Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/408

382 Certain fascinating and exciting forms of religion are always found to flourish under such circumstances. The Jewish oppression under Antiochus Epiphanes, and again under the Romans, gave rise to apocalypses which painted the future in glowing colours for the people of God, but threatened doom for their oppressors. Similarly, during the Mongol oppression new prophecies were published and eagerly devoured; people saw strange visions; icons were unusually active in working miracles. At this time too a great impulse was given to monasticism. No doubt there was much poverty, for trade must have been terribly disorganised, and other miseries besides hunger drove multitudes into the monasteries. Many sought the calm seclusion of the monastic life simply because it was more congenial to their devotional temperament. But monasteries which were planted in remote and secluded places for the sake of the retirement sought by their inmates became centres of missionary activity. Thus Russia repeated the experience of Germany in an earlier age.

The consequence was that this very time, when the normal development of the Russians in civilisation and secular progress was checked and thrown back, Christianity was being spread farther afield in outlying regions of northern and eastern Europe by Russian monks. In the East the far-off place called Great Perm, near the Ural Mountains, formerly only visited by fur-hunters, was now both Christianised and won to Russia by the labours of a single monk, bearing the common monastic name Stephen. All alone he penetrated the forests, and, though opposed by the pagan priests, succeeded in winning a body of converts, for whom he built a rude church on the bank of the river Viuma. The metropolitan consecrated him bishop of Perm, where he laboured for many years; he retired to Moscow in his old age. Eudocia, or Eupraxia according to her name in the convent, founded the convent of the Ascension in the Kremlin; St. Euphemius established the celebrated monastery of the Saviour at Souzdal; St. Cyril founded the monastery of Bielo-ozero, one of the most