§ 206.1. The Orthodox National Church.—The evangelical influences introduced from the West during the previous century, especially among the higher clergy, found further encouragement under Alexander I., A.D. 1801-1825. Himself affected by the evangelical pietism of Madame Krüdener (§ 176, 2), he aimed at the elevation of the orthodox church in this direction, founded clerical seminaries and public schools, and took a lively interest in Bible circulation among the Russian people. But under Nicholas I., A.D. 1825-1855, a reaction proceeding from the holy synod set in which unweariedly sought to seal the orthodox church hermetically against all evangelical influences. Also during the reign of Alexander II., A.D. 1855-1881, a reign singularly fruitful in civil reforms, this tendency was even more rigidly illustrated, while with the consent and aid of the holy synod every effort was put forth to improve the church according to its own principles. Specially active in this work was Count Tolstoi, minister of instruction and also procurator of the holy synod. A committee presided over by him produced a whole series of useful reforms in 1868, which were approved by the synod and confirmed by the emperor. While the inferior clergy had hitherto formed an order by themselves, all higher ranks of preferment were now opened to them, but, on the other hand, the obligation of priests’ sons to remain in the order of their fathers was abolished. The clamant abuse of putting mere clerks and sextons to do the work of priests was also now put a stop to, and training in clerical seminaries or academies was made compulsory. Previously only married men could hold the offices of deacon and priest; now widowers and bachelors were admitted, so soon as they reached the age of forty years. In order to increase the poor incomes many churches had not their regular equipment of clergy, and instead of the full set of priest, deacon, sub-deacon, reader, sexton, and doorkeeper, in the poorer churches there were only priest and reader. Order was restored to monastic life, now generally grown dissolute, by a fixed rule of a common table and uniform dress, etc. In 1860 an Orthodox Church Society for Missions among the peoples of the Caucasus, and in 1866 a second for Pagans and Mohammedans throughout the empire, were founded, both under the patronage of the empress. The Russian church also cleverly took advantage of political events to carry on missionary work in Japan (§ 184, 6). A society of the “Friends of Intellectual Enlightenment,” founded in St. Petersburg in 1872, aimed chiefly at the religious improvement of the cultured classes in the spirit of the orthodox church by means of tracts and addresses, while agreeing with foreign confessions as to the nature and characteristics of the true church. Under Alexander III., since A.D. 1881, the emperor’s former tutor Pobedownoszew, with the conviction of the incomparable superiority of his church, and believing that by it and only by it could the dangerous commotions of the present be overcome (§ 212, 6) and Russia regenerated, as procurator of the holy synod has zealously wrought in this direction.—But meanwhile a new impulse was given to the evangelical movement in aristocratic circles by Lord Radstock, who appeared in St. Petersburg in 1870. The addresses delivered by him in French in the salons of the fashionable world won a success scarcely to be looked for. The most famous gain was the conversion of a hitherto proud, worldly, rich and popular Colonel of the Guards, called Paschcow, who now turned the beautiful ball-room of his palatial residence into a prayer-meeting room, and with all the enthusiasm of a neophyte proclaimed successfully among high and low the newly won saving truth in a Biblical evangelical spirit, though not without a methodistic flavour. The excitement thus created led to police interference, and finally, when he refused to abstain from spreading his religious views among the members of the orthodox church by the circulation of evangelical tracts in the Russian language, he was, at the instigation of the holy synod and its all powerful procurator, banished first from St. Petersburg and then in 1884 from the empire, whereupon he withdrew to London.

§ 206.2. The Catholic Church.—After the Greeks in the old West Russian provinces (§ 151, 3), who had been forcibly united to Rome in 1596, had again in 1772, in consequence of the first partition of Poland, come under Russian rule, the government sought to restore them also to the orthodox national church. This was first accomplished under Nicholas I., when at the synod of Polosk in 1839 they themselves spontaneously expressed a wish to be thus reunited with the mother church. Rome thus lost two million members. But the allocution directed against this robbery by Gregory XVI. was without effect, and the public opinion of Europe saw a case of historical justice in this reunion, though effected not without severe measures against those who proved obstinate and rebellious. Yet there always remained a considerable remnant, about one-third of a million, under the bishop of Chelun, in the Romish communion. But even these in 1875, after many disturbances with the prelate Popiel at their head, almost wholly severed their connection with the pope, and were again received into the bosom of the orthodox national church. In a memorial addressed to the emperor for this purpose, they declared they were led to this on the one hand by the continual endeavour of the curia and its partisans, by Latinizing their old Greek liturgy and Polandizing the people, to overthrow their old Russian nationality, and on the other hand, by their aversion to the new papal dogmas of the immaculate conception of Mary and the infallibility of the pope.—The insurrection of the Poles against Russian rule in 1830, which even Pope Gregory XVI. condemned, bore bitter fruits for the Catholic church of that country. The organic statute of 1832 indeed secured anew to the Poles religious liberty, but the bishops were prohibited holding any direct communication with Rome, the clergy deprived of all control over the schools, and the Russian law regarding mixed marriages made applicable to that province. By an understanding with the curia in 1847 the choice of the bishops was given to the emperor, their canonical investiture to the pope. The mildness with which Alexander II. treated the Poles and the political troubles in the rest of Europe fostered the hope of restoring the old kingdom of Poland. Reckless demonstrations were made in the beginning of 1861, pilgrimages to the graves of the martyrs of freedom were organized, political memorial festivals were celebrated in churches, a general national mourning was enjoined, mourning services were held, revolutionary songs were sung in churches, etc. The Catholic clergy headed the movement and canonized it as a religious duty. In vain the government sought to put it down by making liberal concessions, in vain they applied to Pius IX. to discountenance it. When in October the country lay in a state of siege, and the military forced their way into the churches to apprehend the ringleaders of rebellion, the episcopal administrator, Bialobezeski, denounced that as church profanation, had all the Catholic churches in Warsaw closed, and answered the government’s request to reopen them by making extravagant demands and uttering proud words of defiance. The military tribunal sentenced him to death, but the emperor commuted this to one year’s detention in a fortress, with loss of all his dignities and orders. Meanwhile the eyes of the pope had at length been opened. He now confirmed the government’s appointment of Archbishop Felinsky, who entered Warsaw in February, 1862, and reopened the churches. After the suppression of the revolt in 1864, almost all cloisters, as nurseries of revolution, were abolished; in the following year the whole property of the church was taken in charge by the State, and the clergy supported by state pay. The pope, enraged at this, gave violent expression to his feelings to the Russian ambassador at Rome during the New Year festivities of 1866, whereupon the government completely broke off all relations with the curia. Consequently in 1867 all the affairs of the Catholic church were committed to the clerical college at St. Petersburg, and intercourse between the clergy and the pope prohibited. Hence arose many conflicts with Catholic bishops, whose obstinacy was punished by their being interned in their dioceses. In 1869 the Russian calendar was introduced, and Russian made the compulsory language of instruction. But in 1870 greater opposition was offered to the introduction of Russian in the public services by means of translations of the common Polish prayer and psalm-books. Pietrowitsch, dean of Wilna, read from the pulpit the ukase referring to this matter, but then cast it together with the Russian translations into the flames, with violent denunciations of the government, and gave information against himself to the governor-general. He was agreeably to his own desire imprisoned, and then transported to Archangel. The same sentence was pronounced against several other obstinate prelates and clergy, among them Archbishop Felinsky, and thus further opposition was stamped out.—Leo XIII. soon after entering on his pontificate in 1878 took the first step toward reconciliation. His efforts reached a successful issue first in February, 1883. The deposed prelates were restored from their places of banishment, with promise of a liberal pension, and were allowed to choose their residences as they pleased, only not within their former dioceses. In their stead the pope consecrated ten new bishops nominated by the emperor, who amid the jubilation of the people entered their episcopal residences. With reference to the Roman Catholic seminaries and clerical academies at Warsaw, the curia granted to the government the right of control over instruction in the Russian language, literature and history, but committed instruction in canonical matters solely to the bishops, who, after obtaining the approval of the government, appointed the rector and inspector and canonical teachers. Vacant pastorates were filled by the bishops, and only in the case of the more important was the approval of the government required. As to the language to be used, it was resolved that only where the people speak Russian were the clergy obliged to employ that language in preaching and in their pastoral work.

§ 206.3. The Evangelical Church.—The Lutheran church in Russia, comprising two and a half millions of Germans, Letts, Esthonians and Finns, is strongest in Livonia, Esthonia and Courland, is the national church in Finland, and is also largely represented in Poland, in the chief cities of Russia, and in the numerous German colonies in South Russia. In 1832 it obtained, for the Baltic provinces and the scattered congregations in central Russia, a church constitution and service book, the latter on the basis of the old Swedish service book, the former requiring all religious teachers in church and school to accept the Formula of Concord. Annual provincial synods have the initiative in calling in, when necessary for legislative purposes, the aid of the general synod.—In Poland the Reformed and Lutheran churches were in 1828 united under one combined consistory. By an imperial ukase of 1849, however, the independent existence of both churches was restored. Protestants enjoyed all civil rights and had absolute liberty in the exercise of their religion; but in central Russia down to recent times, when a more liberal spirit began to prevail, they were prohibited putting bells in their churches. The old prohibition of evangelical preaching and the teaching of religion in the Russian tongue also continued; but the attempt made for some decades in St. Petersburg and the surrounding district to preach the gospel to Germans who had lost their mother tongue, in the Russian language, has been hitherto ungrudgingly allowed by the government. Quitting the national church or returning from it to a church that had been left before, is visited by severe penalties, and children of mixed marriages, where one parent belongs to the national orthodox church, are claimed by law for that church. Only Finland counts among her privileges the right of assigning children of mixed marriages to the church of the father. The Lutheran church in Livonia, with the island of Oesel, suffered considerable, and according to the law of the land irreparable, loss by the secession of sixty or seventy thousand Letts and Esthonians to the orthodox church under the widespread delusion that thereby their economic position would be improved. Disillusions and regret came too late, and the ever increasing desire for restoration to the church forsaken in a moment of excitement could only obtain arbitrary and insufficient satisfaction in Lutheran baptism of infants seemingly near death, and in permission at irregular intervals and without previous announcement to sit at the Lord’s Table according to the Lutheran rite. In 1865, not indeed legislatively but administratively, the contracting of mixed marriages in the Baltic provinces was permitted without the enforcement of the legal enactment requiring that the children should be trained in the Greek church. In Esthonia, however, in 1883 there was a new outbreak of conversions in Leal, where five hundred peasants went over to the orthodox church, declaring their wish to be of the same faith as the emperor and the whole of the Russian people. By imperial decree in 1885 the suspension of the law against withdrawing again from the national church, which had existed for twenty years, was abolished. At the instigation of Pobedownoszew the Imperial Council granted an annual subsidy of 100,000 roubles for furthering orthodoxy in the Baltic provinces. No evangelical church could be built in these provinces without the approval of the orthodox bishop of the diocese, and any evangelical pastor who should dissuade a member of his church from his purpose of joining the orthodox church, was liable to punishment.—In order to supply the want of churches and schools, preachers and teachers in the Lutheran congregations of Russia, a society was formed in 1858 similar to the Gustav-Adolfs-Verein, under the supervision of the General Consistory of St. Petersburg, which has laboriously and zealously endeavoured to improve the condition of the oppressed church.563