seen by the following extract from the _Berlin
Gazette_ of Voss, reprinted in the _Allgemeine Zeitung_ of the 12th March
of this year, 1854:—

“Emissaries travelling about the country succeeded by every kind of
cunning, and by holding out prospects of gain and other advantages, to
convert people from Lutheranism to the Greek Church. All the children,
under seventeen years must follow the religion of their father as soon as
he has entered the orthodox church. Whoever has received the
anointment(103) can no longer return to his former creed, and those who
would try to persuade him to do it would be severely punished. It is even
forbidden to the Protestant clergy to warn their congregations from going
over to the Greek Church by drawing their attention to the difference
which exists between the two religions. A great number of Greek churches
have been built in the Baltic provinces, and already, in 1845, it was
ordered that the converts to the Greek Church should be admitted into
every town; that those peasants who would leave their places of residence
in order to join a Greek congregation should be allowed by their
landowners to do so;(104) and, finally, that the landowners and Protestant
clergymen who would oppose in any way the conversion to the Greek Church
of their peasantry and congregations, should be visited with severe
penalties. These penalties, directed against those who would attempt to
induce any one, either by speeches or writings, to pass from the Greek
Church to any other communion, have been specified in a new criminal code.
They prescribe for certain cases of such a proselytism corporal
chastisement, the knout, and transportation to Siberia.” It is also well
known that the Protestant missionaries, who had been labouring in various
parts of the Russian empire for the conversion of Mahometans and heathens,
have been prohibited from continuing their pious exertions. And yet,
strange to say, there is a not uninfluential party in Prussia, which,
pretending to be zealously Protestant, supports with all its might the
politico-religious policy of Russia, and is as hostile to Protestant
England as it is favourable to the power which is persecuting
Protestantism in its dominions. On the other hand, it is curious to
observe in this country some persons of that High Church party which
affects to repudiate the name of Protestant, and with whom _churchianity_
seems to have more weight than Christianity, showing an inclination to
unite with the Græco-Russian Church; and I have seen a pamphlet, ascribed
to a clergyman of the Scotch Episcopal Church, positively recommending
such a union, and containing the formulary of a petition to be addressed
by the Episcopalians of Great Britain to the most holy Synod of St
Petersburg, praying for admission into the communion of its church. I
would, however, observe to these exaggerated Anglo-catholics, who chiefly
object to the ecclesiastical establishment of England on account of its
being a State Church, that the Russian Church is still more so, and that
the most holy synod which administers that church, though composed of
prelates and other clergymen, can do nothing without the assent of its lay
member, the imperial procurator, and that a colonel of hussars was lately
intrusted with this important function. The Greek Church being opposed to
Rome, some Protestants sought to conclude a union with her in the
sixteenth century; and the Lutheran divines of Tubingen had for this
purpose a correspondence with the Patriarch of Constantinople, between the
years 1575 and 1581, but which did not lead to any result, as the
Patriarch insisted upon their simply joining his church. The Protestants
of Poland attempted in 1599 a union with the Greek Church of their
country, and the delegates of both parties met for this purpose at Vilna;
their object was, however, frustrated by the same cause which rendered
nugatory the efforts that had been made by the divines of Tubingen for
this purpose, the Greek Church insisting upon their entire submission to
her authority. It is true that some learned ecclesiastics of the
Græco-Russian Church are supposed to entertain Protestant opinions, but
this is entirely personal, and has no influence whatever on the systematic
policy of their Church, which hates Rome as a rival, but Protestantism as
a revolutionary principle. One of the ablest and most zealous defenders of
the Roman Catholic Church in our times, and whom a long residence in
Russia had made thoroughly acquainted with her church, Count Joseph
Demaistre, is of opinion that this church must finally give way to the
influence of Protestantism;(105) and I think that this might be really the
case if the Russian Church enjoyed perfect liberty of discussion, which
she is very far at present from possessing. I believe, however, that such
a contingency is very possible with those Eastern churches that are not
under the dominion of Russia, if they were once entirely liberated from
Russian influence and brought into contact with Protestant learning. Such
a revolution would be most dangerous, not only to the external influence
of Russia, but even to her despotism at home, because a Protestant
movement amongst the Greek churches of Turkey would sever every connection
between them and Russia, and very likely extend to the last-named country.
It is therefore most probable, as has been observed by the celebrated
explorer of Nineveh, Layard, that the movement alluded to above, which has
recently begun to spread amongst the Armenian churches of Turkey, was not
without influence on the mission of Prince Menschikoff and its
consequences.

I have said above that the mutual position of the Græco-Russian and Roman
Catholic Churches towards one another is that of two rivals. The dogmatic
difference between them turns upon some abstruse tenets, which are
generally little understood by the great mass of their followers, whilst
the essential ground of divergence, the real question at issue, is,
whether the headship of the church is to be vested in the Pope, in the
Patriarch of Constantinople, or in the Czar. The Pope has allowed that
portion of the Greek Church which submitted to his supremacy at the
council of Florence in 1438, to retain its ritual and discipline, with
some insignificant modifications. The Roman Catholic Church considers the
Græco-Russian one in about the same light as she is regarded herself by
that of England. She acknowledges her to be _a church_, though a
schismatic one, whose sacraments and ordination are valid, so that a Greek
or Russian priest becomes, on signing the union of Florence, a clergyman
of the Roman Catholic Church exactly as is the case in the Anglican Church
with a Roman Catholic priest who renounces the pope. The Græco-Russian
Church does not, however, return the compliment to the Roman Catholic one,
any more than the Catholic does it to that of England; because a Roman
Catholic priest who enters the Græco-Russian Church not only loses his
sacerdotal character, just as is the case with an Anglican clergyman who
goes over to the communion of Rome, but he must be even baptised anew, as
is done with Christians of every denomination who join that church,
whether Jews or Gentiles.

The system of reaction which the Roman Catholic Church has been pursuing
for many years, with a consistency, perseverance, and zeal worthy of a
better cause, and not without considerable success, has created just alarm
in the minds of many friends of religious and civil liberty. This feeling
is but too well warranted by the open hostility which the promoters of
that reaction, having thrown away the mask of liberalism, are manifesting
to the above-mentioned liberties. I shall, moreover, add, that the
political complications in which Europe is now involved may be taken
advantage of by the reactionary party in order to advance its schemes,
whilst the public attention, particularly of this country, will be
absorbed by the events of the present war; and therefore I think that all
true Protestants should, instead of relaxing, increase their vigilance, in
respect to the movements of the ecclesiastical reactionists. But the
dangers which threaten from that quarter are, at least in this country, of
a purely moral character, though they are doing much mischief in families,
and may throw some obstruction into the legislative action of the
government. They must therefore be combated with moral and intellectual
means,—with spiritual, and not carnal weapons,—and they may be completely
annihilated by a vigorous and skilful application of such means. The Pope
of Rome, though claiming a spiritual authority over many countries, cannot
maintain himself in his own temporal dominion without the assistance of
foreign powers, and is obliged to court the favour of secular potentates,
instead of commanding them, as had been done by his predecessors. The case
is quite different with the Imperial Pope of Russia, who commands a
million of bayonets, and whose authority is supported, not by canon, but
by cannon law, and not by bulls, but by bullets. The material force which
he has at his disposal is immensely strengthened by his spiritual
authority over the ignorant masses of the Russian population, upon whose
religious feelings he may act with great facility, because his orders to
the clergy are as blindly obeyed as his commands to the army; and it is
with the object of extending and consolidating this authority over all his
subjects without exception that those measures of persecution and
seduction against the Roman Catholics and Protestants, which I have
mentioned above, have been adopted. The probable consequence of this
religious centralization, and the condition of the church whose exclusive
dominion it is sought to establish in Russia, have been sketched in the
following graphic manner by an accomplished German writer, who, having
resided many years in Russia, and being thoroughly acquainted with the
language of that country, may be considered as one of the most competent
judges on this subject:—

“He who, with attentive ear and eye, travels through the wide empire of
the Czar, surrounding three parts of the world with its snares, and then
traces the sum of his contemplations, will tremble in thought at the
destiny which the Colossus of nations has yet to fulfil. He who doubts of
the impending fulfilment of this destiny knows not history, and knows not
Russia.

“However different in origin and interest the strangely mixed hordes may
be which constitute this giant realm, there exists one mighty bond which
holds them all together,—the Byzantine Church. Whoever remains out of it
will soon be forced into it; and ere the coming century begins, all the
inhabitants of Russia will be of one faith.

“Already that great net, whose meshes the Neva and the Volga, the Don and
the Dnieper, the Kyros and Araxes, form, inclose a preponderating
Christian population, in whose midst the scattered Islamitish race, the
descendants of the Golden Horde, are lost like drops in the ocean. What a
marvellous disposition of things, that the Russian empire, whose governing
principle is the diametrically opposite of the Christian law, should be
the very one to make of Christianity the corner, the keystone of its
might! And a no less marvellous disposition of things is it that the Czar,
in whatever direction he stretches his far-grasping arms, should find
Christian points of support whereon to knit the threads of fate for the
followers of Islam, artfully scattered by him—that he should find
Armenians at the foot of Ararat, and Georgians at the foot of Caucasus!

“But of what kind is this Christianity, that masses together so many
millions of human beings into one great whole, and uses them as moving
springs to the manifestations of a power that will sooner or later give
the old world a new transformation?

“Follow me for a moment into the Russian motherland, and throw a flying
glance at the religious state of things prevailing there.

“See that poor soldier, who, tired and hungry from his long march, is just
performing his sacred exercises, ere he takes his meal and seeks repose.

“He draws a little image of the virgin from his pocket, spits on it, and
wipes it with his coat sleeve: then he sets it down on the ground, kneels
before it, and crosses himself, and kisses it in pious devotion.

“Or enter with me on a Sunday one of the gloomy image-adorned Russian
churches. If the dress of those present is not already sufficient to
indicate their difference of station, you may readily distinguish them by
the manner in which each person makes the sign of the cross. Consider
first that man of rank, as he stands before a miracle-working image of a
Kazanshian mother of God, bows slightly before it, and crosses himself
notably. Translated into our vernacular the language of this personage’s
face would run in something like the following strain:—‘I know that all
this is a pious farce, but one must give no offence to the people, else
all respect would be lost. Would the people continue to toil for us, if
they were to lose their trust in the assurances we cause to be made to
them of the joys of heaven?’

“Now look at that caftan-clad fat merchant, as, with crafty glance and
confident step, he makes up to the priest to get his soul freed from the
trafficking sins of the past week.

“He knows the priest, and is sure that a good piece of money will meet
with a good reception from him; that is why he goes so carelessly, in the
consciousness of being able to settle in the lump the whole of his sinful
account; and when the absolution is over, he takes his position in front
of the miraculous image, and makes so prodigious a sign of the cross, that
before this act all the remaining scruples of his soul must vanish away.

“Consider, in fine, that poor countryman, who steals in humbly at the
door, and gazes slyly round him in the incense-beclouded spaces. The pomp
and the splendour are too much for the poor fellow.

“ ‘God,’ he thinks, ‘but what a gracious lord the Emperor is, that he
causes such fine churches to be built for us poor devils! God bless the
Emperor!’ And then he slips timidly up to some image where the golden
ground and the dark colours form the most glaring contrast, and throws
himself down before it, and crosses the floor with his forehead, so that
his long hair falls right over his face, and thus he wearies himself with
prostrations and enormous crossings, until he can do no more for
exhaustion. For the poorer the man in Russia, the larger the cross he
signs and wears.”(106)

This description of the religious state of the Russian people, given by a
writer who is not very partial to their country, may be perhaps suspected
of exaggeration, or considered as being too much of a caricature; I shall
therefore give my readers the observations which have been made on the
same subject by another German author, Baron Haxthausen, a great admirer
of Russia, who travelled over that country in 1843, under the patronage of
the Emperor, in order to study the state of its agriculture and industry,
as well as the social condition of the working-classes.

“A foreigner is struck,” says the Baron, “by the deep devotion and the
strict observance of the ordinances and customs of the church shown by
Russians of rank and superior education. I had already, at Moscow, an
opportunity of seeing it. Prince T., a young, elegant Muscovite dandy,
conducted me about the churches of the Kremlin, and almost in every one of
them he knelt down before some particularly venerated object,—as the
coffin of a saint, the image of a Madonna,—and touched the ground with his
forehead, and devoutly kissed the object in question. I observed the same
thing at Yaroslaf. Madame Bariatynski (the wife of the governor) and
another lady conducted me about the churches of that city, and as soon as
we entered one of them, both these ladies approached an image of the
Virgin, fell down before it, _without any regard to their __ dresses_,
touched with their foreheads the ground, and kissed the image, making
signs of the cross; and these were ladies belonging to the highest
society, and of the most refined manners. Madame Bariatynski had been a
lady of the court, and the ornament of the first drawing-rooms of St
Petersburg. Her mind is uncommonly cultivated, and she has a thorough
knowledge of French and German literature; and, indeed, when we were
walking to see these churches, along the banks of the Volga, she
discussed, in an animated and ingenious manner, the matchless beauty of
Goethe’s songs, and recited from memory his Fisherman. Even in the
strictest Roman Catholic countries, as, for instance, Bavaria, Belgium,
Rome, Munster, such public demonstrations of piety are not to be met,
except in some exceedingly rare cases, with women, but never with men. The
educated classes have in this respect separated from the lower ones. Even
people who are very devout consider such excessive manifestations of piety
as not quite decent, nay, though they dare not confess it, they are in
some measure ashamed of them. In Russia the case is different. There are
perhaps as many freethinkers, and even atheists, as in western Europe, but
even they submit, at least in public, and when they are in their own
country, unconditionally, and almost involuntarily, to the customs of
their church. In this respect, no difference whatever may be observed
between the highest and the commonest Russian; the unity of the national
church and of the national worship predominates everywhere.”(107)

It is almost superfluous to observe that a church which has such a hold on
the national mind of Russia must be a powerful engine in the hands of her
Imperial Pope, whose political authority is thus immensely strengthened by
the influence of religion. But I think it will be, perhaps, not
uninteresting to my readers to compare this baptised idolatry of the
modern Russians with that which had been practised by their unbaptised
ancestors about a thousand years ago, and the following account of which
is given by Ibn Foslan, an Arabian traveller of the tenth century, who saw
Russian merchants in the country of the Bulgars, a Mahometan nation who
lived on the banks of the Volga, and the ruins of whose capital may be
seen not far from the town of Kazan:—

“As soon as their (Russian) vessels arrive at the anchoring place, every
one of them goes on shore, taking with him bread, meat, milk, onions, and
intoxicating liquors, and repairs to a high wooden post, which has the
likeness of a human face carved upon it, standing surrounded with small
statues of a similar description, and some high ones erected behind it. He
prostrates himself before this wooden figure, and says, ‘O Lord, I have
arrived from a distant country; I have brought with me so and so many
girls,(108) so and so many sable skins;’ and when he has enumerated all
his merchandise, he lays before the idol the things which he has brought
with him, and continues his prayer, saying, ‘Here is a present which I
have brought thee, and I wish thou wouldst send me a customer who has
plenty of gold and silver, who will not bargain with me, but purchase all
that I have to sell at my own price.’ When his commerce does not prosper,
he brings new presents to the idol, and when he meets with some new
difficulties he makes gifts also to the small statues, but when he is
successful he offers oxen and sheep.”(109)

Kissing constitutes the principal part of the Russian worship of images
and relics, and is most liberally bestowed on those objects of adoration,
whilst I believe that the Roman Catholic Madonnas maintain a more
dignified state, and do not allow such familiarities to their worshippers,
unless on some particular occasions or to some privileged persons. The
Emperor himself sets the example of this pious _osculation_, a striking
instance of which occurred in the summer of last year, 1853, under
circumstances which deserve a particular notice.

I have said above, p. 161, that several millions of the followers of the
Greek United Church had been forced by the present emperor to transfer
their spiritual allegiance from the Pope to himself. Several of their
churches contain miraculous images of the Virgin, of more or less repute,
and which were obliged to share the fate of their worshippers, and to
become schismatics as much as the latter. Their vested rights have not
been, however, injured in any way by this revolution, because they
continue to be worshipped, and to work miracles as they did before, or,
what is the same thing, they are fully authorised to do so. The Russian
government followed on this occasion its usual line of policy, which is to
promote those who have joined it, forsaking their former party; and thus
one of the most distinguished of these miracle-working converts, the
Madonna of Pochayoff, a little town in Wolhynia, was transferred from her
provincial station to Warsaw, and placed there in a newly built Russian
cathedral, probably with the object of inducing the Roman Catholic
inhabitants of that capital to imitate an example set to them in such a
high quarter, and to acknowledge the spiritual authority of the Czar as
much as they are obliged to submit to his temporal dominion. When the
emperor was going last year to Olmutz, in order to persuade the Austrian
court to support his policy in Turkey, he passed through Warsaw, and
repairing, immediately after his arrival in that city, to the Russian
cathedral, kissed the above-mentioned miraculous image of the Madonna of
Pochayoff with such fervour that it produced quite a sensation upon all
those who were present, and was noticed in the newspapers as a proof of
the autocrat’s piety. Yet whether this Madonna, notwithstanding her
outward conversion to the Græco-Russian Church, remains a Romanist at
heart, or whether, for some other reason, she could or would not support
the views of her imperial worshipper, the result of the Czar’s voyage to
Olmutz proved that the caresses which he had bestowed upon the Madonna in
question were _love’s labours lost_. It may be also observed, that the
emperor himself seems not to have been quite sure of the effects of his
pious addresses to the now schismatic Madonna of Pochayoff, because it is
well known that this man, who, as I have said above, p. 161, had torn from
the spiritual authority of the Pope, by a violent persecution, many
millions of souls, knelt during his visit to Olmutz, with all the marks of
deep devotion, at a Roman Catholic high mass; whilst the Prince of
Prussia, who was also present on that occasion, stood by without taking a
hypocritical part in a worship which was contrary to his religion.

This image-kissing propensity of the Russians was the cause of a tragical
event during the plague at Moscow in 1771. It usually happens during a
public calamity that rumours of a wild and absurd nature are circulated
amongst the ignorant part of the population, and it was thus that, when
the pestilence was raging in the above-mentioned capital, a report was
spread that an image of the Virgin, placed at the entrance of a church,
had the power of preventing infection. Thousands of people repaired to the
miraculous image, and endless processions were wending along the streets
towards the same object of adoration, which was overloaded with rich
offerings by its worshippers, and adorned with costly jewels. As was to be
expected, this superstitious practice, instead of preventing the
infection, powerfully contributed to its increase; because the kisses
which the crowd lavishly bestowed on the miraculous image could not but
propagate the disease. The Archbishop of Moscow, Ambrose, an enlightened
prelate, in order to stop this mischief, removed the image from the place
where it had been exposed into the interior of the church; but this wise
measure produced a violent riot, and an infuriated mob rushed into the
sanctuary and murdered the venerable old man at the foot of the altar,
where he was officiating, dressed in his pontificals.

It is probably the same image of which Bodenstedt, whose account of the
Russian Church I have quoted above, p. 169, relates the following
anecdote. After having spoken of the usurpations of Russia beyond the
Caucasus, under pretence of protecting the Christian population of those
parts, he says:—

“The Russian policy, which conceals its grasping claws under the cloak of
religion, may be not inaptly compared to a lady well known at Moscow, who,
to the great edification of the bystanders, kissed the miraculous Madonna,
situated close to the Kremlin, with so much fervour, that the most costly
diamond of the jewels with which this image is covered remained in her
mouth.” And he adds, in a note, “The thing was afterwards discovered, and
the writer of this was himself present when this lady, the wife of a
Russian general, was obliged publicly to crave the forgiveness of the
image for this act of desecration. It is said that when this noble lady
was judicially examined about this affair, she pleaded in her defence that
having loved and worshipped the image in question devoutly during many
years, she believed herself entitled to a little _souvenir_ from the
Madonna.”(110) The Russian lady of rank seems not to have been so
ingenious as the Prussian soldier, whose story I have related on p. 118.
And it must be remarked that the Russian images expose their worshippers
to the temptations of mammon much more than the Roman Catholic ones;
because, whilst the latter are often valuable as objects of art, the
former have usually silver or golden garments, often set with precious
stones, which entirely cover the painting except the face, generally by no
means a model of beauty. The gifts which the Russians bestow on their
images are immense, and the most celebrated place for the accumulation of
such treasures is the convent of Troitza, or Trinity, situated about fifty
English miles from Moscow, and considered as a kind of national sanctuary
of Russia.(111) Baron Haxthausen, whom I have quoted on p. 173, says that
the value of sacred vases and ornaments accumulated in that place
surpasses all that may be seen of this kind any where else, without even
excepting Rome and Loretto; and he thinks that the quantity of pearls
contained in those ornaments is perhaps greater than is to be found in the
whole of Europe.(112)

The grave of St Sergius, the founder of that convent in the fourteenth
century, is adorned with gold and precious stones, and the silver canopy
over it is said to weigh 1200 pounds. The most remarkable object contained
in that convent is, however, the image of that saint which accompanied
Peter the Great during all his campaigns, and on which are inscribed the
names of all the battles and stormings of towns at which it had been
present. I do not know whether this image had a part in other expeditions
of the Russian army, but I have read this year in the newspapers that when
a division of grenadiers was passing through Moscow, on their way to
Turkey, the Archbishop of that capital addressed them, firing their zeal
for the religious war in which they were going to take part, and after
having blessed them with the image of St Sergius, the same to which I
alluded above, gave it them as a companion of their expedition. The allied
troops must therefore be prepared to encounter that _bellicose_ saint
somewhere on the Danube, unless he has been ordered to the shores of the
Baltic for the defence of the capital. The custom of taking with them
images considered as miraculous, during a campaign, was followed by the
generals of the Greek empire on many occasions. Thus it is related by a
Byzantine writer,(113) that in 590 Philippicus, a general of the Emperor
Mauritius, when going to engage the Persians in battle, took an _image
which was not made by the hands of man_, and carried it about the ranks of
his army, in order to purify his soldiers, and that he gained, after this
ceremony, a complete victory. It must, however, be remarked that when
Philippicus was replaced by another general, called Priscus, the latter,
relying too much on the protection of the image which _was not made by the
hands of man_, diminished the rations of the soldiers, and gave them other
causes of offence; they revolted, and when Priscus, in order to subdue the
riot, paraded the image in question, the mutineers threw stones at it. I
don’t know exactly how this business ended, but it is said that the Greek
generals usually liked to have an image of the kind alluded to, in order
to appease their troops in cases of mutiny and discontent; and I believe
that, considering the gross ignorance and superstition of the Russian
soldiers, the image of St Sergius may do good service in similar cases,
and for which these soldiers have but too many reasons. The Greek emperors
also sometimes provided with miraculous images the ambassadors who were
sent on important missions. I don’t know whether the Russian diplomacy,
which has performed so many wonders, has ever had recourse to the
assistance of such images, or to that of any supernatural agency.

The miraculous images of the Græco-Russian Church are generally considered
as _not made by the hands of man_, whilst those of the Roman Catholic
Church are usually believed to be painted by St Luke. The most celebrated
Madonnas of Russia, as those of Kazan, Korennaya, Akhtyrka, &c., are
believed to have dropt from heaven, in the same manner as the Diana of
Ephesus, and other Greek idols of repute. They are called _yavlenneeye
icony_, _i.e._, revealed images, and their number is considerable, though
all of them do not enjoy an equal reputation for miraculous powers. The
number of images of various descriptions is, I think, much greater in
Russia than in any other country, and they are called by the common
people, not images, _icony_, but gods, _boghi_; and many of their
worshippers are so ignorant, that they take every kind of picture or
engraving for the _boghi_, and devoutly cross themselves before them. A
German officer of engineers, in the Russian service, related to the author
that he had a Russian servant, a young lad of a very devout disposition,
who pasted every engraving which he could lay hold on, upon the wall over
his bed, in order to address his prayers to them. This officer once missed
some plates, containing mathematical figures, which had dropt from a book
of geometry, and he found afterwards that his pious servant, having picked
them up, gave them a place in his pantheon. If this strange divinity had
been found amongst the objects worshipped by that poor lad by some very
profound foreign traveller, unacquainted with the Russian people, it is
more than probable that he would have taken it for a mystical object of
adoration, and written a learned dissertation to explain its emblematic
sense.

Every household in Russia has its own little sanctuary, consisting of one
or more images, ornamented according to the means of the owner, and placed
in a corner opposite to the principal door. Every one who enters the room
makes a sign of the cross, bowing to these _penates_, the place under
whose shrine is considered as the seat of honour, reserved at meals for
the father of the family, or the most respected guest.

The Russians are great _exclusives_ in respect to their images, and every
believer has at least one of them stuck on the wall near his sleeping
place, for his especial use and comfort; whilst people who are continually
moving about, as carriers, pedlars, soldiers, &c., have their pocket
divinities with them; and the description of the devotional exercises of a
Russian soldier, given on p. 171, is by no means a caricature. This
exclusiveness was much greater before the reforms introduced by the
Patriarch Nicon in the seventeenth century than it is at present.(114)
Contemporary travellers relate that people brought into the churches their
own images, trying to get for them on the walls of the church the place
which they considered the best; and thus it often happened that these
images, being placed opposite to the altar, people in praying to them
turned their backs to the officiating priest, which generally produced
great confusion, and disturbed the performance of divine service. There
was a very great competition amongst those people in ornamenting their
images as showily as possible; and as the sanctity of an image was
increased, according to the opinion of those baptised idolaters, in
proportion to the richness of its ornaments, it often happened that a poor
man, who could not afford to trim up smartly his own image, addressed his
prayers to that of his richer neighbour. Such an adoration, however, was
considered as contraband; and when the lawful owner of the image caught
one of those pious interlopers, he not only sharply rebuked him, but
frequently gave him a sound thrashing, saying that he did not go to the
expense of decorating his image that another should obtain its
favours.(115)

Scandalous scenes of this description have been abolished in the
established church by the reforms of the Patriarch Nicon, alluded to
above, but something very like it may still be witnessed in the churches
of the _Raskolniks_, who have separated from the established church on
account of those reforms. These people often bring their own images to the
churches to pray before them, and it frequently happens amongst the boys
who worship in this way, that some of them, perceiving that their
neighbour has a finer image than their own, they steal it from him,
substituting that which belongs to them. This produces quarrels and
fighting amongst these boys, who reproach one another, saying, You
So-and-so, you have stolen my fine image which cost my father two roubles,
and left me this wretched one, which is not worth fifty copecs, _i.e._,
half a rouble. These scenes would be ludicrous if they were not positively
blasphemous, because these images are called on such occasions, as is
always done, by the name of gods, _boghi_.

It has been observed by some travellers in Russia that the image-dealers
of that country do not sell their wares, but, by a kind of legal fiction,
exchange them for a certain sum, and that consequently they are disposed
of at a fixed price. This is, however, not the case, and the image-dealers
of Russia make no exception to the other merchants of that country, who
generally ask for their goods the treble of their value, and a reasonable
price can only be obtained by hard bargaining. Only consecrated images,
_i.e._, those which have been sprinkled by a priest with holy water,
cannot be, I think, made an object of traffic.

The orthodox Russians have no less veneration for fine churches than for
splendidly adorned images, and the well-known German dramatic writer
Kotzebue gives in the relation of his forced voyage to Siberia,(116) under
the Emperor Paul, a characteristic trait of this disposition. The titulary
counsellor(117) Shchekatikhin, who conducted him to the place of his
exile, Kurghan, in the south of Siberia, showed a great reverence to all
the churches which they passed by. Whenever they passed a fine church
constructed of solid masonry, he doffed his cap and crossed himself most
fervently, whilst he treated very cavalierly all those which were built of
wood, making a hardly perceptible sign of the cross in their honour. This
national propensity to treat respectfully the great and disdainfully the
little, of which M. Shchekatikhin’s piety was such a characteristic
exemplification, has been, in its application to churches, described by
the great admirer of Russia, Baron Haxthausen, whose account of the
devotional practices observed by the upper classes of that country I have
given above, p. 173, in the following manner:—

“We saw, in most part of the villages on our road, fine new churches built
of stone or brick; but in one of them, called Novaya, I saw for the first
time an old wooden church, built of logs, and covered with boards and