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RUSSIA mund, King of Poland, and Maximilian II, Emperor of Germany, prevented the legates of the pope from crossing the Russian frontiers, or rendered their missions fruitless. In 1580 Ivan the Terrible, menaced by the victorious arms of Bdthori, King of Poland (1576-86), and of the Swedes, sent to Gregory XIII an embassy at the head of which was Leontius Tchevrigin. The Holy See, although placing little faith in the promises of the tsar, sent to Moscow one of the most eminent men of his day, the Jesuit Antonio Possevino, who, on February 22, 1582, had a theological disputation with the tsar. Possevino was well received at the Court of Moscow, but his apostolic efforts were without result. He returned on March 15, 1582, in company with Jacob Molvianinoff, legate of the tsar, and bearer of a letter to Gregory XIII. In that letter Ivan the Terrible did not refer to the union. Possevino had relations also with the successor of Ivan, Feodor Ivanovitch, and with Constantine II, Prince of Ostrog, the great champion of Orthodoxy in the sixteenth century; always, however, with unfavorable results. The advent of the False Demetrius and his marriage with the heiress of the Waywodes of Sandomir gave hopes that Russia would see a Catholic dynasty on its throne. Demetrius, indeed, had been converted to Catholicism in 1604, and had entered into relations with the Holy See, which, through its nuncios in Poland, proceeded to confirm him in the Catholic faith, and to maintain his devotion to the Roman Church. Demetrius gave to the Holy See the happiest hopes for the conversion of Russia; but through a conspiracy on May 27, 1606 he lost the crown and his life. Fanatical Russian writers charge the popes with responsibility for the turbulence that followed the advent to the throne of the False Demetrius; but the letters of the Roman pontiffs refute that calumny decisively.

In 1675 the Tsar Alexis (1645-76) sent, as ambassador to Clement X, General Paul Menesius, a Catholic. The object of this embassy was to promote an alliance of the Christian princes against the Turks. The Russian legate was received with great distinction. No happy results, however, attended his mission from a religious point of view. During the reign of Alexis, strenuous efforts were made to draw Russia towards Catholicism by a famous Croatian missionary, George Krizhanitch, a student of the Propaganda, on whose life and works Professor Bielokuroff recently wrote several valuable volumes rich in documents. Krizhanitch is regarded as one of the pioneers of Panslavism; but his efforts to bring Russia to the Catholic Church cost him, in 1661, an exile to Siberia, whence he was unable to return to Moscow until 1676, after the death of Alexis.

In 1684 the Jesuit Father Schmidt established himself at Moscow as chaplain to the embassy from Vienna. In 1685 another Jesuit, Father Albert Debois, was the bearer of a letter from Innocent XI to the tsar; and in 1687 Father Giovanni Vota, also of the Society of Jesus, advocated at Moscow the need of Russia to unite herself to the Church of Rome. The Emperor of Germany, Leopold I (1657-1705), obtained permission for the Jesuits to open a school at Moscow, where they established a house. Their work would have been very favorable for the Church, for under the influence of Catholic theology a band of learned Orthodox theologians, led by the higumeno Sylvester Medvedeff, supported certain Latin doctrines, especially the Epiklesis. Unfortunately however two fanatical Greek monks, Joannikius and Sophronius Likhudes, excited the fanaticism of the Russians against the Latins at Moscow, and when Peter the Great freed himself of the tutelage of his sister Sophia in 1689, the Jesuits were expelled from Moscow. The schismatic Patriarch Joachim, a man actuated by hatred for foreigners, and in particular for Catholics, had much to do with that expulsion.

The reforms of Peter the Great did not better the condition of Catholicism in Russia. In the first years of his reign he showed deference to the Catholic Church; he granted permission to the Catholics in 1691 to build a church at Moscow, and to summon Jesuits for its service; in 1707 he sent an embassy to Clement XI, to induce that pontiff not to recognize Stanislaus Leszczynski as King of Poland, to which dignity the latter had been elected by the Diet of Warsaw on July 12, 1704; he promised the pope to promulgate a constitution that would establish, in favor of Catholicism, the freedom of worship that had been promised, but never maintained. During his sojourn at Paris in 1717 he received from various doctors of the Sorbonne a scheme for the union, to which he caused Theophanus Prokopovitch and Stepan Gavorski to reply in 1718. In order to captivate the Russians, the doctors of the Sorbonne had worked Gallican ideas into that scheme, regarding the primacy of the pope and his authority.

Peter the Great, however, was inimical to Catholicism. His religious views were influenced by Prokopovitch, a man of great learning, but a. courtier by nature, and a bitter enemy of the Roman Church. Peter the Great revealed his anti-Catholic hatred when, at Polotsk in 1705, he killed with his own hand the Basilian Theophanus Kolbieczynski, as also by many other measures; he caused the most offensive calumnies against Catholicism to be disseminated in Russia; he expelled the Jesuits in 1719; he issued ukases to draw Catholics to Orthodoxy, and to prevent the children of mixed marriages from being Catholics; and finally, he celebrated in 1722 and in 1725 monstrous orgies as parodies of the conclave, casting ridicule on the pope and the Roman court.

From the time of Peter the Great to Alexander I, the history of Catholicism in Russia is a continuous struggle against Russian legislation: laws that embarrassed the action of Catholicism in Russia, that favored the apostasy of Catholics, and reduced the Catholic clergy to impotence were multiplied each year, and constituted a Neronian code. In 1727, to put a stop to Catholic propaganda in the Government of Smolensk, Catholic priests were prohibited from entering that province, or, having entered it, were prohibited from occupying themselves with religious matters; the nobility was forbidden to leave the Orthodox communion, to have Catholic teachers, to go to foreign countries, or to marry Catholic women. In 1735 the Empress Anna Ivanovna prohibited Catholic propaganda among Orthodox Russians under the severest penalties. Illustrious converts, like Alexei Ladygenski and Mikhail Galitzin, were treated with the most inhuman barbarity on account of their conversion. In 1747 the government expelled from Astrakhan the Capuchins who were making many conversions to Catholicism among the Armenians.

Under Catharine II (1762-96) the condition of Catholics became worse than before, notwithstanding the ukases of religious tolerance that the empress promulgated. The ukase of July 22, 1763 authorized the Catholics to build chapels and churches of stone. Another ukase of February 23, 1769 promulgated the ecclesiastical constitution of the Catholics. This constitution established two parishes, at St. Petersburg and Moscow, and placed them in charge of the Reformed Franciscans and the Capuchins. It provided that the number of parishes should not be greater than nine; and it strictly prohibited Catholic priests, residing in Russia, from proselytizing among Orthodox Russians.

The first dismemberment of Poland (1772) brought a strong body of Catholics to Russia, and Catharine II proposed to make of them a national Church independent of Rome. Unfortunately an ambitious Polish bishop, Stanislaus Siestrzencewicz, entered into her views, and a ukase of May 23, 1774 established the Diocese of White Russia, with its episcopal see at