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SANCTA SOPHIA 
 
 AND TROITZA. 
 
 FREDERICK WILLIAM HOLLS. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924098496056 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 3 1924 098 496 056 
 
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^yW. yAkdiu^^r^yiri^ 
 
 SANCTA SOPHIA AND TKOITZA. 
 
 FREDERICK WILLIAM HOLLS. 
 
SANCTA SOPHIA AND TROITZA: 
 
 A TOURIST'S NOTES ON THE ORIENTAL 
 CHURCH. 
 
 A PAPER READ BEFORE THE MARTIN LUTHER SOCIETY 
 OF NEW YORK, MARCH 19, 1888. 
 
 FREDERICK WILLIAM HOLES 
 
 OF THE NEW YORK BAR. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY. 
 1888. 
 
7 6-yT A \% 
 
 PRESS OF THE 
 
 CHEROUNY PRINTING AND PUBLISHING CO., 
 
 17-27 VANDEWATER ST., JM. Y. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 HTHE scope and occasion of the following 
 essay are sufficiently indicated in its title. 
 The necessary limits of space, and the desire 
 to avoid all appearance of pedantry, pre- 
 cluded a full statement of, or reference to 
 authorities. Suffice it to say that for his- 
 torical and theological statements the 
 works of Neale, Stanley, Schiemann, 
 Macarius, and Winer, as well as Procopius, 
 Silentiarius and Gibbon have been carefully 
 consulted. The descriptions are, of course, 
 based entirely upon personal observation, 
 though comparison and reference have been 
 made to the works of De Amicis, Warner, 
 Kohl and other travelers. 
 
The kind favor with which the essay has 
 been received, encourages the hope that in 
 its present form it may not be without 
 interest to a wider circle of friends of the 
 Society at whose request it is published. 
 
 F. W. H. 
 
 1 20 Broadway, 
 
 New York, June, 1888. 
 
 ERRATUM. 
 The number 18,314,000 in the table on page 6 should be omitted, 
 
SANCTA SOPHIA AND TROITZA. 
 
 "THE wise words of Goethe, that he who 
 knows no other language; knows nothing 
 of his own, have frequently and justly 
 been applied to the knowledge of Religions. 
 While Christianity must necessarily ex- 
 clude the very idea of the existence of any 
 other " Religion " with equal or even similar 
 claims upon human faith, it is nevertheless 
 true that the study and contemplation of 
 the influence of other great systems of be- 
 lief upon millions of human beings, whose 
 minds are not materially different from our 
 own, is one of the most fruitful and sug- 
 gestive of investigations, abounding more- 
 over in beneficial and strengthening effects 
 
upon individual convictions. Of equal, and 
 perhaps greater, importance is the com- 
 parative study of Christian denominations. 
 We need not accept in its entirety the say- 
 ing that the intensity of a man's Calvinism 
 depends upon the amount of rainfall in the 
 country, or upon the extent to which he 
 suffers from dyspepsia, to admit that climate, 
 habits and national history and character- 
 istics have a more or less determining in- 
 fluence upon the point of view from which 
 the great central truths of Christianity are 
 regarded, as well as upon the doctrines and 
 ceremonies in which this point of view is 
 sought to be expressed. To know what 
 others think upon subjects about which all 
 must depend upon the same authority, will 
 always remain one of the most liberalizing 
 occupations for the mind, and the almost 
 complete relegation of such studies to Theo- 
 logical Seminaries is the more to be re- 
 gretted, since none would seem to be more 
 thoroughly appropriate and beneficial to a 
 conscientious and enlightened layman. 
 
It is needless to say that this paper does 
 not pretend to be a contribution to the 
 science of Comparative Theology. Its ob- 
 ject will be accomplished if it awakens, even 
 in the slightest measure, an interest in the 
 past and present of a great and most in- 
 teresting body of Christian believers, of 
 whose history and present condition even 
 men of great culture in the Western world 
 are comparatively ignorant. For such a 
 purpose a tourist's random recollections are 
 sometimes as useful as a volume, being what 
 the French call ^' Memoirs pour servir;" and 
 as such I offer my own, without an apology, 
 but with the warning and the kind request 
 to receive them in the spirit in which they 
 are offered, and not to judge me by a 
 standard which, under the circumstances, I 
 cannot have the slightest aspiration to 
 attain. 
 
 It was my good fortune, during the past 
 year, to travel out of the beaten track in 
 Europe, to Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Ru- 
 mania and Russia. Accordingly, I had an 
 
opportunity of seeing and observing with 
 more or less care, that great ecclesiastical 
 body which seems to us of the West to be 
 enveloped in a glamour of mysterious gran- 
 deur, but all accounts of which, though they 
 had filled my boyish imagination, had never- 
 theless failed to convey a very clear im- 
 pression, — the Oriental Church, variously 
 called the " Eastern," the " Greek Catholic," 
 or the " Orthodox Russian." A detailed ac- 
 count of what may be seen and heard, even 
 by a hurried tourist, would easily fill a volume, 
 and it will be necessary for me to confine 
 myself to a few salient points. 
 
 As the title indicates, my own impressions 
 of the Oriental Church naturally group them- 
 selves around its two great sanctuaries, — 
 the Church of the Heavenly Wisdom, Sancta 
 Sophia, in Constantinople ; and the Troitza 
 Monastery, near Moscow, the latter the 
 capital at present and in the more immediate 
 past, and the former, the centre of authority 
 and inspiration in the remote past and the 
 hoped-for future of the Oriental Church. 
 
But before telling of my personal experiences, 
 a few words on the history and present 
 condition of this great organization may not 
 be out of place. 
 
 By appropriating to itself all the events in 
 the history of Christianity which occurred 
 East of the Adriatic, the Oriental Church 
 easily proves its claim to be the most ancient 
 Christian body in the world. It points tri- 
 umphantly to the fact that the Gospel was 
 first preached in Jerusalem, and the reasoning 
 of some Russian polemical writers will almost 
 bear the construction that the Saviour ap- 
 peared there because he foresaw that some 
 day there would be an Orthodox Patriarch 
 and Metropolitan of Jerusalem. The New 
 Testament was written in the language of 
 the Greek Catholic Church, and it is probable 
 that the earliest services in Rome were held 
 in that same Eastern tongue. Moreover 
 there can be no doubt that the early Patri- 
 archs of the Church, and the Ecumenical 
 Councils were thoroughly Oriental in their 
 leading characteristics. Whatever may be 
 
6 
 
 said, however, as to the antiquity of the Ori- 
 ental Church, it is certainly one of the largest 
 bodies of Christian believers in the world, in 
 fact the second in numbers. Professor Lind- 
 say gives the following figures : 
 
 Orthodox Greek Church of Turkey, Rumania, 
 Servia, Montenegro, Greece, Austria and 
 Russia 78,314,000 
 
 Dissenters, Arminians, Nestorians, Thomas 
 
 Christians in India, Syrian Jacobites 18,314,000 
 
 Copts and Abyssinians 5,822,000 
 
 United Greeks in Poland and Austria 4,670,000 
 
 Total: 88,806,000 
 
 An enumeration even of the chief events 
 which led to the separation of this great body 
 of Christians from their Western brethren is 
 beyond the scope of this essay. The subject 
 has been treated with great care and candor 
 by Gibbon, and latterly by Neale and Stan- 
 ley, and it may be said with some truth that 
 a division was inevitable on account of the 
 different bent of mind which characterized 
 the leaders of thought in the East and in the 
 West. The dogmatic work of the Oriental 
 Church was the definition of that portion of 
 
the creed of Christendom which concerns 
 theology proper, — the doctrines of the nature 
 of the Deity, and the doctrine of the God- 
 head in relation with humanity in the incar- 
 nation ; while on the other hand it fell to 
 the Latin Church to define anthropology, 
 or the doctrine of man's nature and action. 
 This is the essential distinction between 
 the two systems of belief, and has been 
 pointed out by almost every writer of 
 note on the subject. The whole history of 
 the filioque clause, the contest as to whether 
 the Holy Spirit proceeds from God the 
 Father alone, or from both the Father and 
 the Son, abounds in illustrations of the sub- 
 tle philosophical bent of the Greek mind, as 
 well as, on the other hand, of the more 
 practical notions of the Western theologian. 
 Greek theology had its root in Greek phi- 
 losophy, and its professors were the proper 
 successors of the sophists ; while Western 
 theology was largely based on the Roman 
 law, and Roman theologians argued with the 
 precision of advocates. The divergence in- 
 
8 
 
 creased rather than diminished, as centuries 
 passed, though many attempts at recon- 
 ciliation were made. In the intervals it is 
 hard to say whether Gregory the First, or 
 John the Faster, Leo the Ninth, or Michael 
 Cerularius, cursed the other most lustily, or 
 proved best, to his own satisfaction, that the 
 offensive dogmas of his antagonists were out- 
 growths of the uttermost depths of hell. 
 These theological disputations are even now 
 not without interest, though it is difiScult 
 for us to believe that able men, such as many 
 of the early Fathers of the Christian Church 
 unquestionably were, could have failed to see 
 the absurdity involved in their discussions of 
 the precise relations between the Persons of 
 the Godhead, infinite ages before the cre- 
 ation of the world, elaborated and commented 
 upon with all the minuteness of modern law- 
 yers raking up a millionaire's family history 
 in order to break or uphold a will. Of course, 
 the ridiculous pretensions of the Pope con- 
 tributed largely to the break, and the fact 
 that so large a body of Christians existed 
 
who rejected Popery, raised the hope from 
 time to time that hostility to the common 
 enemy might bring about some under- 
 standing with the Protestant bodies of the 
 Western world. Melancthon's efforts in this 
 direction with the Patriarch Joasaph of Con- 
 stantinople, and the later formal condem- 
 nation of Lutheran doctrine by the Patriarch 
 Jeremiah, are well known. The efforts of 
 the Anglicans and the old Catholics in this 
 century proved equally futile, and the Ori- 
 ental Church remains to-day what it was in 
 the Middle Ages, a luridly brilliant mass of 
 subtle and gross superstition, not without its 
 grand and attractive features, at once the 
 source and the back ground of Western 
 Christianity. A volume might easily be fill- 
 ed with a dissertation on the leading char- 
 acteristics and the really great features 
 of the Oriental Church. To its identification 
 with patriotic aspiration, its monasticism, its 
 liturgy and its art, brief reference will be 
 made hereafter, but even in a hasty sketch, 
 mention may be made with honor of the en- 
 
lO 
 
 tire absence of a persecuting spirit in so 
 powerful a body. Its history is not dark- 
 ened by an Inquisition or a St. Bartholomew's 
 massacre, and while even now it carefully 
 protects itself against all danger of pro- 
 selyting on the part of others, it in turn 
 declines to interfere with the convictions of 
 outsiders. Even in the Baltic provinces 
 where we read of the discharge and perse- 
 cution of Lutheran ministers, it is not so 
 much Luther's faith as the German or 
 Swedish language which is sought to be ex- 
 tirpated, and this very persecution is indeed 
 but an indication of that national feeling 
 which so distinguishes all branches of the 
 Eastern Church. It no longer has a general, 
 central authority, — the Patriarch of Con- 
 stantinople has jurisdiction now only over 
 the Church in the Ottoman dominions, — 
 and in each country where it exists, the 
 church is organized under an independent 
 head. 
 
 Thus it is everywhere identified with a 
 nation and all that is best in the aspirations 
 
II 
 
 of the people, and the importance of such a 
 relation can hardly be overestimated. To us 
 American Protestants the Oriental Church 
 is valuable only as a subject of study 
 and observation, when we approach it 
 sufficiently for that purpose, but even as such, 
 its importance is not inconsiderable. As 
 Dean Stanley truly says, " It cuts across the 
 grain of our most cherished prejudices. Our 
 well ordered phrases are thrown into con- 
 fusion by encountering a vast communion 
 which in some respects goes far ahead of us, 
 in others falls so far behind us. From such 
 an experience we may be taught that there 
 is a region above and beyond our agitations. 
 We may learn to be less positive in pushing 
 theological premises to their extreme con- 
 clusions. It is useful to find that churches 
 and sects do not exactly square according to 
 our notions of what our logic and our rhe- 
 toric would lead us to expect." 
 
 Again, as a counterpoise to Popery, 
 with far greater claims than the latter to 
 veneration on the ground of antiquity, im- 
 
12 
 
 mutability and historic grandeur, the Or- 
 iental Church fills a place of great significance 
 for the spiritual inclinations of many be- 
 lievers. To quote the same author, " Re- 
 member that if the voice of authority is 
 confident at Rome, it is hardly less confident 
 at Constantinople and at Moscow. Re- 
 member that beyond the Carpathians, beyond 
 the Haemus, beyond the Ural range, there are 
 unbroken successions of Bishops, long cal- 
 endars of holy men unknown in the West, 
 who can return anathema for anathema as 
 well as blessing for blessing. In the eyes of 
 the Orthodox Russians and Greeks, the Pope 
 is, to quote their own words, ' ' the first 
 Protestant ; the founder of German ration- 
 alism". In the encyclical epistle of the 
 Eastern Patriarchs in 1848, the Papal Su- 
 premacy is spoken of as " The chief heresy 
 of the latter days, which flourishes now as 
 its predecessor, Arianism flourished before 
 it in the earlier ages and which like Arianism 
 shall in like manner be cast down and vanish 
 away." 
 
13 
 
 We cannot think or speculate about a 
 Universal Church without taking into ac- 
 count these opinions, and thus Oriental 
 Christianity becomes a bulwark against the 
 undue claims or encroachments of any 
 church, whether of Rome, Geneva or even 
 Augsburg. 
 
 Moreover, it is interesting and instructive 
 to remember that the Oriental Church fur- 
 nishes us with the one Creed which is 
 accepted by all Christians — the Nicene — the 
 Creed which is not only not Latin but 
 untranslatable into Latin. The ancient Latin 
 Creed commonly called "the Apostles'" 
 is only the foundation for others among both 
 Catholics and Protestants in the West, but 
 in the East the Nicene Creed is still the one 
 bond of faith. Its solemn recitation is the 
 culminating point of the service in the 
 Church of Russia. The great bell of the 
 Kremlin tower sounds during the whole time 
 that its words are chanted. Every Czar at 
 his coronation repeats its words aloud in the 
 presence of the people ; and it may be read 
 
14 
 
 worked in pearls on the robes of all the high 
 dignitaries of Moscow and St. Petersburg- 
 In our own liturgies it is a perpetual reminder 
 of the distant Eastern church and the 
 speculative turn of its theology. 
 
 In my trip I had occasion to visit many 
 localities which are famous in the history of 
 Christianity. From Rome I proceeded to 
 Athens by way of Corinth. The historical 
 reminiscences associated with Athens belong 
 as far as Christianity is concerned, to all 
 readers of the Bible, and neither here nor at 
 Chios, Smyrna, Ephesus, Mitylene or Tene- 
 dos did I obtain any particular view of the 
 Oriental Church, but on Monday morning, 
 June 20th, it was my good fortune to behold 
 for the first time, that most enchanting of 
 European views, the city of Constantinople. 
 Though perhaps most beautiful in the 
 mellow light of the afternoon, when the 
 Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmora and the 
 Golden Horn all seem like a lake of burnished 
 gold, and the activity of life in the harbor and 
 on the famous bridge lends a peculiar and 
 
15 
 
 indescribable charm to the scene, still the 
 impression made by Constantinople at sun- 
 rise on a perfect June morning, is deeper and 
 more lasting. Chateaubriand, Gautier, La- 
 martine and specially De Amicis have de- 
 scribed the scene in words of unrivalled 
 beauty — to one who has not seen it, their 
 enthusiasm seems altogether too gushing — 
 but no description can do justice to such 
 beauty, any more than to the bay of Naples, 
 Niagara or the caverns of Luray. Before 
 arriving at the city proper, we see on the 
 right another place famous in Church history, 
 Chalcedon, now called Kadi Kioi — the loca- 
 tion of the fourth General Council of the 
 Church, built by men whom the Oracle at 
 Delphi rightly called blind, because they had 
 neglected the magnificent site of Byzantium, 
 nearly opposite, when laying out the city. 
 There is, however, hardly time to think of 
 this when the steamer rounds another head- 
 land and the Imperial City is before us — with 
 the grand dome of Sancta Sophia in the im- 
 mediate foreground. 
 
i6 
 
 Sancta Sophia — what innumerable asso- 
 ciations does not the name awaken in every 
 reader of history! For nine hundred years 
 this was, without question, the chief sanc- 
 tuary of Christendom, and to the Oriental 
 Church its recapture and rededication are 
 now, and have been since the conquest of 
 Mahomet Second, the one perpetual subject 
 of hope and prayer. It has become so 
 generally known to us as the Mosque of 
 Sophia — the conquest of Constantinople in 
 the Fifteenth Century seems so long ago, 
 and our sense of historical perspective is so 
 blunted by the barren waste of Mediaeval 
 History — that it seems hard to realize that 
 this Church was almost one thousand years 
 old before the foundation stone of St. Peter's 
 was laid, and that for many generations it 
 occupied the same position in the veneration 
 of all Christians which the great Roman 
 Cathedral to-day holds in the eyes of all 
 devout Papists. Even as a Mosque it is the 
 most important religious structure within the 
 territorial limits of the Oriental Church. 
 
17 
 
 Volumes have been written about this 
 edifice, and less than a volume would not be 
 sufficient to describe even the chief events of 
 its history, or the items of magnificence with 
 which it was filled in the time of its glory. 
 Gibbon has made us familiar with the story 
 of its erection — when ten thousand workmen 
 were employed under one hundred overseers, 
 — the Priests incessantly chanting and pray- 
 ing during the progress of the work, while 
 Justinian himself, clad in a simple linen tunic, 
 was present most of the time superintending 
 the whole. The same historian tells us that 
 the payment of the workmen in fine new 
 pieces of silver was never delayed beyond 
 the evening, and this promptness seems to 
 have had great accelerating influence, for 
 the church was dedicated five years, eleven 
 months and ten days after the first founda- 
 tion. The whole civilized world was ran- 
 sacked for materials for the grand edifice, 
 the splendor of which may be inferred from 
 the cost, which the Hon. S. S. Cox, in his 
 recent work on Turkey, estimates in our 
 
i8 
 
 money at seventy million dollars. Justin- 
 ian's pious vanity at the dedication was fully 
 justified in exclaiming: " Glory to God, who 
 has judged me worthy of accomplishing this 
 work. Solomon ! I have outdone thee ! " 
 Divine inspiration was unhesitatingly claimed 
 for the plan. An angel had told Justinian 
 to put three windows into the apse — to 
 represent the the three persons of the Trinity, 
 and the 107 columns of the church represent 
 the 107 columns which sustained the house 
 of Wisdom. The first writer who describes 
 the church, Procopius, in his work on the 
 edifices of Justinian, Book I, Chapter I, says: 
 
 "Who can recount the beauty of the piers 
 and walls with which the church is glorified .' 
 The stranger would imagine that he stood 
 in a meadow in its height of bloom ; he 
 would admire this sea-blue tint, that leaf- 
 green hue ; he would mark how the purple 
 flowers, how the white glitters, nature hav- 
 ing variegated the marbles with most 
 opposite colors like a pattern. Whenever 
 any one came hither to worship, he would 
 at once perceive that this was not the work 
 of mere human power, but of Divine inspira- 
 tion, and he would walk about with his 
 mind lifted up to heaven, feeling certain 
 
19 
 
 that God Almighty was not far off but 
 delighted greatly in this very seat which He 
 had chosen for His glory. Nor were these 
 the sensations only of one who visited the 
 place for the first time, but every one would 
 return with the idea that this was his first 
 visit. None ever had a surfeit of seeing. 
 Visitors were delighted with what they saw 
 in the Temple and rejoiced to speak of it. 
 It is impossible to estimate the amount of 
 gold, silver and precious stones which 
 Justinian gave to this edifice, but the reader 
 may judge from one fact the Holiest Place 
 of the Temple, inaccessible to any one 
 except the Priests, and called the Altar, 
 contains forty thousand pounds of silver." 
 
 The further writings of Procopius and 
 Silentiarius tell us of hundreds of vessels of 
 pure gold, of exquisitely wrought candela- 
 bra, of crosses of gold weighing one hundred 
 pounds each, of lilies and trumpets of pure 
 gold, of upwards of forty thousand chalice 
 cloths embroidered with diamonds and 
 pearls, while gold alone was considered too 
 cheap a material for the great altar, which 
 accordingly consisted of a mass of the most 
 precious stones, imbedded in gold and silver. 
 Justinian's intention had been to pave the 
 
20 
 
 floor with gold plates, but, as we have seen 
 from the account of Procopius he afterwards 
 substituted variegated marbles laid in the 
 most beautiful patterns. 
 
 If the memory of past grandeur strikes 
 and overwhelms the traveler, the his- 
 torical reminiscences gathered about this 
 spot are not less impressive. Here stood 
 the church of the same name erected 
 by Constantine the Great, and which 
 was afterwards burned, once by the 
 party of St. John Chrysostom, and once in 
 a tumult of the Blue and Green factions of 
 the Hippodrome. It was the sepulchre of 
 St. Andrew, St. Luke, and St. Timothy, 
 whose bodies were transported hither from 
 Ephesus after having reposed there for three 
 centuries, and fifty years later it was honored 
 by a still more illustrious presence, the 
 ashes of the Prophet Samuel, brought by the 
 Emperor Arcadius in a grand procession 
 from their resting place in Judea to the 
 banks of the Bosphorus. This was the site 
 of the most famous homilies of St. John 
 
Chrysostom and here occurred that most 
 impressive scene, illustrating beyond any 
 other the vanity of human glory — the pro- 
 tection, after his disgrace, of the eunuch 
 Eutropius by St. John Chrysostom who had 
 owed his elevation to the late sexless 
 favorite. The object of his appeals lay 
 grovelling, pale and affrighted, under a table 
 of the altar, while Chrysostom pronounced 
 one of his most seasonable and pathetic dis- 
 courses on the forgiveness of sins and on the 
 vanity of human greatness, to an innumer- 
 able crowd of either sex and of every age. 
 We can imagine the effect of his burning 
 eloquence, even from the report of the 
 sermon which is still extant : 
 
 " Forsooth, such is the power of mis- 
 fortune which renders a famous and happy 
 man now the most abject of all ! Perhaps a 
 rich man may be among you who comes 
 here and sees all this splendor, but seeing 
 this man, who has fallen from so high a 
 station, nay, whose nod once shook the 
 whole world, now crouched with fear like a 
 frog or a hare, clinging to this column, 
 though not bound by chains, dumb with 
 fright and trembling, — such a one will curb 
 
22 
 
 his arrogance, repress his pride, and con- 
 sidering everything which ought to be con- 
 sidered in human affairs, he will go away, 
 taught by the very thing itself which the 
 Scripture teaches us, namely, ' All flesh is 
 grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as 
 the flower of the field.' (Isa. 46)." 
 
 The appeal was successful and for the time 
 being, Eutropius was safe. The splendor 
 of this Church and the grandeur of its liturgy 
 and musical service so impressed the Russian 
 Prince Wladimir in 987, that he went home 
 a converted Christian, and thus laid the 
 foundation for the conversion of the Russian 
 people, and for their enduring affection for 
 the church and faith of Constantinople. 
 Moreover, this edifice is the scene of the 
 final dramatic act of separation between the 
 East and West, for upon this altar, in 1054, 
 Humbert, the Papal Legate, with character- 
 istic effrontery, and having broken into the 
 church like a burglar, placed a Papal 
 breve, excommunicating the Patriarch and 
 all his followers, thus making the breach 
 with Rome irrevocable ; " and," to use the 
 words of Warner, "it was in this very nave 
 
23 
 
 that Mahomet II. and Conqueror, spurred 
 his horse through a crowd of fugitives, dis- 
 mounted at the foot of the altar, cried, 
 ' There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed 
 is his Prophet,' and let loose his soldiery 
 upon the people." 
 
 It was my good fortune to visit Sancta 
 Sophia on an occasion which, of all others, is 
 most calculated, to leave a lasting impres- 
 sion upon the mind. It was in the evening, 
 the last night but one of the Ramazan, the 
 Mussulman Lent, when special prayers are 
 said in every mosque ; and thus an excellent 
 opportunity was afforded me of not only 
 seeing the ancient edifice rendered more im- 
 pressive than ever by the light of innumer- 
 able lamps, but also of observing the most 
 solemn Mohammedan public devotional 
 service. At these times strangers are ad- 
 mitted only to the gallery, the ancient 
 yvvaiKovirii or space reserved for women. 
 An inclined pathway, perfectly feasible for 
 a horse and rider, if not for a carriage, 
 leads up to this, and a liberal backsheesh, — 
 
24 
 
 in this case 30 piastres, or $1.50, — renders 
 the attending dervish very obsequious. 
 Sancta Sophia has the peculiarity that from 
 every point of view inside, the interior 
 appears overwhelmingly grand and imposing. 
 Unlike St. Peter's, it seems largest at first 
 sight, though, like St. Peter's, the impression 
 is deepened by repetition. But the most 
 striking feature of the present Mosque, 
 visible from the gallery, is the disturbing 
 obliquity of the Mohammedan arrangements, 
 when compared with the original plan of the 
 building. In every mosque the mihrab, or 
 prayer niche, — corresponding to the altar in 
 a church, — must be in that part of the build- 
 ing which lies in the direction of Mecca, and 
 mosques are always built with la view to this 
 requirement; but the ancient Church of the 
 Heavenly Wisdom had the altar, as usual, 
 in the Eastern part of the building, so that 
 the present mihrab is placed, not in the cen- 
 ter of the apse, as would be required by 
 symmetry, but on one side towards the 
 Southeast. In consequence, all the carpets 
 
25 
 
 are laid askew, and a very disagreeable and 
 disturbing effect is produced. I found a 
 small company of strangers from the various 
 embassies, among them several Americans, 
 in the gallery, but the scene which greeted 
 our eyes has been so beautifully and so 
 eloquently described by one of the most 
 charming novelists of the day, Mr. F. Marion 
 Crawford, in his "Paul Patoff", that I can- 
 not do better than transcribe the passage, 
 being, as I am, able to vouch for the accuracy 
 of every detail : 
 
 " Far down in the vast church an Imam 
 was intoning a passage of the Koran in a 
 voice which hardly seemed human ; indeed, 
 such a sound is probably not to be heard 
 anywhere else in the world. The pitch was 
 higher than what is attainable by the highest 
 men's voices elsewhere, and yet the voice 
 possessed the ringing, manly quality of the 
 tenor, and its immense volume never 
 dwindled to the proportion of a soprano. 
 The priest recited and modulated in this 
 extraordinary key, introducing all the or- 
 naments peculiar to the ancient Arabic chant 
 with a facility which an operatic singer might 
 have envied." 
 
26 
 
 (I may add that a sound such as this has 
 been well imitated and musically utilized by 
 Verdi in the last act of "Aida.") 
 
 "Then there was a moment's silence, broken 
 again almost immediately by a succession of 
 heavy sounds which can only be described as 
 resembling rhythmical thunder, rising and 
 falling three times at equal intervals; another 
 short but intense silence, and again the voice 
 burst out with the wild clang of a trumpet, 
 echoing and reverberating through the gal- 
 leries and among the hundred marble pillars 
 of the vast temple. * * * The whole congre- 
 gation, amounting to thousands of men, are 
 drawn up like regiments of soldiers in even 
 ranks to face the mihrab, but not at right 
 angles with the nave. The effect is start- 
 ling and strangely inharmonious, like the 
 studied distortions of some Japanese patterns, 
 but yet fascinating from its very contrariety 
 to what the eye expects. 
 
 "There they stand, the ranks of the faith- 
 ful, as they have stood yearly for centuries 
 in the last week of Ramazan. As the trumpet 
 notes of each recited verse die away among 
 the arches, every man raises his hands above 
 his head, then falls upon his knees, prostrates 
 himself, and rises again, renewing the act of 
 homage three times, with the precision of a 
 military evolution. At each prostration, per- 
 formed exactly and simultaneously by that 
 countless multitude, the air is filled with the 
 
27 
 
 tremenduous roar of muffled rhythmical 
 thunder, in which no voice is heard, but only 
 the motion of ten thousand human bodies, 
 swaying, bending, and kneeling in unison. 
 Nor is the sound alone impressive. From the 
 vaulted roof, from the galleries, from the 
 dome itself, are hung hundreds of gigantic 
 chandeliers, each having concentric rings of 
 lighted lamps, suspended a few feet above 
 the heads of the worshippers. Seen from 
 the great height of the gallery, these 
 thousands of lights do not dazzle nor hide 
 the multitude below, which seems too great 
 to be hidden, as the heavens are not hid by 
 the stars ; but the soft illumination fills 
 every corner and angle of the immense build- 
 ing, and, lest any detail of the architecture 
 and splendid music should escape the light, 
 rows of little lamps are kindled along the 
 cornices of the galleries and roof, filling up 
 the interstices of darkness as a carver bur- 
 nishes the inner petals of the roses on a huge 
 gilt frame of exquisite design, in which not 
 the smallest beauty of the workmanship can 
 be allowed to pass unnoticed. 
 
 "This whole flood of glorious illumination 
 descends then to the floor of the nave, and 
 envelops the ranks of white and green clothed 
 men, who rise and fall in long sloping lines, 
 like a field of corn under the slanting 
 breeze. * * * A man looks down upon the 
 serried army of believers, closely packed, but 
 not crowded nor irregular, shoulder to shoul- 
 
28 
 
 der, knee to knee, not one of them standing 
 a hair's breadth in front of his rank nor be- 
 hind it, moving all as one body, animated by 
 one principle of harmonious motion, elevated 
 by one unquestioning faith in something 
 divine, — a man looks down upon this scene, 
 and, whatever be his own belief, he cannot 
 but feel an unwonted thrill of admiration, a 
 tremor of awe, a quiver of dread, at the 
 grand solemnity of this unanimous worship 
 of the unseen." 
 
 The service was very short, lasting not 
 more than about twenty-five minutes, and at 
 its close we were permitted to inspect the 
 rest of the gallery. We visited the place 
 where the Empress Theodora was wont to 
 sit, her name being carved into the bal- 
 ustrade, but the light above was so defective 
 that I decided to postpone a further view 
 until the next morning. 
 
 We were up betimes, and wisely decided 
 to visit Sancta Sophia first before dulling our 
 perception with the sight of any of the other 
 curiosities and historical monuments with 
 which the city abounds. 
 
 The exterior of the famous edifice presents 
 little worthy of note. Even the cupola looks 
 
29 
 
 small, and only the minarets attract the eye. 
 Numerous small and mean looking buildings, 
 schools, baths, hospitals and mausoleums 
 hide the architecture of the church. The 
 dome has lost its silvery splendor which once, 
 according to the ancient writers, made it vis- 
 ible from the summit of Olympus, and Mark 
 Twain is not so very far wrong in comparing 
 the whole outward impression made to that 
 produced by a whitewashed barn. Appeasing 
 the scowling dervish at the door with an- 
 other liberal backsheesh we enter the narthex, 
 or outer court of the church. From this five 
 doors lead into the esonarthex or vestibule, 
 from which nine doors lead into the nave of 
 the church proper. On the wall of the eso- 
 narthex a celebrated gilt Mosaic, represent- 
 ing Christ judging the world, with an admir- 
 able portrait in Mosaic of Justinian kneeling 
 at the right hand of the Divine throne at 
 once strikes the eye of the beholder. Enter- 
 ing the church from the grand centre door 
 of bronze, the impression made by the mighty 
 and famous dome proves to be even more 
 
3° 
 
 overwhelming than we had supposed the 
 evening before. We put on the enormous 
 felt slippers without which no iniidel is per- 
 mitted to touch the sacred carpets of the 
 Mosque, and walked to the middle of the 
 nave. Looking up at the grand dome it 
 seems indeed as Madame De Stael said of the 
 dome of St. Peter's, like an abyss suspended 
 over one's head. To quote that most charm- 
 ing of travelers and best of writers about 
 Constantinople, De Amic'is : " It is immensely 
 high with an enormous circumference and its 
 depth is only one-sixth of its diameter which 
 makes it appear still larger. At its base a 
 gallery encircles it, and above the gallery 
 there is a row of forty arched windows. In 
 the top is written the sentence pronounced 
 by Mahomet II., as he sat on his horse in 
 front of the high altar on the day of the 
 taking of Constantinople: 'Allah is the Light ' 
 of Heaven and of Earth.' And some of the 
 letters which are white upon a black ground 
 are nine yards long." As every one knows, 
 this aerial prodigy could not be constructed 
 
31 
 
 with the usual materials, and it was built of 
 pumice stone that floats on water, and with 
 bricks from the island of Rhodes, five of 
 which scarcely weigh as much as one ordinary 
 brick. In each brick was written the sentence 
 of David, " God is in the midst of her, she 
 shall not be moved, God shall help her and 
 that right early." At every twelfth row of 
 bricks holy relics were built in. Can we 
 now be astonished when we think that the 
 construction of this second firmament, so 
 marvelous even in our day, was in the sixth 
 century a thing without example .'' The vulgar 
 believed that it was upheld by enchantment 
 and the Turks for a long time after the con- 
 quest when they were praying in the Mosque, 
 had much to do to keep their faces toward 
 the East and not turn them upwards to the 
 ' Stone Sky.' 
 
 A prominent Austrian architect whom I 
 met during my stay in Constantinople, and 
 who had just visited Sancta Sophia, assured 
 me that it would be impossible with the 
 methods and appliances known to-day, to 
 
32 
 
 duplicate this dome, which is one hundred 
 and eighty-three feet high and one hundred 
 and six feet in diameter. Whichever way one 
 turns in the church, a segment of it can be 
 seen and the eye and mind rise and float 
 within its circle with a pleasurable sensation, 
 almost like that of flying. The church is 
 constructed upon an almost equilateral rect- 
 angle, from the centre of which rises the 
 dome upheld by four great arches supported 
 upon four very lofty pilasters. Around this 
 seven half domes are clustered, without any 
 apparent support, so that they seem, as Si- 
 lentiarius writes, to be suspended by seven in- 
 visible threads from the vault of heaven. 
 Between the four enormous pilasters, which 
 form a square in the middle of the church, 
 rise to the right and left eight columns of 
 green breccia. These were presented to Jus- 
 tinian by the magistrate of Ephesus, and 
 belonged to the temple of Diana that was 
 burned by Erostratus. They sustain at great 
 height the two vast galleries which present 
 two more ranges of columns and sculptured 
 
33 
 
 arches. Between the pilasters eight por- 
 phyry columns stand two and two, which 
 belonged to the Temple of the Sun, built by 
 Aurelian, at Baalbec. They are of enormous 
 height and with a diameter of from two to 
 three feet, and sculptured with the delicacy 
 of Brussels lace. The columns supporting 
 the galleries are from the Temple of Jove at 
 Cizicum, from Palmyra, from Thebes, Athens, 
 Rome and Alexandria, and they present an 
 infinite variety of sizes and colors. Their 
 friezes, cornices, rosettes, balustrades, and 
 capitals are of all orders, and most fantastic 
 in design, coupled together by chance, and 
 altogether, as De Amicis rightly says, pre- 
 sent a strange aspect of magnificence and 
 barbarous disorder, and are the scorn of good 
 taste, although one cannot take one's eyes 
 from them. The galleries are of enormous 
 size, and could each contain the population 
 of a suburb of Constantinople. Approaching 
 the balustrade in the day time and looking 
 over, the gigantic dimensions of everything 
 become more impressive than ever. "The 
 
34 
 
 green discs with inscriptions from the Koran, 
 which look no larger than a chariot wheel, 
 would cover a house^ The windows are the 
 portals of palaces. The wings of the mosaic 
 cherubim are sails of ships. The tribunals 
 are public squares. The dome makes your 
 head swim." Casting down your eyes you 
 find another wonder. You did not know you 
 had gone up so high. The floor of the nave 
 is at the bottom of an abyss. The pulpits, 
 the enormous alabaster urns from Pergamon, 
 the mats, the lamps, have all grown singularly 
 little./ The ordinary day time life of the 
 mosque can be embraced at once with the 
 eye, from above. We see Turks on their 
 knees with their foreheads touching the pave- 
 ment. Others are standing erect with their 
 hands before their faces as if they were study- 
 ing palmistry; veiled women on their knees ; 
 old men kneeling before the lecterns reading 
 the Koran; an Imam hearing a group of boys 
 reciting; the vague harmony formed by the 
 low monotonous voices of those reading or 
 praying; those thousand strange lamps with 
 
35 
 
 clear and equal light; that deserted apse; 
 those vast silent galleries; that immensity; 
 those memories, that peace leaving in the 
 soul an impression of mystery and grandeur 
 which words cannot express nor time efface- 
 Strenuous efforts were made by the Turks to 
 destroy all characteristics of the Christian 
 church. The mosaics were mostly all white- 
 washed over. One of the four carpets which 
 Mohammed used in prayer is hung up on one 
 of the pilasters of the apse. Triumphal 
 standards of Mahomet II. and other Sultans 
 cover up much Christian art. To the right 
 of the mihrab is the tribune of the Sultan 
 closed with gilded lattice work. To the left 
 is the pulpit where the Imam reads the Koran 
 with a drawn scimeter in hand, to indicate 
 that the Mosque was acquired by conquest. 
 But the visitor to-day cannot but be struck 
 with a curious fact which is rarely alluded to, 
 namely, the reappearance of several of the 
 old mosaic crosses from under the whitewash 
 which has gradually peeled off and disap- 
 peared. I counted seven beautiful crosses 
 
36 
 
 which could be distinctly seen through the 
 slight film of whitewash which yet adhered 
 to them; and according to their fatalism, the 
 Turks will not cover them up again, believ- 
 ing that their reappearance has been ordained 
 by Allah, and many of them considering this 
 an evil omen for the continuance of Turkish 
 rule in Constantinople. It is needless to add 
 that no Christian can visit this church with- 
 out the sincere hope that these fatal pre- 
 monitions may speedily prove true. 
 '' After spending an hour or more in aimless 
 wandering about, drinking in the beauty of 
 the scene, we allowed the dragoman to show 
 us the special sights. There is first the 
 pilaster upon which Mahomet the Conqueror 
 when he entered, left the bloody impress of 
 his right hand. Then there is the so-called 
 "cold window," from which a fresh gust of 
 air is always blowing. Near another window 
 is the famous slab of resplendent marble 
 which always glows like a piece of crystal 
 when struck by the rays of the sun. On the 
 left of the entrance, on the north side, is the 
 
"sweating column," covered with bronze, 
 through an aperture in which can be seen 
 and felt the marble always moist. I tried it 
 on several occasions and can verify the state- 
 ment. Finally, we saw the concave block 
 of marble brought from Bethlehem, in which 
 it was said the Saviour was laid as soon as He 
 was born. In the gallery we saw the famous 
 walled-up door, through which the Greek 
 Bishop disappeared at the sight of the in- 
 vaders at the conquest. The pursuing 
 soldiers found themselves stopped by a stone 
 wall in the place where the door had been. 
 All the masons in Constantinople tried but 
 failed to open a breach in the miraculous 
 wall ; (I know that this is so, for I have seen the 
 wall myself) But, according to our dragoman, 
 Leonidas, himself ostensibly a devout Greek 
 Catholic, that wall will open on the day when 
 the profaned church shall be restored to the 
 worship of Christ. "And then the Bishop 
 will issue forth in his pontifical habit with 
 the chalice in his hand, with a radiant coun- 
 tenance, and mounting the steps of the high 
 
38 
 
 altar he will resume mass at the exact pofnt 
 where he left off, and on that day the dawn 
 of new centuries shall shine resplendent for 
 Constantinople." 
 
 Upon the whole it is a sad impression which 
 Sancta Sophia makes upon the visitor. There 
 is more admiration for what has been than 
 for what is. But repeated visits turn this 
 feeling into one of hope for what may and 
 for what we fondly pray will be. Having 
 seen this church, the aspirations and hopes 
 of the orthodox Russians and Greeks appear 
 perfectly natural. Here is, indeed, a sanct- 
 uary of which when restored all Christianity 
 might well be proud. The recovery of this 
 Basilica, the very centre of Oriental Christ- 
 ianity, is indeed a worthy ambition for the 
 great Oriental church, and we can well 
 understand that this ambition is coldly looked 
 upon by the Roman See, for once at- 
 tained, it will give to the Oriental church 
 that outward prominence over the Roman 
 Catholic to which it is clearly entitled by its 
 history and tradition. 
 
39 
 
 'At present the headquarters of the Oriental 
 church in Constantinople are near the head' 
 of the Golden Horn, near the famous light- 
 house or Phanar, from which the Greek 
 Catholics of to-day in Constantinople take 
 their name of Fanariotes. The Metropolitan 
 or Patriarchal church is the so-called Church 
 of the Twelve Apostles, which at the time 
 of my visit was closed for repairs. A series- 
 of institutions of learning, the newest and 
 most beautiful of which was a young ladies' 
 seminary, have grown up in this neighbor- 
 hood and under the supervision of the pres- 
 ent learned and venerable Patriarch, Dio- 
 nysius. But to one whose stay was neces- 
 sarily so limited as my own, it was impossible 
 to see more of the Christian life of the capital 
 of Moslemism. On a beautiful Saturday after- 
 noon I sailed up the Bosphorus to the Black 
 Sea, and after a beautiful but uneventful 
 journey through Bulgaria, Rumania and 
 Southern Russia, I found myself in the holy 
 city of Moscow. I had seen the locality 
 round which are gathered the Orthodox Rus- 
 
40 
 
 sian's sweetest memories of the past and 
 dearest hopes for the future, and I was ac- 
 cordingly well prepared to see the capital of 
 the Oriental church of the present time. 
 
 The limits of this essay of course preclude 
 €ven the most hurried account of Holy Mos- 
 cow, as it is affectionately called by every 
 Russian. Its beauty, quaintness, and fascin- 
 ating features are second only to those of 
 Constantinople, and have been the theme of 
 many writers. In some respects it seems 
 quite as Oriental as the Imperial city on the 
 Bosphorous. The view from the Sparrow 
 Hills, where Napoleon first saw the extreme 
 objective point of his ambition, and which 
 still is the most beautiful and advantageous 
 point of view in or about the city, reminds 
 one of the descriptions of Bagdad or Isphahan 
 in the Arabian Nights, while from the height 
 of the Ivan Veliky tower of the Kremlin, 
 the city with its white walls, its green 
 and red roofs, and its brilliant blue and gold 
 domes looks not unlike a huge flower-bed in 
 
41 
 
 full bloom. It seems indeed a fitting capital 
 city of the gorgeous Oriental Christianity, 
 and it is with some surprise that most tour- 
 ists hear that the chief sanctuary of the 
 Orthodox faith is not to be sought here, but 
 out in the wilderness of the North-East, at a 
 point to which I must now call my hearers' 
 attention. 
 
 If the possession and rededication of St, 
 Sophia in Constantinople represents the 
 highest aim and most intense longing of the 
 devout Russian of to-day, — if such a con- 
 summation would undoubtedly make that 
 venerable edifice the centre of all Orthodox 
 devotion, it is no less true that for the pre- 
 sent the real capital of the Oriental Church, 
 its most venerated spot and dearest sanc- 
 tuary is the great Troitza Monastery, 
 " Ssergiewskaja Troitzkaja Lawra" located 
 about forty-four miles to the northeast of 
 Moscow. It is at once the Vatican and 
 the Oxford of Russian religious life, and 
 before describing my own visit to its sacred 
 precincts, I may be permitted to touch 
 
42 
 
 briefly upon its history and general im- 
 portance. 
 
 The early and mediaeval history of Russia 
 is not an inviting or fruitful field of inquiry, 
 and the fact that most, if not all, modern 
 historians of the period unfortunately have 
 deemed it necessary to write with more re- 
 gard to scholarly fulness than toreadableness, 
 is no doubt the cause of much of the pre- 
 vailing ignorance on the subject even among 
 educated men in Western Europe and 
 America. 
 
 In our enjoyment of the many tales of ro- 
 mance and chivalry in the contest between 
 the Christians and the Moors in Spain, we 
 are apt to forget the equally heroic struggle 
 lasting for more than two centuries, between 
 Cross and Crescent on the plains of Russia. 
 Perhaps the most serious cause of the 
 estrangement between the Oriental and the 
 Western Catholic churches, — the ground of 
 the deepest grudge owed by the latter to the 
 former, was the apathy and indifference dis- 
 played by the Russian Christians towards the 
 
43 
 
 Crusades. But as Dean Stanley very justly 
 says, {The Eastern Church, p. 444) — "The 
 constant struggle against the Mussulman 
 Tartars of the North was a crusade * * * 
 far more close and severe, more disastrous 
 in its duration, and proportionately more 
 glorious in its close, than the remote struggle 
 of Europe with the Mussulman Turks and 
 Arabs of the South." 
 
 The very name for a Russian Peasant, 
 Christianin, — Christian, is a relic of the time 
 when Christian was a distinctive name for a 
 Russian. On the top of every Russian church 
 in every town which was under the Tartar 
 yoke, the Cross is planted on a Crescent. 
 To this is to be ascribed the strong anti- 
 Mussulman feeling which animates the heart 
 of every Russian peasant, and which, 
 whether by nature or policy is so powerful 
 an engine in all the wars which have in 
 later times been waged against Turkey. 
 During the hand to hand and life and 
 death struggle with the Tartar oppressors, 
 the clergy more than any princes or purely 
 
44 
 
 military leaders, were the chief deliverers of 
 their people, and then it was that the foun- 
 dations were laid for that close and intimate 
 union between the religious and political life 
 of the nation, which survives to this day. 
 The importance of monasteries in such a time 
 can hardly be overestimated. Though gene- 
 rally taking their origin from some pious 
 hermit, whose sanctity attracted worshippers 
 and disciples, they soon became nothing less 
 than fortresses and bulwarks — refuges for 
 patriotism as well as for religion, and this 
 characteristic they have retained, in outward 
 appearance, to the present day. Nothing 
 so strikes the beholder in the view from 
 the Ivan Veliky tower in the Kremlin, as the 
 row of monasteries, each surrounded like a 
 fortress with walls, turrets, parapets and 
 trenches, and which almost encircle the city. 
 Many more are to be found scattered over 
 the empire, but the most formidable and 
 military looking, as well as the most ancient 
 and venerable of all is the Troitza. 
 
 It owes its existence to man whose name 
 
45 
 
 is almost unknown to Western readers, but 
 who, to a Russian symbolizes all that clus- 
 ters around the memory of Tell, Joan of Arc, 
 William the Silent or Andreas Hofer in the 
 minds of their respective countrymen, to 
 wit, the holy hermit St. Sergius. He was 
 born 13 1 5, and founded this sanctuary when 
 only twenty-three years of age — in 1338, 
 by building with his own hands a small wooden 
 church dedicated to the Holy Trinity (Troit- 
 za) and to which the reputation of his piety 
 and eloquence soon drew numerous monks 
 and worshippers. The Black Death, which 
 Hallam well describes as " a pestilence the 
 most extensive and unsparing of which we 
 have any memorial", reached Russia in 1351, 
 and under the religious awakening which 
 followed its ravages, many convents were 
 established, and of these Troitza was at once 
 recognized as the chief. Many others entered 
 into a state of quasi feudal dependence upon 
 the monastery of Sergius, who had mean- 
 while risen to the supreme dignity of Me- 
 tropolitan of Moscow, where the great 
 
46 
 
 Donskoi monastery at the foot of the sparrow 
 hills commemorates the miraculous effect of 
 his prayer and remonstrance upon the Rus- 
 sians under Demetrius in the victory over 
 the Tartars on the Don in 1380. Notwith- 
 standing all the honors heaped upon him, by 
 the Muscovite princes and the patriarch of 
 Constantinople, Sergius remained as simple 
 selfdenying and laborious as before, hewing 
 wood and drawing water to the last. He 
 was rewarded, according to the well authen- 
 ticated annals of the Church, by a visit from 
 the Virgin Mary, accompanied by St. Peter 
 and St. John, in 1388. This miracle of course 
 ensured his canonization immediately after 
 his death, which occured in 1393. Soon after 
 a horde of Tartars took Moscow and burned 
 the Troitza Monastery. After their retreat 
 the body of Sergius, which had been buried 
 in the church just destroyed by the Tartars, 
 was found wholly uninjured and in a state of 
 perfect preservation by his successor Nikon. 
 The news of this second miracle soon spread • 
 and naturally tended to augment the fame 
 
47 
 
 of the Sanctuary. A new church was built 
 upon the site of the original building of 
 Sergius in 1422, and this edifice is still 
 standing, and contains the holy of holies of 
 Troitza — the body of the Saint himself 
 Pilgrimages to this sanctuary now became a 
 regular feature of Russian religious life, and 
 the wealth and influence of the organization 
 increased enormously. About 1550, the 
 present wall which is 20 feet thick, and from 
 25 to 50 feet in height, and is defended by 
 nine towers, was erected, and soon after, Ivan 
 the Terrible, in atonement of some of his 
 infamies, built the two chief cathedrals, of 
 which one, the Usspensky, still retains its 
 pre-eminence. The same Czar also erected 
 an Imperial palace and several immense dor- 
 mitories for monks and pilgrims, and be- 
 stowed special honors and dignities upon the 
 office Hegoumenos or Prior of the Monastery. 
 At that time the organization Troitza com- 
 prised nine monasteries, two nunneries and 
 many villages with upwards of one hundred 
 and twenty thousand serfs, and its armed 
 
48 
 
 force consisted of twenty thousand men. 
 
 The second great crisis of Russian history 
 followed, the invasion of Russia by the Poles, 
 and the threatened supplanting of the Or- 
 thodox faith by that of Popery. 
 
 Within twenty years of the time when, by 
 the failure of the Armada, definite limits ap- 
 peared to have been set to the bloody am- 
 bitions of the Papal Church in the West, a 
 vista of even greater conquest presented 
 itself in the East. To a generation which 
 has witnessed the Russian atrocities of 1863, 
 in Warsaw, and to which the partition of 
 Poland appears as the height of despotic and 
 diplomatic wickedness, it sounds strange to 
 hear of Russian sufferings under Polish op- 
 pression, and, in fact, of a Polish partition of 
 Russia. Yet this was the fact, and Stanley 
 is right in insisting that " neither the Civil 
 nor the Ecclesiastical history of Russia can 
 be understood without bearing in mind that 
 long family quarrel between the two great 
 Sclavonic nations, to us so obscure, to them 
 so ingrained, so inveterate, so intelligible." 
 
49 
 
 Its lasting effect was as strong and hardly 
 less important than that produced by the 
 wars with Ghengis Khan and the Tartars. 
 As the latter represented Mohammedanism 
 so the Poles brought with them Latin 
 Christianity with all its characteristic fea- 
 tures, notably its offensive and tyrannical 
 intolerance of all other forms of worship^ 
 Moscow surrendered to the invader, Latin 
 services were chanted in the Kremlin, cruci- 
 fixes and statues, as well as the sound of an 
 organ desecrated the Patriarchal Cathedral. 
 To the Orthodox Russian a deliverance from 
 the yoke of this abomination was as vitally 
 important as the defeat of the Tartars, and 
 his hatred of the oppressor was as fervid and 
 deep-seated in the one case as in the other. 
 Nothing has so greatly contributed to pro- 
 duce the complete isolation of the Orthodox 
 Church, and to continue its hostility towards 
 all forms of Western Christianity, as this 
 identification in the popular mind, of Roman 
 Catholicism with the horrors of Polish op- 
 pression. 
 
50 
 
 " Once again," says Stanley " it was the 
 Church that saved the Empire, and the 
 monastery of Sergius that saved them both." 
 One of the most heroic episodes in Russian 
 history is the defense of the Troitza Monas- 
 tery against the Polish Army under Sapieha 
 and Lissowski, 1608 — 9. For sixteen months 
 the place was besieged by thirty thousand 
 men, and its fortifications, moats and towers 
 were put to the severest tests of actual war- 
 fare. In the numerous pictures of the siege 
 which are still sold to peasants, a goodly 
 number of saints and ghosts are represented 
 as fighting along with the monks and creat- 
 ing havoc among the invaders, and it will be 
 remembered that similar apparitions were 
 seen by the devout Spaniards in their con- 
 tests with the Moors. This was long before 
 the beginning of Temperance agitation. 
 
 The defence of Troitza was the salvation 
 of the Empire. From the church of St. 
 Sergius, Pojarsky and Minin went forth to 
 save their country. A beautiful statue in 
 Moscow commemorates their heroism, and 
 
51 
 
 the picture of the Redeemer which Pojarsky 
 received from the hands of Dionysius the 
 prior of Troitza, and which was carried before 
 his army in a long series of victories, was 
 placed in the principal gate of the Kremlin, 
 which has since retained the name of the 
 Holy or Redeemer's gate. No Russian, not 
 even the Czar would presume, and no stranger 
 is allowed, to pass through this gate without 
 uncovering his head. 
 
 Once more the Monastery of St. Sergius 
 was to be the scene of a crisis in the history 
 of Russia. In 1685, the Usspensky Cathe- 
 dral became the refuge of young Peter, — 
 afterwards justly called the Great and his 
 mother Natalie from the fury of the Strelitzes. 
 Says Stanley " She was permitted to con- 
 ceal herself not only within the precincts of 
 the convent, not only within the walls of 
 the principal church, but behind the sacred 
 screen beside the altar itself, where, by the 
 rules of the Eastern Church no woman's 
 foot is allowed to enter. That altar still 
 remaining on the same spot stood between 
 
52 
 
 the past and the future destinies of Russia. 
 On one side crouched the mother and her 
 son, on the other the fierce soldiers were 
 waving their swords over the head of the 
 Imperial child. ' Comrade, not before the 
 altar ' exclaimed the more pious or more 
 merciful of the two assassins. At that 
 moment a troop of faithful cavalry galloped 
 into the court yard, and Peter was saved." 
 
 An ivory ball, turned by Peter in his re- 
 tirement at Troitza still hangs in the great 
 refectory, and on one of the gates a duck 
 carved in stone commemorates the mo- 
 mentous fact that he practiced duck-shooting 
 on a neighboring pond. 
 
 The wealth of the Monastery grew to such 
 proportions that Catherine II. confiscated all 
 its lands except the original enclosure, but 
 otherwise the fame and power of this great 
 institution has steadily increased. It is to- 
 day the spot of all others which must be 
 visited by a traveler who is desirous of seeing 
 the " true inwardness," as it were, of the 
 Russian people. No Czar comes to Moscow 
 
53 
 
 without paying his devotions there. Many 
 of the nobles of the present day have made 
 their first pilgrimage thither on foot, in 
 which manner the wicked and great Catherine 
 herself came by easy stages, five miles a day, 
 with vessels of water of the Neva always at 
 hand to refresh her. The greatest obstacle 
 to-day to the modern tourist in his efforts to 
 see this most interesting of Russian sights, is 
 the great crowd of pilgrims from all parts of 
 the Empire, whose wants and devotions are 
 apt to monopolize the attention of all in- 
 mates competent to act as guides. 
 
 It was a beautiful Summer Sunday morn- 
 ing, in July, when I took the train at Moscow 
 bound for this famous monastery. I was for- 
 tunate enough to have as a companion a 
 French gentleman of great experience as a 
 traveler, the Marquis de Bernieres, who with 
 his family had just arrived overland from 
 Pekin and with whom I had become ac- 
 quainted in Moscow. His standing and 
 knowledge of Russian proved to be of ines- 
 timable value, and it may be remarked that 
 
54 
 
 nowhere in Russia is a guide or the company 
 of some one understanding the language so 
 valuable as at Troitza. After a ride of about 
 two hours through dreary scenery, we saw 
 at our left the enormous pile of the venerable 
 Monastery. It being Sunday, there were 
 more pilgrims and worshippers than usual, 
 and not only the train but all the country 
 roads which we saw near the monastery, 
 were covered with pilgrims bound for the 
 churches. According to the estimate of one 
 of the priests, there were not less than six- 
 teen thousand pilgrims there that day, rep- 
 resenting every locality and every people of 
 the Russian Empire. The station is about 
 half a mile from the monastery, and the road 
 is lined with vendors of relics, and especially 
 of pictures representing scenes from the life 
 of St. Sergius and from the history of his 
 sanctuary. The latter is defended by nine 
 enormous turrets, some of which still show 
 marks of the siege by the Poles in 1608. 
 The enclosure contains, upon a superficial 
 estimate, about sixty acres of land, upon 
 
55 
 
 which there are twelve churches and chapels, 
 the large Imperial palace built by Ivan the 
 Terrible, a theological seminary, the resi- 
 dence of the Archimandrite, and numerous 
 buildings of enormous size appertaining to 
 the monastery proper, the refectory, dining 
 halls, dormitories, two nunneries, and a great 
 warehouse. The yard is quite densely 
 planted with trees whose shade was most 
 agreeable on the warm Summer day, and be- 
 neath which the hosts of pilgrims were 
 scattered. As it was early, we took up a 
 position near the great bell tower, a very 
 large structure 290 feet in height, in the 
 most hideous style of architecture, that of 
 the French Renaissance of the last century. 
 Here we watched the pilgrims as they ar- 
 rived. They first went to the main building 
 of the Monastery and following them thither 
 we saw that what seemed to be the first duty 
 was to purchase some of the holy bread baked 
 by the monks, and upon which a verse from 
 the Bible is written by novices who were on 
 hand for the purpose. Whoever bought a 
 
56 
 
 loaf took it into the adjoining room, where 
 behind a long table some twenty or twenty- 
 five pale, beardless novices with long black 
 hair hanging over their shoulders and a long 
 black gown girded round the loins with a 
 rope of the same color, sat, each with a quill 
 and inkstand, and without saying a word, 
 but with a sad woe-begone look, would take 
 the loaf of bread from each pilgrim as he ar- 
 rived and write a few words of Russian upon 
 it and hand it back. This holy bread is 
 taken home and considered a most precious 
 relic, but unfortunately it is not miraculously 
 provided with an elixir of life or of sweetness, 
 at least the loaf which I bought and which 
 was inscribed with the same sanctity as the 
 rest, turned sour before I had reached the 
 boundaries of the empire, and had to be 
 thrown into the Baltic. After watching this 
 curious scene which was enlivened by many 
 struggles for precedence between the pil- 
 grims, we entered the oldest and holiest of 
 the churches, which, as said above was built 
 in 1422, on the site of the original chapel of 
 
57 
 
 St. Sergius. and which has of all others 
 the title" Troitzky Chram ' or Church of the 
 Holy Trinity. It is a small and low edifice 
 in the Byzantine style of architecture. The 
 interior is decorated with barbarous splendor, 
 gold, silver and precious stones meeting the 
 eye in every direction. Some of the original 
 frescoes and pictures of saints are notable 
 and to my mind were quite as artistic as 
 anything of the pre-Raphaelite school which 
 I had seen in Italy. In front of the altar is 
 the holy of holies of the place, the sarco- 
 phagus of St. Sergius, made of solid silver, 
 studded with jewels, and weighing 936 
 pounds. Above it is a portrait of the 
 saint painted on wood from his coffin, a 
 miraculous picture, which Peter the Great 
 carried with him in all his campaigns, and 
 which is even now held in the highest vene- 
 ration by every Orthodox Russian. Its 
 presence here alone, in the opinion of the 
 Russian people, saved the Troitza Monastery 
 from capture by the French in 1812, and 
 even if it were known to the common people. 
 
58 
 
 instead of being kept a secret, that the same 
 picture was sent to Sebastopol, in 1855, 
 where unfortunately its miraculous powers 
 seem to have deteriorated with age and were 
 not quite sufficient to keep out the allied 
 armies, it is very doubtful whether this blow 
 to its prestige would make much difference 
 in the eyes of a pious Russian. The readiness 
 of even the most devout Russians, priests as 
 well as laymen, to show strangers their most 
 venerated objects of worship was strikingly 
 illustrated here. Upon our entry, my com- 
 panion expressed the wish to see what there 
 was left of the body of St. Sergius, and after 
 a brief consultation, the priests very readily 
 opened the sarcophagus. The corpse was 
 covered with a precious red velvet cover and 
 only at the head was there a small aperture 
 through which we could see the original skull 
 or what looked like the original skull 
 of some one. It may have been St. Sergius 
 or his substitute. A golden cross, donated 
 by the Empress Catherine II, was affixed to 
 the cover over his breast, and this the priests 
 
59 
 
 kissed with extreme devotion, inviting us to 
 the same, but showing no chagrin whatever 
 when we politely declined. In the stall of 
 the Archbishop is a representation of the 
 Lord's Supper, of which the figures are of 
 solid gold, with the exception of Judas 
 Iscariot, who is of brass. There was no serv- 
 ice in this church on that day, and after 
 glancing at a small chapel near by — built on 
 the supposed site of the cell where the Virgin 
 appeared to St. Sergius, we went to the 
 largest and greatest of the cathedrals, the 
 so-called Usspensky Cathedral or Church of 
 the Ascension of the Virgin Mary. This 
 also is in the Byzantine style of architecture 
 with five mighty domes decorated in the 
 most beautiful manner with bright gold stars 
 on a brilliant dark blue back-ground ; from 
 afar one of the most beautiful specimens of 
 architecture which I have seen. 
 
 At the entrance to the Cathedral the 
 sarcophagus and monument of the Czar Boris 
 Godunow and his family attracts great atten- 
 tion, and over the holy door of the altar screen 
 
6o 
 
 a double headed eagle in wood commemo- 
 rates the concealment and escape of Peter the 
 Great, to which reference has been made 
 above. The cathedral was crowded, but on 
 making ourselves known to one of the attend- 
 ant officers, two priests were called and 
 assigned to us as guides. The service had 
 just begun and it was very strange, to say the 
 least, to notice that notwithstanding this, in 
 all parts of the cathedral an exceedingly 
 active market of candles and of holy bread 
 was going on, not interrupted in the slightest 
 degree by the entrance of the Archimandrite, 
 and his assistant from the doors of the holy 
 screen behind the altar. It was the first full 
 service of the holy Orthodox Church which I 
 was privileged to attend, but space forbids a 
 detailed description either of the liturgy or 
 of the general arrangement of a Greek 
 church. The splendor of the priestly vest- 
 ments was far beyond my expectation, 
 though as I afterwards ascertained, not 
 nearly the most precious ones were in use on 
 that day. No greater mistake can be made 
 
6i 
 
 than to think of these Russian monks and 
 priests as resembling in the slightest degree 
 the Roman Catholics bearing the same titles 
 in this country. The fact that the Russian 
 priests and monks invariably wear magni- 
 ficent beards is not the greatest point of 
 difference. As a matter of fact, I do not 
 think that I have ever seen more splendid 
 specimens of manhood than these very 
 monks who were engaged in that service, 
 either as officiating clergy or as choral 
 singers. The music of the Russian church 
 has often been described and is familiar to 
 every visitor even of the beautiful Russian 
 chapel in Paris. Rejecting absolutely the 
 use of all instruments, the Russians are com- 
 pelled to lay greater stress upon the culti- 
 vation of the voice, and especially the bass 
 which being at the foundation of the other 
 voices, and without the help of an organ or 
 bass-viol must necessarily be full and clear 
 in order to produce the proper effect. The 
 bass singers which I heard at the Troitza, 
 could, every one of them, earn fortunes in 
 
62 
 
 one season on the stage, for no such voices 
 it may be safely said, have ever been heard 
 in opera either in Europe or in America. 
 During the Litany the words "Gospodi 
 pomilui " " Lord have mercy upon us," are 
 chanted twenty-eight times and every time 
 the grandeur of the harmony seemed more 
 overpowering and fascinating, while the 
 Gloria of Bortniansky, which happened to be 
 sung on the same day, notwithstanding that 
 it is quite familiar, seemed a revelation in 
 church music. Of course none of the con- 
 gregation were provided with seats, and what 
 with the jostling of zealous pilgrims en- 
 deavoring to get near enough to light their 
 candles at the candles of the altar, and to 
 have them blessed by one of the officiating 
 priests, it was difficult to keep one's place. 
 Of order, such as we are accustomed to in 
 our churches, the Russian seems to have no 
 conception whatever, and in the very midst 
 of the mass, while the officiating priest was 
 kneeling and reading aloud the Gospel of 
 the day, our guides took us up to the altar. 
 
63 
 
 showing us the precious crucifix, and re- 
 peatedly leading us between the priest and 
 the congregation, showing considerable as- 
 tonishment at our hesitation to "follow. 
 The same had happened to me at Moscow 
 during vesper services but it was difficult to 
 believe that no greater reverence would be 
 shown during the chief service of a Sunday. 
 When the Nicene Creed was chanted, the 
 great bell in the tower, which is said to- 
 weigh one hundred and forty thousand 
 pounds was incessantly sounded, and it was 
 interesting to watch how the exact genuflec- 
 tions, nods and marks of the cross, prescribed 
 by the liturgy were observed with the most 
 painful care by all the officiating clergy. 
 To a Western mind these seem trifles, but 
 we must not forget the fact that there is in 
 Russia an earnest body of over five million 
 Dissenters, who consider themselves so su- 
 perior in piety and in Orthodoxy to the 
 established church that they will have no' 
 religious intercourse with its members, ex- 
 cept only on the morning of Easter, and then 
 
64 
 
 not in a church, but in the public square of 
 the Kremlin, and whose three chief grie- 
 vances against the established church, are, 
 1st, that in the latter the priest gives the 
 blessing with two fingers instead of three ; 
 second, that at the end of the " Gloria " the 
 established Church chants the word " Halle- 
 lujah " three times instead of once ; and 
 thirdly, that in the received version of the 
 Nicene Creed the word "holy" is inserted 
 saying "The holy giver of life "instead of 
 "Giver of life." It is difficult to conceive of 
 a more extreme case of subordination of the 
 spirit to the letter, and its moral is neither 
 far to seek nor wholly without application 
 to some of the tendencies of the more fan- 
 atical factions of the I.utheran Church even 
 in the United States of America. 
 
 From the church we went to the most 
 interesting spot of the Monastery, its great 
 treasury, and, however deeply the traveler 
 may have been impressed with the wealth 
 of the churches of St. Petersburg, Moscow 
 and Kief, it is only here that anything like 
 
65 
 
 an adequate idea of the riches of this great 
 organization can be obtained. European 
 history proves that a national church may 
 be enormously wealthy while the country 
 itself is on the verge of bankruptcy. No- 
 where is this fact so clearly brought out as 
 in Russia. The present government is 
 obliged to pay a usurious interest and to 
 offer every possible advantage to the bankers 
 of Berlin or Paris in oder to raise one hun- 
 dred million dollars. The treasury of Troitza 
 alone according to the best authorities is 
 valued at six hundred million rubles or up- 
 wards of three hundred million dollars of our 
 money. When there is added to this the 
 riches in the Usspensky Cathedral at Moscow, 
 and in the Church of the Holy Saviour at 
 the same place, built by the Russian people 
 as a thank-offering for their deliverance from 
 Napoleon in 1812, at a cost of forty-six million 
 rubles, the innumerable jewels in St. Isaac's 
 Cathedral at St. Petersburg, and the untold 
 wealth in gold and silver vessels scattered 
 broad cast throughout the whole empire, we 
 
66 
 
 see the true piety of a people and a govern- 
 ment which prefers to humiliate itself in 
 the money markets of the Western world 
 rather than despoil sacred shrines and the 
 offerings of superstition. 
 
 Considerable reluctance was shown to 
 allowing us to see the treasury. All 
 manner of excuses were brought forward : 
 all available priests were engaged in the 
 various churches ; the key was mislaid ; 
 an order had been made denying the 
 privilege to strangers, etc., etc. It was 
 only when they heard that one of us had 
 come eight thousand miles from the East 
 and the other five thousand miles from the 
 West, that the prior's heart relented and he 
 deputed a priest to guide us. Four heavy 
 iron doors of a small low building in one 
 corner of the yard were unbolted and un- 
 locked, and then after passing through 
 various long and dark passages we found 
 ourselves in the iirst chamber of the treas- 
 ury. It was a low room about 40 feet square, 
 and lined on all sides with iron and glass 
 
67 
 
 closets. These contained the precious vest- 
 ments which have furnished the most excel- 
 lent objects upon which enormous wealth 
 could be accumulated, in a form naturally 
 precious in the eyes of inhabitants of a 
 monastery. They are long robes literally 
 sown over with pearls of great size and 
 exquisite beauty, every one of which for the 
 purposes of a scarf pin, a necklace or ear- 
 rings could be sold for a very high price, but 
 there are so many of them that I could not 
 help thinking that if by any chance what- 
 ever this treasury is ever sacked, the 
 price of pearls in the whole world will 
 seriously decline, for it seemed difficult to 
 believe that there were more pearls outside 
 of the Troitza Monastery than inside, in all 
 the jewel boxes of all the fair women of the 
 rest of the world. One robe with the Nicene 
 Creed worked in pearls, was shown us and 
 its value was stated to be one million 
 rubles or five hundred thousand dollars. 
 Another, which represented the crucifixion 
 worked in pearls, diamonds, rubies, sapphires 
 
68 
 
 and amethysts was valued at upwards of two 
 million rubles or over a million dollars, and 
 when it is stated that there are several 
 hundred vestments, more or less studded 
 with pearls, as these are, the value of them 
 all can be imagined. I counted thirty-five 
 bishop's staves all of pure gold and covered 
 with precious stones. One book of the Gos- 
 pels is bound in pure gold and studded with 
 jewels, weighing one hundred and fifty-two 
 pounds, and besides this there are altar covers, 
 sarcophagus covers, mitres, and other ec- 
 clesiastical instruments of the most precious 
 materials, too numerous to mention. An 
 agate adorned with several splendid gar- 
 nets, and in which the natural lines of the 
 interior very distinctly show the picture of 
 a monk kneeling before a cross, is considered 
 the most valuable precious stone in the 
 collection, and was shown to us with great 
 solemnity by our guide. Of almost equal 
 curiosity was a natural cross, in a sort of 
 Jasper or horn stone, formed by two white 
 veins crossing each other in the brown 
 
69 
 
 material of the stone. The hair, shirt and 
 wooden cup of St. Sergius are of course 
 revered as the more precious relics than all 
 the rich vestments of his successors and a 
 great clerical gown embroidered by Catherine 
 II, shows that lady to have been almost as 
 proficient in needlework as in intrigue. As 
 is usually the case, the impression left by the 
 contemplation of such riches was one of 
 weariness. The eye and the mind become 
 sated and tired of calculating values. It is 
 impossible to imagine any benefit which 
 the Monastery, the church or the empire 
 receives from the stagnation of what might 
 be such an immense amount of useful capital. 
 On the other hand it may be said with equal 
 truth that the value is more useful in this 
 form than in that of cannon and rifles which 
 would probably be the object of its expend- 
 iture were it ever to be diverted from its 
 present use. The priest who guided us did 
 not doubt that the treasury would some day 
 be used in the defence of the Russian people, 
 and an attack by the Germans seemed to his 
 
70 
 
 mind the most probable future event. From 
 all appearances Troitza seemed to be as good 
 a school of patriotism to-day as it ever has 
 been in the past, and it is safe to say that 
 should the empire ever be in danger again, 
 the monastery of St. Sergius will be heard 
 of to good purpose. 
 
 We next visited the refectory or dining 
 hall of the monks. It is a very large room 
 beautifully decorated, but the dinner which 
 was just being distributed seemed to our 
 Western notions quite as uninviting as could 
 be wished for by the severest ascetic. It 
 consisted of a dish of borshtj, the Russian 
 soup, a horrible conglomeration of broth, 
 vegetables, boiled beef, ham, sausages, cab- 
 bage and sour cream, and a piece of dark, 
 hot and sour looking bread. 
 
 We were invited to visit the other cathe- 
 drals and chapels, but weary with standing 
 and sight seeing, we preferred to rest and 
 observe what is after all the most inter- 
 esting feature of Troitza, the surging mass 
 of pilgrims, wandering to and fro from one 
 
71 
 
 building to the other, rejoicing that they 
 had at length reached this sacred spot, some 
 of them no doubt inwardly wondering why 
 they ever came, and most of them looking 
 as though they would be happiest if they 
 were only safely home again. The library 
 contains some beautiful illuminated manu- 
 scripts, among them one copy of the Gos- 
 pels, written about 121 5, and had I not been 
 surfeited with a comparatively recent visit to 
 the Vatican and other collections, it would 
 no doubt have been even more interesting 
 and attractive. Among recent books I was 
 somewhat surprised to find quite complete 
 collections of modern German, English and 
 French rationalistic writers, as well as the 
 more prominent works of destructive biblical 
 criticism. I had not yet learned what sub- 
 sequent conversation with numerous well 
 educated Russians taught me, namely, that 
 to the Russian mind there is nothing incon- 
 sistent in the position of almost complete 
 unbelief and rigid adherence to all the super- 
 stitious forms of the received faith. Dean 
 
72 
 
 Stanley tells us that the great German 
 philosopher Schelling told a Russian prince 
 who came to Berlin to hear his lectures, that 
 a certain Russian priest knew more about his 
 philosophy than he did himself, and that 
 priest was afterwards found to be a monk at 
 Troitza. In like manner the speculations 
 of Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Renan, 
 Kuenen and others are by no means un- 
 known in this central point of orthodoxy, 
 and who shall say that this small leaven of 
 liberal thought, albeit too radical at present, 
 shall not some day in some degree leaven 
 the whole lump of gross and almost bar- 
 barous superstition in the Russian church. 
 
 A monk with whom I spoke there, and 
 who afterwards proved to be Professor of 
 Modern Literature in the theological semi- 
 nary, very politely gave me as full in- 
 formation as the time would warrant as to 
 the organization of the church at present. 
 The Holy Governing Synod at St. Peters- 
 burg, which is the real head of the Russian 
 church now consists of twelve members, four 
 
73 
 
 Archbishops, six Archimandrites and two 
 Archpriests. This synod is presided over 
 by the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, 
 but is subject of course to the Emperor, to 
 whom it renders a report of its affairs through 
 a lay Procurator, and the latter is in fact the 
 real head of the Russian church. My infor- 
 mant was positive in his belief that no other 
 religion would ever take the place of the 
 Orthodox, in the minds of the Russian 
 people, and for proof he pointed to the com- 
 plete interweaving of the church with the 
 daily life of every Russian ; the morning and 
 evening prayers which are said in every 
 church whether there be a congregation pre- 
 sent or not ; the solemn services held at the 
 houses at the times of marriage, of child 
 birth, of baptism and of death ; the special 
 blessings which every Russian invokes before 
 undertaking a new work of any magnitude, — 
 all seemed to uphold this argument. As I 
 have said above, the church is not persecuting 
 in its spirit, though it jealously guards its 
 own members from anything foreign which 
 
74 
 
 might induce them to change their faith. 
 With a view to this, the church takes almost 
 complete charge of the censorship, and my 
 own experience proved to me that its func- 
 tions were strictly exercised. I received the 
 Century Magazine from a friend, and the 
 copy of the July number which was handed 
 to me in Moscow, had not only the article 
 on Count Tolstoi, but also all the adver- 
 tisements carefully torn out. Tolstoi and 
 his works are tabooed solely on account of 
 his religious ideas and when I indignantly 
 asked the Superintendant of Police why the 
 advertisements were torn out, I ascertained 
 that it was on account of the announcements 
 which they contained of" Irreligious Books," 
 — that is books not countenanced by the 
 church authorities. I could not at first believe 
 this, but a suggestion from me to the author- 
 ities that a dread of the soap advertisements 
 was probably the real cause of the mutilation, 
 was so unpleasantly received, that I preferred 
 to accept their own statement of the case, 
 
75 
 
 and lay the annoyance at the door of intel- 
 lectual intolerance. 
 
 A rising storm and the necessity of reach- 
 ing Moscow in time for the evening train 
 for St. Petersburg, prevented our seeing the 
 solitary cells and Catacombs of Gethsemane 
 nearby, and cut short our visit to Troitza. 
 But brief as it was, it gave us a very ex- 
 cellent inpression of what is beyond com- 
 parison the most interesting spot in all 
 Russia. That it is so little known in this 
 country is the fault of that superficial spirit 
 of travel with which most American tourists 
 in Russia seem to be possessed, and which 
 leads them to take a hasty view of St. 
 Petersburg and Moscow, and in ninety- nine 
 cases out of a hundred to wholly neglect the 
 most interesting of sights which are even a 
 slight distance off the beaten track. Did 
 space and time permit, it would be pleasant 
 and perhaps not uninteresting to describe 
 some of the Orthodox Churches of Moscow 
 and St. Petersburg, and numerous customs 
 of the people which even a hurried strangef 
 
76 
 
 may observe, and which throw a most in- 
 structive light upon the Russian religion. 
 But most of all this has been set forth fully 
 and well by numerous travelers, and the 
 effect of it all would be merely to emphasize 
 once more the crowning importance in the 
 religious life of the Oriental Church of the 
 two localities named in the title of this essay. 
 Nor is this the occasion to indulge in 
 philosophical discussion of the Oriental 
 Church, its real importance or possible future. 
 Of its effect upon the daily life of its own 
 worshippers, no critic has spoken more 
 severely than a former priest of the church 
 in this city. Father Bjerring, who in his book 
 "The Offices of the Oriental Church," says, 
 " In formal, perfunctory religion no country 
 so abounds as Russia. As to religion of in- 
 most righteousness and Christly living, per- 
 haps no Christian country affords worse ex- 
 amples. Surely a nation which is imperilled 
 by the most determined and deadly enemies 
 that ever conspired to compass its ruin, needs 
 something besides a despised, subservient 
 
n 
 
 priesthood and a formal religion. There are 
 in Russia forty thousand churches with 
 seventy thousand priests, but they are para- 
 lyzed by the Czar's rule. And the Russian 
 people greatly need a strong moral influence. 
 Of the ignorance of the peasantry one may 
 judge by the fact that hardly ten per cent, 
 of them can read or write. In view also of 
 modern infidelity, that is spreading among 
 the higher classes, it may be understood how 
 unfortunate it is for Russia that the moral 
 influence of the church is undermined." 
 
 Such being the facts, it is at least doubtful 
 whether the energetic opponents of the pre- 
 sent state of affairs are rightly described as 
 " the most determined and deadly enemies 
 that ever conspired to compass the ruin of 
 the nation," and I think that one effect of a 
 visit to Russia, and a view of its religion, will 
 be to awaken in the traveler a more or less 
 ardent sympathy with the aims and struggles 
 of the noble and heroic band who are stig- 
 matized as Nihilists, and upon whose success, 
 in my humble opinion, the future welfare of 
 
78 
 
 Russia depends. This is said without symr 
 pathy for criminal excesses, which are as 
 useless as they are wicked. But it is only 
 fair to remember, and an observing traveler 
 in Russia cannot but notice the fact, that 
 against the perfect organization of despotism 
 in that unhappy country, no war ofrevolution 
 and freedom can be successfully waged with- 
 out the elements of secrecy and terror. This 
 cannot be gainsaid without denying the 
 " Divine right of rebellion," and thus closing 
 the door against liberty, truth and genuine 
 Christian development in Russia forever. 
 In the suggestion of remedies for the present 
 demoralized and untenable condition of 
 Russia, the words of Goethe, " All which 
 merely frees our spirit without giving 
 us the command over ourselves is dele- 
 terious" — cannot be too carefully borne 
 in mind. The Russian people are fit to- 
 day neither for self-government nor for 
 a divorce of the church from the state. 
 But if they are ever to become fit for either 
 of these consummations, a determined and 
 
79 
 
 radical break with all tradition and history- 
 seems, at least to an outsider, the very first 
 prerequisite in a country where healthy de- 
 velopment is simply impossible, and it may 
 be confidently asserted that in such a 
 cataclysm the Oriental Orthodox Church will 
 not only not suffer, but will have the op- 
 portunity of adding to all its patriotic laurels 
 the great distinction of saving the moral life 
 of the nation. Degraded and deteriorated 
 as the church is to-day, its history never- 
 theless gives reason to hope that in such a 
 supreme trial it will not be found wanting. 
 
 My observation of the Oriental Church 
 came to an end when, not long after, I took 
 a train on a lovely morning from St. Peters- 
 burg bound for Finland. I left a country 
 whose leading characteristics, in spite of 
 better aspirations, are still more or less 
 barbarous, dissipation, filth and superstition. 
 Within two hours I found myself in a country 
 whose leading characteristics are the very 
 opposite. Before nightfall I had arrived in 
 the city of Helsingfors, perhaps the cleanest, 
 
8o 
 
 neatest, most sober and most orderly of 
 cities of its size in the world. As I walked 
 its broad, well built streets, saw the noble 
 university, with its five hundred and fifty 
 students, the magnificent library of one 
 hundred thousand volumes, the beautiful 
 Nicolai Church in the public square built in 
 a severe classic style of architecture, and 
 nobly elevated above the city by a grand 
 plaza fifty feet above the surrounding 
 public square, — on comparing this with what 
 I had seen during the past months, the con- 
 trast seemed obvious. The people among 
 whom I was were not distinguished in the 
 annals of European history. They were 
 modest as far as influence outside was con- 
 cerned, but among themselves they seemed 
 the ideal people of honesty, thrift and 
 thorough self-education. It was with great 
 pride in the religious faith of my fathers, and 
 the religious faith too, of this society, that I 
 remembered that I was in a country and 
 among a people LUTHERAN to the core. 
 Every one who values the Lutheran name 
 
8i 
 
 and is proud of the history of his church 
 should be thankful that its foremost repre- 
 sentative peoples of Europe are so situated, 
 that the contrast with their neighbors is 
 calculated to set off to the best possible ad- 
 vantage the superiority of the Lutheran faith 
 in its effects upon its own believers. Per- 
 haps nowhere in the world is this contrast 
 more observable than in the difference be- 
 tween Russia and Finland. 
 
 "Sancta Sophia and Troitza" was my 
 theme, and my object has been attained if 
 these names convey to my hearers more intel- 
 ligent and real impressions than was the case 
 an hour ago. It is not without an effort that 
 an American Protestant can think of the 
 millions of members of the great church which 
 has been so hastily sketched, as Fellow-Chris- 
 tians, but this very effort is one of the highest 
 and greatest achievements of true Christi- 
 anity. Travel is truly the most melancholy 
 and useless of occupations if it has not 
 such a liberalizing effect. Its true motto 
 
82 
 
 must always be " Prove all things — ^hold 
 fast to that which is good," and in the con- 
 templation of the great systems of christian 
 worship, — their glorious past, their present 
 and their future hopes — he is indeed to be 
 pitied who cannot at the end join in the 
 beautiful Hnes of Elliot with which I may 
 fitly close : 
 
 We hate not the reUgion of bare walls, 
 
 We scorn not the Cathedral's pomp of prayer. 
 
 For sweet are all our Father's festivals. 
 If contrite hearts the Heavenly banquet share 
 
 In field or temple - God is everywhere. 
 

 
 .^^ «J<t* "^ V 
 
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