CATHOLIC WORLD.

THECATHOLIC WORLD.VOL. XXIV.,No.144.—MARCH, 1877.Copyright:Rev.I. T. Hecker. 1877.THE RUSSIAN CHANCELLOR.[177]Theattention of the world is at present fixed upon Russia and upon the aged yet still active statesman who has directed her foreign policy for twenty years with an ability certainly very considerable, though it yet remains to be seen how far it will prove itself consummate and successful. It will help to an understanding of the career of this eminent Russian Minister of State, and of the present attitude of Russia, if we premise a condensed sketch of certain of the most prominent events in the civil and ecclesiastical history of this great and singular empire. It is difficult to find out the certain truth in regard to some of these important facts, and we therefore profess to claim for such statements as we may make, unless they relate to matters of known and undisputed history, only that probability which they receive from the authority of some one or more of the writers whose names we have mentioned in the foot-note annexed to the title of this article. This remark applies especially to facts relating to the schism of the Russian Church. We have never yet met with any professedly complete and minute ecclesiastical history of Russia. Mouravieff’s work is a professed history of the Russian Church, but it is compendious, and too partial to deserve entire confidence. It is much to be desired that some ecclesiastic of profound erudition in Russian literature, such as Father Gagarin or Father Tondini, would furnish us with a thorough and trustworthy narrative of all the facts which can be known in this obscure and interesting department of ecclesiastical history. In fact, we suspect that very much which passes current in the civil history of Russia as written by foreigners needs a critical sifting, and that a perfectly impartial and trustworthy history of that empire is yet to be written.The Russian Empire embracesone-seventh of the land-surface of the earth, or more than double the area of Europe, and European Russia is thirty times larger than England. The aggregate population is at least 75,000,000, including a hundred distinct tribes, among which more than forty languages are spoken. The ancestors of the dominant race were Scythians and Sarmatians, among whom the beginnings of civilization were to be found during the earliest part of the Christian epoch. It is a curious fact that a republic existed at Novgorod before the arrival of Rurik. The Russian dominant race is Sclavonian—that is, as ethnologists suppose, of Sarmatian origin. The present name of the country and people is not, however, indigenous. The Russian tribe was a branch of the Varangians, who were Scandinavians, and migrated into the country to which they have given their name in the ninth century. The name Russian is derived by some from Rurik, and by others from some one of various Scandinavian words signifying foreigner, wanderer, or scattered, in which case it would denote the migration of the Varangian horde from its former seat and its settlement in a foreign country.[178]Rurik was the principal chief of these Varangians, the founder of a principality which was the germ of the future empire, and the father of the first line of the tsars. Other chiefs of the same tribe founded minor principalities, which formed together a sort of confederation, the successor of Rurik being recognized as Grand Prince. The city of Moscow was founded in the twelfth century. It was not until after centuries had passed that one unitedkingdom was formed and increased by degrees to the vast magnitude of its modern proportions. The absolute, autocratic authority of the tsar was likewise a later development of the primitive form of government.The reign of Rurik continued fromA.D.861 to 879, and that of his direct line of successors until 1598, when it became extinct by the death of FeodorI., who left no issue, and is said to have had no near, surviving relatives. After fifteen years of disputed successions and bloody civil conflicts, caused by the usurpation of Boris Godounoff, which began with the accession of the imbecile Feodor, the Romanoff family was placed on the throne, which it has kept in possession to the present day.The first Romanoff tsar was a son of Feodor Romanoff, a nobleman who had retired into a monastery and become metropolitan of Rostoff, which dignity he afterwards exchanged for the higher office of patriarch of Moscow. He was first cousin to the Tsar Feodor through an intermarriage of the Romanoffs with the reigning family. The son of Feodor who was elected tsar was a youth named Michael Feodorovitch. To him succeeded his son Alexis, then FeodorII., then Peter the Great. To Peter succeeded his widow, CatharineI., who was by birth a peasant, followed by PeterII., the grandson of Peter the Great, who died in his childhood, and was succeeded by Anne, Duchess of Courland, a niece of PeterI.After Anne, her grandnephew, IvanVII., an infant, was proclaimed, but soon displaced by Elizabeth, a daughter of PeterI.and Catharine. PeterIII., son of Anne—who was a daughter of Peter and Catharine—and of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp,succeeded Elizabeth, but was dethroned by his own wife, CatharineII.Her son, PaulI., was assassinated by his nobles, and to him succeeded his son, the justly-celebrated AlexanderI., who reigned from 1801 to 1825. The Emperor Nicholas, whose reign terminated in 1856, was the brother of Alexander,[179]and his son, AlexanderII., is the present reigning emperor.For more than two centuries, dating fromA.D.1238, the Russians were subject or tributary to the Mongolians, who had overrun and conquered the country. Ivan the Great shook off their yoke during the latter half of the fifteenth century. Poland was a frequent and often victorious antagonist in war of Russia until internal dissensions broke her power and left her a prey to the enemy who had once regarded her with dread. Turkey, Hungary, Persia, Sweden, and other minor powers were also frequently engaged with her in conflicts of varying success before the period in which she took part in the great European struggles. Having slowly and gradually grown to a gigantic stature and attained to solidity and strength by the long operation of various internal and external causes, this empire of the North founded by Rurik suddenly, under the powerful direction of Peter the Great, took its place among the great nations of Western Christendom. What it is yet to become we may know better than we can now vaticinate in the year 1900, when, to use Prince Bismarck’s strong figure, some more of “the iron dice of destiny falling from the hands of God” shall have made the eternal decrees manifest which are now hidden in the obscurity of the future.It is probable that Christianity was first preached in Russia bySt.Andrew the Apostle, and had some partial success during the period intervening between the apostolic age and the second mission sent from Constantinople in the ninth and tenth centuries. At this epoch some Christian communities were founded, and the way was opened for greater successes at a later period. The Princess Olga was baptized at Constantinople in 955, and in 988 her grandson, Vladimir the Great, who married the Greek emperor’s sister, became a Christian, with all his subjects. It is true that the conversion of the mass of the people was very superficial, and that it was a long time before they ceased to hanker after their ancient superstitions. Yet the foundations were laid for a future superstructure, and there is evidence that even before the Mongolian invasion sacred science flourished at Kieff. At this period, which lay between the schism of Photius and that of Michael Cerularius—whose revolt occurred in the middle of the eleventh century—Constantinople and the other Eastern patriarchates were in the communion of the Roman Church. The Russian Church was therefore Catholic at its original foundation. The higher clergy were all Byzantines, especially in Muscovy, and were under the influence of the prevailing ideas of the clergy of the Greek Empire. The imperfectly-instructed clergy and people of Russia were therefore naturally left to drift into a condition of alienation from the Roman Church and Western Christendom, when their immediate patriarch revolted from his allegiance to the Sovereign Pontiff. The irruption of the Mongols buried them in a sea of ignorance, misery, andbarbarism for ages. Nevertheless, their faith and their liturgical books were always Catholic. Every now and then we meet with signs of some intercommunion with the Roman Church, especially on the part of those who were immediately subject to the see of Kieff. We can scarcely, therefore, consider that an act of overt rebellion and complete schism of the national church was committed until the rejection of the Act of Union of Florence, and the erection of the independent patriarchate of Moscow at the close of the fifteenth century.At the opening of the Council of Florence, in 1439, VasiliIII.sent Isidore, Metropolitan of Kieff and Primate of Russia, a learned Greek, as the representative of the national church, to effect a complete reconciliation with Rome. Isidore fulfilled this commission, and returned with the dignity of cardinal and legatine powers. He was well received by the tsar, who nevertheless dared not publicly ratify and proclaim his action without the consent of the Muscovite clergy and boyars. This was violently and obstinately refused. Cardinal Isidore returned to Kieff, and within the provinces immediately subject to his jurisdiction as metropolitan the Act of Union was accepted. He was afterwards banished from Russia, and after the storming of Constantinople, which he witnessed, he, like the more celebrated Cardinal Bessarion, went to reside at Rome. Vasili’s motives for seeking to place his bishops under the supremacy of the Roman pontiff were chiefly political. He wished to free himself from the ecclesiastical and political interference of Constantinople. Thwarted in his first plan, he tried another. On the pretext that the patriarch of Constantinople hadseparated himself from the communion of the other Eastern patriarchs, he persuaded the Muscovite clergy to abjure his authority. On the same pretext he deprived the see of Kieff of its pre-eminence, and made the metropolitan of Moscow the primate of all Russia. Thus, by flattering the ambition of the Muscovite clergy, he placed them in a position more favorable for the exercise and increase of his own authority over the church. His successor, Ivan the Great, the same who freed his dominions from the Mongolian supremacy, completed and more fully carried out these plans, and made himself the real governing head of the schismatical Russian Church. After the fall of the Greek Empire the tsars ceased to have any reason to fear the oppressed church of Constantinople, and became friendly to it in an altered relation as its protectors and as claimants of the rights of the Greek emperors. Ivan married Sophia, a Greek princess, adopted the double-headed eagle as his escutcheon, assumed the state and splendor of an emperor, and arrogated to himself the prerogatives of the secular head of the so-called Orthodox Church. Under FeodorI.the erection of a new patriarchate at Moscow was effected by Boris Goudonoff, who ruled, in fact, during the life-time of the last of the Rurik dynasty, and gained the throne, left vacant at his death, by his cunning intrigues. Under Alexis, the second Romanoff, the great patriarch Nicon, whose name is highly venerated in Russia, came into a collision with the tsars which resulted in his own downfall and in that of all spiritual independence of the Russian hierarchy. At last Peter the Great suppressed the patriarchal office, substitutingfor it the Holy Synod, and reducing the Russian Church to the condition of enslavement in which it has ever since languished. Notwithstanding the rigorous ecclesiastical despotism exercised by the Russian emperors, a large Catholic communion has continued to exist in the empire, a separate Episcopal Church, including several millions of adherents, has steadily maintained its independence of the state church, and great numbers of irregular dissenters are also scattered through the tsar’s dominions.Within the state church opposite tendencies towards Rome on the one side, and Protestant or rationalistic liberalism on the other, have been continually manifesting the want of a real, internal unity in what is misnamed the orthodox religion. Ivan the Terrible appealed to the pope’s mediation in his political troubles, and received the celebrated Jesuit Possevin as the envoy of the Holy See. During the reign of FeodorII., and the regency of the Princess Sophia while PeterI.was kept under her tutelage as a minor, several prelates and nobles of the court manifested strong Roman proclivities. On the accession of Peter all these adherents of the Princess Sophia shared in her disgrace and punishment. Yet even Peter himself at one time showed a disposition toward reconciliation with the Pope. Under PeterII.the same movement was renewed, but followed by a violent reaction and persecution of the orthodox party, under Anne and her favorite, Biren. The metropolitan of Kieff was degraded, the bishop of Voronége degraded and publicly knouted, the archbishop of Rostoff and the bishop of Kolomna were expelled from the Holy Synod, the archbishop of Kazan was degraded,the bishop of Tchernigoff was confined in a monastery, and the archbishop of Tver, after being beaten with rods, tortured, and kept three years in solitary confinement, was stripped of his episcopal dignity and monastic habit, and imprisoned in a fortress, where he languished until the reign of Elizabeth. Prince Vasili Dolgoroucky was executed, with several members of his family. CatharineII.and AlexanderI.both gave a temporary shelter and protection to the Jesuits. This last prince, although he dallied for a time with evangelical Protestantism, sent his submission to the pope, asking for a prelate to visit, instruct, and reconcile him to the Holy See, and died a Catholic in faith and intention, although the sudden termination of his mortal career took place before there was time for the arrival of the prelate to whom the Holy Father had confided this mission. The numerous conversions of illustrious Russians to the Catholic Church are well-known facts. That heresy and infidelity are rife among many nominal members of the Russian Church is also equally indisputable and notorious.The whole history of the empire of Rurik has a close association with Constantinople. While the Russians were still pagans the project of subduing the Greek Empire seems to have been constantly in view. Oleg, Rurik’s immediate successor; Igor, Rurik’s son, who succeeded Oleg, and was the husband of Olga; and their son Sviatoslaf, the father of Vladimir the Great, made invasions into the Greek Empire at the head of armies ranging from eighty to four hundred thousand in number. They were either bought off from conquest by vast ransoms or defeatedby Greek craft and their own disorderly conduct. After the conversion of Vladimir, Constantinople was to Russia what Rome has always been to Occidental Christendom; and when the Greek Empire fell, the Turk became in their eyes what the Moslem was to the Catholic Spaniards. The queen city of the Euxine and Mediterranean Seas, the New Rome of Constantine, with the rich provinces of Turkey in Europe depending upon it, has ever been present to the view of the emperors and the people of Russia as the objective point of perpetual crusades, as a prize to be won by their warlike valor, as the natural and destined capital whose possession is necessary to bring their empire to its acme of power and glory.[180]Always mysteriously baffled and thrown back, the colossal power of the northern empire has been incessantly pressing against this resistance, even since the power of combined Europe has backed the weakening Ottoman Empire. The Emperor Nicholas was more completely possessed by this hereditary idea than any of his predecessors since Peter the Great; he undertook and sacrificed more for it than any one of them, and seems really to have caused Russia to make a great stride towards the ulterior object. By the war of 1828 and ’29 Turkey was extremely humiliated and weakened, and immense advantages were gained by Russia. Her arms were completely and brilliantly successful from beginning to end of the campaign, and surprise has often been expressed that the Russian army did not march directly on Constantinople after Adrianople had been captured.It may be that the military strength of the empire was exhausted by its costly victories, and that Nicholas was afraid of exciting a league of the great powers against him. Whatever his reasons may have been, he concluded a peace at Adrianople, and postponed further action to a future time.When the treaty of Adrianople was concluded (1829), the present chancellor of Russia was thirty-one years of age and employed in a subordinate position under the ministry. Prince Alexander Mikhäilovitch Gortchakoff was born in 1798, and claims descent from Rurik. He first gained the favor of the Emperor Nicholas by negotiating the marriage of his daughter, the Princess Olga, with the crown-prince of Würtemberg. He had already passed four years at the little court of Stuttgart as resident minister, and he earned the gratitude of the imperial family by remaining willingly eight years longer, in order to aid the Princess Olga as her guide and counsellor. His residence at Stuttgart fell between the years 1842 and 1854, and he was therefore fifty-six years of age before attaining anything above a minor position in the diplomatic service. After the re-establishment of the Diet at Frankfort, in 1850, he was appointed to represent Russia at its sessions, and henceforth divided his time between Stuttgart and Frankfort, and employed his abundant leisure in studying the politics of Europe. It was at this time that he first met withM.Bismarck, then a lieutenant in the Prussian Landwehr, a novice in diplomacy and his colleague at the Diet. Here also he became intimate with two remarkable and singular characters whose history and ideas illustrate the peculiar national spirit bywhich the genuine Russian people, which remains true to its ancient traditions without any foreign mixture, is animated.The first of these singular personages was Vassili Joukofski, who had been in early life a poet of considerable renown, not remarkably original, but possessed of a great talent for facile versification and ingenious translation, and sufficiently cultivated as a scholar to have been selected as the private tutor of the Grand Dukes Alexander and Constantine, the present emperor and his brother. Although he had voluntarily selected a German lady as his wife and a German town as his permanent abode, he remained, nevertheless, confirmed in his belief of the hopeless corruption of Western Europe, and the destiny reserved for Russia to complete the work of the Crusades, drive “the impure beast” from Byzantium, liberate the Holy Land, and regenerate the world by “a new eruption of Christianity.” The other individual of this remarkable pair was Nicholas Gogol, a man of original and powerful genius, full of a sombre and extravagant religious enthusiasm, who haunted the drawing-rooms of Joukofski, and startled the elegant, cultivated guests of his more worldly friend like a fantastic apparition from the spiritual world. Gogol was a terrible satirist of the vices of Russian society, a prophet of wrath and judgment, in despair of civilization and of his own salvation, wandering the earth in a restless search after some relief for his disturbed soul, and reappearing at intervals among his friends at Frankfort to deliver impassioned exhortations to prayer and penance. The only remedy for modern evils, in his view, was a return to the primitive state of barbarian Muscovy,and a crusade of despotism joined with the undefiled faith of old Russia against “the heathens of the Occident.” It is an old saying in Russia that “heaven can only be reduced by famine.” Gogol acted on this maxim to such an extent by his long fasts and prayers that he was one day found dead of inanition in an attitude of prayer, prostrate before his holy images.Prince Gortchakoff is a cultivated sceptic, intent on the aggrandizement of Russia from motives which are earthly and confined within the sphere of that materialistic philosophy which dominates in diplomatic circles. Nevertheless, mystic enthusiasm, the most enlightened and noble aspirations of religion and patriotism, great designs for a lofty end, and the lower qualities of cleverness in worldly wisdom, talent for managing the affairs of administration, and ambition to fulfil a great personal career by serving as an instrument of some grand social or political power, are often found combined together to pursue the same object from different motives. The Emperor Nicholas was undoubtedly thoroughly sincere in his adherence to the religious and political doctrines which he professed, really influenced by the mystical ideas of the “crusaders,” and convinced of the justice of his cause. His chief minister, Nesselrode, certainly did not share these ideas, yet he served his master with all the resources and ability which he possessed. So also did Gortchakoff, although personally he is of the same stamp with his predecessor. The emperor, as the whole world knows, and a great part of it well remembers, reopened the Turkish question and engaged in the memorable, for the time being to Russia unsuccessful, even disastrous,war of the Crimea. In 1855 Prince Gortchakoff was sent as resident ambassador to Vienna; there he labored strenuously, both before and after the death of Nicholas, first to detach Austria from the cause of the allies and win her cooperation with Russia, and then to gain terms which would permit his government to conclude an honorable peace on the least disadvantageous terms. Russia has been profoundly irritated against Austria ever since the latter power refused to take her part against the protectors of the Ottoman Porte; accusing her of ingratitude for the great service which Nicholas rendered to Francis Joseph in suppressing by military force and gratuitously the Hungarian rebellion. Prince Gortchakoff shared this feeling; it has always affected his diplomatic policy, and it may have yet most important results, if hostilities are renewed on a large scale. At the Congress of Paris, which settled the conditions of peace, Prince Gortchakoff was the Russian plenipotentiary. Immediately afterwards Count Nesselrode retired from the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in April, 1856, the successor upon whom the eyes of the court and the empire had been long turned with favor and hope was elevated to the office, which he has filled for twenty years, and which has become essentially more important in his person than it ever was during preceding administrations. Prince Gortchakoff is the first who has filled at the Russian court the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Western acceptation of the powers and responsibilities of that position. Heretofore the emperor had personally directed the state policy, using his minister as a mere counsellor and chief secretary. AlexanderII.has devolved the actual direction upon his chief minister. The most marked feature of his administration has been the close personal and official amity and concord which has subsisted since their first meeting at Frankfort between himself and Bismarck. The delineation of the common policy of the two chancellors would require that we should take upM.Klaczko’s exposition of the career of the Prussian chancellor—a task which we cannot fulfil at present. Of course each one has had in view the aggrandizement of his own state, and given his concurrence to the designs of the other in the expectation of forwarding thereby his own plans. Bismarck cares nothing for Russia, and, after his residence atSt.Petersburg as Prussian ambassador, he expressed his opinion of her by the motto which he pasted inside his watch-case: “Russia is nothingness.”[181]Gortchakoff undoubtedly cares as little for Prussia and the German Empire. Each one looks out for his own ship; for those men whose ideas are catholic are of a different class from mere clever diplomatists, and, unhappily, are rarely to be found among either kings or ministers of state.Bismarck has always made his special accomplices in ruining the antagonist of the moment the next victims of his undermining schemes. What he has in prospect for Russia is as yet undisclosed. Nor is it certain that he will succeed in playing out his game, making Gortchakoff a mere card in his hand. The Russian is doubtless too astute and farseeing to rely on the disinterested friendship of the Prussian, or on his fidelity to any secret engagements, except so far as self-interestor fear may hold him to his word. Thus far, however, the contract offacio ut faciashas been well kept between the two, to their mutual advantage. Prussia has gained a great deal by it, and Russia something, although the decisive crisis is just now coming on, and still undecided, which will solve the problem how much she has gained or will gain. Nicholas died, baffled and disappointed. Alexander came to the throne sad and disheartened. Russia was crippled and exhausted by the terrible disasters of the Crimean war, her prestige and influence in Europe were diminished, and she was placed under humiliating and hampering restrictions by the treaty of Paris. Under Prince Gortchakoff’s administration she has recuperated and increased her strength by the mere force of her immense vitality. By skilful management she has regained a place in European politics almost equal to that of Germany. She has thrown off the trammels of the treaty of Paris. France, England, and Turkey have lost all they had gained by their costly victories. The allies of Turkey have been overcome by superior diplomacy together with adverse fortune, and made to play into the hands of their old antagonist; and Turkey has been driven into worse straits than any which have beset her in the most dangerous epochs of her former history. The initiative in the extraordinary political movements of this epoch has been taken by Bismarck, whom Gortchakoff has merely connived at or seconded. This secondary and mostly negative support has been, nevertheless, most important, probably even necessary, to the success of Bismarck’s schemes. It has involved, moreover, great changes in Russia’s traditional policy and considerablesacrifices. This is especially the case in regard to the minor states of Germany and Denmark, so closely allied by intermarriages with Russia, formerly so decidedly supported and aided by her influence, yet of late abandoned without remonstrance to Prussian spoliation. Russia has been avenged on France, on Austria, and to a certain extent on England, and she has had the opportunity of reviving the question of the East with a view toward ulterior results. Thus far Bismarck has seemed to act toward Gortchakoff in the same way that the latter acted towards him in reference to the war on the French Empire. Certainly, much more must be expected from him, and it does not yet appear that he can dupe and outwit his copartner in politics as he did the weak, dreamy Louis Napoleon, or make use of him as a mere subservient agent, to be discarded when his services become unnecessary. Prince Gortchakoff appears to have managed matters thus far for the advantage of Russia with consummate adroitness. Moreover, whatever may have been the influences at work within the imperial family compelling the chancellor to yield his personal opinions or wishes, it is evident that in point of fact Russian policy has not been of late subservient to Bismarck’s designs, but, on the contrary, has forced him to modify them considerably in respect to France.In the event of war between Russia and Turkey alone it is plain that Russia will not find it an easy task to effect the conquest of Turkey and to expel the Turks from Europe. It seems probable, however, that the Ottoman power must succumb after one desperate struggle, if left unaided by all the Europeanpowers. It does not seem likely, however, that Europe will stand idly aloof; on the contrary, there is reason to apprehend that when the conflict threatens to become decisive of the fate of Turkey, all the great powers will become involved in a general war, which will make an epoch in history and determine the destinies of the world for the next ensuing age. We may conjecture, on grounds which are at least plausible, that if Russia is actively supported by any other powers, it will be Germany and Italy which will ally themselves with her, against Austria, England, and France. We can scarcely expect that a war of this kind would terminate in complete success to either of the belligerent parties. In the end all the great nations must come to some mutual agreement in a congress which shall settle the balance of power on a new basis, guarding against an absolute and dangerous preponderance of any one of the chief powers. What is to become of Constantinople we will not venture to predict. But let us suppose that Russia obtains this object of her long, patient, and persevering efforts and ardent aspirations. Must we suppose that this will necessarily be an event disastrous to the interests of the Catholic Church and civilization and to the religious, political, and social welfare of Europe and the world? The language of many most intelligent and religious men, particularly of Englishmen, and of many others, not particularly religious, who look at the matter purely in view of the temporal interests of nations, proves that a very strong and general conviction exists in the sense of the affirmative answer to this question. We think, however, that there is something to be said on the otherside. As the Catholic aspect of the question is the one most important in itself, and really involving all the others, we consider this aspect alone. It is the schismatical position of the Russian Church, and its complete subjection to the autocratic power of the ruler of the state, which furnishes the only reason for regarding the Turkish dominion in the Levant as a lesser and more tolerable evil than the transfer of the capital of Russia fromSt.Petersburg to Constantinople. All reasons, therefore, which encourage the hope and expectation of the reconciliation of Russia with the Holy See diminish, in proportion to their weight, the dread which the prospect of such an event may awaken.We will here quote a remarkable passage from Dr. Mivart’s late essay onContemporary Evolutionhaving a bearing on this subject. Those who have read this work, or the review of it in our number of last December, will understand the value of the quotation we are about to make, as coming from a man who anticipates such a very different course of events from that whose possibility he here sets forth. It proves his cautious, scientific method of reasoning. He does not advance his own theory with absolute assertion as certain, and his acuteness, combined with candor, causes him to discern and bring into notice a contingency in the direction of Russia which, if it should turn out to be a future actuality, would alter most essentially the “evolution” whose probable course causes so much curious and anxious questioning of the signs of the times.“Nevertheless, there are many who believe that a reversal will at length ensue, and some modification of the old theocracy be again generally established.At present the only power which seems to contain enough of the old material is Russia. Itmaybe that, instead of politically assimilating itself to Western Europe (like the manners of its highest class), it may come to exercise a powerfully reactionary tendency. It does not seem impossible that, availing itself of the mutually enfeebling wars and revolutionary disintegration of Western powers, it may hereafter come to play that part in Europe which was played of old by Macedon in Greece. Such a Western expansion might be greatly aided if, carrying out the idea of a former sovereign, it united itself to the Roman Church, and made itself the agent of the most powerful religious feelings and of all the theocratic reactionary tendencies latent in Western Europe. It does not even seem impossible that a Roman pontiff effectively restored to his civil princedom by such Russian agency might inaugurate, by a papal consecration in the Eternal City, yet a fresh dynasty of ‘Holy Roman emperors,’ a Sclavonic series succeeding to the suppressed German line, as the Germans succeeded in the person of Charlemagne to the first line of Cæsars.”[182]What seems to the distinguished writer just quoted barely possible appears to us quite probable. It does not follow, however, that his hypothesis, proposed as possible, expresses precisely the necessary alternative to the opposite term of a complete revolution in Russia by pagan liberalism. The medium between Nicholas Gogol’s fanatical ideas of a reformation by Muscovite barbarism and despotism and their absolute contrary—the uttermost development and sway through the whole extent of the civilized world of Western heathenism—need not be placed exactly at the point marked out by Dr. Mivart. We can suppose that the Russian Empire may reach its ultimatum by attaining a degree of power and grandeur beyond that which it nowpossesses, without acquiring domination over the rest of Europe. We can suppose that its influence may be exerted successfully to arrest and turn back the tide of pagan revolution, in co-operation with the other powers acting on a more Christian policy, without being absolutely reactionary. Russia may receive as well as impart influence, undergo in herself modification as well as cause modification to be undergone by Western Europe, through mutual contact at Constantinople. It would seem that such must be the result of her coming down to the Mediterranean and emerging from her old ice-bound and land-locked isolation. She will come in contact with America as well as Europe; and, in fact, the visits of her naval squadrons and of three of her grand dukes to our shores show that the imperial court ofSt.Petersburg does not fear communication with the great republic of the West.The method of administering government in Russia has actually been undergoing a great modification, in the sense of substituting regular procedures of law and definite codes for personal and arbitrary authority under the initiative and direction of the emperors themselves and their immediate ministers. The local communal government, by the system of free assemblies and elections of the people in districts and villages, exists throughout Russia. The Emperor Nicholas prosecuted actively the work of ameliorating and improving the condition of the common people, which Alexander has carried still further by the abolition of serfdom. The mitigation and attempering to the demands of an improved civilization of the autocratic principle inthe empire seems to be an inevitable and certain process which must go on, and which finds its greatest impediment in the nefarious plots and insurrections of secret societies and revolutionists. It is to be hoped that when a stable equilibrium is once restored in Europe, when a solid peace succeeds to the impending storm of war, and Russia is in harmony with other Christian nations, her power, combined with theirs, will be seriously and successfully applied to the suppression of these secret societies, thus giving the hydra-head of revolution a stunning, disabling blow; though we cannot expect that any human power will be able to kill and bury the monster.Russia cannot fulfil the mission her religious and patriotic children ascribe to her, cannot take a principal part in the redintegration of Christendom, or even attain her complete political growth and strength either in Europe or Asia, without abandoning her schismatical position, reuniting herself to the Pope, and liberating the church from its constricting thraldom to obsolete Byzantine prejudices and secular tyranny. The question of the conversion of Russia has already been treated of in our pages by the learned and zealous Father Tondini, and a number of works bearing on the whole subject are accessible to English readers. We have not space to go into this matter as it deserves. We are merely indicating what a Catholic Russian Empire, in possession of Constantinople, might accomplish for the triumph of Christianity. The long catalogue of crimes, cruelties, persecutions, internal abuses, disorders, heresies, fanatical extravagances, ravages of infidel and revolutionary opinions—in which too much thatis true, we are induced by the argument from analogy, as well as in part by counter-statements worthy of credit, to believe, is mixed with some falsehood and much exaggeration—on which a wholesale denunciation of Russia is founded, proves nothing at all or too much. All great nations of Christendom can be subjected to the same oriminating process. What can an advocate say in the cause of England, France, Germany, or mediæval Europe? The same can be applied to Russia. If it is a legitimate plea, the facts cited in the indictment on sufficient evidence are true, but irrelevant. To attempt a white-washing process is in all cases foolish as well as immoral. The crimes recorded in the pages of Russian history, whether personal or political, are not to be denied or excused. Existing evils in church and state are not to be disguised. All mankind are born in original sin, and the great majority have committed actual sins. What then? Has Christ not redeemed the world? will he not triumph over sin and death, and crowd the kingdom of heaven with his elect? In none of the kingdoms of this world, in no age of human history, can we find the ideal kingdom of God and Christ, of justice, peace, and happiness, otherwise than imperfectly brought into actual existence. Does not the heavenly kingdom gradually form itself out of this confused mass of material, growing up through the ages of time to that perfection which it will attain in eternity? Let us look at Russia in a general view, as we look on the past ages of Christendom, neglecting those small particular objects which disappear or become insignificant in an extended and philosophical survey. Let us drop our petty national prejudices, andclear our minds of everything inconsistent with impartial justice to all mankind and Catholic charity. We shall find much that is admirable and hopeful in the great Russian Empire and her people, and be convinced that Russians, even after they have become Catholics and suffered expatriation, are justified in their ardent love for, and pride in, their unique and wonderful country.The Russian people resembles a belated army, like that of Blücher at Waterloo, coming on the field to decide a doubtful battle. They are of the past, and have but just emerged from their childhood. The old patriarchal spirit lives in them; they are simple, hardy, traditional, loyal, full of reverence for parental, sacerdotal, and imperial authority, industrious and easily contented. The Russian peasantry are warmly clothed and housed; they have enough of the simple food which suffices for their wants; and pauperism scarcely exists. They are a most religious people, and religion is recognized as the basis and foundation of the entire political and social fabric of the nation, as well by the government as by the mass of the people. They only need to be vivified by the current of life from the heart, and energized by the vital force from the head, of Catholic unity, to become what the Western nations were in the times of their pristine Christian vigor. The schism in which they are involved is an unhappy legacy inherited from the corrupt Lower Empire of Byzantium and its ambitious, perfidious clergy. Christianity lacked the full amount of power necessary to accomplish a perfect work in Russia, because the source whence it was derived could not give it. The RussianChurch has never had its golden age. There are many reasons why it seems fitting and probable that the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit should be imparted to it at this late day in much greater fulness than they were in the beginning, making it flourish suddenly and beautifully, like its own artificial gardens, out of the long, bleak winter. The body of the Russian nation cannot be regarded as apostate, or compared with those who followed Photius, Luther, Jansenius, or Döllinger into wilful rebellion and secession. The authors of the schism were the prelates and higher clergy from Constantinople, and the boyars of Moscow, who were completely under their influence. Most of these, even, were probably, to a great extent, misled by ignorance and prejudice. We have already shown how the schism has become intertwined with state policy, so as to transform the great, severed limb of the Catholic Church into a national institution with an outward form of hierarchical organization, yet really only a department of the imperial autocracy. Nevertheless, this national Russian Church is in a condition essentially different from that of the Anglican establishment or any other Protestant communion. It retains all that is necessary to the constitution of a catholic church, and needs only to submit to the supremacy of the Pope in order to be redintegrated in unity. The body of the priests and people of Russia are undoubtedly not in formal, but merely in material, schism. They are therefore truly in their own persons members of the Catholic Church. They have the faith and the sacraments, and there is no obstacle to the grace of God in the inculpable state of external separation fromthe Holy See in which they have been unfortunately placed by their ecclesiastical and civil rulers. The misfortune of such a vast number of the true and pious children of the Holy Mother Church must cry to God for deliverance and restoration to the true fold. Their numerous oblations of the unbloody Sacrifice, their communions, their perpetual prayers to the Blessed Virgin and the saints, some of whom belonged in this world to their nation, the sacrifices and prayers of the noble converts from the Russian schism to Catholicity, the mercy of God, which is extended over all men, especially the baptized, must surely effect their reconciliation to their Catholic brethren and the Holy Father of all Christendom. The sufferings and the blood of the victims of Russian persecution will conduce more powerfully to this result than any other human cause. The pagan Russians slaughtered the priests and faithful of the Byzantine Empire but a short time before they fell down before the cross and submitted to the spiritual authority of the Christian patriarch. Vladimir dragged ignominiously to the river the idol he had formerly worshipped. It cannot, therefore, be impossible that God should bring his successor to the feet of the Pope in humble submission, to place himself and his empire under the gentle sway of the Vicar of Christ. Russia once reconciled with Catholic Christendom,the conversion of all the Sclavonians would undoubtedly follow. The Eastern schism would become extinct or reduced to insignificance; and to Russia would naturally fall the great work of Christianizing Asia, when the paralysis of schism was removed. Who can tell if the kingdom of Poland may not be restored to its autonomy, renovated by the severe chastisements which it has not only suffered but deserved, and purified from the foul mixture of infidel revolutionism which has been more fatal to it than any of its external disasters? The designs of God defy all human scrutiny, and the changes awaiting Europe, whose complicated, mysterious evolutions have always baffled the most sagacious foresight or previous planning of rulers or statesmen, are as much beyond philosophical calculation as the movements of three bodies are beyond the computation of mathematics. Some indications, however, precede the full disclosures of events. An eminent Catholic of Germany has recently said: “I see the finger of God, which pushes the Russians forwards and Romewards.”[183]We do not think there can be any object more worthy of the united prayers of all Catholics, next after the deliverance and triumph of the Holy See, than the reconciliation of Russia to the Catholic Church.[177]Two Chancellors: Prince Gortchakoff and Prince Bismarck.By Julian Klaczko. Translated from theRevue des Deux Mondesby Frank P. Ward. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1876.Various works on Russia by Palmer, Gagarin, Tondini, De Custine, De Maistre, Pitzipios, Tyrrell, Gurowski, Romanoff, Rabbe and Duncan, etc. The histories of Mouravieff, Leo, Rohrbacher, Darras, and Alzog.[178]Still another derivation is from Roxolani, the name of a Scythian tribe.[179]The older brother, Constantine, resigned his right of succession.[180]AlexanderI.said to Caulaincourt: “I must have the key which opens the gate of my house.”[181]La Russie c’est le rien.[182]Contemporary Evolution, bySt.George Mivart,pp.66, 67.[183]Reinhold Baumstarck in theHist. Polit.BlätterforDec.1, 1876.

THE

VOL. XXIV.,No.144.—MARCH, 1877.

Copyright:Rev.I. T. Hecker. 1877.

Theattention of the world is at present fixed upon Russia and upon the aged yet still active statesman who has directed her foreign policy for twenty years with an ability certainly very considerable, though it yet remains to be seen how far it will prove itself consummate and successful. It will help to an understanding of the career of this eminent Russian Minister of State, and of the present attitude of Russia, if we premise a condensed sketch of certain of the most prominent events in the civil and ecclesiastical history of this great and singular empire. It is difficult to find out the certain truth in regard to some of these important facts, and we therefore profess to claim for such statements as we may make, unless they relate to matters of known and undisputed history, only that probability which they receive from the authority of some one or more of the writers whose names we have mentioned in the foot-note annexed to the title of this article. This remark applies especially to facts relating to the schism of the Russian Church. We have never yet met with any professedly complete and minute ecclesiastical history of Russia. Mouravieff’s work is a professed history of the Russian Church, but it is compendious, and too partial to deserve entire confidence. It is much to be desired that some ecclesiastic of profound erudition in Russian literature, such as Father Gagarin or Father Tondini, would furnish us with a thorough and trustworthy narrative of all the facts which can be known in this obscure and interesting department of ecclesiastical history. In fact, we suspect that very much which passes current in the civil history of Russia as written by foreigners needs a critical sifting, and that a perfectly impartial and trustworthy history of that empire is yet to be written.

The Russian Empire embracesone-seventh of the land-surface of the earth, or more than double the area of Europe, and European Russia is thirty times larger than England. The aggregate population is at least 75,000,000, including a hundred distinct tribes, among which more than forty languages are spoken. The ancestors of the dominant race were Scythians and Sarmatians, among whom the beginnings of civilization were to be found during the earliest part of the Christian epoch. It is a curious fact that a republic existed at Novgorod before the arrival of Rurik. The Russian dominant race is Sclavonian—that is, as ethnologists suppose, of Sarmatian origin. The present name of the country and people is not, however, indigenous. The Russian tribe was a branch of the Varangians, who were Scandinavians, and migrated into the country to which they have given their name in the ninth century. The name Russian is derived by some from Rurik, and by others from some one of various Scandinavian words signifying foreigner, wanderer, or scattered, in which case it would denote the migration of the Varangian horde from its former seat and its settlement in a foreign country.[178]

Rurik was the principal chief of these Varangians, the founder of a principality which was the germ of the future empire, and the father of the first line of the tsars. Other chiefs of the same tribe founded minor principalities, which formed together a sort of confederation, the successor of Rurik being recognized as Grand Prince. The city of Moscow was founded in the twelfth century. It was not until after centuries had passed that one unitedkingdom was formed and increased by degrees to the vast magnitude of its modern proportions. The absolute, autocratic authority of the tsar was likewise a later development of the primitive form of government.

The reign of Rurik continued fromA.D.861 to 879, and that of his direct line of successors until 1598, when it became extinct by the death of FeodorI., who left no issue, and is said to have had no near, surviving relatives. After fifteen years of disputed successions and bloody civil conflicts, caused by the usurpation of Boris Godounoff, which began with the accession of the imbecile Feodor, the Romanoff family was placed on the throne, which it has kept in possession to the present day.

The first Romanoff tsar was a son of Feodor Romanoff, a nobleman who had retired into a monastery and become metropolitan of Rostoff, which dignity he afterwards exchanged for the higher office of patriarch of Moscow. He was first cousin to the Tsar Feodor through an intermarriage of the Romanoffs with the reigning family. The son of Feodor who was elected tsar was a youth named Michael Feodorovitch. To him succeeded his son Alexis, then FeodorII., then Peter the Great. To Peter succeeded his widow, CatharineI., who was by birth a peasant, followed by PeterII., the grandson of Peter the Great, who died in his childhood, and was succeeded by Anne, Duchess of Courland, a niece of PeterI.After Anne, her grandnephew, IvanVII., an infant, was proclaimed, but soon displaced by Elizabeth, a daughter of PeterI.and Catharine. PeterIII., son of Anne—who was a daughter of Peter and Catharine—and of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp,succeeded Elizabeth, but was dethroned by his own wife, CatharineII.Her son, PaulI., was assassinated by his nobles, and to him succeeded his son, the justly-celebrated AlexanderI., who reigned from 1801 to 1825. The Emperor Nicholas, whose reign terminated in 1856, was the brother of Alexander,[179]and his son, AlexanderII., is the present reigning emperor.

For more than two centuries, dating fromA.D.1238, the Russians were subject or tributary to the Mongolians, who had overrun and conquered the country. Ivan the Great shook off their yoke during the latter half of the fifteenth century. Poland was a frequent and often victorious antagonist in war of Russia until internal dissensions broke her power and left her a prey to the enemy who had once regarded her with dread. Turkey, Hungary, Persia, Sweden, and other minor powers were also frequently engaged with her in conflicts of varying success before the period in which she took part in the great European struggles. Having slowly and gradually grown to a gigantic stature and attained to solidity and strength by the long operation of various internal and external causes, this empire of the North founded by Rurik suddenly, under the powerful direction of Peter the Great, took its place among the great nations of Western Christendom. What it is yet to become we may know better than we can now vaticinate in the year 1900, when, to use Prince Bismarck’s strong figure, some more of “the iron dice of destiny falling from the hands of God” shall have made the eternal decrees manifest which are now hidden in the obscurity of the future.

It is probable that Christianity was first preached in Russia bySt.Andrew the Apostle, and had some partial success during the period intervening between the apostolic age and the second mission sent from Constantinople in the ninth and tenth centuries. At this epoch some Christian communities were founded, and the way was opened for greater successes at a later period. The Princess Olga was baptized at Constantinople in 955, and in 988 her grandson, Vladimir the Great, who married the Greek emperor’s sister, became a Christian, with all his subjects. It is true that the conversion of the mass of the people was very superficial, and that it was a long time before they ceased to hanker after their ancient superstitions. Yet the foundations were laid for a future superstructure, and there is evidence that even before the Mongolian invasion sacred science flourished at Kieff. At this period, which lay between the schism of Photius and that of Michael Cerularius—whose revolt occurred in the middle of the eleventh century—Constantinople and the other Eastern patriarchates were in the communion of the Roman Church. The Russian Church was therefore Catholic at its original foundation. The higher clergy were all Byzantines, especially in Muscovy, and were under the influence of the prevailing ideas of the clergy of the Greek Empire. The imperfectly-instructed clergy and people of Russia were therefore naturally left to drift into a condition of alienation from the Roman Church and Western Christendom, when their immediate patriarch revolted from his allegiance to the Sovereign Pontiff. The irruption of the Mongols buried them in a sea of ignorance, misery, andbarbarism for ages. Nevertheless, their faith and their liturgical books were always Catholic. Every now and then we meet with signs of some intercommunion with the Roman Church, especially on the part of those who were immediately subject to the see of Kieff. We can scarcely, therefore, consider that an act of overt rebellion and complete schism of the national church was committed until the rejection of the Act of Union of Florence, and the erection of the independent patriarchate of Moscow at the close of the fifteenth century.

At the opening of the Council of Florence, in 1439, VasiliIII.sent Isidore, Metropolitan of Kieff and Primate of Russia, a learned Greek, as the representative of the national church, to effect a complete reconciliation with Rome. Isidore fulfilled this commission, and returned with the dignity of cardinal and legatine powers. He was well received by the tsar, who nevertheless dared not publicly ratify and proclaim his action without the consent of the Muscovite clergy and boyars. This was violently and obstinately refused. Cardinal Isidore returned to Kieff, and within the provinces immediately subject to his jurisdiction as metropolitan the Act of Union was accepted. He was afterwards banished from Russia, and after the storming of Constantinople, which he witnessed, he, like the more celebrated Cardinal Bessarion, went to reside at Rome. Vasili’s motives for seeking to place his bishops under the supremacy of the Roman pontiff were chiefly political. He wished to free himself from the ecclesiastical and political interference of Constantinople. Thwarted in his first plan, he tried another. On the pretext that the patriarch of Constantinople hadseparated himself from the communion of the other Eastern patriarchs, he persuaded the Muscovite clergy to abjure his authority. On the same pretext he deprived the see of Kieff of its pre-eminence, and made the metropolitan of Moscow the primate of all Russia. Thus, by flattering the ambition of the Muscovite clergy, he placed them in a position more favorable for the exercise and increase of his own authority over the church. His successor, Ivan the Great, the same who freed his dominions from the Mongolian supremacy, completed and more fully carried out these plans, and made himself the real governing head of the schismatical Russian Church. After the fall of the Greek Empire the tsars ceased to have any reason to fear the oppressed church of Constantinople, and became friendly to it in an altered relation as its protectors and as claimants of the rights of the Greek emperors. Ivan married Sophia, a Greek princess, adopted the double-headed eagle as his escutcheon, assumed the state and splendor of an emperor, and arrogated to himself the prerogatives of the secular head of the so-called Orthodox Church. Under FeodorI.the erection of a new patriarchate at Moscow was effected by Boris Goudonoff, who ruled, in fact, during the life-time of the last of the Rurik dynasty, and gained the throne, left vacant at his death, by his cunning intrigues. Under Alexis, the second Romanoff, the great patriarch Nicon, whose name is highly venerated in Russia, came into a collision with the tsars which resulted in his own downfall and in that of all spiritual independence of the Russian hierarchy. At last Peter the Great suppressed the patriarchal office, substitutingfor it the Holy Synod, and reducing the Russian Church to the condition of enslavement in which it has ever since languished. Notwithstanding the rigorous ecclesiastical despotism exercised by the Russian emperors, a large Catholic communion has continued to exist in the empire, a separate Episcopal Church, including several millions of adherents, has steadily maintained its independence of the state church, and great numbers of irregular dissenters are also scattered through the tsar’s dominions.

Within the state church opposite tendencies towards Rome on the one side, and Protestant or rationalistic liberalism on the other, have been continually manifesting the want of a real, internal unity in what is misnamed the orthodox religion. Ivan the Terrible appealed to the pope’s mediation in his political troubles, and received the celebrated Jesuit Possevin as the envoy of the Holy See. During the reign of FeodorII., and the regency of the Princess Sophia while PeterI.was kept under her tutelage as a minor, several prelates and nobles of the court manifested strong Roman proclivities. On the accession of Peter all these adherents of the Princess Sophia shared in her disgrace and punishment. Yet even Peter himself at one time showed a disposition toward reconciliation with the Pope. Under PeterII.the same movement was renewed, but followed by a violent reaction and persecution of the orthodox party, under Anne and her favorite, Biren. The metropolitan of Kieff was degraded, the bishop of Voronége degraded and publicly knouted, the archbishop of Rostoff and the bishop of Kolomna were expelled from the Holy Synod, the archbishop of Kazan was degraded,the bishop of Tchernigoff was confined in a monastery, and the archbishop of Tver, after being beaten with rods, tortured, and kept three years in solitary confinement, was stripped of his episcopal dignity and monastic habit, and imprisoned in a fortress, where he languished until the reign of Elizabeth. Prince Vasili Dolgoroucky was executed, with several members of his family. CatharineII.and AlexanderI.both gave a temporary shelter and protection to the Jesuits. This last prince, although he dallied for a time with evangelical Protestantism, sent his submission to the pope, asking for a prelate to visit, instruct, and reconcile him to the Holy See, and died a Catholic in faith and intention, although the sudden termination of his mortal career took place before there was time for the arrival of the prelate to whom the Holy Father had confided this mission. The numerous conversions of illustrious Russians to the Catholic Church are well-known facts. That heresy and infidelity are rife among many nominal members of the Russian Church is also equally indisputable and notorious.

The whole history of the empire of Rurik has a close association with Constantinople. While the Russians were still pagans the project of subduing the Greek Empire seems to have been constantly in view. Oleg, Rurik’s immediate successor; Igor, Rurik’s son, who succeeded Oleg, and was the husband of Olga; and their son Sviatoslaf, the father of Vladimir the Great, made invasions into the Greek Empire at the head of armies ranging from eighty to four hundred thousand in number. They were either bought off from conquest by vast ransoms or defeatedby Greek craft and their own disorderly conduct. After the conversion of Vladimir, Constantinople was to Russia what Rome has always been to Occidental Christendom; and when the Greek Empire fell, the Turk became in their eyes what the Moslem was to the Catholic Spaniards. The queen city of the Euxine and Mediterranean Seas, the New Rome of Constantine, with the rich provinces of Turkey in Europe depending upon it, has ever been present to the view of the emperors and the people of Russia as the objective point of perpetual crusades, as a prize to be won by their warlike valor, as the natural and destined capital whose possession is necessary to bring their empire to its acme of power and glory.[180]Always mysteriously baffled and thrown back, the colossal power of the northern empire has been incessantly pressing against this resistance, even since the power of combined Europe has backed the weakening Ottoman Empire. The Emperor Nicholas was more completely possessed by this hereditary idea than any of his predecessors since Peter the Great; he undertook and sacrificed more for it than any one of them, and seems really to have caused Russia to make a great stride towards the ulterior object. By the war of 1828 and ’29 Turkey was extremely humiliated and weakened, and immense advantages were gained by Russia. Her arms were completely and brilliantly successful from beginning to end of the campaign, and surprise has often been expressed that the Russian army did not march directly on Constantinople after Adrianople had been captured.It may be that the military strength of the empire was exhausted by its costly victories, and that Nicholas was afraid of exciting a league of the great powers against him. Whatever his reasons may have been, he concluded a peace at Adrianople, and postponed further action to a future time.

When the treaty of Adrianople was concluded (1829), the present chancellor of Russia was thirty-one years of age and employed in a subordinate position under the ministry. Prince Alexander Mikhäilovitch Gortchakoff was born in 1798, and claims descent from Rurik. He first gained the favor of the Emperor Nicholas by negotiating the marriage of his daughter, the Princess Olga, with the crown-prince of Würtemberg. He had already passed four years at the little court of Stuttgart as resident minister, and he earned the gratitude of the imperial family by remaining willingly eight years longer, in order to aid the Princess Olga as her guide and counsellor. His residence at Stuttgart fell between the years 1842 and 1854, and he was therefore fifty-six years of age before attaining anything above a minor position in the diplomatic service. After the re-establishment of the Diet at Frankfort, in 1850, he was appointed to represent Russia at its sessions, and henceforth divided his time between Stuttgart and Frankfort, and employed his abundant leisure in studying the politics of Europe. It was at this time that he first met withM.Bismarck, then a lieutenant in the Prussian Landwehr, a novice in diplomacy and his colleague at the Diet. Here also he became intimate with two remarkable and singular characters whose history and ideas illustrate the peculiar national spirit bywhich the genuine Russian people, which remains true to its ancient traditions without any foreign mixture, is animated.

The first of these singular personages was Vassili Joukofski, who had been in early life a poet of considerable renown, not remarkably original, but possessed of a great talent for facile versification and ingenious translation, and sufficiently cultivated as a scholar to have been selected as the private tutor of the Grand Dukes Alexander and Constantine, the present emperor and his brother. Although he had voluntarily selected a German lady as his wife and a German town as his permanent abode, he remained, nevertheless, confirmed in his belief of the hopeless corruption of Western Europe, and the destiny reserved for Russia to complete the work of the Crusades, drive “the impure beast” from Byzantium, liberate the Holy Land, and regenerate the world by “a new eruption of Christianity.” The other individual of this remarkable pair was Nicholas Gogol, a man of original and powerful genius, full of a sombre and extravagant religious enthusiasm, who haunted the drawing-rooms of Joukofski, and startled the elegant, cultivated guests of his more worldly friend like a fantastic apparition from the spiritual world. Gogol was a terrible satirist of the vices of Russian society, a prophet of wrath and judgment, in despair of civilization and of his own salvation, wandering the earth in a restless search after some relief for his disturbed soul, and reappearing at intervals among his friends at Frankfort to deliver impassioned exhortations to prayer and penance. The only remedy for modern evils, in his view, was a return to the primitive state of barbarian Muscovy,and a crusade of despotism joined with the undefiled faith of old Russia against “the heathens of the Occident.” It is an old saying in Russia that “heaven can only be reduced by famine.” Gogol acted on this maxim to such an extent by his long fasts and prayers that he was one day found dead of inanition in an attitude of prayer, prostrate before his holy images.

Prince Gortchakoff is a cultivated sceptic, intent on the aggrandizement of Russia from motives which are earthly and confined within the sphere of that materialistic philosophy which dominates in diplomatic circles. Nevertheless, mystic enthusiasm, the most enlightened and noble aspirations of religion and patriotism, great designs for a lofty end, and the lower qualities of cleverness in worldly wisdom, talent for managing the affairs of administration, and ambition to fulfil a great personal career by serving as an instrument of some grand social or political power, are often found combined together to pursue the same object from different motives. The Emperor Nicholas was undoubtedly thoroughly sincere in his adherence to the religious and political doctrines which he professed, really influenced by the mystical ideas of the “crusaders,” and convinced of the justice of his cause. His chief minister, Nesselrode, certainly did not share these ideas, yet he served his master with all the resources and ability which he possessed. So also did Gortchakoff, although personally he is of the same stamp with his predecessor. The emperor, as the whole world knows, and a great part of it well remembers, reopened the Turkish question and engaged in the memorable, for the time being to Russia unsuccessful, even disastrous,war of the Crimea. In 1855 Prince Gortchakoff was sent as resident ambassador to Vienna; there he labored strenuously, both before and after the death of Nicholas, first to detach Austria from the cause of the allies and win her cooperation with Russia, and then to gain terms which would permit his government to conclude an honorable peace on the least disadvantageous terms. Russia has been profoundly irritated against Austria ever since the latter power refused to take her part against the protectors of the Ottoman Porte; accusing her of ingratitude for the great service which Nicholas rendered to Francis Joseph in suppressing by military force and gratuitously the Hungarian rebellion. Prince Gortchakoff shared this feeling; it has always affected his diplomatic policy, and it may have yet most important results, if hostilities are renewed on a large scale. At the Congress of Paris, which settled the conditions of peace, Prince Gortchakoff was the Russian plenipotentiary. Immediately afterwards Count Nesselrode retired from the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in April, 1856, the successor upon whom the eyes of the court and the empire had been long turned with favor and hope was elevated to the office, which he has filled for twenty years, and which has become essentially more important in his person than it ever was during preceding administrations. Prince Gortchakoff is the first who has filled at the Russian court the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Western acceptation of the powers and responsibilities of that position. Heretofore the emperor had personally directed the state policy, using his minister as a mere counsellor and chief secretary. AlexanderII.has devolved the actual direction upon his chief minister. The most marked feature of his administration has been the close personal and official amity and concord which has subsisted since their first meeting at Frankfort between himself and Bismarck. The delineation of the common policy of the two chancellors would require that we should take upM.Klaczko’s exposition of the career of the Prussian chancellor—a task which we cannot fulfil at present. Of course each one has had in view the aggrandizement of his own state, and given his concurrence to the designs of the other in the expectation of forwarding thereby his own plans. Bismarck cares nothing for Russia, and, after his residence atSt.Petersburg as Prussian ambassador, he expressed his opinion of her by the motto which he pasted inside his watch-case: “Russia is nothingness.”[181]Gortchakoff undoubtedly cares as little for Prussia and the German Empire. Each one looks out for his own ship; for those men whose ideas are catholic are of a different class from mere clever diplomatists, and, unhappily, are rarely to be found among either kings or ministers of state.

Bismarck has always made his special accomplices in ruining the antagonist of the moment the next victims of his undermining schemes. What he has in prospect for Russia is as yet undisclosed. Nor is it certain that he will succeed in playing out his game, making Gortchakoff a mere card in his hand. The Russian is doubtless too astute and farseeing to rely on the disinterested friendship of the Prussian, or on his fidelity to any secret engagements, except so far as self-interestor fear may hold him to his word. Thus far, however, the contract offacio ut faciashas been well kept between the two, to their mutual advantage. Prussia has gained a great deal by it, and Russia something, although the decisive crisis is just now coming on, and still undecided, which will solve the problem how much she has gained or will gain. Nicholas died, baffled and disappointed. Alexander came to the throne sad and disheartened. Russia was crippled and exhausted by the terrible disasters of the Crimean war, her prestige and influence in Europe were diminished, and she was placed under humiliating and hampering restrictions by the treaty of Paris. Under Prince Gortchakoff’s administration she has recuperated and increased her strength by the mere force of her immense vitality. By skilful management she has regained a place in European politics almost equal to that of Germany. She has thrown off the trammels of the treaty of Paris. France, England, and Turkey have lost all they had gained by their costly victories. The allies of Turkey have been overcome by superior diplomacy together with adverse fortune, and made to play into the hands of their old antagonist; and Turkey has been driven into worse straits than any which have beset her in the most dangerous epochs of her former history. The initiative in the extraordinary political movements of this epoch has been taken by Bismarck, whom Gortchakoff has merely connived at or seconded. This secondary and mostly negative support has been, nevertheless, most important, probably even necessary, to the success of Bismarck’s schemes. It has involved, moreover, great changes in Russia’s traditional policy and considerablesacrifices. This is especially the case in regard to the minor states of Germany and Denmark, so closely allied by intermarriages with Russia, formerly so decidedly supported and aided by her influence, yet of late abandoned without remonstrance to Prussian spoliation. Russia has been avenged on France, on Austria, and to a certain extent on England, and she has had the opportunity of reviving the question of the East with a view toward ulterior results. Thus far Bismarck has seemed to act toward Gortchakoff in the same way that the latter acted towards him in reference to the war on the French Empire. Certainly, much more must be expected from him, and it does not yet appear that he can dupe and outwit his copartner in politics as he did the weak, dreamy Louis Napoleon, or make use of him as a mere subservient agent, to be discarded when his services become unnecessary. Prince Gortchakoff appears to have managed matters thus far for the advantage of Russia with consummate adroitness. Moreover, whatever may have been the influences at work within the imperial family compelling the chancellor to yield his personal opinions or wishes, it is evident that in point of fact Russian policy has not been of late subservient to Bismarck’s designs, but, on the contrary, has forced him to modify them considerably in respect to France.

In the event of war between Russia and Turkey alone it is plain that Russia will not find it an easy task to effect the conquest of Turkey and to expel the Turks from Europe. It seems probable, however, that the Ottoman power must succumb after one desperate struggle, if left unaided by all the Europeanpowers. It does not seem likely, however, that Europe will stand idly aloof; on the contrary, there is reason to apprehend that when the conflict threatens to become decisive of the fate of Turkey, all the great powers will become involved in a general war, which will make an epoch in history and determine the destinies of the world for the next ensuing age. We may conjecture, on grounds which are at least plausible, that if Russia is actively supported by any other powers, it will be Germany and Italy which will ally themselves with her, against Austria, England, and France. We can scarcely expect that a war of this kind would terminate in complete success to either of the belligerent parties. In the end all the great nations must come to some mutual agreement in a congress which shall settle the balance of power on a new basis, guarding against an absolute and dangerous preponderance of any one of the chief powers. What is to become of Constantinople we will not venture to predict. But let us suppose that Russia obtains this object of her long, patient, and persevering efforts and ardent aspirations. Must we suppose that this will necessarily be an event disastrous to the interests of the Catholic Church and civilization and to the religious, political, and social welfare of Europe and the world? The language of many most intelligent and religious men, particularly of Englishmen, and of many others, not particularly religious, who look at the matter purely in view of the temporal interests of nations, proves that a very strong and general conviction exists in the sense of the affirmative answer to this question. We think, however, that there is something to be said on the otherside. As the Catholic aspect of the question is the one most important in itself, and really involving all the others, we consider this aspect alone. It is the schismatical position of the Russian Church, and its complete subjection to the autocratic power of the ruler of the state, which furnishes the only reason for regarding the Turkish dominion in the Levant as a lesser and more tolerable evil than the transfer of the capital of Russia fromSt.Petersburg to Constantinople. All reasons, therefore, which encourage the hope and expectation of the reconciliation of Russia with the Holy See diminish, in proportion to their weight, the dread which the prospect of such an event may awaken.

We will here quote a remarkable passage from Dr. Mivart’s late essay onContemporary Evolutionhaving a bearing on this subject. Those who have read this work, or the review of it in our number of last December, will understand the value of the quotation we are about to make, as coming from a man who anticipates such a very different course of events from that whose possibility he here sets forth. It proves his cautious, scientific method of reasoning. He does not advance his own theory with absolute assertion as certain, and his acuteness, combined with candor, causes him to discern and bring into notice a contingency in the direction of Russia which, if it should turn out to be a future actuality, would alter most essentially the “evolution” whose probable course causes so much curious and anxious questioning of the signs of the times.

“Nevertheless, there are many who believe that a reversal will at length ensue, and some modification of the old theocracy be again generally established.At present the only power which seems to contain enough of the old material is Russia. Itmaybe that, instead of politically assimilating itself to Western Europe (like the manners of its highest class), it may come to exercise a powerfully reactionary tendency. It does not seem impossible that, availing itself of the mutually enfeebling wars and revolutionary disintegration of Western powers, it may hereafter come to play that part in Europe which was played of old by Macedon in Greece. Such a Western expansion might be greatly aided if, carrying out the idea of a former sovereign, it united itself to the Roman Church, and made itself the agent of the most powerful religious feelings and of all the theocratic reactionary tendencies latent in Western Europe. It does not even seem impossible that a Roman pontiff effectively restored to his civil princedom by such Russian agency might inaugurate, by a papal consecration in the Eternal City, yet a fresh dynasty of ‘Holy Roman emperors,’ a Sclavonic series succeeding to the suppressed German line, as the Germans succeeded in the person of Charlemagne to the first line of Cæsars.”[182]

What seems to the distinguished writer just quoted barely possible appears to us quite probable. It does not follow, however, that his hypothesis, proposed as possible, expresses precisely the necessary alternative to the opposite term of a complete revolution in Russia by pagan liberalism. The medium between Nicholas Gogol’s fanatical ideas of a reformation by Muscovite barbarism and despotism and their absolute contrary—the uttermost development and sway through the whole extent of the civilized world of Western heathenism—need not be placed exactly at the point marked out by Dr. Mivart. We can suppose that the Russian Empire may reach its ultimatum by attaining a degree of power and grandeur beyond that which it nowpossesses, without acquiring domination over the rest of Europe. We can suppose that its influence may be exerted successfully to arrest and turn back the tide of pagan revolution, in co-operation with the other powers acting on a more Christian policy, without being absolutely reactionary. Russia may receive as well as impart influence, undergo in herself modification as well as cause modification to be undergone by Western Europe, through mutual contact at Constantinople. It would seem that such must be the result of her coming down to the Mediterranean and emerging from her old ice-bound and land-locked isolation. She will come in contact with America as well as Europe; and, in fact, the visits of her naval squadrons and of three of her grand dukes to our shores show that the imperial court ofSt.Petersburg does not fear communication with the great republic of the West.

The method of administering government in Russia has actually been undergoing a great modification, in the sense of substituting regular procedures of law and definite codes for personal and arbitrary authority under the initiative and direction of the emperors themselves and their immediate ministers. The local communal government, by the system of free assemblies and elections of the people in districts and villages, exists throughout Russia. The Emperor Nicholas prosecuted actively the work of ameliorating and improving the condition of the common people, which Alexander has carried still further by the abolition of serfdom. The mitigation and attempering to the demands of an improved civilization of the autocratic principle inthe empire seems to be an inevitable and certain process which must go on, and which finds its greatest impediment in the nefarious plots and insurrections of secret societies and revolutionists. It is to be hoped that when a stable equilibrium is once restored in Europe, when a solid peace succeeds to the impending storm of war, and Russia is in harmony with other Christian nations, her power, combined with theirs, will be seriously and successfully applied to the suppression of these secret societies, thus giving the hydra-head of revolution a stunning, disabling blow; though we cannot expect that any human power will be able to kill and bury the monster.

Russia cannot fulfil the mission her religious and patriotic children ascribe to her, cannot take a principal part in the redintegration of Christendom, or even attain her complete political growth and strength either in Europe or Asia, without abandoning her schismatical position, reuniting herself to the Pope, and liberating the church from its constricting thraldom to obsolete Byzantine prejudices and secular tyranny. The question of the conversion of Russia has already been treated of in our pages by the learned and zealous Father Tondini, and a number of works bearing on the whole subject are accessible to English readers. We have not space to go into this matter as it deserves. We are merely indicating what a Catholic Russian Empire, in possession of Constantinople, might accomplish for the triumph of Christianity. The long catalogue of crimes, cruelties, persecutions, internal abuses, disorders, heresies, fanatical extravagances, ravages of infidel and revolutionary opinions—in which too much thatis true, we are induced by the argument from analogy, as well as in part by counter-statements worthy of credit, to believe, is mixed with some falsehood and much exaggeration—on which a wholesale denunciation of Russia is founded, proves nothing at all or too much. All great nations of Christendom can be subjected to the same oriminating process. What can an advocate say in the cause of England, France, Germany, or mediæval Europe? The same can be applied to Russia. If it is a legitimate plea, the facts cited in the indictment on sufficient evidence are true, but irrelevant. To attempt a white-washing process is in all cases foolish as well as immoral. The crimes recorded in the pages of Russian history, whether personal or political, are not to be denied or excused. Existing evils in church and state are not to be disguised. All mankind are born in original sin, and the great majority have committed actual sins. What then? Has Christ not redeemed the world? will he not triumph over sin and death, and crowd the kingdom of heaven with his elect? In none of the kingdoms of this world, in no age of human history, can we find the ideal kingdom of God and Christ, of justice, peace, and happiness, otherwise than imperfectly brought into actual existence. Does not the heavenly kingdom gradually form itself out of this confused mass of material, growing up through the ages of time to that perfection which it will attain in eternity? Let us look at Russia in a general view, as we look on the past ages of Christendom, neglecting those small particular objects which disappear or become insignificant in an extended and philosophical survey. Let us drop our petty national prejudices, andclear our minds of everything inconsistent with impartial justice to all mankind and Catholic charity. We shall find much that is admirable and hopeful in the great Russian Empire and her people, and be convinced that Russians, even after they have become Catholics and suffered expatriation, are justified in their ardent love for, and pride in, their unique and wonderful country.

The Russian people resembles a belated army, like that of Blücher at Waterloo, coming on the field to decide a doubtful battle. They are of the past, and have but just emerged from their childhood. The old patriarchal spirit lives in them; they are simple, hardy, traditional, loyal, full of reverence for parental, sacerdotal, and imperial authority, industrious and easily contented. The Russian peasantry are warmly clothed and housed; they have enough of the simple food which suffices for their wants; and pauperism scarcely exists. They are a most religious people, and religion is recognized as the basis and foundation of the entire political and social fabric of the nation, as well by the government as by the mass of the people. They only need to be vivified by the current of life from the heart, and energized by the vital force from the head, of Catholic unity, to become what the Western nations were in the times of their pristine Christian vigor. The schism in which they are involved is an unhappy legacy inherited from the corrupt Lower Empire of Byzantium and its ambitious, perfidious clergy. Christianity lacked the full amount of power necessary to accomplish a perfect work in Russia, because the source whence it was derived could not give it. The RussianChurch has never had its golden age. There are many reasons why it seems fitting and probable that the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit should be imparted to it at this late day in much greater fulness than they were in the beginning, making it flourish suddenly and beautifully, like its own artificial gardens, out of the long, bleak winter. The body of the Russian nation cannot be regarded as apostate, or compared with those who followed Photius, Luther, Jansenius, or Döllinger into wilful rebellion and secession. The authors of the schism were the prelates and higher clergy from Constantinople, and the boyars of Moscow, who were completely under their influence. Most of these, even, were probably, to a great extent, misled by ignorance and prejudice. We have already shown how the schism has become intertwined with state policy, so as to transform the great, severed limb of the Catholic Church into a national institution with an outward form of hierarchical organization, yet really only a department of the imperial autocracy. Nevertheless, this national Russian Church is in a condition essentially different from that of the Anglican establishment or any other Protestant communion. It retains all that is necessary to the constitution of a catholic church, and needs only to submit to the supremacy of the Pope in order to be redintegrated in unity. The body of the priests and people of Russia are undoubtedly not in formal, but merely in material, schism. They are therefore truly in their own persons members of the Catholic Church. They have the faith and the sacraments, and there is no obstacle to the grace of God in the inculpable state of external separation fromthe Holy See in which they have been unfortunately placed by their ecclesiastical and civil rulers. The misfortune of such a vast number of the true and pious children of the Holy Mother Church must cry to God for deliverance and restoration to the true fold. Their numerous oblations of the unbloody Sacrifice, their communions, their perpetual prayers to the Blessed Virgin and the saints, some of whom belonged in this world to their nation, the sacrifices and prayers of the noble converts from the Russian schism to Catholicity, the mercy of God, which is extended over all men, especially the baptized, must surely effect their reconciliation to their Catholic brethren and the Holy Father of all Christendom. The sufferings and the blood of the victims of Russian persecution will conduce more powerfully to this result than any other human cause. The pagan Russians slaughtered the priests and faithful of the Byzantine Empire but a short time before they fell down before the cross and submitted to the spiritual authority of the Christian patriarch. Vladimir dragged ignominiously to the river the idol he had formerly worshipped. It cannot, therefore, be impossible that God should bring his successor to the feet of the Pope in humble submission, to place himself and his empire under the gentle sway of the Vicar of Christ. Russia once reconciled with Catholic Christendom,the conversion of all the Sclavonians would undoubtedly follow. The Eastern schism would become extinct or reduced to insignificance; and to Russia would naturally fall the great work of Christianizing Asia, when the paralysis of schism was removed. Who can tell if the kingdom of Poland may not be restored to its autonomy, renovated by the severe chastisements which it has not only suffered but deserved, and purified from the foul mixture of infidel revolutionism which has been more fatal to it than any of its external disasters? The designs of God defy all human scrutiny, and the changes awaiting Europe, whose complicated, mysterious evolutions have always baffled the most sagacious foresight or previous planning of rulers or statesmen, are as much beyond philosophical calculation as the movements of three bodies are beyond the computation of mathematics. Some indications, however, precede the full disclosures of events. An eminent Catholic of Germany has recently said: “I see the finger of God, which pushes the Russians forwards and Romewards.”[183]We do not think there can be any object more worthy of the united prayers of all Catholics, next after the deliverance and triumph of the Holy See, than the reconciliation of Russia to the Catholic Church.

[177]Two Chancellors: Prince Gortchakoff and Prince Bismarck.By Julian Klaczko. Translated from theRevue des Deux Mondesby Frank P. Ward. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1876.

Various works on Russia by Palmer, Gagarin, Tondini, De Custine, De Maistre, Pitzipios, Tyrrell, Gurowski, Romanoff, Rabbe and Duncan, etc. The histories of Mouravieff, Leo, Rohrbacher, Darras, and Alzog.

[178]Still another derivation is from Roxolani, the name of a Scythian tribe.

[179]The older brother, Constantine, resigned his right of succession.

[180]AlexanderI.said to Caulaincourt: “I must have the key which opens the gate of my house.”

[181]La Russie c’est le rien.

[182]Contemporary Evolution, bySt.George Mivart,pp.66, 67.

[183]Reinhold Baumstarck in theHist. Polit.BlätterforDec.1, 1876.

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