The Icon and the Axe

Less familiar than the growing worldliness of the monasteries in the sixteenth century is the increasing monasticism of the outside world. The "white," or married, parish priests were often more zealous than the "black," or celibate, monastic clergy in the performance of religious duties. Simple laymen were often the most conscientious of all in keeping the four long and rigorous fasts (for Advent, Easter, the apostles Peter and Paul, and the Assumption); observing weekly days of abstinence not only on Friday, the day of the Crucifixion, but also on Wednesday, the day on which Judas agreed to betray Christ; keeping vigil before the twelve universal feast days of Orthodoxy; and observing private devotions and local feasts. The simple Christian often came from considerable distances to go to a church which offered him neither heat nor a seat. Each visit was something of a pilgrimage, with the worshipper often spending as much time kneeling or prostrate upon the cold floor as standing. Religious processions were frequent and lengthy-the daily services of matins and vespers often lasting a total of seven or eight hours.50

Behind the elaborate rituals of Russian Orthodoxy there often lay a deeper popular spirituality that was only slightly touched by the new tsarist ideology of the Josephites. Ordinary believers were dazzled by imperial claims and excited by its prophetic pronouncements. But they had no real interest in polemics which were conducted in a language that they could not understand and written in a script that they could not read.

Thus, along with the militant prophetic ideology of Muscovy went the cult of humility and self-abnegation: the attempt to be "very like" the Lord in the outpouring of love and the acceptance of suffering in the kenotic manner of Russia's first national saints: Boris and Gleb.51 The persecuted followers of Nil Sorsky "beyond the Volga" were closer to this tradition than the victorious Josephites and enjoyed greater popular veneration to-

gether with all those willing to suffer voluntarily in the manner of Christ: as a propitiation for the sins of others and a means of purifying God's sinful people.

The contrast between active militarism and passive kenoticism is more apparent than real. Hatred to those outside a group with a sense of destiny is often combined with love to those within it: and both the compulsion and the compassion of early Russian spirituality resulted from the over-all prophetic, historical bias of its theology. Soldiers followed images of the saints into combat, while dedicated figures at home followed the image of Christ into the battle with sin. Each was performing a podvig (glorious deed) in history and earning a small place in the great chronicle which would be read back at the Last Judgment. Podvizhnik, a word which more secular subsequent ages have tended to use pejoratively in the sense of "fanatic," still carries with it the meaning of "champion"-whether in sports, war, or prayer.52 Ephrem the Syrian, the very same fourth-century saint from whom Russian iconographers derived their graphic and terrifying image of the coming apocalypse and judgment, provided the ordinary believer with his most familiar call to repentance and humility in a prayer recited with prostrations at every Lenten service:

? Lord and Master of my life! the spirit of vanity, of idleness, of domination, of idle speech, give me not. But the spirit of chastity, of humility, of patience, of love, do Thou grant to me, thy servant.

Yes, ? Lord and King, grant me that I may perceive my transgressions and not condemn my brother, for Thou art blessed forever and ever, Amen.

Muscovite soldiers were not primarily mercenaries nor were Muscovite saints basically moralists. The Russian ideal of kenotic sainthood does not correspond exactly with the "imitation of Christ" advocated by Thomas a Kempis and the "new devotion" of late medieval Europe. Muscovites spoke of "following" or "serving" rather than "imitating" Christ, and put greater stress on the suffering and martyrdom which such service entailed. They dwelt on Christ's mission rather than his teachings, which were in any case not widely known in the absence of a complete Slavonic New Testament. Man's function was to enlist in that mission: to serve God by beating off his enemies and by following Christ in those features of his earthly life that were fully understood-his personal compassion and willingness to suffer.

In general practice, however, the monastic civilization of Muscovy was dominated more by fanaticism than kenoticism, more by compulsion than

compassion. This emphasis is illustrated vividly by Ivan the Terrible, the first ideologist to rule Muscovy, the first ruler to be formally crowned tsar, and the man who ruled Russia longer than any other figure in its history.