Глава восьмая. Вера, нравственность и религиозность народа

The Church exists for society - in order to educate people in Christian faith and morality and through this promote earthly well-being and provide them with eternal salvation. Consequently, in the history of each individual church or in the history of the church of each nation, the main question is: to what extent has it, the church, achieved its stated goal? Alas! The histories of all individual Christian churches provide an answer to our main question that is far from one that could be considered satisfactory. This sad thing is not, however, anything unexpected. In this case, we are talking about nothing other than that summa summarum of human history, to what extent people, as they are, i.e. in their current state of sinful corruption, want to be real people or to what extent they preserve and manifest the desire for spiritual and moral perfection that God has placed in them. And the sad fundamental truth of human history is that people, who are slaves of sin and passions, exhibit this inclination to an extremely weak degree. The Christian Church, by its origin, is a deliberately divine work, rises above what is created by people themselves, such as states 1615; In addition to the ordinary means to achieve her goal, she also has an extraordinary means - the grace of God. But the grace of God does not forcefully and compulsorily control the will of people; it is given to them only when they themselves seek it and become worthy of it. Consequently, its effectiveness depends on their own will. In general, the real Christianity of all individual Christian churches in history is extremely far from the true Christianity that should exist everywhere 1616. The success of the religious education of society, just like the family-school education of children, depends on two conditions: on the degree to which educators fulfill their duties and on the degree of acceptability of those being educated. But both of them are people. Where and when in the Christian Church did its called educators take care of the religious education of societies so that this education, not to mention the quality, would embrace in volume the entire mass and in the masses all the units of believers? As for the other side - education, then the acceptability of people for religious and moral education, due to their sinful damage, alas! stupid to the very last degree; man has always been and forever remains what he said about himself, in the consciousness of his moral weakness, - the most perfect of people: I am carnal, sold under sin... I do this if I do not want, but if I hate it, I will do it (Rom. 7:14-15). In the ancient Christian church we find short times in which the epithet of “luminous” is adopted; but these times were luminous not at all for the moral height of the masses, but for individuals, and not so much for the moral height as for the mental – brilliant with the flowering of Christian science, which revealed and processed the Christian doctrine of 1617. So, was our Russian Church, in terms of its underlying qualities, lower or higher than other individual churches, that is, at least not the first, but the last. In any case, our main speeches about faith and morality of society could not be some kind of laudatory ode to ourselves. For in the history of the churches of the entire Christian world, this faith and morality (as it could not have been otherwise given the spiritual weakness of people) are the subject not so much of laudatory odes as of mournful elegies. In the area of ​​the church, as in the area of ​​states, humanity does not stand still in one place, but gradually moves forward and improves itself. However, it moves and improves itself so slowly and with slowness so unconditionally that the time will hardly come when, instead of sad elegies, it could become the subject of laudatory odes. By order of the sovereign, the Russians were baptized and became Christians in name and apparently. But it was another matter to become Christians as truly as possible, Christians not only in name, but in faith and morality themselves. To believe, you need to know what to believe in, otherwise, you need to know the teachings of faith or its dogmas. Knowledge presupposes means of knowledge, for, according to the apostle, how can they believe without hearing it (Rom. 10:14)? Therefore, here is the first question: how did we deal with these means of knowledge or learning in faith? The responsibility to teach the laity faith and, at the same time, morality is assigned in the Christian Church to pastors, who are obliged not only to be the first to perform the sacraments and in general church, public and private services, but also to be their teachers in relation to Christianity. According to the true idea of ​​pastors, the duty to teach the laity faith and morals is as much their essential and indispensable duty as the duty to perform the sacraments. But it is known that the discord between ideas or ideals and reality due to the imperfection of people constitutes, so to speak, the fundamental essence of all human history. In general, in the Christian world the duty to teach was and is understood by most pastors in a very limited way. The shepherd is obliged to teach all his flock the truths of faith and the rules of Christian morality. In relation to both, and especially in relation to the first, he can achieve this no other way than if, maintaining a school at home or at a church, he will take a course of Christian teaching with each teenager (generation) of children. For without real, systematic and deliberate teaching, like any concept, it is impossible to acquire knowledge of the truths of faith. Meanwhile, the duty to teach the laity, for the most part, is understood by pastors in only a very narrow and limited sense, in order to tell them teachings or words in church during divine services on holidays, which in fact cannot be real teaching at all, but only some kind of repetition, which, having all its meaning in application to the rules of morality, is very little applicable to the truths of faith. But it also happens that pastors do not fulfill their duties as teachers, either in its broad or narrow meaning. They don’t fulfill it not because they don’t want to, but because they are not capable of fulfilling it. Shepherds are taken from the people. If there is no enlightenment among the people, then there is nowhere to get enlightened pastors capable of fulfilling the duty of teaching. In Rus' in the pre-Mongol period (as well as for a very long time after) there was no enlightenment, and its shepherds were in an insignificant minority - people without education, book-read, in the vast majority of people no higher than just literate (and below not quite and even completely illiterate) - both of them were completely incapable of being teachers of the people and were only performers of sacraments and services for them. Thus, in the pre-Mongol period (as well as for a very long time after), the Russian people had to remain completely without teaching from their shepherds. In the absence of this teaching, obviously, he had to teach himself the Christian faith, and be his own teacher in it. Bookish people, who made up the upper minority of society, after the planters of bookishness brought from Greece, who were also actual temporary teachers, learned from books and, together with books, were children from their fathers: but how did the common people learn, how did the masses learn? The question is not easy to answer. I studied somehow, but how? It is usually customary to answer that our church with its divine services was a school of faith and piety for the common people, and it is especially strongly pointed out that our divine services were performed not in someone else’s incomprehensible language, but in our own understandable one. But speaking frankly, they resort to this answer to calm the conscience and simply because they do not find any other satisfactory answer. Who would dare to assume that in ancient times our worship was performed better than in the present? And, therefore, what could a simple person make out of everything that was read and sung (as the first is read, and the second is sung to this day in the vast majority of Russian churches) cut from one “Lord have mercy”? Then, the language of our liturgical books, as we have already said more than once above, is called our own in a far from proper or accurate sense, and it was (and is) not at all as understandable to the people as their own Russian. Moreover, they completely forget and lose sight of the fact that even their own Russian language is completely understandable for the common people only in spoken language, but not in book language. But even if we now completely eliminated the indicated obstacles from the unsatisfactory performance of services and the incomprehensibility of the language, then would it be possible for the church with its worship to assume the role of a real school of faith for the common people or for the masses? Divine services performed in church are not for teaching the faith to non-leaders, but for the edification of those leading; not designed to prepare people and be an initial Christian school for them, it, on the contrary, itself requires preliminary preparation and presupposes already acquired greater or lesser knowledge. The common people of the present time are before us. Take any peasant from among the illiterate and deliberately not taught Christianity, which, however, is the majority of our peasants: what does he understand when he stands in church for worship and how much does this walk expand his Christian knowledge? We do not at all want to say that going to church is useless for the common people: participation in public church prayer, due to the special meaning of this prayer, is equally necessary both for a fully leading Christian and for one who only knows “Lord have mercy.” We are only saying that it is in vain that the church is taking on a role that it is not actually assigned to perform. So, how could the common people learn the truths of the Christian faith from us? Above we talked about voluntary teachers of the people in addition to shepherds or priests, namely, about monks who, in addition to the feat of saving themselves, also added the feat of caring for the salvation of others and who, deliberately devoting themselves to the work of teaching the people, taught everyone who came to them. There is no doubt that the works of these teachers were not without significance and not without benefit, greater or lesser; but they could be teachers of morality, and not of faith, which is what we are talking about, for they taught listeners daily and every minute, and did not open courses of teaching for specific and constant listeners. It must be assumed that, without any deliberate teachers of the faith, the people learned it in the same way as they learn everything, namely, that a certain degree of knowledge spread to them from above from the minority. The upper minority has no desire to teach the lower majority or the masses; the lower majority or mass of the people does not seek to learn from the upper minority; but despite all this, they constitute one living whole, one indivisible people, and through not deliberate teaching, but constant communication, without intention or knowledge on either side and in an imperceptible way for one or the other, from the minority a certain part of knowledge is spread to the majority. That this path of enlightenment for the masses of the people is the most primitive path, extremely slow and extremely insufficient - that in general it is a path whose only merit is that it still exists in the absence of any other, this is completely clear and without any explanation. So, in this, so to speak, self-acting way, without any care or concern on anyone’s part, the mass of the people had to learn from us the Christian faith, its truths and its dogmas. This is, of course, very sad. A kind of consolation in this case can be the fact that all other Christian nations with our teaching of the truths of faith of the masses were no better or very little better than ours: not everywhere, like us, it was the case that skill was absent, but everywhere it was the case that desire was completely or almost completely absent. The upper minority of society and the masses of the people, having been converted from paganism to Christianity, accepted the latter in different ways. The first, having been more or less properly announced by the baptists, changed the faith with the proper consciousness of the meaning of this change, namely, with the proper consciousness that the paganism being abandoned is a false faith, and that the Christianity being accepted is the only true faith. As a result of this, it did not combine Christianity with paganism, as happened among the mass of the people, which we will talk about below, but accepted the former in place of the latter. It would follow from this that pagan beliefs will completely give way to Christian ones - that the latter, possessing a greater or lesser degree of internal perfection, will dominate outwardly alone, without the remnant of the former beliefs of abandoned paganism. In fact, this did not happen at all. Paganism was abandoned as a faith, and, however, all pagan beliefs were far from abandoned. Tertullian said about the human soul that it is by nature a Christian. If this can be considered true regarding the best part of the soul, then, on the contrary, regarding the worst part of it it should be said that it is by nature a pagan. Paganism, created by people themselves and, therefore, to satisfy all the needs of their nature, contains something that not only could not be abandoned immediately after the adoption of Christianity, but which is almost to the same extent never completely abandoned by a person, as in the area of ​​​​moral sin. God closed his future from man, leaving it to his own knowledge, yet the inclination in man to know this future is irresistible. God has not given man his ability to do the supernatural, and yet man has the unshakable confidence that it is possible for him to have the secret of how to do it. As a result of these two inclinations, all peoples developed a belief in fortune telling, omens, magic or sorcery, which became an essential part of pagan dogma, receiving the widest development. According to pagan beliefs, a person, one might say, did not take a single step without the environment surrounding him, representing as if one continuous oracle, foreshadowing something for good or ill: “the temple is cracking, the earring, the raven, the chicken-cry, the okomig, the fire is roaring, the dog is howling, the mice are squeaking, the mouse is gnawing at the ports, the toad is hooting, the cat meows, frightens a dream, meets a blind man (monk, pig), burns something out, fire squeaks, a spark from the fire springs, a man falls,” etc., etc., etc. - this is an endless list of pagan fortune-telling about the future by signs 1619. According to pagan beliefs, people who mastered the secret of creating the supernatural - sorcerers and wizards - represented an earthly Providence that held the fate of people in its hands, endowed them with happiness and sent misfortune. Without a sorcerer, the pagan could not take a single step of any importance. It is known that in relation to the now indicated part of pagan dogma, even today the vast majority of people, not to say all people in general, are more or less pagan. Concluding from the present time to the first times of Christianity, obviously, we will have every probability of assuming that this part of pagan dogma was transferred from paganism to Christianity in full, in its entirety. Consequently, the faith of the upper minority began with the fact that, along with the accepted Christian beliefs, a very large remnant of former pagan beliefs was preserved. If we still continue to paganize, then it is clear that it would be in vain to be surprised at this, and that it simply remains to recognize the sad fact of the too decisive inclination of human nature towards paganism, that is, towards the aforementioned part of pagan superstitions 1620. The lower majority or mass of the people, having been converted from paganism to Christianity, could not be properly enlightened regarding this latter, and, accepting it as a new faith, had to be guided by their own pagan view of the mutual relationship of faiths. The consequence of this was that the mass of the people began with real dual faith, not only with the transfer of part of the previous pagan beliefs to Christianity, but with the combination of paganism with Christianity as a whole faith, or with the simple addition of newly accepted Christianity to the old paganism. Whether the pagans rose or did not rise to the idea of ​​a single God, they were all polytheists who accepted that the world and people are governed and led by many gods with one God, the father of other gods, at the head, or without this latter. From this polytheism of the pagan peoples, obviously, flowed the principle of multi-faith, namely, the assumption and recognition by each of them, together with their faith, of the same truth of all other existing faiths. Once the existence of many gods is admitted, then it can no longer be said that there should be five or six of them, or in general as many as one known nation accepts. If there is a multitude, then it is obviously completely unlimited in number, and it is clear that just as some gods in this multitude are true, that is, their own, so are all the others true. Each pagan people had their own gods; this meant, according to the pagans, that the world was divided between the gods into destinies and that in one place some of them reign, in another - others, all of them equally true. Each person had to adhere to his own faith, the faith of his fathers, for his own paternal gods had real care for him and his land; but it was free to turn with prayers to all other gods that anyone knew, and to include foreign gods among their own. For this reason, pagan peoples, during mutual rapprochement, replenished the number of their gods from one another and even sought to unite them all in one place, so as to honor all the known gods of the world. (Roman Pantheon diis deabusque totius mundi, the Athenian desire for the veneration of all gods, extending to the unknown gods - Acts of the Apostles 17:23, also the Roman form of prayer to every god encountered, but unknown by name, Quisquis es) 1621. Our pagan ancestors also held ideas common to all pagans. For them, the only true faith, excluding all other faiths, such as Christianity, was unthinkable; for them, only many, equally true, faiths were conceivable, which would not exclude one another, but were united with one another, complementing each other. As a result, it was incomprehensible and unthinkable for them to change faith in the proper sense of the word, as leaving one faith and taking another instead, and only the addition of a new faith to the old could be understandable and conceivable. Thus, the adoption of Christianity, which was introduced by the government, in their opinion could not mean leaving the former faith and putting it in the place of this latter, but could only mean joining it to the former faith 1622. Christianity is not anything like one of the private pagan faiths. These latter, all being of the same origin and all being variations of the same general thing, are very similar to each other in the essential and inessential, so that a complete fusion between them is possible and easy. Christianity could not be merged with paganism, but had to stand next to it, as a separate faith from it. Thus, having accepted Christianity and not renouncing paganism, the mass of the Russian people had to become dual-faith in the exact and literal sense of the word: The Christian God introduced by the government with a host of saints and the former pagan gods - two gods or two hosts, two families of gods; The new Christian worship and the old pagan worship are two special and separate worship services. With the introduction of Christianity, the government destroyed public pagan temples and banned public pagan worship. But it was not strong enough to destroy the very faith in the former gods, and the forbidden, remaining in all its integrity, resorted to the veil and defense of secrecy. Over time, the consciousness began to gradually penetrate the mass of the people that Christianity is the only true faith and that paganism is a lie and the flattery of the devil. At the same time, the pagan gods, as personifications and incarnations of the devil, had to gradually disappear. However, paganism itself did not disappear with them. Pagan beliefs, festivals and religious customs, created by the people and their life and constituting the treasured paternal antiquity, were too strong among the people to be carried away by the disappearing gods 1623. These latter formed a decisive contrast with the Christian God, could in no way be reconciled with Him, and as soon as the consciousness of such a contrast appeared among the people, they were bound to inevitably disappear. But for the beliefs, festivals and customs of paganism, with the disappearance of the gods, freed from the obvious stigma and obvious seal of paganism, there were ways of salvation. One part of them found it possible to join Christianity and come under its protection; the other part remained in an indefinitely innocent or not hated form of beliefs, festivals and folk customs. Thus, after the times of open and conscious dual faith, the times of hidden, masked and unconscious dual faith have come. The largest part of pagan beliefs, festivals and customs remained among the people even after the disappearance of the pagan gods; but they ceased to be recognized by him as such, and became simply the heritage of the fathers, for which the justification: “as our fathers thought and lived and taught us, so we think and live.” In this second period of hidden and unconscious dual faith, the people remain partly to this day, for even now, under the name of superstitions, customs and rituals, folk holidays and amusements, they still retain quite a lot of remnants of paganism in their faith and their way of life. From a non-archaeological point of view, everything said may seem very sad. One thing can be answered to this: this was and is not only among us, but absolutely among all the Christian peoples of Europe, not excluding our baptizers, the Greeks, 1624. A phenomenon common to all is, obviously, an inevitable and necessary phenomenon. Like all other peoples of the Indo-European tribe, the Slavs to some extent rose to the idea of ​​​​monotheism 1625. Among their many gods, they recognized one God of the universe, supremely dominant in the heavens, who produced all other gods and divided the universe among these latter into private jurisdiction. This one heavenly God, the parent of other gods or the “primordial god,” that is, the god par excellence, was called by the Slavs by a name preserved, like the well-known names of almost all other gods, from the ancient first language of the Indo-European peoples 1626 - Svarog, which means walking in the sky, dwelling in the sky (Celestial Walker, Sky-Dweller) 1627. The Supreme God, according to the beliefs of the Slavs, as we have now let you know, was surrounded by a host of lower gods who privately knew the world and people and were divided into degrees, depending on their proximity to this God above themselves 1628. The number of lower gods (pribogs) among different Slavic peoples was different 1629. First of all, they idolized the heavenly physical figures who support the life of the earth or its life-givers, namely, firstly, that invisible figure who produces clouds and lightning and releases rain on the earth. Secondly, the sun, which illuminates it and warms it. After the heavenly figures, they idolized the supermundane figure, that is, the wind that blows the earth, cleanses and refreshes its air. Then, they recognized the gods who actually and directly care about people, and namely, firstly, the gods who care about all people in general with their common needs and requirements; secondly, individual patrons and patrons of houses or families and individuals. Thirdly, the gods of livestock, which in ancient times constituted the main wealth of people. Finally, like other pagan peoples, they inhabited different parts of the earth with lower gods or demigods, or, more precisely, the entire earth, according to its physical division into special parts - fields, forests, mountains, waters and swamps. Since man not only enjoys happiness on earth, but is also subject to misfortunes, at the head of which is the common misfortune of all people - death, then famines, pestilences, etc., the Slavs, like all other peoples, believed not only in the good gods who cared for them, but also in the evil gods who were hostile to them and persecuted them. Calling the first gods by the common name of white gods (Belbogov, Belbog), they called the latter by the common name of black gods (Chernobogov, Chernobog) 1630. The Russians called the deity of thunder, lightning and rain Perun, which means sprinkler, rainmaker 1631. The sun, which name means distributing, creating (or shining) 1632, they also called Dazhbog, which means shining, burning 1633, and Khors or Kors, which means creator, producer 1634. The deity of air and winds was called Stribog, which exactly means the god of air (wind) 1635. The common deities of people were: firstly, Lada, among the Western Slavs was called Siwa, and among the Poles in particular, according to some evidence, Alive, the goddess of people’s life, peace and harmony between them, all their happiness, and especially family and marital happiness 1636. Secondly, Yarilo (Yarovit among the Western Slavs), otherwise called Tur (Tur), is the god of war and heroism or daring, fertility of the land and people, fun and sensual pleasures 1637. The deities of houses or families and individuals were Rod and Rozhanitsy 1638. The god of cattle, probably the main and general one, who had lower gods under him according to the kinds of animals, was Volos or Veles, perhaps identical with the Scandinavian Valass, which means the god of oxen. Of the gods or, as it were, demigods of fields, forests, mountains, waters and swamps, our Russian mythology knows - forest gods, who were called Leshy from their place of residence (goblin from the forest, the same as forest), - water goddesses, who were called Rusalkas, which means inhabitants of water (the first half of the volume, footnote 300?), - swamp gods, whose proper name, it seems, was the Devil (proverb: “sits like a devil in swamp"). The chronicle also mentions the deities Simargl or Semargl and Mokosh 1639, but what they were remains completely unknown 1640. In accusatory words written against the paganism of the baptized Slavs and belonging to literature not exclusively of our Russian, but generally of the East Slavic (Bulgarian-Serbo-Russian) instead of one Simargl, two are named in the chronicle - Sima and Regl, and then Buyakini, Upyri, Beregini, Vila, Pereplut, Troyan 1641 are also mentioned. The representative of the black gods, hostile to man, was, it seems, Div, who had an owl as his ominous messenger, who, being taken for himself (as his personification), was also called Div 1642. He was followed by Mara, the black goddess of plagues and pestilences and probably of social disasters in general, and Mo(a)rena or Mo(a)ryana, the goddess of death. Both of them probably had a considerable number of different names for assistants or assistants 1643. Like all the peoples of the world and in accordance with the human ability to imagine, the Slavs in general and the Russians in particular imagined their gods in the bodily images of earthly living beings. Our information in this regard is very limited. Of the two forms of representation - primary zoomorphic and secondary - anthropomorphic, the Slavs, it seems, adhered exclusively to the second, allowing only temporary transformations of their gods into animals. Each deity was represented, as one must think, in a human image, in accordance with its internal properties and with certain external attributes appropriate to it (and learned). But since the firm establishment of individual images can only be accomplished with the help of painting and sculpture, and the Slavs had them in the very first rudiment, it is likely to think that in their ideas about deities they did not have the proper relief (and firm forms of establishment in relation to particulars). The Russians depicted most of their gods in idols or statues. The chronicle of 1644 speaks about the idols of Perun, Khors - Dazhbog, Stribog, Simargl and Mokosha. The existence of the idols of Lada and Yaril suggests that folk customs still exist in 1645. By chance or not by chance, the idol of Volos is not mentioned; if it is not accidental and he really was not depicted in idols, then we cannot say the reason. Then, in our country, in all likelihood, the gods of fields, forests and waters and the earthly gods in general were not depicted in idols, just as the Western Slavs were not depicted; The reason for this, in addition to the comparative unimportance of these gods, must be assumed to be that with their own faces they were too close to people and that instead of statues they could be prayed to in the places of their dwellings. The statues were exclusively wooden 1647, and as for the executive or artistic side, they, of course, more hinted at living people than actually represented them. The Russians had not yet gone so far as to build elaborate churches for their gods in 1648. They honored them and served them, firstly, in the open air: on the hills, in areas of forests or sacred groves dedicated to them, near the water - in wells, springs and rivers, in grain fields, in swamps; secondly, in their own churches, namely, huts and barns 1649. The worship of the pagan Slavs, like other peoples, consisted of offering sacrifices to the gods and performing services before them, to use a Christian expression. Sacrifices to the gods consisted of slaughtering and burning animals, libations, offerings of bread and all kinds of earthly fruits and, in general, everything that a person needs in his life. Like all Slavs in general, so the Russians in particular had a custom of human sacrifices, made on especially important occasions 1650. Services to the gods consisted of prayers to them and in liturgical more or less lengthy and complex ceremonies, which included singing songs, games and dances, of which the first (games) depicted the spiritual in material actions, and the second generally served as an external expression of internal feelings. We have already touched upon the question of who performs divine services among the Russians, and whether they had deliberate priests. There were no deliberate priests, and public worship was performed by princes, chiefs, elders or elders, and generally the most honorable people in a given place and at a given time, and private or home worship was performed by the heads of families. For all pagan peoples, divine services were inextricably linked with fortune-telling, asking about the favor or displeasure of the gods towards people and the actions they have committed or taken. The mysterious science of fortune telling required special people, and these were our Magi, who were only partially the priests of other pagan peoples (who, as we said above, had a very great importance among the people). The Russians believed in the immortality of the soul and in the afterlife and, at least in part, recognized rewards and punishments for the deeds of this life 1651. They believed that the dwelling of souls was on a certain island Buyan 1652, located on the sea-on-Okiyan 1653. However, according to their ideas, for a certain part of the year, during our Christian time from Easter to Trinity Day, souls annually returned to this world 1654. They burned the bodies of the dead, usually in boats 1655 so that the souls in the latter could be transported to their places of residence. At the sites where the bodies were burned (and over the bones that remained from them), hills were poured 1656, or the bones were collected in “sudina mala” (small vessels) and placed either “on a pillar, on a path” or on hills 1657. The funerals of the dead were celebrated with feasts and funeral feasts, and military games in 1658. A year after the death, large memorial dinners were held at the graves of the deceased in 1659. In addition, the souls of all deceased people were annually honored with several deliberate commemorations or funeral festivities in 1660. In the first place, Russians idolized the heavenly figures who support the life of the earth and people. Naturally, their annual holidays, first of all, should have been dedicated to these latter. Since both deities act in close connection with one another and mutually complement each other, it seems that they had common holidays, namely, three out of four on sunny or Solntsevo days and one on the day of Perun. The annual relationship of the sun to the earth is divided into two periods: during one, it takes care of it and gives life to it, during the other, it seems to leave it in its care. The period of care, as is clear, was supposed to be the time of celebration in honor of the Sun and with it Perun. The gradual progression of this period has three terms: in the month of December, having reached its greatest distance from the earth, the sun again turns to summer (12 December Spyridon solstice); in the month of March, the sun compares day with night and begins to lengthen it, and at the same time, having outweighed the cold, it gradually begins to add heat; in the month of June the sun brings the day to its greatest length and the heat to its greatest degree of intensity. These three solar terms were the times of the holidays of the Sun and Perun: the first was the holiday of the new year, the second was spring, the third was summer. The first holiday was called Kolyada or Koleda, which is from the Latin Galendae and is the Roman name for the new year adopted by the Slavs (Calendae Jannuarii); the pagan names of the other two holidays are not known. The fourth annual holiday in honor of the sun and Perun was celebrated on the day of the latter, namely, either on an indefinite and random day of the first rain and thunder, or on a certain, but unknown to us, day around the time of the first rain and thunder 1661. Of the holidays, other gods, according to the instructions of modern folk life, are known: in honor of Lada, two, in honor of Yarila, two and one in honor of Volos 1662. It should be assumed with high probability that in addition to annual holidays, the Russians also had monthly holidays, celebrated at the beginning of each lunar month, and it is not incredible to assume that they had weekly holidays, celebrated six days later on the seventh (since the pagan Slavs, like our Jewish-Christian ones, had seven-day weeks) 1663. So, in the first time after the adoption of Christianity, our ancestors in their lowest mass or in their majority, literally becoming dual-faith and only adding Christianity to paganism, but not putting it in the place of the latter, on the one hand, prayed and celebrated the Christian God with the host of His saints or, according to their ideas, the Christian gods, and on the other hand, prayed and celebrated their former pagan gods. Both cults stood side by side and were practiced simultaneously: the annual circle of public Christian holidays was celebrated and at the same time the same circle of pagan holidays was celebrated; household services were performed through priests in a Christian way, and at the same time they were performed through the elderly and through the wise men and in a pagan way. Home prayer was performed to God and the Christian saints, and along with them to the pagan gods. Public pagan idols were crushed, public prayers and pagan holidays were prohibited; but by this the paganism of the newly baptized Russians, as we said above, could only be constrained, and not destroyed. We do not know whether the Russians had household idols along with public idols, so that after the destruction of some, they would use others in cases of public prayer. But, firstly, they could do without any idols, being content to have before their eyes any material reminder of the gods - some symbol of one or another of them, some thing considered dedicated to one or the other, or, finally, simply their own presence at the place of the supposed field of activity, at the place of the imaginary residence of one or the other. Secondly, if they considered idols to be a necessary accessory for public worship and celebrations, then, given their unpretentiousness in relation to the perfection of the forms of idols, they could easily create them for each given occasion. The idols of the Russians were not like Phidias’s Athens - Pallas, which, in the event of death, would remain irreplaceable: a wooden block, a straw effigy, hewn and receiving only some hints of a human form, could be completely sufficient idols for the Russians. Public pagan prayers and celebrations were banned by the government; but it had some opportunity to observe the non-violation of this prohibition only in cities and not at all in villages, where the leaders, who were from local residents (village elders), were completely the same two-religionists as everyone else. Consequently, despite the prohibition, public prayers and celebrations outside the city limits could be carried out with the same complete freedom as before. We are not talking about prayers and celebrations to pagan house gods; government supervision could not penetrate into the house either in villages or in cities, and it is clear that this type of paganism remained completely free throughout the entire territory of Rus' even after the introduction of Christianity. We do not have ancient literary monuments that would depict the dual faith of the first Russian Christians in its entirety and with all the clarity, so that they would allow us to contemplate living, ready-made pictures. But we have a considerable number of ancient monuments, including some of an official nature, which speak directly and clearly about it and which put the matter beyond any doubt. Everything we have said above is nothing more than a simple commentary on the direct and clear evidence of the mentioned monuments of 1664. To us, according to our concepts, it is not entirely easy for us to imagine these two-faith people, combining light with darkness, at the same time and with equal zeal serving truth and falsehood and seeing the former both to the right and to the left. But we know from Sacred History that the ancient Israelites very often suffered from this disease of dual faith, serving at the same time both Jehovah and the gods of the languages. In Russia, even today, the state of dual faith can be visible and observed in reality: some of our baptized foreigners are at the same time both Christians and pagans, or precisely those dual-faith Christians that we ourselves were at the beginning of our Christianity. How long our period of open and real dual faith lasted is one of those questions that cannot be answered directly and positively. In different places it ended at different times, having different and very varied durations, from relatively very short to relatively very long. It goes without saying that its disappearance began from the most central places, which were the centers of representatives of true Christianity, and from the centers it gradually went to the circles, embracing all the wholes the more quickly the shorter the radii. Recalling the history of the spread of Christianity in Rus', namely, that initially only Rus'’s own was baptized, and foreign Rus' was gradually baptized after, the reader will understand that what we said above should apply to Rus'’s own: in places that were baptized at different times after, naturally, there were their own periods of dual faith. Among foreigners, it must be assumed, these periods of dual faith were much longer than among natural Russians, and for some of them, as we positively know, they were extremely long (for example, Chud Vodskaya Pyatina in the Novgorod region, baptized, perhaps even in the pre-Mongol period and hardly later than the 13th century, remained dual faith until the half of the 16th century). Approximately how long after the baptism of Rus' by Vladimir dual faith remained in the very centers from which its disappearance began, one example known to us can serve as an indication of this. Between 1073–78, under Prince Gleb Svyatoslavich (grandson of Yaroslav, great-grandson of St. Vladimir), a sorcerer appeared in Novgorod who wanted to make an attempt to expel the Christian faith from him. When the bishop, seeing the success of the sorcerer’s preaching among the people, came out to denounce him, the prince and his squad took the side of the latter, and all the people stood for the sorcerer and wanted to kill the bishop (saved only by the courage and resourcefulness of the prince). This attitude of the people towards the bishop and the sorcerer shows that he was still a real semi-pagan with a preponderance of sympathies on the side of paganism, and that the latter had not yet begun to dissolve in Christianity. Regarding Novgorod, one should think that in it, as the most popular and free, Christianity was established more slowly than in any other center, for there was great freedom for the oppositional preaching of the Magi and all enemies of Christianity in general (just as he was baptized with fire and sword). But if we accept, that is, assume that in the assimilation of Christianity it was still not too far behind other centers, then we will need to think that the time of complete domination of paganism in it was in other centers no more than the time of the first transition from paganism to Christianity. By the upper minority of society, Christianity was accepted in the true meaning of the single true faith, which did not have to stand next to paganism, but to replace it, so that this minority, having been converted and baptized, from pagan directly became monofaith Christian, without a preliminary period of open dual faith. From above, the true view of Christianity was gradually, soon or not soon, supposed to spread below and, finally, become the general view of the entire people, along with which the period of open dual faith among the people was supposed to end. After the disappearance of the gods, who gradually became demons and evil spirits for their former worshipers, there came very long, partly still ongoing, times of semi-paganism, so to speak, acephalous, headless and nameless, hidden and disguised dual faith. The people had to part with the pagan gods soon or not soon, because any reconciliation or any compromise was impossible here. As soon as the consciousness appeared and became established among the people that they were a lie and enmity against the true God, they faced an inevitable end, for there was no other outcome. But after the gods, a lot had the opportunity to survive. The gods were finally abandoned and not honored; but the celebrations that took place in honor of them and the religious customs and rites that belonged to their cult could remain after them in the form of festivals, customs and rituals of the people, or they could be combined and merged with Christian holidays, rites and customs. In the likeness of all other Christian peoples, this happened among us Russians. Everyone knows that even to this day the life of the people is full of remnants of pagan holidays and rituals of the pagan cult. The pagan holiday of Kolyada or New Year, the first of the year of the holidays of the Sun and Perun, was connected with the Christian holiday of the Nativity of Christ and, in general, with the entire holiday of the so-called twelve days (δωδεκαήμερον) or 12 days from the Nativity of Christ to the Epiphany. Folk rituals, games and amusements of this time are precisely the remnants of the pagan New Year holiday of 1665. The holiday of spring or the second Sun and Perun, which fell during Lent, was moved to the week preceding this last one, and constitutes our present Maslenitsa 1666. The holiday of summer or the third of the Sun and Perun was connected with the holiday of John the Baptist or, in common parlance, Ivan Kupala (June 24) 1667. The fourth holiday of the Sun and Perun and precisely Perun, as some indications that have survived to this day make it known, was connected with the Easter holiday of 1668. In some places in Russia, two Yarila holidays are still celebrated - one at the end of April, the other on All Saints' Day 1669. Almost all of Russia to this day celebrates two Lada holidays - one on the so-called Red Hill (Fomino Resurrection), the other on Semik - Trinity Day. The Feast of Volos is connected with the Feast of St. George (April 28)), under him the role of patron of animals was transferred to this saint in 1670. The house holiday of Rod and Rozhanitsa, which has now completely disappeared, for a long time was celebrated on the next day of the Nativity of Christ on the feast of the Cathedral of the Virgin Mary in 1671. Cases of domestic life, which in paganism, as well as in Christianity, were accompanied by religious actions, namely: births, weddings, funerals, as is known, to this day abound in the remnants of pagan religious rites under the name of folk customs. Having celebrated and celebrated all the mentioned pagan holidays and performed and performed religious pagan rites on all these occasions, the people became pagans (after the forgetting of the pagan gods) and are pagans not at all consciously: but the pagan nevertheless remains pagan. Currently, folk holidays and customs no longer bear obvious traces of paganism; however, even today, at festive and funeral dinners and when commemorating parents at graves, in some places pagan libations are poured in honor of the gods or for the dead in a completely pagan way. But the further back, the more pagan was preserved intact and more fully. We can judge this by the example of others. In some places in Greece and throughout Bulgaria, to this day, on St. George is sacrificed in honor of him (instead of Volos, which he replaced), a real pagan sacrifice 1672. Among the Serbs and the Bulgarians, on the eve of the Nativity of Christ, the so-called badnyak is lit on the hearths of their houses - a damp oak block, which is left to burn (slow fire, smolder) until Epiphany: this is undoubtedly a remnant of the pagan rite of 1673 in its original form. There was a section of pagan beliefs that was entirely to be converted to Christianity and forever remain among the people in its true form. This is a belief in black gods. In the black gods, paganism recognized the beginning of evil, just as Christianity recognizes it in demons. According to the general characteristics of representatives of evil, black pagan gods were identified with Christian demons, and therefore remained completely in popular beliefs, as if recognized as Christian teachings. Meanwhile, the black pagan gods have nothing in common with Christian demons (except for the fact that belief in them, like in all pagan gods, is demonic flattery). The latter are representatives and agents of moral evil, while the former were recognized as the culprits of physical evil. Holding pagan ideas and concepts, the common people to this day firmly believe that physical disasters are the actions of evil spirits - their former black gods, and in accordance with their faith they fight against them not with rational, but with their own pagan means - spells, conspiracies, and the performance of pagan rituals 1674. Together with the blackest gods, he firmly believes in their tools between people living and dead - sorcerers, witches, werewolves, vampires or ghouls. That our shepherds, who had the responsibility to teach the people Christianity, and, consequently, to turn them away from paganism, were not at all capable of fulfilling the duties of teachers, we spoke about this above. But the monuments present the matter in an even sadder way. There were no shepherds who taught and were able to teach their flock, but there were shepherds who indulged their flock to become pagans, partly because they themselves remained the same pagans in their feelings, partly because, being shepherds - mercenaries, they extracted self-interest from the paganism of their flock. The compiler of one accusatory word against the dual faith of the people, reproaching the remaining custom of consecrating and praying at festive feasts for food and drinking in a pagan way, says that “priests and scribes - some, seeing evil deeds and hearing about them, do not want to teach, while others themselves indulge in them, allow the aforementioned pagan action to be performed and eat the prayed food.” 1675 . In another word we read that the custom of serving a meal to the Family and Rozhanitsa on the next day of the Nativity of Christ and consecrating it with the troparion of the Theotokos, that is, celebrating a feast in their honor under the guise of the feast of the Mother of God, was not only not prohibited by the priests for the sake of “salaries” or their fees, but was even highly encouraged 1676. To console the reader, we will repeat again what we have said more than once: throughout the Christian world, people were the same, and what the history of the establishment of Christianity represents in us, we find the same thing to a greater or lesser extent in all other European Christian peoples. To the question in what state the knowledge of the Christian faith itself was among the people, we have already partly answered above. While the people were only semi-Christian, remaining at the same time semi-pagan, they obviously did not have any proper concept of Christianity, for if they had it, they would not have been semi-pagan. Over time, he acquired and assimilated the concept of Christianity that it is the only true faith, and at the same time he ceased to be semi-pagan (of course, consciously). But his further knowledge of the Christian faith, knowledge of it in its dogmas, should have been limited to very little and went very far. The faith of the simple illiterate people of the present time is before our eyes: even if we do not subtract anything from this faith according to the law of regression, then we will have a faith that is too limited and meager in relation to completeness and clarity. We have already spoken above about the means that our people had for learning in the faith: but how can they believe if they do not hear it?.. This was the attitude of the lower majority of Russian society, or its so-called popular mass, in relation to faith. The upper minority began with the true Christian faith from the very first minute of accepting Christianity: it did not add paganism to Christianity, but directly accepted the latter instead of the former. But true faith, being such, can have very different degrees of internal perfection - it can be a completely distinct and separate faith, and it can be an extremely vague faith. A clear and separate knowledge of the faith, that is, its constituent dogmas, presupposes thorough teaching of it. But we did not have the means of this teaching: we did not have deliberate teachers of the faith for anyone, but only the means for self-teaching - there were only doctrinal books translated from Greek, from which those who had the opportunity and the desire had to learn themselves. There are a few, isolated and exceptional, people who, even by self-teaching something, acquire such knowledge that is possible only with real training. But the knowledge of the majority with this self-education can never reach the point of being in any way proper and satisfactory: they usually represent something and something that is far from sufficient, lacking coherence, completeness and clarity. Just as this happens when we self-teach everything, so, of course, this should have been the case when our ancestors self-taught the Christian faith. And, thus, regarding the faith of the upper minority of our society, one must think that although it did not survive the period of half-faith, that is, the period during which it would only be attached to paganism, and that although it directly began with being a true faith, but that in its internal qualities it did not rise high and constantly remained a faith more or less far from the desired degree of perfection. Faith necessarily presupposes knowledge and cannot exist without it. A little knowledge is presupposed and required by the moral law in order to be fulfilled, for its commandments are few in number and not sophisticated in their meaning. From this it would apparently follow that in relation to the fulfillment of the moral law, educated peoples have a slight advantage over uneducated peoples, and thus it would apparently follow that with our education there were no obstacles for us to stand on the same moral level with other peoples. However, this is far from the case here. The Christian moral law or the evangelical moral law, as such, is, so to speak, a law written not for entire societies, but for individual chosen people. Selected individuals in societies strive, with the help of the grace of God, to fulfill the moral Christian law in its true and true form. As for entire societies, as societies, they live not directly according to the moral law of the Gospel, but according to other laws based only on it. By reducing Christian morality to themselves, people create so-called social morality, the requirements of which, as recognized by societies, serve as a more or less obligatory moral law for all members of each society, because otherwise a person attracts public condemnation. Enlightenment necessarily raises the level of public morality to an appropriate degree, making it more demanding. And, thus, in the Christian sense, enlightened peoples must necessarily be more moral than unenlightened peoples. Christian morality, as well as natural morality, which it restores to its original form, consists of man’s duties in relation to his neighbors and to himself. The first or lowest duty in relation to neighbors is not to appropriate anything that belongs to them and not to harm them in any way or to be completely honest in relation to them. This is followed by mercy towards neighbors, which consists in not only not appropriating what belongs to them and not harming them, but also sharing one’s own with them and helping them in every way. Finally, the most perfect fulfillment of the moral law consists in loving your neighbor as yourself, in order to consider everything that belongs equally to yourself and to him, and in case of need to lay down your soul for him. Love for one's neighbor as for oneself is so high and beyond the strength of people that, after the short-lived example of the preeminent church in Jerusalem (Acts 4:32, 34), it is no longer seen in Christian societies, constituting the exclusive virtue of a few chosen people. Apparently, honesty and mercy are available to all people. But, alas, even here in their majority they are such unique executors of the moral law that virtue becomes simple pharisaism and hypocrisy. People look at mercy properly, recognizing it as the first and highest Christian virtue (after perfect love for others, which is inaccessible to them), and everyone, to the best of their ability or at least to some extent, tries to fulfill the commandment about it. But, at the same time, it is a great rarity among people and, as it were, perfect honesty is not considered an obligatory virtue. Sacrifice and almsgiving to neighbors from what was acquired from them with greater or lesser theft and untruth are nothing - this is taught not only by the word of God, but by each person’s own mind. And, however, it is considered necessary to give to your neighbors from your acquisitions, but deceiving and exploiting those same neighbors while collecting these acquisitions is not considered a sin. We do not mean overt deceptions, which are recognized as crimes by civil laws, but secret deceptions, when a neighbor allows himself to be deceived out of ignorance. Communication between people consists of the mutual exchange of labor (with money being a conditional replacement and, as it were, receipts) and precisely - either labor in its original form (work, services) or in the form of its products (goods). There are no Christian societies and peoples in which people do not try to sell their labor in any form at more than its actual value, in which they take care of maintaining perfect honesty - not to take more than what is due. This greater or lesser lack of honesty in business or interested relations between people in all Christian (as well as non-Christian) societies is a disease not only of certain classes of people, but common to all of them from the very top to the very bottom. Just as someone running a million-dollar business cares only about profit, with little regard for honesty, so someone who sells his labor for a hryvnia or a nickel cares about the same thing. Thus, the fulfillment of duties in relation to neighbors is extremely far from perfection among Christians. There is mercy for others, and, however, with it there is always more or less lack of that virtue, without which all that remains of it is a false name. Fulfilling the commandment of mercy, people make donations for the benefit of their neighbors and give them alms; but very often, if not most of the time, through these latter people only return to their neighbors a small part of what they collected from them using more or less deception and exploitation. There is no perfect honesty among any people in the Christian world. But we must admit the sad fact that we, Russians, do not belong to the number of peoples who could boast of it primarily. This does not mean that nature has deprived and offended us with the moral quality of honesty - the impeccable honesty of the simple people of remote areas, untouched by temptations, serves as proof of the injustice of criticizing nature in this regard - it means that the level of requirements in this regard of our public morality is too low. It is known that in our so-called trade business, taking this word in a broad sense and meaning merchants both special and casual, deception is considered not only as nothing, but precisely as a trading rule - that clever deceptions are boasted as feats, and that in general the lack of honesty in trade is justified by the words: “trade business,” i.e., by the recognition that trade without deception is impossible. We do not undertake to decide: we are higher or lower than other Christian peoples in relation to the commandment of mercy, which, being understood not only materially, but also spiritually, is broad and diverse (to console, reconcile, instruct). But what is certain is that from the earliest and earliest times we have been diligent performers of it in the form of charity to the poor and needy. Unfortunately, the form of this charity was and remains very imperfect among us to this day, not only not fully achieving its goal, but also producing considerable evil. Based on the imaginary charter of Vladimirov, many people think that in our country, following the example of Greece, almshouses and hospitals, or even houses of public charity for the poor, were established after the adoption of Christianity and existed in the pre-Mongol period. In fact, we never had anything like this, and the form of our charity was exclusively voluntary alms, and as for the imaginary charter, it only transfers Greek orders to us on paper. That Vladimir did not at all set up almshouses and hospitals for the poor, the chronicle leaves no doubt about this, which directly and clearly says that Vladimir does charity to the poor by hand: “he commanded every beggar and wretched to come to the prince’s courtyard and collect every need - drink and food, and from the cowgirls with kunami (from the housekeepers in money); Arrange this too, saying: “Because weakness and sickness cannot reach my yard,” - he ordered to build a stake and store up bread, meat, fish, various vegetables, honey in beans (barrels), and in others, carry kvass around the city, asking: “Where is the sick and the poor, you cannot go?” - to those who need distribution” 1677. That there were no almshouses and hospitals even after Vladimir, this undoubtedly follows, apart from the complete silence of all monuments about them, from those many places in the chronicle in which it praises the virtues of the deceased princes: almost every one of these praises speaks of the poor or wretched, and not a single one about almshouses and hospitals 1678. The manual form of charity, generally very imperfect, forcing people to walk around the world, has two important inconveniences: firstly, due to the humiliation of begging, some poor people do not dare to resort to it and thus remain to endure the greatest need until they die of starvation. Secondly, and most importantly, voluntary charity produces beggars - industrialists, idle parasites, as everyone knows, of the most substandard quality. We did not establish almshouses in our country, following the example of Greece, first of all, there is no doubt, for the general reason that we did not establish many other things following her example - that in general, in the structure of our life, we did not strive and did not set the task in everything to be equal to the Greeks (who, moreover, had almshouses established in ancient times, and in our later times, they probably gradually closed and disappeared). A separate reason could be that in ancient times we did not have as many poor people who needed alms and sought it as in Greece (where there was a real proletariat in the cities, like today’s Western Europe). As for hospitals for the poor, they could not be established in our country, except for what has been said, due to the lack of doctors, without whom not only the poor, but also the rich 1679. It would be very natural for almshouses for the poor and wretched to be established at monasteries, which themselves lived on alms, and whose inhabitants were a kind of beggars. The Monk Theodosius of Pechersk actually started such an almshouse at his monastery: “create a courtyard near your monastery and reward the church of the Holy First Martyr Stephen in it, and commanded the poor and the blind and the lame and the laboring (sick) to remain, and from the monastery you gave them what they needed, and from everything that existed in the monastery you gave them a tenth” 1680. But if the example of Theodosius had private imitators, then, in any case, it did not at all become part of the general custom of monasteries. In the Pechersky Monastery itself, the almshouse established by Theodosius, it seems, existed after him for a very short time. Our monks, having before them the example of the Greek monks, who in the 10th century and after were not at all the same as in ancient times, focused their concerns exclusively on themselves, thinking only about their own, poor or rich, beggary. In ancient times, beggars collected alms from us in exactly the same way as they do today, that is, they went from house to house and stood at churches. Of course, from the most ancient times there is a custom that smaller amounts of cash alms are given on weekdays, larger amounts on holidays, and even larger amounts on special occasions in homes, such as christenings, weddings, and especially funerals. In addition to alms or donations of bread and money, in ancient times they organized feedings or dinners for the poor, namely, in all those cases when dinners were held for guests, for the poor were considered Christ's guests. These feedings were held not in the kitchens and somehow disdainfully, but in the same place as for the guests and with religious honor, for it was piously believed that Christ himself was present at the head of the poor brethren. This custom, quite possibly passed down from pre-Christian times, was common, starting with the princes, the first of whom was mentioned by St. To Vladimir, monk Jacob reports directly that on holidays he had the custom of serving three meals: to the metropolitan with the clergy, to the beggar, and to himself with the boyars and all his husbands 1682. For the convenience of collecting alms, as we said above, the poor settled in settlements near churches and monasteries, renting land from both of them and setting up their own cells on it. In addition to duties towards all neighbors, Christian morality, just like natural morality, imposes on a person special duties towards neighbors by blood and family. Evidence of the modern life of our simple people does not allow us to draw favorable conclusions regarding ancient times in this regard. The imaginary charter of Vladimirov, which is a historical monument of the late XII - early XIII centuries, makes it clear about the imperfection of our family morals, when among the crimes subject to formal trial, it considers it necessary to place: “(if) a father or mother is beaten by a son or daughter (a son beats a father or a daughter beats a mother) “In the common people, at present, the attitude of husbands to wives is especially suffering from a lack of humanity. In all likelihood, one should, of course, assume that this is something that was not created in modern times, but comes from ancient times 1683. The social life of people creates among them various obligations, the honest and faithful maintenance of which constitutes Christian virtue, which significantly enhances the well-being of both individuals and entire societies. This virtue, due to its important practical significance, has always been recognized by people as one of the main Christian virtues, which is evident from the fact that the opposite of treachery has always been recognized as a grave sin. Our princes of the pre-Mongol period, due to frequent mutual quarrels and equally frequent conclusion of mutual agreements, had deliberately many occasions to show themselves in one way or another in relation to this virtue. Turning to the positive evidence of the chronicles, we find neither the sad extreme - the princes’ decisive inclination towards treachery, nor light without shadows. There were princes who firmly kept the obligations sealed with a kiss on the cross, were afraid to break them and, being forced to do this last, cried their whole lives; but there were also princes who violated obligations almost as soon as they kissed the cross, and who even mocked the scrupulous conscience of others in this regard. Christian moral duties of a person in relation to himself are primarily: sobriety and bodily purity or chastity. That sobriety is not at all our virtue, that on the contrary, from ancient times to the present we have been most sadly devoted to the vice of drunkenness, this is known to everyone. The Arab Ibn Fotslan speaks of the Russians in the first half of the 10th century: “they indulge in drinking wine in an unreasonable manner and drink it whole days and nights; it often happens that they die with a glass in their hand" 1684. The unknown Greek, who wrote the story of the baptism of the Russians, placed in the chronicle, putting into the mouth of Vladimir the famous words: “Rus' is joyful and drinking, we cannot exist without it,” wants to say with ridicule of us that the Russians will not exchange wine for any faith and that it is in vain to start talking with them about a faith that forbids drinking. The Monk Theodosius of Pechersk depicts the ugliness of ancient drunkenness in exactly the same form as it exists today: “some,” he says, “crawl on their knees, unable to stand on their feet, others roll in the mud and dung, every minute ready to give up the ghost” 1685. We don’t know whether nature has endowed us with a special passion for drunkenness, but what is certain is that with a higher degree of enlightenment, and, consequently, with greater demands of public morality, it would not be so great and so ugly among us. Nor can we boast of the virtue of chastity. Much higher, we cited the testimony of the now mentioned Ibn-Fotslan about the pagan Russians, how their merchants who traded in slaves had the latter, while they were in their hands, as their concubines 1686. It must be assumed that they had the same relationship between masters and the latter's permanent slaves, and that, thus, among the pagan Russians, slave and slave were synonymous with concubine. With the adoption of Christianity, views had to change, but morals changed little. Even in our memory, there were a considerable number of landowners who recruited completely Turkish harems from their courtyard and serf women, or who looked at all their courtyard and serf women as their own solid harem: this is not an innovation of later morals, but, undoubtedly, a remnant of the ancients. Historical monuments say little about this remnant of paganism in the morals of the upper strata of our society. But silence should be understood not in the sense that the remainder does not catch the eye due to its insignificance, but in the sense, on the contrary, in the sense that it does not hurt the eye due to its commonality and generality 1687. The common people do not go ahead of their superiors, and it is natural that their morals could not sooner become more strict and pure than the morals of the masters. Among the common people, for quite a long time after the adoption of Christianity, the pagan custom remained of having two or three wives and divorcing their wives in order to enter into new marriages, without any legal reasons, for the sole reason that they no longer liked the wife. When both were stopped by the police measures of the state and the church, they were replaced by a violation of fidelity to marriage on the part of men, a very slight pagan view of which is visible from the fact that among the common people it is considered almost nothing to this day. The fornication of single youths was so common both in the upper stratum of society and among the common people that they did not even find it possible to persecute it with all severity. Kirik of Novgorod asked Bishop Nifont: under what conditions can the sacrament be given to the youths who fornicate? Niphon does not stipulate that they promise to completely renounce fornication, but only that they abstain from it for 40 days before communion 1688. Insulting Christian morality not in deed, but in word, constitutes swearing or swearing. It is known that nowadays among our common people the habit and tendency of swearing reaches the point of disgusting - that it is a very rare man, being in his heart or somewhat drunk, who is able to say two words without a third swear word. It is difficult to think that this habit and inclination would ever be greater; but on the other hand, it would be a violation of all historical probabilities to believe that they would ever be smaller. The reality, obviously, must be that as it was in paganism, so it remained without the slightest improvement in Christianity. A true Christian must be such in all his everyday life, observing moderation in food and drink, moderation and modesty in clothing and in all everyday life, moderation and moral decency in entertainment. In fact, people have always been very bad Christians in this respect and have no hope of ever being better. We have already spoken above about the vice of drunkenness of our pre-Mongol ancestors. In ancient times, we did not have the current fashions in clothing, but their luxury was not only no less, but also much greater than today: from Greece and from all over the East we received all kinds of silk and wool, woven with silver and gold, fabrics, and if today's dandies can boast of the number of dresses, then the pre-Mongol people of both sexes left them far behind in quality 1689. Regarding the desire for luxury in everyday life, the ancient rich people were in no way inferior to the modern ones, acquiring silver and gold dishes, expensive carpets and tablecloths, etc., etc. from Greece and “from all lands” 1690. At present we amuse ourselves through balls, music, theater and cards. In ancient times they had fun through feasts of the same music and theater and instead of cards through the so-called grain. The ancient musicians and actors who entertained our ancestors with musical concerts and theatrical performances were the so-called buffoons, free and active or wandering artists who walked around cities and villages, giving their performances to everyone, especially being invited to feasts and holidays in 1691. The current leaders or leaders of the bears represent the remnant of the ancient buffoons, but the remnant is very insignificant. Buffoons practiced their artistic craft in larger or smaller artels: all members of the artel or a certain part of them played instruments, which were: harps, surnas, domras, pipes, tambourines; some of the artel members had voices and could sing solo with or without accompaniment; all of them, or most of them, were actors and could perform theatrical plays: finally, all of them, or a certain part of them, were dance masters. Now the indicated composition of them should be assumed because the repertoire of entertainment that they gave consisted of: instrumental concerts with or without singing, singing solo songs, dancing, as if corresponding to modern ballets, and, finally, playing theatrical plays. The human theater was joined by an animal theater, consisting of bears, monkeys and, probably, other animals in 1692. Of the plays that were played by buffoons, no remnant has survived to us 1693; Many of their songs may have been preserved, but they are lost in the general mass of folk songs and cannot be indicated. In any case, regarding the moral quality of both, it is necessary to assume that they were not at all distinguished by modesty and any kind of restrained decency, on the contrary, that the pagan freedom of morals continued to remain and be reproduced in them in its entirety and even with all its naked cynicism, and that thus they did not at all serve to improve Christian morals in society. The game of grain, most likely borrowed from the Greeks, was a game of chance by throwing scoring dice on a board divided into conventional squares 1694. We don’t know how attached our pre-Mongol ancestors were to it, but in later times the attachment to it was exactly the same as today to cards. Man consists not of the soul alone, but of soul and body. Therefore, he must express his religious union with God not only through internal thoughts and feelings, but also through external actions and deeds. These external actions and deeds, partly directly and necessarily prescribed by the church, partly having their origin in the voluntary zeal of people, are: external prayer, private and public, fasts established and generally accepted by the church, the creation and decoration of the churches of God, travel to holy places to worship the shrines located in them. More or less zeal for performing these actions and for completing these deeds constitutes external piety or external religiosity. At present, outward piety is weakening among us in the so-called educated part of society, and the common people are revered as its representatives. Considering external piety a necessary attribute of the common people, a substitute for their internal, conscious and distinct faith, some are inclined to believe that from ancient times our common people were distinguished by especially zealous external piety. In fact, this is far from the case. It is absolutely true that if a simple person is devoted to faith and is zealous for it, then he is outwardly pious, that is, he tries to express his devotion and zeal through actions and deeds of external piety, which for him replace internal conscious and distinct faith. But this does not at all mean that every simple person must necessarily be pious. It can hardly be considered fair to say that our common people, as a whole people, are very pious at the present time, and it is unlikely that something else is mistaken for their piety. In the so-called educated society, doubts are spreading regarding the necessity and significance of external piety, skepticism is established in this regard; The common people do not have these doubts and skepticism - and this, in fact, constitutes their significant difference from educated society in relation to piety. But if we take piety itself, it turns out to be far from being as satisfactory as it might seem at first glance. Simple village people go to church on holidays, but, as everyone knows, very inaccurately to the last degree, and, moreover, if not the majority, then in a very significant percentage, the real reason for going is not so much prayer as the auctions that happen on holidays in villages. Simple village people walk “in spirit” - which, according to their understanding, is a matter of external piety - but most of the time not out of real zeal for the fulfillment of this work - as they understand - piety, but because it is strictly required by the authorities. In general, looking at our village man, at the commoner, somewhat intently and directly, that is, with eyes not predisposed in his favor, we are unlikely to find that he was particularly pious, not in the sense of a theoretical recognition of duty in relation to deeds of piety, but in the sense of actual zeal for their implementation. But the current, far from particularly zealous, piety of the common people should not at all be traced back to too ancient times. From the middle of the 7th century, from the reign of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, the secular and spiritual governments paid close attention to the people in this regard, beginning to issue appropriate decrees and instructions, and from this time, in fact, the piety of the common people was brought to its current, not particularly high, degree of perfection. As for the piety that precedes these deliberate measures, the monuments depict it in the most unattractive form. Among the common people there were quite a few people who did not care at all about fulfilling Christian duties and “were called Orthodox Christians in vain.” Those who looked into the church only two or three times a year, on the Lord’s biggest holidays, or even never looked at all. Those who went to confession to their spiritual fathers and received the sacrament of communion extremely rarely, or even did not go or approach at all for their entire lives, expecting to confess and receive communion only before death 1695. However, there is nothing surprising in what has just been said; on the contrary, it is completely natural. Actions and deeds of external piety do not require any teaching and are accessible to every simple person; on this basis, this piety is considered an indispensable property of the common people. But to be able to do something does not at all mean to do it yourself: the perfect accessibility of affairs and the effect of external piety for the common people does not necessarily presuppose their zeal for them. This latter is not something unreasonably characteristic of the common people, but is an expression of zeal for the faith, separately or vaguely represented in its teaching. Consequently, in order for it to appear among the people, it was necessary that zeal for faith first appear among the people. The common people, as we have seen, began with semi-paganism, and then, left to their own devices, became exclusively or entirely Christian very slowly; with no less slowness, zeal for external Christian piety (in which he believes all Christianity or the entire Christian faith) should have grown in him. And thus, one should think about the common people or the masses of the pre-Mongol period not in such a way that a lack of internal faith replaced in them zeal for external piety, but in such a way that they (the masses) were very imperfect in Christianity in both ways - both internal and external. Zeal for external piety was in the same place as internal faith, that is, in the upper minority. To answer the question: how great was this zeal, unfortunately, we have very little data. Our absolutely definite information in this regard begins no earlier than at the beginning of the 16th century (with the accidental but precious descriptor of our morals, St. Maximus the Greek). The evidence represents the upper minority of our society as being quite religious or devout; but from the 16th century to the beginning of the 13th century and further back, the distance is so great that there is no room for any conclusions: It is possible that this religiosity in its entirety already goes back to the pre-Mongol period, but it is also, if not even more, possible that it only subsequently and gradually developed from the beginnings of this last time. The basis of external religiosity or piety is more and no less zeal for prayer at home and in public. There are indications that give the right to conclude that zeal for home prayer already in the pre-Mongol period and from the very first time was as great as in later times. The chronicler, talking about the murder of St. Boris, reports that when the murderers came to his camp and approached his tent, they heard him “singing matins.” These words imply that St. Boris had the custom of singing Matins to himself every day and that he followed the rule that is read in later records: “It is appropriate for those who have a letter to sing Matins and Hours, Vespers and Compline and Midnight Office for themselves every day, so that they will not leave anything without sending” 1696. We said much above that in ancient times the boyars usually had house priests who performed church services for them - either with the inclusion of liturgy in house churches or without this latter in prayer rooms, the so-called cross rooms. We have some random indications from very ancient times that the boyars took their house priests with them everywhere and, therefore, everywhere they unacceptably forced church services to be performed for themselves. The same chronicler, telling about 1071. about the appearance of the Magi on Beloozero and their execution by the boyar Yan Vyshatich, who came to Beloozero from Kyiv to collect princely tribute, randomly reports that the boyar had a priest with him in 1697. Princes took priests with them when they went on military campaigns. Prince Novgorod-Seversky Igor Svyatoslavich, the hero of the Tale of Igor's Campaign, having been captured by the Polovtsians and not hoping to be freed soon, made sure that a priest was sent to him from Rus' with the holy service in 1698. Vladimir Monomakh, in his famous memorial letter to children, instructs them to say a prayer every day before sunrise, after sunrise and in the evening. And he adds that his father did this and “all good men accomplished” 1699. More or less zeal for the construction and decoration of churches that serve as places of public prayer cannot be understood entirely and exclusively in the sense of application and evidence of piety, for besides piety there may be other motives - the spirit or custom of the time, vanity, imitation of others. But, in any case, if not completely, then to some extent, this zeal constitutes precisely the application of piety and serves as evidence of greater or lesser wealth and strength. Turning to this measure of the piety of our ancestors of the pre-Mongol period, we find that it shows decisively in their favor. It would be exaggerated and completely unfair to attribute to them extraordinary and unparalleled zeal, as some do, mixing house churches with public ones, and being amazed at the number of 600 churches in Kyiv. For house churches, which were very cheap to build and did not require any special sacrifices at all, cannot at all serve as a measure of piety, as they constituted a simple general custom of the time. But, in any case, the zeal for the construction of public churches, which our princes showed in the pre-Mongol period and which is evident from the presentation we made above, positively testifies, if not to an excess of piety, then to its complete prosperity 1700. It was not the positive statutes of the church, but the Christians’ own pious aspirations that created a special type of piety - traveling to holy places to worship the shrine located in them. The custom of these journeys dates back to very ancient times, directly to Saints Constantine and Helen, who returned to Christians the holiest of holy places - Jerusalem. From Greece the custom passed on to us, and from the very ancient times it became with us what it is to this day, that is, a custom that is very zealously revered and very diligently practiced by the people and, moreover, not only by the upper minority, but also by the lower majority or the masses. Already during the reign of Yaroslav there were people who made and wanted to make trips to holy places. Such was the Monk Anthony of Pechersk, a citizen of the city of Lyubech unknown in the world by name, to whom “God put it in his heart to go to the country,” that is, abroad, to foreign holy places, and who, rushing to Athos, took monastic vows there. Such was Theodosius of Pechersk, who in his youth attempted to travel to Jerusalem. Hegumen Daniel, the famous author of the Jerusalem Pilgrim, who was in the holy city at the beginning of the 12th century, speaks of a whole and more or less numerous squad of Russians who were at the same time with him in Jerusalem for worship in 1701. Under the Venerable Euphrosyne of Polotsk, in the second half of the 12th century, there was a special Russian monastery of St. The Mother of God, it is unknown when he appeared (above paragraph after footnote 1458), but owes his existence, as one might think, among other things, to the impulse to provide shelter for Russian admirers. Belonging to the same second half of the 12th century, the Question of Kirik of Novgorod directly and clearly makes it clear that worship trips to Jerusalem were then very numerous 1702. Since these travels, under the conditions of that time (roads on land and methods of transportation at sea), were very difficult, they were considered the most effective means of begging God for any misfortunes and the most effective way of thanking him for any blessings. Therefore, those who prayed to God to prevent or to grant something promised to make a journey to Jerusalem. Moreover, to further demonstrate the immutability of their promise, they used to take an oath on themselves (that is, an oath that they would fulfill the promise) 1703. Unfortunately, I must say that no matter how early travel to holy places began, abuse of this feat began just as early. Bigots, idle parasites and people in general of the most suspicious morality, of whom so many are hiding under the guise of wanderers and wanderers at the present time, as it turns out, date back to the pre-Mongol period. Bishop Niphon of Novgorod says in the Question of Kirikov that others went to Jerusalem only to eat and drink idly: “that is why they go, so that they may eat and drink separately” 1704. It is suspected that the zeal of the common people for wandering, despite their lack of diligence in relation to other and more significant things, flowed from motives not so much direct as the indirect ones now indicated. Travelers to holy places were called pilgrims in the books (as were books containing journeys to holy places and their descriptions), and in folk epics they were called kaliki 1705. The name pilgrim is considered identical with the Western name for the same travelers - palmarii, palmati, palmigeri, which comes from the fact that the latter returned from Jerusalem with palm branches as a sign of the completed journey in 1706, i.e. pilgrim, considering the original pronunciation pilgrim, is derived from palm. The name kalika, in all likelihood, should be derived from the famous Greek shoes kalig (kaliki), about which see the paragraph above, footnote 1293 ff), which could be used by travelers to holy places, as the most comfortable shoes for them (soft and light, which kaligo-shaped shoes are still predominantly used by wanderers) 1707. Folk epics say about the Kaliks that they went on trips, for safety on the road and for mutual assistance, in artels (“Forty Kaliks with Kalikas”) and that during their travels they chose atamans who would watch over the morals of everyone else, preventing them from stealing and engaging in female fornication 1708. Christianity in itself is one; but the peoples who contain it are different. Therefore, regarding its character, to the extent that it depends not on itself, but on the people who perceive it, it had to be reproduced in each people more or less in its own special and individual image. The peoples of Western Europe constituted not only one church, but also one spiritual whole in the broad and full sense of the word, due to the unity of their enlightenment; but even there, under the general physiognomy of the church, the private physiognomies of individual peoples are distinguished. The Greeks and I formed one church; but we did not at all form one spiritual whole with them in relation to enlightenment. Consequently, in our country Christianity could be reproduced in our sense not only somewhat differently from them, but also completely in its own special image. For the pre-Mongol period and for the subsequent time until the 16th century, we have so little information about the nature of our Christianity that we are absolutely unable to imagine it in any living and clearly discernible way. We have sufficient information about the nature of our Christianity, after a huge time from its beginning in our country, only in the 16th-17th centuries. This information allows us to see in our Christianity of the 16th-17th centuries a decisive extreme adherence to external piety and external ritual formality. Christianity, as a religion, consists in a person maintaining in his mind and heart the right faith in God, combined with hope in Him and love for Him. And so that he leads a moral life consistent with this faith, as far as possible becoming like the God he believes in. What constitutes the task (goal of being) of a true Christian (as it was the task or goal of being and a true man, as man came out of the hands of God). But since a person does not consist of one soul, but of soul and body, and he must express the internal in the external, then, in accordance with his nature, in relation to internal faith, he is also required to express it externally, through external prayer and other actions and deeds that constitute external worship of God. Thus, perfect Christianity, as regards its appearance in appearance, requires from a person: firstly, that he lead a moral or virtuous life in accordance with the law of the Gospel, and secondly, that he fulfill the duties of outward reverence for God. Which series of these external duties is the first, which is the second, and what is the mutual relationship between them, this, in addition to the too clear teaching of the Word of God, is apparently completely obvious in itself. A person has two responsibilities: he must believe in God and lead a moral life in accordance with His law; fulfilling the first of these duties, he must express internal faith in external actions that constitute external reverence for God. If a moral life in accordance with the law of God is one of two direct duties, and external reverence for God is only external, so to speak, evidence of compliance with one of these two duties: then it is obvious that direct duty is more than that, which serves only to testify to the fulfillment of the duty. A person who is subordinate to another person is obliged to respect him and fulfill his duties towards him. He must do the first not only in such a way as to nourish a feeling of respect within himself, but also in such a way as to express it through external corresponding signs: however, it is clear that the main thing here is not these external signs, but the fulfillment of duties. From what has just been said, it would apparently follow that the extreme adherence to external piety, consisting in the fact that people place the duties of external reverence above and in place of the duties of a moral and virtuous life - that in the former they consider the main essence of Christianity, and the latter, as it were, cease to be considered direct and positive Christian duties, should not have taken place. In fact, it not only occurs, but is a common occurrence among uneducated people, so that lack of education in relation to Christianity has as its inevitable consequence that a person more or less distorts its meaning, adopting a greater or lesser excess of external piety to the detriment of a moral and virtuous life. The horizon of mental vision of uneducated people is very narrow and, as it were, coincides with the horizon of material vision, limiting itself to what they actually see. External reverence for God with its component actions is only an external testimony and statement of internal feelings nourished by a person who believes in God, whom it is necessary to please and can only be pleased by the deeds of life, which consists in the fulfillment of His moral law. But an uneducated person sees churches with public worship performed in them, sees all other actions of external worship prescribed for public and private performance. And, so to speak, by completely and exclusively focusing one’s gaze on this visible thing, one comes to believe in this alone the whole essence of Christianity and to forget about everything else, as if included in the circle of direct Christian responsibilities and left simply to people’s own will. By acquiring the power to sanctify and save oneself through the external actions of outward worship of God, in addition to and independently of one’s morally good deeds, a person assimilates to them, as it were, some kind of supernatural and magical power (opus operatum). Of course, this is not entirely clear to us; but the entire area of ​​mental and moral pathology of humanity is far from being completely understandable and clear to us. Among all Christian nations, as we have just made clear, it is an inevitable phenomenon that the lower uneducated parts of societies, that is, the lower majorities or masses, suffer to a greater or lesser extent from the inseparable disease of lack of education - an exaggeration of the importance of outward piety to the detriment of a moral and virtuous life. But there may be peoples who are completely uneducated, and then this disease should become a disease of an entire people. We, the Russians, were an uneducated people, and, therefore, the above-mentioned sad incident should have taken place among us now. As we said above, we have no information at all about the nature of our Christianity over the vast period from its beginning in our country to the 16th century. That from the very first minute of its adoption we have internalized external piety to have a meaning that is not entirely due, but more than it should be, there is no doubt about this, for an uneducated person generally cannot help but exaggerate the importance of external piety. But did it begin directly with the complete extreme that we find in the 16th century, or did things in this regard proceed gradually? In turn, there can be no doubt that it is not the first, but the last, and that external piety has its own history with us, which we cannot trace and imagine, but which is absolutely necessary to assume. Having accepted the Christian faith, our ancestors were the same people without education as in subsequent times. But even being people without education, they had to accept it for the first time in its possibly true, and not perverted, form. They accepted Christianity instead of paganism, as a true faith instead of a false faith. But the essential difference between Christianity and paganism is that it, replacing faith in false gods with faith in the true God in relation to man himself, requires that he please God not only through external signs of His veneration, such as external prayer and all external worship of God, which is the only thing paganism demanded, but also certainly and moreover through good deeds, through the fulfillment of the commandments of His moral law. Good deeds and a virtuous life constitute such a decisive contrast between Christianity and paganism, they constitute such a major and fundamental part of its new demands against the latter, that to accept Christianity and not now be aware of its indicated difference from paganism means to accept something that is not understood at all. Consequently, we must here assume one of two things: either that our ancestors accepted Christianity completely without understanding it, or - if they accepted it with a proper understanding of it, then at the same time - with a proper understanding of the meaning of morally good deeds in it. At the time of their adoption of Christianity, our ancestors were uneducated people, as they remained after. But, being uneducated, they did not at all represent, in terms of the degree of their so-called universal human (primary and pre-scientific) development, any perfect savages who would not distinguish their right hand from their left and generally represented primitive unconsciousness. Undoubtedly, they were at such a stage of development that they were able to properly understand what accepted Christianity was. When we say: we were able to properly understand, we must remember that we are not talking about the entire people, including their so-called lower mass, about which there should be other ideas that we indicated above, but about the upper minority, about which alone we are speaking here: the mass of the people did not primarily initially understand Christianity in their own way because they were not able to properly understand it, but because they were not taught and were left to their own devices. Thus, our ancestors, accepting Christianity, had to accept it with a clear understanding of the meaning it assimilates to good deeds and a virtuous life or - which is the same thing - the fulfillment of the moral law of God. And if so, then they could not have directly and immediately begun with what we see in the 16th century, i.e. from completely perverted ideas about the mutual relationship between external piety and personal or actual piety. We are talking here about a general church-historical truth, which has only a very particular application to us, Russians, and which consists in the fact that peoples and uneducated people, however, standing at such a stage of human development that they are able to distinguish the essence of Christianity from paganism, accept this latter in its more or less true form (true, it is understood, not in relation to itself, but in relation to its understanding of it) and that only then it is more or less with them perverted. Initially, uneducated peoples, but possessing the indicated ability of understanding, accept Christianity in such a way as to assimilate the due significance of its requirement from a person of a virtuous life or fulfillment of the moral law of God, and only then, little by little, more slowly or more quickly, so to speak - not holding on to the original height and sinking to the bottom, they put external piety in the place of their own piety. How soon did this transformation or perversion of Christianity begin in our country, how quickly did it proceed and when did it reach the extreme in which it appears to us in the 16th century? We are not at all able to answer all this, as we have said more than once above. The Kievan or pre-Mongol period of Russian history is the period in the history of that Russian tribe that is now called Little Russian. Comparing the later Little Russians with the Great Russians and specifically paying attention to the fact that the Great Russians made a schism, which expresses the identification of the external rites of faith with its dogmas, which in turn is a consequence of extreme attachment to external piety, and that the Little Russians had nothing of the kind and a schism still has no place between them, we come to the conclusion that the two tribes - the Great Russian and the Little Russian - differ significantly in the nature of their spiritual natures and that the later extreme attachment to outward piety, being the work of the Great Russians, to whom the Moscow period belongs, is an expression (and consequence) of their character. This opinion about the difference between the Little Russians and the Great Russians in character, of course, is more or less true, but hardly in relation to the character traits that concern us: To assume about the Little Russians that their character would never fall into that extreme of adherence to outward piety that we see in Moscow in the 16th century is more than doubtful. The later, 16th-century Little Russians, very different from their contemporary Great Russians, are a product of their own special history, different from the history of Great Russia, and what they would have been if their history had been identical with the history of the latter is a question to which a confident answer cannot be given at all. Great Russia, a part of Rus' very remote from Western Europe by its geographical location, began to separate itself to some extent from Western Europe with Andrei Bogolyubsky himself, with whom its history begins, and then completely broke off its ties with it and became a self-enclosed country to such an extent that it represented, as it were, European China. On the contrary, present-day Little Russia not only never broke with Western Europe, but from the very minute when Great Russia began to experience complete separation (invasion of the Mongols), it became closer than before to it (the Kingdom of Galicia-Volyn), and then, having fallen under the state power of Poland, it came under its decisive spiritual influence. The later learned Little Russia, sharply different in its character and the structure of its religious thinking from contemporary Great Russia, is a reproduction of Western-educated Poland. The Little Russians differ more or less in the nature of their spiritual nature from the Great Russians, but, in any case, this difference cannot be imagined in such a way that the Little Russians, if they had remained, like the Great Russians, were uneducated people. And if they were placed in the conditions of the situation of these latter, they would not go to extremes beyond due attachment to external piety. A people that remains uneducated and placed in the position in which the Great Russians were, that is, disconnected from the rest of the world and self-enclosed in itself, cannot more or less avoid falling into this extreme. We do not at all know positively that the Little Russians or - which is the same thing - the Russians of the pre-Mongol period, did not fall into our extremes and that they did not free themselves from it only later. We only consider this an absolutely necessary subject, so our speech must return to where we left it above. We consider it necessary to assume this, firstly, for the reason already stated above, and secondly, for other reasons. A people, although uneducated, but standing at such a level of universal human development as to understand the essence of Christianity and its difference from paganism, as Russians should be represented, must accept Christianity, and cannot but accept it with a proper understanding of the importance it attaches to good deeds or moral life. And for this reason, as stated above, it cannot happen among such a people as the Russians were that they would directly begin with extreme attachment to external piety (since this is already a perversion of Christianity). Such a people, due to their lack of education, must necessarily more or less fall into this extreme over time and then, and it is this “later” that constitutes the question in relation to the Russians, i.e., how soon and when did it come? It could come sooner or slower, depending on the circumstances, and it is precisely the circumstances in which the Russians were in the pre-Mongol period that lead us to assume that it had not yet come then. If a person is left to himself, then certain natural inclinations will develop and manifest themselves more quickly; if he is under influences that will paralyze and retard the development of these inclinations, then it is self-evident that their discovery will take place much more slowly: in relation to the Russians of the pre-Mongol period, the second case took place (while, on the contrary, in relation to the Russians of the Moscow period, the first); and as a consequence of this, what we assume must be assumed. Throughout the entire period, our pre-Mongol ancestors were in relatively lively communication with Western Europe. Due to the geographical position of the country, our princes could not take an active part in the political affairs of all Western Europe; but, nevertheless, they made acquaintance and were in relations with all of it, as can be seen from the fact that they entered into marriages, bringing brides or giving away their maidens, throughout its entire territory. Without taking an active part in the affairs of all of Europe, our princes were in active political relations (friendly or hostile) with our immediate neighbors in the West - the Poles and Hungarians. Throughout the period, in the main cities of Rus' (Kyiv or its own at that time), there were constantly more or less numerous partnerships (companies) of merchants from different places in Western Europe. All this in no way had the consequence that our ancestors wanted to be, like Western Europe, enlightened, borrowing enlightenment from it or from the Greeks; but all this, as we said above, cannot but be given absolutely no significance. An uneducated person who makes acquaintance with educated people, unnoticed by himself and without his direct intention, borrows from the latter some development and becomes superior to that uneducated person who circulates exclusively among others like himself. The arrivals of princesses from Western Europe for marriage were not particularly numerous; but these princesses later raised entire families of children. Moreover, it is very likely to think that the matter in this case was not limited to the princes themselves. But that in their likeness, our boyars took brides from Western Europe, and mainly from neighboring Poland and Hungary. Thus, the acquaintance and connections of our ancestors with Western Europe should have informed them of some general development. But this general development could not help but serve somewhat to maintain light in religious views and to protect against deviation in the sphere of these latter into decisive extremes. A completely undeveloped peasant without a doubt believes that external prayer or bowing before icons is all that is required for salvation; but the peasant, who has some development, already, at least, vaguely understands that this does not amount to everything. Now, of course, the influence we have indicated should not be given too much importance. In itself and separately, it could be so weak in its effect in the religious sphere as to have no significance at all. But besides this, as it were, side influence, there was another direct influence, to which it served only as an addition, and to diminish the significance of which would be unfair. We understand the Greek influence. Throughout the pre-Mongol period, the Russian metropolitans were Greeks; along with the metropolitans, there were always a number of Greek Russian bishops; Greeks lived under the metropolitans and bishops as their officials or cathedral choir-shans. The consequence of this state of affairs must necessarily be that the religious views of the Russians were more or less identical with those of the Greeks and did not deviate from them. All natural Russian bishops, who represented the conductors of religious views in a spiritual or church environment, naturally had to try to assimilate for themselves the views and, in general, the character and spirit of thinking of their metropolitans. The great princes with their boyars, who represented in a secular environment the image that everyone else should look up to, were under the teaching influence and guidance of the same metropolitans, along with the Greeks who lived with them. All other Greeks who lived outside of Kyiv had to directly support Greek views throughout the whole of Rus'. To make our speeches more convincing for the reader, we allow ourselves to turn to an argument that is not particularly pleasant: If the rule of the Tatars had the consequence that our ancestors were largely infected with the Tatar spirit, then it was impossible that the rule of the Greeks (spiritual) would not have as a consequence the maintenance of Greek views. We have people who believe that it is to the Greeks that we owe our extreme attachment to outward piety. But this is completely unfair and amounts to nothing more than a misunderstanding. Protestant and rationalist writers represent the Greek Church for its acceptance of icon veneration and the veneration of the relics of saints, with which all external worship of God is connected and from which all external worship developed, as the culprit of the return to pagan idolatry and, in general, of everything that is encompassed by the German word Abgöttereï these reproaches of writers are thought to be attributed to the external piety of our Rus', as it is in the 16th century. But the great difference between the use of any thing and its abuse is the great difference between accepting external reverence for God as a necessary matter and acquiring its due meaning, and perverting the meaning of this reverence for God and taking the place of moral Christian deeds. If the aforementioned writers, acting completely unfairly, reproach the Greeks for their use, this does not at all mean that the latter are to blame for our abuse. It cannot be said about the Greeks that, as their enlightenment declined, the purity of their Christian views did not become completely clouded and that they did not lean somewhat towards the side of unjustifying righteousness. In our pre-Mongol period, we see a custom among the Greeks for dying people to take monastic tonsure before death, and there is a vain hope of receiving the reward of monastic deeds for one short-term perception of the monastic image. But regarding the origin of this custom, one should probably think that the reason for this was not so much the now indicated vain hope, but rather a special opinion formed about monasticism: monasticism was taken as a sacrament and, as it were, for a second baptism 1709, which is why it is probable to believe that the real reason for the origin of the custom was the desire and hope of people to blot out the sins of their previous worldly life as much as their baptism actually blots them out. As for the deeds and actions of outward piety in the proper sense, the Greeks never went so far as to go to our extreme regarding them - so that, perverting their meaning and putting in them, as it were, the whole essence of Christianity, putting them in the place of morally good deeds. In the pre-Mongol period that followed our period, the Greeks, of course, did not rise in their understanding of Christianity against this last time, for the means of this understanding - enlightenment - did not go uphill for them, but more and more downhill. However, even in later times we do not find among them anything similar to what we have in the 16th century. The Monk Maxim the Greek, having appeared in Russian society of the 16th century, saw himself as if in a completely different moral world - to such an extent was the difference between the Russians and Greeks of that time. Perhaps someone will want to think that the Monk Maxim castigates the extreme attachment to the outward piety of the Russians of his time, not because it outraged him as a Greek, but because he was an exceptional man, towering above the society of his day, and that, had he remained in Greece, he would have castigated it among the Greeks themselves. But, firstly, if the Greeks, like us, fell into this extreme, then there would be accusers there even without Maximus, while we do not know them. Secondly, we find evidence of a sharp difference in relation to the subject of our speech between the later Russians and Greeks among our contemporary Russians and Greeks, turning to their mutual comparison. Regarding their behavior in churches or churches during public worship, Russians and Greeks differ significantly from each other: among us, ordinary people try to pray as hard as possible, that is, to bow as much as possible (so in rural churches, even some noise arises from the rustling of hands on clothes making crosses). On the contrary, in Greek churches there is almost no “praying” in our sense at all, so to the unaccustomed Russian eye, Greeks in church during prayer are something strange: they stand and do not pray (“stands - as they say - and does not cross themselves”). The Greek limits his so-called worship prayer to making several bows at the entrance to the church, and then doing a small number of them at certain important times of the services (and he does not do them with that extreme mechanicalness, as is the case with our ordinary people). The Russian will probably think that the Greeks in this case retreated from ancient piety; in fact, this is not the case at all: the Greeks in this case remain with the ancient custom, and the Russians introduced their own custom, in accordance with their special view of bowing. Now the indicated difference between the Russians and the Greeks, in a private but undoubted way, shows that one and the other are not at all identical in their views on external piety, and, therefore, shows that the former did not borrow their views from the latter 1710. So, it is necessary to think that our pre-Mongol ancestors had not yet fallen into the complete extreme of adherence to external piety or had not yet reached the complete perversion of its meaning, which we find to be the moral disease of our later ancestors. To what extent were they alien to this disease and to what extent did they correctly understand the meaning of outward piety in the matter of salvation, this constitutes a question to which, in any case, it would be impossible to give a mathematically precise answer. For here we are not talking about objects that can be determined with mathematical precision and we are not able to answer the question with non-mathematical precision due to lack of means. A person who does not have enlightenment must inevitably deviate to this extreme, and as for the circumstances in which he is placed, they either retard his inclined movement towards this extreme or accelerate the latter. Since the first circumstances can only more or less delay and paralyze the movement, but not completely destroy and stop it, it follows that our pre-Mongol ancestors cannot be represented in such a way that they do not deviate in the least towards our extremes and that they remain motionless on the line and in the place of true understanding. We must think of them in such a way that they more or less deviated towards our extremes, but that the deviation had not yet reached the line beyond which the real and real extreme began. Falling into extreme adherence to external piety, a person does this at the expense of his own and real piety, which consists in fulfilling the moral law of God. Being pious, one cannot help but be correspondingly pious; on the contrary, being pious, one can be completely impious. Godliness consists in loving God, as the apostle says, in deed and in truth (1 John 3:18); and whoever loves God in deed cannot help but express his love for Him with outward signs. Piety consists in expressing one's feelings for God in word and tongue and in other external ways, but it is quite possible to express externally what one does not have inside. Piety consists in fulfilling God's commandment to love others; and whoever truly loves his neighbors, how can he not love God and at the same time not honor Him internally and externally, when the first love is from God and when everyone who loves his neighbors is born of God and knows God (1 John 4:7)? Piety consists of outwardly honoring God by means of verbal prayer, bending of the body or prostrations, and other outward acts; but with the words of the mouth and the bowing of the body and all sorts of other outward actions, it is very possible to honor God in such a way that your heart is far away from Him (Matthew 15:8-9), and so that we do not at all think about fulfilling His commandment to love our neighbors. The mutual relationship between one’s own piety and outward piety is based on the now indicated mutual relationship that when a person exaggerates the importance and distorts the meaning of the second, he does so to the detriment of the first. Man creates for himself and, as it were, elevates into his own dogma the sinful opinion that the most important and important thing in Christianity is to fulfill the commandment of outward piety; but the more diligently he fulfills this imaginary first commandment, the more and more he becomes careless about fulfilling the real first commandment, as the Savior himself testifies to this, pointing to the example of the Jewish scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 23:23, Luke 11:43). What happened to these latter, according to the testimony of the Savior, was that, caring for the most careful observance of human traditions, they abandoned the commandment of God (Mark 7:8). A similar thing happens to Christians when they place outward piety in the first place in which human traditions stood among the scribes and Pharisees: by assimilating such importance to the deeds of this piety that as if they contained the whole essence of Christianity, people abandon and forget the commandment of God to observe His moral law. Of course, this does not happen in such a way that the moral law of the Gospel is directly and positively denied; but this happens in such a way that, not being denied, it is posited as if in complete oblivion. Do these things appropriately and not forsake them, the Savior says to the scribes and Pharisees about the mutual relationship between the most important and less important commandments to be observed (Matthew 23:23): moving the moral law and outward piety and putting the first not in the place of what should be done, but in the place of what should not be abandoned. People, in their powerlessness to fulfill their duties in their entirety, allow themselves and find it excusable to completely abandon what should only not be abandoned; By doing things that constitute outward piety with all their zeal, and thinking about them wrongly, people imagine themselves to be sufficiently good and pious Christians to care about anything else. Perhaps such self-delusion (and, as it were, a moral and pathological phenomenon) is not entirely understandable; but it is there before us, as a fact of our life, for even hitherto a very significant part of Russian pious people do not believe piety in outward piety alone? So, it is necessary to think about our pre-Mongol ancestors that in the matter of understanding piety they were still free from that extreme that is our disease in later times. But in relation to piety, of course, the one who understands it more correctly is superior; therefore, we must think of them that in this case they were higher than our later ancestors. The publisher of the periodical collection “Ancient and New Russia,” Mr. V. Gratsiansky, wishing to gain the fame of a scientist at our expense, placed in his publication (currently 1880, the month of August) an article against us, to which he gave a witty and biting title: “The supposedly disappeared city, or how learned Russian historians are sometimes mistaken,” and which at the top of the pages he inscribed: “The erroneous opinion of Mr. Golubinsky." At the Kyiv Tithe Church of the Virgin Mary, among its immovable estates was the city of Polony. G.V. Gratsiansky was also born in Polonnoye. Curious to know that we are talking about Polonny, he goes to our book and finds... that we do not know at all where Polonny was [page 288 footnote 991]. “How,” exclaims Mr. Gratsiansky, “does the professor’s ignorance extend to the point that he does not know where Polonny was and is?” Oh, to write, to write!.. But Mr. Gratsiansky hastened to show his very great (and we dare to assure him - not uninteresting) learning. He was born in Polonny Volynsky. The two Volyn Polonnys were very well known to us (and if he had read our book a little more carefully, he would have seen that we also know that Polon(n)y, about which Mr. Barsov considers it necessary to refer to the authority of Mr. Solovyov himself. Of the two Polonny Volynskys, one, not the homeland, however, of Mr. Gratsiansky, is mentioned in the Ipatian Chronicle). But we are not talking about one of the Polonny Volynskys, but about the Polonny Kievsky. We really don’t know the area of ​​this Kievsky Polonoy, and if Mr. Gratsiansky shows it to us, we will be grateful to him. (In the first summer of the reign of Gleb Yuryevich in Kyiv, which is 1169 according to the Laurentian Chronicle and 1172 according to the Ipatsky Chronicle, many Polovtsians came, who, having divided into two halves, stood - some near Pereyaslavl, others near Korsun, and who called to them to order the world, the Grand Duke. Gleb Yuryevich, Having listened to the call of the Polovtsians, he first went to half of them in Pereyaslavl. But when he set off, he sent to tell the Korsun Polovtsians to wait for him, they thought: “Behold, Gleb was going to this country to one of the Polovtsians, and there he would be stuck (stuck, for a long time), but he didn’t come to us: let’s go beyond Kiev, take the villages, let’s go (and thus go, it is implied - having arranged things perfectly) with the full force in Polovtsian.” As they thought, so they did: “they went to fight for Kiev, and came to Polonoye (version Full) to the Holy Theotokos, to the city of Tithes and to Semyn (we quote according to Ipatskaya, in Lavrentievskaya: Semynya) and took the village without knowledge.” It is absolutely clear here, firstly, that of course Polony Kiev or those who were in the Glebova region; It is absolutely clear here, secondly, what kind of Kyiv is from Korsun - not in the direction of Polonny Volynsky. The place of Semcha or Semocha, mentioned with Polony, is indicated in the chronicle either on the river or near the Teterev River - Ipatskaya under 1257, 2nd edition p. 555. Looking for Semcha beyond Kiev from Korsun, it would be necessary to place it between the lower Teterev and the Dnieper. But on the map of Boplan” attached to the History of Little Russia by Bantysh-Kamensky, we find a note made that until the 16th century, now the indicated area was an uninhabited swamp. Therefore, Semcha, and with it Polonoy, must be looked for in the upper Kiev Teterev or near the present city of Radomysl). In response to the unceremoniousness of Mr. Gratsiansky, which he allows himself towards us, we will give him good advice not to write articles like the one he wrote against us. We have neither the time nor the desire to answer him in the way he would give us the right to. But he can attack a person who has time and desire - then he will be unwell... Our old ancestors had the custom of writing not prefaces to books, but afterwords. Using their example, I intended to write a somewhat lengthy afterword to the present second half of the volume in order to make explanations regarding the part of my story completed in it that I would find necessary and useful. But various considerations force me to postpone my intention. Instead of an afterword and as some replacement for it, I allow myself to place here my short speech, with which I preceded my doctoral disputation of 1711. ... "Turning to my history, I, as I think, do not need to answer the question in many words: what prompted me to undertake its publication. The history of the Russian church, in order to achieve the possible degree of perfection desired from any history as a science, must be processed. This processing, just like the processing of any other history, cannot be the work of one or two hands, but awaits a whole and more or less long series of workers. The processing of Russian church history has already a solid and lasting beginning has been made; but after the beginners, to whom belongs (and let there be!) all the glory, as such, many continuers must appear. I have a zealous desire to be one of these latter in order to make my contribution, and this is the answer to the question about the motives that guided me. Desire and the fulfillment of desire are different things: Whether I was able to add anything to what my predecessors had done—I, of course, must leave it to others to judge. Without arrogating to myself the right to be my own judge, I consider some explanations not inappropriate and, even more, I recognize the need for some justifications. It is an unfortunate truth that the history of the Russian Church in general, and the pre-Mongol period in particular, is not very rich in historical material from which it should be created. Regarding the pre-Mongol period, to which the part of my history submitted for the degree is devoted, the truth is not only that it is not very rich in historical material, but also that it is poor in it to the very extreme and to the very last degree. A completely bare and not entirely complete list of metropolitans, incomplete lists of bishops, lists of stone churches: this is almost everything that our chronicles of the pre-Mongol period give to church history; and besides the chronicles - no historical acts and no historical monuments. In this state of affairs, the historian of the Russian church, no matter how tormented he may be by the ideals of history, is, of course, unable to give the history of the pre-Mongol period any real and any proper: if there is no information at all about the government activities of the metropolitans, if nothing at all is known about them; it is clear that nothing can be said about their activities and that it is impossible to draw their portraits as living and morally individual people. Refusing what is impossible, the historian of the Russian church obviously undertakes to turn all his concerns to what, one way or another, is possible for him. The history of our church, like the history of any other church and in general of any society of people, is the history not only of individuals representing the so-called historical persons, but also the impersonal history of the institutions that make up its external organization: In addition to the metropolitans, as individuals, we had a metropolitanate and a hierarchy in general, as a church-governmental institution; In addition to historical figures, for example, monks, we had monasticism as a moral and social institution. It is impossible to talk about individuals when there is no information about them; but it is possible to some extent to reconstruct the histories of institutions as impersonal mechanisms, even if the historical material is absent or only very scanty. In this case, to complete the material, if it is missing, or for its proper use, if it is very scarce, so that by itself, representing only fragmentary and dark hints, cannot be used, it turns out to be possible to turn to the power of two means: analogy and reverse conclusions from later times. We borrowed the institutions of the church, together with the church itself, from Greece; therefore, it is necessary to assume similarities between her church institutions and ours, and, therefore, information about her church institutions can to some extent compensate for the absence or make up for the deficiency and illuminate the darkness of our information about these institutions in our Rus'. Institutions do not exist in societies in such a way that they change their spirit, character and external structure every day. If societies do not experience sudden violent upheavals arising from private initiative that reorganize their lives, then institutions maintain the unity of their spirit and character, and, in general, of the external system, just as steadily as life itself steadily preserves itself. Consequently, in the history of the Russian church there is reason to draw conclusions from the latest pre-Petrine era to the most ancient. Now the indicated means of reconstructing the history of institutions, it goes without saying, cannot be considered completely satisfactory and, of course, it is not at all the same as the direct means - positive information. But if the historian does not have this last resort at his disposal, then the use of our means can still, to some extent, provide him with a service, and, therefore, in order to do something, it is necessary to use them. For my part, I diligently tried to take advantage of the side remedies that I am talking about, as far as I was able to do so. The part of my history submitted for my degree includes a chapter on management. Anyone slightly familiar with Russian church history knows that our church administration of the pre-Mongol period is shrouded in the darkness of complete obscurity. We, of course, have the knowledge that in the pre-Mongol period we had metropolitans, bishops and lower parish clergy. But how the metropolitans and bishops ruled the church, where they came from and what the lower clergy was, positive information does not give us any answers to these and other questions. I tried with all my zeal, as far as I could, with the help of the means now indicated, to shed some light into this darkness... Any history regarding its material, whether it is abundant or scanty, must be subjected to critical processing. The rule of ordinary life: not to believe everything that people say and write has exactly the same application to history. Just as nowadays, when preparing material for future history, people, partly out of ignorance, partly out of direct intentions, write about affairs and events that are destined to become the property of history, far from being the only pure truth, so it was in ancient times. In ancient times, according to the conditions of social life at that time, there was still much greater freedom for unintentional and intentional lies: and to this day folk art creates historical legends, but these legends no longer have the opportunity to acquire the significance of historical material; and now, perhaps, there would still be people who, for one purpose or another, would not refuse to compose historical legends, but they are under the control of the current printed publicity. In general, the need for criticism in relation to the material of any history is completely clear and obvious, and - no matter how naive that future historian of our time will be who gives complete faith to everything that he receives from us in the form of historical material, we would be just as naive if we treated the material of past history in our hands with similar complete faith. In my study of Russian church history, I set as my deliberate task a critical attitude towards its material. Criticism led me, among other things, to deny the authenticity of the story of the baptism of St. Vladimir, placed in the chronicle, and I recognize it as a later legend. Regarding this, so to speak, major denial, I consider it necessary, firstly, to note that it is completely unfair to accuse me of being the first to dare to raise my hand to the story. Long before me, this was done by the late Sergei Mikhailovich Solovyov, who sees in the story nothing more than a reproduction of later traditions or legends, and who does not accept either ambassadors coming to Vladimir with an offer of faiths, or sending them his ambassadors to inspect the faiths on the ground in 1712. The difference between me and Sergei Mikhailovich in relation to disbelief in the story is only that he expresses it relatively briefly, and I express it relatively at length. But this difference is explained by the fact that he is a civil historian, and I am a church historian. The authority of the late Sergei Mikhailovich, I hope, is strong enough for me to come under his protection from accusations that I acted in this case with not entirely excusable frivolity. If they tell me that I, as a church historian, should have taken up arms in defense of the story against Mr. Solovyov, then I will answer this by saying that there are cases when a church historian sees himself in the need to agree in his field with a civil historian. Secondly, I had to hear accusations that with my denial of the story I was absolving St. Vladimir is the crown of glory with which he is adorned, as if I were bringing him down from the high pedestal on which he stands, and as if I was taking away from him the title of Equal-to-the-Apostles. I am not inventing accusations - I actually had to hear them: but how they could be made, I do not understand at all. St. Vladimir is adorned with his crown of glory, stands on his high pedestal and received the title of Equal-to-the-Apostle from the church because he baptized Rus': but do I, by denying the authenticity of the story of his baptism, deny the fact of his baptism of Rus'? Vladimir, the story claims, accepted the Greek faith because he was convinced of its truth: but don’t I affirm the same thing and say something different? My disagreement with the story is that according to it, Vladimir sent ambassadors to inspect the faiths and that after this inspection he decided to accept the Greek faith, and not any other, because it was found by the ambassadors to be the best. But I do not allow inspection and consider it necessary to assume a direct and immediate conviction of the truth of the Greek faith. So it's all about that choice. We, the Russians, representing an exception among all the peoples who had the opportunity to change their fatherly paganism to another faith, instead of paganism accepted Greek Orthodox Christianity, not in the same way as everyone else did - they convinced us of its truth, and we accepted. And so that, not trusting third-party beliefs, we ourselves carried out an examination of all faiths, and that according to our own examination we found the Greek faith to be the best. To prove that this choice of faith is something very incredible in itself and at the same time something completely unknown to our ancient, senior chroniclers or contemporary historical narrators, would mean again repeating what I already say in my book. But let’s assume this incredible choice of faith: in fact, does Vladimir, as the baptist of Rus' and as an equal to the apostles, in this case appear in a better light than in my presentation of the matter? Ambassadors from different nations come to Vladimir with offers of faith; he listens to all the ambassadors and, not convinced by any of them, makes only the general decision that it is necessary to change paganism to some other faith. Having made this general decision, he withdraws from further personal participation in resolving the issue of faith and instructs the 10 wise and intelligent men from among his boyars assigned for this to choose from several other faiths, agreeing, by implication, to accept the faith that the latter choose. Let us assume that this was possible, although Vladimir, intending to renounce paganism not for some other known faith, but in general in order to accept some other faith, will present a very tricky riddle: But a person who accepted only the intention of changing the old faith to some new one and then left it to others to make the choice of a new faith, can he be recognized as a person acting according to his own sincere conviction? Isn’t it clear that if we want to present the matter as it is presented in the story, we will get in relation to Vladimir not only to see in him a person acting out of sincere conviction, but, on the contrary, to see in him a wonderful example of an extraordinary indifferentist? “I am ready to renounce paganism (for an unknown reason), and you go and choose, whatever you know, another faith” - in this strange way the story makes us imagine St. Vladimir. The unknown author of our story, one must think, was guided by good intentions when composing it. But this does not prevent the story from being of little substance... In the chapter on education, I say that we Russians, in the pre-Mongol period, as well as for a very long time after, did not have real education - that our education was one simple literacy, with our own reading in church teaching books translated from Greek. Whoever remembers and accepts Karamzinsky’s assertion that there was a time when Russia “was not only vast, but in comparison with others and the most educated state” of 1713 Europe, or that, at least, it was not inferior in this respect to the first European powers of 1714, it is, of course, unpleasant to hear speeches that are completely different. But after Karamzin, a lot of water has passed under the bridge and a lot of time has passed. In those days, as Karamzin wrote his stories, we somehow still looked at enlightenment very lightly: we thought that it could disappear from the people for the most insignificant reasons, because, on the contrary, we were self-deluded by the confidence that it would cost nothing to implant it among the people. Hence the possibility of Karamzin’s idea, which saved our national honor, that enlightenment was established in our country - that it had a brilliant period of existence, and that then the division of our fatherland (into appanages) and internecine wars (princes) suppressed it among us, so that in the 8th century we already began to lag behind the powers of Western Europe in this regard 1715. But after Karamzin, we saw and became convinced that it is not very easy to implant enlightenment among the people, and from here, in relation to our history, we realized that it is not very easy for implanted enlightenment to disappear. This was joined by the example of Novgorod, which Karamzin strangely forgot about, but which stood outside the internecine wars of the princes and which did not even need to pay off the oppressive power of the barons, which, according to Karamzin, the cities of Western Europe had to do in 1716. Be that as it may, only our historians who followed Karamzin - the Reverends Philaret and Makariy and Sergei Mikhailovich Solovyov - no longer talk at all about how in the pre-Mongol period we had a real education and that during the period we had it, if not in a brilliant, then in any condition. They all talk only about literacy, although the eldest among them in time, the Eminence Filaret, speaking about literacy, uses phrases that seem to be talking about real enlightenment 1717. Thus, when I assert that in the pre-Mongol period we did not have real enlightenment, I am not at all saying anything new against my predecessors. In this case, I seem to differ somewhat from my predecessors only in that I speak about this with more urgency than they do. Why I speak with urgency, I explain this in my book itself. Whether a people is enlightened or not are two completely different things; in the first case there are some consequences, in the second - others. We lacked enlightenment, and this absence was accompanied by its own, that is, corresponding, consequences, gave a peculiar character to the history of our church and produced peculiar phenomena in it: and therefore I speak about our lack of enlightenment with urgency. Perhaps I speak with a little overdue urgency; If this is true, then in my apology I can say that the historian is a living person and that, speaking about the past, he cannot completely renounce the present. In our country, contrary to the bright hopes to which the contemporaries of the venerable historiographer indulged and he himself led them, it has not yet entered into the general and living consciousness of everyone that we urgently need enlightenment - that both in the state and in the church (in the latter case on the natural side, on the supernatural side) it constitutes the fundamental principle on which everything is based: For a person who deals with lack of enlightenment in history and who sees its fruits, as I do I think it is, to some extent, excusable to appear to my readers as an apologist for enlightenment. To be a historian is in some ways almost as delicate as to be a publicist. The history of any society cannot be a word of praise or a panegyric to it, but must be an accurate reproduction of its past life with all the advantages and disadvantages of this latter; otherwise it will lose all its meaning and cease to be history. But, speaking about the shortcomings of the past tense, sometimes it is impossible not to capture the present to some extent, for the very simple reason that sometimes the past still continues to more or less remain the present. Thus, in some cases, the historian, willy-nilly, becomes partly a publicist. Meanwhile, there are people who look at this with their own eyes - who, putting the past at the complete disposal of the historian, would like to make demands on him that, as he knows, he carefully avoid the present, even if only at the obvious detriment to history. That is, at least to avoid speeches about the present, he had to refuse full and proper speeches about the past. Is the historian obliged to comply with this requirement? If he had submitted to the demand, then, allowing for silence, he would have been forced to bend his conscience; and as soon as he allows himself to do this, then history is no longer history. For my part, I was of the opinion that it is better to be reproached by people who make unscientific and extra-scientific demands on science than to abandon the obligation to be a historian with a sincere conscience. At the same time, to justify both my personal and history in general, I consider it necessary to add the following. I don’t know whether it’s fair and whether it’s entirely good to act when in any deliberate speeches about the present tense, trying to point out its shortcomings, they certainly suspect reprehensible intentions; but history, when it is forced, together with the past tense, to touch upon the present, not only does not mean to insult this latter, but, on the contrary, renders it a good service. The shortcomings of the present time are something that is known to everyone, and, therefore, history does not do anything like interfering with its own business and revealing some secrets that should not be made public. People who see shortcomings and do not know the reasons from which they occurred place all responsibility for them on those to whom they belong; history, explaining the reasons, how the shortcomings occurred and how they were formed historically, shows that such an accusation is far from fair... I had to hear comments that had the sense of sharp accusations that in views, opinions and judgments I deviate too much from my predecessors. Allowing myself to think that people who want to blame me for my originality or originality exaggerate it quite a bit. And on the other hand, allowing myself not to find too great a crime in having the courage to be independent, I can then say in my own defense: I hold views, express opinions and judgments that seem to me the most true and thorough, as do all people who speak from their own sincere convictions. Of course, I may be wrong in my views, opinions and judgments. But this is possible, and happens to all people, and if everyone refrained from declaring beliefs that they consider true, in fear that what they accept as true may turn out to be false - and no one will ever dare to deny this possibility - in this case, people would have to do something to put a seal of perfect silence on their lips. This is from the subjective side. From the objective side, I can say in my defense that every history has the hope of being properly developed not in the case when those working on it put aside concerns about independent research, which is the cause of differences in views, opinions and judgments, but, on the contrary, in the case when they consider this independent research to be their obligatory task. The too great and not entirely understandable intolerance among us other people towards the independence of scientific research involuntarily brings to mind the words of the late Pyotr Simonovich Kazansky, with which he addressed the late Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin on the occasion that the latter very unfriendly met the new historical theories and opinions of Sergei Mikhailovich Solovyov. Having pointed out to Pogodin that even though all the new theories and opinions were erroneous, nothing else could come from this for science other than good, Pyotr Simonovich points out to the enemy of new theories and opinions the final result that should result from the disagreement of researchers: “the view (of objects) is expanding, new sides are opening up (in them), and (what we all strive for) the truth will triumph” 1718. Every person does no more than he can do, and therefore the success of every person’s activity does not actually depend on him. It depends on the person himself to work to the best of his ability, diligently and conscientiously. I don’t know if I managed to add anything to what my predecessors had done, as I sincerely wished, but I tried to work in such a way as to reproach myself as little as possible for what depended on myself.” The purpose of which is to bring earthly well-being to people. Just like actual states are extremely far from their ideal (quite often completely forgetting about bringing well-being to people, which is their main and own goal). The time of Chrysostom is ranked among these luminous times - and, however, according to the image of St. father, it was far from being morally luminous either at the top or at the bottom of society. The Church is, of course, a school of faith and morality, but not in the sense of its own and initial teaching, but in the sense of repetition and strengthening. Who among even educated people does not adhere to the belief that Monday is a difficult day for starting any business and for undertaking travel? This superstition, coming from pagan times, is based on the fact that among the pagans Monday was the day of the moon (Lunae dies, Lundi, Montag), and the moon, as a mythological deity, was the patroness of spells and sorcery (B. Hederichs Mythol. Lexicon, sub v. Luna, - mainly love spells, which is why love songs refer to the moon); therefore, according to pagan ideas, on Monday (which was, as it were, the day of sorcerers), a person was subjected to the greatest effect of charms directed against him. A. Adam Roman antiquities in Russian translation, II, 92 beginning. When the Baltic Slavs introduced it in 1124. Christianity St. Otton of Bamberg, then some of them decided: Nobis consilium videtur, ut Deum christianorum habeamus et tamen antiquos deos nostros non dimittamus et juxta illius aram nostris quoque diis aram constituamus, ut eos omnes pariter colendo illum et istos pariter habeamus propitios, – Vita Ottonis in Acta SS. Ballandistov, Julii t. 1 p.m. 414 fin. The Hungarian Duke or Grand Duke Geyza, according to Dietmar of Merseburg, began to Christianize in such a way as to simply add Christianity to his former paganism: hic, writes Dietmar, Deo omnipotenti variisque deorum inlusionibus immolans, cum ab antistite suo ob haec accusaretur, divitem se et ad haec facienda satis potentem affirmavit (Chronic., lib. VIII c. 3). Pagan festivals were not only prayers to the gods, but also entertainment in honor of them; and the need for fun is so characteristic of people... The Greeks, even to this day, are a very superstitious people and covertly paganize no less, if not much more than we do (to what extent a lot of paganism remained among them among the masses of the people at the end of the 7th century, this is shown by the rules of the Trullo Council 61, 62 and 65; regarding the present time we can indicate the books: Bernhard Schmidt Das Volksleben der Neugriechen und das hellenische Altertum, - first part: Leipzig, 1871, and Η . G. Polita, Μελέτη ἐπί τοῦ βίου τῶν νεωτέρων Ἑ λληνων, - first part: Ἐν Ἀθ ή ναις, 1871, which indicate other books existing on our subject). Books regarding the pagan mythology of the Slavs and in particular the Russians and regarding the pagan superstitions remaining among the latter: Inscription of the Slavic mythology by M. Kastorsky, St. Petersburg. 1841, Slavic mythology by N. Kostomarov, Kyiv 1847, Studies on the pagan worship of the ancient Slavs by I. Sreznevsky, St. Petersburg. 1848, Russian common holidays and superstitious rituals of M. Snegirev in four editions, Moscow 1837–1839, Russian folk anniversary of P. Sakharov, placed in Tales of the Russian People - in the second volume of book 7, All-Russian diary of church, folk, family holidays and economic activities, omens and fortune telling by A.S. Petrushevich, Lvov, 1865, Poetic views of the Slavs on nature by A. Afanasyev, three volumes, Moscow, 1866–1869. The first language of the Indo-European peoples, which disappeared, it is understood, with their separation, was preserved most intact in the so-called Sanskrit language (which means a structured, processed language), which was the first or oldest special language of the Indians and which, having ceased to be a spoken language very long ago, remains as a dead language, like Latin, Old Greek, in the Brahminical sacred books (Vedas). Helmold speaks about the recognition by the Slavs of a single heavenly God, - Chronic. Slavor. lib. 1, § 83 (and Procopius of Caesarea in De bello Gothico, III, 14, by the single god of the Slavs, the creator of lightning, means the chief of the lower gods - Perun). That this one God was Svarog is clear from the fact that in the genealogy of the gods he (Svarog) is placed in first place and that the other gods are his (Svarog) children, Svarozhichi (Ipat Chronicle under 1114, 2nd edition p. 200: first Svarog, then the Sun king, son of Svarog; in the word of the lover of Christ, about whom there is a footnote paragraph in the first half of the volume 1534: “they pray to the fire, calling him Svarozhich”; Dietmar of Merseburg, Chronic, lib. VI, p. 17, says that the first of the minor gods was called Svarozhich by the Slavs - Zuarasici). Among the Baltic Slavs, Svarog was called Svyatovit (Zuantevit, - Helmold, lib. II, § 12). The name Svarog is explained by the Sanskrit Svar - sky and ga - walking (Buslaeva On the influence of Christianity on the Slavic language, p. 50). – As for the word God, some see in it the Sanskrit baha - happiness, beauty, strength, love, virtue (everything divine, everything good and desirable) or bahy - many, great (bah to increase, increase), others derive from the Sanskrit bu - to be. (Existing, - News of the Academy of Sciences vol. 1 p. 241 and vol. 2 p. 386, cfr ibid p. 522, also Buslaev ibid. p. 122). Helmold, lib. 1, § 83: Inter multiformia vero deorum numina, quibus arva, silvas, tristitias atque voluptates attribuunt, non diffitentur unum Deum in celis ceteris imperitantem,– illum prepotentem celestia tantum curare, hos vero, distributis officiis obsequentes, de sanguine ejus processisse et unumquemque eo prestantiorem, quo proximiorem illi Deo deorum. Helmold ibid.: Est autem. Sclavis multiplex ydolatrie modus, non enim omnes in eandem superstitionis consuetudinem consentiunt. Helmold lib. 1, § 52 (A. Afanasyev 9, 92).– Dietmar of Merseburg translates the word white with the Latin word pulcher: Belegora (White Mountain), quod pulcher mons dicitur, Chronic, lib. VI c. 38 start; Beleknegini (Beloknegini), id est pulchra domina, lib. VIII c. 3. Bodyansky “On a Prologue of the Moscow Spiritual Printing House and on the identity of the Slavic deities Khors and Dazhdbog,” in Readings of the Society of History and Antiquities, year 1 (1846) book 2. The sun, acting on the earth from a distance, directly on the earth reproduces itself in fire. The Slavs worshiped fire: “they pray to fire, calling it Svarozhich” (quote a little higher). With high probability, one should think that the Slavs worshiped fire not as a separate deity, but as a reproduction of the sun, or as the same sun, only in its earthly image. Having been transferred from the goddess of marital love to this love itself, the word lada was used in the old days as an affectionate name by which spouses called each other. In the Tale of Igor’s Campaign: “the Russian wives burst into tears, and howled: we can no longer understand our dear ways” (according to the publication in Russian Monuments III, 98 fin. and also pp. 216, 218 and 220). The words used until now indicate the character of Lada - okay, get along. In folk songs, Lada is constantly called Did-Lada: “oh! Did-Lada." Did means great and was an epithet adopted by Lada, so that: “oh Did-Lada” means: “oh great Lada!” The life of Otto of Bomberg says: Herovit (Yarovit) lingua latina Mars dicitur,-Acta SS. Bollandistov, Julii, t. 1 p.m. 409 fin. That he was the god of fertility is clear from the testimony of the same life of St. Otto, – ibid. r. 408 fin. That among us, with the name Yarila, he was the god of sensual pleasures, is evident from the fact that Yarila at the festival of his funeral was depicted in the form of a doll with a huge male reproductive member (Afanasyev, I, 442 cfr, Snegirev IV, 55). They consider the gods Ruevit, Yason or Khason (Jesse) to be the same as Yarovit, seeing in the names special philological forms of the name Yarovit (Afanasyev I, 443 fin.). That Tur is one and the same with Yarovit or Yarila, we have evidence of this: near Zagreb or Agram in Croatia there is an area called Turovo Polje in Croatian, and Marsfeld in German (see Ancient and New Russia 1879 in No. 8, article: “Ludevit Gai”, p. 280 col. 2). In some places in Russia, the word tur is not a printed word and means the same as the Greek φαλλός (information reported by one service comrade, originally from the Saratov province; see. also Snegirev Ι V, 55 sub fin.; in Homer in the Iliad the adjective θοῦρος, identical with our tour, is a constant epithet of Mars). One of the two gods of love - Yarilo or Lada - was also called Kostrub (in Little Russia) and Kostroma (in Great Russia, Afanasiev III, 724 fin. sqq). The clan or brownie was the patron of entire families or houses; women in labor were patronesses of individual people (corresponding to Christian guardian angels). 1) Under 980: “Postavn (Vladimir in Kiev) idols on the hill outside the courtyard of the tower: Perun..., and Khursa-Dazhbog, and Stribog and Simarga (a variant of Semargl) and Mokosh.” It can be assumed that they were not Russian deities, but foreign ones, accepted by Vladimir or earlier into the host of Russian deities (and later adopted by the Russian people, for they are spoken of in accusatory words). Chronicles of Russian literature and antiquity Tikhonravov IV, department. 3, pp. 90 and 97. The name Buyakin should (or can) be derived from the word: buoy, buevische, which means cemetery (Snegirev, I, 27 fin.) and therefore should (can) be considered as female spirits who lived in cemeteries. A ghoul is the same as the German Vampire (Vampir, V30;am) is a deceased, gravely sinful and cursed person who comes out of the grave at night, walks from house to house and sucks blood from sleepy people and, especially, from babies (Afanasyev, III, 557. Serbs and Greeks confuse ghouls with werewolves, which among the Little Russians, along with other Slavs - vovkulak, Afanasiev III, 525 sqq, and the first call them (the ghouls) vukodlaks, - Karadzic under the word and Belly and customs of the Serbian people, p. 213. The second - by our Slavic name βουρκόλακας, - B. Schmidt, Das Volksleben der Neugriechen S. 157, Dukanja Gloss. Graecit. under the word Βουλκόλακα). Beregini may be another name for Mermaids, given to them because they emerge from the waters onto the banks of rivers and spend time sitting on them. (Afanasyev takes them for female creatures living on the mountains, from the ancient meaning of the word breg - mountain, -II, 529 fin., III, 124; in some legends it is noted about the beregins that they are “called distant (option thirty) sisters,” Tikhonravov p. 89 beginning, 92 beginning, 108 beginning). The Vilas of the Serbs are young and beautiful female creatures, dressed in white, long clothes, with loose braids, living on large mountain heights and on cliffs near the water, not harming anyone and only taking cruel revenge when someone insults them - Karadzic, Rechnik and Zhivot. What Pereplut is remains completely unexplained. By Trojan, as we said before, in all likelihood we should mean the Roman emperor Trajan, who was included in the legends among the gods due to a misunderstanding (first half of the volume, footnote 16). Div, identical with the Latin Deus and Greek Θεός (indirect cases from Ζεύς - Διός, Δι ΐ), actually meaning bright, was originally used about the deity in a good sense (the current meaning of the words: wondrous, wondrous) and then began to be used in an evil sense (what happened to the word and among the Persians, for whom div is an evil spirit, Afanasyev, I, 127 fin.). Together with the masculine deity - Div, in the legends there is a feminine deity - Divia: “to eat from Dyyu, and from others to Divia”, Bibliographic sheets of Köppen, 1825, No. 7, p. 88 sub fin., cfr Chronicles of Russian Literature Tikhonravov IV, 3, 99). As a black deity who brings misfortune to people, Diva is spoken of in the word about Igor’s campaign: “Div has already fallen upon the earth” (Russian, which was terribly devastated by the Polovtsy, Russian Memorabilia III, 130), and about the diva-owl, as the bird of the god-Diva in it: “Div calls to the top of the tree” (foreshadowing misfortunes - ibid. p. 38). Instead of Mary of the other Slavs, a feminine deity, we Russians probably had Mor (morit), a masculine deity, for the word pestilence is still used among us in such a way as to suggest the existence of a pagan black god: a pestilence came and attacked people. The Serbs have Mara-Kuga and Morija, Karadzic Slovo. According to our Russian mythology, the assistant of death is Baba Yaga (Afanasyev III, 586) and then the instruments of evil deities between the people themselves are witches (about whom he has in the same volume). At folk games, which constitute a remnant of their pagan celebrations, their stuffed animals or dolls are still used. Helmold, lib. I, § 83, says: alii (dei Sclavorum) silvas vel lucos inhabitant, quibus nullae sunt effigies expressae. This is evident from the fact that Vladimir, having erected an apparently magnificent statue of Perun in Kyiv in 980, erected it in wood and only partially added silver and gold to the wood: “put Perun in wood, and his head in silver, and his mustache in gold.” Cfr of Ibn-Fotzlan in Fresne, S.9. For what the Western Slavs already had, see Sreznevsky on pagan worship. Under the barns, that is, in the basements, they prayed to the fire. First half of the volume footnote 277 Sreznevsky On pagan worship. From that cemetery there are buoys and buoys. On Maundy Thursday, with the cries of the dead (Stoglav chapter 41, question 26, Kazan edition p. 190), that is, they greeted them returning from the other world; on Trinity Saturday they celebrated wakes and funeral feasts for the dead in cemeteries (Stoglav chapter 41, question 23, Kazan edition p. 187), that is, they saw them off to the next world. (The popular belief that still persists is that the souls of the dead are released from hell on Bright Day and are locked back into it on Trinity Day). Ibn-Fotslan in Frena, S. 11 and 13 (according to our chronicle in the introduction, they burned on great treasures, but we can assume that the placing of boats on the decks on which they are in Ibn-Fotslan, S. 13, is not said in the chronicle). Chronicle in the introduction and Ibn-Dast in Khvolson, p. 29. Olga performed a funeral feast for Igor and did not order funeral feasts to be performed on herself, - chronicle from 945. and 969 (In one rite of confession, penance is imposed on the one who “fought over the dead” - Synodal manuscripts according to the Description of Gorsky, and Nevostruev No. 153, l. 290, p. 282. Since funeral feasts or fights for the dead took place in cemeteries, then from here a violent person is a brave man, a fighter, and a brawler - νεανιεύομαι, – Budil. “Language of the XIII Word of Gregory the Theologian, p. 110). Special essay on our subject: A. A. Kotlyarevsky, On the funeral customs of the pagan Slavs, Moscow, 1868. It can be assumed that on the first or on a certain coming Thursday, which as a day of the week was dedicated to Perun (like the Romans to Jupiter, who was the same Perun - among some of the Western Slavs Thursday is still Perun's day: Perendan), after the first rain and thunder. There is a well-known proverb: “after the rain on Thursday,” meaning never (and corresponding to the Latin: ad calendas graecas). The origin of the proverb seems likely to be explained in such a way that when the celebration of our Thursday was prohibited in Christianity, they began to refer to it as a holiday that was never meant to be celebrated. (I will do, I will perform this and that after the rain on Thursday, that is, on our holiday, and since this holiday, being prohibited, was never meant to be celebrated, then...). About holiday times, see below. See the accusatory words against Christians living in two faiths in the chronicles of Russian literature and antiquity of the Tikhonravs, vol. IV, department. 3, page 83 sqq. The word dual faith itself is not a word of a new composition, but belongs to our words (“Christians living in dual faith,” ibid. pp. 89 and 91 of the beginning). By evidence of an official nature we mean the testimony of Metropolitan John in the Rule to the monk Jacob, according to the publication of the Right Reverend Macarius in History Vol. II, edition 2, p. 372, 15: “And those (Christians) eat the demon and the swamp and the storehouse”... In Little Russia, among the Bulgarians and among the Serbs, on the evening before the Nativity of Christ or on Christmas Eve, a special ritual meal is held (Petrushevich All-Russian Diary p. 85, Karavelova Monuments of the Folk Life of the Bolgars p. 276 fin., Karadzic Riverman under the word of God and “Belly” p. 3): this is a meal to the Sun and Perun, with prayer to them about the fertility and well-being of the coming year (which is why the evening of Christmas Eve is called a generous evening among the Little Russians, cfr Snegirev, II, 9). Yuletide fortune-telling expresses the desire of people (at present exclusively young people) to know their fate in the coming year. Dressing up, which has its own meaning, in order to hide under a mask and under someone else's guise from the actions of evil gods and from the evil people who serve as their tools, is used at Christmas time because during their continuation the evil gods try to harm and cause evil to people through the so-called cornflowers (because they are mainly evil on Vasily's evening - on New Year's Eve. And why the evil gods try to especially harm people and send their cornflowers at this particular time is not entirely clear). In ancient times, we called Christmastide Korochyun (Novgorod 1st Chronicle under 1143 - like the Carpatho-Russians and some other Slavs, they are still called, Snegirev I, 49; “to give someone a karachun” means to give someone a Christmastide, to give someone a holiday, i.e. to finish off someone). Karachun, in all likelihood, is one and the same with the Bulgarian Karakoncho (Karavelov ibid. p. 278 fin.); and the Bulgarian Karakoncho is one and the same with the modern Greek Καλικάντζαροι; the modern Greek Kalikantsars are precisely evil spirits (in some places represented, just like our cornflowers, by small naked boys in caps), appearing on earth to harm and annoy people for 12 days from the Nativity of Christ to Epiphany (about them Polita Μελέτη ὲπι β ί ου p. 67 and Schmidt Das Volksleben S. 142). The Christmastide Avsen (Ovsen, Usen) or Tausen and Pluga (among the Romanians Plugul) remain unsatisfactorily explained. The Council of Trullo speaks about the pagan celebration of the January Kalandas or our Christmastide by the Greeks in canon 62. For the celebration itself, which remains, as it does with us to this day, see in the Pidalion, in the note to the now indicated canon of the Council of Trullo. We Russians in pre-historical times (and then for a very long time in historical times) counted years or began the new year not with the January term of the natural year, but with the March term, as was the case with the classical Greeks and Romans in ancient times. Therefore, our second holiday of the Sun and Perun was also a civil holiday of the New Year. About the celebration of the March pagan holiday, corresponding to our Maslenitsa, by the Greeks, see the indicated 62nd rule of the Council of Trullo, in the interpretation of the rule of Valsamonov (in Ralli and P. II, 450) and in the note to it by Pidalion. - On Maslenitsa, we bake pancakes or pancakes because Saturday of cheese week or Maslenitsa is the day of universal remembrance of parents (i.e., on the occasion of the pagan holiday, Christian commemoration was extended throughout the week). Kupala is not a pagan deity, as our mythologists say, but a popular nickname for John the Baptist. Kupala, bather, from I bathe, that is, I baptize: Ivan who bathed, that is, who baptized, Christ, is the Baptist (we have seen that in liturgical books baptism is colloquially called bathing). - About the pagan celebration of our bathing suit holiday by the Greeks, see Valsamon in the interpretation of rule 65 of the Council of Trullo (in Ralli and P. II, 459 beginning) and partly in Pidalion in a note on the same rule. In some places in Russia, holy week is called Gremyatskaya week (Sakharov p. 75). There is a sign that on holy week there is thunder for the harvest (Petrushevich, p. 40); in Little Russia, bones from an Easter lamb or piglet are buried in grain fields so that there is no famine (ibidd. and Snegirev I, 160; before the time of the Council of Vladimir in 1274, in some places in Russia on the night of the Holy Resurrection, by which, it seems, should be understood not every resurrection, but namely the Easter, they celebrated a pagan holiday, like Dionysus, through whistling and neighing together of husbands and wives - the end of the actions of the council, in the manuscripts. In Galicia, in some places they call Voroday, - Petruevich ibidd.: what does this Voroday mean?). Nicephorus the Confessor in one of his rules prohibits τὰς πεμπτὰς φυλάττειν, that is, keeping Thursdays (in Ralli and P. Ι V, 431, pr. 4). This is explained in the Pidalion: “among the Armenians and (Orthodox) Christians of the East (Asia Minor) it has become a custom and still remains observed not to work on all Thursdays from Easter to Ascension Thursday, perhaps for the sake of honoring this (last) Thursday” (in a note to the rule of Nicephorus, Zakynthos (Dionysius?) 1864 edition p. 732). Do these Thursdays represent the Thursdays of Zeus-Perun? Let us note here, by the way, that just as in our popular belief, the prophet Elijah now thunders in the sky instead of Perun, so among the Greeks, instead of Zeus, he is the same, see the life of Andrei the Fool in Acta SS. Bollandistov, Maii t. VI p. 81. The demonic fun on the first Monday of Peter's Lent, which Stoglav speaks about (chapter 41, question 27, Kazan edition p. 391), constituted the end of the Yarila holiday (see Snegirev IV, 59 fin. extract from Tikhon of Zadonsk). And St. Blasius, who represents the transformation of Volos according to consonance, is, as it were, an assistant to St. George.– About the celebration of St. George among the Greeks and Bulgarians is completely pagan, see now below. It was celebrated because this holiday was accepted by the Greeks as the holiday of the “homeland” of the Mother of God (λοχειῶν, - Trullo Council rule 79, cfr in Pidalion a note to this rule). - The meal served to the Rod and the Rozhanitsy was consecrated with the troparion of the Mother of God - see the accusatory words in the Chronicles of the Tikhonravs (in Little Russia, at the end of the 16th century, on the next day of the Nativity of Christ, they brought to the church “boiled flour with cheese, supposedly in honor of the Mother of God,” Acts of Western Russia, vol. IV, No. 22 and 33, pp. 30 and 44). – As for the monthly pagan holidays, it is quite likely that 12 Fridays a year, for which the people have special respect, reproduce these holidays. For the weekly pagan holiday of the Slavs, the same Friday should be taken (which in paganism was dedicated to Lada or Siva, Afanasyev I, 230, and this explains that the people have special respect for St. Paraskeva-Friday and that among the Bulgarians she is considered the mother of St. Week: Stoglav, paragraph 41 question 21: “Holy Friday appears (to the false prophets) and Saint Anastasia (Resurrection, i.e. Bulgarian St. Week) and they order them to command the peasants”..., cfr Snegirev I, 188; in Little Russia among the common people at the end of the 16th century. the week-long holiday was Friday; and not Sunday - Acts of Western Russia, ibid., pp. 29 and 44). [About the veneration of Friday as Sunday in Little Russia, about fasting on 12 Fridays and about the simple-haired woman who portrayed St. Friday, see Regulations, part 2, paragraphs 4 and. 5.] For the Greeks, see the note to Canon 99 of the Council of Trullo in Pidalion. (Moreover, the victim is unfairly mistaken for their kurban borrowed from the Turks). About the Bolgars from Karavelov in Monuments of Folk Life of the Bolgars, p. 211. We still sing: Bless, Trinity, Mother of God, we should go into the forest and weave a wreath! Ay Did, ay Lado! – Snegirev III, 103. Plowing villages during pestilences. In the Chronicles of Tikhonravov, p. 89. About Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky, who would certainly have opened almshouses in Vladimir if they had existed somewhere before him, the chronicle says: “he was even more eager for alms: for he carried his goods and copper through the streets better than the sick and through the shutter,” - Laurentian Chronicle under 1175. In ancient times, as in later times in Moscow, we had doctors from foreigners (Arabs, Armenians - in the Patericon, Greeks and maybe Jews, who were then famous for the art of healing) only from princes. Nestor in the Life of Theodosius, according to the edition of Bodyansky L. 20 sub fin. Saint Vladimir distributed very large monetary alms to the poor on holidays, - a chronicle from 996. See the first half of the volume, paragraph footnote 462. The treatment of people with domestic animals, of course, constitutes evidence regarding their morals (as Holy Scripture also says, Proverbs 12:10): the treatment of our people with unfortunate horses (and yard dogs), in this case, represents an extremely sad testimony. Let the reader remember what the Stoglavy Council says about our drunkenness in its answer to drunken drinking, ch. 52, Kazan edition p. 249 sqq (253). First half of the volume footnote 272 ff. Pravda Yaroslavova, recognizing and, as it were, sanctioning the fact of the masters’ birth of children from slaves, does in relation to the children and their mothers what prescribes the liberation of both from slavery: “even if the husband has timid children, then they will not have the back (inheritance), but they will have freedom with their mother” - Russian Remarks I, 54, II, 107. Issued in manuscripts by Kalajdovich (p. 187 note 2). In later times, in the 16th century, sodomitism (παιδεραστία, actually boy-love, or in general manly love) was very widespread among us. Attributing its appearance among us to a later time, they consider the reason for this to be the later strict confinement of women among us. But in later times, not all women were strictly confined among us, but only women of the highest class, and, therefore, this does not constitute the real reason; and in any case, we find indications of the existence of our supernatural sin already in very ancient times (see the first half of the volume, footnote 1533). The Greeks could have introduced us to sodomitism, for whom it dates back to classical times and who were devoted to it in later times to the most extreme and, one might say, terrible degree, see, for example, the life of Andrei the Fool in Acta SS. Bollandistov, Maii t. VI, p. 32 sqq, 44. In later times, among us, men who served for women, to acquire effeminacy, plucked their beards: we find the same among the Greeks, - Morini De poenitentia, appendix p. 93). Sodomitism The Turks, despite the fact that every man can have as many women as he wants, are more likely to be descended from the Greeks). In addition to the fact that the clothes were made from expensive and precious materials, they were decorated with pearls and decorated with stones. A shirt made of Dutch linen for today's rich man and at the same time a dandy, with all its good quality and with all its grace, costs no more than 20–25 rubles; but the shirt of an ancient rich man and dandy, studded with pearls, could cost thousands of rubles. The additions to the shirt were: a gold hryvnia (on the neck), gold hoops (on the arms): an expensive and very precious belt (cfr Description of Synodal Manuscripts No. 54, p. 22 beginning). And regarding the large number of servants in houses and house servants in general, ancient and old people, as is known, reached the point that, according to our current concepts, they were something completely ridiculous. The word buffoon comes, as we think, from the Greek common (not found in lexicons) σκώμμαρχος, which means master (actually chief) of laughter (ἀρχὸς σκωμμάτων). In old Scribe and Census books you can often find that in some village there lives a buffoon or buffoons live. This means that buffoons lived to serve the needs of the surrounding area, so that there would be someone to invite as musicians and entertainers to all sorts of feasts, and especially to weddings (in Greece, where the craft of buffoons is practiced by gypsies, this is still the case). In addition to all of the above, the buffoons were also gymnasts and magicians. The buffoon performing gymnastic tricks in front of the prince, see on the fresco in the porch of the Kiev St. Sophia Cathedral - a photograph in the Polevoy edition of Essays on Russian History in the Monuments of Life, II, 48; that the buffoons were magicians, the Pereyaslav chronicler makes it clear when, telling about 1070. about the appearance of the Magi in Rostov, he says: “they (the Magi) dreamed as if they had obscured the vision behind them”... - Temporary Book IX, p.47. [On buffoons, see the article by the late I. D. Belyaev (“About buffoons”) in the Temporary of the Society of History and Antiquities, book XX, also by Afanasyev in Poetic Views, I, 338 fin. sqq. – Nestor in the life of the Monk Theodosius says that one day the latter came to the Grand Duke Svyatoslav, “and saw many playing before him, some harp voices emanating, other organ voices singing, and frosty (Vostokov does not have the word, and Miklosich does not explain) squeaks saying, and thus everyone playing and having fun, as is the custom before the prince,” according to the edition of Bodyansky L. 26.] That is, some remnant may have survived among the people, but has not yet been made known. [The common people amused themselves, as they still do on holidays. In ancient times, major holidays included the so-called fraternities (Ipata Chronicle of 1159, 2nd edition p. 340 beginning: “brotherhood”) - collective feasts of parishioners at the church. Brotherhoods, which also existed among the Greeks, are actually prohibited by canonical rules - the Council of Laodicea, rule 55 and the Council of Carthage, rule 71 (in Ralli and P. - 60. About the festive round dances among the Greeks, for comparison with ours, see Ralli and P. III, 117, 185 and 465 sqq).] The game of grain (the name comes from the fact that instead of bone cubes, “grain bones,” grains were often used, in all likelihood, there is a Greek game, which the ancient Greeks called κύβοι (cubes, a game with bone cubes, Apostolic canon 42 and Trullo Council canon 50), and among the new Greeks it is called τὸ ζάρι ·and τὸ τάβλι, and which is a European backgammon. See Shchapova Russian schism of the Old Believers, p. 162 beginning sqq. Description of the Synodal Manuscripts Section II, Supplement No. 231, p. 89 fin. The Magi killed “Popin Yanev.” Hypatan Chronicle under 1185, 2nd edition p. 437. In the Laurentian Chronicle under 1096. About the Galich prince Vladimir Volodarevich it is stated in the chronicle (not quite definitely) that he had the custom of going to the court church every day for services - Ipata Chronicle under 1152, 2nd edition p. 319 beginning; the chronicle says this directly and positively about the Smolensk prince David Rostislavich, - ibid. under 1197, p. 471 fin. The concepts of time included in the number of legitimate war booty not only everything that belonged to the enemies of people, but also to God - the shrine of churches and their accessories. On this basis, our princes, when they happened to take conquered cities, diligently plundered the churches of the cities in order to enrich their churches with shrines and accessories. In 1066 Vseslav of Polotsk took Novgorod and carried away St. Sofia bells, chandeliers, Jerusalem church and service vessels (Novgorod 1st Chronicle under 1066 and Ipata Chronicle under 1178, 2nd edition p. 412). In 1171 The army of Andrei Bogolyubsky, led by his son Mstislav, took Kyiv under Mstislav Izyaslavich of Volyn, and “robbed the monasteries and Sophia and the Virgin Mary of the Tithes: they stripped the churches of icons and books and vestments, and they destroyed all the bells, and all the shrines were quickly taken” (Ipatskaya under 1171 from the beginning). In 1203 Rurik Rostislavich took Kyiv from his rival with the help of his allies, and these last (Chernigov Olgovichs) “plundered St. Sophia with the Metropolitan, and plundered the Tithe Holy Mother of God, and plundered all the monasteries, and took away icons, and took others, and honest crosses and sacred loans and books, then put everything in full” (Laurentian Chronicle under 1203 from the beginning). Pilgrim ch. XXI, published by Norov p. 144 fin. In Kalaidovich, pp. 176 and 203 (Travel took so much time away from farming and labor in general among the common people that, according to Nifont, they caused great harm to the state). From Kirik: “we went to the company, although we wanted to go to Jerusalem,” Kalaidovich p. 203. In Kalajdovich, page 176. Our name for the hypocrite “hypocrite” is the Greek χατζῆς (among the Bulgarians and Serbs - hajiya and hadji, among the Turks - hoja), which is the name of the admirer who made a trip to Jerusalem (and we later assimilate him as a nickname), i.e. with us the name of the admirer has become a synonym and a common noun for the hypocrite. (On the existence of the word in the Greek language before the Turks - perhaps originating from our Slavic walk? - see Acta Patriarchat. Constantinop. Miklosic, I, 13, II, 203: χαδζ ί κης). In the chronograph: “in the form of a certain pilgrim (s), that is, Kaliki” - A. N. Popova Izbornik from hrogrr. 190 (Pilgrims, about whom in the Laurentian Chronicle under 1283, in other chronicles are called transitionists, who walk the lands asking for alms - Voskresensky). Ducanja Gloss. Latinit. under the word Palmarius. And the name “cripples,” meaning beggars wandering around the world, is the same as Kaliki (for these latter also made their journeys in the name of Christ). Bezsonova The crippled pilgrims, issue I, p. 7 sqq (that the crippled people lived well from the name of Christ is evident from the fact that they are called “burly fellows” in epics). – Anthony of Novgorod in his Constantinople Pilgrim reports the news of a remarkable Russian pilgrim of the pre-Mongol period, who died and was buried in Constantinople: “on slaughter ( ὲν τῷ ὲμβόλ ῳ, – above between footnotes 495 and 496) of St. George, St. Leontius the priest of Rusyn lies in the body, a great man: that Leontius walked to Jerusalem 3 times on foot” – according to Savaitov’s edition, p. 142. The writer known as Dionysius the Areopagite takes monasticism as a sacrament (De eccles. Hierarch, p. 6); for the sacrament and, as it were, for the second baptism - Theodore the Studite (in Min in Patrology t. 99 p. 1521, 1524 and 1590), cfr Gieseler Dogmengeschichte, SS. 403 fin. and 526. And to all actions and deeds of external piety, the Greeks do not have the same commitment as we, the Russians. The Russians who know the Greeks in this regard explain this by the fact that their ancient piety has fallen. But this is not true and the real reason is a difference of views. (Nikon’s correction of the books gave rise to the old or medieval opinion of the Russians about the Greeks, as if true piety had fallen among them: the reason for the formation of this view was what we have now indicated above - the difference in views on external piety. We will have to talk about this in detail much later). Former in the MDA a few days ago. History vol. 1, ch. VI, edition 4 p. 177 sqq. About ancient and new Russia, - appendices to the XII volume of History pp. XXXIX fin. History vol. V, pp. 213 fin. Eminence Philaret History, period I, § 9, edition 3 p. 32; His Eminence Macarius History, vol. I ch. III, edition 2 p. 211, Soloviev History, vol. I, ch. VIII, edition 4 p. 285. See Pyotr Simonovich’s letter to Pogodin in Moskvityanin 1849, part II, Mixture, page 11. You might be interested in: