In Polish and Lithuanian Russia, in Lemberg [Lwów], Kiev, and Vilna matters stood as ill [as in Muscovy] or in reality still worse because the [Orthodox] clergy, especially the higher, was wholly without discipline ; notorious sinners and assassins, grown old in wickedness were nominated bishops by the king's will and the fish stank like the head of it ; the lower clergy, wholly sunk into peasants, were deeply despised ; the state of the Orthodox church, especially measured by the brilliancy and importance of the Polish or Latin, was hopelessly sunken. Precisely, the comparison with the consideration, knowledge, and power of the Polish clergy could not fail to make the Orthodox question whether by adhesion to Rome—thoughts of union had never been quite eradicated—better conditions, a spiritual revival, schools and teachers, an increase indiscipline and dignity, could not be gained. On the other hand, Rome and its new instrument, the Jesuit order, were almost forced of themselves into wondering whether this Orthodox Church in Poland might not be won for the United Church ; it might then furnish a bridge for further steps, for the Utopian scheme of securing Moscow itself and Constantinople. The Orthodox Church in Lithuania and Poland had not much more time for delay : the wholesale desertion of the nobility, the Radziwils, Sapiehas, &c., to Catholicism (or Protestantism) was already causing very serious harm. Thus Jesuits and Orthodox bishops met each other half-way, and the Church, in return for the retention of its language, Liturgy, and the marriage of priests, acknowledge the Roman Papacy and dogma. This step, however, met with no unconditional welcome ; various magnates and even more the people,
especially in the towns, fought against it most emphatically. The battle, however, must mainly be fought with spiritual weapons, and for that knowledge and schools were indispensable.
The first intercourse with Polish-Latin literature and teaching had come about ; even the court of the Yagellons (only the first Yagellon loved all that was Russian, language, " banya," and paintings, all the rest were Polish from head to foot, and the mansions of the magnates followed the example of the Court) worked for and demanded Western culture.
Russians and Lithuanians learned Latin and Polish ; translations from the latter begin at the end of the fifteenth century. At first these are again interesting Apocrypha : the Book of the Three Kings, by Johannes of Hildesheim, the Tundalus Vision of the Tortures in Purgatory, although Orthodoxy acknowledges no Purgatory and the like, legends of the saints (Alexis, &c.),
and ascetic writings (the Dialogue of Death, &c.),
found their way into Russian. Francis Skórina, of Polotsk, who though Orthodox was forced to adopt Catholicism in order to pursue his studies,
the first Russian to obtain the degree of Doctor of Medicine in Italy, printed at Prague and afterwards at Vilna between 1518 and 1525 Books of the Scriptures, the Breviary, and others to satisfy the needs of his countrymen ; the language of his texts in some degree accommodated itself to the West Russian. The Protestant propaganda also wanted to make use of Russian, but soon gave up the attempts, after the issue of a catechism ; for the populace remained through ignorance and unshakable adherence to the Faith of their fathers inaccessible to it, while the easily-won nobility only read and wrote Polish. The Orthodox Brotherhoods, established on Western models for pious and charitable purposes at Lemberg and Vilna, as also Constantine of Ostróg, one of the richest and most powerful princes in the world, provided schools, teachers, and means ; and as nothing could be done with Græco-Slavic alone, they based on the Latin of the Polish schools their programme and their whole curriculum. Thus Russia acquired after fully six hundred years the first
establishments which deserved the name of schools and not mere spelling-classes. The Prince himself kept up a Press (the first complete Slavonic bible appeared at Ostróg in 1581 ; he text is drawn from Old Russian sources)
and schools, built monasteries and churches, and ordered of Polish Protestants, as his Russians were as yet not strong enough, the polemical writings for the defence of Orthodoxy against Jesuits and Catholics, which were then translated into Russian. Soon, however, his schools bore excellent fruit ; there proceeded from them brilliant controversialists, the first grammarians and lexicographers. And in the same way worked the schools of the Brotherhood. But the foundation of their culture, Polish and Latin, took them wholly away from Russian soil, to which they were only attached by their creed ; they wrote by the by almost exclusively Polish, like Smotritsky, the most brilliant among them, compiler of a grammar which for a century and a half regulated the laws of Church Slavonic ; even their Russian writings are thought out in Polish and crammed so full of Polonisms that one would think one had Polish printed in Cyrillic before one. From Lemberg, Ostróg, and Vilna this movement, half religious, half scholastic, spread and finally transplanted itself to Kiev, which had begun at length to recover from the desolation of centuries, and was destined to raise itself once more to its former leading position in Russian spiritual life ; for it was Kiev that was to pave the way for the entry of the Latin-Polish school and its scholastic methods into Moscow itself.
CHAPTER II
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Premature reform movement under Demetrius—Stubbornness of the Moscow reaction—The Russian schism—Polish influence and Kiev intervention—Schools and literature, the printed and the written—Direct influence of the West—Close of the Russian Middle Age, and summary
At the beginning of the seventeenth century it seemed certainly as if there would be no need of Kiev intervention to introduce Western life, art, and knowledge into Moscow. The native dynasty had died out, the Tartar scion—Boris, after setting aside the last heir to the throne (Demetrius), had himself elected Tsar and anointed ; and although he trod wholly in the footsteps of the late rulers, posed as quite as pious and proceeded quite as ruthlessly against all " suspicious folk," exerted himself honestly for Russia's prosperity, and to please the nobility deprived the peasants of their right of transfer, he seems to have anticipated the needs of the new age and to have been more ready to make concessions to them. But he was allowed no time to do so : a conspiracy set up against him a supposed son of Ivàn, that Demetrius whom he had had murdered at Úglich, and, supported by Polish and Cossack help as well as by the discontented peasants flocking to him, Grishka Otrépiev entered Moscow as Tsar Dmitri.
The former pupil of Moscow monastic schools had in the best years of his youth sojourned in Kiev and Volhynia, consorted with religious freethinkers or Arians, and allowed the splendour of Polish life and customs to have its effect on him ;
of his having in Poland gone over to Catholicism people certainly knew nothing at Moscow ; his autograph declaration to the Pope has recently come to light out of the Vatican archives. What a century later Peter the Great was only to carry through with the help of iron determination and most terrible cruelty the frivolous youth thought that he could do in sport. He fell—not because of the falseness of his birth, for that point was quite secondary, and has been made prominent by Schiller quite contrary to the facts. Even the most genuine scion of Rurik would infallibly have come to grief over roast veal, table music, and not washing oneself in the " bànya " before going to church. In spite of his vanity Demetrius was really eager to know and thirsted for European knowledge, and the Jesuits who accompanied him could not serve him fast enough in that respect : he contemplated the immediate opening of High Schools in Moscow, even if he fetched the scholars at first from abroad. By this over-great eagerness for what was new, which did not go hand in hand with the necessary strictness and seriousness, he dug his own grave, wounded the religious feelings of his subjects, the only ones that they had, and irritated them into revolts which with his leniency and want of foresight had only too easy work of it. The attempt to let in freely the customs and knowledge of the West through widely opened gates was destined to fail this time. Nay, in consequence of fresh conflicts, of the threatening of Russian independence by the possibility of a Polish domination, which was only prevented by the putting forth of the whole powers of the nation, an orthodox reaction developed . . . ; the exceptional activity of the years 1603-13 caused indeed a whole flood of writings and counter-writings to appear, in which often among the tawdry phrases of ecclesiastical eloquence the basis of facts was there, though obscured as much as possible, but soon everything seemed to fall back into the old dead grooves. What fanatical intolerance and ignorance still prevailed was shown at the Moscow Synod of 1618. The Abbot of the Trinity Monastery, Dionysius, had been entrusted with the " purging " of the text
of a Book of Ritual : after a year and a half's work he handed it to the Deputy Metropolitan. He had on the strength of old MSS. and Greek texts made many corrections ; amongst others in the prayer for the consecration of water had had set aside an absurd addition to " Enlighten this water with Thy spirit "—" and fire," because it was wanting in the Greek original and in good Slavonic texts. For this he was found guilty of heresy, excommunicated, starved and smoked, and flogged. On holy days he was brought in chains before the Metropolitan, then tied up in the courtyard and exposed to the mockings and blows of the populace. Only by energetic intercession with the Tsar and Patriarch the Patriarch of Jerusalem saved the hapless man, whom they at the same time made to expiate other equally uncommitted sins.
Naturally Moscow Orthodoxy met the Kiev people also with similar mistrust : when one of them laid his newly worked out catechism before the Moscovites, he and his work failed to stand the test ; he had amongst other things included in it an explanation of clouds, storms, and the like, which they rejected as " Hellenic," heathen, and Aristotelian subtleties. To his indignant rejoinder " How then could the matter be explained ?" they referred him to the work of the angels ascending and descending . . .
Even in the last decades of the century Moscow presented in many ways a replica of Constantinople or towns in Asia Minor in the fourth century, when temple and market re-echoed with theological wranglings . .
( pages 33 - 38 )
* * *
It had . . . been easier to drive the Polish garrison out of the Kreml . . . than the Polish spirit out of Russia. Russians learned to know and appreciate Polish customs and culture from direct observation with every decade Polish influence increased in secular circles at Court and among the nobility, and reached its culmination under Tsar Theodore. When he was still Heir-Apparent a Kievite dedicated to his father, Tsar Alexis a book in Polish with the explanation : " I have published the book in Polish because I know that the Tsarévich reads books not only in our native tongue but also in Polish . . . The Senate of your Majesty also does not despise that language, but reads Polish books and narratives with pleasure." The Tsar's wife was the daughter of a Polish nobleman from Smolensk : we read of her that " she brought much good to Moscow ; first of all she induced the people to lay aside their hideous, womanish loose garments, which the tyrannical Tsar had forced upon them as a punishment for cowardly flight from his army—a legendary reason, common to the traditions of many people, explaining the Oriental garb of the old Russians ; then to cut
their hair and beards, as the father of Ivan IV. had done to please his Polish wife, but had found no imitators then ; next to wear sabres at their sides ; to wear Polish outer coats (the kontusz), and other things of the kind ; they began to set up Polish and Latin schools at Moscow, which some praised, while others in dispraise declared they would soon bring Polish religion and disputes into Moscow." Personal influence was also exerted by highly-placed Polish prisoners who were detained for years, such as the author and Voevode Paul Potocki. The Regent Sophia and her favourite, the highly cultivated Prince Golitsyn, were particularly inclined to things Polish. The second half of the century was thus marked by a regular invasion of Polish books, either circulated in the original or translated.
But should any one seek for these traces in Russian bibliographies he would find himself wofully disappointed. During the whole of the seventeenth century printing is still exclusively the affair of the clergy : Moscow has a single press at the Court of the Patriarch, and there only religious books are printed in the strictest Church language ; everything secular is completely excluded. But we are in the Middle Ages : written literature goes side by side with printed, as if printing were not yet discovered (the number of readers was of course very small), and from it we learn what was in favour. We learn this, for that matter, from other sources also : the splendid version of the whole Psalter by the Pole Kochanowski was so liked at Moscow, even among people who did not fully understand Polish, that Simeon Polotsky, the Tsar�s Court poet, in 1674 undertook a poetical rendering of his own in order to oust the Polish text.
At the outset the supply of belles letters was replenished from Polish. They had at first been most scantily represented ; to the old stock of the religious romance some classical romances and sagas, such as the Alexandreïs, fables, and some Oriental subjects, the riddles of the merchant Basargà, with the dénouement like that of Semiramis and Ninus, and the Judgment of Shemyakà were added in the fifteenth century ; brought from Lombardy by the agency of the Southern Slavs and
White Russia, the legend of the king�s son�s Bová, which became a favourite work of the Russian people otherwise Buovo d�Ancona, our Bevis of Hampton, from the Carolingian � Chansons de gest,� and � Tristan,� which, however, found no proper echo. Now the old chap-books poured in the Polish version over Russia, many being translated from the Bohemian : � The fair Magellone and her true Knight,� � The Serpent-woman Melusina,� � Emperor Otto and his Innocent Wife,� � The Seven Wise men,� the � Gesta Romanorum,� a collection of Oriental and Middle Age legends and anecdotes, in places of most unedifying contents, though always with an edifying and allegorical explanation ; facetiæh;, selected from a Polish collection. Only � Eulenspiegel,� which was such a favourite in Poland, found no purchaser ; evidently the half townish, half bucolic material was repellent. With these precursors of the novel Russia made acquaintance at a time when in Europe a higher stage of it had been reached. For true imagination they had as yet no inclination people chose what was instructive, translated the tedious fables of Paprocki from the dialogues Creaturarum ; the ethical maxims of Zabczyc ; apothegms and anecdotes from the Classical Antiquity of Budny. They were not all afraid of Catholic asceticism, so translated with abridgements the gigantic � Great Mirror of Examples,� mostly stories of miracles from the Middle Ages, as edited by the Polish Jesuits ; Thomas à Kempis�s � Imitation of Christ,� the writings of the Jesuits Bellarmine and Drechsel ; allegories, those of St. Augustine and Pope Innocent III., down to simple prayers.
Stronger meat was also in request ; historical literature in particular was held in esteem ; thus folks read the Universal Chronicle of Bielski, the Lithuanian of Stryjkowski, Boter�s Narratives, and others of the kind. They took interest in political writings, and translated the Economics of Aristotle in the Amplified Polish version, and Modrzewski�s books on State Reform ; Polish descriptions of journeys to the Promised Land and Starowolski�s description of Turkish institutions were greatly appreciated. They translated
calendars, medical works, the old herbals, the physiological and fabulous � Problems � of Aristotle, the book of E. Sixt on hot springs, and mathematical and grammatical treatises. In addition, many kinds of works were translated from the Latin, or even from the Dutch direct, e.g., the great idle Age collection of sermons of the Hungarian Meffreth, at the desire of Tsar Alexis, but side by side with it the excellent selenography of the astronomer Hevelius, who worked in Poland. The old and the modern, knowledge and fable, from deeply learned works to merry tales of Boccaccio or simple dream-books of Daniel, were welded together in an intellectual repertoire such as earlier Russia had not even dreamed of for comprehensiveness and many-sidedness ; for the first tie writing ceased to be placed solely at the service of the Church and asceticism. If the Russian had in previous centuries hesitated to tread on a piece of parchment which had been written on because the matter was sure to be sacred, now, for the first time, written as well as printed literature emancipated itself from these leading strings of the Church.
The Church itself had lent a hand to this, though not, indeed, that of the Patriarchs Joachim and Adrian. This movement also went directly back to Poland. There the Orthodox Church in its struggle against the Union forced upon it had been obliged to overcome by education and schooling its previous condition of spiritual nonage, in which it was unable even to give an account of its own belief. All Russian schools were soon outdone by that of the Kiev Metropolitan Mohila, a Wallachian who had become quite a Pole, the Collegium Mohileanum, expanded after the pattern of the Polish colleges out of a monastery school. The curriculum of it was roughly modeled on that of the Jesuit schools, Latin with poetics and rhetoric, scholastic philosophy and theological courses to crown the studies ; they not only borrowed from them laudatory verses and ornate orations to the glorification of their patrons, and to celebrate festivals, but even the Jesuit school dramas, although they limited them with greater exclusiveness to scriptural subjects and Christmas plays. At this school worked and from it issued all the theologians, or in other words men
of letters, of Western Russia, who were soon to set the fashion in Moscow itself. Teaching and method were those of the Middle Age, Latin and scholastic ; they delighted in preaching, not the simple edifying word, but the far-fetched allegorical exposition which culled the most remote themes from Ancient History, from imaginary Natural History, in order to dazzle by something new, to give the most startling explanations, to stimulate the hearer by the most remote conjunctions. Especially the younger generation knew and delighted in the Classics, wrote Latin, and printed both in Polish and Russian ; it belongs to both literatures.
This West Russian culture, the new Kiev activity, had by no means escaped notice in Moscow, but people regarded it at first with growing distrust. They saw in this Latin, rhetoric and scholastic only defection from the true Orthodoxy They denied this to people who possibly had been baptized, not by immersion, but by mere sprinkling ; they even went so far, at Moscow, as to rebaptize those so baptized as if they were heathen, and yet in the end, without the help of these � sprinkled,� the Cherkasses (or Circassians) as the Little Russians were called from a town on the Dnepr, it was quite impossible to introduce the simples innovation into Moscow.
Greek refugees and begging emissaries of the Oriental Patriarchs opened the eyes of the Russians as to their incredible antiquatedness. These Greeks notice the difference between Kiev and Moscow in their own persons. In the former they felt themselves free, in the latter as if in a cage ; they were even watched through the keyhole ; in the Ukraine among the Cossacks people loved to attend the schools, in Moscow there were none. And evermore urgent sounded the demand of these Greeks for schools. When the people at last consented to them at Moscow, when the revision of the ecclesiastical books became more and more urgent, except the Little Russians there was no one who could conduct the schools or prepare the texts for printing ; hence with the idle of the century begins the extensive exodus of Kiev scholars to Moscow. Though their knowledge might seem to Westerns one-sided and obsolete, as
compared with Moscow ignorance it signified the tardy liberation of the spirit from mere belief in the letter, it worked for the first time with logical categories, had at command a wide knowledge of literature, and transferred the Polish-Latin models to Moscow.
The spiritual life and literature of the second half of the century is materially affected by them. The most prominent among them were E. Slavinetsky—who, to be sure, was personally little to the fore, and hid himself modestly in the background of the school and the press, as the real reviser of the liturgical texts—and more particularly one Simeon Polotsky, who, a skilful courtier to boot, managed to hold his own against all attacks in a sort of confidential post under Tsar Alexis Theodore, whose tutor he was, and the Regent Sophia till his death. He is the first Russian poet, at once of the Court and religion. His verses in their rhythmical construction incline towards Polish, an language rhythmically quite differently constituted, and run counter to the Russian ; they are syllabi so-called, because instead of their being founded on any rhythm only the syllables are counted, and quite inexact rhymes, for the most part merely grammatical, are used ; these monstrous, wooden, inharmonious verses held their own up to the thirties and forties of the eighteenth century.
Ethically the most important Kievite was a gentle Christian, the pious and saintly Demetrius, later Bishop of Tostóv, a patient worker, who did especially good service to deifying literature by his � Menaea,� Lives of Saints, partly based on those of the famous Polish Jesuit Skarga, which might have become a real popular book, and by his sermons, and to Russia by his solicitude for the school at his Rostóv ; against Dissent he engaged in controversy, but only in writing. Another Kievite, Gizel, compiled a Russian chronicle, which, in spite of its harsh strictly ecclesiastical language and other material defects, for a whole century enjoyed undeserved authority. Others, without leaving their beloved Ukraine, helped by their works to create the earliest literature, however one-sided it might be —the preacher Radivilovsky, the controversialist (in
theological matters, of course, Galatóvsky, the poet Archbishop Baranovich, who persistently put into rhyme everything impossible . . .
The advancement of the Kievans was regarded at Moscow askance. The Old Believers were sworn enemies of those in whom the suspected only renegades, but even at the Patriarchate they were not in favour. People begrudged them their strivings after ecclesiastical independence (for their city) ; they were suspected of Catholic inclinations ; they were accused of heresy .&nbps;. . No one, indeed, ventured to attack Simeon Polotsky, so firmly did he stand in the Tsar�s favour, but they vented their anger on his devoted pupil, Medvedev, the first great Russian scholar, even if only of the Kiev type ; his knowledge, his devotion to his teachers, whom he imitated in his poems, nay plundered, he had to pay for on the scaffold ; alleged political offences had to serve to hide the personal and fanatical animosity . . . After the execution the Kiev movement seemed suppressed. In conscious opposition to it, and its Latin proclivities, they tried at Moscow to call into existence Græco-Slavonic schools, with the assistance of the Greek Lichudes ; as the attempt failed they returned to the Latino-Slavonic school type of the Kievans. Though persuaded to consent to the execution of Medvedev, Peter leant upon the Kievans and made them his instruments in his conflict with Dissent, with superstition, and with the theoretical cravings of the Moscow clergy, and used them in particular to crush down the Orthodox Church in the State to a mere police agency, as which it still acts, without life, dignity, or importance of its own.
Not only life and the Church ,literature and thought, but even the language, was for the first time lasting smitten as
by an alien wave, through the translation and the Kievans. Hitherto the written language had remained untouched by intercourse and life ; men spoke the Great Russian dialect among themselves, in the courts and in the saloons of the Ambassadors� Office, a sort of Foreign Office, where the instructions for the Ambassadors were worked out and their reports received ; but the wrote only Church Slavonic and pronounced it, following the tradition, in the Little Russian way, �h� for �g,� and so forth. The difference between the two languages were so considerable . . . .
This strict division of the languages permeates the whole of the old literature, but its completeness varies considerably ; thus the synopsis of Gizel is written in a more exclusive church Slavonic than the Kiev Chronicle, which is six centuries older. The former practice remained in vogue, and thus there were really two languages—the written and the spoken. Into these the Polish now found its way . . . It is especially the terminology of the various ranks, citizens, coats of arms, and the like, of the army, rank and weapons, of grammar and philology, of objects of finer cultivation, from State apartments to the names of daily wants in clothes and food, even
expressions of politeness, in which the Polish element, often unsuspected by the Russian himself, survives since the seventeenth century. Ever the Latin borrowed words in Russian which so puzzle the foreigner, spina, luna, &c., came in through the medium of Polish, and in the same way many German words, e.g., tyurma (prison), or Thurm, pushka (cannon), or B¨chse reached Moscow first by Poland and Lithuania, and through Polish forms. However the Kiev people might try they could never quite get rid of the Polish they had got accustomed to at home. The eighteenth century first slowly eliminated many Polish words, which are still noticeable in the correspondence of Peter the Great, just as it had long since mastered the Polish influence.
( pages 41 - 49 )
( Geschichte der russischen Litteratur, A. Brückner
Leipzig : C. F. Ameland 1905. )
Edited by Ellis H. Minns, Translated by Henry Havelock.
New York, C. Scribner's sons ; London, T. F. Unwin, 1908.