Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/98

 74 Besides the Stépiénnaïa-Kniga, which I have already mentioned, and a great number of epistles and instructions, the authorship of the Kormtchaïa Kniga (kormtchyi, pilot)—a collection of Russian canons, of all canonical or reputedly canonical works, a book of monastic regulations, another compilation, in fact, is attributed to him. But the writer was an orator too. He unsealed the lips of the Church, which had been silent so long, and two or three of the sermons which have come down to us—well composed, and written with a simplicity at war with every literary precedent of that time, so much so as to lead one to think they must have been extemporary—usher in the coming of a new literary world. His third sermon, preached in the presence of Ivan the Terrible after the taking of Kazan, is the most laborious and least successful of them all—a regrettable return to the worst practices of the past. His general lack of culture forbade any attempt at art, properly so-called, on the part of this really gifted man, and on this occasion, when, in his desire to be worthy of the great historical event he was to celebrate, he aimed too high, he missed sublimity, and his fall was heavy and clumsy.

The Domostroï has been likened to many other and apparently similar works in Italian, French, and even Hindu. I am inclined to assert that it escapes all comparison. It is unique. In the first place, the book possesses this peculiarity that—it does not correspond with any precise epoch or settled sphere. It is, as I have already indicated, a work of compilation and a work of retrospection, and this is what makes it so widely representative. Its groundwork was probably borrowed by Pope Sylvester from yet older works, composed at Novgorod, the habits of which place the book pretty faithfully reflects. The domestic life it reproduces is just that of the local aristocracy, a little world of boïars, half-landowners, half-merchants. To this secular portion of the work is added an appendix devoted to religion and morals, and there, amongst other borrowings from ecclesiastical literature, and from a didactic literature held in high honour in the monasteries—which comprised, notably, a set of Lenten bills of fare—the Moscow spirit inspires and rules the whole the contents. The last chapter only—an instruction addressed by the Pope of the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin to his son Anselm—is believed, and rightly, to have been Sylvester's personal work. And even in it, the author only sums up the teachings contained in the preceding chapters. These teachings deal with a good Christian's duties to God and to his neighbour, his Sovereign and his servants. Some, such as that of holding the breath when kissing the sacred pictures, are