Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/57

 Rh to reach these communities, infected, like the Western communities of the same period, by the general corruption of morals. But here, where it did not find elements strong enough to support it and insure its victory, the reforming effort missed its aim, and the authority of the Church was irremediably damaged.

At the same time, and as the result of yet another cause, her social power was reduced and partly forfeited. Up to the period of the Tartar invasion, the subdivision of the country into petty principalities, and the maintenance of the Church under the ultimate authority of Constantinople, had guaranteed an independent position to her chiefs. But at this moment they thought it wise to place themselves under the protection of another power, and the Metropolitan Cyril established his seat at the very Court of the Khans. This attitude was rewarded by a charter graciously bestowed by Mengou-Timour, and numerous iarliks, freely distributed by his successors. But the obtaining of such favours involved a complete abdication of the old independence, and by the time Moscow took over the inheritance of the Asiatic despots the habit was formed. Ukases, following on the iarliks, claimed the same obedience.

Further, the Church, having co-operated, as I have shown, in the constitution of the national unity, did not hesitate to join in the work of destroying the appanages. The division of the country, as a fact, interfered with the exercise of her power. But the political enterprise thus pursued in common inevitably resulted in a confusion of the two allied elements, and then to the subjection of the weaker to the stronger. The omnipotence acquired by Moscow perpetuated this result, and the rupture with Constantinople deprived the gradually subjugated Church of that national character and external support which made the fortune of Catholicism, and continued its best defence against the enterprises of civil despotism. When, after the close of the sixteenth century, the collation of ecclesiastical dignitaries and of church benefices in Russia became matters entirely at the Sovereign's discretion, this state of things was not the outcome of any kind of concordat. It was the natural evolution of the country's institutions, which had wedded, and inseparably mingled, the two orders of interest and power.

Even in the fifteenth century the Sovereign, as the chief protector of orthodoxy, summoned the Conciles, and in these assemblies affairs of State were discussed, as well as questions touching faith or religious rites. On the other hand, the high ecclesiastical dignitaries were frequently called to sit on the Sovereign's Lay Council, the Douma, and shared all its deliberations. Between such a position and that of being enrolled with everybody else in the great army of the sloojilyié, under the