Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/131

 Rh hell, the one event crowned with an aureole of sincere and august morality was death. In that hour the religious law, which claimed more than any life could render, obtained full and utter satisfaction. To die surrounded by one's family, and in full possession of one's faculties, was accounted a heavenly benediction. So great was the power of faith that the moment did not terrify. It was prepared for long before it came, the last will duly made, and as many good actions as possible introduced into it—alms, the freeing of slaves, the remission of debts, or merely their discharge. The keeping of engagements was accounted a merit, and the whole process was graced with an expressive name, 'to build one's soul' (stroït douchou). It often happened that the dying man desired to put on a monkish habit, and in the Tsar's case this was generally done. If a man who had put on the skhima recovered his health he was obliged to enter a monastery. But even on the brink of eternity, and in spite of the part played by Christian beliefs, pagan traditions still claimed their rights, and the scenic effect produced was instinct with materialism of the grossest sort. There was a funeral banquet, as a prelude to which a preparation of flour or of kacha—perhaps the koutia already known to us—was laid on a window-sill, and there were lamentations in which the profane or profaning spirit ruled: 'Oh, my darling,' the widow would begin, 'why hast thou forsaken me? … Was I not pleasant to thee? … Did I not know how to dress and adorn myself to please thy taste? …' And the rest would cry: 'Why didst thou die? … Hadst thou not thy fill of meat and drink? … Was not thy wife fair? …'

The family was not so much a moral entity as an association of interests. And it was capable of extension in the form of certain communistic groups, of which the principle, on an equally low level of culture, may be found in Iceland, in Servia, and even in America—elementary communities of from ten to fifty persons, living under the same roof, eating at the same table, and recognising the authority of a leader, instead of any bond of relationship. The Servian zadrouga is the most perfect type of this description. These communities, which were mentioned by Nestor and in the Pravda (code) of Jaroslav, continued to exist in Russia down to the seventeenth century, both in the north-west provinces, towards Pskov, and those in the south-west lying near Lithuania. This method of association, while, as its apologists have pointed out, it suppressed the bitterness of economic rivalries, contributed yet more to the paralysis of the spirit of individual enterprise, and certainly did not render family or sexual relations purer or tenderer.