Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/92

 68 of the sacred traditions, form became the tabernacle, the holy ark which sheltered the true faith. Outside it, nothing save rationalism, Latin, Catholic or Protestant—all sources of heresy and impiety. Argument, reasoning, were forbidden, and by this elimination of the essential leaven of all progress Moscow placed itself on a lower intellectual basis than that of Byzantium, where the right of dogmatic controversy was always preserved. Here, from the twelfth century onwards, the only problems discussed are such as these: 'Can a priest who has not slept since he has eaten food celebrate the holy sacrifice? Can he do so if he finds a woman's handkerchief sewed to his garment? …' The very sermons, such as are preached, only deal with ritual questions: 'Must the celebrant move with or against the sun? Should the sign of the cross be made with two or three fingers?' The first Concile called by Ivan IV. considered this question, and pronounced sentence of excommunication on those who crossed themselves with two fingers.

The identification of faith with rite reduced piety to the accomplishment of certain external practices, the keeping of fasts, long prayers in church. Confession, which implied an act of internal religion, was relegated to the second rank. The most devout did not present themselves at the tribunal of repentance oftener than once a year; the most scrupulous did not make it a case of conscience to keep back none of their sins. Ceremonial took the place of everything else. It grew more and more extensive, and was attended by a more and more theatrical display. On Palm Sunday the Metropolitan, riding upon an ass, went in procession to all the churches, bestowing his blessing on the crowd that cast its garments under the hoofs of his symbolic steed; and on the feast in memory of the three Hebrews cast into the fiery furnace, the place of the pulpit was filled by a huge stove, into which three white-robed youths were thrust with many a complicated rite. The performance stopped short here, and they were not actually burned.

Religious feeling continued very intense; it wandered into muddy paths, and floundered into sloughs. While the Domostroï enjoined the repetition, six hundred times every day, of a certain prayer, the effect of which, after a perseverance of three years in the process, was to be a triple incarnation of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost in the person of the individual using it, the question whether it was not a sin to cross the threshold of the house inhabited by a woman lately brought to bed, or whether the milk of a cow that had just calved was unclean or not, was much debated. While sensualism thus lay in wait for pious souls and overtook