CHAPTER XIIThe Convents and Monasteries

Исполинскою рукоюТы, какъ хартія развитъ;И надъ малою рѣкоюСталъ великъ и знаменитъ!

“These are the haunts of meditation,—theseThe scenes where ancient bards th’ inspiring breathEsctatic felt; and from the world retired,Conversed with angels and immortal forms,On gracious errands bent.”—Thomson.

RUSSIAN monks all belong to one order, that based on the rule of St Basil the Great, practically the only order of “black” clergy recognised by the Eastern Church. The first monastery in Russia was founded by St Anthony, a Russian who, after living some time on Mount Athos, returned to Kiev, and there, in 1055, conjunctly with St Theodosius, established the Pecherski Monastery, on the same rule as that of the Studemi—one of the strictest of the clerical institutions in Constantinople. The Pecherski still ranks highest among the monasteries of Russia. The one of greatest importance in Moscow, though not the most ancient, is that of the Miracles (Chudov) founded in the fourteenth century by St Alexis, the Metropolitan. It stands within the Kremlin, between the two Imperial palaces, on a spot which long ago was a part of the enclosure around the dwelling of the Tartar bashkak, or “resident.” At the time when one Chani-Bek was khan, his wife, Taidula, fell ill and was healed by Alexis, to whom out of gratitude she presented her gold signet ring with its effigy of the Great Dragon, and a site for theMonastery of the Miracles. The first building was erected in 1365, and the monastery long served as the residence of the primates of Moscow; it has been many times destroyed and rebuilt; the present building dates from the reign of the first Romanof, and, at the time of writing, is in course of extensive alteration. Passing before the Church, with the curious paper ikon outside, a large gateway will be found in the angle where the Chudov buildings abut against those of the smaller Imperial palace; passing through this, the visitor will find himself in a large Courtyard; the Church of St Michael is on the right, a small railed-in cemetery among the trees on the left. The Monastery, a mean, dilapidated, straggling two-storeyed building, extends almost completely around the quadrangle; the chief rooms, on thebel-étage, communicate with a long outside covered gallery, closely resembling the yard of an old London inn, which is reached by the perron in the western corner. The Church of St Michael, the Archistratigus, was built conjointly with the Monastery in 1365, rebuilt in 1504, and later restored in its primitive style, so has preserved even more than any other church in Moscow the original character of Muscovite ecclesiastic architecture. The interior is well worth seeing, but access is not easy; the best time is after early matins, which are celebrated about thrice weekly at 7A.M.

The frescoes are very primitive, and for Moscow, original. The old-fashioned low ikonostas is of a type common to “wooden Russia”; the ancient ikons call only for the attention of the student, but on the High Altar is a tabernacle in the form of a church with twelve domes which has wider interest. It is the work of Remizov in the reign of Mikhail Theodorovich. Within the courtyard, traces of Tartar graves have been found; and the cemetery contains the tombs of Edeger—the last “Tsar” of Kazan, 1565—and of many Moscowfamilies, as the Trubetskis, Kovanskis, Sherbatovs, etc. The state rooms are still used by the head of the Church in Moscow; they look out towards Ivan Veliki, immediately above the little window at which the Holy Bread is sold. Although the monastery has been the scene of many important events in connection with the history of the Church and of Moscow—it was here that Maxim, the Greek, studied, and Latin was first taught, 1506—there is nothing either in the refectory or common rooms connected with them, for the monastery was erected during the plague riots of 1771 and spoiled by the French. The church of the Patriarch Alexis is entered from the Tsar’s Square through a portico, of a pseudo-Gothic style, designed by Kasakov in the eighteenth century, but the church itself was constructed in 1686, and the remains of St Alexis the Metropolitan then conveyed there in the presence of the Tsarevna Sophia and the boy-Tsars Ivan V. and Peter I. It occupies the site of an earlier church founded in 1483, and contains the incorruptible remains of the Saint. Alexis, the wonder-worker, was descended from a boyard family named Pleskov. Born in 1292, he passed twenty-two years of his life in Moscow, a student of the Bogo-yavlenski Monastery; after admission he was for twelve years one of the household of the Archbishop, and later became bishop of Vladimir, and Metropolitan of Kief.

His care of the two child princes of Moscow, his direction of Dmitri Donskoi and sturdy championship of Moscow, and his efforts to maintain its supremacy, endeared him to the people. When he died in 1378, at the age of eighty-five, he was buried within the Chudov monastery he had founded; there in 1439 his remains were discovered undecayed, and miraculous qualities attributed to them. In 1519, Balaam the Metropolitan informed Vasili Ivanovich, then the reigning Grand-Duke, that the blind in visiting thetomb of Alexis were restored to sight. Since that date the memory of Alexis has been held in highest reverence by the orthodox, and in the public esteem he ranks with St Peter, first among the Patron Saints of Moscow. Consequently the church is one of the richest; it was spoiled by the French, who cast the silver shrine of the saint into the melting pot, and hismoshiwere found under a heap of lumber after the flight of Napoleon. Much of the decoration is new, but in the style of the time of Alexis Mikhailovich, of which the pavement is particularly characteristic. The new shrine is of silver, so are the royal doors of the sanctuary; for them some 420 lbs were needed, and the tabernacle, the chandeliers and the elaborate ikonostas are all of sterling metal, and there is a magnificent archiepiscopal mitre presented by Prince Potemkin. The original coffin of the saint, is preserved in a glass case near the silver shrine, and by it are kept the identical pastoral staff he used in Moscow, and other personal relics. Among these are manuscript copies of the New Testament executed by the saint, as also his holograph will. The library has some hundreds of old illuminated and other manuscript books, including a psalter of the thirteenth century, and a collection of old printed books of the seventeenth century. This church, the adjoining chapel of the Annunciation, and the monastery are all closely associated with the introduction of pedagogy to Moscow; it was here that the first scholastic seminary for priests was founded, and later an academy was developed. It became customary for parents to bring their children hither before their entry to any school, in order that the blessing of St Alexis might be asked, and some peasants of the village at one time owned by the saint make a pilgrimage to his shrine on his name day, and pray for their “Lord.” The sacristy has a valuablecollection of old plate; the crosses, panagies, mitres, vases, goblets, etc., are remarkable for their beauty and rich decoration, and second only to those of the collection in the sacristy of the Patriarchs.

Naturally the Monastery of the Miracles is closely associated with the more renowned of the wonder-working ikons of Russia. The most celebrated now existing there are: the trimorphic paper ikon of the Holy Trinity, that of St Nicholas the wonder-worker, and that of St Anastasia. In 1771, when Moscow was decimated by the plague, it was believed that the ikon of the Virgin (Bogoloobski) at the Varvarka Vorot wrought miraculous cures. It was so thronged by worshippers and the pestilent stricken that, as a measure of precaution, the Archbishop Ambrose ordered its immediate removal to the Chudov monastery, but the maddened people gathered in the Kremlin and threatened that they would not leave a stone of the monastery standing unless the ikon was at once restored. The Archbishop was forced to give way. The next day he was dragged by the mob from the Donskoi monastery where he was hiding and massacred by the enraged populace. This was on the 17th September: from that date the plague declined and the daily death-rate of 700 returned to the normal average with the advent of winter.

Flanking the eastern wall of the Chudov Monastery are the buildings of the Convent of the Ascension (Vossnesenski), the entrance to which is from the large square of the Kremlin near the Redeemer Gate. There are some indications that this nunnery is of greater antiquity than 1393, the date usually assigned its foundation. Eudoxia, the wife of Dmitri Donskoi, organised the institution, and, after taking the veil there, ordered that it was to be her place of sepulture also. The buildings were destroyed in 1483—ninety yearsafter their erection—again in 1547, 1571, 1612, 1701, and last of all on the great fire of All Saints’ Day, 1737. Its successive rebuildings are due to the great veneration of the orthodox for the tombs of their ancestors, and from 1407 its cemetery ranked first as the place of sepulture for the consorts of the rulers of Muscovy; some thirty-five were interred within its walls between 1407 and 1738.

“It is said that when Eudoxia retired to the convent in 1389, although she observed the appointed fasts rigorously and within the walls wore heavy weights and performed arduous penances, she still took great interest in the affairs of the outer world, and when visiting dressed in rich robes befitting her former state. This gave rise to much scandal, which she refuted by exhibiting to her accusers the effects of her self-imposed penances. When Tokhtamysh destroyed the building in 1393 she not only devoted herself to the task of founding a better community, but did so much work among the sick and indigent that she more than retrieved her character, being worshipped almost as a saint and canonised under her adopted name of Euphrosina, revered through many generations.”

The cells are mean, and the low plain façade not unlike those of English alms-houses of the eighteenth century. It was in this nunnery that Maria Mniszek was housed prior to her marriage with the false Dmitri, and here, too, that Maria Nagoi was forced to recognise the same impostor as her own murdered son. The Cathedral of the Ascension, like that of St Michael in the Chudov, is of a primitive type, preserving many of the characteristics of the original building erected by the Tsar Vasili Ivanovich in 1518; the five domes have not, however, the common bulbous cupolas, these resemble inverted cups—an original type. The interior has the customary four pillars supporting the central dome; there is an ikonostas with four tiers reaching to the arched roof. Of the sacred pictures the most remarkable are that of the Virgin and that of theAscension; there is also a curious one in the north chapel dedicated to Mary the Mother of the Afflicted.

The tombs of the Grand Duchesses are arranged along the frescoed walls, north, west and south; some are of the white stone used in the earliest buildings in Moscow, others of brick; formerly the portraits of those interred were painted on the walls over their tombs, now many are covered with splendidly worked palls of native design. The remains of Eudoxia (St Euphrosina) are in a modern shrine of silver, replacing that taken by the French; on the right, near the south wall, is the tomb of another Eudoxia (Shtrchnev), the wife of Mikhail Theodorovich; then come the tombs of the Miloslavski and Naryshkin, wives of his son the Tsar Alexis, and the last tomb of all is that of another Eudoxia, the much tortured first wife of Peter the Great. Four of the six, or more, wives of Ivan the Terrible also lie here. In the sacristy among many rich relics are two exquisitely decorated copies of the gospels; the enamel work and enrichment with gems is the most characteristic of the Russian art handicrafts. Not less excellent are the two golden processional crucifixes presented by the Tsar Michael. Such is the summer church of the convent, to which there is a grand ceremonial procession on Palm Sunday, and one on the second Sunday after Trinity to commemorate the great fire of 1737.

The winter church, dedicated to St Michael, is the chapel of Honour of St Theodore of Persia and was built in the eighteenth century only. In addition to a much venerated ikon of the virgin, painted in 1739, there is preserved one of the greatest antiquities of Moscow—a bas relief representing St George the Conqueror (Pobiedonostzev), the head uncovered, which originally was one of the decorations of the Redeemer Gate near by. It was transferred thence to the Church of StGeorge, which was destroyed by the fire of 1737, a conflagration that threatened the convent also, but was stayed by the miraculous ikon of the Virgin of Kazan, now placed in the adjoining new church of St Catherine the Martyr. This is a modern building on the site of a fine old church of the seventeenth century, and of a Russified-Gothic style serves to show, from an artistic point of view, how disastrous is the attempt to combine native designs with those of the west. On the ground floor of the western range of buildings are the ovens, etc., where the Holy Bread is prepared, and the nuns of the convent are celebrated throughout Russia for the excellence of their work with the needle and brush, their copies of the ikons of these churches being in particular request.

The monasteries outside the Kremlin have much the character of small fortified towns, and are the stronger and, architecturally, the more interesting the greater the distance at which they are situated from the town. To visit them, drive out to the Simonov—four miles from the centre of the town—and pass the Krutitski Vorot and the Novo Spasski; the Spasso-Andronievski and the Pokrovski on the return. On the south side of the river to the Danilovski and the Donskoi; to the west the Zachatievski and Novo Devichi. The others, of minor interest are:—Monasteries of St Nicholas, Epiphany, Znamenski, Petrovski, Srietenka, and Alexis; Convents: St Nikita, Rojdestvenka, and Strastnoi.

St Sergius founded the monastery in 1370, but it was not moved to its present site on a hill commanding the Moskva until twenty years later. It educated St Jonah in the fifteenth century, and when he became Metropolitan it increased in importance, but was latersurpassed by the Troitsa, and although it owned 12,000 souls—male serfs—in the eighteenth century, it has never attained the leading position, nor even that expected of it. The present walls were built during the reign of Theodore I. but, finished in 1591, they could not keep out the Poles, who completely sacked the monastery in 1612. It is a line, strong looking, dreamy old place, somewhat dilapidated and overgrown with verdure. The wall is half a mile long, commanded by wonderful spire-like towers, some 130 feet high, crowned with two-storeyed domed watch rooms, which look like huge dovecots. There is a covered rampart walk all round, and from the tower near the river, a subterranean passage to the Lizin Prud, a holy well at one time much visited by the sick who had faith in its miraculous healing properties. Some six churches are within its walls, one the Cathedral of the Assumption, a massive building, consecrated in 1405, and having a somewhat bizarre appearance, its façade, in the Byzantine style, being also painted in three colours to represent quadrangular facets. It is a building quite foreign to Muscovite style; reminiscent rather of the old country churches of Portugal. The ikon of greatest celebrity is that of God the Father, richly decorated, and once, it is said, blessed by St Sergius, when it was carried with the troops of Dmitri against the Tartars under Mamai.

SIMONOV MONASTYRSIMONOV MONASTYR

A Moscow merchant defrayed the cost of the great belfry, 330 feet high, and under the refectory is buried the renowned Field-Marshall Bruce; the sacristy is rich in vestments and some ornamental work of the Tsar Alexis’sMasterskayain the Kremlin. The most famous inmate was Simeon Bekbulatov the converted Tsar of Kazan, whom Ivan Groznoi made Tsar of Moscow for twelve months; his tomb will be shown. The charm of the Simonov is derived from its stillness, its out of the world air, its roominess, the matured trees, the ample orchard, the long rampart walk, the excellent views of Moscow, the many quaint nooks near the old stores, the grateful shade of pleasant bosquets and the orderly negligence that suggests contentment—an ideal home for dreamers, for cheery mysticism and the inception of unhurried philosophies.

The new monastery of the Saviour, so called because in the fifteenth century removed from the Kremlin to its present site, is pleasantly situated near the Moskva river not far from the Krasnœ Kholmski bridge. Its walls were of wood until the invasion of Devlet Ghiree, after which an attempt appears to have been made to turn all the outlying monasteries into fortresses for the better protection of Moscow. One peculiarity of the Spasski Monastyr is that the towers which flank the wall are all different, one is pentagonal, one round, one hexagonal, and so others vary—some are squat, others have tapering spires from the towers; the belfry is 220 feet high. Its claim to greatness is not due to the spirited defence it made to the Polish attack, but to the fact that within its Cathedral of the Transfiguration, one of the five churches within the walls, is a picture “Neruko-tvorenni,” not made withhands. “In the year 1645, in the town of Khlinov, in the porch of the Church of the Trinity, before the image of our Saviour not made with hands, Peter Palkin, blind three years, stood and worshipped and miraculously received his sight.” The Tsar Alexis ordered the picture to be brought to Moscow for the Spasski Monastery, and a copy of it to be sent to Khlinov, or Viatka. The church is also adorned with a set of fresco portraits illustrating the genealogy of the Tsars of Moscow, from Olga to Alexis: corresponding therewith, the portraits of the Kings of Israel. Behind the ikonostas are some extraordinary mural paintings of the Tsars Michael and Alexis, founders of the cathedral. The Church of the Protection, to the south of the cathedral, was built in 1673 to the memory of the Patriarch Philaret, and a third church, near the cells of the monks, was built in 1652 by Nicholas Cherkassky, to whose family Moscow owes several fine churches. The monastery was the favourite burying place of such noble Moscow families as the Yaroslavskis, Gagarins, Sherbatevs, Naryshkins and Romanofs, whose ancestors are mostly interred in a crypt here, the last being Vasili Yurivich Zakharin.

The monastery of St Andronievski was founded by St Alexis the metropolitan who made a vow, when in a storm at sea during his voyage to Constantinople. The relics of St Andronie are preserved in a silver shrine. All these monasteries were pillaged and profaned by the French, the Andronievski suffered perhaps more than the others since there some monks were shot.

This monastery is in no way connected with Dmitri Donskoi but owes its name to a picture of the Virgin Mary, presented by the Don Cossacks (Kazak = soldier) after the great victory over Khazi-Ghiree and his army of 150,000 Mongols advancing against Moscow in 1591: they were repulsed by the armyraised by Boris Godunov and the miraculous intervention of the ikon of the Cossacks, and the grateful Theodore built the monastery on the field of their defeat as a fit shrine for the ikon, which had been set up as the standard of the defenders of Moscow. A church pageant on August 19th (old style) commemorates the victory. The white walls and red turrets are copied from those of the Novo Devichi. The principal church was founded in 1684 by Catherine, daughter of the Tsar Alexis, and differs from those of Moscow town in being of red brick. The smaller Church of the Virgin is the older, founded in 1592; the three others are of the eighteenth century.

The Cossacks were the means of enriching the church by recovering the silver looted by the French. The decorations are for the most part quite modern, and the paintings by an Italian. The cemetery has fine monuments, and there the people resort on summer evenings for the shade of the trees and restfulness of this peaceful retreat. Further along the Kalujskaya is the Alexandrina Palace, formerly the property of the Orloffs, with its celebrated pleasaunce “sans souçi,” extending to the wooded bank of the Moskva, with pretty views of Moscow and one excellent one of the Church of the Saviour seen alone at the extremity of a fine avenue of great trees.

This has the advantage of being the oldest establishment of its kind in Moscow. Founded in the Kremlin by Daniel in 1272, it was transferred in 1330, and in the reign of Ivan IV. rebuilt on its present site. The walls are less ornate than those of the other fortifications of their time; the machecoules with superposed loop-holes over the gun-ports are also unusual and the polygonal corner towers have greater symmetry than those of Simonov or Novo Spasski. The chief object of interest within the building is the silver shrine of the founder placed in the church by the Tsar Alexis in 1652. The other two churches are commonplace, but in the cemetery is the tomb of Gogol, one of the most original of Muscovite authors.

The Zamoskvoretski quarter, south of the river,was in mediæval times little better than a swamp and long uninhabited. The Mongols settled there later, and Tartar names indicate some streets, as Balchoog, “quagmire,” and Bolotnaia, “swamps;” as late as the reign of the Great Catherine, the Island where is now the Babygorodskaia (little town) was open waste land, and there the rebel impostor Pugatchev, brought to Moscow in an iron cage, was beheaded in 1773. A raised road Krimski-val, above the fen-land leads from the Donskoi Monastyr to the Krimski Most, the tubular bridge over the river near the Ostogenka. It obtained its name from the fact that the Krim Tartars in their attacks on Moscow always crossed the river at that point, and it is still better known as Krimski Brode or “ford.”

West of the Krimski Most, where the river makes a wide sweep and on three side bounds a large tract of low lying land, is the Maidens’ Field, which tradition asserts is the locality of the market at which the Tartars in old times purchased Muscovite girls for the Mohammedan harems in Constantinople and Ispahan. Historians contend that the name is derived from the convent established there since 1525. There is no doubt that this was established in the early years of the sixteenth century to commemorate the recapture of Smolensk by Vasili III. It is also indisputable that there were already convents existing within Moscow and thatNovo Devichi Monastyrmeans simplyNew Monastery for Women. Helen, “the maid,” was the first abbess of this, and may have given it the name, but it was customary in Moscow, before and since, to name the convents after the dedication, as Conception, Nativity, Passion, etc., so some earlier use of the popular appellation “Maidens’ Field” is more probable.

The convent is two miles distant from the Kremlin, but also on the river bank, though a tank serving as a moat actually separates it from the present raised embankment of the Moskva. The walls were built by the same Italians who completed the walls of the Kremlin, and are of the same type, but round and square towers alternate and both have some of the heavy florid decoration so common in Moscow. The single and double dropped-arch is most conspicuous, and the quaintness of the architecture is accentuated by the glaring disparity of the colouring—dead white for the walls and interior of the open turrets, dark Indian red for the tops of the towers and masonry above the corbels of the machecoules. The belfry is of five lofty stagesen retraitesurmounted with a gilded bulbous dome and immense cross; its colours are pink and white with neutral facings: yellow, green, rose-pink picked out with white or darker tints are used for the other churches; that over the gateway being white with green roof, and both green and blue are used lavishly elsewhere for the roofs of the buildings within the enclosure, which together with the gold on domes and crosses, gives to the convent-fortress a beauty that is wholly eastern.The two churches Vasili founded have been preserved and others added. They are—Church of the Assumption, with a chapel dedicated to the Holy Ghost.Church of St Ambrose, of Milan.Church of The Transfiguration of the Virgin.Church of The Protection of the Virgin.Chapel of SS. Balaam and Jehosaphat, beneath the belfry.Church of St James the Apostle, founded in gratitude of the preservation of the monastery on St James’s day 1812.The cathedral church with chapels to the Archangel Michael; to SS. Prokhor and Nikanor; to St Sophia and the sister graces, Vera, Nadejda, and Lubov (Faith, Hope and Charity). Here the daughters of Alexis Mikhailovich are buried, as also Eudoxia (Helena), first wife of Peter I. On the ikonostas is a very early copy of the Iberian Mother of God, before that ikon was taken to Smolensk in 1456.Its history is unimportant. Julia the wife of its founder was forced to take the veil here in 1563 when Vasili intended to marry Helena Glinski; Boris Godunov and his sister Irene lived within it during the six weeks following upon the death of Theodore I. Notwithstanding its apparent strength, during the times of trouble Vasili Shoviski after various struggles to retain it, was forced to give it up to the invading

The two churches Vasili founded have been preserved and others added. They are—

Church of the Assumption, with a chapel dedicated to the Holy Ghost.

Church of St Ambrose, of Milan.

Church of The Transfiguration of the Virgin.

Church of The Protection of the Virgin.

Chapel of SS. Balaam and Jehosaphat, beneath the belfry.

Church of St James the Apostle, founded in gratitude of the preservation of the monastery on St James’s day 1812.

The cathedral church with chapels to the Archangel Michael; to SS. Prokhor and Nikanor; to St Sophia and the sister graces, Vera, Nadejda, and Lubov (Faith, Hope and Charity). Here the daughters of Alexis Mikhailovich are buried, as also Eudoxia (Helena), first wife of Peter I. On the ikonostas is a very early copy of the Iberian Mother of God, before that ikon was taken to Smolensk in 1456.

Its history is unimportant. Julia the wife of its founder was forced to take the veil here in 1563 when Vasili intended to marry Helena Glinski; Boris Godunov and his sister Irene lived within it during the six weeks following upon the death of Theodore I. Notwithstanding its apparent strength, during the times of trouble Vasili Shoviski after various struggles to retain it, was forced to give it up to the invading

NOVO DEVICHI CONVENTNOVO DEVICHI CONVENT

Poles. Peter the Great imprisoned his sister Sophia within its walls, and executed many of the streltsi before her windows that their agony might awe her bold spirit. Some years after he made it a foundling hospital, and 250 infants were housed there before the Hospitalrie Dom was built; it was abolished in 1725. Napoleon visited it in 1812 and at first it suffered little; the King of Naples ordering divine service to be celebrated daily as usual, but later Davoust was billeted there, and after the disaster the French before quitting it did their utmost to blow up the belfry, the cathedral and stores. The nuns at considerable risk interrupted the fired train and, by their intrepidity and subsequent perseverance in combating the fire, saved the convent from destruction.Russian monasteries and convents are not rigorously closed to the public like those of the Roman church. Generally from sunrise to sunset the great gates stand open that all may enter who desire to do so; and the nuns, so far from being secluded from the world, are rather encouraged to go out into it, both on errands of charity and, at need, to supplement by their own handicraft a too scanty income. For the most part the cells are shared in common by three inmates who unite their daily rations of tea, salt, and black-bread, and whilst the infirm sisters busy themselves in copying ikons or producing lace, needle-work and the like, the more active go into the town to dispose of the produce. In convents as elsewhere the Russian rule holds good that one’s room is inviolate: strictly private if the inmates wish, yet open to whomsoever it is their pleasure to entertain.

Russian monasteries and convents are not rigorously closed to the public like those of the Roman church. Generally from sunrise to sunset the great gates stand open that all may enter who desire to do so; and the nuns, so far from being secluded from the world, are rather encouraged to go out into it, both on errands of charity and, at need, to supplement by their own handicraft a too scanty income. For the most part the cells are shared in common by three inmates who unite their daily rations of tea, salt, and black-bread, and whilst the infirm sisters busy themselves in copying ikons or producing lace, needle-work and the like, the more active go into the town to dispose of the produce. In convents as elsewhere the Russian rule holds good that one’s room is inviolate: strictly private if the inmates wish, yet open to whomsoever it is their pleasure to entertain.

“O, how glad was I that the Tsar took notice of those few Englishmen.”—Horsey.

MOSCOW still bears witness to the thoroughness of English handicraft just as it shows the unmistakable impress of the French heel. When the discovery of the new world by Columbus had awakened England to enterprise and adventure, among the expeditions fitted out to find new markets for English manufactures was one of three ships sent on the advice of Sebastian Cabot, to the Arctic seas in 1553. Sir Hugh Willoughby was in command; Richard Chancellor, a youngprotégéof Sir Henry Sydney, his able lieutenant, and King Edward VI. himself the patron. The merchant venturers each found £25 for the undertaking; £6000 in all was subscribed; two Tartars in the King’s stable were interrogated as to that land on “the East of the Globe,” but they answered nothing at all that was in point. Three ships sailed from Rudcliff Harbour on the 20th May, but a few days later a storm separated them. Chancellor sailed on, and notwithstanding “the counsel of three friendly Scotchmen” to proceed no further, he reached the White Sea where he awaited the coming of his chief. Sighting a smack he got the men on board; they at once fell prostrate to kiss his feet but he himself raised them, “an act of humanity that won for him much goodwill.” The natives darednot trade without leave of their prince, and in some six weeks an invitation was given Chancellor to proceed from Kholmogori (Archangel) to Moscow. There he was sumptuously entertained. Furnished with a reply to King Edward’s letter and permission to trade, he returned to London. In April 1555, Chancellor was again sent to Moscow; the Tsar in the meanwhile had found the remains of Sir Hugh Willoughby’s other two ships, the crews of which had been starved to death. The result of this second voyage was the establishment of the Russia Company at Kholmogori and Moscow, and the visit of a Russian envoy to the Court of St James’s. Ill-luck attended the return voyage; Chancellor, his son and seven Russians, were drowned when their ship was wrecked, near Kinnaird Head.

The English were not deterred by untoward events, and pressed trade briskly. They had to deal with a sovereign whose methods were detestable and whose aim was a political and matrimonial alliance with the Tudors, not commercial intercourse with the English people; the Tsar was foiled, and the English traders succeeded. No doubt the venturers were misled by the too glowing reports of their servants, who represented Russia as a new Indies. Wondrous were the stories they gave of the country and its inhabitants; of the immense wealth of the Tsar; of the strange animals that roamed in the forests. Of these last one was the “Rossmachia,” which devoured food so ravenously that it had to pass between great growing trees in order to reduce its distended stomach—an animal not identified; another was the Ass-camel, having the attributes of both these beasts, which was so far believed in as to figure in the arms of the Eastland Company and is thought to be the yak. To these early voyagers, earnest and austere in their new-found protestantism, the religion of the Muscovites seemed idolatrous, andto their prejudiced writings, reproduced by generation after generation, many of the still current misconceptions concerning the Eastern Church are due.

The Governors of the Russia Company were hard-headed, bargain-driving tradesmen, with no soul for empire or an attempt had been made by them to conquer and annex Russia for their sovereign and their country. Profitable trade was their one aim and the extravagances of their servants and apprentices their increasing lament. Many were the complaints, piteous the explanations; anger on the part of the employer, indignation and desertion on the part of the unlucky apprentices.

Ivan did not pay for the goods he had, or his chancellor would not; none dared trade but by his leave; his subjects feared to buy the merchants’ goods lest their sovereign might still require them for himself. The governors paid no heed to the customs of the country or the needs of their apprentices—foundlings and charity—reared orphans—no furs were to be worn; the ells of cloth allowed annually were in no case to be exceeded, and the use of horses forbidden; “if it be against the manner of that countrie we will make it the manner rather than forbear our money with losse to clothe them otherwise, or maintain them to ride when we go afoot. Let the horses and mares be sold.”

So ordered the governors their full-powered servant Anthony Jenkinson, who was further commanded to “reduce our stipendiaries to a better order in apparel; forbid them riding, for such excessiveness corrupteth all good natures, bringeth obloquy to our nation and also loss to ourselves.” “Item 34” of this long command is “no dogs, bears, or superfluous burdens to be kept; no bond-men or women to wait upon them.” “Item 39, they shall pay for their apparel not at cost price but at the selling price in Russia.” Among other things the unfortunate ill-clad apprentice bore inthe frozen north during arctic winter was punishment for the company’s misdoings, but the governors, “doubt that Alcock’s death proceeded from asking for payment of our debts, as Edwardes writes, but that he either quareled inadvisedly or else constrained the people touching their religion, laws, or manners, being given wisdom wolde to mislike and mock other strangers.” No wonder the English left the factory and tried to make a living for themselves, but withal there were many of the right grit among them, to wit, Anthony Jenkinson who passed through Moscow in 1558 determined upon finding a way to the Indies by the Caspian. This intrepid adventurer reached Ispahan with the goods of the Russia company and returned burdened with rich barter and precious gifts. Later he fitted out a fleet on the Caspian and made war on the Turcomans with some success, an undertaking the difficulties of which can scarcely be estimated seeing that he could communicate with England only by way of Archangel,—a port closed by ice for one half of the year. Jenkinson had not only to contend with pirates on the Volga, but was warned that the Danes might attempt to seize his ships,—Primrose, 240 tons;John Evangelist, 170;Anne, 160;Trinitie, 140;—as they passed the wardhouse (Vardso) “where be enemies that do mislike the newe found trade by seas to Russia.” Sigismund II., King of Poland, tried his utmost to stop the traffic, “sending messengers with pretended letters of thanks to English merchants in order to make the Tsar, Ivan, suspicious of them.

He fitted out ships in Dantzig to capture English ships bound for the Narva, and threatened Elizabeth that loss of liberty, life, wives and children awaited those who should carry wares and weapons to the Muscovite who was not only the enemy of the King of Poland but the hereditary foe of all free nations.” Amongother of the company’s servants who distinguished themselves were Southam and Spark who discovered the water-way from the White Sea to Novgorod, and so got goods thither without such risk as was run from Russia’s enemies on the Baltic when sent by Narva. The Flemings and Germans were jealous of the new traders and made many misrepresentations concerning both persons and goods. They themselves furnished an inferior staple, but the simple people were made to prefer it to English cloth which, as it would not shrink as theirs did, could not be new.

Jerom Horsey was an apprentice or underling of the Russia company at Moscow; he attracted the Tsar’s attention by his expert horsemanship and his wit when the Tsar questioned him respecting the Russian ships building at Vologda for the Caspian. Horsey answered that with others he had admired their “strange fashion.” Ivan would know what he meant by this description. “I mean that the figure heads of lions, dragons, eagles, elephants and unicorns were so skilfully, so richly adorned with gold and silver, and painted in bright colours.” “A crafty youth to commend the work of his own countrymen,” remarked Ivan, and then asked about the English Fleet, but was displeased when Horsey described the Queen’s flag as “one before which all nations bow.” These traders were not the only British in Moscow, others were brought as prisoners by Ivan on his return from the devastation of Novgorod.

“At which time, among other nations, there were four score and five poor Scotch soldiers left of 700 sent from Stockholm, and three Englishmen in their company brought many other captives, in most miserable manner, piteous to behold. I laboured and employed my best endeavours and credit—not only to succour them but with my purse, and pains, and means got them to be well placed at Bulvan near the Moskva. And although the Tsar was much inflamed with fury and wrathagainst them, torturing and putting many of these Swede soldiers to death—most lamentable to behold—I procured the Tsar to be told of the difference between these Scots, now his captives, and the Swedes, Poles and Lithuanins his enemies. That they were of a nation of strangers; remote; a venturous and warlike people, ready to serve any Christian prince for maintenance and pay, as they would appear and prove, if it pleased His Majesty to employ and spare them such maintenance. They were out of heart; no clothes; no arms; but would show themselves of valour even against his mortal enemy the Tartar. It seems some use was made of this advice for shortly the best soldiers were put apart and captains of each nation appointed to govern the rest. Jeamy Lingett for the Scottish men, a valiant, honest man. Money, clothes, and daily allowance for meat and drink was given them; horses, hay and oats; swords, piece and pistols were they armed with—poor snakes before, looke now cheerfully. Twelve hundred of them did better service against the Tartar than twelve thousand Russians with their short bows and arrows. The Krim-Tartars, not knowing then the use of muskets and pistols, struck dead on their horses with shot they saw not, cried:—‘Awaye with those new devils that come with their thundering puffs,’ whereat the Tsar made good sport. Then had they pensions and lands allowed them to live upon; matched and married with the fair women of Livonia; increased into families, and live in favour of the prince and people.”—Horsey.

Unhappily their good treatment was not long continued. Soon Ivan set a thousand of his opritchniks “to rob and spoil them,” and their sufferings were terrible. Some escaped into the English House, and were clad and relieved there, “but,” says Horsey, “we were in danger of great displeasure in so doing.” But Horsey, a man of wide sympathies, did not confine his aid to men of his own country; he was instrumental in saving many other of the captives of Ivan’s wars in the west, who were quartered in a special suburb, thenemetski sloboda, “by my mediation and means, being then familiar and conversant in the Court, well known and respected of the best favourites and officers at thattime, I procured liberty to build them a church, and contributed well thereunto; got unto them a learned preaching minister, and divine service and meeting of the congregation every Sabath day, but after their Lutheran profession.” These people “soon grew in good liking” of the Muscovite citizens, “living civilly, but in doleful mourning manner for their evil loss of goods, friends, and country.” Horsey was the man chosen by Ivan to take a private message to Queen Elizabeth in answer to the important communication she had sent him by Anthony Jenkinson. The Tsar provided him with horses, and a guard as far as the confines of his territory, but “forbear to tell you all the secrets entrusted to you, lest you should fall into my enemy’s power and be forced to betray them, but you will give to the Queen, my loving sister, the contents of this bottle,” and the Tsar himself secreted a small wooden spirit-flask among the trappings of the young rider’s horse.

Horsey had engaged upon a daring undertaking, and had an adventurous journey. It was winter; Russia was beset by Ivan’s enemies, who hated the English for the help given the Muscovite ruler. As soon as he crossed the border he feigned to be a refugee, but was taken as a spy and cast into prison. The governor of the castle, hearing that he came from Moscow, would learn some news of his daughter, who had been carried away a captive by Ivan’s troops. She was among those whom Horsey had helped to settle in the Sloboda, and he gave so good an account of her, that the grateful jailer liberated him and helped him forward on his long journey. When he passed through the Netherlands the merchants gave a banquet in his honour and, for favours he had rendered the foreigners in Moscow, presented him with a silver bowl full of ducats. Horsey returned the ducats, as he says, “not withoutafterwards repenting of this,” but kept the bowl to remind him of their good will. He reached England, and was received by the Queen and indicted by the sordid governors of the Russia company, who made a number of trivial and baseless charges. He returned to Russia more than once, got the extravagant demands of the company conceded, some thousands of roubles were “preened from the shins of Shalkan, the Chancellor,” and after living through the “troublous times” he finally settled in England; was married, knighted, and lived far into the seventeenth century.

Probably his “good friends” at court were Nikita Romanof, grandfather of the first elected Tsar, and Boris Godunov with whom Horsey was always on excellent terms. Ivan sent a couple of hundred of his opritchniks to pillage the house of his father-in-law Nikita Romanof, and the English then sheltered the family in their house close by, and supplied them with food and stuffs “for they had been stripped of all they possessed.” In its turn the English House suffered; it was burned by the Tartars in 1591, and the inmates huddled in the cellar for days, lost Spark, the explorer, Carver, the first apothecary in Moscow, and others, but the survivors rushed out during a lull in the conflagration and made their way through the smoke and flames to the Kremlin, where they were helped over the wall. In 1611 it was again destroyed by fire, in the struggle between Pojarski and the Poles, and finally destroyed during the French invasion. Its site is now occupied by the Siberian Podvor, in the Varvarka. It was not rebuilt, but a plot of land between the Broosovski and Chernichefski Pereuloks—the streets that connect the Tverskaya and Nikitskaya behind the Governor-General’s residence—was granted the colony by Alexander I., and there a new English church, parsonage and library have been erected.

The early settlers were chiefly traders, but they also coined silver money and made weapons; it was usual for the Tsar to honour the house by a ceremonial call early in the new year, and towards the autumn, the Tsar and Court accompanied the merchants the first stage of their homeward journey towards Archangel, and gave them a parting feast and toast at a picnic in the forest—a custom observed by Peter I. until he founded St Petersburgh. Their status was, and is, that of foreign guests, and they were subject to the common law and custom. William Barnsley of Worcester appears to have been the first Englishman exiled to Siberia. Ivan the Terrible thought him too familiar in his behaviour towards the Tsaritsa, so banished him, but he returned after twenty-six years, hale and very wealthy. Giles Fletcher, father of Phineas Fletcher, the poet, obtained an undertaking that Englishmen should not be put to the torture or put on the put-key—whipping block—before condemnation. His own book on Muscovy was promptly suppressed on the petition of the Russia Company, whose members so far from supporting the rights of their countrymen, were not altogether displeased that an escaped apprentice—or other roving Englishman—if not roasted, “yet were scorched.” Peter the Great put to death the beautiful Miss Hamilton, a lady of honour to his wife Eudoxia and nearly related to his own mother’s foster-parents, but he is said to have accompanied her to the scaffold and picked up the head as it dropped from the block and pressed his lips to hers.

There were Englishwomen in Moscow in the sixteenth century, for, apart from the anecdote respecting Ivan’s treatment of them, Jane Richard, the widow of his physician, the notorious Dr Bomel, was sent back to England in 1583, and in 1602 John Frenchman founded theAptekain Moscow in 1586, and returned

TOWER OVER THE REDEEMER GATE (SPASSKI VOROT)TOWER OVER THE REDEEMER GATE (SPASSKI VOROT)

to Moscow with his wife and family in 1602. From the complaints of the Russia Company of their young employees, it would appear that married men were sent out, “as also a Divine to exhort the single to righteous conduct,” quite early in its history. From these people who lived apart from the citizens and enjoyed certainprivileges, the Russians derived new ideas as to woman’s place in the household, and many families adopted the foreign customs long before Peter “commanded” that the terems should be thrown open and the example of the Court followed by all.

The visible memorials of the early English settlers in Moscow may be found about the Kremlin in such works as the great central tower, Ivan Veliki, built by John Villiers, the beautiful Church of St Catherine—that behind the Golden Gate (v.p. 161) accredited to John Taylor; and, still more characteristic, those Gothic towers which rise so majestically above the Troitski and Spasski Gates. In them the influence of the east is scarcely to be discovered, even such use as is made of the ogival arch being quite as native to the Gothic of the later period as to the Russian architecture, whilst those forms of decoration common to Moscow prior to, and during, the seventeenth century are as completely ignored as the designs of the Italian builders of the wall these Gothic towers crown. In the view illustrated the belfry tower of the Church of St Catherine also figures, in not unpleasing contrast with the more severe, and beautiful, but commoner architecture adopted by Galloway.

Foreign craftsmen flocked to Moscow during the glorious reign of Alexis, and the Russia Company prospered, but the English settlers received a temporary check when the quarrel rose between King and Parliament. Alexis, in gratitude for favours shown his ancestors by the English, sent Charles grain and furs, and banished those who declared for the Commonwealth. He annulled the charter of the Russia Company when Cromwell succeeded, and would have no intercourse with the Protector. In this, as in most matters, Cromwell ultimately obtained his own way. The difficulty was smoothed away by Cromwell’sroaming ambassador, the able Bradshaw, who did not even need to visit Russia to accomplish so little. Trade was re-opened, and later Alexis corresponded with the great Englishman. During the reign of Peter all foreign residents, not military leaders, were oppressed—their wages were withheld that they might not escape the country and agreements and contracts disregarded, but there was no open enmity between the races save for a short time subsequent to the seizure of Malta, which act greatly embittered the Emperor Paul against the English. The Marquess of Carmarthen obtained a tobacco monopoly from Peter the Great, who on his return to Moscow now punished as severely those of his subjects who would not acquire the habit as he had previously done those who indulged it. But he disregarded the provisions of the contract and the result was that Queen Anne’s representative at Moscow was instructed to send home the workmen and secretly destroy all the material and machines in the factory at Moscow. The envoy and his secretary “spent long hours and nights” in accomplishing this service with their own hands—probably the last actual direct interference of the British Crown with matters commercial and industrial, for it failed of its ultimate purpose, and brought disaster.

Scotch soldiers of fortune found their opportunities in Russia, and made the most of them. One of the best known among them is the sturdy Patrick Gordon, who entered the Swedish service under the grandfather of Charles XII.; was captured by the Poles and served them until taken prisoner by Alexis. The Tsar had heard that Gordon had taken pity upon Russian captives in Warsaw, and at his own cost fed them, so sent for him that he might thank him personally for the “favours shown to the poor captives in Warsaw,” whereupon Gordon offered his sword toMoscow, and served faithfully. One Alexander Gordon, who claimed cousinship, found his way to Moscow, and was made an officer by Peter “for that he, single handed, thrashed seven Russian officers who had insulted him.” He also married a daughter of Patrick Gordon, and wrote the best contemporary biography of Peter I. Crawford helped the Gordons to form a regiment of regular soldiers, and Field-Marshal Bruce with Gordon rendered such valuable services, that Peter instituted the Order of St Andrew, for distinguished military services, and these Scotchmen were the first to be decorated.

After the peace of Tilsit Napoleon wished Alexander to banish or imprison the English in Russia, but the Tsar answered, “Their ancestors have been here during past centuries and I shall not treat my old friends so ill as to consider them enemies; if they choose to remain in Russia none shall molest them.” They suffered during the French occupation of Moscow; their Church was burned, and the residence of their pastor as well as their own warehouses and dwellings. It is said that one Englishman, more astute than most, buried his treasure and a little less deep interred the body of a French soldier. The marauders seeing the newly-turned earth dug until they reached the body of their comrade, but sought no further, and the next year the Englishman removed his treasure intact. During the Crimean war, the only inconvenience the English residents suffered was the loss of trade. The police doubted whether it was lawful for the community to offer up prayers for the defeat of the Russians—the Queen’s enemies—and the matter was referred to the Emperor Nicholas, who answered that the English were “to be allowed to pray for whomsoever and whatsoever they pleased.” From the English settlers have descended men who have distinguishedthemselves, as amongst poets, Lermontof (Lear-month); amongst diplomats, Count Balmaine (Ramsay of Balmaine) and Prince Menzikov (Menzies); among soldiers, Barclay de Tolly (from a Scotch Protestant refugee) and Skobelev (Scobie); amongst architects, Sherwood, designer of the Historical Museum, and Parland, architect of the Memorial Cathedral, St Petersburg, and in other walks of life, others the equals of these. The colonists have but one policy—to support the Government—and do not fuse freely with the Slavs. Some still cling tenaciously to the nationality of their ancestors, whilst in dress, language, manners and aspirations indistinguishable from those Russians of the class with whom they associate. Pathetic figures some; reluctant to relinquish the passport that alone links them with the land of their fathers, looked at askant by the Britons newly out, a nuisance to diplomatists, and a puzzle to the “orthodox.”

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