Russian Rambles Part 14

"I am _otetz kaznatchei_," he replied, with a smile, as he not only offered his hand, but grasped mine and shook it, with an expression of his cordial good wishes, instead of bestowing upon me a mechanical cross in the air, and permitting me to kiss his plump little fingers in return, as he would undoubtedly have done had I been a Russian. I understood the respect paid, and our reflected importance, when I discovered that the "Father Treasurer" occupies the highest rank next to the permanent head of the monastery officially, and the most important post of all practically.

Shortly after, the question fever having attacked me again, I accosted another monk, equal in stateliness of aspect to the Father Treasurer. He informed me that from seven hundred to one thousand persons lived in the monastery. Not all of them were monks, some being only lay brethren.

Each monk, however, had his own apartments, with a little garden attached, and the beautiful rugs which I had seen formed part of the furnis.h.i.+ngs of their cells. A man cannot enter the monastery without money, but fifty rubles (about twenty-five dollars) are sufficient to gain him admittance. Some men leave the monastery after a brief trial, without receiving the habit. "In such a throng one comes to know many faces," he said, "but not all persons."

I inquired whether it were not a monotonous, tiresome life.

"It seems so to you!" he replied, when he had recovered from his amazement; and when I mentioned the liturgy which is peculiar to the monastery cathedral, and famed throughout Russia as "the Kieff-Catacombs singing," all he found to say was, "It is very long."

He took advantage of the chance presented by a trip to his cell to get us some water, to remove his tall _klobuk_. He must have read in our glances admiration of his beauty mingled with a doubt as to whether it were not partly due to this becoming cowl and veil, and determined to convince us that it was nature, not advent.i.tious circ.u.mstances, in his case. I think he must have been content with the expression of our faces, as he showed us the way to the most ancient of all the churches in Kieff,--in Russia, in fact,--built by Prince-Saint Vladimir immediately after his return from the crusade in search of baptism.

The church door was locked. The wife of the deacon in charge was paddling about barefooted, in pursuit of her fowls, in the long gra.s.s of the dooryard. She abandoned the chickens and hunted up her husband, who took a peep at us, and then kept us waiting while he donned his best ca.s.sock before escorting us.

It is a very small, very plain church which adjoined Prince Vladimir's summer palace, long since destroyed, and still preserves its gallery for women and servants, and a box for the ladies of the household.

Everything about it is nine hundred years old, except the roof and the upper portion of the walls. The archaic frescoes of angels in the chancel, which date from the same period, and are the best in Kieff, were the only objects which the deacon could find to expound, to enhance the "tea-money" value of his services in putting on his best gown and unlocking the door, and he performed his duty meekly, but firmly. We did ours by him, and betook ourselves to the princ.i.p.al church, the Cathedral of the a.s.sumption, where less is left to the imagination.

There, very few of the frescoes are more than a hundred and sixty years old, the majority dating back less than sixty years, and being in a style to suit the rococo gilt carving, and the silver-gilt Imperial Gate to the altar. In the _papert_, or corridor-vestibule, a monk who was presiding over a Book of Eternal Remembrance invited us to enter our subscriptions for general prayers to be said on our behalf, or for special prayers to be said before the "wonder-working image" of the a.s.sumption so long as the monastery shall exist.

"We are not _pravoslavny_" (Orthodox Christians), I said. But, instead of being depressed by this tacit refusal, he brightened up and plied us with a series of questions, until he really seemed to take a temporary interest in life, in place of his permanent official interest in death alone, or chiefly.

Service was in progress, in accordance with the canons of the Studieff monastery, adopted by St. Fedosy in the eleventh century. The singers, placed in an unusual position, in the centre of the church, were as remarkable for their hair as for their voices and execution. The russet-brown and golden locks of some of them fell in heavy waves to their waists. In fact, long, waving hair seemed to be a specialty with the monks of this monastery, and they wore it in braids when off duty. I had seen priests in St. Petersburg who so utterly beyond a doubt frizzed their scanty hair on days of grand festivals, that the three tufts pertaining to the three too slender hair pins on which they had been done up stood out in painfully isolated disagreement. What would they not have given for such splendid manes as these Kieff singers possessed!

We ascended to the gallery, to obtain a better view of the scene.

Peasant men in sheepskins (_tulupi_),--the temperature verged on 100 degrees Fahrenheit,--in coats of dark brown homespun wool girt with sashes which had once been bright; female pilgrims in wadded coats girt into shapelessness over cotton gowns of brilliant hues, knelt in prayer all about the not very s.p.a.cious floor. Their traveling-sacks on their backs, the tin tea-kettles and cooking paraphernalia at their belts, swayed into perilous positions as they rocked back and forth, striking the floor devoutly with their brows, rising only to throw back their long hair, cross themselves rapidly, and resume the "ground salutations," until we were fairly dizzy at the sight. Some of them placed red, yellow, or green tapers--the first instance of such a taste in colors which we had observed--on the sharp points of the silver candelabra standing before the holy pictures in the _ikonostas_, already overcrowded. A monk was incessantly engaged in removing the tapers when only half consumed, to make way for the ever-swelling flood of fresh tapers. Another monk was as incessantly engaged in receiving the _prosfori_. A _prosfora_ is leavened bread in the shape of a tiny double loaf, which is sold at the doors of churches, and bears on its upper surface certain symbolic signs, as a rule. The Communion is prepared from similar loaves by the priest, who removes certain portions with a spear-shaped knife, and places them in the wine of the chalice. The wine and bread are administered with a spoon to communicants. From the loaves bought at the door pieces are cut in memory of dead friends, whose souls are to be prayed for, or of living friends, whose health is prayed for by the priest at a certain point of the service, in accordance with the indications sent up to the altar with the loaves on slips of paper, such as "For the soul of Ivan Vasilievitch," "For the health of Tatiana Pavlovna." Thus is preserved the memory of early Christian times, when the Christians brought wine and oil and bread for their wors.h.i.+p; and the best having been selected for sacred use, portions were taken from the remainder in memory of those who sent or brought them, after the rest was used to refresh the congregation during a pause in the all-night service between vespers and matins. After the service, in our modern times, the _prosfori_ are given back to the owners, who cross themselves and eat the bread reverently on the spot or elsewhere, as blessed but not sacramental. At this monastery, the _prosfori_ prepared for memorial use had a group of the local saints stamped on top, instead of the usual cross and characters. It is considered a delicate attention on the part of a person who has been on a pilgrimage to any of the holy places to bring back a _prosfora_ for a friend. It is very good when sliced and eaten with tea, omitting the bottom crust, which may have been dated in ink by the pilgrim. Some of the peasants at this monastery church sent in to be blessed huge packages of _prosfori_ tied up in gay cotton kerchiefs.

The service ended, and the chief treasure of the monastery, the miraculous image of the a.s.sumption of the Virgin,--the Falling Asleep of the Virgin is the Russian name,--was let slowly down on its silken cords from above the Imperial Gate, where a twelve-fold silver lamp, with gla.s.s cups of different colors, has burned unquenched since 1812, in commemoration of Russia's deliverance from "the twelve tribes," as the French invasion is termed. The congregation pressed forward eagerly to salute the venerated image. Tradition a.s.serts that it was brought from Constantinople to Kieff in the year 1073, with the Virgin's special blessing for the monastery. By reason of age and the smoke from conflagrations in which the monastery has suffered, the image is so darkened that one is cast back upon one's imagination and the copies for comprehension of this treasure's outlines. What is perfectly comprehensible, however, is the galaxy of diamonds, brilliants, and gems thickly set in the golden garments which cover all but the hands and feet of the personages in the picture, and illuminate it with flashes of many-hued light. After a few minutes, the image was drawn up again to its place,--a most unusual position for a valued holy image, though certainly safe, and one not occupied, so far as I am aware, by any other in the country.

It occurred to us that it might prove an interesting experiment to try the monastery inn for breakfast, and even to sojourn there for a day or two, and abandon the open sewers and other traces of advanced civilization in the town. Our way thither led past the free lodgings for poor pilgrims, which were swarming with the devout of both s.e.xes, although it was not the busiest season for shrine-visiting. That comes in the spring, before the harvest, at all monasteries, and, in this particular monastery, on the feast of the a.s.sumption, August 15 (Russian style), 27 (European style). But there was a sufficient contingent of the annual one million pilgrims present to give us a very fair idea of the reverence in which this, the chief of all Russian monasteries, is held, and of the throngs which it attracts. But, as usual in Russia, sight alone convinced us of their existence; they were chatting quietly, sitting and lying about with enviable calmness, or eating the sour black bread and boiled buckwheat groats provided by the monastery. I talked with several of them, and found them quite unconscious that they were not comfortably, even luxuriously, housed and fed.

The inn for travelers of means was a large, plain, airy building, with no lodgers, apparently. The monks seemed frightened at the sight of us.

That was a novelty. But they escorted us over the house in procession.

We looked at a very clean, very plain room, containing four beds. It appeared, from their explanations, that pilgrims have gregarious tastes, and that this was their nearest approach to a single room. I inquired the price. "According to your zeal," was the reply. How much more effective than "What you please" in luring the silver from lukewarm pockets! The good monks never found out how warm our zeal was, after all, for the reason that their table was never furnished with anything but fish and "fasting food," they said, though there was no fast in progress. The reason why, I could not discover; but we knew our own minds thoroughly on the subject of "fasting food," from mushroom soup, fish fried in sunflower oil, and coffee without milk to that most insipid of dessert dishes, _kisel_, made of potato flour, sweetened, and slightly soured with fruit juice. They told us that we might have meat sent out from town, if we wished; but as the town lay several versts distant, that did not seem a very practical way of coquetting with the Evil One under their roof. Accordingly, we withdrew; to their relief, I am sure. As we had already lived in a monastery inn, it had not occurred to us that there could be any impropriety in doing so, but that must have been the cause of their looks of alarm. I believe that one can remain for a fortnight at this inn without payment, unless conscience interferes; and people who had stayed there told me that meat had been served to them from the monastery kitchen; so that puzzle still remains a puzzle to me.

We went to see the brethren dine in the refectory, an ancient, vaulted building of stone, near the cathedral. Under a white stone slab near the entrance lie the bodies of Kotchubey and Iskra, who were unjustly executed by Peter the Great for their loyal denunciation of Mazeppa's meditated treachery. Within, the walls of the antechamber were decorated with dizzy perspective views of Jerusalem, the saints, and pious elders of the monastery. At the end of the long dining-hall, beyond an _ikonostas_, was a church, as is customary in these refectories. Judging from the number of servitors whom we had met hurrying towards the cells with sets of porcelain dinner-trays, not many monks intended to join the common table, and it did not chance to be one of the four days in the year when the Metropolitan of Kieff and other dignitaries dine there in full vestments.

At last, a score of monks entered, chanted a prayer at a signal from a small bell, and seated themselves on benches affixed to the wall which ran round three sides of the room. The napkins on the tables which stood before the benches consisted of long towels, each of which lay across four or five of the pewter platters from which they ate, as the table was set in preparation. If it had been a festal day, there would have been several courses, with beer, mead, and even wine to wash them down.

As it was, the monks ate their black bread and boiled buckwheat groats, served in huge dishes, with their wooden spoons, and drank _kvas_, brewed from sour black bread, at a signal from the bell, after the first dish only, as the rule requires. While they ate, a monk, stationed at a desk near by, read aloud the extracts from the Lives of the Saints appointed for the day. This was one of the "sights," but we found it curious and melancholy to see strong, healthy men turned into monks and content with that meagre fare. Frugality and dominion over the flesh are good, of course, but minds from west of the Atlantic Ocean never seem quite to get into sympathy with the monastic idea; and we always felt, when we met monks, as though they ought all to be off at work somewhere, --I will not say "earning money," for they do that as it is in such great monasteries as that of Kieff, but lightening the burden of the peasants, impossible as that is under present conditions, or making themselves of some commonplace, practical use in the world.

The strongest point of the Lavra, even equal to the ancient and venerated _ikona_ of the a.s.sumption in the great cathedral, is the catacombs, from which the convent takes its name.

In the days of the early princes of Kieff, the heights now occupied by the Lavra were covered with a dense growth of birch forest, and entirely uninhabited. Later on, one of the hills was occupied by the village of Berostovo, and a palace was built adjoining the tiny ancient "Church of the Saviour in the Birch Forest," which I have already mentioned. It was the favorite residence of Prince-Saint Vladimir, and of his son, Prince Yaroslaff, after him. During the reign of the latter, early in the eleventh century, the priest of this little church, named Ilarion, excavated for himself a tiny cave, and there pa.s.sed his time in devout meditation and solitary prayer. He abandoned his cave to become Metropolitan of Kieff. In the year 1051, the monk Antony, a native of the neighboring government of Tchernigoff, came to Kieff from Mount Athos, being dissatisfied with the life led in the then existing monasteries. After long wanderings over the hills of Kieff, he took possession of Ilarion's cave, and spent his days and nights in pious exercises. The fame of his devout life soon spread abroad, and attracted to him, for his blessing, not only the common people, but persons of distinction. Monks and worldlings flocked thither to join him in his life of prayer. Among the first of these to arrive was a youth of the neighborhood, named Fedosy. Antony hesitated, but at last accepted the enthusiastic recruit.

The dimensions of holy Antony's cave were gradually enlarged; new cells, and even a tiny church, were constructed near it. Then Antony, who disliked communal life, retreated to the height opposite, separated from his first residence by a deep ravine, and dug himself another cave, where no one interfered with him. This was the origin of the caves of Fedosy, known at the present day as the "far catacombs," and of the caves of Antony, called the "near catacombs." The number of the monks continued to increase, and they soon erected a small wooden church aboveground, in the name of the a.s.sumption of the Blessed Virgin, as well as cells for those who could not be contained in the caverns. At the request of holy Antony, the prince gave the whole of the heights where the catacombs are situated to the brethren, and in 1062 a large new monastery, surrounded by a stockade, was erected on the spot where the Cathedral of the a.s.sumption now stands. Thus was monastic life introduced into Russia.

The venerated monastery shared all the vicissitudes of the "Mother of all Russian Cities" in the wars of the Grand Princes and the incursions of external enemies, such as Poles and Tatars. But after each disaster it waxed greater and more flouris.h.i.+ng. Restored, after a disastrous fire in 1718, by the zeal of Peter the Great and his successors, enriched by the gifts of all cla.s.ses, the Lavra now consists of six monasteries,-- like a university of colleges,--four situated within the inclosure, while two are at a distance of several versts, and serve as retreats and as places of burial for the brethren. The catacombs, abandoned as residences on the construction of the cells above ground, have not escaped disasters by caving in. Drains to carry off the percolating water, and stone arches to support the soil, have been constructed, and a flouris.h.i.+ng orchard has been planted above them to aid in holding the soil together. Earthquakes in the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries permanently closed many of them, and when the Tatars attacked the town, in the thirteenth century, the monks boarded up all the niches and filled in the entrances with earth. Some of these boards were removed about a hundred years ago; some are still in place. The original extent of the caves cannot now be determined.

The entrance to the near catacombs of St. Antony is through a long wooden gallery supported on stone posts, at a sharp slope, as they are situated twenty-four fathoms below the level of the cathedral, and twenty-two fathoms above the level of the Dnyepr.

A fat merchant, with glowing black eyes and flowing, crisp, black beard, his tall, wrinkled boots barely visible beneath his long, full-skirted coat of dark blue cloth, hooked closely across his breast, descended the gallery with us. Roused to curiosity, probably, by our foreign tongue, he inquired, on the chance of our understanding Russian, whence we came.

I had already arrived at the conclusion that the people at Kieff, especially the monks and any one who breathed the atmosphere within their walls, were of an enterprising, inquisitive disposition. My last encounter had been with the brother detailed, for his good looks and fascinating manners, to preside over the chief image shop of the monastery.

"Where do you come from?" he had opened fire, with his most bewitching glance.

"From the best country on earth."

"Is it Germany?"

The general idea among the untraveled cla.s.ses in Russia is, that all of the earth which does not belong to their own Emperor belongs to Germany, just as _nyemetzky_ means "German" or "foreign," indifferently.

"No; guess again," I said.

"France?"

"No; further away."

"England, then?"

"No."

"Hungary?"

Evidently that man's geography was somewhat mixed, so I told him.

"America!" he exclaimed, with great vivacity. "Yes, indeed, it is the best land of all. It is the richest!"

So that is the monastic as well as the secular standard of worth! This experience, repeated frequently and nearly word for word, had begun to weary me. Consequently I led the fat merchant a verbal chase, and baffled him until he capitulated with, "Excuse me. Take no offense, I beg, _sudarynya_. I only asked so by chance." Then I told him with the same result.

This was not the last time, by many, that I was put through my national catechism in Kieff. Every Kievlyanin to whom I spoke quizzed me. Of course I was on a grand quizzing tour myself, but that was different, in some way.

Over the entrance to these catacombs stands a church. The walls of the vestibule where my mother, the merchant, and I waited for a sufficient party to a.s.semble, were covered with frescoes representing the pa.s.sage of the soul through the various stages of purgatory. Beginning with the death scene (which greatly resembled the _ikona_ of the a.s.sumption in the cathedral) in the lower left-hand corner, the white-robed soul, escorted by two angels, pa.s.sed through all the halting-places for the various sins, each represented by the appointed devil, duly labeled. But the artist's fancy had not been very fruitful on this fascinating theme.

The devils were so exactly alike that the only moral one could draw was, that he might as well commit the biggest and most profitable sin on the list, and make something out of it in this life, as to confine himself to the petty peccadilloes which profit not here, and get well punished hereafter. The series ended with the presentation of the soul before the judgment seat, on the fortieth day after death. Round the corner, Lazarus reclining in Abraham's bosom and the rich man in the flames were conversing, their remarks crossing each other in mid-air, in a novel fas.h.i.+on.

When the guide was ready, each of us bought a taper, and the procession set out through the iron grating, down a narrow, winding stair, from which low, dark pa.s.sages opened out at various angles. On each side of these narrow pa.s.sages, along which we were led, reposed the "incorruptible" bodies of St. Antony and his comrades, in open coffins lacquered or covered with sheets of silver. The bodies seemed very small, and all of one size, and they were wrapped in hideous prints or plaid silks. At the head of each saint flickered a tiny shrine-lamp, before a holy picture (_ikona_) of the occupant of the coffin. It was a surprise to find the giant Ilya of Murom, who figures as the chief of the _bogatyri_ (heroes) in the Russian epic songs, ensconced here among the saints, and no larger than they. Next to the silk-enveloped head of St. John the Great Sufferer, which still projects as in life, when he buried himself to the neck in the earth,--as though he were not sufficiently underground already,--in order to preserve his purity, the most gruesome sight which we beheld in those dim catacombs was a group of chrism-exuding skulls of unknown saints, under gla.s.s bells.

On emerging from this gloomy retreat, we postponed meditating upon the special pleasure which the Lord was supposed to have taken in seeing beings made to live aboveground turning into troglodytes, and set out for the Fedosy, or far catacombs, in the hope that they might a.s.sist us in solving that problem.

We chose the most difficult way, descending into the intervening ravine by innumerable steps to view the two sacred wells, only to have our raging thirst and our curiosity effectually quenched by the sight of a pilgrim thrusting his head, covered with long, matted hair, into one of them. The ascent of more innumerable steps brought us to the cradle of the monastery, Ilarion's caverns.

In the antechamber we found a phenomenally stupid monk presiding over the sale of the indispensable tapers, and the offerings which the devout are expected to deposit, on emerging, as a memento of their visit. These offerings lay like mountains of copper before him. The guide had taken himself off somewhere, and the monk ordered us, and the five Russians who were also waiting, to go in alone and "call to the monk in the cave." We flatly declined to take his word that there was any monk, or to venture into the dangerous labyrinth alone, and we demanded that he should accompany us.

"No guide--no candles, no coppers," we said.

That seemed to him a valid argument. Loath to leave his money at the mercy of chance comers, he climbed up and closed the iron shutters of the grated window,--the cliff descended, sheer, one hundred and two feet to the Dnyepr at that point,--double-locked the great iron doors, and there we were in a bank vault, with all possible customers excluded.

Luckily, the saints in these caverns, which differed very little from those in the former, were labeled in plain letters, since the monk was too dull-witted to understand the simplest questions from any of us. At intervals we were permitted a hasty glimpse of a cell, about seven feet square, furnished only with a stone bench, and a holy picture, with a shrine-lamp suspended before it. Ugh! There were several sets of chrism-dripping saintly skulls in these catacombs, also,--fifteen of the ghastly things in one group. I braced my stomach to the task, and scrutinized them all attentively; but not a single one of them winked or nodded at me in approval, as a nun from Kolomna, whom I had met in Moscow, a.s.serted that they had at her. I really wished to see how an eyeless skull could manage a wink, and hoped I might be favored.

After traversing long distances of this subterranean maze, and peering into the "cradle of the monastery," St. Antony's cell, the procession came to a halt in a tiny church. There stood a monk, actually, though we might have wandered all day and come out on the banks of the Dnyepr without finding him, had we gone in without a guide. Beside him, denuded of its gla.s.s bell, stood one of the miraculous skulls. The first Russian approached, knelt, crossed himself devoutly, and received from the priest the sign of the cross on his brow, administered with a soft, small brush dipped in the oil from the skull. Then he kissed the priest's hand, crossed himself again, and kissed the skull. When we beheld this, we modestly stood aside, and allowed our companions, the other four Russian men, to receive anointment in like manner, and pa.s.s on after the monk, who was in haste to return to his bank vault. As I approached the priest, he raised his brush.

"We are not Orthodox Christians, _batiushka_,"* I said. "But pray give us your blessing."