Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/175



Russia, clerical life is not, as in other countries, simply a vocation or a profession, nor do the clergy there, as in France before the revolution of 1789, form one of the great bodies of the State; it is a distinct social class, set apart from the rest of the world; a separate caste, hereditary, and peculiar in its duties and privileges.

It is divided into monks, or the regular monastic clergy, and popes, or the secular parish clergy; the one is popularly termed the black and the other the white clergy. The differences in their garb are hardly sufficient to explain these designations, for, while monks are always attired in black, and wear a long black veil hanging down behind from the cowl, the popes are not restricted to white, and often adopt brown, or other sombre colors; one peculiarity is common to them both—long hair and flowing beards.

The radical distinction between the two is marriage; the monks take vows of celibacy, but the popes must marry before they can have charge of a parish. In the Russian, as generally in Orthodox Churches, the episcopate and all offices of authority are reserved for the unmarried clergy, who are comparatively few in number, while the subordinate and more laborious positions only fall to the lot of the married clergy. From this custom arise diversity of interests, and a mutual spirit of rivalry and antagonism, the more intense in that marriage, abso-