Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/39

24 What Jerusalem and the Temple were to the Jews, Kiev and the Petcherski are to the Russians. The vast and mysterious catacombs are peopled by the bodies of thousands of holy men, who still rest in the caverns where they lived; miracles are worked by their remains, and keep alive the ardent devotion of innumerable worshippers at their shrines.

When Christianity was introduced in Russia the schism dividing the East and the West, although threatening, was not declared, and the Russian establishment was a branch of the Church universal, still, in theory, one and indivisible. The final separation, consummated in 1054, aroused but little, if any, attention in Russia. The Church there, deriving its origin, its creed, and its ritual from Constantinople, followed as of course the fortunes of its parent stem. It ignored the doctrines of Rome, and, while it watched with jealousy any unnecessary interference on the part of the patriarch, whom it acknowledged, it resented from the first all pretensions of the popes to jurisdiction over it. Its flourishing condition had already attracted notice, and Rome was in haste to commence the long series of her attempts to bring it under her authority.

Yaroslav's reign was followed by long and bloody civil wars. Isiaslav, his son, driven from power, found refuge in Germany and obtained promises of support from Pope Gregory VII. upon condition of submitting his kingdom and the Church to the Roman see. In the bewildering maze of revolution and counter-revolution Isiaslav regained his throne without foreign aid, and Gregory's schemes came to naught.

The short reign of Vladimir II., Monomachus, a wise and pious prince, was the only respite in a century and a half of anarchy. During this dreary period of civil