Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/64

38 patriarch and therefore to the emperor of Constantinople, as supreme head of the Orthodox church. The centralisation of Russian territory began ecclesiastically. In individual princedoms the princes had gained control over the church. In Novgorod the folkmote elected the archbishop.

A perspicacious prince, one with far-reaching political ideals, seizes every opportunity of extending his power, of promoting centralisation, by availing himself of any extraneous help that may offer. The grand princes were not slow to turn the church to political account in this manner.

If we are to think, not merely of ecclesiastical development in Russia, but of the actual Christianisation of the country, it must be pointed out at once that the latter process was by no means intensive, if only for the reason that the church was a Greek church, that its chiefs were foreigners. Slav polytheism continued to live side by side with and beneath official Christianity, which about the year 988 was by St. Vladimir made the religion of the state. Russia long remained, and perhaps is still today, the country and the nation of the "twin-faith" (dvoevěrie).

The Christianisation of Russia was effected a hundred years later than that of the southern Slavs, and much later than the Christianisation of the west.

It was impossible that the Russians should have a spiritual conception of Christianity, for they lacked the requisite culture. In Byzantium and in Rome it was a cultured and philosophically trained people that was converted to Christianity, and the western nations that were Christianised at a later date had shared in Roman culture But the Russians were entirely unprepared, and what could the learned divinity of Byzantium signify to them, what could they be expected to make of its theological philosophy of religion? The Russians, therefore, absorbed from Byzantium chiefly the ritual and the discipline of the church. The morality of these Christians was mainly limited to externals, and was diffused and strengthened by outward constraint. The punishments which, with its independent judicature, the church was able to inflict were more influential than the "word." Most potent of all was the working of monkish morality, of asceticism, and of monastic life. The monk was the living example, the example which as time passed proved most efficacious. The Byzantines did not import any excess of humaneness with the gospel of love.